The Palm Coast City Council this morning briskly and collegially if tentatively approved ballot proposals that would amend the city charter regarding council appointments and special elections, council pay and benefits, candidate requirements to qualify for office, city borrowing limits, and the powers of the council to remove or censure council members or the mayor.
The council’s top three priorities for amendments to appear on the November ballot would address filling vacancies, the borrowing limit, and council disciplinary powers.
The proposals were among the priorities from 35 recommendations submitted by the Charter Review Committee the council appointed last summer. The committee developed the recommendations over six months of meetings.
The council’s challenge in a meeting that stretched to three hours and 40 minutes was to pare down the number of recommendations that would make it onto the November ballot, so as not to overburden voters. The council combined several recommendations under single initiatives and shifted several others away from the charter, to future administrative or policy initiatives.
“The reality is that when it comes to putting amendments on a ballot, there’s going to be a certain amount of voter fatigue if they’re presented with 15 choices to vote on,” Council member Ty Miller said. The council aimed for concision and specificity to ensure that the most important ballot proposals don’t get sacrificed to voter fatigue.
The current borrowing limit is $15 million, the same as it was when the city was incorporated in 1999. Amending it is a council priority. (The limit applies only to loans backed by the general fund.) But the council could not decide what the new amount should be, and will discuss that further in the near future.
When it comes to disciplining its own, the council agreed that, while it has no power to remove a member, it may not request a removal by the governor–who has that power–without at least three censures of the council member in question.
The filling of council vacancies had been the impetus for convening a charter review, following the controversial appointment of Charles Gambaro in October 2024, and the lawsuit triggered by Norris (which Norris lost). For that reason, fixing the charter language in that regard was the committee’s top priority. It is also the council’s.
The proposed amendment is intended to eliminate a repeat: the charter language will be such that vacancies and special elections will not be left to interpretation.
The ballot language will sum up the following: if a vacancy occurs, whether for the mayor’s seat or a council seat, and no election is scheduled within the next 12 months, the council must, within 30 days of the vacancy, announce a special election. If the vacancy occurs within six months of an election, the council may appoint a replacement. The seat would still have to be up for a popular vote at the next scheduled election. If an election is not practicable within that window, the council may still appoint, but the new council must call for a special election within 30 days of being seated, with a special election within 90 days.
The charter committee had proposed giving the council the option of leaving the seat vacant if the vacancy occurs within six months of an election. Council members were opposed to that.
Norris said cost should not be an obstacle to special elections. “It is imperative that the person that’s sitting in that seat is elected by the people,” he said. “You say, okay, the cost? Well, we’ll absorb that cost to represent the people by elections.” A special election could cost around $100,000 to $120,000. The city’s reserves are generally more than 20 times that amount.
Pontieri agreed about holding elections but was concerned about cost. “I just don’t want to say, no matter what, we’re going to hold a special election regardless of the cost,” she said, “because that comes out of the city manager’s budget. That budget is very tight. It’s general fund money. It’s tied to property taxes.”
The aim, Dumont said, is to avoid situations that result in appointed members serving two years or more. That means calling for a special election within 30 days of a vacancy, leaving the details to the council–without 60-day or 90-day deadlines for an actual election. “The intent is that nobody sits in an appointed seat or any length of time without having to go before the voters,” Dumont said. She heard no disagreements.
To spur swifter special elections, Norris had said, quoting a statement made during his court hearing, that “Palm Coast does not need the supervisor of election for an election.”
Norris had misunderstood both the statement and the context of that statement, which was made by Deputy County Attorney Sean Moylan. “Municipalities do not have to use the Supervisor of Elections for their elections under Florida law. Counties do. Municipalities do not,” Moylan had said. But he had said that in answer to a procedural question from the judge regarding the potential for an injunction, which Moylan said would have to target the city clerk, not the supervisor.
None of that had anything to do with running the election, which the supervisor does for Palm Coast regardless, through a joint agreement, because the supervisor has all the infrastructure, hardware and experience to do so. The city clerk does not, and could not run an election without the city buying that equipment and standing up the infrastructure, even if, theoretically, the city could do just that. So the city would still have to coordinate its special elections with the supervisor’s office.
City Attorney Marcus Duffy will draft the proposed ballot language for the vacancy amendment, as he will all other proposals, bringing it back to the council for approval.
The council opposed the committee’s recommendation to reduce the number of petitions the candidates must collect to qualify to run, without having to pay a fee. The number of required petitions will remain at below 200 for council members and around 700 for the mayor. The council candidates must gather their signatures from within the district they intend to represent. Qualifying by fee, however, would be lowered from 10 percent of the council member’s salary to 4 percent–from around $3,000 for mayor and $2,400 for council seats to $1,200 for mayor and $960 for council seats.
Regarding council pay and benefits, the council agreed to tie salary increases exclusively to inflation. Anything additional would have to be approved in a referendum. The council opposed dropping health benefits from council’s compensation. But if council members opt out of that benefit, they may not get cash payments instead. Retirement benefits, which the council members do not currently receive, would also be eliminated regardless.
At the beginning of the meeting the council was immediately but briefly at loggerheads over a proposal by Mayor Mike Norris to advance a proposed charter amendment only by a super-majority vote of the council. Norris got no support for that approach.
“It should be a super majority to even get on the ballot, plain and simple,” Norris said. He noted that two of the five council members were appointed, not elected. He had the support of one of those appointees, Council member Dave Sullivan.
Council member Ty Miller agreed that placing an amendment on the ballot “should be a high hurdle.” But he and Council member Theresa Pontieri said the decision should be left in voters’ hands. Miller said an item should not require an 80 percent majority of the council to get to a ballot that would require a 51 percent majority for approval. Council member Charles Gambaro agreed.
Norris also lost the attempt to place charter amendments on the 2028 ballot–the presidential election ballot–to ensure maximum voter turnout and participation.
A committee proposal to allow the city manager to live within 50 miles of Palm Coast was changed to allow the manager to live outside the city limits, as long as the residency is within Flagler County.
As worded in the charter, the current term limit on council members or the mayor is eight years, or two successive terms in the same seat. But the wording leaves room for a council member to run for mayor, or vice versa, and also to run again for a separate seat, or to run for the same seat after an absence of four years. The committee recommended placing an eight-year cap regardless, while still allowing a council member to serve as mayor or vice versa, for a total of 16 years.
The council was supportive of prohibiting former council members from taking executive jobs in the city administration within a year of their service on the council.
Several items were considered outside the reach of the charter, including administrative matters involving city manager qualifications, evaluations of the city manager and the city attorney. A committee proposal to forbid council members from voting if they are attending a meeting remotely was also considered procedural, not charter-worthy. Both Pontieri and Council member Charles Gambaro–who attended today’s meeting remotely, as he was in Washington, D.C.–have pressed for more flexibility for members to attend and vote remotely. They say it recognizes the modern workforce.
The council is supportive of a Citizens’ Bill of Rights, but as a council action, not a charter amendment. It is also supportive of adding a preamble to the charter.
Gary says
The best alternative for filling a vacant seat is, when the election takes place there are two parities, one winning with the most votes for that party. The person in that same party with less votes then the winner could be placed in the backup position. If the winner can’t finish the term the backup could be put in place. No cost no election needed. The secondary winner is supported by the people of that district.
Roger Williams says
There is no need yo increase the borrowing limit. Palm Coast needs to learn to live within its means. $600 million borrowing for water improvements? Pay fir that furst then think if gouging taxpayers for more money.