King says he will take the heat

Gary King may hold the most thankless government job on the Gulf Coast: city manager of Cape Coral, one of the more dysfunctional and debt-laden cities in the region.

King, who was recently appointed to the position, has been the target of attacks in the local press for hiring consultants to review how the city does business. You can bet that what those consultants find won't be pretty and the eight public-sector unions that dominate the city's workforce know it.

“The heat in the press is correlated to the progress I'm making, so keep that in mind,” King recently told a group of commercial real estate brokers in Fort Myers.

King says the city needs an economic development program that will include creating an advocate for business customers and create a simpler permitting process for complex projects. “If it's legal and it makes sense, we'll do it,” King says. “I think you're going to like what you see and hear.”

Coffee Talk already does. One of King's first acts was to get rid of the “closed for lunch” sign at City Hall.