By Marta Rose-Thorpe
Interview with Mayor Stuart Tettemer
On a brisk Saturday morning in February, I catch up with Panama City Beach Mayor Stuart Tettemer. We meet at The Pour, a coffee bar on Front Beach Road that stands in front of The Ark and Ark Church and funds many of the Ark’s ministries and programs. Praise and worship music gently flows through the lively space, packed with visitors and Christian youth groups lining up for their coffees and matcha teas. This is a spot Stuart visits frequently for various meetings and spiritual-fueled appointments, and throughout our conversation, he quotes scripture. As Mayor of Panama City Beach for nearly one year now – he took office in April 2024 – he’s had time to settle in and get to know the lay of the land. I am anxious to check the pulse of how things are going. “So far, is it anything like you’ve anticipated?” I ask. “It’s such a tremendous opportunity – much better than I expected,” is his reply. “That’s because of the people, on the Council and Charter staff, City Manager, City Clerk, City Attorney – they’re all wonderful, dedicated, hardworking people. They are part of the lifeblood of our municipality.”
It’s evident Stuart has great respect for the people he works and serves with. “The Vice Mayor, Michael Jarman, who’s been in the area forever, is dedicated, knowledgeable and insightful,” he shares. “Councilmember Mary Coburn is connected with the community, particularly the Senior Center. She has history in Downtown development and revitalization. Councilman Paul Casto has been with the municipality his entire life and provides great history for us. He started as a lifeguard, worked his way up to Director of Public Works, and is now a Councilman. Councilman Ethan Register knows a lot about the tourist industry, bringing a vibrant perspective from the crucial industry on the beach. He works hard to represent everyone in the community, from residents to business owners. In Corinthians 1, Chapter 12, verses 4 into the 20s, it talks about spiritual gifts and the body of Christ being different parts of the body,” he explains. “It’s fascinating how well that works. The apostle Paul emphasizes that we all have our role to play, and it’s not the same role. We see that in the City Council, we have a good mix of people.”
Stuart grew up in Kissimmee, FL, attended college at Cornell University, and majored in Computer Science. “The internet came of age when I was in middle school,” he shares. “I was good with computers, and I like building useful things.” He relocated to Northern California after graduation, living in Silicon Valley for nine years, 2009-2018, and joined three early-stage startups. At Pinterest, there were 90 employees when he joined, and he stayed as that number climbed to 300. At Zumper, the largest privately-owned rental platform in the country, he became the tenth person to join. For seven and a half years, pre-Covid, he worked remotely at a search engine called Elastic. “When Covid hit I was living in Colorado with my family, but I wanted to get back to Florida. On a business trip to Florida, I got off the plane, felt the oppressive humidity, and it just felt like home!” Panama City Beach is well-located, geographically, and accessible to the rest of the south. He moved here in May 2020. “PCB is a good mix of ‘Small Town’ with a lot of amenities because of the tourism. Being from Kissimmee, I love tourist towns. I was ready for a quiet life but felt I was called to enter the political realm. I had a few people ask me to run.”
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Fast, cheap and good, pick two?’” he asks me. “When you’re in public office those three things become ‘Interacting with community, getting things done, and having a home life… pick two.’ Interacting with the community is an important part of government, making sure everyone knows we’re here, we’re listening, that we care about the residents as well as the visitors and the business owners.” “So, what are your two?” I ask, and he smiles. “I don’t have a home life!” But as our conversation continues, I start to feel that Stuart’s spiritual life is the third part of the equation. “I spend my time between work and church. I’ve really poured a lot into this church (The Ark Church). I was an Atheist for 20 years,” he shares. “I took a philosophy class in college; I was listening to a podcast about Atheism and there were some things that didn’t make sense to me – didn’t fit with my experience of reality. Seven years ago, I came back to the church. That was God, I believe, who’d been working on my heart for many years. I started investigating Christianity, attending an Orthodox church for a little while. I liked the ritual and the structure. But then I came to The Ark.” Stuart really became a Believer, he feels, about two or three years ago. “I had an intellectual understanding of God. The Ark is where that moved from my head to my heart. That movement began when I started volunteering. Sweeping the floors before service… being of service is how I interact with spirituality and the world.” His heavy involvement at The Ark includes involvement in the Mentorship Program. “I have one protégé – we’ve developed a very strong friendship and brotherhood through that program.”
“One of the passages I enjoy is John 14-17, where John prays for us,” he shares. “That we be one, as he and the Father are one, and we are all one through that. I see the opportunity for Panama City Beach to be One Beach. There are different areas of the beach, but there is one body.” This is the first I have learned of One Beach, and I am curious to hear more. “Public safety, infrastructure, water infrastructure, transportation, CRA – these are core things we have to get right,” he says. “But there’s also the collaboration with the City and the community to work together to be One Beach. This includes the unincorporated area… it includes the ‘Island’ bound by three bridges. Bay County and the City have good movement towards thinking about the entire beach from a regulatory perspective. One element of Stuart’s campaign platform was encouraging collaboration with residents and making sure they have robust communication with the City. He cites a recent successful collaboration. “After the tragic shark attacks on the beach, the City and TDC worked together to place more lifeguards, and the Beach Rotary Club worked with the City on a Personal Rescue Tubes pilot program.”
He sees Panama City Beach as an All-American city. “We have a healthy visitor mix from blue-collar and white-collar backgrounds. Our local faith community is strong, and the visitors reflect that, as well. The Tallahassee Memorial Health Hospital is coming in making PCB a potential medical destination perfectly placed between Pensacola and Tallahassee. We have our wonderful military: NSA-PC and Tyndall, so you can see the opportunity to continue to build up the defense contractor community, giving us a more stable base. As One Beach, we want to hear from every segment who lives here.” Tourist communities in Florida, he shares, can go one of three ways. “They can become Disney World. They can become retirement communities. But then you have a full community. You have the visitors and the retirees, but you also have families and a robust ecosystem. Our community has the potential to have a three-legged stool of economic productivity.”
We discuss Bay County as a tech hub. “If you look at Silicon Valley, one of the reasons it was so successful was the two universities there, Stanford and UC Berkeley. You have that talent. I know FSU-PC has a very strong entrepreneurship program and computer science program, and GCSC has a nice electronics program – I took a course there. To grow tech, you need the practical side of academia as well as workforce development. We want good jobs here to make sure families can stay here. One of the things I love about this community is the strong multigenerational families. There’s history and a strong ‘sense of place.’ More global areas, like Silicon Valley, are transient with so many moving in and out.” Right now, he adds, there is a lot of focus on aerospace. “The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010 has largely funded FSU’s InSPIRE project (bringing advanced manufacturing and aerospace capabilities to the region). It’s amazing how God works… out of tragedy comes opportunity.”
“One Beach is a continuation of the efforts,” he says. “We’re doing a good job in this community – there needs to be tweaks, but we’re still broadly walking down the same path. We’re taking what has already been done and building on it. Our job is to put the next rock on the pile.” As an individual, he says, your job is to put the next rock on so that the future elected officials and the future residents – those born here and here for generations as well as those who have moved here more recently – can build on that. “I ran because I love the people here. I have been overwhelmed in seeing the other side of city government, the other side of the elected office, and seeing the passion and drive of the residents to do everything they can to make this the best place possible. It is such a blessing to be here and be part of this community. Honestly, I just really thank God.”
