“All right, here we go. This is our sad moment,” Bunnell Mayor Catherine Robinson.
It was Commissioner Tonya Gordon’s last meeting after five years on the commission.
“I do want to say I have enjoyed this. I have learned so much, especially from Alvin, when I first came on,” Gordon said of Alvin Jackson, the city manager. “We did have some arguments, but I always told you that it would be between me and you, and we would settle them, and I would never do anything to embarrass you or hurt you.”
Gordon was addressing Jackson, her colleagues and the city administration for the last time from the dais at the April 14 commission meeting, just before newly elected Commissioners David Atkinson and Dean Sechrist were sworn-in.
Like Tina-Marie Schultz, Gordon elected not to run for another term. She said she “wanted a break and time with my family.”
“She’ll sit on her back porch and contemplate the city. That’s what she will do,” Robinson said.
Schultz resigned in late February, a few weeks before the end of her term, as she was physically moving out of Bunnell then. Gordon served out her term.
“We want to thank you for the support that you’ve given us to make the right decisions in making Bunnell the best little city in the country,” Jackson told her, presenting her a plaque that echoed those words. “Thank you for your service, for your hard work all the arguments we had and wish you the very best, and stay involved with public service.”
Gordon made her mark as a solid supporter of the Bunnell Police Department and law enforcement (her daughter is a detective with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office) and prized stability and a complete absence of drama on the commission. She was never a big talker and wouldn’t know what grandstanding is, since she never practiced it on or off the dais.
“There was a lot I thought I knew and did not know until I became a commissioner,” Gordon said, crediting her colleagues on the commission, the city manager and Kristen Bates, the city clerk without whom the city would drift. “I appreciate everything y’all have done, everything y’all do, and the citizens have no clue, no clue at all, what y’all do every single day, and the dedication that’s put into making the city run–and teach everybody. So I appreciate that, and I appreciate the PD,” meaning the police department. “They’ve become my kids. And I’ll continue to take care of everybody. So I’ll be here. Y’all are not getting rid of me that easy.”
The oath of office was first administered to Robinson, who was re-elected without opposition and is now, with last November’s retirement from the School Board of Colleen Conklin, the longest-serving elected official in Flagler County. She was first appointed to the commission in 1996 as a commissioner. Had it not been for a year’s sabbatical in 2000, she would have been entering her 30th consecutive year as an elected official. She was last challenged in 2008.
John Rogers was again re-elected vice mayor by his commission colleagues, on a nomination by Commissioner Pete Young. Rogers was first elected in 2011 and is now the third-longest serving elected official on a major board in the county (or fourth-longest, when Jules Kwiatkowski, who has been serving on the East Flagler Mosquito Control District board since 2008, is included. Andy Dance was elected to the school board that year, and has since moved on to the county commission.)
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