- April 23, 2024
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Palm Coast received 86 resumes after city staff posted the city’s vacant city manager position on career websites. But many of those people had no relevant experience, and of the six people the City Council shortlisted for interviews, three have dropped out.
Concerned about the dearth of qualified applicants, the City Council decided in a 3-2 vote at a Dec. 7 council meeting to begin the process of hiring an executive search firm to expand the existing applicant pool. The council directed city staff to start seek bids from search firms.
Palm Coast City Councilman Nick Klufas made the proposal that Palm Coast bring in outside help, saying he’d been concerned by the relative lack of experience among the people who’d applied.
Klufas said he’d become alarmed when the council’s initial process of ranking candidates hadn’t shown that any had the support of all five City Council members.
“I was a little distressed that we didn’t have any candidate that received five nominations from the council,” Klufas told the Palm Coast Observer on Dec. 3. “That was the really eye-popping moment for me, when I realized that we couldn’t even agree upon who we thought would be qualified for this position.”
At the meeting Dec. 7, Councilman Ed Danko and Councilman Victor Barbosa resisted, saying the city should proceed with the city staff-led process it had chosen during a previous meeting.
“We made the decision unanimously to conduct this process,” Danko said. “... I would suggest that, perhaps, we go through the interview process ... before we make any other decisions. And if we’re not satisfied after that, then we certainly have the ability to go in a different direction.”
The three remaining shortlisted applicants are civil engineer and former Avon Park Assistant City Manager Vince Akhimie, attorney and former Flagler County Sheriff Jim Manfre, and consultant and former Fitchburg, Wisconsin City Administrator Patrick Marsh.
The council had previously considered hiring a search firm, but decided instead to have city staff handle the search.
The 86 resumes received included many people who had no experience in municipal government — teachers, salespeople, police officers and bakers, among others — while only a handful had experience as city or county managers in communities as large as Palm Coast.
Mayor David Alfin, noting the applicant pool's relative lack of experience, had mentioned in previous press interviews that it may be worth hiring a search firm if the council can’t agree on a candidate.
He said so again at the Dec. 7 meeting, saying he’d met with Florida League of Cities experts who’d said that Palm Coast’s process for seeking a new manager had procedural flaws — they said Palm Coast should have developed a firmer list of qualifications, Alfin said — and that the advertised salary of $140,000 (depending on qualifications) was likely too low to attract the best candidates.
“They advised me that we did miss the mark on salary,” Alfin said. “... That leads me to believe that ... we may not have been given the opportunity to review all of the best of the best candidates that might be available.”
