Government in the shade? Data shows Daytona Beach Shores pays top average salary
By Lonnie Groot
The Daytona Beach News-Journal’s recent front-page story ("How much does Daytona Beach city manager make? More than Volusia County manager, Orlando mayor") evidenced how local journalism enlightens citizens. Showing the salary levels of local employees helps citizens evaluate the efficiency of their governments as well as whether their governments are operating in a fiscally sound manner.
The more information citizens have at their hands, the better citizens they are and the more accountable they make their governments be. Transparency is the essential element of good governance.
Recent data provided by the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research shows, for example, that the City of Daytona Beach Shores has the highest average annual salary per employee.
The salary data for New Smyrna Beach was from the prior year’s report as current-year data was unavailable.
One can discern how Daytona Beach Shores got this way in looking at the recent actions of the City Commission in giving a pay raise to its city manager in the shade.
On January 10, 2023, the last item on the commission agenda stated, “Consideration of Salary Treatment.” The item did not say what salary, whose salary or anything like that – much less that the matter involved the city manager’s salary.
On page 168 of 168 pages of the commission agenda packet, a one-page memo stated very little. The only things stated were “This was a request by Mayor Miller” and the memo had no fiscal impact statement, legal review, recommended action, suggested motion, or anything else.
At the meeting, Mayor Nancy Miller did the unusual action of making a motion herself and urged that a $1,000 per month pay raise be approved for the city manager who had been on the job for seven months to make his salary equivalent to the prior city manager who had over 20 years of experience and a very favorable employment contract. The commission approved the raise and the city manager thanked them.
On January 27, 2023, after giving the raise to the city manager, the city commission held a meeting at which it discussed for a while the form that they should use for the city manager performance evaluation and action that it had apparently taken 17 days earlier.
On February 14, 2023, the commission placed an item on the agenda about “Formalization of City Manager Salary Adjustment.” On page 274 of a 283-page agenda packet. The memo about this item says that it “merely implements the will of the City Commission as expressed at the meeting of January 10, 2023.” The memo also mentions that the city budget that had just been passed a few months earlier needed to be amended and that the $1,000 a month raise would have an “annual impact [that]would be approximately $17,066.40.”
It is clear that the City of Daytona Beach Shores is not a transparent government when it comes to providing pay raises. All citizens in Florida are entitled to far more from their local government.
Lonnie Groot is a Daytona Beach Shores attorney.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Which city in Volusia County pays the highest average salary?