St. Lucie County Administrator George Landry received strong praise from county commissioners during a performance evaluation this week, with the board also considering a potential sizable salary increase following the review.
Commissioner James Clasby, who requested that the evaluation be placed on the agenda, spoke highly of Landry’s leadership and responsiveness since taking the role.
“He is a mission-driven individual. He handles his role as the county administrator with the same seriousness and professionalism that I'm sure he did in the United States Army, and I couldn't be happier with him. Whenever I have a question for him, he gets the answer. Whenever I first came on the board, he did a wonderful job onboarding me as a new commissioner, introducing me to everybody that I needed to be introduced to. He's available 24 hours a day. The rest of the commission was quick to join Clasby in praise, with each speaking to the administrator's efficiency and work ethic,” Clasby said.
Following the discussion of his performance, commissioners turned to the possibility of adjusting Landry’s salary.
Commissioner Cathy Townsend proposed a raise that would bring his annual pay to $250,000.
“I believe that we should give our current administrator a 4% raise, take him to 250, and he has been awarded the same thing as our staff,” she said.
Clasby said he would support a larger adjustment that would align the pay of the county’s two board-appointed positions.
“I'm willing to go above what Commissioner Townsend said. I would like to bring both of our board-appointed employees to the same pay level. By that, I mean to bring George to what we are paying our county attorney,” he said.
County Attorney Katherine Barbieri was appointed to her role in November and earns $275,000 annually. Matching that salary would represent a significant increase for Landry, a proposal Townsend said should be considered carefully given potential budget pressures with the property tax bill, which is slated to be voted on in November.
“For me, the whole thing was, he deserves a raise, but I am mindful of what's coming up in the budget and we don't know what the unknown is, and how do we cut the budget and add 20-something thousand,” she said.
The commission ultimately voted unanimously to tentatively raise Landry’s salary to match the county attorney, contingent on whether the increase can be accommodated in the upcoming budget.
Townsend also urged the board to make performance evaluations a regular part of the commission’s process going forward.
“Every year it needs to be brought to the attention of the current board so that it doesn't just roll over and it's not evaluated. I think that there should be an annual evaluation every single year to whoever the county administrator is,” she said.
Commissioners agreed with the idea, and Clasby suggested developing a more structured format to guide future evaluations.
“Maybe even we move forward to kind of standardizing it where we can have each be asked the same question that we could each respond to, more so than just up-down type of things. Because if there's specific areas that we are having issues with, this is the time to talk about it,” he said.