Cape Coral Council Fires City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn Without Cause on Eve of Election That Made Rick Erickson Mayor

Cape Coral's outgoing City Council voted Monday, Nov. 2, to terminate City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn's contract without cause, ending the tenure of a 24-year city employee at the council's final meeting before Tuesday's election reshaped city government. Ilczyszyn's employment ended at 11:59 p.m. that night, and the council named Maureen Buice, the assistant to the city manager, as interim city manager.

The next day, voters chose Rick Erickson, a retired Army veteran, as Cape Coral's next mayor over real estate broker Lisa Cohen-Adkinson. The timing of the firing, coming hours before voters went to the polls and with Mayor John Gunter presiding over his last meeting, has drawn questions about whether a departing council should make such a consequential decision for the one that follows it.

The vote

Gunter, who was eliminated in the August mayoral primary, made the motion to end Ilczyszyn's employment agreement. The Cape Coral Breeze reported the motion passed 4-1, with Gunter and Councilmember Bill Steinke among those in favor. Gunter said he made the motion because residents had spoken through the election process, according to the Breeze. Other members cited a lack of trust and confidence in the city manager, according to published accounts of the meeting.

The decision came at the same meeting in which the council approved a $10 million incentive package for Costco to build a roughly 165,000-square-foot store in the city. Four of the council's eight seats were on Tuesday's ballot, meaning the body that fired Ilczyszyn will not be the one that hires his successor. An outgoing council's choice of a top administrator, made after its own members have lost or left their races, is the core of the criticism over the timing.

The Breeze also reported that one sitting council member asked for an investigation, arguing the termination did not follow the removal procedure laid out in section 5.02 of the city charter. The city had not publicly responded to that claim as of Friday.

Severance and the contract

City Attorney Aleksandr Boksner told the council Ilczyszyn is entitled to a severance package of four months' salary, paid in a lump sum. That provision comes from the contract the council approved in September 2023, which promised four months of base salary if he was terminated without cause.

That 2023 contract set Ilczyszyn's pay at $285,000 a year, up from the $220,000 he earned as interim manager, and ran for an initial four-year term through Sept. 19, 2027, with automatic two-year renewals unless either side gave notice. The council could review and raise his salary each year after the first 12 months, so his final salary may have been higher than the starting figure.

Who is Michael Ilczyszyn

Ilczyszyn spent his entire career at Cape Coral City Hall before Monday's vote. He was hired in 2002 as a water plant operator trainee and rose through the public works department. He became assistant city manager in 2015, was demoted to a public works role in 2018 following an internal investigation, and was named public works director in 2022.

In February 2023, after the council ended the tenure of City Manager Rob Hernandez, it unanimously chose Ilczyszyn as interim manager. Seven months later, in September 2023, the council unanimously made the appointment permanent. His departure leaves Cape Coral, a city of more than 200,000 residents and one of Florida's fastest-growing, without a permanent chief executive barely three years after that appointment.

The interim manager

Buice will oversee the city's day-to-day operations while the council decides how to fill the job permanently, the city said. Gulfshore Business reported that her interim salary is $290,000 a year.

Buice has more than two decades in local government, nine of them with Cape Coral. She joined the city in August 2017 as a public information specialist, was promoted to senior public information specialist in 2019, and has been assistant to the city manager since November 2021. Before that, she spent 12 years with the Fort Myers Police Department as accreditation manager and public information specialist. She holds a master's degree in public administration from Barry University and a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and she is a Florida Certified Public Manager through Florida State University's Florida Center for Public Management.

Her appointment puts a longtime communications and administrative staffer, rather than a department head, at the top of the organization for now. Ilczyszyn himself followed the opposite path, moving from public works into the manager's office.

A former mayor weighs in

Joe Mazurkiewicz, Cape Coral's longest-serving mayor, told WINK News that calls for change in city government had included Ilczyszyn, saying "Mike was one of the people that they wanted out." He recalled a similar situation in the late 2000s, when an outgoing council approved a resolution allowing the city manager to resign with benefits before five newly elected members took office.

Mazurkiewicz said an outgoing council keeps its full authority until the new members are seated, and he described that earlier move as "last minute, but it was notified." He said he would not have handled Monday's decision the same way and that he did not know whether any deal had been made. WINK News said current city leaders had not responded to requests for comment as of Wednesday.

Erickson wins the mayor's race

In Tuesday's general election, Erickson defeated Cohen-Adkinson by fewer than 3,000 votes, according to results reported by WINK News.

Erickson, a retired Army veteran and former U.S. Postal Service employee, and Cohen-Adkinson, a real estate broker and business owner, both advanced from a six-candidate primary in August that knocked Gunter out of the race. Gunter, first elected mayor in 2020, finished his term by making the motion to remove the manager his council had hired.

What's next

The new mayor and council members will inherit the city manager vacancy as one of their first decisions. They can keep Buice in the interim role, launch a national search, or choose a permanent manager from within City Hall. They will also have to decide whether to look into the procedural questions raised about the Nov. 2 vote. Until then, Buice runs the day-to-day operations of Southwest Florida's largest city.