BRADENTON – At Thursday’s Manatee County Commission land use meeting, County Attorney Bill Clague informed the board that developer lobbyist Jon Mast, whom the board had voted to begin negotiations with to serve as acting county administrator, had withdrawn himself from consideration.
Mast is the CEO of the Sarasota Manatee Building Industry Association (BIA), which bills itself as "the unified voice" of local development interests. Commissioner Mike Rahn, past president of the BIA, motioned to begin negotiations with Mast during a meeting last week.
Commissioners Vanessa Baugh and Amanda Ballard, both of whom have connections with the BIA through their husbands, joined commissioners Kevin Van Ostenbridge, James Satcher, and Jason Bearden to approve the motion, while Commissioner George Kruse voted against it.
Kruse cited concerns that switching interim administrators in the midst of a national search for a permanent replacement for Scott Hopes would cause unnecessary disruption, while possibly complicating negotiations with the final candidates.
The BIA is currently engaged in lobbying the county to make developer-friendly changes to its comprehensive land use plan and land development code. On Tuesday, Rahn, whose campaign was largely bankrolled by development interests, urged that it was critical to have Mast’s "expertise" while the county continued its rewrite of the comp plan and LDC.
On Tuesday, Clague brought the board a contract proposed by Mast that would have made him, by a considerable margin, the highest-paid county employee ever, at an annual base salary of $225,000. Some commissioners were uncomfortable with the terms and the board voted unanimously to authorize Commissioner Bearden to join the negotiations as a representative of the board.
At Thursday's meeting, Bearden said that he had one conversation with Mast, accompanied by Clauge, in which he offered a base salary of $195,000 as a starting point. Bearden said that he did not receive a counteroffer and that the next thing that happened was Mast informing Clague that he wished to withdraw from the negotiations.
Commission chair Kevin Van Ostenbridge testily expressed his disappointment in Bearden’s failure to reach terms with a candidate that six of the seven commissioners wanted in the position. Bearden responded that Mast's failure to even make a counteroffer to a reasonable starting point suggested that either he did not want the job or had previously been made to believe by other board members that his initial demands would be met.
The meeting devolved into a protracted bickering session between the two commissioners who allegedly were close to engaging in a physical altercation last week, sometime after Bearden had motioned to replace Von Ostenbridge as chair with Commissioner Baugh at Tuesday’s meeting. That coup was initially successful until Ballard changed her vote at Thursday’s meeting, restoring Van Ostenbridge as chair.
In an email sent to BIA members obtained by TBT, Mast wrote, "You may have heard in the news that I was being considered for the Acting Administrator position for Manatee County. This is a position I was asked by our friends on the commission to entertain. As of Wednesday, of this week, I have withdrawn my name from consideration for the position."
Mast concluded by saying that he would go back to work to defend and promote the housing industry.
Commissioners ultimately decided, at least for now, that interim county administrator Lee Washington would remain in the position until a permanent administrator is selected by the board, which is currently engaged in a candidate search with the aid of a consulting firm. Finalists are expected to be presented to the board in early July. Commissioner Satcher did suggest that the county may still hire Mast as a "consultant" on the LDC and comp plan rewrites.
