Cheri Coryea To Retain County Administrator Position: Report

MANATEE COUNTY, FL — Manatee County commissioners voted unanimously that County Administrator Cheri Coryea will keep her job at Thursday’s land-use meeting, the Herald-Tribune reported.

The vote came unexpectedly Thursday, as the Manatee County Board of County Commissioners was slated to discuss Coryea’s future with the county at a Jan. 6 meeting. Her termination was first discussed Nov. 19.

At that special meeting, commissioners decided to notify Coryea of their intention to fire her without cause in a 4 to 3 vote. First-time commissioners James Satcher, Kevin Van Ostenbridge, and George Kruse, joined by Vanessa Baugh, who was recently sworn in for her third term, led the discussion to fire Coryea and voted in favor of her dismissal. Van Ostenbridge proposed her termination, and he, along with Satcher and Kruse, had only been in office for 50 hours at the time.

Kruse was the one to initiate the move to retain Coryea at Thursday’s meeting, the Herald-Tribune reported. He said he’d met local mayors, county department heads, business organizations and Coryea since the Nov. 19 meeting.

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This took place a day after the Herald-Tribune published a Nov. 19 text message exchange between Kruse and Satcher, questioning the meaning behind it. In the exchange, Kruse texted Satcher, “Ignore our call the other night. Stick to the original.”

Kruse said the text referred to whether he would wear a suit that day or not, reports said.