Atlantic Beach hires Bill Killingsworth as city manager

[thelakelander]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2023/aug/24/atlantic-beach-hires-bill-killingsworth-as-city-manager/

[jcjohnpaint]

Haven't heard that name in some time.

[jaxlongtimer]

Maybe it was the mayors he had to kowtow to, but the Planning Department was a "best friend" to developers under his administrations.  Interesting that he goes to Atlantic Beach where they have real standards they stick to for "planning."  Maybe we will see a different administration there.  All the best...

[CityLife]

Congrats to Bill. AB has historically been a tough place to be a City Manager, but he should do well there.

Sidebar, it is laughable that the pay range for Planning Director of a city/county of 874 square miles and 950k people is $139k-$180k. That is probably not enough money to interest any experienced Planning Director's around Florida, certainly not any talented ones. You can get the same pay at much, much smaller cities. I mean the Planning Director in the town I live in (Jupiter, population 61k) makes the same salary that Killingsworth was making. There is a cost of living adjustment, but still. I just took a Planning Director job in Florida in a town of 6k people with a salary range of $125-$150k. It's an affluent community with high expectations, but there should be an insane difference in salary between it and Jax.

I don't think all of the mayoral appointed positions have come out, but a city/county as large and complex as Jax/Duval shouldn't be paying the Planning Director less than the Press Liaison, Director of Community Initiatives, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, and Deputy Chief of Staff, which are all new positions and basically cake political appointments. If Lori Boyer can get paid $211k, Jax should be able to pay a similar salary for a Planning Director.

[vicupstate]

$218k for a city manager of a city of 13k people seems very generous. Does the city do anything besides pick up trash and provide police protection?

[Jax_Developer]

To AB's credit, it probably has the best run government locally. Their construction standards also far exceed the other localities in Duval. They do basically every function a small city would internally, except fire I believe.

CityLife you make a great point. Jacksonville's pay scale for the more premier positions is completely out of line. Wink wink JTA.

[thelakelander]

Chicago's planning director recently resigned. His salary was $196k. How would you rank that in comparison?

[Jax_Developer]

In reference to city managers, they get paid the most in wealthy small towns. I've seen towns in CA pay $300k ish for theirs. Most of the times it's because the city manager has to live within the town limits to qualify for the position.

In reference to city planners, my unknowledgeable opinion is that large cities like Chicago have much more dynamic webs of power, coupled with less influence, on average, than a city planner running Jacksonville for example. Taking a position in Chicago/NYC, leaves less room to exert your own influence/ideas vs. most of the south where the planning leads have quite a bit of power.. mainly due to us being in a growth mode. (higher quantity of projects per capita, less written code & less people to please politically.)

My main gripe is that JTA has 5 employees all making over $250,000. JTA's "Associate Vice President of Construction & Capital Projects" also makes more than our Head of Planning. I think the money laundering to JTA needs to be exposed, and I would also argue paying city planners better is probably one the best things a city can do, given how much of the code they interpret/influence locally.

[tufsu1]

Sidebar, it is laughable that the pay range for Planning Director of a city/county of 874 square miles and 950k people is $139k-$180k.

$175k for a planning director in Florida is actually quite fair - the exception is south Florida, which in the case of Miami, is one of the most expensive metros cost-of-living wise.

And as Lake said, the planning director in Chicago was just under $200k - proving the point

[CityLife]

Sidebar, it is laughable that the pay range for Planning Director of a city/county of 874 square miles and 950k people is $139k-$180k.

$175k for a planning director in Florida is actually quite fair - the exception is south Florida, which in the case of Miami, is one of the most expensive metros cost-of-living wise.

And as Lake said, the planning director in Chicago was just under $200k - proving the point

Agree to disagree and the Chicago thing isn't apples to apples. The Chicago guy could have been getting paid at the bottom or middle end of the pay range. So the range could easily be something like $180-$240k, which is far different than Jax's range.

