- January 22, 2025
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When Palm Coast city council members met in a special meeting Jan. 22 to evaluate potential candidates for the city's vacant city manager position, only one candidate got highest marks from all four of them: interim City Manager Beau Falgout, who's been in the interim role since the council fired former city manager Jim Landon in September.
Falgout was previously assistant city manager under Landon.
City Council member Jack Howell was absent from the meeting and did not submit his candidate evaluation form, on which council member rated potential candidates from one to three, with one being highest — the ones they definitely wanted to see more information form — and three being lowest.
Falgout was one of a total of 54 applicants the council discussed Jan. 22.
Doug Thomas, of Strategic Government Resources, the firm the City Council hired to help conduct the search, presented a summary of the candidates' applications during the meeting. Some initial candidates had dropped out of the application process, and Thomas winnowed the list down further by cutting a few that he believed wouldn't meet the city's needs.
He presented the candidates in three lists: a list of "conventional" candidates who had experience in a similar role or in a department head role in other municipalities, a list of "unconventional" candidates whose backgrounds were more in the private sector or more in the military, and a third list, consisting of one: the internal candidate, Falgout.
Of the total, the City Council short-listed 16: Falgout, Brent Moran, Charles Brown, Claire Collins, David Strahl, Donald Kewley, Greg Young, Jim Drumm, Jeff Eder, Jeff Oris, Ken Kelly, Matt Morton, Mike McNees, Ricardo Mendez, Robin Hayes and Sean Ratican. Klufas was the only one to assign a score of one to Brown and Kewley, but the council decided to list them anyway.
Klufas said interested in Kewly because of his background in fiber. "I just want to explore the avenues that possibly someone who has specific expertise in something as critical, I my opinion to our city," Klufas said.
Aside from Falgout, were two other candidates from within the county: Jim Manfre, the former Flagler County sheriff and current attorney; and Douglas Bentley, a former Army officer and former deputy district engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Manfre got a score of 2 from Councilman Eddie Branquinho, but otherwise, both local candidates got 3s from all of the council members.
Bentley — who lives in the Hammock, not in Palm Coast — had asked Mayor Milissa Holland if the requirement that the manager reside within Palm Coast within six months of hiring could be waived. That was a deal-breaker for her.
"The residency thing was very clear to me; I don't know how we can overcome that," she said. "That, to me, is a non-starter." She added that the residency requirement is part of the city's code of ordinances.
Bentley is also applying for the position of interim county manager of Flagler County.
Manfre, Holland said, could be a poor choice for political reasons: He was ousted from his position as sheriff by current sheriff Rick Staly in the last election for that seat. Staly had been his second-in-command.
"We all are very aware of the fact that he does not have a very good working relationship with our current sheriff, and that's a pretty serious set of conversations," Holland said.
"So when you made the decision to short-list him," she asked Thomas, "what it was based on?"
"Those are political decisions that you as a board make," Thomas said. "I'm looking at his skill set, solely, whether or not he has the skills to potentially be in this role, and based on running a sheriff’s department and that background, I think he does. You make the decision about whether there's dynamics or issues beyond that that ultimately would be a factor."
The next step in the process will come in the form of more intensive checks about the applicants' histories: Thomas will research the short-listed applicants in the media going back five years, and will perform a background check. They'll complete a questionnaire and a recorded interview, and Thomas will put together packets for the council to review on each one.
After some discussion, the council decided to hold one-on-one interviews with candidates, plus a public meet-and-greet session.
