JUPITER TRIMS CITY MANAGER CANDIDATE LIST TO FOUR
The finalists will be interviewed at Nov. 6 council meeting.
JUPITER — The town manager candidate list has been narrowed to four — and Jupiter Police Chief Frank Kitzerow is not one of them.
”Nobody knows the community like (Kitzerow). He’s an excellent police chief. But I don’t think he would enjoy the job as town manager,” said Jupiter Mayor Todd Wodraska.
The town council Monday night narrowed the list down from a dozen recommended by a national search company.
The four finalists are:
■ Susan Grant, deputy city manager, Coral Springs
■ Matt Benoit, city manager, Huntsville, Texas
■ David Buckingham, city manager, Morro Bay, Calif.
■ Mark Lauzier, assistant city manager, Tacoma, Wash.
The next step in the selection process is a Nov. 6 town council meeting to interview the four finalists.
A meet-and-greet session, which will be open to the public, is scheduled later that day to meet the candidates at the town’s Community Center.
A Nov. 16 town council meeting to make a final decision has been tentatively scheduled.
Kitzerow, Jupiter police chief since 2005, supervises a department of about 116 sworn officers. The town has about 380 full-time employees.
Kitzerow, 60, is paid about $147,000 annually. Before coming to Jupiter, he was police chief in 96,000-resident Portsmouth, Va.
The annual Jupiter police budget is about $21 million. Jupiter, with about 60,000 residents, has an annual operating budget of about $90 million.
Former Town Manager Andy Lukasik, 47, who was paid about $180,000 annually, left March 18 to be the village manager in North Palm Beach. He was Jupiter town manager since 2004.
The original list of about 60 applicants included the former police chief of St. Louis, Samuel Dotson, and city managers from Florida, Texas, Missouri, Minnesota, California and New Mexico as well as a U.S. Navy senior liaison officer from Vienna, Va.
The list of town manager candidates was compiled by Strategic Government Resources, a Keller, Texas-based firm hired by the town to recruit candidates. The town agreed to pay SGR $18,500, with additional expenses not to exceed $8,500.