There are 45 Applicants for City Manager

There are 45 applicants for the Fernandina Beach city manager position after the deadline to apply closed last week. Of the 45 who applied, 10 are either current or former city managers. Another seven are either current or former town/city administrators.

Notably absent is Lee Smith, the former  County Manager of Chatham County, Georgia. Smith was the city’s number two selection last year when the city manager position was filled by Ty Ross. Commissioners Chip Ross and James Antun favored hiring Smith in recent meetings.

Charles Hammond, city manager of Archer, Florida, is the only applicant from 2023 to apply this year.

The next step is for the city’s executive search firm Colin Baenziger & Associates to narrow the applicants list to the “top 5” candidates for the city commission to consider on August 14.

The applicants also include a utility plant manager, fire department shift commander, a military advisor, parks and recreation director, state legislator and consultant.

The Observer published profiles of the previous list of applicants on July 13.

Here are the profiles of those with city manager experience who applied after July 11.

Sonia Alves-Viveiros, City Manager Edison, New Jersey since April 2022. Edison, with a population of 107,000, is a bedroom community of New York City. Edison has 1,000 employees according to her resume. Sonia Alves-Viveiros inherited a sports complex construction project that has doubled in cost over the initial estimate. The complex was due to open in 2023, but now is delayed to 2025. Last month, Edison approved a $28.5 bond, but scrapped plans to pay $5 million for a restaurant property that had been valued at $2.2 million.

Prior to her current role, Sonia Alves-Viveiros was city manager of Englewood, New Jersey for two years, a town with a population of 30,000.

Sarah Campbell, Town Manager Orange Park, Florida since 2017. The town has a population of 9,000. She was appointed assistant town manager/town clerk in 2008, but was the interim town manager from 2010-2011.  She returned to her former duties when a new town manager was hired. She became town manager in 2017.

Campbell instituted four-day work weeks for some administrative employees in May 2023. During her tenure, the town has sought solutions to flooding issues during storms.

In 2023, Campbell was an unsuccessful candidate for the St. Johns County Administrator position.

She previously worked as a legal assistant with the Orange Park law firm of Kopelousos & Bradley.

Thomas Ernharth, City Manager Eagle Lake, Florida since 2017. After working as city manager in Starke for nearly two years, Ernharth became city manager in Eagle Lake, population 3,000, after nearly an eight-month search. Eagle Lake has 23 municipal employees.

He previously had been unsuccessful in seeking other city manager positions. In 2015, he applied to be city manager of Flagler Beach, Florida. In 2016, he was an applicant for the Gainesville and DeBary, Florida city manager positions.

Robin Hayes, City Manager Cocoa Beach, Florida 2022-2023. Hayes had worked with the City of Mount Dora since 2016 before departing in 2021. She had a brief stint of nine months as interim director of finance for the city of Port Orange, Florida. She had previously worked for the City of Oviedo as the Management Services Director from 2012 to 2016. She applied to be city manager of Palm Coast in 2018. Since leaving Cocoa Beach, Hayes has applied to be city manager in Fruitland Park, New Smyrna Beach and Daytona Beach.

Christopher Hobby, City Manager Bainbridge, Georgia 2003-2024. Bainbridge is a rural community of 14,500 residents located in southwest Georgia, 50 miles north of Tallahassee, Florida.

After 21 years, Hobby resigned as city manager of Bainbridge last May. In 2011, Hobby was issued a letter of reprimand by the mayor following a heated argument with another city employee.

Bainbridge came under the national spotlight in February with plans to build a monkey breeding warehouse at a significant cost to taxpayers. It would be the largest in the U.S., holding up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques bred for experiments. The fate of the facility is in the hands of the Georgia Court of Appeals, on whether to overturn the validation for a bond that the city of Bainbridge promised to Safer Human Medicine.

Among his accomplishments, Hobbs lists construction of a new water pollution control plant to serve the city’s 6,483 water and sewer customers; upgrades to the city’s water and sewer infrastructure; two new municipal wells; two new 500,000-gallon elevated water tanks; the development of a utilities master plan that will guide the city’s infrastructure investments through 2045; active participation in economic development efforts and successful master planning of the city’s new Fiber to the Home utility.

Robert Thompson, City Manager Texarkana, Arkansas 2023-2024. He resigned less than a year into the city manager job at Texarkana. Thompson came to Texarkana in September 2021 from DeFuniak Springs, Florida, where he also served as city manager for 18 months. The city did not renew his contract.

Thompson’s resume indicates he was also performing as a senior vice president of Shewa Amhara Development Corporation starting in 2019 along with his city government duties. He currently works for Shewa Amhara which does work in Ethiopia.

List of applicants in PDF format.