13 Applicants, Including Several Familiar Names, Apply to Fill Palm Coast Council Seat Vacated by Stevens

By the time the application window closed at 5 p.m. today 13 candidates had filed for the District 3 seat on the Palm Coast City Council that Ray Stevens resigned at the end of February. The list includes several familiar names, among them Dave Ferguson, a former appointee to the council, Dave Sullivan, who just ended two terms on the County Commission, Cornelia Manfre, who has had three unsuccessful runs for a council seat or the mayorship, Mark Stancel, who lost a primary vote to Stevens by two votes, and Andrew Werner, who lost to Stevens.

A disproportionate number of candidates are from Grand Haven. Many are highlighting their Republican Executive Committee connections to gain favor with an all-Republican council. The council will make its choice in early to mid-April.

Whoever the council appoints will be joining a county and a city in turmoil. The four-member council is launching an investigation of Mayor Mike Norris, who unilaterally, in a private meeting, demanded that Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston and Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo resign (according to Johnston’s confirmation of the demand), and who has been the subject of mounting internal complaints to human resources about his behavior toward city employees.

The council just approved a half-billion dollar utility spending plan predicated on the sharpest rate increase in the city’s history, at the end of a meeting rife with partisanship in support for Norris and against his proposed building moratorium (which failed).




Into the maelstrom the council just invited five candidates to interview for the city manager position. Those interviews will not be conducted until after the District 3 member is seated.

Stevens resigned a seat he barely occupied after his November election when his health quickly deteriorated. The appointee will join Charles Gambaro as a pair of non-elected members of the council whose terms will end at the 2026 election, for which they would be eligible to run for full four-year terms. It will be the first time in the city’s 26-year history that two-fifth of its representation is appointed, though appointees have been nearly a dime a dozen in the past half dozen years.

The city is split into four districts, with a council member theoretically representing each. Council members are all elected at large and represent the city as a whole, but with a focus on their individual district. The mayor is elected at large, without a district affiliation. District 3 is roughly the southeast quadrant of the city, with the P Section, Grand Haven and Seminole Woods forming its plurality.

Here’s a rundown of the District 3 candidates. Their full applications are linked:

Mark Burton: A Seminole Woods resident, Burton, 71, owned and ran an RV park of 75 sites and five employees for four years in Arkansas until last July (he’s only been a Palm Coast resident for eight months), and was in software sales for Splunk, the software platform. He’s chaired a community redevelopment board and a landscape review board and is a retired architect, licensed in Florida. “I’ve owned 3 businesses in my career before retiring in 2024,” he wrote in a brief cover letter. “As a serial business entrepreneur, I am very adept in working with city governmental agencies, financial institutions and high net worth individuals to grow and enhance cities in responsible ways.”




Doug Courtney: Courtney, 70, a P-Section resident, is a past candidate for a few local offices, including the council. He has run ExecData, a consultancy, since 2008, and was previously town clerk and city clerk in Beverly Beach and in Palm Coast’s founding days. He played a prominent role in advocacy for the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club as the school district gradually withdrew support for the public operation of that facility. Courtney had led a membership group that used the club. Cheryl Massaro, a former member of the School Board who had also advocated in vain for the club is among his references.

“I have gained many skills related to City Council work and duties,” he wrote in his application, citing his many years of varied experience. “I have
worked with community organizations to advance programs and ideas with city, county, state, and federal level. As an owner/founder of many business enterprises I know how to lead and when to make the hard decisions.”

Dave Ferguson: The 73-year-old resident of Grand Haven has one distinction none of the 12 other candidates have: he has been through just such an appointment process for the Council, was the council’s choice out of 16 applicants (Greg Hansen, subsequently appointed to the County Commission, was among the applicants), and distinguished himself in the two years he served until 2014. (He filled the seat the late Frank Meeker resigned before his successful run for the County Commission.) The puzzle was why he then declined to run in the 2014 election.




A retired corporate executive, he’d been vice president of Bank Capital Group, a commercial manager with Inspec (now Ineos), and vice president of marketing and sales for PCR, now Millikan/SiVance. “As a former Senior Executive and co-owner of a business, I have extensive commercial and managerial experience on a worldwide basis,” he writes. “My analytical skills coupled with communication and people skills are a major asset in this capacity. Having been a resident of Northeast Florida for 42 years. I have a keen understanding of the strategic location of Palm Coast between Jacksonville and Orlando.” His references include Sheriff Rick Staly and AdventHealth’s John Subers, executive director of the East Florida Region Foundation.

