With the calendar about to roll over to 2026, City of Westlake officials say their search for a permanent manager is tracking for an on-time landing around April 1.
“We’re in line for the schedule we set for getting someone in,” Councilman Gary Werner said.
“It’s going well,” Mayor JohnPaul O’Connor agreed. “I’d like to make a hire as soon as possible, but I don’t want to rush it.”
At a Wednesday, Dec. 10 video meeting, representatives from the Florida City & County Management Association (FCCMA) who reviewed the applications shared the names and résumés of the 19 individuals who’d applied.
“We have 10 qualified applicants,” O’Connor said. “The number of quality candidates we got reaffirms the idea that Westlake is a very, very desirable city.”
The request for applications called for the candidate be an “experienced municipal city manager in Florida, or [have] significant progressive executive-level management experience within a single municipal organization.”
The applicants include multiple city, town and village managers, mostly from Florida, plus a police captain, an assistant fire chief, a multi-media sales manager, a cyber security professor, a city attorney, a mortgage originator, and Ramsay Bulkeley, director of the Palm Beach County Planning, Zoning & Building Department from 2018 to 2023.
“I think we have three or four really strong candidates,” said O’Connor, while adding that a dark horse could emerge “who doesn’t meet all of the qualifications technically but is well qualified.”
Depending on experience, the contract position will pay $155,000 to $190,000 a year, plus a benefits package.
O’Connor said he expects the council to take up applicant-related issues at its Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, meeting.
Werner said the number of qualified candidates likely will be narrowed to a handful.
At that point, each council member likely will have the chance to meet one-on-one with the remaining candidates in a round-robin format, Vice Mayor Greg Langowski said.
“We have a good number of applicants,” Langowski said. “A lot of it will come down to face to face… and how their personalities connect with each of the council members.”
The position came open when Kenneth Cassel left the position in September after some 10 years as Westlake’s first and only municipal manager. Cassel also served as manager of the Seminole Improvement District, which supplies most of the community’s infrastructure — a situation that in recent years created friction with council members and residents.
City Clerk Zoie Burgess was appointed acting city manager but has said she is not interested in the job permanently.
Burgess, like Cassel before her, is an employee of Texas-based Inframark, a government staffing agency that supplies personnel to many municipalities across the country. While continuing to use the staffing agency for most positions, as required by Westlake’s charter, when Cassel resigned in August, the council made clear that they wanted a manager answerable directly to them.
Early estimates suggested that the candidate search might cost as much $30,000 to $50,000, but the FCCMA agreed to conduct the search and review at no charge, as it has successfully done for a number of small municipalities.
Beyond meeting basic qualifications, Werner, a municipal planner by profession, said he will be looking for a manager who is open to major changes in the way the city does business, including charter changes that would allow the municipality to directly hire more employees rather than outsourcing the jobs to an agency.
