What are you trying to do with the clerk position?
So, the way that, I think it was about 10 years ago, maybe a little longer, the board decided after Dan Cavanah quit being the town manager that they didn’t want a manager.
They decided to take Michelle’s position — which is the clerk duties, and all the clerk duties are is show up at the meetings, take the notes, produce the minutes. That’s it.
And she got about $2,900 a year. What they decided at that point was to — and this is not done anywhere else, I haven’t been able to find anywhere else where this is being done — but they decided to take the clerk position and give it some of the duties of the town manager and increase her pay. So at one point, she was getting $26,000. Now she is $28,000 to be there 30 hours a week and do some of the town manager duties and the clerk duties. She gets no benefits, no retirement, no healthcare. And it’s just not beneficial to her, or us, to have that position. You know, we don’t have like a centralized organizational lead. And so, There’s really no direction that we can, we can have until we have that. And so everywhere else in Florida, I won’t say everywhere else. The majority of the other places in Florida have a town manager, and the clerk position gets appointed. Right? So in our setup, as long as the clerk position is elected, they cannot be fired. So no matter what they do, as long as the people elect her, or him, there’s no recourse, right? And to back Michelle up, it’s hard being in that position and not really have any power. So again, it’s just not beneficial to her or the town to continue with what we’re doing, knowing that change is coming and knowing that we’re going to grow, whether we want to or not. So, In my opinion, the advantages of having a town manager is consistent management of daily operations. You have centralized leadership so that they can make decisions without having to wait for that once a month meeting. You know, obviously there’s going to be things that are going to have to wait for that, but not the day-to-day operations, which seems to be happening now.
She could manage the one employee we have a little bit better because then she’ll feel empowered, or he, whoever. , will feel power to do that.
It allows us, the elected board members, to actually focus on policy, and so there’s more efficient service delivery to the citizens.
I think we’d have a stronger community vision, so we can offer more community events, maybe some more services. And we don’t have to increase taxes to get that done, to have a little bit more money or income coming in. We could start actually fixing things around the town and again, not having to wait for that monthly meeting. The one thing that I noticed, and I’ve talked to some people at other towns that have that setup of it’s the town manager with duties of the clerk. Um, they feel like there’s a there’s a better political neutrality because they don’t have a dog in the fight.
They don’t have to make decisions in order to get elected again. They make decisions because it’s the right thing to do for the community. And I think that’s the hard part where we have it set up. Everybody has a political agenda. Maybe not, but I mean, at the end of the day, if you don’t get elected, you can’t be on the board.
And it’s the same thing with the clerk. And that’s one thing that I tell everybody in the community when they come and they want to complain, I’m like, well, as long as the clerk is elected, then she can’t be fired because you elected her. Or him. Or whatever. But again, Michelle’s doing the duties that they gave her 10 or 15 years ago.
So, I think what would be my vision for the responsibilities of the town manager is overseeing the admin part of the day-to-day operations, coordinating activities across multiple entities. So that’s county, legal, town, which Michelle does a lot of that, but again, we’re empowering that position to actually make decisions and then follow through and not wait months to get it done because that’s what we deal with right now. We’ve dealt with that in Bell forever. Managing the budgets, communicating with the public without fear of, like, knowing that she can come back to us if she needs to, but then also having some kind of power to say, yeah, we don’t do that and this is why. Making decisions on the fly instead of waiting for the monthly meetings, long-term planning for strategic growth, also, working with our county leadership, our state leadership, we have, because of our community size and because of the rural community, there’s lots of grants that we could apply for, but where do you find the time when you’re only working 30 hours a week and you’re only getting paid $28,000 a year?
So that’s one thing that I think we could work on. The reason why I asked for $55,000, and that’s one thing that I don’t know if the board understood, is I’m not asking for an extra $55,000. She makes $28,000, I need $27,000. Right? It makes sense to me because, like, in Trenton, Brittany makes $85,000. In all the other communities, it’s between $80,000 and $150,000. So I’m not asking for a lot and I know that the council, some of the council members were like, well, nobody will want that job. Okay, if they don’t, then it’s egg on my face. Like, I would rather try than just say, well, it’s never going to happen or we didn’t like the last town manager, which is, you know, some of the comments they made. Not that they didn’t like him, they just didn’t feel like he did a good job or whatever. Well, then don’t hire him again. You know, find somebody to do it. But if it doesn’t work out, I’ll own that. But we gotta do something.
