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The Palm Coast City Council fell short Monday of deciding whether to go with Strategic Government Resources as a search firm for its next city manager or issue its own request for proposal for search firms. It will make that decision on May 14, after reviewing the SGR contract and other possibilities.
Palm Coast hired SGR in 2018 for the search that resulted in the short-lived tenure of Matt Morton as manager. But SGR is the company New Smyrna Beach hired for its own manager search in January. If Palm Coast were to “piggyback” on that contract, it could save time in its own search.
A majority of council members are intent on completing the search and having a city manager in place before year’s end, even though at least two council members–Ed Danko and Nick Klufas–are certain to be off the council by then (both are running for county commission seats), while Mayor David Alfin is running for reelection: his seat could also turn over.
The council fired Denise Bevan last month and installed Lauren Johnston as acting city manager. The city administration gave the council two options for a permanent replacement: inviting search firms to respond through a city-issued request for proposal, or piggybacking on New Smyrna Beach’s RFP, meaning going with SGR. That would save Palm Coast two months. But it would also eliminate the council from choosing its own search firm.
“I’ve done some homework on this firm, and it’s great and all these things, but it’s one firm,” Alfin said. “I don’t ever like to have one choice.”
But today there seemed to be little question that the city would end up with a search firm. “It is my understanding that search firms that specialize in the executive level of municipal government keep literally in daily touch with a network of who they consider to be the best possible candidates for the appropriate positions throughout the country,” Alfin said, the literally somewhat of an exaggeration.
Danko recalls the search in 2021, after the resignation of Morton. The council opted to lead its own search without a firm, to save money. The city posted the job on various trade sites. It drew 91 applicants, but most were not qualified: the job posting had been inadvertently misleading by being classified under “manager” as opposed to “city manager,” causing dozens of applicants to mistake it for a broadly applicable managerial position. Only 20 applicants had served as city or county managers. “I know, some were way out there,” Danko said, but some were not, and could save some time, he said.
“I’m not opposed to a search firm,” Danko said, “But I want to make sure last time we had a conversation about requirements. And we had discussed putting educational requirements on there. We then ended up not doing that. And I don’t want to do that. Because there’s a lot of folks out there that have done amazing things in this world without that education.”
Danko has two priorities: not setting minimum education requirements, and ensuring that the manager is hired before the November election. (Danko last week made a motion to hire Jerry Cameron as acting or interim manager. Cameron, a former county administrator in Flagler, has no college degree.)
Alfin said the council would set its own criteria. He did not say what criteria he favored.
Council member Theresa Pontieri said the council had previously talked about allowing the next council, after November, to select its city manager. She was against any kind of speeded up schedule, including saving 60 days through piggybacking on search contracts. Letting the next council pick the manager makes sense, she said, “being that they will be the ones working with the city manager and working with the staff that that city manager creates.”
To Pontieri, there’s no point speeding things up, especially considering that the position has been “volatile” for two years. A new council could be seated after November and fire the newly hired manager, she said, reinforcing the volatility–and possibly diminishing the draw of better candidates now. “I again don’t want that to be used as a deterrent for good candidates,” Pontieri said.
Pontieri was alone in that regard.
Alfin said he understood her logic, but disagreed with it to some extent: “If we expand that concept, then every city council term limits itself to what it does within that term,” he said. “We are better served to spend the time to find that city manager with all of the experience that the [council] currently holds, because the next [council] will not hold as much experience with the current staff as the next council would.”
Danko, Klufas and Heighter favored the Alfin approach. Heighter, who wanted to underscore the lack of experience of new council members, suggested putting together a “manual” for new council members “to learn what’s going on.”
If Pontieri lost on delaying the hire, she was more successful in convincing the council not to embrace piggybacking just yet.
“This firm is accepting this contract based on what their RFP is saying they have to find for the city,” Pontieri said of the arrangement with New Smyrna Beach, which is setting minimum requirements at a higher bar than some where Palm Coast council members want it set, including educational requirements. “In my opinion, that’s where we really framing who we’re looking for here is in the RFP that we get to craft, which is why I’m so heavily against piggybacking this contract, because it’s already based on an RFP we didn’t craft.”
Alfin didn’t disagree. But he asked a curious question: how long does the new manager have to become a permanent city resident? “I’m just throwing that in because we’re going to have to deal with that, otherwise, we’ll be violating that,” he said, referring to Johnston as acting city manager.
If Flagler Beach is any guide, the “acting” part is not covered by the charter: in Bernie Murphy, Flagler Beach had an acting city manager for five years until about 2010, as he lived in Ormond Beach, even though that city’s charter requires its manager to live in the city. And in fact Palm Coast’s charter is equally silent on the mater. The city attorney said the residency requirement does not apply to the acting manager. Johnston lives in Ormond Beach.
