The first two installments of The Apopka Voice series examining operations inside Apopka City Hall relied on interviews with seven former and current administrators, department heads, and employees who worked in different departments and at different levels of city government.
Taken together, those interviews revealed several recurring patterns. Some described infrastructure projects that remained unfinished or delayed for years. Others pointed to internal disagreements about priorities, budgeting, and long-term planning. Several described workplace conflicts that, in their view, influenced decision-making within the organization.
The sources came from different backgrounds — a former city administrator, a former police chief who briefly served as acting administrator, a public services director, technical staff members, and longtime employees who spent decades working in city government. Most did not work closely together, and some never overlapped at all.
Yet their accounts often touched on similar themes.
That raised a natural question: how did seven people who served in different roles and different years ultimately arrive at the same point — speaking publicly with The Apopka Voice about their experiences inside City Hall?
Seven sources were originally interviewed for this reporting series. One of those individuals is a current City of Apopka employee who initially agreed to speak with The Apopka Voice about their experiences, but asked that their contribution be removed from Part Three out of concern that speaking publicly could lead to professional repercussions.
At the employee’s request, their interview was not included in this article.
According to those interviewed, the answer lies in a series of personal turning points: retirement, termination, leadership changes, and career transitions that created distance from city government and allowed them to reflect on their experiences in Apopka.
For most of them, speaking publicly was not an immediate decision. In several cases, it came months or years after leaving city employment.
But once outside the organization, each said they began thinking about the broader patterns they believed residents should understand.
A career that spanned nearly three decades
Greg Conant’s decision to speak publicly came after nearly three decades inside the Apopka government.
Conant retired in February 2025 after 28 years of service across multiple departments. During that time, he worked in utility billing, landscaping, cemetery operations, and eventually the streets division.
Those moves, he said, were often abrupt and rarely part of a long-term career plan.
“I was put in charge of all of the landscaping for the City,” Conant said, describing one assignment early in his career.
Later, he transferred to the City cemetery before eventually being reassigned again, this time to Public Services, where he worked in the streets division overseeing right-of-way work.
“I did that until retirement,” he said.
Working in several departments gave Conant what he describes as a wide view of how City government functioned internally.
He said he often found himself taking on responsibilities that were not formally recognized.
“They never moved me into management,” Conant said. “They just had me do the work.”
Over time, he said, tensions with supervisors escalated.
At one point, those conflicts led him to hire an attorney after he said the City attempted to terminate him.
“I had to hire an employment lawyer because they were trying to fire me without cause,” Conant said.
The dispute never developed into a formal lawsuit, but Conant said the legal pressure changed the outcome.
“When I used my trump card against them — information they didn’t realize I had — they backed off,” he said.
Conant also recalled an internal employee survey that he believes revealed broader concerns among City staff.
“Every employee was forced to do it,” he said.
According to Conant, the results were never shared with employees.
The Apopka Voice filed a public records request for the employee surveys, but did not receive them by the time of publication.
After retiring, he said it took time to gain distance from the stress of the job.
“When you put up with that kind of harassment for that long, it messes with you,” he said.
Only after leaving City employment did he feel comfortable discussing his experience publicly, he said.
A leadership role that ended quickly
Momtaz Barq’s time in Apopka was short.
Barq previously worked in Orange County government before accepting the position of Public Services Director in Apopka. He said he took the job believing the City wanted to address operational challenges within the department.
Instead, he said he quickly encountered internal resistance.
“I saw there were a lot of personnel issues and also an unwillingness from management to listen to certain things that I needed them to help me with to be able to do my job,” Barq said. “I thought they wanted to kind of fix the issues that they have."
But that expectation changed as he worked inside the organization.
“The resistance plus the games that they played with staff — I realized pretty quickly this wasn’t about fixing problems," he said.
Rather than remain in the position under those circumstances, Barq decided it was better to leave.
“I really don’t have the patience to do that,” he said. “I also don’t want to be collecting money and do nothing, not be effective."
His departure became one of several leadership changes within the Public Services Department during the period examined in this reporting series.
A termination that reshaped a career
One former Public Services employee, who spoke to The Aoopka Voice on the condition of anonymity, decided to speak publicly following a very different exit from city government.
The employee worked in the Public Services Department, overseeing stormwater compliance and infrastructure inspections. During her time with the City, she said she raised concerns about several environmental and operational practices.
One involved using a stormwater Vactor truck (as referenced in part one), equipment designed to clean drainage systems, as a substitute for the sewer department's truck after the department’s truck broke down.
“You cannot do that because it’s cross-contamination,” she said.
The employee said she documented the concern and warned City leadership that if the practice continued, she would be required to report the issue to state regulators.
The Apopka Voice filed a public records request for those documents, but did not receive them by the time of publication.
Not long after, she was terminated.
“They made up a cause,” she said. “That’s the third thing that they made up about me and my record to just try to get rid of me.”
The Apopka Voice filed a public records request for those documents as well, but did not receive them by the time of publication.
During her work inspecting stormwater infrastructure, the employee said she also discovered maintenance issues that had not been addressed.
In one case, she said she discovered a collapsed stormwater pipe.
“We found a giant hole in the ground, probably the size of a car,” she said.
The employee said some infrastructure problems were difficult to track because records were incomplete.
“We have ponds that don’t work that we didn’t even know existed that were just overgrown,” she said.
She also described discovering what she believed was improper disposal of animal remains collected by city crews.
“I found a bunch of bags of dead animals,” she said.
According to her, the remains had been dumped on private property near Dream Lake before the practice was corrected.
The Apopka Voice filed a public records request for documents and photos related to the stormwater pipe, ponds, and animal remains, but did not receive them by the time of publication.
