Pasco County Administrator Michele Baker expects to be very busy over the next year and a half.
She’ll be crossing off a to-do list, one by one, before leaving in 2017 to go on a lengthy road trip with her husband.
The couple will hit the road with their recreational vehicle and their motorcycles, on a tour of as many baseball parks and national parks as they can squeeze into a year.
“That’s been our dream,” Baker said, so letting her contract lapse in July 2017 makes sense.
But, don’t expect a lame duck administrator.
“There’s no kicking back here,” Baker said. “This isn’t me slowing down.”
(File Photo)
Baker has told Pasco County commissioners she won’t seek renewal of her current two-year contract, which makes her last day July 9, 2017.
By then, Baker will have worked 35 years in public service, 24 of those years with Pasco County.
Her to-do list, in short form, includes:
- Completing master plans and updates for storm water, solid waste and tourism
- Funding and building a diverging diamond road design to ease traffic congestion at State Road 56 and Interstate 75
- Completing the State Road 56 extension
- Nurturing SunWest Park, the county’s fledgling aqua park
- Replacing and repairing aging infrastructure and roads damaged by the summer flooding
- Making progress on the expansion of the jail and construction of new fire stations
- Relocating more government offices to central Pasco
Baker also plans to fill vacancies for a few key leadership positions that remain, including an assistant county administrator for public safety and administration.
Progress has been made, Baker said, but government services still could be more customer-friendly.
A culture that was decades in the making is being changed, she said. “You don’t get to turn a canoe. You’re turning a ship.”
Public service wasn’t Baker’s first career choice.
Over the years she worked as a waitress, flight attendant and a theater manager. She also served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
Her undergraduate degree was in business administration.
It wasn’t until she accepted a secretarial position with Miami-Dade County’s emergency management office that she discovered her passion for public service.
“I see that it was the hand of God, a bit of destiny with doors I went through and doors I didn’t go through,” Baker said. “But, I fell in love. I am not a competitive, money-directed person by nature. Public service allowed me an opportunity to make a difference.”
She was an emergency operations officer in Miami when Hurricane Andrew devastated that city in 1992.
Pasco County Administrator John Gallagher hired her away the following year as Pasco’s emergency management director. She interviewed for the job the day before the “No-Name” storm (also known as the “Storm of the Century”) slammed Florida’s coast and flooded west Pasco.
Baker cut a vacation short to take on the new job.
Over the years, Gallagher showed his confidence in her, tapping Baker as program administrator for engineering, and for nearly six years as his chief assistant county administrator.
As head of engineering, she oversaw the launching of the county’s Environmental Land Acquisition and Management Program, which buys and manages environmentally sensitive land throughout the county.
She also got the Penny for Pasco program off the ground. Funds from a penny sales tax are shared with the county, cities and the school districts for building projects.
“We had a new program to seek stewardship of at its birth,” Baker said.
She took the helm as interim county administrator in 2013 when Gallagher retired after more than 30 years in the job. County commissioners initially offered the administrator’s job to a candidate from Texas who unexpectedly walked away during contract negotiations.
When Baker was appointed, she was the first woman to hold the county’s top administrative job.
She took over as the county struggled with deep budget cuts and staff layoffs, following the nation’s deepest recession in history.
Baker credits Gallagher for initially steering the county safely through a new era of leaner budgets and fewer staff members. Even as Gallagher prepared to retire, about half of the county’s departmental managers indicated they also planned to retire.
“He empowered me to begin the transition,” she said. “We saw the handwriting on the wall. There was going to be a substantial correction. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be. But, we knew our revenues would be tightening.”
Baker also shared with Gallagher a vision of reorganizing county government and putting an emphasis on customer service.
“You have to operate more efficiently and keep level of service residents want because government has less money,” Baker said.
Baker routinely provides county commissioners with a quarterly report updating them on her progress for the projects on that to-do list.
Discussions are expected to begin soon on how the board will search for a replacement. That typically takes about seven to nine months, Baker said.
She would like to have that person on board before she leaves to help with the transition.
“I am, by nature, an organized planner,” Baker said. “I want to hire and mentor that person. I will have been successful if my successor is successful.”
Once the ignition key is turned on the RV though, it’s a new adventure ahead.
Published January 27, 2016
