- November 23, 2024
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Only two candidates remain on the ballot for Palm Coast's mayor seat: Mike Norris and Cornelia Manfre.
On Aug. 20, Primary Election Day, Norris led with 31.3% of the vote, with Manfre close behind with 23.7%, knocking current Mayor David Alfin and two others from the race. With just two months before the general election, the Observer sat down with Norris and Manfre to gather their thoughts on the city.
Below, get to know Manfre's thoughts on what she thinks needs to change in Palm Coast, the best way to manage growth and what experience she brings to the table.
I decided to run for mayor to be able to bring my experience to help administer the rules and regulations of our city, to make it productive and, also, make better our customer service to the public. I’m also very concerned about the lack of commercial industrial development. We’re at 8% of our monies collected that come from commercial — we should be at 20% to 30% — so we have got to focus on economic development and jobs, jobs, jobs.
I was working with companies that wanted to bring jobs here, and they were being told that we did not have proper infrastructure and our timing for approval would take too long. That was my biggest concern: that we are losing companies that have wanted to look here, but they’re finding it difficult to get through the process.
I’m 40 years in business, which puts me in a different category. I’ve done corporate real estate for 20 years; 25 years doing commercial and economic development here in Flagler County; I’ve worked on numerous companies coming into the county. I have the temperament, I have the business knowledge, I have the financial acumen that sets me apart for the experience that I have.
The corporations that I worked for were all Fortune 100 companies — American Express, City Bank, UA Theaters, etc. — and they trained and expected the employees to be able to forecast and administer numerous locations. So, I’ve had that experience in my past, what I bring today is what I’ve been doing for the last 40 years, which is commercial and industrial investment, advising, bringing jobs and companies to Flagler County.
I worked in corporations, but then when I worked for Dunkin’ (Donuts) at Baskin-Robbins, I had to learn how to coach and counsel franchisees. I went from admin- istering for a company to training franchisees how to seek and find locations, and I was the approval person. So there were specific parameters that had to be met. Not only was I trained to do it myself, I had to train others, so I’m very comfortable in training people in different types of physicians. I learned at United Artist Theaters.
I worked on 850 locations categorizing to be able to show that I could actually administer locations and understand the leases and the ownership parameters of theater development and corporate ownerships.
I believe we need a really strong city manager to get the guidance to the council. The council should not be running the city at all. Your city manager conducts the business of this city. We need a good, strong candidate for that position that will free us up, the council, to be the meet and greet people for companies looking to come in here. That is very important, and my biggest thing is getting commercial industrial development here as soon as possible.
The first thing you need to do is have everything working at the City Hall for application process and getting companies to an approval process. We have to have commercial development. We also need to be able to market ourselves. So you have
to fix what’s going on inside City Hall first, and then you can project out and market yourself.
We have good school system. We have great medical coverage here. We’ve got other hospitals that are interested in coming to Palm Coast. We also have technology companies. There’s a new company that just purchased 20 acres in Flagler County to build solar panels. We’ve got some international companies looking at us — but we have to be able to market ourselves and package ourselves so that people get interest right away. We don’t have that.
I have asked the city in the past to come to conferences. I just came from a conference [the International Council of Shopping Centers] where the cities of Orlando, Tampa, St. [Petersburg] — all of these other cities where they’re looking for development and companies to look at their spaces. Palm Coast has never attended, and I think that’s very critical to get to conferences where these business and site selectors are to get them interested in Palm Coast.
So, we have to fix our process in City Hall, get a good city manager, and then create a marketing package for our city to entice people to come and look here and build.
[These conferences] are your huge national companies, and it’s great exposure. They build for a lot of the end users, the business users. And I’ve been attending these conferences for almost 30 years. Great networking, great contact, and that’s what we need to do. We need to be able to get to these type of conferences and have a good marketing piece for the city.
That’s sort of a three-pronged question. The properties that are zoned for commercial development, I think, is what we need to focus on, being able to bring in companies that will bring jobs, jobs, jobs, is critical.
But when it comes down to commercial and industrial and residential developments, we have a good code system, if we adhere to our code system. I would like to institute some additional buffer- ing from the main roads for these developments so that they’re not hitting you in the face. But I think if we keep our nature preserve — which is what ITT Corp. planned on here, keeping all of your parkways and byways very buffered. I think that’s very critical — that’ll keep that feeling of a lot of nature in our city. I think that is absolutely critical to preserve as much as possible while bringing in good development. There are ways of buffering buildings that it still makes it very attractive.
The other point of any kind of development, which is the point of concern for why I got into this, is about our infrastructure. What- ever it’s going to be — commercial, industrial, medical, residential — we must make sure that we have proper infrastructure. That is going to be one of the key components when I start is a complete review of infrastructure: road, paving, swale maintenance, count, the canals. All of these have to be reviewed, and a plan put forth for their maintenance.
I think they're looking for people that can compromise, negotiate. Those are very important components, and that's what was lacking from this current council, I believe. You have to look at the facts, apply your opinion, know what the public would like to see and be able to incorporate them. I have 40 years of trained negotiating skills, and that's what I bring to the table. So looking for each council person's opinion of whatever the subject matter is and coming to a fulfilled compromise with each of them to move the business along.
