Mark Bunker's thoughts on Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard's sudden resignation

[Former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard and Councilman Mark Bunker]

We just got off the phone with Clearwater City Councilman Mark Bunker, who told us he’s still stunned after Mayor Frank Hibbard, with a year still left in his term, resigned during the middle of a morning work session. (See the breaking news story by Tracey McManus at the Tampa Bay Times here.)

“It was a bit of a shock. And yet, I wasn't surprised,” he says.

“He called a brief recess and when he came back in and sat down, I could tell he was upset. As he started to speak, I said to myself, he's going to quit. And he did.”

Hibbard had served as mayor from 2004 to 2012, and then ran again in 2020. He had already announced that he was not going to run again next year, but he leaves a year left on his current term.

“I like Frank. I admire him. I voted for him. If he had run for another term, I would have voted for him again, even though we didn't always agree,” Bunker says.

“I think it's a shame that he resigned in the middle of a meeting the way he did. But it was clear this was eating at him. And the thing is, I have seen Frank, this stubbornness and this anger, when the council would vote 4 to 1 against him. And he would loudly say, ‘I'm fine with 4-to-1 votes.’ But he brought it up so often, you knew it was really eating at him.”

In her story about the incident, McManus suggested that Hibbard was unhappy that the other four council members were in favor of $90 million in spending for a new City Hall project that already had a $60 million deficit.

“Yes, we have been talking for at least 20 years about a new City Hall. The old City Hall was built in 1964, and it was really falling into disrepair,” Bunker says. “We were supposed to have temporary offices in this former Bank of America building, and that has gone on for several years now, with no conceivable end in sight unless we take some action.

“What we ultimately decided to do was we started to design a new City Hall, and then the idea came, well it would be great for the staff if everyone was under one roof. Because where we are now in the tower, we have one floor there, but there's lots of departments that are separate from us in the Municipal Services Building, which is falling apart.

“So we decided collectively — well at least 4 to 1 — to make the City Hall into a place where all the city employees can be under one roof.”

We asked Bunker, with a Tracey McManus bombshell investigation about Scientology apparently coming soon, was there any connection to Hibbard suddenly walking away?

“It has nothing to do with Tracey's imminent story,” Bunker assures us. “I don't think there's any Scientology aspect to this at all. Frank certainly has no love for Scientology. This was purely him believing we should not spend that money. I think that's what upset him the most, that he couldn't convince us that his way was the right way.”

And what was Hibbard suggesting as an alternative?

“He wanted to move City Hall into our downtown library where we're now holding our council meetings. But it would have meant displacing a lot if not all of the library. And that’s prime real estate right there on the bluff. It didn’t make sense to be giving ourselves these beautiful views when really we wouldn’t have been able to fit any more than into our current one-floor office if we moved into the library.”

So what’s political fallout? Does the vice mayor step in?

“We have to sort that out. We'll spend this week discussing it. We'll have to have a meeting, because we can't speak to each other about it,” Bunker explains.

“My feeling? Kathleen Beckman, who is the vice mayor, she's doing a good job. She took over the meeting after Frank left and she did really well.

“Frank, when he quit said, ‘This is not my council.’ And in many ways it's Kathleen's council. She is really spectacular about getting out and meeting people. She has her pulse on the city. And she is tireless in doing her research on every vote we have to take.”

How is she on Scientology?

“She doesn't necessarily agree with me on Scientology. No one on the council is with me on Scientology and I'm used to that. They may be quietly in support of me, but there were few that joined in on the ‘hip hip hooray’ I gave Ben Shaw,” he says.

Bunker says he thinks a council led by Beckman it would be a good step away from a good-old boy network that has controlled the city in the past. He suggests that she could make progress on homelessness issues, and on environmental challenges

“I'd be very interested to see what Kathleen could do in this next year. I was hoping she would run for mayor next year. We could let her get comfortable in this.”

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link to today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning…