Bunnell City Commission Accepts City Manager’s Resignation, Denies Severance

The Bunnell City Commission on Monday voted 4-1 to reject a proposed severance package from now-former City Manager Alvin Jackson. They also decided in unison to appoint Police Chief Dave Brannon interim city manager. All commissioners agreed to accept the resignation and to appoint Brannon, while Mayor Catherine Robinson dissented on rejecting Jackson’s severance. In a package submitted for the City Commission’s consideration by Jackson, he requested 12 weeks’ pay as well as other compensation from benefits and holidays. Because Jackson resigned and was not fired, the City Commission had no obligation to grant any of these requests. Still, Mayor Robinson drew upon recalled precedent from her decades in office to argue in favor of appeasing Jackson. She deemed his departure was a ‘forced resignation’, contesting he left only because his firing became inevitable. Robinson argued that Jackson resigned to prevent division within the City Commission, and that he acted for the good of his community. Residents did not agree with Robinson’s assessment. Only scarcely did public commenters have anything positive to say about Jackson, who did not attend Monday’s meeting. Some felt that it was fiscally irresponsible for Bunnell to pay out money it had no obligation to part with. Several commenters invoked the commissioners’ democratic duty to carry out the will of the people. Though nothing forces the commissioners to do so, their votes carried out the prevailing public sentiment. The final rejection of Jackson’s severance proposal actually came after the formal vote to do so. The Commission previously voted unanimously to accept Jackson’s resignation and 4-1 to deny his severance. That was before City Attorney Paul Waters contested that Jackson’s request for severance was on the same document as his formal resignation document, and thus prevented the two aspects from being voted on separately. This briefly reopened discussion and seemed to give Jackson’s payout an extra life. An exasperated Vice Mayor John Rogers questioned how Jackson’s document could be reconsidered when its contents were already voted on. According to Waters, the proposal could only be split into two parts if Jackson was in attendance to negotiate. Since he wasn’t, his request had to be taken as it was presented. That would mean rejecting his severance request technically also rejected his resignation, opening the door to potential legal challenges. As it turned out, none of these technicalities mattered. Rogers himself had an entirely separate letter of resignation signed by Jackson which he said was on the dais when he walked in. Waters, apparently unaware of this, informed the Commission that the existence of said letter rendered their current discussion irrelevant. Now there were two separate documents for his resignation and his severance request. When the City Commission voted to accept Jackson’s resignation, that applied to the letter Rogers found. When they voted to deny his severance request, that applied to the document in which Jackson made his request. Though members of the public were largely icy toward their eight-year former city manager, they were even more united in their support for Dave Brannon as an interim replacement. Brannon will serve as city manager until a permanent successor is hired. In the meantime, Lieutenant Shane Groth will be the acting chief of the Bunnell Police Department. Only two issues with Brannon were raised by commissioners, though not from hesitance over his qualifications. For one, Brannon had to assure the Commission that he would not lose out on any high-risk retirement benefits because he already accessed them when he retired from the Volusia Sheriff’s Office in 2019. Secondly, the Commission agreed that despite residing in DeLand, Brannon would not be expected to relocate to Bunnell as is required of permanent city managers. Alvin Jackson’s Resignation Letter