The Dunedin City Commission held a workshop on August 5, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:19 p.m. at City Hall. The meeting covered presentations on the new Parks & Recreation Director and Duke Energy's Broadway project, a post-legislative update, a discussion on exiting solid waste service to unincorporated Pinellas County residents, and selection of Florida League of Cities committee representatives. The business survey item was deferred to the September workshop.
I'd like to call the meeting to order, and we'll start with Jen doing our Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, we'll go to presentations and we have an exciting presentation. Introduction of our new parks and recreation director, Tony Mulkey, and I'm gonna welcome him to front. But do you want to say something, City Manager? As we start very excited you're here. Thank you. And good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. Um I'm very pleased this morning to introduce um all of you once again to our new director of parks and recreation, Tony Mulkey. Um I just want to talk to you a little bit about the interview process, if I may. This is probably the first time a lot of folks are going to be hearing about how we arrived at Tony as as our our number one candidate. Um as you know, we do a 360 interview. Um we we reach out to uh every level of the organization that Tony will be um uh working with, and that's employees, frontline employees in the parks and recreation department, uh management parks and recreation department, city management, meaning the department directors, um, and also Jorge myself uh and Teresa Smalling who interviewed him uh and sat with the mayor as well, representing the city commission, which is actually very unusual to invite an elected official in on an interview of staff, but um this particular position interacts a great deal with the commission and a great deal with the community, and I wanted to be sure that the commission felt comfortable with with our candidate uh and obviously the mayor would take the lead uh in those terms. And so uh Tony did a fantastic job. Um, as as did uh the other candidates. We actually I need to start um uh a little bit farther back. We did do a uh national recruitment for the position. Uh we had upwards of 90 candidates, about 40 were qualified. And then we also, of course, had the uh Walmart cashier who thought that they could do the job. But you know, so um and uh we might be the ball thrower that's right. Exactly. Exactly. We shortlisted that um down to I think five or six, and we interviewed them virtually, and even our local candidates were interviewed vir virtually so that the playing field was level uh for every candidate. And then we invited three back. Uh and Tony was one of those. Uh Tony's resume, and uh um I'm just gonna ask him to say hello. He doesn't have to go over it again because he's done it a zillion times, but just just um just to give you a uh kind of a broad brush uh uh perspective. He is uh formerly the director of parks and recreation for the city of Tampa. He has overseen uh staff who has overseen marinas golf courses, special events, and he was in fact in charge of special events for the city of Tampa for for a period of time. Um he was uh director of recreation for Pinellas Park, I believe, um as well. So Tony really checked every box and uh he interviewed when he was interviewing. There's obviously the degree of emotional intelligence that we need to see in that position um as well. Um you know uh and I and I've said this many times that that uh a mentor of mine, a former city manager told me that there are really two department directors um who are lightning rods for you uh in the community, and the one is the director of community development, and the other one is the director of parks and recreation. And so hello, lightning rod, thank you for coming. Yeah, right, exactly. Because of their interaction with the community. Um so uh welcome Tony. I wanted to introduce him to you and to the public. Uh he started on the 28th. He will be reporting directly to the deputy city manager to Jorge Quintas. And I believe that Tony has found the coffee pot and the restrooms in the community center and and is introducing himself to staff. So thank you very much, Mayor. And Tony, just want to say hello. Good morning, Commission. Thank you, City Manager Tony Mulkey, Parks and Recreation. I am thrilled to be here to be able to meet with you publicly. I I've had conversations with all of you privately and and uh really enjoyed and had the pleasure to do so. Uh look forward to serving the community. Um lightning rod seems appropriate in Tampa Bay. So uh I I am looking forward to to kind of recalculating some of the the things I've been doing to fit the community here, and and it's been uh a real pleasure so far, seven days in and really enjoying it. We have a very talented staff, high level of service that that I hope to continue and elevate as much as possible.