There’s two options here. We can either keep the clerk position, which is an elected position, bump it back down to the $2,900 a year — which is what we all get — and hire a town manager. So, you know, again, I’d be taking money from this position to get a bigger one. That position is gonna get the $55,000 if I can get them to do that. There’s increased responsibility, so that means he or she can hire, fire, budget. Um, and then the full-time allows our community to have more access to us and to that office over there.
I also feel like we are still working in some archaic workplace. We need to upgrade our computer system. We need to upgrade where people can sign up for the community center or give us feedback and things like that.
And right now, it’s a lot of paper. And it’s 2026. So we got to do better about that. I’m not saying we need to run things how Gainesville does, but we definitely need to kind of move into that next upgrade for sure. And then, you know, mainly just the political neutralities, having somebody in a position where they don’t feel like they have to make a decision based off of being elected next time. So that’s my goal, is to have a town manager for all those reasons. And again, if that’s not what the community wants, that’s fair. Talk to the other council members and let them know, and it’ll die with lack of second. But for the last 4 years, or however long I’ve been on the board, it’s consistently an issue. And again, it’s not beneficial to her and it’s not beneficial to us to continue. She has no retirement, no healthcare, no nothing. We just gave them PTO, and it’s not that much. So, I mean, I don’t know what else. But I definitely don’t want to bump up just a clerk position, that’s an elected position, up to $55,000. Not all.
Are there any other benefits that this would have for town, council, citizens?
I think that we don’t know what we don’t know. And so, other than the benefits that I described, I think there’s endless opportunity for that position. I think we’re gonna have to agree on a job description that makes sense for our town because (Town Attorney) Duke (Lang) didn’t seem like he thought it was a good idea legally. I went back to him, I said, well, help me understand from a legal perspective. Why it wouldn’t be? And so I think he’s gonna bring that to the next meeting maybe, but I think the benefits that I described will make a tremendous change.
But once we get the right person in that position, God knows what we could do. And, you know, behind my house, there’s quarter-acre lots that a new developer just bought. People are coming. They’re moving into smaller towns, and if we don’t get ahead of the change and we don’t prepare for the change, it’s going to overtake us. So, you know, and it’s just like, Mr. Keith and Michael O’Steen, the 80 acres at the end of town. That’s going to get developed eventually. If we don’t plan for it and we don’t have somebody in a position to look to the future and figure out how we’re going sustain all this. We’re going to get lost, and it’s not going to be good.
So that’s my goal. And again, if it doesn’t work out or if that’s not what the community wants, that’s fair. But I can’t just sit back and watch it anymore. Like, it’s frustrating. My little OCD heart needs some organization and I don’t know how else to do it because again, Michelle does not feel empowered with the job description she has. I mean, when you think about it, it’s 10 years old. Things have changed, but we haven’t. So, what do we do? Do we continue to do things that not benefiting anybody? Or do we make a change and take a leap of faith and say, okay, we’re gonna try something new? If it doesn’t work out fair, we’ll just fix it, adjust and keep going.
Is there anything else that you feel like people need to know so they understand what you’re plan is?
I think the only thing is it would be nice to hear from the community how they feel about the way it’s been ran and then what their, their hope for the future is. Because again, like, I can only operate off of what people tell me that they have frustrations with and I can change what I can, but really have to have the community come back and say, I wish you offered this. I wish you could do this. So, you know, again, we just don’t know what we don’t know. And it’s hard when, because of the sunshine law, you can’t have these conversations all month long. You have to have it within that tiny period that we all sit down at the board. And again, you know, when I go to the meetings in Trenton, Brittany is that central person that can get all the information in and speak to the different people without it breaking any laws. And so I just feel like we don’t have that, and it’s not fair to anybody.