Sold Out Crowd Enjoys City Manager Roast

You know you’ve staged a successful roast when the crowd milling around outside the venue afterwards is discussing who did the best job of roasting. That was the case Saturday night, May 31, at the Arts Center Theatre in the Town Center Mall, where gleeful attendees had kind words for all of the roasters, who did their best to poke fun at Marco city manager Mike McNees, who turned 70 earlier in the week. The event was a fundraiser for the Marco Island Center for the Arts. Art Center executive director Hyla Crane served as emcee.

Outside the theater, former city councilors Becky Irwin and Jared Grifoni were being singled out for their good-natured barbs. McNees’ friend Maria Lamb, colleagues Casey Lucius and Dan Smith, and McNees’ wife Hazel were also mentioned as being the top roasters. But the results of the post-event straw poll seemed to favor Irwin, whose roast centered on hot-button city issues and city council meeting hijinks, as the winner.

"I was told to keep this short,” Irwin said in her roast, “which, as anybody who's ever been to a Marco Island City Council meeting knows, means absolutely nothing.”

 Irwin, a former Marco Island city councilor, is a longtime real estate professional on the Island. "Let's talk about this man's resume,” Irwin said." Multi-Municipality McNees has a resume longer than a council agenda with a noise ordinance vote, short-term rental discussion, public comment, and a vote for a seventh councilor. Mike's changed offices more than I've changed yard signs. Remember when four new councilors were sworn in at once? Mike calmly advised them: 'Governance is a team sport.' That's adorable, Mike. You've seen it all, Mike: Hurricanes, lawsuits, and even someone's pants falling down at the podium during public comments. You've led with grace, grit, and stamina. Surprising for a man your age. Here's to you, Mike McNees. May your inbox be light, your council meetings short, and your North Carolina mountain home peaceful enough to forget we ever existed.”

Assistant City Manager Casey Lucius compared her boss to Kermit the Frog from the Muppets, noting they were born the same year. 

"Jim Henson described Kermit as kind of easygoing,” Lucius said, "very likable, and sometimes slightly a wise guy. He said Kermit possessed a natural sense of leadership within the Muppets. He held everything together. I know someone else who was introduced to the world in May of 1955. My boss, my mentor, my sidekick. But back to Kermit. Mike and Kermit actually have a lot in common. Both play guitar. They like to sing and act. Also like Kermit, Mike's surrounded by some characters. Remember, Kermit had to deal with Statler and Waldorf. Mike's also had to deal with a couple.” At that moment, pictures of current council chair Erik Brechnitz and former council member Greg Folley flashed on the large screen located in the center of the stage to raucous laughter and applause. 

Former two-term council member Jared Grifoni perhaps took the most liberties when roasting McNees.

"Casey Lucius is here,” Grifoni said. "Casey, thanks for taking the time away from doing Mike's job for him to be here. Dan Smith. He's the only person less popular than city council. Dan’s upset more businesses than Build Back Better and tariffs combined. Becky Irwin. Becky's awesome. I love Becky. You know, I served with Becky for a number of years. She was great. But she took a lot of heat over the trolley project because she said it would be beneficial to Marco Island residents and would have a social benefit in lowering DUIs. You know, she was right, because after the trolley failed, DUIs have skyrocketed. And that's just been at Hideaway Beach.

Director of community affairs, Dan Smith, seemed to enjoy sending some good-natured barbs his boss’s way.

"You know Mike's getting old,” Smith starts, "he'll set up a meeting and he'll go in there and sit down. And he looks at you, and you look at him and he's like, ‘What?'

Then his memory comes back, and he kind of remembers, ‘Hey, I'm the one that set up this meeting.’ 

Dolores Siegel was introduced as a philanthropist, an active citizen, and a friend of McNees. Siegel’s roast was actually more like a tribute.

"I know you’re all asking each other, ‘Who is she?’ Siegel said. "I didn't ever work for the town. My claim to fame now is that I'm the chairman of the Parks and Rec committee. And the only people who really care about me on Marco Island are the pickleball players. 

"Mike, he's towering at 6’5”,” Siegel said. "He runs everything on Marco Island: the police, the fire department, sewage, water. Basically, if it flows, burns, or backs up, it's his fault. He manages the cops, the firefighters, the engineers, utility crews. And if your job requires a badge, a hardhat, a hazmat suit, Mike's your boss. He's done it all. Let's hear it for the man. The myth. Mike McNees.”

