Former County Administrator Jerry Cameron’s name is again lurking around Palm Coast City Hall as an interim possibility days after the council unanimously voted to install Assistant City Manager Lauren Johnston as its acting manager, the role required and so defined by the city charter in the absence of a permanent appointment.
The possibility is bewildering staffers at City Hall, polarizing the council, and creating confusion about Johnston’s role ahead of Tuesday evening’s council meeting, when the matters may come to a head.
The meeting agenda includes a discussion item about the “interim manager.” The council was to consider approving Johnston’s contract as acting manager. That contract is up for a vote. The contract would ensure her job security once she returns to her former role. Instead, the item may be an opening for some council members to motion for different interim altogether. At least that’s how Mayor David Alfin and Council member Ed Danko see it.
Johnston said she is prepared to serve as acting or interim, either way, as long as the city needs her. “If that’s what’s needed then I’m here to help and support,” she said. “I’m not looking for anything permanent at this time.” But she said today she sees different council members interpreting the interim/acting role differently, putting her appointment in question. “I’m confused with it as well. I think some are going that route and some aren’t,” Johnston said. “So I’m hoping for some clear direction on tomorrow evening, and I’m fine either way.”
Alfin, who was audibly hesitant with Johnston appointment, said that he called Cameron to solicit his interest in the job, and Cameron expressed interest. Alfin called him two months before he made a motion to fire Denise Bevan, the city manager until last month, even though Alfin, in an interview, said he has no familiarity with Cameron’s resume.
“I’ve never really worked with Jerry, so Jerry has expressed an interest,” Alfin said, “I’ve never been a part of his leadership program or work. I’ve never worked with him directly when he was at the county. I think that actually comes after my time.” (Cameron had organized a leadership academy that the county has kept going since.) “I’ve never really worked closely with Jerry. So could he could he be a candidate? Of course. I haven’t ruled out anybody.” Alfin said he was continuing contacts with the Florida League of Cities and the Northeast Florida Regional Council.
Council member Ed Danko also has had contact with Cameron, among others, and asked him for a list of accomplishments, as he has others. “I’ve talked with Jerry,” Danko said, “we’ve had a conversation, I’ve talked with several other people, we have to find an interim city manger.” Danko said he doesn’t know anyone who dislikes Cameron. He said he’s interested in an interim manager who will again set a budget with a tax rate set at rollback, meaning that it would largely keep the budget flat, something he said all those he has spoken with are willing to do. (The city went to rollback last September, eliminating roughly $2.8 million in revenue had the tax rate remained what it was the previous year.)
Danko and Alfin also consider the “acting” job different than an “interim” job–that Johnston was hired as an acting manager, not an interim, and that an interim has yet to be hired. “A lot of people have been confused on that,” Danko said. “It was a vote to make her acting city manager. She was not voted as the interim city manager. So the next step is interim city manager. Somebody may offer her up, I don’t now, but somebody needs to be put in there.”
Council members Nick Klufas and Theresa Pontieri disagree, seeing Johnston’s appointment, and its unanimity, as filling the position for now (and fulfilling the charter’s requirement) and enabling the council to focus on a permanent hire. (Reached by phone for an interview, Council member Cathy Heighter said she could not speak just then.)
“It doesn’t make sense to remove Lauren and put him in there,” Pontieri said of Cameron, about whom she said she had concerns, not least among them the tension he was in part responsible for in county and city relations. “It would be a terrible idea, and I would definitely and vehemently contest it.” Among her concerns: that Cameron would carry the water of an extremist faction that wants to clean hour at City Hall. “I think they see Jerry Cameron as a way to do that, and I don’t know that they’re necessarily wrong,” Pontieri said. “He needs only to be city manager for 24 hours to do that,” and “has a history o doing that at the county.”
Klufas, like Alfin, doesn’t know much about Cameron, calling his experience with him “limited.” While he doesn’t consider him “a bad guy at all,” Klufas said “it’s off-putting that we’re lobbying for individuals to move forward in this manner without having consensus from council.” He, too, was concerned about a heavy hand at City Hall. “We need a leader who’s interested to keep the ship going. I don’t think cleaning house is the right direction to travel right now.”
As for the difference between “interim” and “acting,” he didn’t see it: “I felt it was pretty unanimous that we had consensus that Lauren was capable and willing to do the interim duties,” he said. Beyond that, the council’s consensus, as he understood it, was to seek counsel from the Florida League of Cities for next steps, presumably the methods of finding a permanent city manager.
Klufas and Danko are both running for County Commission seats, so they will not be on the council after November regardless (Klufas is term-limited). The mayor’s seat is also up. Alfin is running for re-election.
Cameron, 78, is a St. Augustine resident whose political connections through County Commissioner Dave Sullivan landed him the job as Flagler County’s administrator. (Sullivan and Alfin sit on the regional council together.)
Cameron, a small-town police chief in his younger days, can be engaging and smooth in conversation, though he does not easily brook dissent or challenges. He had a checkered history during his brief tenure at the county. It included selling land to a county commissioner, attempting to segregate the homeless in a distant county camp and pushing with little transparency an ill-fated sales tax proposal with little transparency. Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhard was bitterly critical of Cameron’s “contempt” for voters when he green-lighted a disruptive parking construction project during an election period. Cameron had not made friends in Palm Coast after situating a planned sheriff’s operations center on Palm Coast Parkway, then scrapping the plan.
He has no city management experience, limited and dated county management experience, and no college degree. His candidacy for interim city jobs was twice scuttled at the last minute, in Palm Coast and in Flagler Beach, in 2021 and 2023 and he previously lost an election for county commission in St. Johns.
A year ago, after heavily lobbying them even before they’d fired their manager, a prickly and defensive Jerry Cameron stood before Flagler Beach city commissioners as if behind a mound of baggage to speak about how all sorts of inaccurate things were being said of him, about the number of times he’s turned down jobs, that he had “no intent” in presenting himself to the commission, that he’d not solicited anyone for the job–it was not true: he’d met with at least three commissioners–and that he had no intention of “ending my career on the battlefield.”
But he said he was their man as interim manager “in the right circumstances.” Sullivan sat in the audience.
Unlike other candidates, who detailed their credentials and work methods, Cameron didn’t tell commissioner why he would be the right man, or what he brought to the job that made him stand out. Commissioners were not impressed, as some of them had no been even in their one-on-one meetings with him. He did not make the shortlist. The Flagler Beah commission, trying to move past the firing of William Whitson days before, eventually hired Mike Abels, the long-time city manager in DeLand. Abels gave the city six months and by all commissioners’ accounts bridged the time between Whitson and current Manager Dale Martin brilliantly, efficiently, and without an ounce of political baggage. (See: “Ex-County Administrator Cameron Has Been Lobbying for Flagler Beach Job Since Before Whitson’s Firing,” and “Flagler Beach Commission Narrows Interim Choices to 3, Eliminating Cameron.”)
Cameron’s name had similarly circulated in Palm Coast after City Manager Matt Morton resigned in 2021 and the City Council was hunting for an acting manager. Then-Fire Chief Jerry Forte, whose counsel weighed more than anyone’s in city ranks, pre-empted any possibility of a Cameron tenure when he supported Bevan.
I’ve never even seen Jerry Cameron’s resume, so I have to be honest, I’m not there yet,” Alfin said. “I’m absolutely going to look at all of the possibilities with the most open mind I possibly can.”
