Tampa Bay Water hires new general manager

Tampa Bay Water voted this morning to hire former New Port Richey City Manager Gerald Seebers as their new general manager. Seebers will receive an annual salary of $168,000.

The board first voted to ratify Seeber's selection, which was made in an unpublicized meeting last week. Tampa Bay Water chairwoman Susan Latvala, a Pinellas County commissioner, said that was done for the benefit of the St. Petersburg Times.

"I've never seen anything like it," Pat Gleason, who serves as Gov. Charlie Crist's special counsel for open government, told the Times last week.

Seeber spent nearly 16 years as New Port Richey's city manager before he quit in 2004 to become the city manager of Oviedo, a town twice the size of New Port Richey about 10 miles from Orlando.

-- Craig Pittman, Times staff