10 of My Questions for our County Administrator Finalists.......

We will be interviewing at least 7-8 candidates for the next County Administrator job.  I am going to ask some tough questions and I am going to demand answers to them for my vote.  Here are 10 I'll be asking.......

I'll be polite----but I won't be bashful.

I will ask tough questions of the 6-8 finalist that will be interviewed for our administrator position.

Because I know this position is critical.  This is the "Quarterback" position on the football team.

This is the manager of the "restaurant" taxpayers have invested their futures in.....

This position will be the "face" of our county

This  position runs our county and  our operation.  This is a stressful, mostly thankless, high-paying job that operates in the sunshine but that also deals with a lot of political pressure from 5 separate "bosses."

So we need this position filled ASAP but we need to get the RIGHT PERSON in this seat.

Right now there is a tremendous "leadership vacuum" in Escambia County, and filling the administrator position is the first step in correcting this condition.

So we have our list, we will do group interviews, and then we will do individual, one-on-one interviews with each of the finalists.  This is the point where I will make my final decision on my selection of the next administrator.  ( I am one-fifth of the  vote that will hire Jack Brown's successor)

Here are ten of the most important questions I will ask, and I will PRESS for REAL answers...

1.  Knowing this job will be high-visibility and high-pressure--why do you want this job?

2.  If you are the eventual selectee and you agree to terms to come to work for us--how many hours per week will you be willing to work on our (multiple) pressing issues (budget, labor union negotiations, fire service, pay issues, tax issues, ECAT issues, BCC personality issues, internal employee issues, etc. etc. etc.)?

3.  How will you handle Elected Board Members that want to micromanage you and tell you, for instance, what to do, how to do it, and /or which employees you need to discipline/terminate?

4.  How will you handle Elected Board Members that berate staff publicly at the dais?

5.  How will you handle Elected Board Members that try to thwart the will and the lawful votes of the elected BODY as a whole?

6.  Are you willing to tell an elected member of the BCC "NO" if unreasonable requests are made?

7.  Will you bring plans, ideas, initiatives forward to address the pressing issues this board faces


 based upon your skills and experience--------or will you take the obsequious and feckless position that you will simply enact the initiatives that "garner a motion, a second, and at least three votes"

8.  Will you work, within the parameters of the law, to guide the board toward solutions you feel will be supported by the majority of the board?

9.  To whom will your ultimate loyalty go in this position?  (e.g. the citizens, the taxpayers, the board, the organization, or the  senior staff?)

10.  Are you willing to commit to 7-10 years to this community, in this position, to move us in the right direction?

I will ask these questions and I will carefully consider how these questions are answered.  I have had the luxury of serving on not one but two locally elected, constitutionally mandated boards.  On the first one, there was too much power concentrated in the executive because in addition to the board members, the executive was an elected position.  This was problematic; luckily, with respect to that board, that issue has been corrected and starting in 2020 that executive will be a "hired"-not elected-position.

At the BCC--we as board members have an incredible amount of raw power that can make an executive's job excruciatingly difficult.  So now that we are hiring a new executive, I need to insure he/she knows what to expect and also what we can expect from this person.

We need a strong, charismatic leader that knows how to say NO and how to bring ideas and solutions.

this is what I am looking for, and this is what we NEED badly at the moment, so far as I am concerned!