Bullock to enter into three-year contract

David Bullock isn’t making plans for the first Monday night of any month, other than August, any time soon. That’s because he’ll be spending those Monday nights in the town-manager seat in commission chambers for Longboat Key Town Commission meetings.

The commission reached consensus at its Thursday, June 21 regular workshop to direct Town Attorney David Persson to draft a contract allowing for a three-year extension of Bullock’s contract, which gives the commission and Bullock the option to extend the contract for an additional three years at the end of the agreement.

Persson wrote in a June 13 letter to commissioners that Bullock had suggested a three-year contract that would contain the option for two subsequent one-year renewals.

Commissioner Lynn Larson said that she would prefer an arrangement that allowed for continuity and suggested a three-year contract that would be followed by the option for a three-year renewal.

“If the people who are on the commission today run for election and are re-elected, in three or four years, all of the sudden there’s going to be a complete turnover and possibly a void of institutional knowledge at that time,” she said. “I think that it’s very important — even more important, then — that we have leadership that would know what had been going on and that had continuity at that time.”

But Commissioner Phill Younger said that the contract is more for Bullock’s protection than for the commission’s benefit; he compared the agreement to a football coach’s contract.

“If he wants to go someplace else,” Younger said, “he’s going to go someplace else before the three years is up, but he’s comfortable by the security that is given by this.”

Bullock said that he was fine with what was discussed but stressed a provision in the contract that allows him or the commission to end the agreement with 90 days’ notice.

“I’m not a young guy, anymore,” Bullock, 61, said. “ … If I decide, at age 66, that it’s time for me to let someone younger or smarter or more energetic or whatever come into place … I want to give you adequate notice, so that the transition can be smooth and reasonable and so that it makes sense for everybody.”

Persson said that the changes could be added as an amendment to Bullock’s existing contract, extending the length of the contract and increasing the severance provision from its current 30 days’ to 20 weeks’ salary if terminated without cause. Bullock will continue to earn $180,000 annually.