The Key West Keynoter reports that our county’s chief administrative officer was in the running for city manager of Key West, Fla. — possibly the farthest away you can get from Humboldt County in the lower 48 — but pulled out at the last minute. 

So Key West is out, but the question remains: Is Phillip Smith-Hanes looking to vamoose, for real? Difficult to say.

On the one hand, your competent careerist, I’ve learned, is forever sending out resumes this hither and yon, forever at the ready in case the main chance just happens to present itself. One might not seriously be on the market, but isn’t it nice to know that options exist? There are more useless hobbies than turning down job offers left and right. PSH’s brush-off to Key West fits that pattern — he reaches the semis, then he bows out. 

But you could read that Keynoter story in another way, too. Turns out that PSH is the second of Key West’s semi-finalists to abort mission late in the game, which might mean that there is some bad voodoo afoot in island government. Our man hints as much in his kiss-off, as quoted in the story above:

After our conversation on Tuesday, conversations with other managers, additional research into the community, and review of the background materials, I have decided not to pursue the opportunity in Key West at this time. I am withdrawing from the process….

What does it mean? Who knows. Any number of things. Taken at face value it suggests that his application was in earnest. Though, as always, you’d be a fool to take at face value anything so deeply embedded in bureaucratic realpolitik as a job application letter … or its reverse.

Well, it’ll be a shame when PSH moves up and out. He is sane. He hasn’t taken sides. He doesn’t seem to have fouled anyone’s hawse. In his two and a half years as the county’s top staffer, he has pulled off a pretty neat trick, managing to remain pretty much above the fray in Humboldt County’s ultrapoliticized atmosphere. If you want to see what the opposite scenario looks like, you have only to look across the street.