- November 17, 2024
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Palm Coast’s Little League has ballooned over the past few years — from just 270 or so players three years ago to almost 600 predicted for the upcoming season — and the hundreds of parents, kids and volunteers who turn up for games have increasingly found themselves with no place to park, Little Leaguers told the City Council at its Dec. 2 meeting.
It’s so bad, one mom said during the meeting’s public comment period, that she drops her kids off at games in a car, then drives home and takes a bicycle back to the field to watch the game.
And those who do find parking might not find it nearby, leaving parents and kids to walk hundreds of yards along busy streets to get to games. Little League volunteers called the situation “dangerous.”
“It seems illogical that anybody can accept that the current situation is safe, reasonable, or to the advantage of Palm Coast Little League participants,” Little League volunteer Doug Berryhill said during the meeting. And, he said, the league “is regularly being asked to modify their team schedules to make way for out-of-town events,” like soccer and lacrosse tournaments that rent the Complex. Berryhill asked the council to “take action to resolve the parking problems.”
Parent Rich DeAugustino called parking at the complex “under-designed from day one,” but said that when they city installed coquina rocks, palm trees, curbs and “no parking” signs on the grass near the ball fields, it “removed the parking spaces parents were finding on the grass.”
Other parents said people were getting tickets for parking on the grass.
City Manager Jim Landon said there isn’t any easy solution to the parking problem. “We can’t go out and find more property that’s going to be convenient; I can tell you that right now,” he said.
The coquina rocks and curbing that parents said blocked grass parking, he said, were installed to keep people from parking on the sidewalks and thereby forcing kids to walk to games along the streets.
And the out-of-town games that parents have indignantly said shouldn’t displace the local Little League pay for the fields’ upkeep by rental fees, he said.
“During the time when we were making serious cuts during the hard recession, city staff proposed that we start charging fees to the users of our fields such as Indian Trails Sports Complex,” he said. “That got the attention of not just the Little League but all the other youth sports that said, ‘We don’t want to pay that.’” So the city decided to “see what we can do to encourage the (out-of-town) tournaments, and have the tournaments help the local economy.”
And the city hasn’t required Little League to reschedule games, he said. It has offered the use of Holland Park at times when other events would be taking place at Indian Trails.
As to parking tickets, he said, the city has spoken to the Sheriff’s Office, and “We have made it very clear that we are not interested in people getting cited unless they park in a place that causes public safety issues,” such as in a through-lane or in front of a fire hydrant
There was no simple, comprehensive solution proposed at the meeting.
Resident Lewis McCarthy suggested using a jitney system to ferry kids and parents to the fields form parking farther away. Councilman Steven Nobile suggested the league have some kind of “advocate” at the city to explain what its needs are.
Netts: City can’t block gas station
Several residents showed up at the Dec. 2 meeting to complain about the planned construction of a 4,250-square-foot convenience store and gas station on the corner of Pine Lakes Parkway and Wynnfield Drive, saying it would be out of character for the residential area, and cause traffic problems.
Mayor Jon Netts said there was nothing practical the city could do to block the project.
“That property was purchased, and with the purchase of that property go certain property rights,” he said. “That property was zoned commercial many, many, many years ago by ITT. They had a vision of neighborhood shopping so you wouldn’t have to drive so far. … One of the things that’s allowed is a gas station.”
The city’s only options to block the project would be to buy the property from the developer, refuse a building permit — which would land the city in court, in a losing battle — or change the zoning to residential, which would require the city to pay the owner for the difference in value. None of those options is feasible, he said.
Landon compared the situation to cases where residents complain when a vacant lot next to their home is developed. In either case, he said, “It is not something that City Council or staff can say no to. … We can not stop it via zoning or ... taking those property rights away.”
As to residents’ concerns about things like traffic issues, lighting and appearances, Netts said, “If I were a resident, I would probably convey my concerns to the developer, and say, ‘We’re not going to buy your gas unless you do this and this and this and this.’”
