After nearly seven months of uncertainty and controversy over the selection process, Marathon has its permanent city manager.
With a 3-2 vote after more than an hour of discussion, the Marathon City Council approved a new contract for former city attorney and interim city manager Steve Williams on Sept. 8.
The selection capped a process that began in February, when the council voted 3-2 to fire then-City Manager George Garrett. Initially appointed as the interim manager in March, Williams repeatedly told the council he didn’t want the permanent job.
But following a search that drew 69 applicants and a field that narrowed to Marathon city clerk Diane Clavier and St. Lucie County deputy administrator Mayte Santamaria, Williams faced heavy pressure from Vice Mayor Debbie Struyf and Mayor Lynny Del Gaizo to join a final round of interviews. Clavier and Santamaria withdrew once Williams agreed to apply, leaving him as the lone finalist.
Last month, council directed staff to draw up a contract for Williams, with review for legal sufficiency by consulting firm Vernis and Bowling. Negotiations over points of contention in the contract dominated Tuesday night, after the agreement was removed from the consent agenda to address council and resident concerns.
Salary
Several speakers raised concern over the contracted base salary of $289,881.40 plus city-sponsored insurance and retirement benefits – nearly a $70,000 jump over Garrett’s base pay of $219,000 at the time of his termination.
But Williams pushed back at length, arguing the new number is within roughly $3,000 of what his compensation would have been as city attorney after cost of living and merit raises in the city’s next budget cycle. The new number, he said, is far below what some other comparable city managers in Florida receive – well into the $300,000 range and above.
He said he arrived at the number by using a 2025 survey of comparable Florida city manager salaries, updated to 2026 figures, while HR Director Evie Engelmeyer noted that the new salary would be roughly a 1% increase over Williams’ existing pay. Staff clarified that if the contract was accepted, Williams would not be eligible for merit or cost of living adjustments in the city’s 2026-27 budget, but would have increases matching the rates provided to other staff in future years.
Williams also said the contract’s final clause, a one-time allowance of up to $84,000 to compensate him for time served as both city manager and attorney, was left intentionally blank if the contract had been approved on consent. The final version accepted the proposed salary, with no one-time lump sum.
The $289,000 salary places Williams as the Keys’ highest-paid city manager. Key West City Manager Brian Barroso earned a salary of $215,000 when first hired, increasing to his current rate of $265,000 per year. Islamorada village manager Ron Saunders began in 2025 at a $200,000 salary with a $4,000 per month housing allowance.
While keeping a $650 monthly allowance for use of his personal vehicle for city business, Williams also agreed to return his city-assigned truck for use by other employees, and to strip any city-sponsored memberships and dues in outside organizations down to strictly necessary professional memberships.
Term & termination
Former councilman Jeff Smith, resident Wendy Bonilla and the Florida Keys Contractors Association urged discussion of specific contract elements, including the agreement’s indefinite term and a provision requiring a supermajority vote of four of five council members to fire Williams as manager.
They also raised issues with a “fallback provision” and a heavy severance package that would allow Williams to revert to the city attorney if terminated as the city manager. Under the original agreement, he would receive a severance package of 20 weeks pay – the maximum allowed under state law – if dismissed from the manager job, plus a second 20-week sum if he was also fired as the city attorney within the next year.
Smith, who worked alongside Williams on the council for three years, said he doubted the city attorney would have allowed the draft to reach council in its original form.
“I think you’re setting yourself up to just having to pay a large severance package if you ever get rid of the manager,” Smith told the council. “(The indefinite term) has never been done in the history of the city of Marathon, 25 years. I don’t think it should start today.”
Smith argued the supermajority requirement could also conflict with the city charter, which states that both the city manager and attorney serve at the pleasure of the council and can be removed by “majority” vote.
“If it takes three to hire, but four to fire, I think that’s an unreasonable ask,” Smith said. “Anything that conflicts with my charter, I’d want a strong legal opinion to make sure I’m good.”
Williams said he believed the four-fifths threshold still fit under the charter’s “majority” requirement, and said he’d declined to add other more aggressive protections he’d found in other city managers’ contracts.
Councilmen Lynn Landry and Kenny Matlock listed the 4-1 provision as one of their strongest sticking points, with Landry suggesting the supermajority could be beyond the council’s legal authority.
Landry further panned Vernis and Bowling’s review of the contract, saying the firm had “punted” and not specifically addressed the 4-1 clause, and that the city lacked legal representation in the room that night for negotiations.
At the request of the council, Williams agreed to remove the “double severance,” but kept his ability to revert back as city attorney. Last month, the council directed Williams to ask deputy attorney Alli Heller if she would be interested in filling Williams’ position once vacated. With contract negotiations ongoing until Tuesday night, Williams told the Weekly that Heller had not given her decision.
Noting a council election barely a year away and deep political divides in Marathon, Williams also told the council that the 4-1 term was non-negotiable for him to accept the job, rejecting a suggested “sunset provision” that would revert to a 3-2 majority after a prescribed number of years.
Challenged by Landry that the contract appeared “written by someone who didn’t really want the job,” Williams said the terms instead were written for “someone who doesn’t want to lose the job once they’ve got it.”
“I want to do what I think is best for the city, and I think this is what gives me the ability to do it confidently without looking over my shoulder every 10 seconds to see where three votes are,” Williams said. “If you want turnover every six months, have that. But that’s not what we want to do as a town.”
Threats gone too far
Public comment during Tuesday’s meeting centered on criticism of the proposed contract and selection process, with residents and council members clearly separating their evaluation of contract terms from a positive impression of Williams’ performance since March.
And while the meeting’s discourse remained civil compared to previous discussion in local social media groups, Williams used part of his remarks to describe threats he said his family had received since he became interim manager, including a bullet fired into his home while his wife and daughter were present. The Keys Weekly has requested further documentation of the incident from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
“For those of you who are shaking your head and not agreeing with me — you take a bullet through the window of your living room and sit here and see what you think about it,” Williams said.
Public comment was not uniformly critical. Several residents and sitting council members praised Williams’ handling of the interim role and his three decades of local government and legal experience, including board certification in city and county government law — a credential Williams said only about a dozen attorneys statewide hold.
“We have lots of questions about what’s been going on in the city for the last 10 years,” said Struyf. “Right now we need stability in this community. We have huge contracts here, and we’re on a timeline for some of them. We really need to pay attention.”
The vote
Councilwoman Robyn Still moved to approve the amended contract, with a second from Struyf and support from Mayor Lynny Del Gaizo. While Matlock and Landry were the “no” votes in the 3-2 final call, both said their votes came from disagreement with the contract terms and supermajority provision, not from a lack of faith in Williams.
Williams thanked the council for adhering to Florida’s Sunshine Law, noting members were barred from discussing contract terms outside public meetings — pushing much of the negotiation into real time on the dais Tuesday night.
For more coverage of the Sept. 8 Marathon City Council meeting, see the Sept. 17 issue of the Marathon Weekly.