The COJ/Duval County Planning Director position is totally different than most positions in the state and country imo. You have to deal with the growth management of the entire county (minus the three beach municipalities). So the Planning Director has to manage 874 acres of developable land, and quite a bit of that is still greenfield. Compare that to other cities that are much smaller in land area and developable land. Chicago is 234 acres, Miami is 55 acres, Tampa is 170, Orlando is 100, St. Pete 130, and Ft. Lauderdale 36. In those places there is a County Planning Director and then Planning Director of each individual city. COJ's director get's no mutual aid from a County Planning Director like virtually everywhere else.

Along the same lines, Duval County is saving tons of money by not having to pay Planning Directors (and other key positions) in each municipality like elsewhere. Pinellas County is comprised of 24 municipalities. So there are 24 Planning Directors, generally making north of $100k, many well over that number.  Orange County 13, Palm Beach 39, Broward 24, and Miami-Dade 34. Duval County/Jax is saving tons of money by consolidating a lot of services into one large department that has to cover a substantial amount of ground. Because of those savings and the sheer amount of work, the Planning Director of Jax should be getting paid in a totally different stratosphere than most other places, imo.

[CityLife]

One thing Jax could do to lighten the burden on the Planning Director and lead to a more well run city is to hire Deputy Planning Directors for each of the six CPAC's that would report to the COJ Planning Director. I know Jax seems to have low level planners staff their CPAC meetings already, but I am talking about a total re-organization that would bring in higher level Deputy Director's to focus on all activities within each CPAC area.

[tufsu1]

Well the director of the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission (1.5 million people) makes around $150k
The City of Tampa director makes around $130k
The City of Orlando director makes $170k

and there's this
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/planning-director-salary/fl#:~:text=The%20average%20Planning%20Director%20salary,falls%20between%20%24139%2C972%20and%20%24190%2C773.

[Jax_Developer]

That's the point. Just use Hillsborough County as an example. You have all the of the municipalities within it, all with their own planning directors. So, for 1.5M people, the local expenditure of planning staff is much higher.

Duval has Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, AB, Neptune Beach, and Baldwin (I think). All of them encompassing like 5% of the total land area and less than 10% of Duval's population. So in Duval, you 'basically' have one central agency handling all of the planning files.

Places like Orlando also utilize this same concept. Duval's consolidation makes it an exception. The position really is much more "powerful" than anything listed above.

[CityLife]

That's the point. Just use Hillsborough County as an example. You have all the of the municipalities within it, all with their own planning directors. So, for 1.5M people, the local expenditure of planning staff is much higher.

Duval has Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, AB, Neptune Beach, and Baldwin (I think). All of them encompassing like 5% of the total land area and less than 10% of Duval's population. So in Duval, you 'basically' have one central agency handling all of the planning files.

Places like Orlando also utilize this same concept. Duval's consolidation makes it an exception. The position really is much more "powerful" than anything listed above.

Yeah, TUFSU1 was making my point for me. In his example, the combined salary of the Hillsborough County Planning Director and Tampa's is $280k. That is also inaccurate because Tampa has a Development and Growth Management Director that makes >$160k and a Planning Director that makes $130k. So in total, you have Tampa paying a combined $290k for the same responsibilities as Jax's Planning Director, plus $150k for Hillsborough County's Director. All in, that's $440k.

In looking into Hillsborough more, it's a total outlier from all of the other large counties in Florida. It actually only has three incorporated cities (Tampa, Plant City, and Temple Terrace). In all of the other places, you would have a County Planning Director and anywhere from 13 (Orange County) to 39 (Palm Beach County) municipal Planning Directors. Conservatively, that would be $1.45 million to $4.05 million in Planning Director salaries ($100k for each municipality+$150k for County Director). Surely little ole Jax can skimp together $200-$250k for the position and/or can bring in a few Deputy Director type roles.

[Charles Hunter]

All very interesting. But, if Jacksonville-Duval paid the Planning Director like a professional responsible for directing the planning for 840 square miles, the person may insist on being a Planning Director, and not as an employee of the developers and their Council lackeys.