Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on SWFWMD move:
Swiftmud considers moving headquarters from Brooksville to Tampa
Monday, May 18, 2015 7:26pm
BROOKSVILLE — The Southwest Florida Water Management District governing board today will consider moving its headquarters — located in Brooksville since the district’s founding in 1961 — to its Tampa office.
The move would put the agency in a better position to attract qualified workers needed to replace departing staffers over the next decade, executive director Robert Beltran said.
It also will put the headquarters near the geographic center of the district, said Sandra Murman, chairwoman of the Hillsborough County Commission.
“(Hillsborough) is like the center of the whole region,” she said. “I just think it makes sense.”
Beltran said there are no immediate plans to move employees from Brooksville or to expand the Hillsborough office, which is near U.S. 301 north of Interstate 4.
But he also said the district might take both actions if required in the future.
The relocation was recommended in a long-term business plan, “a five- to 10-year look ahead into time,” he said. Decisions about whether to move staff or add office space “depend on the annual review” of how the district is progressing toward meeting the plan’s goals, he said.
Those future decisions are what worry the Hernando politicians and business leaders who plan to speak against the relocation at the district’s governing board meeting today in Tampa.
They are concerned that it could waste the public investment in the compound of Brooksville offices and that it eventually will rob the community of one of its most visible institutions and biggest sources of good jobs.
“How can they say this isn’t going to impact Hernando County?” County Commissioner Diane Rowden said. “Yes, it will. It’s going to have a big impact.”
“We’ve spent millions of dollars building a beautiful building in Hernando County,” said state Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, whose district includes all of Hernando. “It’s a state-of-the-art facility, and I want to see it properly utilized.”
Both Rowden and County Administrator Len Sossamon also said the county should have been told of the plan earlier so that it could prepare a response.
“Serving as the district’s headquarters is a legacy established by one of Hernando County’s most respected forefathers, Alfred McKethan,” Sossamon wrote in an email to the Times, referring to the Brooksville banker who helped found the district. “I’m mystified as to how we were not included in discussions of this change.”
The district, which had more than 700 workers before budget reductions and widespread layoffs in recent years, now employs 574, spokeswoman Susanna Martinez Tarokh said. And though the district’s legal department and the head of its regulation department have already moved to Tampa — as have most governing board meetings — 337 workers are still based in Brooksville.
But as the economy expands and the district needs to add employees, they probably will be added in Tampa, said former executive director Sonny Vergara, a Hernando resident who spread word of the possible relocation after he received a copy of Beltran’s internal email on this subject last week.
The business plan does not address adding positions, just replacing the more than 500 workers expected to retire or leave for other reasons over the next 10 years.
Fewer young people are trained in the scientific and technical fields the district needs, the report’s summary said. And Hernando has a far smaller population and a far lower percentage of college-educated workers than Hillsborough.
“The Tampa area offers a larger and better-educated talent pool and should be more attractive to recruits,” it said.
