The Flagler County Board of County Commissioners held a workshop on Monday, May 4, 2026, focused on two topics: an update on the ongoing county administrator search and a detailed discussion of a new employee merit pay program. Chair Leann Pennington presided over the session, which included Commissioners Andy Dance, Vice Chair Kim Carney, Pam Richardson, and Greg Hansen. No formal votes were taken at the workshop, as it was structured as a discussion session to guide future decisions. No members of the public came forward during the public comment period.
County Administrator Search: 30 Applicants and Counting
HR Director Charlie Pecano opened the meeting with an encouraging update on the search for a new county administrator: just one week after the position was posted, the county had already received approximately 30 qualified applicants. “We’ve had really good applicants already,” Pecano said. “I’m excited about it, and the pool is looking good already.”
Joining Pecano was Bradley Arnold, the County Administrator of Sumter County, who is serving as one of three volunteer advisors through the Florida Association of County Managers (FACM). The other two committee members are Michelle Lieberman of Alachua County, who chairs the committee, and Taco Pope of Nassau County. Arnold said the committee was assembled specifically because all three members have experience managing fast-growing Florida counties — counties that face challenges similar to Flagler’s, including balancing growth with infrastructure needs, managing impact fees, and building relationships between county government and cities or constitutional officers.
Arnold outlined a detailed recruitment timeline. Applications will continue to be accepted through late June. The FACM committee will review applications the week of July 6–10. Michelle Lieberman is scheduled to be present on July 13 to walk commissioners through a tentative shortlist of candidates. Background checks on shortlisted candidates will run July 14–20. A final presentation of recommended candidates is set for July 24. After that, individual interviews and public interviews will be conducted between July 27 and August 17, at which point the board will make its final decision.
Commissioners asked whether they would have access to all applicants throughout the process or only the final shortlist. Pecano said he would send the board a weekly list of all qualified applicants — meaning those who meet the minimum requirements in the job description — as they come in, while the FACM committee continues its own independent review. The board agreed it did not want to put a hard cap on the number of candidates to be shortlisted, preferring instead to let the committee recommend however many they feel are genuinely strong fits.
The board also raised the question of what to do if a commissioner happens to encounter a candidate at a professional event before the process is complete, such as the Florida Association of Counties conference scheduled for June 23–26. Arnold advised commissioners to simply declare upfront whether someone is a candidate and disengage if so. “If somebody’s moving outside the due process, then I think we’re being unfavorably viewed,” he said. Commissioner Hansen called encountering a candidate who bypasses the formal process “an indicator I would not view as favorable.”
Arnold also offered advice on how the board should present itself to potential candidates, noting that applicants are watching commission meetings and doing their own research before deciding whether to apply. He said the key thing a county administrator needs is a board that functions as a unified policy body — setting direction and then allowing the administrator to run daily operations — rather than individual commissioners getting involved in day-to-day management. “Direction comes from the board, not an individual commissioner,” he said. “That’s the hardest piece to overcome with new commissioners.”
The job posting can be found by visiting the Flagler County website at www.FlaglerCounty.gov, clicking the “Government” tab, then selecting “Jobs” and “Apply.”
Employee Merit Pay: A New Era for County Workers
The second and longer portion of the workshop was devoted to a first-of-its-kind merit pay plan for Flagler County employees. Pecano said the county has never had a structured, performance-based pay system — historically, all employees received the same cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) regardless of how well they performed. “If you’re not working hard, and we don’t want you here, is more of the argument,” Pecano said. “Giving everyone the same raise every single year with no expectations — that’s where you get a culture issue.”
Pecano said he declined to implement merit pay when he first arrived in November 2024 because the county lacked the evaluation infrastructure to support it fairly. Since then, he said, the county has implemented an online evaluation and training platform called NeoGov, standardized its evaluation process to once per year, digitized employee files, and trained supervisors on how to conduct consistent, fair performance reviews.
How the Program Will Work
Under the proposed system, all regular full-time and part-time employees who have worked for the county for at least six months will be evaluated each year during January and February. Employees who earn a rating of “meets expectations” or higher will receive a combination of their standard COLA increase plus a merit raise. Employees who are rated below expectations or who have received a corrective action within the last six months will not receive a merit increase for that year. Merit pay will be added to base pay — meaning it becomes part of an employee’s ongoing salary, not a one-time bonus.
A salary cap of $100,000 was set for merit pay calculations, meaning employees earning above that threshold will still receive their full COLA but will have their merit increase calculated as if they earn $100,000. For example, the maximum merit increase at the highest performance level would be $2,500.
For the current fiscal year 2026, because the evaluation cycle is already underway and there is not enough time to restructure base pay, the merit portion will be paid as a one-time lump-sum bonus rather than folded into regular pay. Approximately $500,000 was set aside in reserve for this purpose. Starting in fiscal year 2027, merit pay will be built into base salaries and issued on the first paycheck of May each year.
Excluded from the program are elected officials, union employees (whose pay is governed by negotiated contracts), contract employees like the county attorney and county administrator, temporary workers, and employees in state-managed departments such as the courts and UF/IFAS Extension.
The Challenge of Rating Caps
A significant portion of the discussion focused on how to prevent too many employees from receiving the highest ratings — a problem Pecano, Commissioner Hansen, and others said is common in both government and corporate settings. Commissioner Hansen, drawing from his military experience, said the problem he encountered was supervisors rating all of their employees in the top bracket without differentiating between them. “You’ve got to have a bell curve on this,” he said.
Pecano said his office already reviews every evaluation rated at a one or a five to ensure the rating is backed by solid documentation of goals and achievements, not just a supervisor’s opinion. However, commissioners and Pecano agreed the program should include a cap — limiting the number of “exceeds expectations” and “significantly exceeds expectations” ratings that any given department can award in a year — to keep the program fair, budget-controlled, and meaningful.
The board directed Pecano to develop a cap policy and bring it back for review before it is formally adopted as part of the fiscal year 2027 merit pay structure.
Self-Evaluations Discussed for the Future
Several commissioners raised the importance of allowing employees to submit self-evaluations before their supervisors rate them — so employees can document accomplishments their managers might have forgotten or not been aware of. “Your manager can’t know, be all, know all, remember everything that you’ve done,” one commissioner said. Pecano agreed this is a best practice and said it could be implemented in the next evaluation cycle, once the new county administrator is in place to help guide the decision.
The program as a whole drew support from all five commissioners, who agreed that creating a performance-driven culture is a necessary step forward for county government. “I think it’s really important to create a performance-driven culture here,” Pecano said. “When people realize that if I’m getting rewarded for working harder, they’re going to want to work harder.”
Pecano will bring back a revised merit pay structure — including the proposed rating cap and other edits — for the board to review and formally adopt before the fiscal year 2027 evaluation cycle begins.
More information about Flagler County government is available at www.FlaglerCounty.gov. The county administrator job posting can be found under the Government tab by selecting Jobs and then Apply.
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