Just one week after coming out of a retirement for the second time to serve as Plant City’s manager, David Sollenberger already has his finger on the community’s pulse.
“There’s a lot of activity going on right now,” Sollenberger said. “My response is to keep it moving along. There’s a lot going on in Plant City. When I first came to Plant City, it was very sleepy.”
Sollenberger said one of the most pressing issues is the ongoing concerns regarding Visions Golf LLC and the Walden Lake Golf & Country Club.
“There’s a lot of interest in Visions Golf rezoning and request,” Sollenberger said. “I think it’s important for the city to conduct this as transparently as possible.”
To do that, Sollenberger wants to have all correspondence that comes in and out of the city about Visions Golf’s plan posted online.
“I know there’s a great deal of uncertainty in how it works, but I want to put it up on a billboard with the lights flashing,” he said.
The Midtown Redevelopment Project is another project on which he would like to see progress during his return to City Hall.
“We want to get this to the point where proposals can be requested for development,” he said.
Sollenberger is working with an attorney in Boca Raton, with whom he also worked when he helped redevelop Sarasota as its city manager. That project was challenging but culminated in one of the most “joyful” experiences, when the Ritz-Carlton chose to plant roots in downtown.
Another concern is that city employees haven’t received raises in several years. The lack of a permanent salary raise is something Sollenberger would like to change.
Of course, Sollenberger also will be using his time to select a permanent replacement for outgoing City Manager Greg Horwedel. He hopes to have a candidate selected within six months.
SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL
Sollenberger’s road carried him throughout the United States before landing him in the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World.
An Ohio native, Sollenberger, a U.S. Army veteran, received a bachelor’s in education from the University of Dayton and got a job as an eighth-grade teacher in the late 1950s. Although he liked teaching, he decided it wasn’t the job for him.
Thinking back to high school, he remembered when a city manager came to talk to his school for a business industry day. He also remembered a former Dayton city manager who installed an income tax to overcome a funding shortage. The decision led to a fiery column in a local shopper called Fiddlesticks by Fagin.
All this fascinated the young Sollenberger. So, he went back to school and earned a master’s degree in government administration at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
He moved to California, where he served as city manager of Vallejo and Watsonville, even experiencing a 6.7 earthquake — which he described as “shake, rattle and roll.” Like Plant City, Watsonville grew strawberries, but in the summer. Sollenberger cites his time in California as the most challenging of his career.
“It was a tough decade — the 60s,” he said. “There was a lot of social upheaval, resistance and push for civil rights, the Vietnam War. There was a lot of abrasiveness going on at the time. It was tough to get through. What was going on in the textbooks wasn’t necessarily going on in real life.”
After 12 years, he moved from California to Minnesota. His California peers teased him for leaving the warmth of the beach for the bitter winters of the north. His Rotary Club even fined him $10. Sollenberger learned exactly what they were talking about when he experience his coldest winter every at -36 degrees.
He also spent 12 years in Minnesota, serving as city manager of Winona. But he ended up back at the beach. This time on Florida’s Gulf Coast as city manager of Sarasota.
When he found himself in Plant City, he realized there was something special about the town.
“I enjoy working here,” Sollenberger said. “I enjoy the people, the employees are really dedicated to doing their jobs and the bulk of the people do quality work.”
This community, the residents, the people are wonderful,” he said. “It’s good to be back, and I’m glad the City Commission had the confidence to ask me to serve. I hope to live up to the confidence they put in me.”
But, make no mistake: Sollenberger wants to get back to retirement, traveling with his wife, Alise, and cheering on his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes.
“I have no long term ambitions,” Sollenberger said. “I plan to do everything I can to assist the commission in an orderly and timely basis.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.