'There's a quality of life': Keeping Winter Haven ahead of the times

Care to meet someone who literally worked his way from the bottom rung of a shaky city career ladder to the very top? Then allow me to introduce T. Michael Stavres, city manager of Winter Haven.

Starting as a teenage lifeguard working minimum wage at Lake Silver – two short blocks but more than three long decades from the spacious city hall office he now occupies – Stavres steadily rose through the ranks on the strength of knowledge, creativity, political savvy, a tenacious work ethic and a competitive core lightened by a genial personality.

The son of restaurateurs, the 53-year-old graduate of Polk State College and Florida State University holds two master’s degrees and presides over a $260 million budget while overseeing 630 full-time employees.

But it’s not all business for the married father of one. Over the years, he and fellow troubadour Duke Burr have donated more than $80,000 in tips they received from their off-hours musical performances to nonprofits such as Meals on Wheels, the Humane Society, Girls Inc. and Theatre Winter Haven, among others. It’s an understatement to say Straves is a citizen fully invested in the life of his community.

Q. Compare Winter Haven as it currently exists to what it was like 20 or so years ago in terms of population, commercial and residential development, public amenities and the downtown sector.

A. Today it is definitely a progressive small city. Twenty years ago there wasn’t a lot happening in Winter Haven but there was a lot that needed to happen. Downtown is probably the biggest change of all, and locating the library at the corner of Avenue A and 4th Street Northwest was significant because that gave people a reason to come downtown. Then came investment into streetscapes and park improvements, which further increased the desire to be downtown. People started gravitating back toward it and now when you look at downtown it’s a place for restaurants and professional services and retail and multifamily apartments and hotels – and all this speaks to the growth we're experiencing.

We were probably around 26,000 people give or take at that time, and now we are just shy of 60,000. And I think that's because there's a quality of life people like about Polk County generally and Winter Haven specifically – there's a charm, there's a character, a very strong identity that's built around nature and affordability, without the same challenges that a Tampa or an Orlando have.

That growth has warranted the development of more industrial, commercial and professional opportunities – hospital expansions, technology enhancements, the industrial logistics park – and things still coming online that help enhance the attraction of the area.

Q. Constructing anticipated infrastructure before issuing permits for residential or commercial development would seem to be a more rational approach to managing growth than the cart-before-the-horse system most cities in Florida seem to employ. How does Winter Haven justify growth that appears to significantly outpace current or planned infrastructure?

A. It's always a question of how you build that infrastructure faster than what the need is, and I've yet to find a community anywhere that's been successful at doing that within the state of Florida because the growth here is so significant and it comes in massive bites at one time.

Road projects are very expensive and take a long time to not only design but to deliver. We have to work very closely with the state and the county because most of the roads that are major carriers of traffic throughout Winter Haven are either state roads or county roads. When you're getting to a pinch point in capacity, what happens during construction is you pinch it even more because during the period of construction it becomes even worse. Right now we're looking at all of our roads, where the fail points are within our existing roadway system so that we can get a better handle on that and try and take on some of those things in advance – better than we have in the past.

On the utilities side, how do you take infrastructure that in some cases has been in the ground for 100 years and make sure that it has been repaired, replaced, renewed on an appropriate schedule? It’s not glamorous, it’s not frontpage news, but infrastructure that's underground has a shelf life that is only so long. And then there’re septic systems – houses that were built way back around the lakes were all put on septic systems because that was the technology at the time, so how do we transition those into sanitary sewer systems to protect our lakes?

Q. A significant part of any city’s appeal is aesthetic. Starting with conversion of the old railroad right of way to Central Park, Winter Haven has done a superb job of making its downtown corridor pleasant for walking and pleasing to the eye, with many trees planted for shade. Yet there have been obvious instances in which a private developer has cut down mature trees – apparently without consequence – that were a requirement at the time construction was first approved, as well as new developments that seem to get by with bare minimal landscaping. Does the city have a tree ordinance with teeth – or one in the works that would address those issues?

A. Not at the present time. The city just did its strategic planning retreat with the commission in March and the urban forest is of particular interest and concern. We've been able to make a lot of headway in urban forestry in the past couple of years. We have a great staff that are very much expert in that area and growing their knowledge base while at the same time pursuing grant dollars to not only improve our practices in managing and maintaining what we have but also learning what's the right tree at the right place at the right time. You don't go out and plant every single tree you ever want at one time because the mortality rate comes due on all those at the same time, so you try to sequence those things.

