Feb 17, 2010 4 min read

Frame of reference were two key words newly named Fort Myers Beach Town Manager Terry Stewart used to describe how he will view and conduct himself throughout his term in town hall. The former Cape Coral manager has been in office for one week and spoke to members of the FMB Civic Association at St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church recently.

“Frame of reference is the way you look at things based upon your experiences in life and things that life has taught you,” said Stewart. “You come at it and you look at it in a particular way. It’s all about perspective.”

Stewart explained he has come from a frame of reference of working inside organizations. He has accumulated 41 years of local government work both as a fire fighter and a manager.

“Since I work for a local government, I’m going to do exactly what the elected body of that local government instructed me to do unless its illegal, immoral or unethical,” said Stewart. “I know that somewhere along the way people are going to be unhappy about what the local government has decided to do, and it will characterize me as representing those people who have done what they didn’t want them to do. That’s one of the difficulties of being a town manager.”

Stewart’s examples of frame of reference included reference to many different witness accounts at a car accident and relaying stories about his own upbringing. Since he started near the bottom, he has respect for those in the trenches.

“I actually lived in a Baptist working farm orphanage for five years as a kid,” he said. “I come from a background where hard work was not an uncommon thing. When I graduated from high school, I worked construction installing A/C units and then A/C duct systems. I was also a single dad for 14 years.”

Stewart’s blue collar employment also included maintenance work in a public works department where he cut grass, swept streets and mopped floors at a city hall. From there, he worked his way up the ranks of a small fire department in a Florida East coast town with a similar population and land dimension as the Beach. He cherished the mentoring he received by an experienced superior.

“They hired a fire chief who was second in command of the New York City Fire Department, and I had the opportunity to work with him very closely on a day-today basis,” said Stewart. “To be mentored by someone like that, you couldn’t write a script for it. I learned a great deal from him. Each one of the people who I looked to as my role models had a strong sense of dedication, loyalty to work staff and an absolute iron clad set of rules and ethics.”

Stewart, who has gone from managing 1,500 employees in Cape Coral to 45 on the Beach, considers himself ‘incredibly fortunate’ to be able to stay in Southwest Florida and appreciates the opportunity to be the town manager here. He mentioned the average national life span of a city/town manager is five years, but only 2 1/2 in Florida.

After his speech, Stewart fielded questions from local civic members including micro-managing, code enforcement and what to expect from the foreclosure properties at Seafarer’s Mall and at the Gulf front.

On council member micro-managing: “Decisions that I make and the way that I receive will not be predicated about fear of losing my job. I’m confident in my ability as a manager. When the (town council) group as a whole gives me an instruction to do something, that’s exactly what I will do. There some very specific restrictions within the charter about what a town manager can do and what the local elected officials can do. I expect that both of us on both sides of the equation will honor those things.”

On code enforcement: “The best way is to go out and deal with people in a positive way. But, don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. If there’s a law in the books, we ought to be enforcing it. My intent is that we do code enforcement in an equitable fashion.”

On foreclosure at Times Square: “The town council appointed the mayor to be the point person to talk with the county commissioners. I will be joining him in these discussions. There’s nothing to report yet.”

Human behavior is important for the long-time public official. He is the co-author of a fire protection handbook entitled “Disaster Planning and Response Services.”

“On the worst day of my job in the City of Cape Coral, which is the day I left, I got up and walked away and never attacked anybody,” said Stewart. “And, that’s the way I believe in performing my work, as a professional, with dignity and respect for others.”