After leaving the City government, she moved into private-sector consulting, preparing stormwater compliance plans for development projects.
“It was one of the most traumatic parts of my life,” she said of her time in Apopka.
A candid voice that didn't last long
Former Apopka City Administrator Jacob Smith says many of the challenges he observed while working inside City Hall were less about budgets themselves and more about how decisions were made.
Smith stepped into the administrator role in April 2024 after departmental budgets had already been submitted, placing him in the middle of an already-developed planning process.
“When I came in, all the departments had submitted their budgets,” Smith said. “So it was a matter of going through the details and figuring out what realistically could move forward.”
Smith said one of the most significant difficulties was navigating disagreements about priorities and timing for infrastructure projects.
“There was a lot of argument back and forth about whether something needed to be done or shouldn’t be done,” Smith said. "That kind of uncertainty can affect long-term planning, particularly in growing cities where infrastructure demands are constantly evolving.
In some cases, Smith said, projects remained in the planning stage for extended periods while staff waited for direction.
“Some of them are sitting there on the shelf or halfway through the planning process,” Smith said.
Smith said the process of evaluating projects often involves balancing technical recommendations from staff with broader policy decisions made by leadership. As city administrator, he said his role was to provide clear financial and operational information to help guide those decisions.
“I’m not a politician,” Smith said. “I try to be ethical and honest about where things actually stand.”
Smith said that approach meant focusing on practical realities rather than messaging.
“My goal was to set the bar where we really needed to be,” he said. “If we could get anywhere closer to it, that would be better.”
The concerns Smith described in interviews also surfaced during Apopka’s 2024-25 budget workshops (as referenced in part two), where his presentations shifted from technical explanations to blunt warnings. When resident Rod Olsen asked whether the proposed budget provided everything departments needed, Smith broke from other officials.
“No, it’s not enough," adding that the shortfall affected every single department.
At a later workshop, Smith warned that public safety spending was rising faster than the City’s revenue growth, forcing Apopka to rely on reserves and pushing expenses past its income trend line.
He recommended increasing the millage rate to stabilize the budget.
Approximately six months later, in March 2025, Mayor Bryan Nelson terminated Smith just before the next budget cycle began.
A long institutional perspective
A former Apopka police chief who briefly stepped in as acting city administrator says the City’s leadership has placed too much emphasis on launching new projects while critical infrastructure needs remain unfinished.
Chuck Vavrek, who served as Apopka’s police chief from 1992 to 2011 and later as interim city administrator, said his disagreements with Nelson centered on what he described as a pattern of starting projects before completing existing ones (as referenced in part one)
“I’d had a meeting with him that he needed to stop creating projects, finish up what we had going on out there, and get them finished,” Vavrek said. “Within not even a week, he went out there and created another project.”
Vavrek said that moment marked a turning point in his relationship with the mayor.
“I was like, ‘He’s not holding true to his word,’” he said.
Vavrek said many of the city’s most pressing problems involve basic infrastructure rather than new development initiatives.
He also pointed to aging equipment within the City’s water infrastructure.
During a storm that caused power outages near U.S. 441 and Chick-fil-A, he said the city’s emergency backup generator at the Schuler Hills Water Treatment Plant failed.
“That generator’s over 30 years old,” he said.
The incident required coordination with Duke Energy to restore electrical service to the facility. Vavrek said equipment failures like that illustrate the importance of prioritizing core infrastructure needs.
Vavrek also raised concerns about how the City has managed its water utility's finances.
While Apopka frequently highlights the strength of its general fund reserves, he said the water system operates as an enterprise fund under state law and must sustain itself financially.
“They operate completely separate from the general fund,” he said. “They’re supposed to be self-sufficient.”
Vavrek said the finance staff informed him that the water utility had little remaining reserve funding after spending on projects.
"That prompted the city to revisit its water rate study," he said.
Despite his criticisms of leadership decisions, Vavrek said Apopka’s municipal workforce remains one of the City’s greatest strengths.
“You have some of the most qualified and best staff that work for that city that truly want to do the right thing if given the opportunity,” he said. "But they are understaffed and asked to wear too many hats."
Whether the city resolves its infrastructure challenges, he said, will ultimately depend on whether leadership focuses on those underlying systems rather than visible projects.
“The focus really needs to be on what really needs its attention,” he said.
A technical role behind the scenes
Another former employee who spoke with The Apopka Voice, who worked in the engineering department, requested anonymity because she still works in regional government.
She told The Apopka Voice she had high hopes for her role in Apopka, but over time, the department's culture changed.
“People got promoted over other people who were more qualified,” she said.
She also said employees across several divisions frequently raised concerns about limited resources and budget constraints.
“Everybody was complaining about money — not having money to do what they needed to do,” she said. “The city’s growing so much, but they’re not increasing the budget to maintain those streets that they’re adding,” she said.
Her position also faced budgeting challenges.
“I wasn’t included in the budget at all,” she said. “If I wanted anything, I had to fight for it.”
The message she often heard, she said, was simple.
“Just make do with what you got.”
Her job eventually ended in a layoff.
Why did they speak publicly?
None of the seven people interviewed for this series set out to become sources in a public investigation.
They were administrators, department staff, technicians, and longtime employees doing the daily work of running a city — reviewing budgets, maintaining infrastructure, managing departments, and carrying out policies set inside City Hall.
Over time, each of them encountered moments that stayed with them: projects that stalled, warnings that went unaddressed, decisions that took unexpected turns.
Individually, those moments may have seemed routine, but when the accounts were placed side by side, a pattern emerged.
It was that pattern, not any single interview, that ultimately shaped this series.
To read part one,
go here.
