By Anne Geggis
When she steps down as Manalapan’s town manager at the end of this month, Linda Stumpf will go out in much the same way she’s led the smallest of the South County coastal municipalities: efficiently and without much fanfare.
The two-decade town employee (nearly 14 years as manager, the balance as finance director) has issued the edict that no retirement party will be held to mark the occasion.
Still, her staying power stands out in a time when most municipal managers don’t last more than a few years.
“I would put her down as one of the top town managers I’ve had the pleasure to know,” said South Palm Beach Mayor Bonnie Fischer, who tried to woo Stumpf to come north to her town from Manalapan.
The Town Commission is planning to give Stumpf a $25,000 going-away gift, which it expects to include in the new budget that will be voted on this month.
“We hope everyone will support that as part of a thank you to her for her 22 years of service to Manalapan,” Mayor John Deese said at the commission’s July 23 meeting. “It’s not necessarily a normal precedent for the town, but it’s also not a normal precedent to have someone serve the town for 22 years.”
He described the payout as “good and fair.”
At a March meeting of the Town Commission, Stumpf praised the addition of Eric Marmer as assistant town manager. He will assume her duties at her retirement. She also made a rare statement about her ongoing medical issues, which in recent years have meant she used a wheelchair in dealing with a chronic illness.
“I’ve been sitting in this chair for over a year,” she said. She’s still working at recovery, going to occupational and physical therapy sessions.
“So, my legs … the atrophy is there and I have to build it back,” she said.
Stumpf is leaving after overseeing some seismic change in Manalapan. The transformation has occurred without a lot of metaphoric storms — even if there were hurricanes to manage and, more recently, the sudden resignation last year of all but two members of the seven-member Town Commission because of a new state law requiring fuller disclosure of elected officials’ assets.
The property value of the town, which covers about .45 square miles of land, has nearly doubled in the time Stumpf has been a part of Manalapan’s operations — expanding from $635 million in 2003 ($1.19 billion when calculated in 2024 dollars) to its current taxable value of $2.24 billion.
Per square mile, Manalapan is among the most valuable in South Palm Beach County. Boynton Beach, for example, is 35 times Manalapan’s size in land mass, but its taxable value is only about four times greater than Manalapan’s.
Stumpf is credited with shepherding the development of the only Publix located on the South County barrier islands. The store opened in 2016 with Publix officials calling it a store unlike any other in the country.
“People were afraid it was going to cause too much traffic,” Fischer said. “But the end result … everybody loves it.”
Tracey Stevens, who worked in neighboring Ocean Ridge from 2016 to 2022 as town clerk and then town manager, has served on committees with Stumpf and collaborated as officials in neighboring towns.
“Whenever we had a police issue or a hurricane issue, we always came together and worked together for the betterment of the communities,” said Stevens, who is now Haverhill’s town manager.
Stumpf, Stevens said, brought an authoritative, no-nonsense manner to the proceedings.
“She really knew what she was talking about,” Stevens recalled of their collaboration.
Jane Musgrave contributed to this story.
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