The Palm Coast City Council on a 4-1 vote Tuesday night approved hiring Mark Strobridge, the Flagler County Sheriff’s chief of staff, as the assistant city manager for at least three months.
With little discussion, the majority of the council was supportive. Mayor Mike Norris was not, nor were a handful of public speakers, most of them Norris supporters who frequently address issues at council meetings, some of them making baseless claims about Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston, who verbalized the justification for the hire.
Knowing that it would pile on the criticism, Norris dubiously allowed two rounds of public comments before calling for the vote, now that those rounds have become his unraveling tenure’s only validation.
“We are not fully staffed,” Johnston said. “My assistant city manager position is open, the community development director position is open, and the utility director position is open. We have the utility director position posted. We need to hire that position. It’s been a desire of this city council to get that person on board as quickly as possible. Chief Strobridge offers many years in local government experience. He’s a great judge of character. He can help us with that process.”
Strobridge has described his responsibilities as focusing on the utility department hire and on improving process and efficiencies across the city. A source familiar with the hire says some already-designated personnel may be losing their job during Strobridge’s tenure.
Sheriff Rick Staly said in an interview Tuesday that he called Strobridge “crazy” for taking the assignment, considering the turmoil he’s stepping into. But he was supportive. “Mark has some good skills to look at thing. It’s my understanding they wanted outside perspectives on the city operations,” Staly said, “and if you brought in a consultant or one of these Range Riders,” the retired city and county executives made available for similar assignments by the state’s county and city associations, “they have to learn the city, they have to learn the people, whereas Mark comes in to some degree with some good knowledge of the city operations. I think it will help them get a faster result for less money, quite frankly.”
“I’m just trying to be a good partner,” Staly said. “I kind of look at it the same way we support the Bunnell Police Department, the Flagler Beach Police Department,” and other agencies through mutual aid.
“Is this ideal? No,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “But theoretically, we’d be paying a city manager and assistant city manager anyway, so we’re not spending any more money than we hadn’t budgeted for anyways. And I fully expect that with this position, Miss Johnston, that we are going to see deliverables, that we will see results.”
Pontieri was puzzled about the council having to vote on the hire. All administrative hires are in the city manager’s purview, exclusive of council action. But the city, with more sophistry than precedent, is getting around a state law prohibiting the hire of an employee from an agency under contract by describing the hire as “an executive on loan” through an agreement with the sheriff rather than with Strobridge. The sheriff provides policing for Palm Coast. Its pending contract is valued at $11.3 million.
“We are not hiring Chief Strobridge directly,” Johnston said. “We would be paying the sheriff for Chief Strobridge’s services.”
The joint agreement with the sheriff, called an interlocal agreement, is nevertheless framed around the job description for an assistant city manager, a position Johnston asked Strobridge to fill for a few months soon after the collapse of the council’s latest attempt to hire a city manager. Johnston has filled that role for just over a year. So under that arrangement, the council was voting on the interlocal agreement–as it must on all proposed interlocal agreements–rather than on hiring Strobridge.
Strobridge will continue to receive his paychecks from the Sheriff’s Office (he is paid $147,000 a year). The city will pay the Sheriff’s Office $22,700 a month, or $68,100 for three months, an amount that includes covering the differential cost of Strobridge’s replacement at the Sheriff’s Office during his absence, Cmdr. George Bender, currently in charge of management services.
Bender has been on a leadership track, graduating from Flagler County’s Leadership Academy three years ago and from the National Command and Staff College’s leadership program last year. (The city will not be covering Bender’s salary, only the difference between his current salary and what he will earn as Strobridge’s replacement.)
“I look at this as an executive on loan to the city that needed some help, and it’s done around the state of Florida, probably around the country, occasionally,” Staly said. “But I wasn’t going to let the taxpayers of Flagler County cover the cost of this, because I’m going to have to have an acting chief while he’s over there, so I wanted to make sure I’m protected so they’re not incurring additional costs.”
Strobridge is “not allowed” to work on the sheriff’s budget going before the council, City Attorney Marcus Duffy said. Strobridge will maintain a limited role at the Sheriff’s Office. For example he’ll continue to participate in a 30-minute Friday phone call about the ongoing development of the State Guard’s training facility on Justice Lane in Bunnell, the project Staly was instrumental in bringing to county acreage neighboring the county jail on Justice Lane. Strobridge will also be available for calls from Bender. He remains a sworn law enforcement officer, so while he’ll be working in civilian clothes at City Hall or elsewhere in ciy buildings, he will still be armed, but will not exercise the functions of a law enforcement officer.
Pontieri wanted to “make sure that this agreement is not in any way a violation of our charter or any of our policies and procedures,” and was assured by Duffy that it is not.
“The attorneys tell me there is no conflict,” Staly said. “I’m sure there’ll be the naysayers out there, but I run a very transparent agency, and the cost is the cost. I’m not asking for anything more. It’s not like he’s going to go over there and balloon up the city contract.” Staly said critics of the agreement haven’t read that agreement.
“I can’t believe this is where we’re at,” Norris, the mayor, said, describing the hire as “backfilling” because the council wouldn’t hire a city manager. He was bitterly critical of paying for the service, saying that borrowing Strobridge should not carry a cost.
“You can call me an ass, whatever you want, this is an embarrassment for this city,” said a mayor who has been officially censured and criticized by his own colleagues and others for repeatedly embarrassing the city and degrading its employees. Norris said he was unsure if Shakespeare would have written about the Strobridge hiring as a tragedy or a comedy. He complained about not being contacted about the impending hire until after an article about it appeared in FlaglerLive.
Johnston briefed the other council members since last week. Norris was on vacation in Europe until Monday, and had many weeks ago started refusing to meet with Johnston for weekly briefings.
The sheriff, whose reputation has thrived on a spotless record, was asked directly about getting unwittingly splattered by turmoil from the city.
“I don’t want to get embroiled in the City of Palm Coast shenanigans, but the way it’s structured, he’s working for them, and everything he does is under their umbrella,” Staly said. “I can’t stop what people are going to say, and I don’t know what recommendations he may have to give the city manager and people. Depending on what that amounts to, yeah, it could come back to haunt me a little bit, especially if they are unpopular recommendations.” But Strobridge, the sheriff said, will not have the authority to implement recommendations–only propose them.
“I’ve got 300 deputy sheriffs that at any moment could do something that could blemish my record,” the sheriff continued. “Hopefully nothing will come back to bite me, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
