The city manager of St. Augustine Beach has written to his commission to tell it he is overpaid.

That is item 3 on Monday’s agenda, under old business, and the memo carrying it is dated Sept. 23 and signed Max Royle, City Manager. The commission is looking for his replacement. It meets at 6 p.m. at 2200 A1A South.

The memo gives his own FY 26 salary as $154,271. Its first conclusion, in the document’s own words, is “that your current City Manager is overpaid when you compare his FY 26 salary of $154,271 to the salaries of the managers on the list who manage cities with more employees and services and larger budgets.”

The list is an exhibit he assembled with the city clerk. Eight cities, picked for being close in size or close by: Cape Canaveral, Daytona Beach Shores, Flagler Beach, Green Cove Springs, Neptune Beach, Orange Park, Palatka and Ponce Inlet.

The range is already set, and it starts above what the job pays now

The commission has been at this since the summer. At its Aug. 3 meeting the search consultant proposed $180,000 to $230,000. The memo says the commission “believed that range was too high” and lowered it to $160,000-200,000.

So the bottom of the range is higher than the figure the memo gives for the salary being paid today.

The exhibit puts the eight managers between $154,159 at Ponce Inlet and $190,000 at Daytona Beach Shores. Three of the eight have been in the job under a year, at $157,476 in Green Cove Springs, $160,000 in Orange Park and $172,000 in Palatka, which the memo notes so that nobody reads the column as a seniority table.

The argument is about the shape of the city, not about the money

Royle’s case is structural and it runs on three criteria: services, employees, budget.

The city has an estimated population of 7,014 and 67 employees. Twenty-five of them are in the police department. The number in departments the manager oversees is 42: public works 24, building and planning 9, finance and administration including IT 9. Four department heads report to him.

Under the city charter the police chief is appointed by the commission, not by the manager, and the memo says the manager “has no authority over the Chief and no responsibilities concerning the personnel and management of the Police Department.”

That matters to the budget line too. The city’s FY 2026 budget across all funds was about $15.5 million. The police department’s was nearly $4 million. The memo asks and answers its own question about the rest: “What was the size of the budget controlled by the City Manager? $11.5 million”.

The services list is four items long: law enforcement, public works, building permitting and planning and code enforcement, and finance and administration. The memo calls the city “a bare bones city” and says it has been that way since it was incorporated in 1959. Fire and rescue, potable water, sewage, the library and recreation are the county’s, which is why a beach taxpayer is not paying for them alone.

The sentence the commission is being handed is this one: “A bare-bones city cannot justify to the taxpayers a high salary and expensive perks for its city manager.”

And one figure does not agree with itself

The memo’s first page gives the Ponce Inlet low as $154,159. Its fourth page, arguing the same point, gives the Ponce Inlet manager’s pay as $154,259. The exhibit attached behind both says $154,159.

The memo carries its own caution on that, back on the first page: the city clerk and the city manager “have done their best to ensure that the information in the exhibit is accurate. However, some cities’ websites make finding specific information difficult.”

The third conclusion is a date

The memo asks the commission not to sign anything yet.

Its third conclusion is that it would be prudent to delay negotiating a contract and a salary until the November vote on Amendment 3 is known. The figures it attaches to that are the city’s: “a major reduction of revenue (an estimated $655,000) for the City’s budget in 2027. For 2028, the reduction will be $1,000,000.”

The fourth conclusion goes further and does not have a document behind it. It is that even if the amendment fails, the legislature will limit local revenue in the spring of 2027 anyway, by capping budget increases to inflation or by requiring a supermajority to pass a millage above the rolled-back rate. That one is written as an assumption and the memo says so.

The rest of the packet

The applications themselves get read in public, at presentations item B, by Jim Hanson and Steve Kennedy of the Florida City/County Management Association. That is before public comment, not after it.

Two budget resolutions sit on consent, which means one motion and no discussion unless a commissioner pulls one. Resolution 26-14 moves $9,232 to buildings, for City Hall and police station windows. Resolution 26-15 moves $171,616.54 into paving for FY 27. Both come out of the ARPA fund.

Item 4 is 4th Street between A1A Beach Boulevard and 2nd Avenue, which the memo on it calls the last unpaved street in the city. It is platted and was never built. The city’s practice has been a special assessment with the owners on each side paying a third each, which is how 2nd, 3rd and 8th streets were opened. The owners on the south side have expressed no interest. The city holds $1,101,315.16 in road impact fees, which may only be spent on new construction related to growth.

Item 5 is the cash reserve, and the number in it is the one worth keeping. The city fell below its own 20 percent policy threshold in fiscal 2020, for the second year running. The finance director’s memo of Sept. 1 puts the unassigned general fund balance at 61.9 percent now, and asks the commission to decide what the target should be. Her auditor’s answer was three to four months of operating costs and sometimes twelve, depending on storms. The consultant’s was 30 to 40 percent for a small coastal city.

Item 6 is housekeeping with a calendar behind it. The November meeting has to move, because the first Monday falls next to the Nov. 3 general election.

The election is in the building. The commission meeting room at 2200 A1A South is the early voting site from Wednesday, Oct. 21 through Saturday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and it is the polling place on Nov. 3 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Amendment 3 is on that ballot, which is the same amendment the salary memo asks the commission to wait for.

The minutes of the Sept. 8 meetings are on the same agenda for approval, which is where the commission’s own account of the last one becomes the record.