- November 6, 2024
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Palm Coast may get a city charter review. But whether it will happen — and what form it will take if it does — is still uncertain.
Residents, City Attorney Bill Reischmann told council members at a City Council meeting May 30, tend to assume that a charter review would be led by a citizen committee. That's not necessarily so.
"It's an option," he said. "It's common, but it's not mandatory."
In fact, there are three ways to change the city's charter, all of which ultimately require a referendum, Reischmann said. One is by adding an amendment through a referendum after collecting petition signatures from at least 10% of the registered electorate. The second is by having City Council make a list of possible amendments, and submitting them to the electorate for a referendum vote. The third is by holding a charter review, then submitting for a referendum the changes proposed in the charter review.
If the city decides to hold a charter review, it could decide to use a resident-led charter review committee. The city's current charter dictates the form that committee must take: five members, one each appointed by the four council members from among residents of their district, plus one at-large member appointed by the mayor. The appointments would have to be made at least a year before an upcoming general election.
But the council could also decide to review the charter on its own, an approach council members and the city administration seemed to favor.
"When you have a charter review committee that starts at A and goes to Z in the charter, generally speaking, you’ve got five laypeople, and, I mean this not as judgement, but they may not have much experience in local government," Reischmann said. "When you start getting into the specifics of the charter … it gets into the weeds, and there’s a lot of details, and there’s a lot of legalities that are contained."
If the city uses a citizen charter review committee, Reischmann said, it would probably need to assign someone to assist the committee. A facilitator, he said, could cost anywhere from $6,000 to $27,000.
Milissa Holland, there city's mayor, has gone through the charter review process before — not with the city, but with the county, when she served as a county commissioner. It didn't go well.
The citizen committee process, she said, "doesn't necessarily appeal to me, just because I went through this whole charter review as a county commissioner," she said. The process took about half a year, she said, and "it took a tremendous amount of resources from our staff to really inform them, and educate them as to, for example, 'You recommend this; this is the effect.'"
And then the County Commission didn't accept any of the committee's suggestions, she said, because commissioners understood that the proposed changes "were not necessarily the most efficient effective way to do the day-to-day business of running our county government."
Holland said the City Council should handle any potential charter review on its own.
"We were elected by the majority of the residents in this city to make decisions on their behalf in the best interests of the residents, and I think each one of us takes that very, very seriously," she said.
Councilwoman Heidi Shipley said she'd been messaged by someone who was starting a petition for a charter review. The resident hadn't mentioned any specific things they wanted changed.
Shipley agreed with Holland, preferring a charter review process led by the council after a series of meetings with the public to take public comment.
So did Councilman Bob Cuff, who noted that most comments he'd heard from the public in favor of a charter review centered around issues that wouldn't actually require a charter review.
"The feeling that I get from the people that are talking to me about charter review… It’s this vague feeling that, 'charter review: good; not charter review: bad.'" Cuff said. "I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but that’s kind of the input that I’ve gotten so far."
City Councilman Steven Nobile said residents have mentioned to him a number of things they'd like to see changed in the charter that are in fact issues dealt with in the charter. But he agreed with the rest of the council on taking public comment and then considering a council-led review process.
Holland suggested that the process take place after snow birds return to town and after the city's budget process is complete.
The council developed a consensus to hold meetings with the public about the possibility of a charter review and to seek feedback on what parts of the charter residents might be interested in amending.
"I think information gathering first is the way to go," Cuff said.