Michael Flanagan: The 72-year-old Grand Haven resident is a retired director of business development in sales and marketing. He did not turn in a resume and did not list his last employer. “I have had the privilege of serving my communities in Illinois on city boards, community restoration programs and special boards,” including Grand Haven’s Community Development District Board, he wrote, where he became familiar with the Sunshine law and oversaw a budget.

Cornelia Downing Manfre: The 67-year-old Grand Haven resident and commercial real estate broker last November made it through the primary but lost to Mike Norris, now the mayor, with 37 percent of the vote (when she raised alarms about Norris’s temper and potentially mercurial relations with city staff). She had previously lost a mayoral bid to David Alfin, and a 2020 run for a City Council seat. Though a fiscal conservative by instinct and policy positions–she would be indistinguishable from a hard-right Republican on that score–her affiliation with the Democratic Party in an ever-reddening county has not helped her political fortunes. ” I have the experience to bring negotiating skills, financial analysis, [and] issue prioritization to the community,” she writes.

Joan Paulus: Given the tenor of this council, Paulus’s name will vault to the attention of several of them because of her deep background in corporate recruiting, a skill that would have made her a useful fit for the council’s city manager search were it not to be over by the time the new council member is seated. It is also a moot skill beyond that, on a board where council members get to fire and hire only the city manager and the city attorney, something they hope not to have to do at least for a few years, though recent history suggests otherwise. Beyond that, the last thing the council and the next city manager need, or can legally exercise, as Norris is discovering, is an administrative meddler.




Paulus, 71, a Grand Haven resident, has been a corporate recruiter for the majority of her career until becoming a Realtor with Grand Living Realty for almost the last two years. Suzie Johnston, the former mayor of Flagler Beach, the current chair of that city’s planning board, and a Grand Living Realty staffer (who would have been an ideal council member were her address different), is among Paulus’s references. Paulus is focusing on her recruiting experience when she explains why she believes she would be a good fit for the council seat, writing that she can “apply my experience to supporting City Council in a professional manner.”

Eugene Perez: The 79-year-old R-Section resident who is best known as Gene Perez is a self-employed insurance salesman based in Ormond Beach, through Sunsure Insurance Solutions. Under business, professional, civic or fraternal organizations he’s been a member of, he lists just one: the Flagler County Republican Executive Committee (Perry Mitrano, the REC’s chair, is one of his references, as is Sharon Demers, another REC member). He describes himself as “a good analyst and problem solver.” He intends to ask: “Is it necessary? Why do we do it this way? What does it cost us to keep doing it this way?” He also adds: “I hope to help set a direction before the next election and then turn it over to my successor. It is not my intent to run for reelection.”




Chad Raymond: The youngest applicant at 40, the Seminole Woods resident is also among those who have been in Palm Coast the longest (18 years), arriving here on the lee side of the housing bubble in 2007. Since 2015 he’s been the co-owner of Raymond Appraisal, the real estate appraisal service, as well as the Raymond Realty Group since 2017. He has some 20 years’ service in the Air Force and Sir Force Reserves, and 10 years as a cop–in criminal investigations, as a patrolman, as a field training officer–with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office between 2006 and 2016. “My combined leadership and management experience in the military, law enforcement, and as a local small business owner,” he writes, “will benefit the Council and Residents of District 3 by providing an open-minded, ethical, and competent perspective free from outside influence or advocacy.”

Dave Sullivan: Seemingly antsy about full retirement from politics, Sullivan, 83, a Grand Haven resident, last November ended eight years on the County Commission, and has since been appointed to the county’s Value Adjustment Board. He lists Donald O’Brien, who served the same eight years on the commission, as one of his references. He’s chaired the REC in the past. On the commission, he maintained a relatively centrist, pragmatic, candid approach to public policy, grasping complex issues quickly and distilling them to their essentials while maintaining good relations with colleagues–at times to a fault: He was no stranger to turmoil on that panel. His years straddled those of Joe Mullins, the chief disrupter of local politics at the time, though Sullivan, a close ally, repeatedly declined to censure his colleague regardless of his egregious behavior on and off the commission.

