By the Coral Gables Gazette editorial board

Peter Iglesias gave the Coral Gables City Commission more than four months to prepare for his departure as city manager.

More than half that time has passed, and the commission has not publicly established how it will choose his successor, who will run the city if no permanent manager is ready by Oct. 2 or when residents should expect either decision.

That is a narrowing window the commission has allowed to narrow further.

Under the Coral Gables Charter, the manager is the city’s chief executive, responsible for the daily administration of municipal government, the direction of city departments, the appointment of most employees and the implementation of policies adopted by the commission.

The position pays more than $305,000 a year before benefits and carries responsibility for a municipal government with a proposed $318 million budget and a workforce that delivers everything from police and fire protection to permitting, sanitation, transportation and capital construction.

Choosing the next person to hold that authority should not be improvised in the final weeks before a vacancy.

Yet the city has not retained an executive search firm, announced a recruitment process, identified candidates or begun interviews. The commission has not decided whether an interim manager will be necessary. Its next scheduled meeting is Aug. 25, leaving just over five weeks before Iglesias’ planned departure.

A professional city-manager search ordinarily takes longer than that. The Florida City and County Management Association estimates that a typical search requires 90 to 120 days from initiation to selection, and that estimate does not account for the time a successful candidate may need to leave another position and relocate.

Apply those numbers to the calendar, and they answer a question the commission has not yet answered publicly.

Sixty-four days remain before Oct. 2. A search begun now, at the fastest end of that range, would reach a selection near the end of October. A search begun at the Aug. 25 meeting would reach one near the end of November.

Unless Iglesias changes his announced departure date, and barring either a compressed process the commission has not described or an internal appointment it has not announced, the person exercising the city manager’s authority on Oct. 3 is unlikely to be a permanently hired successor.

The city will almost certainly need someone serving in an interim or acting capacity. This is not an abstract staffing problem. Coral Gables already has a deputy city manager and an assistant city manager in place, and Deputy City Manager José “Joe” Gómez served as acting city manager as recently as last year. Yet the city’s position, as of this week, is that no decision has been made about who would exercise the manager’s authority beginning Oct. 3.

That is the heart of the problem.

The concern is not that the commission has acted improperly. Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson says these issues will be taken up at the next meeting, and they may well be. The problem is that the city is still treating temporary leadership as a contingency for a circumstance that has, in all likelihood, already arrived.

Coral Gables may decide an internal candidate is best. It may undertake a regional or national search. It may appoint an interim manager while a broader process unfolds. Any of those paths can be defensible.

Having no announced path is not.

The commission should use its Aug. 25 meeting to establish, in public, the transition process it should have begun discussing weeks ago. At a minimum, commissioners must answer four questions.

Who will exercise the city manager’s authority beginning Oct. 3 if no permanent successor is in place?

Will the city conduct the search itself or retain an experienced executive recruiter?

What qualifications, timetable and public process will govern the selection?

And will the current commission make the permanent appointment before the November election, or preserve that decision for the commission seated afterward?

That final question deserves particular care.

Coral Gables will hold its first November municipal election only weeks after Iglesias leaves. A permanent manager chosen immediately before that election would be selected by the current commission only weeks before voters determine the commission’s post-election composition.

Waiting until after the election, however, could leave the city under interim leadership for months.

Neither choice is automatically improper. But the commission should make the choice deliberately, explain its reasoning and avoid drifting into a result produced only by delay. A decision of this consequence should not be reached by letting the calendar make it.

The stakes are heightened by the instability that has surrounded the manager’s office.

Iglesias was dismissed in February 2024 by one commission majority and returned in May 2025 after an election altered the balance of power. His departure now creates another transition less than 18 months after his reinstatement.

That recent history should make commissioners more attentive to process, not less. The next manager should not enter office appearing to be the rushed choice of a political bloc or the product of a deadline the commission failed to manage.

A transparent search cannot eliminate politics from an appointment made by elected officials. It can establish qualifications in advance, give candidates a fair process and give residents confidence that the commission considered more than personal familiarity or immediate political convenience.

It also protects the eventual appointee. A manager chosen through a clear and professional process begins with greater institutional legitimacy than one installed through a hurried negotiation as the clock runs out.

Iglesias announced his departure May 20, in time for the commission to prepare. That the commission has not yet publicly established a transition process cannot be attributed to an unexpected vacancy.

Nor should residents accept the city’s August recess as a sufficient explanation. Leadership transitions do not pause because the regular meeting calendar does. Commissioners have the authority to call a special meeting when city business requires one, and the pending departure of the chief executive of a municipal government with a proposed $318 million budget qualifies.

The commission does not need to name the next permanent manager tomorrow. It does need to show that someone is managing the transition.

That means placing the issue prominently on the Aug. 25 agenda — or meeting sooner — adopting a public timetable, settling the interim question and stating how candidates will be evaluated. The city should publish the search materials and keep residents informed as the work proceeds.

Coral Gables can still conduct a thoughtful transition. But it no longer has the luxury of passive time.

Two months before Iglesias’ exit, the city has no public succession plan. The next month must produce one.