Majority of Palm Coast Council Candidates Oppose Pre-Election City Manager Hire, Others Fence-Sit, with Nuances

Six of the 11 non-incumbent candidates running for three Palm Coast City Council seats oppose the council’s decision to hire a new city manager before this year’s elections, which will turn over at least two of the council’s five seats, and possibly three, if Mayor David Alfin is not re-elected. Three candidates are on the fence about it, seeing strong arguments on both sides. Only one favors the hire outright.

If Alfin, the only incumbent running and one of the council members favoring a pre-election hire, were included in the tally, then he could claim that the candidates are evenly split on the issue, though that wouldn’t reflect the ambivalence of the fence-sitters. FlaglerLive interviewed 11 of the 12 candidates, including Alfin, with the exception of Jamaris Dornan.




The council fired City Manager Denise Bevan in a 3-2 vote in March. In early April, it ratified the installation of Lauren Johnston as interim and elected to hire a new manager before the election, though it won’t decide on a search firm–or any other method–until at least May 14. Four of the five council members favor a pre-election hire, with Theresa Pontieri opposed.

The majority argues that it has the kind of experience to make the decision, an experience the new council members will not have. The majority also argues that it was elected to act, and that leaving the position vacant through the election, and presumably for months afterward as the new council conducts its own search, is too long, though there’s unanimity among council members–echoed among most candidates–that Johnston is leading the city strongly and capably, and would be able to do so for three months, six months or longer.

Alfin himself provided the strongest endorsement yet, for her and her staff, just today: “The succession plan has been excellent and staff has filled in expertly. The city is running on all cylinders extremely well and making themselves better every day,” he said.
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Three candidates are challenging Alfin (John McDonald said he was dropping out): Peter Johnson, Alan Lowe, and Mike Norris. Five are running for the District 1 seat Council member is not contesting as he runs for a County Commission seat: Kathy Austrino, Shara Brodsky, Dornan, Ty Miller and Jeff Seib. Three are running for the District 3 seat from which Nick Klufas is term-limited: Dana Stancel, Ray Stevens and Andrew Werner. Klufas, too, is running for a County Commission seat.

Austrino is the lone ranger candidate entirely on the council’s side: “I honestly don’t mind it,” she said of a pre-election hire. “I don’t want us to be stagnant. There’s a good bit of time between now and then and it’s dangerous for us to be stagnant.” Don’t mistake her for a council mouthpiece: she was bitterly and publicly critical of the attempt (by Council member Ed Danko) to hire Jerry Cameron, the former county administrator, and sluice him in place of Johnston as interim. “I don’t want any games like what was being pulled with Jerry. We need to be doing the work and keep getting it done. We just need to do it transparently, that’s all.” As for the risk of not having a match between the new manager and the new council, “you’re not going to click with everybody you work with, but you just have to do your job and get it done.”

The six candidates opposed to a pre-election hire are Norris, Johnson, Brodsky, Stancel, Seib and Lowe.

“Ms. Johnson is more than qualified to hold the position in the interim,” Norris said, noting a recent meeting with Johnston when he was impressed. Hiring a new manager now would “hamstring:” the new council, he said, “because three of them are going to be leaving, and they hired Ms. Bevan without even going through the proper process top hire her.” (The council was in the midst of what turned into an ill-fated search for a manager when it opted to end the search and transfer Bevan from interim to permanent manager just over two years ago.)

“I think that they don’t even need to hire an outside firm,” Norris said. “If the human resources manager is good at their job they can post that themselves and get qualified candidate. I don’t see us wasting 35,000, $50,000, whatever, to pay a search firm to find someone.”




A pre-election hire, John son said, “puts the city manager coming in in a very volatile position,” as the new council could decide it’s not a good fit. “100 percent the person is at risk of getting fired, especially with the tone they’ve set at the council.” He sees the quicker hire as “a play to get the person they want in there. That simple.” John Adams’ midnight appointment of John Marshal to the Supreme Court ensured that his Federalist-conservative philosophy would define the nation’s laws for a generation, as it did, despite the liberal revolution ushered in by Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Johnson said by hiring a manager now, Alfin is ensuring that his imprint will prevail even when he’s gone.

