'Steadfast to the end'

Resigning was difficult, former Clearwater City Manager Mike Roberto says, but "you accept this as being part of the profession.''

By CHRISTINA HEADRICK

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 23, 2000

[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer] Former Clearwater City Manager Mike Roberto faced the media Thursday night after the City Commission accepted his resignation.

CLEARWATER -- He was philosophical and evasive, somber and funny, frustrated and proud. You could say he was vintage Mike Roberto.

Speaking a day after the City Commission accepted his forced resignation, former City Manager Mike Roberto demonstrated the kinetic personality that excited some people and aggravated others during his administration.

If there was one constant during his 45-minute interview with the Times on Friday, it was Roberto's repeated insistence that he was proud of every minute of his three-year tenure.

"I have absolutely no hard feelings, absolutely not one shred of negativity," Roberto said. "And I would do everything all over again."

Roberto, who resigned abruptly last week after Mayor Brian Aungst suggested the move, began the interview by saying that he wouldn't say anything negative about the City Commission.

And he stuck to the high road -- even though most commissioners pulled their support from underneath him last week before handing over a $166,000 severance send-off.

"I think politics is difficult," Roberto said. "You accept this as being part of the profession. You have to, or you're not in the right profession."

But the resolve vanished when asked if deciding to resign was hard for him. Roberto suddenly looked sad. He sucked on his top lip and his smile tightened into a straight line.

"I didn't expect you to ask that," he said with a sigh.

Nearly 30 seconds passed while he thought about it, dark shadows under his eyes and a five-o'clock shadow on his chin.

"It was not one of the easier decisions I've made in my life," Roberto said finally.

Did he think he had made any serious mistakes in Clearwater? Roberto would say only this:

"You cannot make decisions in life and not make mistakes. That's for history to judge. . . . I try to focus on the positives, always. If anything didn't turn out that way, it was not for lack of trying."

Roberto was even more philosophical when speaking of the city he tried to unify with his "One City. One Future" redevelopment plan. He leaves a town that is in many ways more polarized now, after the emotions kicked up by the recent referendum on a $300-million downtown proposal.

Voters rejected the plan.

Clearwater "is a city with incredible potential that's got so many divisions that need to come together," he said. "It is damned to repeat itself, historically. I think this community will become successful someday only when great people step up. Great individuals, not government. You know, people from the private sector. When government tries to create things, it's too easy of a target.

"One group always plays another one off here," Roberto observed.

The referendum led to a debate about whether the city should invest in downtown, considering the Church of Scientology's considerable presence there.

The referendum pitted a group of former city commissioners, who were responsible for mismanaging the creation of Harborview Center, against the commissioners who booted them out of office. But this time, it was the newcomers who saw their credibility attacked, as the old-timers worked to foil the redevelopment plan.

Also, the referendum asked people in the suburban sprawl of Countryside and other far-flung neighborhoods to care about downtown. They said no: Only precincts close to downtown voted for the plan.

Asked what he considered his biggest accomplishments, Roberto ticked off a laundry list from trying to get the city to better fund its Fire Department to proposing the beautification of Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard.

He also took pride in extending an olive branch to the Church of Scientology. In early 1998, 10 months into his tenure, he started meeting with Scientology's worldwide leader, David Miscavige, the first city official to do so.

After more meetings, there was a general thawing of the city's icy relationship with Scientology, which began when the church moved to Clearwater in 1975. In the months that followed, the church and city settled a 1994 federal lawsuit and the city police ended its 20-year practice of assigning an officer to gather intelligence on Scientology.

"I believed in my heart it was time for this community to move on," Roberto said. "I thought it was time to engage in conversation, especially if we were going to redevelop downtown. They had to be a part of it.

"I think it was the most unique thing I have had to deal with in my career, and I'm proud of the way I handled it. I opened a door and line of communication that had to be there."

As for the criticism that was heaped on him during his tenure for a host of issues, Roberto did not use the interview for any kind of confessional.

He only conceded he took city projects personally, championing ideas like the Clearwater Beach roundabout, which then became associated with him even though he was not the engineer who designed the accident-prone oval.

"You cannot have a passion and not take things personally," Roberto said.

He championed the roundabout to his last day of work on Friday.

"People's memories have faded," Roberto said. "When I got here, they were complaining about backups on the bridge all the way back to Greenwood Avenue downtown. That intersection, the old one, was the most dysfunctional intersection in the county. The new intersection has been handling 30 percent more traffic.

"Of course it's had its problems. Are they fixable? Of course they're fixable. You have to move forward. You can't move forward on a negative."

Roberto said he hopes the city doesn't wind up with a "milquetoast" city manager because commissioners become wary of trying bold new ideas -- and being criticized by some residents and the media for it.

"It is not the critic who counts," Roberto said, paraphrasing a Theodore Roosevelt saying that hung in his office the past year. "It's the man who's in the fight. The man who's in the arena. The man who's got the dust and dirt on him."

But the critics were after Roberto to the end.

A reporter from The Business Journal cornered Roberto twice Friday morning, once in the Clearwater Times parking lot and the second time in the parking lot just below City Hall. The Journal reporter demanded to review the contents of his laptop and Palm Pilot, before they became his personal property under his severance agreement with the city.

Both the Times and the Journal had requested the contents under Florida law. Roberto insisted to the Times that the documents were already being copied and made available to the media. The Journal reporter, however, was persistent, following Roberto from place to place in her car to argue for the records.

"I'm just tired of taking this s---," Roberto finally said. "I'm done."

With that, he drove away from Clearwater to visit a friend in Sarasota.

After that, Roberto is planning a two-week vacation in Minnesota to unwind.

"I found a cabin that I'm told the St. Pete Times doesn't deliver to," he joked, when asked how he found the vacation spot.

What will he do when he gets back sometime in August? Roberto showed he hadn't lost his sense of humor. Or maybe he was serious. It was hard to tell.

"I might run for office," he said.

- Times staff writer Thomas C. Tobin contributed to this report.

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