Aug. 7 marked the first day for Islamorada’s new interim manager Bryan Cook, the county employee services director loaned to the village by County Administrator Roman Gastesi to provide stability through a busy budget cycle and the latter months of hurricane season.
For Cook, the transition was rapid, as Gastesi and he met separately with four council members on July 27 to discuss the idea. By Aug. 3, an agreement between the village and county to loan Cook as interim village manager was approved via 4-1 vote. Before Cook’s appointment, the dais voted 3-2 at a July 17 special meeting to forgo another year of employment with Ted Yates as village manager.
A Sugarloaf resident, Cook spent his first week acquainting himself with a new office, some of the issues facing the community and a village staff going through another transition at the top position.
“They’ve been through a lot and going through change now,” Cook said of the staff. “The village has great people and the right people who are trained, qualified and eager to work. One of my first priorities is to be respectful and understanding of that and the impact that it’s had on every single department and every single function of the village, and every person obviously.
“Every time they get a new village manager, the analogy I use is they get their compass set and they start down the path down a new direction. They take a few steps down the path and then they have to go back and start over and recalibrate their compass and start off again down a new path,” he continued. “Stability is a goal for me and trying to bring as much as I can to help that situation get settled for staff.”
Cook also spent time preparing for a Thursday, Aug. 17 meeting containing 24 items on the agenda. The length of village council meetings, which have lasted as long as six hours, is one of the main contention points from the attending public left watching and listening well past 10 p.m. The council recently decided to move to a Tuesday-Thursday schedule in an effort to cut down on the marathon meetings. The change could begin when the dais meets in October, but Cook said he’s hoping to make the meetings more efficient and improve the flow with the “county’s formula” before that change takes effect.
“Obviously, the staff and I will follow the direction of the council, but I would like to ask the council to try a few things before we go all that way,” he said.
In better managing the agenda, Cook hopes briefings with council members before the meetings will eliminate any element of surprise and give them reassurance knowing staff did their due diligence on an agenda item.
Cook is also examining the inner workings of agenda creation and how items are placed for consideration. Cook acknowledged the public’s statements about items placed on the agenda at the last minute, leaving residents little time to review before a meeting.
“We acknowledge there are emergency items that come up, such as a vendor didn’t sign a contract in time, but they signed a day before the meeting. It makes business-efficiency sense to go ahead and add that item to the agenda,” Cook said. “It’s not about surprises. It’s about only allowing last-minute items to the agenda if they meet certain criteria.”
In addition to briefings and agenda management, Cook is also encouraging the public to consider organizing their public comments a little differently. Cook said he’s noticed public commenters taking time to share similar sentiments.
“If the members of the public want to go through this public process and address their village council, maybe have the first person uses their three minutes to make the first point, the next person makes the second point and the third person makes a third point,” Cook said. “To make that public comment more meaningful, I want to try to have conversations to encourage folks to streamline focus and be more purposeful and impactful with their public comments.”
Originally from Virginia, Cook spent most of his career in the private sector. Starting out recruiting temporary employees for various industrial and professional jobs around Tennessee and Virginia, he eventually transitioned to the printing company Robinette, where he worked in human resources for three years. From there, Cook moved to South Carolina, where he served as assistant human resources manager at a BMW manufacturing plant that employed 5,000 workers.
He moved to St. Petersburg and landed a job with the St. Petersburg Times. Cook’s admiration for the Sunshine State — particularly scuba diving — grew as time progressed.
A human resources opportunity became available at Pinellas County, where he was hired as workforce strategy manager. He worked there six months before applying and successfully securing the employee services director position with Monroe County. He was hired Aug. 1, 2017 and closed on his house two weeks before Hurricane Irma caused destruction in the Keys.
“I went right into working,” Cook said. “It’s some of the most rewarding work of my career. I just pinch myself every day that I’m able to live and work in paradise and be part of this community, and do what I do and make a difference.”
Gastesi, an Islamorada resident, told council members at a July 27 meeting that the move to loan Cook to the village had the county commission’s full backing, as well as county senior management.
“This is just basically the county family coming in trying to help out the Islamorada family,” he said.
Cook’s transition away from his employee services job for the short term will put a few county projects on hold. For instance, Cook said his office is currently revamping the county’s performance review form, something he said is old and needs streamlining. But he’ll continue to stay in touch with his staff as well as county senior management, all of whom stand ready to assist Cook throughout his stent with the village.
“This is the beauty of Roman’s idea,” Cook said. “Anything that comes up with the village, obviously I can talk to staff about it, but if we get into something where we need to get another perspective on a particular issue, I can pick up the phone and call any and all county directors.
“For example, recently I called Emily Schemper (county planning director). She was able to help us with digital files of land use maps that the village had a portion of,” he continued. “I think there was a digitization project and some files got corrupted. The county had files in their records and we were able to build the village’s records by just picking up the phone and calling Emily.”
Per the agreement, Cook will remain interim manager for 60 days with the option to renew for additional time, if the council chooses to go that route. The village recently issued a request for proposals for headhunting firms to potentially aid the council find its next permanent manager. In addition, the village has released a hiring ad for the position in a bid to potentially find locally qualified candidates.
With searches underway, Cook said he’s focused on doing the best job for the village of Islamorada with the work he currently has in front of him.
“It’s a neat arrangement where the county could help the village in this,” he said. “Personally, I’m honored it could be me.”
