- April 24, 2024
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The Palm Coast Coast City Council has voted itself a 365% raise, doing so at an April 5 council meeting after residents lined up to lambaste the proposed raise during the meeting's public comment period. Audience members at the meeting booed, yelled and cursed at council members after the vote.
The increases will take effect after the next election, and council members will have to approve them again in a second-reading vote at another council meeting before the raises are formally adopted.
The vote was 4-1, with Councilman Eddie Branquinho dissenting.
Palm Coast City Council members are currently paid $9,600, and the mayor makes $11,400. City Council salaries, in accordance with the ordinance the council approved at the April 5 meeting, will rise to $44,670, and the mayoral salary will rise to $46,470.
"Increased compensation allows more residents, including younger and more diverse candidates, to campaign and a run for office. ... The public is best served with the largest number of candidate available."
— DAVID ALFIN, mayor
Many residents at the April 5 meeting said they thought the council deserved a raise — but not such a steep one.
“Politics and public service used to be all about giving of yourself, not asking the taxpayers to give from their wallets to you,” said resident Mike Martin “Do I think your salaries should be raised? Yes, I do. I think you deserve more money. But to go to $44,500 a year? Absolutely not.”
Former councilman Alan Peterson suggested the council raise salaries by perhaps 30%.
"That's reasonable," he said. "... Anything significantly more than that, you'll have a very difficult time telling the public why you should be entitled to more money."
Mayor David Alfin, who'd first proposed the raises in a meeting on March 1, said he believed increasing council salaries would lead to a broader and more qualified pool of council candidates in the future.
“This is not about me or our individual council members' needs," Alfin said at the City Council meeting on April 5. "This is about managing, planning for and protecting the future of Palm Coast with diverse, qualified leaders who have a smart managed growth mentality. … I believe raising our salaries would expand our pool of competent applicants, giving us a City Council which we need and deserve."
"Do I work my butt off? Yes, I do. But I kew what I was getting into."
— EDDIE BRANQUINHO, City Councilman
He cited numbers from the Florida League of Cities, saying that the median city council or commission salary for cities with comparably sized populations to Palm Coast was over $30,000 in 2019.
His proposed salary increase, he said, would amount to 0.07% of the city's 2022 budget, and the cost per resident would be approximately $1.86.
That increase, Alfin said, is "easily digested within the budget without raising the taxpayers' liability or payments in any way."
When Palm Coast was founded over 22 years ago, he said, it had only 32,732 residents. Now it has close to 90,000. In 2002, he said, the city had 55 employees; now it has 547.
"The function of our council, the success of our council, is a function of our diversity. If we are all the same up here, it doesn't work. If we have no different perspectives, it doesn't work.
— NICK KLUFAS, city councilman
"Compensation is based on outdated duties and responsibilities," he said. "... City Council service has become a full-time job with part-time pay."
Branquinho said this is the wrong time for such a major raise.
"There's a time for everything," he said. "Right now, with the inflation and all of it, we should be thinking more of what the other people perceive of what we're doing here."
He referred to Alfin's argument that higher pay would attract more qualified candidates. "Mr. Mayor, I don't exactly take that as a complement," Branquinho said.
"I think that it's an outrage, with the amount," Branquinho said. "Do we deserve it is something else — do we put in the time, yes. But at this time ... I don't think that we should even get close to it. If we come up with something closer to inflation rate, you've got my vote. Other than that, I'm completely, completely against."
"What this council was paid a long time ago doesn't add up in today's world, and we need to attract better candidates."
— ED DANKO, city councilman
He added, "Do I work my butt off? Yes, I do. But I knew what I was getting into."
Branquinho motioned to raise council salaries to $12,000 and the mayor's salary to $15,000, but other council members didn't back that proposal.
Councilman Nick Klufas noted that locals who have full-time jobs that don't have flexible hours aren't able to serve as council members. He's able to do so, he said, because of the flexibility he has in his position as a software engineer.
"I feel that we are diminishing the potential candidate pool, to a degree where we don't have candidates that are active in our community, that are willing to run for office, because they can't," he said. "... The amount of work that we put in for the dollar value is crazy."
The council needs to set the city up for success in the future, he said.
"Raising the base salary and fixing it to some type of metric, to either cost of living increase or something else that we decide — I think it's prudent, and necessary, to ensure our success in the future," Klufas said.
"I knew it was going to be a big job. Honestly, it's an even bigger job than I ever thought it was going to be."
— JOHN FANELLI, interim City Council member
He added, "What other situation do you have people managing a $250 million budget that you're paying $9,600 a year? Nowhere."
Klufas also noted that the City Council, unlike the County Commission and School Board, has term limits that limit council members to two terms.
"We have a lot of turnover," he said.
Councilman Ed Danko, who'd said on March 1 that he'd support the raise if it wouldn't require raising taxes, said on April 5 that he believed it would not involve a tax increase, and that he therefore still supported it.
He noted that few people are willing to run for City Council seats, and that only a handful are running for the two council seats that are up for election.
"I can tell you , this has become a full-time job," he said. "What this council was paid a long time ago doesn't add up in today's world, and we need to attract better candidates."
Interim council member John Fanelli, early in the discussion, said he hadn't yet made up his mind on the issue of the proposed raise — the first major controversy he's faced since he was sworn in on March 22 to fill the seat vacated by former councilman Victor Barbosa's resignation.
The raise won't benefit Fanelli: He's set to step down in November, when the winner of the election for that council seat will take his place.
But Fanelli acknowledged that the position requires a lot of work. Just answering city-related emails, he said, is taking him two to three hours a night.
"I knew it was going to be a big job," Fanelli said. "Honestly, it's an even bigger job than I ever thought it was going to be."
The scheduling of council meetings and the time required, he said, also impedes people with nine-to-five jobs from running for City Council seats.
Fanelli, an administrator at the school district, said he's using his vacation time to attend City Council meetings and workshops when they're held at 9 a.m. on Tuesdays, as they are twice a month (one meeting each month is held at 6 p.m.)
After hearing more from his colleagues and members of the public, Fanelli joined the majority, noting that even many people who'd opposed the raises had acknowledged that council members should be paid more than they're getting now.
"I understand that it's not the way we would like to see it happen," Fanelli said before the vote. "But at the end of the day, we the citizens get to vote on who receives that money."
