- January 20, 2025
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The Palm Coast City Council and Flagler County School Board will both consider major issues this week: The School Board meets to select its next superintendent, while the City Council is set to discuss, among other topics, Florida Park Drive traffic, possible regulations for dollar stores, and a proposed impact fee increase to fund parks and recreation initiatives.
All local government boards let residents attend and comment (comments are limited to three minutes). Here's what's on their agendas this week.
Location: City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast.
Full agenda/backup: Click HERE.
Livestream: Go to https://bit.ly/2I5zxxG.
Notable agenda items:
Presentation: National Community Survey results for 2019: Every other year, Palm Coast participates in the National Community Survey conducted through the National Research Center, which uses a statistically sound, random-sampling method, according to a city staff presentation.
This year's survey was sent to 1,700 people, and 417 responded, according to the presentation. Palm Coast residents reported higher satisfaction in 2019 compared to 2017 in 34 areas overall, including crime prevention and fire prevention, overall quality of life, and general city services.
Respondents reported decreases in satisfaction in three areas: child care/preschool, housing options, and bus/transit options. Another 96 rating items got about the same scores as they did in 2017. View the full survey results and the city staff slide presentation at the agenda backup linked above, starting on page 4.
Presentation: SCORE and Business Review Extreme: The City Council's Business Friendly Initiative has prompted a city staff effort to simplify and clarify the permitting/approval process for businesses that want to open in Palm Coast. The new process, called "BRX" for "Business Review Extreme," involves city staff members serving as point people to work with individual business owners to guide them through the process. The city is also partnering with SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, which offers mentoring and workshops at the Business Assistance Center, according to the workshop backup documentation.
Presentation: Florida Park Drive: In an attempt to limit unnecessary commercial traffic on residential Florida Park Drive, the City Council voted late last year to ban certain types of heavy trucks from the street. That has been enforced by the Sheriff's Office since Feb. 21, according to a city presentation.
But the city is also looking at other options, including a landscaping grant program to create a vegetative noise buffer.
A community meeting about traffic issues on the street also brought out more than 70 people from 58 households on Jan. 29.
Residents expressed concerns about the location of a stop bar at Palm Harbor Parkway and Palm Coast Parkway, and about a poor asphalt patch at 141 Florida Park Drive. They also requested a flashing light at the entrance to Holland Park.
The city will adjust the stop bar and inspect the asphalt patch to determine if changes are needed, and will look into the feasibility and cost of adding a flashing light for Holland Park, according to the presentation.
Presentation: Options for regulating dollar stores: Palm Coast is partway through a 120-day moratorium on the addition of new dollar stores in the city.
The council unanimously approved a "legislation in progress" moratorium in January in order to give city staff time to research options for regulating the stores in light of some council members' concerns that they might crowd out healthier grocery options.
But the moratorium ends on May 13, and city staff will present regulatory options to the council at its March 10 workshop.
One councilman who initially voted for the moratorium, Jack Howell, has since expressed reservations — and, along with Councilman Bob Cuff, voted against the moratorium when it came before the council as an ordinance on first reading March 3. Howell said he's been trying to recruit out-of-state aviation-related businesses to come to Palm Coast, and that two companies told him they’d read about the moratorium and that it made them question whether the city was business-friendly.
A city staff slide presentation on potential regulatory options, due to be presented to the council during the March 10 workshop, notes that one possibility is to leave things as they are and take no action. But if the council does decide to regulate the stores, potential regulations include the following, according to the presentation:
Presentation: Parks and Recreation impact fees: Palm Coast's Parks and Recreation impact fee is currently $849 per residential dwelling unit, including a $576 discount, and was last reviewed in 2014. The city is considering raising it.
City staff gave an initial presentation to the City Council on Jan. 14 about a possible increase to $1,550 per unit. Since then, staff held a public meeting on the topic and met with the Flagler Home Builders Association. Staff members will report their findings to the council at its March 10 workshop.
Discussion: City manager evaluation process: Palm Coast hired City Manager Matt Morton in March 2019, and he has not yet had a formal performance evaluation from the City Council.
But his employment agreement requires one annually, and on March 10 city staff will present the City Council with a sample performance evaluation form to consider options for the evaluation process.
The seven-page sample form has six pages worth of checkbox-style rating items for dozens of individual performance measures organized under four headings: Assisting council with is policy-making role; internal administration, external relations, and personal accomplishments. Each section has a box for narrative comments. A separate narrative response section makes up the final page, and asks five open-ended questions about the city manager's performance.
Location: Government Services Building 2, third floor conference room, 1769 E. Moody Blvd., Bunnell.
Full agenda/backup: Go to https://bit.ly/2T9lZYj.
Livestream: Go to https://bit.ly/2I3wplA.
The School Board will hold a special meeting March 10 to choose one of four finalists to be its next superintendent, taking the place of Superintendent James Tager, who is retiring at the end of his contract on June 30, 2020.
The four finalists, who have been selected from an initial 35 who applied, are: Vernon Orndorff, superintendent of a 250-student school district in Texas and a former Flagler Schools assistant superintendent; Earl Johnson, Flagler Schools' district's executive director of leadership development; Cathy Mittelstadt, a deputy superintendent in St. Johns County; and Janet Womack, an educational consultant in Texas and former superintendent of a district in Alabama.
