Setting aside fairly raised implications by two city council members of sunshine-law violations, there were inexcusable elements of brutality, arbitrariness, and sexism in the firing of Palm Coast City Manager Denise Bevan last week, none of which should be swept past by claims that it’s over and done with, that we should move on. Those claims only benefit the firing’s orchestrators and reward the ill manner of it all. They explain nothing. Explanations are due.
Those given by Mayor David Alfin in a candid interview immediately after the firing raise more questions than they answer. None were given from the dais by the other two council members who supported the putsch: Ed Danko and Cathy Heighter.
We know that nothing terrible happened that would justify this–not just because Alfin called it a “no-cause” firing, but because it’s a little strange to fire a city manager within days of a city reaping close to $100 million in state money, or $150 million during Bevan’s two-year tenure. That’s more state appropriations, one suspects, than in all previous years combined.
No doubt Alfin would want to take credit for that. But Bevan was the city manager. It was hers and her staff’s work that was translated into legislative asks and returned as barrels of pork from Paul Renner’s reign as House Speaker. Firing her was like firing a company CEO for doubling the company’s stock price in two years. It makes no sense. If we’re missing something, then by all means fill us in, Council.
Bevan was the most unassuming of all local government executives. She didn’t like the limelight. She drew the least amount of headlines of any government executive in the past 15 years. In a county where some of those executives were attention-grabbing boors whose narcissism often damaged relations between governments and residents’ welfare, Bevan was an oasis of calm.
That could cut both ways. Her public circumspection could easily be misinterpreted as timidity or, as some would occasionally say on this site, that she was in over her head–one of many examples of overt sexism you never hear about men in the same position, especially when they cover up their inadequacies with testosterone-thumping stunts a naive public easily mistakes for command. Bevan was not that insecure. She commanded quietly, and she appeared to have the loyalty and affection of an excellent staff. All that is now in jeopardy.
She had not asked for the manager’s job. She stepped in at a moment of crisis and agreed to stay on when Alfin and the council were desperate for stability. She provided it. Forgive the vulgarity, but it fits last Tuesday’s vote: She was repaid with a kick in the ass. No attempt at a more civilized transition. No attempt at perhaps shifting her to a different job she might very well have accepted after 17 years’ service to a city she loved genuinely, not by contractual obligation. No attempt to avoid a public spectacle at Bevan’s expense, the kind of public spectacle that, if ever necessary, should be reserved only for when a council wants to send a message about someone who’s been incompetent, unethical, dishonest or criminal.
By Alfin’s and the council’s own account, Bevan’s management has been impeccable on all these counts, and Bevan as a person is untouchable.
There was no heed for the timing: tomorrow (March 26), the council holds the first of its many budget workshops. No heed for the irreplaceable experience the city lost, at a time when the council is poised by November to be left with potentially two council members with four years’ council experience between them, total, and three greenhorns. (Because Alfin did not help his chances with last Tuesday’s move, so his re-election is now much more in doubt than it was a week ago. Danko and Nick Klufas are running for County Commission seats, making their council seats’ turnover certain.)
And of course no heed for that political timing: to fire a city manager five months from an election, when it usually takes at least six months to hire one (at least when you’re not trying to manipulate the process), has now hurled an unnecessary wrench into the three council races. In last week’s interview Alfin was critical of Bevan for introducing a utility rate increase during an election year. Disingenuous: He’s made matters immeasurably worse with this firing.
And he’s wrong to suggest that this council’s experience requires that this council, not the next, appoint the next permanent city manager.
The firing of Bevan was not the work of experience. Any sound experience or wisdom would have counseled against it. It was the work of mysterious and from all appearances indefensible expediency to benefit the politics of the moment, or hurry up and benefit the interests of builders and developers before Alfin loses his chance: it’s no secret that Bevan and her administration were still tiny little roadblocks in the way of untrammeled development, the last bit of conscience in that frenzied rush to pave over West Palm Coast. The word “ecology” was not banned at City Hall. “Impact fees” were not dirty words.
That may have bothered developers, though let’s not assume: even the latest round of utility impact-fee increases, while not celebrated by the local housing association, was neither opposed nor criticized by the association. That’s a rarity that credits both the association and the city for working things out. How can that not be at least partly to Bevan’s credit?
Most of us cannot know, though we can suspect, that the manner of the firing and its “no cause” insult demolished Bevan and sent shockwaves through City Hall. The removal of Utility Director Steve Flanagan only days before suggests that the firewall between the council and the administration may not exist as it legally should, justifying fears among the ranks that others may be next. Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston is not in a position to reassure the ranks, now that benevolence could cost her her job. Alfin did this. It’s Alfin’s responsibility to repair and reassure. And not just the ranks. The firing speaks poorly of us residents, because it’s a reflection on our city.
The haphazardness of the firing raises other alarms. Most of our attention was focused on the segment at the beginning of the meeting when Alfin made his firing motion. But if it weren’t for Council member Theresa Pontieri at the end of the meeting raising the question of an acting city manager, we may not have had one now. The city charter doesn’t require an acting manager (one “may be appointed by the Council during a vacancy in office,” it says).
But what’s the point of a succession plan if an acting manager wasn’t appointed, and what sort of chaos would prevail ahead of budget and election season without one? To whom would council members have directed their commands, when the charter does forbid them from interfering with city staff? That Alfin was ready to move on without answers to those questions raises yet more concerns and suggests that he or other council members may have felt comfortable crossing that firewall at will: Let’s hope it’s not the case.
If that weren’t enough, then came Alfin’s alarming hesitancy at appointing Johnston, who by every measure has the qualifications for the job–a hesitancy I doubt would have so much as glimmered had she been a man. This, at the same meeting where he’d fired Palm Coast’s first woman city manager. Alfin was more comfortable pushing for Jason DeLorenzo, the chief of staff, and Johnston “together” filling that interim requirement, as if Johnston needed hand-holding. That aside, the situation would have lent itself to all sorts of questionable firewall violations. Again, only Pontieri’s intervention prevented that, leaving it to Johnston to elevate DeLorenzo to assistant manager if that’s what she wants.
All in all, not a good showing for Alfin–whom I have generally admired–or the council majority that went along with him instead of at least asking the questions that the (allegedly) inexperienced council member in the minority did ask. None of this portends well for what’s ahead. None of it was necessary. None of it was deserved–not for Bevan, not for city staff, not for the rest of us residents. Before moving on, the council majority that did all this has a lot to answer for.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.
