Who will be next city manager in Miami Beach? Commission to pick from six finalists
“We have three really terrific internal candidates and very impressive external candidates, so I think we can’t go wrong in terms of our decision,” Mayor Dan Gelber said.
Whoever is chosen will inherit a city recovering from a budgetbruising pandemic and the fallout from a spring break period that resurfaced long-standing tensions between residents and the party scene in South Beach.
Miami Beach has a city manager form of government in which the manager runs the day-to-day operations of the city and executes policies approved by the commission. The manager will oversee 2,200 full-time employees and a $627 million operating budget.
The next city manager
will replace interim City Manager Raul Aguila, who is expected to return to his former role as city attorney until his retirement next year.
The three internal candidates are Eric Carpenter, an assistant city manager; Alina Tejeda Hudak, also an assistant city manager; and John Woodruff, the city’s chief financial officer.
The external candidates are Jay Boodheshwar, deputy town manager for the town of Palm Beach; Anthony Figliola, executive vice president at Empire Government Strategies; and Michael Reese, former director of local government affairs for Ice Miller Whiteboard.
Miami Beach tapped headhunter Ralph Andersen & Associates, paying the firm $49,500 to conduct a nationwide search. The 45-day application process returned 29 candidates by its March 1 deadline. Ten of the candidates were deemed to have exceeded qualifications. Commissioners voted March 17 to short-list 6 candidates.
Minimum qualifications for the position are a bachelor’s degree and at least seven years of administrative experience, preferably including government work. City residency, while not a requirement, is also preferred.
Two candidates, Boodheshwar and Reese, said they would live full-time in Miami Beach if selected. All internal candidates currently live outside of Miami Beach, but Woodruff said he would split time on the Beach by purchasing a second home in the city, possibly a condo in North Beach.
“All of them bring different strengths to the table, but it’s hard to narrow it down,” Commissioner Michael Góngora said in an interview.
Góngora, who was involved in the hiring of Morales in 2013, said he expected the search to turn up more qualified external candidates. Morales was chosen among 60 candidates.
After the commission agreed last month to quickly short-list the three internal candidates, Góngora said it was difficult to come up with three external candidates everyone agreed deserved to be considered.
He and two other commissioners requested that the city consider two additional options, former City Manager Jorge Gonzalez and former Building Director Alex Rey. Neither applied for the job. Gonzalez is the village manager in Bal Harbour, and Rey is the city manager in St. Pete Beach. The motion failed due to a lack of support.
“I was disappointed with the lack of quality external candidates that applied,” Góngora said. “Last time we had opened the job up I felt that we had more talent from across the country.”
THE INTERNAL CANDIDATES
Eric Carpenter, 48, has worked for the city of Miami Beach since 2013 — first as director of public works and since 2018 as one of three assistant city managers.
Carpenter has been the lead negotiator on several high-profile public-private development deals, including proposals to redevelop the Byron Carlyle Theater and the Miami Beach Marina, both of which were rejected. He also worked on the $600 million renovation project for the Miami Beach Convention Center and the 500 Alton project, the latter of which involves the construction of a condo tower and public park near the South of Fifth neighborhood as well as a pedestrian bridge that spans the MacArthur Causeway.
Carpenter has been heavily involved in the city’s work to raise roads in order to combat sea level rise, he said. Carpenter, who is a licensed engineer, said his understanding of technical details would inform his decision-making as city manager. He has a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
“I’m lucky enough to understand the background in a lot of the technical discussions we’re having,” said Carpenter, a resident of Cooper City in Broward County. “I actually understand what’s going on behind the scenes.”
He sees reorienting South Beach’s entertainment district and diversifying the city’s tourismreliant economy as two of several immediate steps his administration would take as the city emerges from a difficult spring break period and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carpenter said he would look to break up the bloc of late-night clubs with residential and office buildings, echoing a pillar of the 12-point plan Mayor Dan Gelber released late last month.
“Coming out of the pandemic, everybody wants to be in Miami Beach,” he said. “That’s a good thing in one respect but it also brings with it its challenges.”
Alina Tejeda Hudak, 61, joined the city in February 2020 as an assistant city manager and was almost immediately tasked with leading the city’s COVID-19 response. Tejeda Hudak, the former deputy mayor of Miami-Dade County, came out of retirement to work for the city after a 35-year career in county government.
Early on in the pandemic, Tejeda Hudak leveraged her relationships with the county to coordinate governmentmandated COVID restrictions. She has overseen Miami Beach Fire Rescue’s vaccination program, which has administered 10,233 doses to Florida residents, and Miami-Dade’s disbursal of federal CARES Act coronavirus aide to the city.
When she was MiamiDade’s deputy mayor, Tejeda Hudak led the county’s response to the Zika virus in 2016, which included spraying an insecticide via airplane over Miami Beach and Wynwood. Although the efforts were nationally recognized, some Miami Beach residents protested the use of the controversial naled spray.
Tejeda Hudak, the only female county manager in Miami-Dade history, also presided over the county’s unprecedented 2017 debris cleanup following Hurricane Irma and the completion of the 2018 recount of statewide races, which earned the county’s Elections Department praise amid botched counts in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
“I think for me the COVID response was sort of a natural progression of all the different experiences I’ve had, whether it’s Zika or Hurricane Irma,” she said.
Aside from a two-year stint as director of the county’s General Services Administration, Tejeda Hudak served as an assistant county manager or deputy mayor from 1993 until her retirement in 2019. She has a master’s in public administration.
