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After eight years as Lakeland’s mayor, Bill Mutz is packing up his office — and stepping into unfamiliar territory.
“For the first time in 55 years, I don’t have a job to go to,” he said with a mix of wonder and candor. “I don’t actually know what is next.”
But that uncertainty doesn’t mean he plans to slow down.
He said his deep faith will guide his next chapter, “trusting God and being obedient to what he shows me to do.”
“We’re not here for vacations. We’re here to make a difference,” he said.
‘Drinking out of a fire hose’
Mutz, 72, didn’t follow a traditional route and serve as a city commissioner before mayor. The former co-owner of Lakeland Automall sold the business in 2016 and ran for mayor the following year, winning 72% of the vote in a four-way race.
He assumed his decades of civic involvement — serving on 21 boards — had prepared him for the job. It helped, he said, but only to a point.
“It was still drinking out of a fire hose when I became mayor,” Mutz said. “I came in with some relative confidence that I would know the big picture. And then you realize there are 18 departments. There’s a ton of detail.”
Voters reelected him in 2021 with 66.8% of the vote. However, he chose not to seek a third term, saying he wanted to spend more time with Pam, his wife of 48 years, and their large family of 12 children and 41 grandchildren.
‘Honor everyone’
One of the first major challenges Mutz and his fellow commissioners faced after he was elected was deciding what to do with the Confederate monument in Munn Park.
In December 2017, the outgoing Commission voted 4-3 to remove the statue, but did not specify where it should go.
“That was our first big issue,” Mutz recalled. “The monument, for us, was defining. Because that made us create the ‘honor everyone’ mantra that has been behind everything we’ve done.”
Despite court challenges and deep community division, the Mutz-led Commission opted to relocate it to Veterans Park. Mutz spearheaded an effort to raise private funds to pay for the move.
The same philosophy shaped other decisions, like the vote to require masks during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic — an action strongly encouraged by Lakeland Regional Health.
At the time, Mutz said, “I don’t like wearing a mask either; I don’t like my glasses fogging up — but it’s not about me, it’s about other people.” The city’s mask mandate lasted three months, from July to September 2020.
It was also behind his support for equipping Lakeland Police officers with body-worn cameras and his decision to continue issuing LGBTQ+ Pride proclamations each June — as his two predecessors had done — even though it required him to step down from Lakeland Christian School’s board, where he had served for more than 20 years.
Growth, roads and a ‘tsunami’ of people
Mutz presided over a period of tremendous growth, with Lakeland regularly topping lists of America’s fastest-growing metros. The city’s population increased by 9.9% between 2020 and 2024.
That surge — and the development that came with it — was also one of the biggest criticisms of his tenure.
Mutz said fast growth brings infrastructure challenges, but opposing it outright isn’t realistic.
“That’s like standing in a tsunami with a four-by-eight sheet of plywood saying, ‘I’m going to stop the wave,’” Mutz said. “You’re just going to get flattened.”
The key is to guide growth, not chase it — prevent sprawl and think 30 years ahead when making decisions, he said.
Despite intense criticism of the South Florida Avenue road diet — which narrowed a one-mile stretch of the major north-south corridor from five lanes to three — Mutz said he believes in the project.
“You don’t make decisions to be popular,” he said. “As a Commission, you make decisions you really, truly think are going to be in the best interest of citizens, even when they may not see it yet.”
Although it doesn’t look like anything has been happening with the road diet, “The engineering is done. The acquisition is done. So we are very, very close. We’ll break ground in this next year.”
Once the concrete barriers are gone and the wider sidewalks, street trees and lighting are in place, he said, “Dixieland will feel more like an extension of downtown — it’s going to connect.”
But that project is only one mile. As he leaves office, Mutz said his bigger worry is the many other miles of local roads still waiting for upgrades, extensions and safety improvements.
“We don’t have money for transportation, and nobody is creating a way for us to have money for transportation,” he said.
He called the Polk County Commission’s refusal to put a half-cent transportation sales tax referendum before voters “one of the least brave decisions the county has made,” given what officials know is coming.
“That is not the wise way to deal with a tsunami,” he said.
Pushing against the clock
In his final months, Mutz acknowledged he was somewhat heavy-handed in pushing his colleagues to wrap up unfinished business. His final few meetings were uncharacteristically long and involved several testy exchanges.
“I went from more moderate to tougher,” he said, particularly regarding three property sales in the Mass Market area. “It was not an absence of confidence in the new Commission… it was a provision of leadership before this one ended.”
“We lost our momentum in defining those deals … so I started pushing. That pushing made some commissioners feel uneasy, especially those who weren’t part of the earlier process.”
Still, he said the eventual compromise was worth it. Haus 820, DOU Bakehouse and the Market Lofts apartments reached sale agreements, allowing them to buy their buildings with credits covering 20% to 40% of the sale price.
Being a lame duck and “kicking the can down the road” was never an option.
“I have heard people talk about how you’re so ineffective the minute that election is over,” Mutz said. “I was not going to be ineffective. I had stuff to get done.”
Succession planning
Mutz didn’t just think about how to finish his term; he also thought about who should follow him.
He said he began talking with Sara Roberts McCarley about succeeding him as mayor two years ago.
“She was always very impressive to me — very, very competent and self-assured,” he said.
Mutz said he had known her for years, but his view of her changed in 2009, after her first husband, Randy Roberts, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Two days later, she spoke at his funeral.
“It was the most profound delivery from a spouse I’ve ever heard,” Mutz said.
From then on, he said, he watched her “from afar,” following her professional and philanthropic work and seeing in her the kind of leadership he believed the city would one day need.
When the city called a special election in 2019 to fill former Commissioner Michael Dunn’s seat, Mutz urged her to run.
“She said, ‘I’ll pray about it,’” Mutz recalled. A few days later, she declined, saying her children were still at home and the timing didn’t feel right.
“I told her, ‘Pray harder,’ and I hung up,” he recalled, laughing.
Two days later, she called back. “She said, ‘I prayed harder. I’m going to do it.’”
His biggest advice, now that she has been elected mayor, is to avoid battles that are outside the city’s purview and to protect the Commission’s culture of mutual respect and cooperation.
‘Returnment,’ not retirement
Mutz insists he’s not retiring in the traditional sense.
“I don’t think of retirement even as a goal in life,” he said. “I think of this period as returnment.”
He wants to give back the experience he’s gained and remain useful to organizations that could benefit from it.
In the short term, he plans to tackle a list of long-neglected house projects and support Pam as she promotes her book Richer by the Dozen about raising 12 children.
Beyond that, he’s intentionally leaving space.
“Be nimble for what you might be called to do,” he said. “You want to be pre-decided for interruption… so that if it occurs, there’s a reason for it.”
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