Jerome Fletcher, City Manager, City of North Port
July 2026 — In an interview with Invest:, Jerome Fletcher, city manager of the City of North Port, shared that the city is experiencing steady growth while focusing on expanding its healthcare sector, strengthening infrastructure, and attracting new jobs. “We keep growing as a city — we are right now at 96,300 people — and we are trying to increase our activities not only in healthcare, but across new areas like sports and business development,” said Fletcher.
Over the past year, what have been the most significant changes or initiatives for the city?
Our economic development and outlook have improved as we keep growing as a city. At a population of 96,300, we are increasing our activities beyond healthcare. Since we last spoke, we celebrated the opening of a behavioral hospital, an HCA Florida emergency center, and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System is building a nine-story hospital. We are doing a lot in that area but also looking to broaden our horizons. We need more sports venues and activities here, such as a mini arena, which would be a great addition.
We’ve added a lot of local small businesses — 300 in 2024. Our annual wages continue to increase as has our population. We know people are coming and growing here, but we need more jobs. We focus on adding jobs so that people can live and work here; we’re expecting to bring in 150 new jobs this year.
How have infrastructure investments supported sustainable growth?
We are a city with borrowing challenges due to restrictions in our charter that we are still working through, but we believe we’ll resolve those soon. In the meantime, we’ve had to allow developers to build infrastructure alongside their projects. As you can imagine, that’s not ideal for them, which has limited us somewhat.
Still, when you look at developments like Wellen Park — now the No. 6 top-selling master-planned community — it continues to thrive and uplift our city. It’s probably the face of our city until the SMH hospital is completed, which, as I mentioned, will be a nine-story facility that grows with the community. As the community expands and ages, having healthcare available locally is essential, and I think that’s exciting.
How is the City of North Port approaching workforce development?
For workforce development, we are partnering with Suncoast Technical College. We’re working to expand their facility so healthcare programs can be more directly integrated into our community. We’re also collaborating with the local high school to support students who may choose trade school over college, helping them make positive contributions to our community as well.
We also plan to launch a summer internship program through the city, which is exciting because we believe helping young people stay on the right path is essential. Our workforce is about 35,000 strong, but we’d like to see our average annual wage rise above the current $65,000, as prices remain high and haven’t come down since COVID. We’re very aware that many in our community are still struggling.
About 10% of our residents work from home, which helps them avoid commuting through Sarasota. We’re located about an hour south of Tampa — really at the far end of that market, but we’re doing everything we can to keep moving forward.
How do you balance population growth with livability and civic engagement?
We keep our eye on innovation and improvement. The North Port Aquatic Center is a great example. It was a hard lift for our community to support that project when it was built in 2019 because of borrowing and making hard choices about what to delay or prioritize. Now it’s one of the gems of our community and welcomed more than 115,000 visitors last fiscal year.
From our standpoint, we balance it by focusing on the growth of our city, especially the east side where there’s a lot of room for activity. I mentioned Wellen Park, but there is an equally large amount of opportunity on the east side where we’re working to activate 3,000 homes near one of our main highways.
We’re trying to make sure there’s balance throughout our 104 square miles, ensuring the same quality of life amenities, parks, and recreation centers throughout the city.
What makes the City of North Port a great place to live and do business?
When you think about quality of life and what we have to offer business-wise, there’s space here. We have a business park that’s still growing. When your population is almost 100,000 people, you start to catch the eye of new investors who see opportunities. Our city is 65 years old — we still have a long way to go, but also a huge opportunity to grow on both the business and community side.
What broader trends are most influencing your city’s planning decisions?
Our approach is to continue ensuring our economic development team maintains a personal touch, high level of customer service, and an aggressive approach to attracting businesses. We’re growing at a time when others in the region have already done this, so if we’re not taking it for granted, we’ll keep doing it well.
Looking ahead, what are your top goals and priorities for the next two to three years?
The thing that’s held us back has been our inability to borrow. Now we’re about to embark on a journey that will allow us to go through the court system to borrow money so we can fund projects and put infrastructure in place that will entice development.
It’s very hard to tell a developer, “We want you here, but you have to build the infrastructure at the same time.” That’s not an attractive statement. We need to change that so we can grow faster. If we invest in our infrastructure, as a 65-year-old city that’s aging in some areas, we’ll be able to bring in more development quickly.
The people are here, we just don’t have the infrastructure. And no one’s going to do it for us, it won’t just magically happen. So I’m looking forward to taking on that challenge, flipping it upside down, and showing people what’s coming because it’s going to be amazing.