She said the choice to work for Miami Beach was easy. It’s an international city at the forefront of the fight against sea level rise. Tejeda Hudak said her immediate priorities as city manager would be to prepare for Memorial Day Weekend crowds, focus on the 2022 budget and complete resiliency projects.
“For me it comes from the heart, it comes from a place where I want to make a difference,” Tejeda Hudak said.
John Woodruff, 49, has worked as the city’s chief financial officer since 2017, building up Miami Beach’s budget reserves and navigating City Hall through financial contractions caused by COVID-19.
He was first hired by the city as budget director in 2013 and briefly left to fill the same role in his hometown San Antonio in 2016 before returning to Miami Beach as the chief financial officer. He presides over the Finance Department, Office of Management & Budget and the city’s Customer Service Center.
Prior to 2013, he worked for five years for Pinellas County, reaching the title of director of the county’s Office of Management & Budget. He also worked for the city of San Antonio for about four years, mostly in budget and management analysis.
Woodruff said Miami Beach is an exciting and unique place to work. He said it sometimes feels like a bigger city due to its international allure, but it is also home to a very passionate and well-informed resident base.
“It’s a challenge. Its a smaller community, but also you have this worldwide exposure,” he said. “To me that’s very exciting. If I got this job, there’s nothing else I’d really like to do.”
Woodruff previously owned a real estate firm and received a master’s degree in business administration. He said he would rely on his business background and financial expertise to help the city fund resiliency projects and redevelopment proposals — and to lure financial and tech companies to South Beach.
He said public safety remains the biggest issue in the city, echoing resident concerns following a chaotic spring break. He worked with the police department to use federal COVID aide to temporarily hire 15 new officers and two sergeants, and to fund a real-time crime center with two full-time crime analysts.
“If we can’t afford a cop on every corner in the Art Deco Cultural District, we can certainly afford a camera on every corner,” Woodruff said.
THE EXTERNAL CANDIDATES
Jay Boodheshwar, 48, has served as the deputy town manager in Palm Beach since 2015. He has helped lead the small town’s COVID-19 efforts and overseen multimillion-dollar development projects.
Boodheshwar, who joined the town in 2006 as director of recreation, previously held senior management positions in Parks and Recreation in East Chicago and Massillon, Ohio.
Boodheshwar said Palm Beach, a town of about 8,500 residents, including former President Donald Trump, reminds him of Miami Beach in some ways. The town has followed Miami Beach’s lead on some environmental reforms, borrowing language from the city’s Styrofoam and plastic straw restrictions. Boodheshwar, who has a master’s in public administration, said the Beach’s pioneering reputation, its engaged resident base and the professional staff working at City Hall drew him to apply for the city manager position.
“To be honest, there are very few communities in America that would lure me away from this place,” Boodheshwar said of Palm Beach. “And Miami Beach is one of them.”
Boodheshwar, who has visited Miami Beach during recent weekends, said it feels like the city is in a period of introspection in the wake of spring break and COVID. He said the challenges that the city faces — such as in the South Beach entertainment district — should be seen as opportunities to evolve. Policies to reinvent the district with an eye toward improving public safety could dovetail with plans to bring in more office and residential uses, he said.
“This presents a great opportunity for Miami Beach to have a win-win situation,” he said.
Anthony Figliola, who declined to comment for this article, is the executive vice president of the New Yorkbased Empire Government Strategies, a firm specializing in public affairs, economic development and lobbying. Through his work at the firm, where he has been since 2008, Figliola has represented the likes of the American Petroleum Institute, the Bus Association of New York and Canon USA.
He previously served as the deputy supervisor for Brookhaven, N.Y., a Long Island town of about 480,000 residents. In his resume, which he submitted to the city, Figliola wrote that he oversaw 2,000 employees and a $165 million operating budget.
During his three-year tenure with Brookhaven, Figliola expanded business investment and created a program to reduce commercial permit approval time by more than half, he wrote. Figliola began his career as a political campaign adviser and government communications director. He has a master’s degree in public policy administration.
In his cover letter, Figliola said his negotiation skills can help him navigate government bureaucracy to improve the lives of residents. He added that he was excited to work for a city with a “rich history of arts, culture, entertainment and tourism.”
“I effectively operate in all political and social landscapes to build relationships with decision makers at every level,” he wrote. “I am well versed in gaining support and trust from C-suite leaders as well as those on the community level.”
Michael Reese, who did not respond to a request for comment, is the former director of local government affairs for Ice Miller Whiteboard, an Ohio firm that concentrates on lobbying and public affairs, economic development and network solutions.
Reese worked at the firm from 2016-2020, lobbying before local governments across Ohio and serving as the “point person” for the Ohio Political Action Committee.
Prior to his jump to the private sector, Reese worked for eight years in Ohio as chief of staff to former Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, who is now a partner at Ice Miller. Reese has a master’s degree in political science.
Reese, who worked for nearly 19 years for the city, wrote in his resume that he managed 14 department heads representing more than 9,000 employees, and that he oversaw a $1.6 billion operating budget.
He wrote that he directed policy initiatives, participated in economic development and housing transactions and led community outreach efforts to pass a 2009 referendum increasing the income tax during the Great Recession.
In his cover letter, Reese said some of the main challenges for Miami Beach he would like to address are investing in utility and transportation infrastructure, forging ahead with an environmental and sustainability agenda and working to identify economic development opportunities.
“We can make great progress on these challenges by working as an efficient and cohesive team,” he wrote. “We worked strategically to invest in and coordinate capital projects for maximum benefit in the City of Columbus.”
Martin Vassolo: 305-376-2071, martindvassolo