With Commissioner (Brad) Dantzler, we joke kind of tongue-in-cheek about the numbers – is it 300,000 trees, three million? – it’s probably closer to 100,000 new trees planned for Winter Haven. And that speaks to our intent to try and plant as much as we can – and to try to mitigate when we have removals, whether they're on public land or private land.

Q. As most longtime residents are painfully aware from traffic that snarls them daily, the Winter Haven-Lakeland corridor is among the fastest growing in the country, with this community having doubled in population in recent years. Are we in danger of losing the very quality of life that makes this place so desirable?

A. I think we could be if we don't manage it well. If we don't make an intentional effort to safeguard our chain of lakes and our natural areas and maintain the health of those water systems, then that certainly could happen. One of the things I'm extremely proud of is what we do in Winter Haven. For example, our natural resources division knows more about our lakes than ever and the amount of research they do year-in and year-out rivals anything done in any other part of this country. I can assure you that the work that we do within our utilities operation in how we manage water means exacting every ounce of energy and value out of every drop of water that comes through our system, whether it’s potable water, wastewater, reuse water, rainfall stormwater, whatever. We don't just use it once and throw it away.

We try to understand the uniqueness of every lake that we have and make the best decisions to ensure their long-term health. But the primary responsibility for the lakes is with everybody, whether you're a private property owner that fronts the lake or you're a municipal system with roadway stormwater systems that discharge into lakes.

Q. Tourism is great for hotels, restaurants and bars, but is it good for the city itself since tourist taxes go to Tallahassee, not locally, leaving the city on the hook for infrastructure that serves tourism?

A. Tourism is fantastic for the city. We look at tourism as an export, meaning we have dollars that are coming from outside our area into our area to be spent. You do have taxes that go to Tallahassee, but you also have taxes that stay locally. The bed tax that's collected on hotels stays local and is managed by the Polk County Tourist Development Council and we are a direct beneficiary of that. The AdventHealth Field House, a roughly $24 million project completed in 2019 – $11 million of the cost of that project came from that tourist development tax. The Chain of Lakes baseball stadium, which is now being renovated, a $20 million project – $10 million of that is coming from the Tourist Development Council, so those are dollars that are collected locally and they're reinvested locally.

Tourists from outside the area are spending money on local things – they may be shopping at a retail, they may be dining in restaurants, paying for gas –whatever the case may be – the general rule of thumb is that dollars coming into the community will change hands seven times before they leave the community.

Surprise? Nah: Among the state's most alligator-infested lakes, Polk County shows up a lot

Legoland, which voluntarily chose to annex into the city limits, is drawing people from across the globe to come to Winter Haven, and they're putting a lot of money back into the TDC through those bed taxes that they collect.

Q. For decades, both Haines City and Lake Wales have been dealing with decrepit downtown multi-story structures. Winter Haven has its own problem child in the six-story Phillips building at the heart of downtown, which has been vacant for years and is quite obviously deteriorating before our very eyes. What is the city doing about this eyesore, economic depressant and potential public danger?

A. That building has come before the special magistrate for code enforcement and there is a case pending. It's a privately owned building and the best means to do something about it is through the code enforcement process, which is what's underway at present. Typically, there's so much time afforded to address the issue, and if it's not done then there’s a compounding of fines from that point forward on a daily basis. My belief is the property will be redeveloped in what I hope is a sooner time frame than what it's taken to this point. We just have to let that play out.

Q. Most people, including me, have little idea of the scope of your work. What might surprise outsiders about your responsibilities?

A. That’s a tough question. I've tried for over 30 years to explain it to my wife – and she's got a background in municipal government. There's a new challenge every day, a new opportunity to serve people. You have to be able to pivot from one thing to the next instantly – you can go from meeting a new employee to dealing with an angry water customer to addressing a police incident to a special event within a park to a commissioner item to something at the airport, and this is just to name a few – and that can be within the first hour.

Municipal government is unlike any business, and you end up touching everything we do as a city – an airport, a traffic operation system, lakes, utilities, a library, recreation facilities, police and fire – plus multiple aspects of what it takes to actually make those things operate efficiently. It's a quarter-billion-dollar industry that we operate under a board of directors – otherwise known as the city commission.

I'm extremely proud of our staff at all levels, the pride they take in their job, the respect they have for their work and the way they carry it out. It’s sometimes hard work and oftentimes thankless, yet they show up every day and give it everything they’ve got.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: T. Michael Stavres talks about keeping Winter Haven ahead of the times