New City Director Quits After Only One Month Working for Mayor Bill Foster

The St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times just reported that former Safety Harbor City Manager Matthew Spoor who left that position to become the Director of Management and Budget for the City of St. Petersburg, has just quit that job and is requesting his old Safety Harbor job back. For a well respected and well reviewed rising-star of a city administrator like this to jump ship after a major step up to a higher paying position in a city that is 15 times the size of Safety Harbor after only one month speaks volumes as to what it is like to work directly under the incompetent Mayor Bill Foster. 

Mr. Spoor is really giving up a lot by doing this, especially since he wasn't guaranteed his old job back. So what is it that caused him to leave St Petersburg so quickly? We know that the city has to cut more than $10 million from the budget this year, which he was in charge of doing, but in Safety Harbor, Spoor had to cut their budget quite a bit as well while he was City Manager. He was reportedly very excited to take the Director position according to a now-redacted St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times article(original opening "Matt Spoor couldn't resist the personal and professional lure of going to work for the city where he was born").

So was it too much working for Mayor Foster(the poor communicator and inept manager that is scared of his employees and doesn't hold the staff members under him accountable for their wrong-doings)? One can only imagine how working in such an unsupportive and chaotic environment would be for someone coming from a smaller and better run city, but apparently it was too much for Mr. Spoor, and it looks very bad for Mayor Bill Foster that he can't even keep a director around for a full month before the guy jumps ship.


UPDATE: Tonight, the Safety Harbor City Commission unanimously voted to take Matt Spoor back as their City Manager "as if he had never left" to a joyous response from the audience.
 
UPDATE 2: Doc Webb over at the Patch shares his perspective on this