Nearly 18 months into his three-year contract, County Administrator John Titkanich still hasn’t convinced two of his bosses that he is the right man for the job.
County Commissioners Deryl Loar and Joe Flescher both were publicly critical of Titkanich’s performance earlier this month, when they questioned his approach, tactics and, in some cases, decisions.
They also expressed frustration with what they perceived to be the administrator’s lack of communication, especially with the commission as a whole but also with community leaders and employers.
At one point during the commission’s Sept. 10 meeting, in fact, Loar warned that Titkanich’s failure to provide regular and sufficient feedback on the county’s operations was not acceptable.
“For us to thrive, like any board of directors, we have to have feedback from our CEO,” Loar said. “Absent that information from our CEO, we’re going to find ourselves in a position where we’re either backpedaling or, perhaps, looking for a new CEO.”
It was Loar – the county’s sheriff for 12 years before retiring in 2021 and being elected to the commission in 2022 – who placed on the meeting’s agenda a request that Titkanich provide an “objective overview” of his tenure, including accomplishments and obstacles.
Loar also asked the administrator to share his “vision” for any further restructuring of departments and personnel, as well as identifying challenges the county might face as he moves forward.
“I probably should’ve done this sooner,” Loar said last week, adding that he has decided to seek re-election to a second term in 2026 and, in the interim, will make sure Titkanich addresses the commission’s concerns.
“I got his attention at that Sept. 10 meeting, but he knew it was coming,” Loar said. “I told him in August I was putting him on the agenda.”
Flescher thanked Loar for doing so, saying such a session, which commissioners agreed will be held quarterly, was “long overdue.”
Together, he and Loar peppered Titkanich with questions and remarks pertaining to several areas of concern, including:
- The loss of institutional knowledge because of the turnover of personnel, including at the management level, where some of the departures were prompted by Titkanich’s arrival and resulting personality conflicts.
- A penchant for hiring supervisory personnel from outside the organization, instead of promoting from within to inspire employees and improve morale.
- Spending excessively to hire consultants, some of which provided information that was entirely predictable.
Loar was particularly troubled by what he saw as Titkanich’s steadfast adherence to a step-by-step process outlined in industry-accepted administrator’s playbooks, rather than opting to “triage” the more immediate problems confronting the county.
“It’s great when you read it in a book and apply it to real life,” Loar said at the meeting, referring to Titkanich’s efforts to develop a strategic plan for the county, create a mission statement and establish values. “Sometimes, though, you have to put some of those things on the back burner.”
This should have been one of those times.
The overwhelming majority of complaints that have poured into the county offices in recent years have targeted the Building Division, which has been noticeably understaffed and unable to meet the demand of real-estate developers and others in the construction industry.
Even Titkanich’s strongest allies on the dais, Commissioners Joe Earman and Laura Moss, agreed that customer service in that division – especially the permitting process – needs to be improved.
Neither Earman nor Moss, however, was eager to blame Titkanich for its shortcomings, saying he inherited a struggling operation and continues to address problems.
Flescher hammered him.
“This has been the Year of the Complaint,” the five-term commissioner said, referring to the flood of grievances and relentless grumbling about the county’s permitting process, which was hampered by the building division’s transition to My Government Online (MGO) software in July 2023.
“The system is in failure,” he later added. “The public needs to know that we’re spending a huge amount of money in flying in an MGO asset, an individual, to come here and help us out and get everything going.
“The rollout was not good,” Flescher continued. “It was imperfect, at best. And it has generated a lot of angst and acrimony regarding the permitting process, the engineering process, any process that has to do with building – and it has gotten worse.”
Flescher went on to say he has received more calls from contractors this past year than he did in his previous 17 years as a commissioner, and that several of them have told him they no longer want to work here because dealing with the Building Division presents too many challenges.
“You need to get it better,” he told Titkanich.
Flescher, though, didn’t stop there: He’s also unhappy with the county’s overall operations, which he said are being hindered by an inability to fill key positions, forcing too many employees, particularly in management roles, to do multiple jobs.
The result has been too much inefficiency in too many departments.
“We have been failing, we are weakened, and I haven’t seen it get any better in the past 18 months,” Flescher said, delivering a direct condemnation of Titkanich’s performance. “We’re fixing some problems, individually – patchwork, I call it – but we need to now let all this consulting actually take root.”
For those wondering: The county spent nearly $35 million on consultants the past two years, more than $16 million in fiscal 2023-24.
To Moss, that was money well-spent, as long as the information is used. And she believes Titkanich will take action with the recommendations presented by the consultants.
“The man is an Army Ranger,” she said. “You don’t make plans and not implement them.
That’s something bureaucrats do.”
Moss, who was elected to the commission in 2022, said she already has seen a positive change in the culture of the county’s organization.
“A lot of what needed to be changed could not be, given the staff that was here,” she said. “It was like running into a brick wall, as opposed to what we have now, which is someone who listens and someone who does research.”
Earman, who was elected to a second term last month, offered the most rousing endorsement of Titkanich’s work, saying the administrator was handed a county that was fiscally sound but “wasn’t in great internal shape.”
Not only did he say Titkanich has “done a great job,” but he also compared him to a football coach who needed to make changes to his staff and, as a result, endured some early growing pains.
“We need to tell him: ‘OK, coach, you’ve had your first year under your belt. We understand you went 5-5 this year. It’s time to go 10-0,’” Earman said. “That’s what we expect.”
It was a ridiculous analogy.
Titkanich didn’t take the reins of a losing team and get to .500. This county was doing plenty of things right before he arrived, as evidenced by the thousands of newcomers who’ve moved here.
Also, having started in April 2023, he’s already halfway through his second season – and the county is nowhere 10-0.
Earman himself said so.
“Are we perfect? Have we solved every problem? Absolutely not,” Earman said, adding that the county still needs to improve its customer service, building-permit processing, building-and-grounds work, recreation facilities and opportunities, and other services and offerings.
“We still need to do a lot of things.”
The potential swing vote on Titkanich’s fate appears to belong to Commission Chair Susan Adams, and based on her remarks from the dais, she remains in the administrator’s camp – at least for now.
Adams placed much of the blame for Titkanich’s early struggles on the commissioners, whom she said failed to fully and clearly explain to the new administrator what was expected of him.
“We wanted change, but we didn’t define what that change was and what it should look like,” she said, adding that the commissioners also should’ve prepared the organization for the change that was coming.
She also said the county is still a small and “insular” community, and that the commission needs to give Titkanich, who was an outsider when he was hired, more time to build the relationships that connect so many local public servants.
For his part, Titkanich aptly defended his work, presenting a long list of accomplishments, which included a reorganization of some divisions and departments, making personnel changes, implementing more employee training sessions and the creation of two high-level positions – assistant county administrator and county administration ombudsman.
A former Cocoa city manager and St. Lucie County director of performance and innovation, Titkanich said he continues to emphasize to county employees here that “public service is customer service.”
Still, Loar and Flescher want to see more, and they’re not alone: Adams, too, said she wants to see progress in specific areas when Titkanich provides the next of his now-quarterly updates to the commission at its Dec. 3 meeting.
Will the administrator give them enough to get off the hot seat?
“That’s up to him,” Loar said. “It better be something substantial. I’m not going to settle for mediocrity.”
