Fort Myers Beach names 2 directors on leave in grants review

The two Fort Myers Beach staff put on leave during the town's contracts and grants review have now been named by the council, and the town says neither has any connection to its FEMA money or its Hurricane Ian emergency funds

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 13, 2026

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: RDNE Stock project / Pexels

What it changes

Two things are worth separating here, because a story like this tends to get read as one thing when it is really two. The first is what has actually happened, which is narrow. An outside review is looking at how a small barrier island town acquires and handles certain contracts and grants, and two department directors are off the job on full pay while it runs. Nobody has been accused of anything. Paid administrative leave is not a sanction and it is not a finding; it is what an employer does to take people out of contact with records and processes that are being examined, so that whatever the review concludes cannot later be attacked as compromised. It protects the review, and, when the review clears someone, it protects them too. The second thing is why this matters more in Fort Myers Beach than the same announcement would matter in a town that had not been flattened. Since Hurricane Ian the town has been running an enormous volume of money through exactly the two mechanisms now under review, contracts and grants, and it has been doing it under time pressure with a rebuilt staff. That combination is where procurement problems live everywhere, not because people are dishonest but because emergency purchasing rules relax the ordinary checks and nobody goes back afterwards to tighten them. Which is precisely why the town's line that the two employees have nothing to do with FEMA grant funding or the town's Ian emergency funds is the most load-bearing sentence in the whole story. Residents should hold on to it, and should also hold the town to it when the findings come. For anyone who lives there, the practical question is what to watch for and when. Three things. First, the promised town hall. The town manager has said he will present the findings publicly and take questions in a timely manner, and timely manner is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A date is the test. If one is set and kept, the process is working as described. Second, the scope. The town has not said which contracts and which grants, and the eventual answer to that is more informative than anything available now. A review scoped to one department and a handful of agreements is a different animal from one scoped to a procurement function as a whole. Third, the auditor. Who is doing the review, whether they were engaged by the council or by staff, and whether they report to the council in public are the questions that decide how much the eventual findings are worth. An independent review commissioned by the same management layer it is examining is a weaker instrument than one the council commissions directly, and residents are entitled to ask which of those this is. There is a broader point for anyone who follows municipal money in Southwest Florida. Grant funding is not free money, and the compliance tail on it is long. Federal and state grants carry procurement standards, documentation requirements and clawback provisions that survive long after the cash is spent, and a town that cannot evidence how a contract was let can be made to give money back years later, out of a general fund that residents pay into. That is the real exposure in stories of this kind, and it is why a review that looks like internal housekeeping is worth watching. The cost of getting this wrong does not land on the two men on leave. It lands on the tax base.

The two Fort Myers Beach staff placed on administrative leave during an independent review of the town's contracts and grants have been identified, and the town has given a first indication of what the review does not cover.

This publication reported on Wednesday that the town had put two employees on leave as a precaution while the review runs, and that it had not named them. The town council has since confirmed the names, WINK News reported on Wednesday evening in a report by Hunter Walterman.

The two are Frankie Kropacek, the community development director, and Jeff Hauge, the community services director. Both are on paid leave. WINK reported that it contacted both men and did not immediately hear back.

No wrongdoing has been alleged against either man. The town has described the leave as a precautionary step taken to protect the integrity of the review, and says it takes the stewardship of public funds seriously and will share updates as the findings progress.

"The Town is conducting a thorough and fair review and gathering all relevant facts and evidence," town Public Information Officer Abigail Eberhart told WINK. "We ask for the community's patience and respect for the process as this work continues."

The town has not said which contracts and which grants are being examined. Eberhart said the two employees have no connection to the town's emergency funds drawn down from Hurricane Ian, or to FEMA grant funding.

Town Manager Will McKannay will hold a public town hall to present the findings and answer questions from residents directly once the review is complete, Eberhart said, and will set out the town's actions and how it intends to proceed.

"The Town is committed to protecting public funds, maintaining the public's trust, and providing residents with a direct and transparent accounting of this matter once the review is complete," she said.

No public document underlies this item. The town has published no press release or notice on the review, and its website carried no announcement of it when checked for this report. Everything above is attributed to WINK's reporting and to the town official quoted in it.

Where we read it: Hunter Walterman at WINK News. Read their story.

The document: No public filing has been released.

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