- December 10, 2024
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Over 100 capital projects are in some phase of progress and a number of them are set to begin construction in 2025, Stormwater and Engineering Director Carl Cote said.
Cote provided an overview of current and future capital projects at a Strategic Planning retreat for city staff on Dec. 9, held at the Southern Recreation Center. The meeting — filled with city department heads and the new Palm Coast City Council members —provided a crash course overview of Palm Coast’s current state of the city and capital projects and also provided an overview for of how the next budget session will work.
Cote said the projects under constructions and planned for construction total $251.5 million, with 26.5% of that funding coming from impact fees and another 35.6% from grants and state appropriation funding. The projects vary from road improvements, flood management, wastewater treatment plant expansions and parks and facilities.
Between 2024-2027, multiple major city projects are either already in progress or will begin construction, according to Cote’s presentation.
The Wastewater Treatment Facility 2 expansion project began construction in August 2022 and is set to finish in August 2025. Cote said the expansion will increase the facility’s treatment rate from 2 million gallons per day to 4 million gallons per day.
That, in turn, he said, will also allow the city to divert some of the flow treated at Facility 1 to Facility 2, alleviating some of the capacity issues plaguing Wastewater Treatment Facility 1.
The Colbert Culvert replacement project has been in design stages for four years and is set to begin construction in the spring of 2025. A $5 million project, the culverts at the crossing on Colbert Lane will be replaced with larger ones to accommodate more stormwater during large rain events.
Typically, the Woodlands area near these culverts flood from stormwater overflow during hurricanes and large rainstorms. Residents have been waiting on a solution for the problem for years.
Another long-awaited project is the city’s Maintenance Operations Complex, which has been a part of the city’s master plan since 2016.
The complex will consolidate several departments into a single centralized location. Phase 1 of construction, the site development portion, will begin in February. Construction on the facility buildings themselves won’t begin until February 2026, extending through September 2029.
PLANNING FOR FUNDING
During the meeting, Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo handed out a list of projects and areas of concerns that are on the city’s radar for the next couple years.
Among those impending policy items includes funding for capital projects. Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston said raising impact fees — for transportation, park and recreation and fire — is one of the policy changes that is in the city’s two-year outlook.
The city is looking at conducting studies toward those impact fees in the future, she said.
“Water and wastewater infrastructure is important to us. Road improvements are important to us, building that quality of life with stormwater, reducing the risk of flooding, and parks and facilities, all of those are important, and we have active projects in the pipeline trying to accomplish all those things,” she said. “But what kind of hinges us in that success is, do we have the accurate funding for it?”
All five council members attended the meeting, with Vice Mayor Theresa Carli Pontieri attending virtually. Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris told city department heads that, in a lot of cases, they would have to “make do with what they had.”
“Be smart about your hiring and try to find cost savings for the city,” Norris said. “I think we’ll be in a pinch for the next year, a couple of years.”
