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Search committee extends hunt for new citrus director

News Chief – October 11, 2011

BARTOW A Florida Citrus Commission search committee on Monday kicked the can down the road for another week, agreeing to review all 114 applications for a new Citrus Department executive director during the next seven days.

The six-person committee agreed to meet at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 17 to compare their lists of top candidates for the department’s chief executive. All six committee members belong to the nine-person Citrus Commission, the governing body of the Florida Department of Citrus, a state agency to promote Florida citrus products, primarily orange juice.

A committee majority affirmed marketing experience would be the key qualification they would look at. The new executive director’s main task would become reversing U.S. sales of orange juice, which have declined in nine of the past 10 seasons, they said.

“The way I look at the primary function of the Department of Citrus, it is to market our citrus,” said Marty McKenna, a Lake Wales grower and chairman of the commission and the search committee. “If you’re an orange grower, you know we need to address declining sales.”

McKenna spoke after Commissioner Michael Garavaglia Jr., an executive with a Fort Pierce fresh citrus packinghouse, told committee colleagues Florida citrus people seem uncertain they are looking for a marketer or someone with broader administrative experience. Garavaglia expressed concern about focusing just on marketing background.

Commissioner Michael Haycock, an executive with Tropicana Products Inc. in Bradenton, the state’s largest citrus juice processor, said he doesn’t think the person chosen will come entirely from a marketing background. But the department does need someone with experience in consumer marketing with some administrative experience.

McKenna asked the committee also to decide next Monday whether it wants to continue the search for candidates by hiring an executive search firm, also known as a “head hunter.”

Eight companies have responded to an earlier Citrus Department request for bids on a head hunter contract, said Interim Executive Director Debra Funkhouser. Another committee will rank those firms and select the winning company by then.

Under state law, the committee could turn to a head hunter only if it declares its own search “unsuccessful,” Funkhouser said, but the law does not define the term.

The committee could reject all 114 candidates or ask the head hunter to include some of them as part of a wider national search, she said.

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