- November 20, 2024
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Updated 12:43 p.m. Nov. 13
The Palm Coast City Council voted 3-1 to censure Vice Mayor Ed Danko for allegedly working with citizens to sue the city over a Nov. 5 charter amendment while also representing the city in that same lawsuit.
A censure is mostly a parliamentary procedure, City Attorney Marcus Duffy said, where council members can vote to censure another member for behavior that is unbecoming or who has not followed council policies. At the Nov. 12 council meeting, council member Theresa Carli Pontieri made the motion to censure Danko with failing to follow the council’s procedures regarding decorum after a FlaglerLive article posted on Oct. 29 showcased text messages between Danko and a Palm Coast resident over a lawsuit against the city.
The messages showed Danko attempting to recruit the resident to file a lawsuit against the city’s charter amendment, according to the article.
“The conflict of interest in this regard is inexplicable,” Pontieri said. “The mental gymnastics that had to have been taking place — I can't even imagine.”
Palm Coast resident Alan Lowe filed his complaint against Palm Coast and the charter amendment on Sept. 20. The day after Lowe filed his complaint, Danko appeared on Lowe’s podcast show, “The I Told Ya Show” on the YouTube channel Flagler Voice.
There, Danko thanked Lowe for filing the suit and “standing up for the people of Palm Coast.” Danko initially voted for the charter amendment to go on the ballot but changed his mind in August and began campaigning to remove it from the Nov. 5 ballot.
Palm Coast resident Jeani Duarte — implicated in FlaglerLive’s article as the first person Danko approached to file a lawsuit against the city’s charter amendment — has also appeared on Lowe’s podcast show.
Duarte filed her own complaint against the charter amendment on Sept. 25, though it was immediately tossed out by the judge for being “legally insufficient.” Duarte’s complaint was not represented by an attorney, according to the Flagler Clerk of Courts website.
Lowe’s complaint was also ultimately rejected by the judge just days ahead of the election, though the amendment failed at the ballot box regardless.
Pontieri said Danko should not have been working with residents to sue the city, nor then participating in a shade meeting — a legal, closed-door meeting of council members and attorneys regarding on-going lawsuits — with the council on that same lawsuit.
“To me, [that] is censurable behavior,” she said.
Pontieri also called on Duffy to begin looking into an ethics violation complaint for Danko’s behavior regarding the lawsuit.
“That type of behavior should not be acceptable by the city, or by the county, and it's not something that I think that should happen in the future,” Pontieri said. “I fear if we don't take action now, we are setting ourselves up for this type of behavior to occur in the future.”
I fear if we don't take action now, we are setting ourselves up for this type of behavior to occur in the future.”
— THERESA CARLI PONTIERI, Palm Coast City Council member
Danko was not present to defend himself — he left the four-hour long meeting early for an appointment, and Pontieri was not able to address her concerns until the end of the business meeting during City Council member comments.
In a statement sent Nov. 13, Danko wrote: “This is typical Pontieri behavior, like a spoiled child lashing out in anger because she did not get her way. She is distraught because the bonds failed and she didn’t get a blank check from the voters, she didn’t get her pick to fill the vacant council seat, she didn’t get her half-percent sales tax increase, and I stopped her attempt at imposing an FPL franchise fee. Her only recourse is to try and censor free speech with false second-hand accusations. [...] She can’t stomach the fact that I have been the only person who has stood between her and the taxpayer’s money, and I wear this Censuring as a badge of honor.”
Council member Charles Gambaro was the sole vote against the censure, with Mayor David Alfin and council member Nick Klufas voting for it.
Klufas seconded Pontieri’s motion and said that during his tenure as council member, he had just two regrets: not standing up to Danko more when he was campaigning and “spreading lies” against previous Mayor Melissa Holland, and “ever allowing him to have the title of vice mayor, hoping he would become more of an adult and be able to understand the enormity of the situation and the title itself.”
While the lawsuit was Pontieri’s primary concern, she said she could not continue to stay silent against other issues with Danko’s behavior she had heard about, including threatening staff, threatening fellow council members and his lack of professional courtesy and decorum online.
Alfin said he was conflicted with the motion. Unlike Pontieri, who has addressed Danko’s behavior and comments online during council meetings before, Alfin has not commented on the multiple of GIF images Danko has posted online regarding the charter amendment and Alfin. The GIFs — short, repeating online images — typically featured Alfin’s face with a mocking audio placed over top and referenced the charter amendment.
We are free to disagree. I don't want to impose on anybody's freedom of speech, but we also have a certain level of decorum that we must conduct ourselves with."
— THERESA CARLI PONTIERI, Palm Coast City Council member
Pontieri called the images disrespectful.
“We are free to disagree,” she said. “I don't want to impose on anybody's freedom of speech, but we also have a certain level of decorum that we must conduct ourselves with.”
For Alfin, he said he did not want his vote on a censure to appear retaliatory as he had ignored Danko’s online posts until now.
“I think we have worked towards decorum, but there have been episodes and incidents which certainly I'm not okay with,” Alfin said. “My reservation is that having been the target and remaining silent I do not want this to appear to be a retaliatory or any kind of a reaction.”