Stancel–who has been attending the city’s Citizen Academy, a multi-week program that schools residents on the inner workings of the city–thinks similarly that the pre-election hire is “a control thing.” He’s not keen on having “someone else’s leftovers.”

Brodsky is also unequivocal: “Definitely waiting and coming to that conclusion should be after the new council members take their seats,” she said. She had concerns about the way the current council has handled the firing of Bevan–the matter was not on the agenda–and the rush since that would deny the new council a voice in its most important hire. (The council hires and fires only two positions: the city manager and the city attorney. The council has just completed the hire of a new law firm, ending a 16-year relationship with its previous attorneys, though that was not the council’s choice. See: “Ending 16 Years With One Firm, Palm Coast City Council Begins Contract With Douglas Law of St. Augustine.”)

Lowe, who has previously been seen as a candidate in Danko’s shadow–Danko also favors a pre-election hire–disagreed Danko’s position on this one, with a caveat: ““I think we should start the RFP process now,” Lowe said, referring to the request for proposal process, “but the actual hiring and final decision I believe should be made after the election.” That would ensure that the pool of manager candidates would be ready to be analyzed and narrowed to a choice by the new council almost as soon as it is seated, eliminating any delays.




Seib, who addresses the council at almost every meeting, spoke his opposition to the pre-election hire earlier this month, and repeated it in an interview, but acknowledged that “if, hey, all of a sudden Superman walks through the door, super-city manager walks through the door, someone who is outstanding, it might change my mind.” Seib was quickly skeptical of that scenario, however. “Look at out history. We’ve gone through a few city managers. Are the best and brightest going to walk through our doors?”

The council has drawn some of the bleaker headlines this side of the Flagler school board in the past months. Job-seekers study their prospects as much council members study them. The quality of the pool of candidates is inevitably affected by the recent history of the government they’re seeking to steer.

The fence-sitters are either hesitant to second-guess the council or uncommitted between two strong positions, both of which they recognize as valid. Stevens is uncomfortable with the length of time between now and November, leaving all that time without a permanent manager. He has nothing against Johnston. He just doesn’t know “her proficiency level.”

“My inclination is to get everybody in place on the City Council who’s going to be in place to work with this individual, whether it’s the lady that’s there now or a new one, would be prudent,” Stevens said. There’s two elections, not one, he says, noting the August primary. He proposes that should any candidate get the 50-percent majority result at the primary that would give that candidate the election, the council should then include the council member-elect in its deliberations toward a new city manager. (Lowe is opposed to that approach: “I don’t think we should disrupt the current council in that way,” he said.)




Miller and Werner seemed especially reluctant to take one position or another, both echoing each other. “That was their decision. Whether or not I’d have preferred for them to have waited, it’s hard to say,” Werner said, deferring to current council members who he says are fulfilling their responsibility as elected representatives to do the job they’re faced with here and now. He was surprised that the vote to fire Bevan came up, but he respects it–as he does the decision to move on with a hire, though he won’t endorse it or oppose it. “They made a good choice to put Ms. Johnston in there. I met her a few times. She’s very qualified for that job as interim.”

On his fence, Miller tilts ever so slightly toward a preference for waiting until after the election, but then defers. “I would prefer to have had a say in that if I were to be elected, however I do understand that other people that came before me have more experience in that situation,” he said.

A far larger majority of the candidates–all but three–was opposed to eliminating college or advanced degree requirements for the new manager’s minimum qualifications. “I don’t think we should dumb the position down. I think we should increase the qualifications,” Lowe said, especially, he said, with the westward expansion that could nearly double the size of the city. “We need somebody highly trained to take that on.” In that regard, even Alfin–who, his mind on the western expansion, is currently working on his master’s in urban planning through the University of Florida–is part of that majority.

Today, Alfin was inviting of candidates’ opinions in the choice for a city manager. “I don’t see why not. I don’t think there’s anything that prohibits that,” he said. But recalling his remark about Johnston and the succession plan working on all cylinders, he said of the coming search: “I see no urgency or rush. In other words we have a plan in place which is working extremely well for succession.”

You might even imagine Alfin polishing a saddle on a fence of his own.