Scott Pillath, 55, a resident of the P-Section, is coming off a rejection by the City Council as one of the 38-some applicants for city manager. He barely made the first shortlist on the strength of his local address, which Norris favored, though he got bottom marks from two other council members. He did not make the second cut, getting almost across-the-board bottom marks. He lists his employment as an “advisor” to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol following 25 years in the Army (the one pedigree that vaults to the highest attention for several council members, whatever else may be on the candidate’s resume.)

His courage is nearly undaunted: he openly terms himself a “humanist” (though he is completing a doctorate in public administration from Liberty University, where humanism is not king). He emphasizes reason, ethics and dignity in his definition of humanism, and doesn’t see it as a complement rather than a contradiction of Christianity. The Palm Coast City Council’s most notable humanist was the late Jerry Full, one of the city’s founders.




Despite applying for a job or a seat from several avowed Trump supporters, he prominently cited his recently acquired DEI certification from the University of Florida in his city manager application. “My DEI certifications will enable me to lead initiatives that promote diversity within Palm Coast’s workforce and community,” he wrote in a cover letter he tempered somewhat when he submitted it for the council seat. “I am committed to fostering an environment that embraces varied perspectives, ensuring that all residents and employees can contribute to and benefit from the city’s growth. These skills are critical as Palm Coast continues to evolve and embrace its diversity.” He clarified in an interview, about DEI: “I don’t embrace it the way the ultra-left believes. I still believe in hiring the best candidate for the job.”

Dana Mark Stancel: The 74-year-0old Seminole Woods resident developed a friendship with Ray Stevens, the man whose seat he now seeks to fill, as he and Stevens battled in last year’s election, then in the most closely contested election in the city’s history, losing to Stevens by two votes. He had by then pledged his support to Stevens, just as Stevens had pledged his support to Stancel if he were to lose. The pledge worked. Even though their opponent, Andrew Werner, had won more votes than either of them, Stevens won. They have remained friends since, and Stevens is one of his references.

Stancel had two careers, the first in the Army (21 years), the second in the the U.S. Postal Service, from where he retired in 2012. He continued working at a farm and home supply store until 2020. In 2021, he was appointed to the Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board, then to the  Palm Coast Planning Board, giving him significantly more in-the-trenches experience of city government than any of the applicants. He knows his politics: though the position is non-partisan (a non-partisanship acknowledged only with smirks and nudges in the ribs), Stancel brazenly notes in his application that he is a “fiscal conservative Republican.” As of June 2024, he was a registered Democrat–the party he listed on his FlaglerLive candidate interview, in which he sounded more conservative than most–as is his wife, who chairs the city’s drainage advisory committee.




Candace Stevens: The 56-year-old bartender, pastry chef, lead server, front-of-house manager and resident of the P-Section known as Kandi came to prominence in the last couple of years as the administrator of Flooded in Palm Coast, the Facebook Page that garnered over 1,000 followers and helped propel the council through one of its muddiest controversies. Residents of Palm Coast’s originally platted neighborhoods complained that as new homes sprouted around them, at higher base elevations, they were getting flooded. Stevens’s campaign led to the creation of the drainage committee mentioned above.

Since 2021 Stevens has worked at Santiago’s Restaurant in St. Augustine, after a couple of years as a server at Grand Haven Golf Club and a service adviser at Palm Coast and Daytona Beach and other car dealerships for many years before that. She cites her “proven ability to hold town halls and enrich public engagement” and “experience with media and news interviews” among her skills for the council seat.

Andrew Werner: The 46-year-old P-Section resident had been the leading vote-getter in the primary, but Stevens beat him handily in the runoff, taking 58 percent of the vote. A school psychologist, Werner is employed by Boston-based Stepping Stones Group, working on a contractual basis with various school districts. He lists his various Republican credentials under his civic, professional or fraternal organizations. “My experience serving the community as an educator, counselor, case manager, juvenile justice worker, coach, and active church member has taught me to listen, problem solve, and lead in making positive change with long term results,” he writes. He lists three pastors as his references, including Greg Peters, the Parkview Church pastor who’s fancied himself, with occasional success, a local kingmaker.

Applicants will be interviewed by the City Council in open session at a workshop on April 1 at 3 p.m. The City Council will discuss the applicants during at the April 8 workshop at 6 p.m., and make the appointment at the April 15 meeting at 9 a.m. Public input will be heard at each meeting.

Note: this is an updated and revised version of an article that first ran on March 14.