By Jacob Smith, former Apopka City Administrator
Editor's Note: Jacob Smith, the former Apopka City Administrator, was fired by Mayor Bryan Nelson on Friday.
"Yes, I was terminated today," Smith told The Apopka Voice in a text response. "No notice, no warning, not even sure why."
On Saturday, Nelson confirmed he fired Smith, but did not say why.
Two days later, Nelson stated his reasons in an interview with The Apopka Chief.
“I’m his boss, and you’d think he would communicate with me, but yeah, so in four weeks since his daughter got married, he’d been to see me in my office once,” Nelson said.
Nelson also cited an email from a Florida DOGE department requiring the City's response.
“He got two emails, one from the governor’s office and one from the League of Cities about this DOGE requirement, that was it. I was done,” Nelson said.
He also said Smith did not communicate with him in comparison to other department heads.
“I’ve had numerous conversations with every department head other than him,” Nelson said. “Every couple days, I’m having conversations with department heads. So why is he different?”
Smith responded to Nelson's allegations in the below OP/ED he wrote after The Apopka Voice sent several questions to him about the specifics of his termination.
Former Apopka City Administrator Jacob Smith.
The last four weeks
"The mayor refers to the past four weeks. Here's what happened during that time:
My daughter’s wedding in Utah occurred, followed by an upper respiratory illness and nausea that caused me to take one sick day. I worked the rest of the time and met with the mayor twice that week, although he preferred I not get too close due to health concerns.
The following week, I had a scheduled endoscopy for internal bleeding and took one day of PTO.
According to the mayor’s calendar, he was out of the office Wednesday through Friday. So everyone knows, the only access I had to his calendar were blocked out times marked as “busy.”
The two weeks after, I met with him several times to discuss various issues: CRA matters, the St. John’s water meeting, personnel hiring, the reorganization of public services, decisions about the Community Development and Economic Development positions, the legislative session and bills to watch, moving offices to get nMomentum setup for the major ERP/EAM system transfer.
During those two weeks, I made numerous attempts to meet him in his office, but he was never there. I informed his Executive Assistant, but at no point did the mayor reach out to let me know he was available and could meet. For these four weeks, I was also waiting for him to provide me with contacts for a stakeholder list, but when the mayor didn’t provide them, I had to go into the community myself to meet with business managers and inform them about the strategic plan we were working on.
A normal day for a City Administrator
On a typical day, I attend five to six meetings and receive an email about every 10 minutes from directors, staff, HR, salespeople, citizens, and stakeholders. My tasks also include reviewing performance evaluations, check registers, budget transfers, change orders, code enforcement briefings, negotiations, new employee onboarding, job interviews, RFP evaluations, and preparing materials for public meetings.
All of this is done while at my desk, which is only about 50% of my time— the rest is spent on site visits, attending events, meetings in conference rooms, and public meetings.
I believed the mayor had empowered his city administrator to handle day-to-day operations so he could focus on political matters, external stakeholders, public engagement, and attending key events. I genuinely thought I was doing him a favor by not burdening him with management-level issues that should have been handled without his direct involvement.
The "DOGE" letter/email
As for the “DOGE” letter/email, I’m not sure what that refers to. I receive over 100 emails daily, and if it was a letter, I never received it. If it was an email, it may have been blocked by our spam filters. If I somehow missed it, the mayor receives the same correspondence from the state or the League of Cities that I do. Usually, I get a follow-up email for any urgent matters with deadlines, but I never received anything of that sort. If this "DOGE" email is legitimate, and the mayor was aware of it, why didn’t he simply ask me about it? I would have responded with “What DOGE letter?” and we could have figured it out—just like I’ve handled everything else.
What I don’t understand is why, if the mayor had concerns with my work, he didn’t sit down with me to discuss his expectations. I could have explained and worked with him to address any issues. He never did this, which is why I was so surprised when, after months of no communication, he walked into my office and simply said, “You’re done,” without any explanation or willingness to have a conversation about his concerns. I thought he was coming in response to my request, a request I made to his executive secretary because he was not in that morning, to discuss Main Street Apopka’s request to be put on the next Council meeting agenda."
