Two Strong Women Making Bold Moves | 4/30/2026

Two female city managers are making waves in today’s edition of the newsletter. One is already being attacked a statewide political blog and I suspect the other will become a target of criticism in the near future.

Meanwhile, it looks like a Florida city manager who has had a rocky relationship with his governing body for over a decade is on the verge of being ‘fired’ for the second time.

Oh — and karaoke racism rears its head again!

All that and more news after the job postings.

It is free to post all of your senior and executive level recruitments over at the AAME job board. If you would like to include them in this newsletter, select the $199 option.

Fort Lauderdale City Manager Rickelle Williams has only been on the job for a year, but her leadership has riled up some political foes even though she appears to have the full faith and backing of her governing body.

She is accused of massively increasing spending and bringing in a wave of loyalists into leadership ranks, which have left longtime employees in the lurch.

A statewide political blog railed against her with the following headline: “Fort Lauderdale’s City Hall payroll bloat: Rickelle Williams’ year of reckless hiring exposed”

The local paper published a story that outlined the changes and concerns. But here’s the rub. The council is fully informed, aware, and obviously on board with Ms. Williams’ performance.

Hollister City Manager Ana Cortez, who was recently mentioned in the April 16th issue, takes a hardline position on the water utility which has been bleeding red ink for years, apparently.

If you have seen Coming to America, you may recall the “Rent’s Due, Muthaf—-a” scene. This link is definitely NSFW!

Well, she kind of said the same thing to the governing body and the department. She’s saying that she’s going to claw back the money the general fund has been using subsidize that department.

In 2017, Riviera Beach fired Jonathan Evans. But that was not the end of the matter. They hired him back two years later and paid him a $190,000 legal settlement for the termination.

Since returning, the road has been pretty bumpy, especially of late. This week, the council voted 3-2 to not extend his contract which expires in July. The council feuded over what to do with Evans in the meantime — keep him until the contract expiration or pay him to leave. But they couldn’t settle the issue and punted until the next meeting.

There was also a bizarre allegation that documents had been stolen from the clerk’s office.

And then there was City Council Member Bruce Guyton who allegedly threatened Evans to “deal” with the city’s Chief Financial Officer Randy Sherman or face consequences.

Sherman, a white man, accused then Human Resources Director Tenille DeCoste, a black woman, of not following the city’s established hiring practice when making hires, helping a friend get a job without advertising the position, wrongly promoting an employee who hired DeCoste’s husband and falsely stating another applicant's experience to earn positions within the city.

There is an entire backstory to DeCoste — who previously worked in Boynton Beach and tried to smear their executives by painting them as racists. I do not have the space to get into it here. So, you will have to settle for this lengthy LinkedIn post where I broke it down a couple years ago.

And note that I expect DeCoste to make news in the future based on what my sources tell me.

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