As with plebiscites of perfection from Napoleon to Paul Kagame–or Trump cabinet meetings–three of the five Bunnell city commissioners, including the mayor, think Alvin Jackson, their city manager, is perfect enough (or nearly so) to all but walk on water: they gave him a combined evaluation score of 99 percent even as taxes have risen sharply under his tenure and unemployment is rising.
To mark the completion of his seventh year with the city, last Monday commissioners gave him a 10 percent raise, or $14,600, increasing his salary from $143,395 to $158,000, not including a $2,400 a year car allowance and his health and retirement benefits.
It would have been a 12.5 percent raise had Commissioner Pete Young’s motion carried. Commissioner John Rogers pushed it back to 10. “I did the best I could to cut it back,” Rogers said.
The 10 percent includes a 2.5 percent inflation raise that all employees got. Employees also got up to 3 percent in merit raises. But no one got anything more than 5.5 percent.
Jackson’s salary is now nearly double the $82,000 salary he started with in August 2019. “My work speaks for itself,” Jackson said.
No word yet on renaming City Hall or Commerce Boulevard in Jackson’s name. But there’s time yet for naming-rights rivalry down that newly-carved road, especially with Jackson’s end date approaching.
Jackson will retire in February 2028, since he is in the state retirement system’s deferred retirement option program known as DROP. That makes his raise doubly significant–and costly–for taxpayers, as they will be paying his deferred compensation, with interest, based on his last five years’ salary.
Mayor Catherine Robinson and Commissioners Pete and Dean Sechrist gave Jackson his “exceptional” marks in his latest review. Commissioners Rogers and David Atkinson were a shade more discerning, finding him “effective” and both giving him a respectable 80 percent (or 48 points out of a possible 60). Atkinson, too, supported the 10 percent rather than 12.5 percent.
“Everyone is concentrating on the number. It’s the performance,” Jackson said in an interview today. “That’s what that performance evaluation is–it’s what we’re doing here in Bunnell, and that’s what really counts. It’s really moving the city forward. I’ve been here what, seven years, and when we think of the things we’ve accomplished, we’ve created a strategic plan and outlined how we would transform economically, develop the city of Bunnell, grow its ad valorem [or property tax] base, diversify the economic base. That’s where it counts. So many things this year have come to fruition, the new city hall, the new Commerce Parkway, the construction of the utility system, all those things really speak to where we’ve come from.”
When it was pointed out that the three projects are being accomplished entirely through taxpayer dollars and loans that taxpayers will be repaying over many years, Jackson said: “That doesn’t even speak to all the private sector, where we’ve actually grown in business, created jobs.”
The countywide unemployment rate was 4 percent when Jackson began as city manager in 2019, according to the state Department of Commerce. It was 5.4 percent last month, a four-year high. The department does not have Bunnell-specific numbers.
Jackson touted job creation and diversification of the tax base, which would normally translate into benefits to existing homeowners through lower tax rates. It has not. The opposite is true. When Jackson took over management of the city, the city’s property tax was $6.43 per $1,000 in taxable value. It is now $7.93 per $1,000, a 23 percent increase and the highest rate of any city in the county (other than Marineland, which has three residents and two property taxpayers). This has happened despite the county taking over the fire department and relieving the city of a substantial burden, without charging it any more for the service it now provides, and despite significant housing growth in Grand Reserve, the subdivision of hundreds of houses on the east and north side of the city.
Other than taxpayer-funded projects, Jackson’s two biggest achievements were the muscling through of a 6,100-home development–the largest housing development since ITT created Palm Coast–called Reserve at Haw Creek, even after the commission had killed it, and the rezoning of 1,260 acres to light and heavy industrial, one of the largest such single-rezoning in the state, while never disclosing to what uses the land would be put. The development and the rezoning drew near-unanimous and intense public opposition. It made little difference to Jackson and the bare majority of the commission that pushed both through.
“He has done an outstanding job,” Robinson said of Jackson. She had supported both the development and the rezoning without hesitation. Even Rogers lavished the praise. “He has had opportunities to get hired as an assistant or put his name in as a city or a county manager,” Rogers said.
Is Jackson perfect? “No, I’m not perfect,” he said, “and you know what, those scores don’t represent just me. Those scores represent a team effort. We have assembled a world-class team, and without them, no way in the world I could have realized those types of scores.”
But no member of his team is getting anywhere near a 10 percent raise.
The most criticism Rogers could muster, if that’s what it was, is in communications: Rogers wants the city manager to be more forthcoming with commissioners, faulting his communications.
Though Jackson is generously forthcoming with his accessibility and quick willingness to explain all routine city issues, he is far more circumspect with most issues outside the norm. More specifically, he has taken cloaking in economic development projects to questionable legal limits.
He included an item on last week’s agenda titled “Another Great Day Documents,” which consisted of board action on a secret project, with zero information provided, even though staff, the city attorney and the commission have all been privy to the information. No such board action is legally permissible even under the Florida law exemption to open records that Jackson cited. An agenda item of the sort Jackson submitted is unheard of in local government. While the city may protect the name of the business engaged in an economic development project for a restricted window of time, it is required to disclose related information when it is the board’s action. Commissioners and the city attorney in Bunnell appear uninterested in holding Jackson to account on that score.
“Basically legal has advised us, and that’s the way we presented it,” Jackson said.
Fernando Melendez says
I think it’s excessive in a time when Bunnell is still struggling and in need of much ecomonic planning and development for a much needed boost to their commercial tax base and give taxpayers a much needed break. But that’s Bunnell for you, but give it up for Alvin for capitalizing on Bunnell ‘s maladroitness and incompetence government.
Bunnell resident says
I think it’s time to residence of Bunnell request the removal of Alvin Jackson, and that we start voting out all of these commissioners and Mayor. How could this guy get a grade A rating when the utilities is failing, we’ve had multiple boil water notices that a good majority of the time Bunnell doesn’t even let you know until the next day. One time was on Christmas Eve and if it wasn’t for Grand Reserve residents realizing we had no water for a short time no one would’ve known because the city never notified. This Mare and council are a complete joke. They built a brand new City Hall raised our taxes and still use Grand Reserve amenity center for the national night out, using our Natural gas for the grills to feed the residence of the community in Bunnell I can’t believe I’m paying CDD fees for these people to use facility’s. They should be using the brand new City Hall that they won’t lower our taxes now that it’s complete.