Another active resident on the panel was Maria Lamb, who marched around the stage with a tall sign with an artist’s rendering of a tall giraffe with a picture of McNees’ head glued to the top to illustrate the height disparity between herself and McNees. Much of Lamb’s roast centered around the similarities between McNees and his wife and Lamb and her husband, Charlie.

"This is how it looks like standing next to McNees,” Lamb said. "Confucius said when he turned 70, no more pretending to remember people's names. It's okay if you say. 'Hmm. Where did I meet you again?' Wisely, Confucius also said age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.' Take it from the entire population of Marco Island, they don't mind because you don't matter."

McNees’ longtime friend Joe Townsend, a fourth-generation Floridian whose father was born in Naples in 1923, was mostly kind to McNees.

“Mike's a great guy,” Townsend said, “He really is. He's got a few flaws. They're not insurmountable, right? In 40-some years of knowing Mike, I'll be regaling some of my fondest memories, unforgettable memories. I spent a weekend on a houseboat under the Marco Island Bridge with Mike. We were singing all night long, screaming out Marshall Tucker songs. I learned one thing about Mike that night. He can't sing, but he can play guitar. I cherish our friendship because at our age, you can't make new old friends.”

The final roaster was Hazel McNees, who caught everyone off guard with her heartfelt and hilarious stories about her husband.

"I grew up in Costa Rica, where I was teaching language,” she said. "And I love to dance salsa, merengue, cumbia. Mike grew up in Indiana. He thought that salsa was just a jar in the fridge. One time, Mike asked me if salsa was just the Spanish word for ketchup. I almost turned myself into Homeland Security. Mike loves to tell people that I am from Costa Rica, like he discovered me in a National Geographic expedition. He married an exotic, tropical dancing queen. I have taught Latin dancing to lots of people in the United States. And I tried to teach Mike before our wedding, and he had so many excuses. He did try, stepping on my feet or my dress. So eventually, I just gave up and I just wept in both languages. I am very proud of my husband, the man, the myth, the city manager. But at home, he cannot manage to find the peanut butter in our kitchen, and he panics when he cannot find one of his socks. Mike loves my cooking. He brags to everyone about my cooking like he made it himself, but I have to admit he contributes with his appetite. We have been together for 15 years, and this man hasn't learned any Spanish. He thinks he's fluent in Spanish because he can order enchiladas or uno mas, por favor. My perfectly imperfect partner. So happy birthday, Mike. You might be 70, but you're still my biggest adventure."

McNees approached the dais and deliberately unpacked his reading glasses from his briefcase, then pretended to remove earplugs that he was wearing during the roast.

He addressed some of the barbs that were fired his way. Then he finished by playing a song that he wrote on his amplified acoustic guitar. His friend Townsend did the singing. McNees’ song borrows heavily from Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, a song written for the piano. McNees admitted up front that he might struggle a bit with his performance of Rollback State of Mind, a song that laments the challenges of managing a city when city council votes in a tax rollback year after year.

After struggling on the guitar, McNees jokingly offered to give attendees a refund.

"Okay, I gotta tell you,” he said, "if you bring me a receipt, I will give you a refund." Then he issued a fundraising challenge to the audience.

"If anybody who didn't get an opportunity wants to take a cheap shot at me, raise your hand,” McNees said. "It's $100 a pop. Not $5. Keep your two or three bucks. We don't need it. $100 a pop. Are there any hands?”

While he didn’t get any takers from the audience, McNees didn’t waste the opportunity to finish with a plug for the Art Center.

"You could have watched a program on television tonight,” he said, "and gotten a perfectly produced, sanitized, predictable experience. For me, a space like this is a sacred thing. What you saw here tonight, you can't see it tomorrow on YouTube. You can't live stream it. You can't get it on Netflix. It is transient and it is gone. And if we were going to do it again tomorrow night, it would be different. So the opportunity to come into a space like this and express myself is really a priceless thing. I’m here to tell you if we don't defend these spaces and support them and keep them alive, we'll be making a huge mistake. This is a sacred space. I encourage everyone, if you can, chip in for the Art Center. I thank you all. It has meant a lot to me to have you all be so enthusiastic about this. I hope it has been good for the Art Center." 

For more on the roast see the expanded version on CoastalBreezeNews.com.