- April 16, 2024
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Agreeing to change one of the practices that led City Council members to call for his former supervisor's firing, newly appointed interim City Manager Beau Falgout told the City Council Sept. 25 that he will not continue former manager Jim Landon's practice of releasing the backup documentation and presentations for City Council workshops only shortly before those workshops begin.
The last-minute release of workshop backup materials had been one of Mayor Milissa Holland's stated reasons for asking the council at last week's meeting to fire Landon.
Weeks before, Holland had asked Landon to release the documents earlier so that council members could read them before workshops began. Often, the documents were released the morning of the 9 a.m. workshops. But even though other council members had echoed Holland's concerns, Landon resisted and continued releasing the materials shortly before the Tuesday workshops were due to start.
Falgout — who had been Landon's assistant city manager and whom the council appointed as interim manager when it decided to oust Landon last week — said he will aim to get backup materials to the council members on the Fridays preceding the workshops.
Falgout is currently working without a new contract that reflects his expanded responsibilities.
"The role is different. I’m going to be quite frank with you: My schedule has been extended," he said at the Sept. 25 workshop when Holland asked him how things were going.
Falgout thought it important that the city develop a contract for his interim city manager role and provide clear expectations on, for instance, whether he should be proactive about pursuing the council's priorities or simply keep the city running until the council finds a new manager.
"I would like to have the ability to return to my position [after a new manager is found]. … and then, fair compensation for the additional responsibility for this position," he said.
Holland said it was important to her that the city council's priorities for the city aren't held up by the manager search. She asked the city attorney to draft a contract for Falgout that the council can vote on at its upcoming business meeting on Oct. 2.
With its city manager of 11 years gone after the City Council dismissed him last week, Palm Coast is preparing to search for a replacement — but perhaps not just yet.
The council may wait until after the upcoming November elections to discuss former city manager Jim Landon's successor with the search firm tasked with finding the right person. In the meantime, Beau Falgout — who served as assistant city manager under Landon — is serving as interim city manager.
"These [City Council] candidates that will be seated on our council will have a four-year term to begin with and will be working with our city manager," Palm Coast Mayor Milissa Holland said, proposing to the council at its Sept. 25 workshop that it wait until after the winning candidates are seated to work on selecting Landon's replacement.
The new council members will join the council at its Nov. 20 meeting.
Holland and Councilman Bob Cuff both suggested that the city invite a representative from search firm Strategic Government Resources — which the city had already contracted with when Landon announced last summer that he intended to retire sometime in 2019 — to attend the Nov. 20 meeting.
Holland said she preferred to approach the hiring process with open workshops and meetings as a council, rather than one-on-one meetings between council members and job candidates.
Councilman Vincent Lyon, who was appointed as an interim councilman after former councilman Steven Nobile moved out of the area and relinquished his seat, said his understanding when he was appointed was that the parameters of the search for Landon's replacement had already been determined.
"What we’re looking for, I thought, was pretty much already worked out," Lyon said. "So putting it off longer and longer — I don’t see the advantage to that."
He wanted to have the search firm's representative attend the council meeting on Oct. 8.
But Holland said that individual council members are looking for specific qualities in a city manager candidate — Councilman Nick Klufas wants someone well-versed in technology, Cuff wants someone who has utility experience, and Holland considers herself somewhere in the middle but wants "a visionary," she said.
"I don’t know what those [new] council members' priorities are going to be," she said. And their priorities, she said, could affect how SGR advertises the city manager position.
But if the council had gone over all of this a year ago, Lyon countered, why was it going over all of it again?
"We did not get that far as to write the ad," Holland replied.
Councilwoman Heidi Shipley wondered whether new council members would be ready to make such a major decision for the city in their first days as seated council members.
Cuff agreed, saying that he believed selecting Landon's replacement could be "the single most important thing I’m going to do in my term on the council.” To have new members sworn in, have their official photos taken, and then have them "immediately after give thought out input to our search firm on what we’re looking for is a little ambitious," he said.
Holland said that if the council waits too long to get started, it will find itself trying to handle the search during the busy holiday season. She favored the Nov. 20 date for a meeting with the search firm. Cuff didn't want to feel he was disenfranchising two future members of the council by starting the process without them. Lyon still didn't think there was anything to be gained by waiting.
The council will decide at an upcoming business meeting.
