Key West The Newspaper

by Ralph De Palma…….

Michael Doyle’s resignation is not very surprising. The proverbial handwriting has been on the wall since the Board of Commissioners rescinded his raise last year. He’s going back to the lab. It’s where he’s most comfortable. Managing a sophisticated operation like FKMCD was overwhelming and he performed mediocre at best. Managing people and processes can be tedious and boring at times not sexy like releasing GMOs. He’d never managed any organization of this size and was immediately in trouble at FKMCD. He never gained the trust of the employees and acted like he never trusted them either.

He lost a $400k contract with the Navy, blew through $6m in reserves over 4 years, dismantled the Dengue program that Director Fussell put in place in 2010-2011, mismanaged and for the most part ignored employees and destroyed basic morale, delayed new software projects by years and caused many other operational delays by concentrating most of his efforts on the GMO project. He ignored employees for the most part but micro managed every budget item. We ran out of toilet paper in KW once in 2014 because he wasn’t available to sign the purchase request.

He’s leaving FKMCD with a huge mess – a 45% tax increase, no office in KW, an understaffed underfunded organization, and no plan to resolve any of this. He is also leaving because there will be probably be one or two new Commissioners next year. His last contract was renewed by a 3/2 vote. If he lost one vote he wouldn’t be the Director.

My concern is for FKMCD and the citizens of Monroe County that depend on FKMCD. Michael Doyle is a very nice man but he was in the wrong job. I wish him well. He is leaving FKMCD with huge problems. The FKMCD Board Of Commissioners need to select an experienced Director that can repair the organization and properly manage what once was the best mosquito control organization in the world.

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Ralph dePalma retired from the FKMCD in 2014. He ran the IT data collection systems.