David Alfin Files Formal Request to Re-Name Community Center After Late Mayor Jon Netts

Two weeks ago when mention of renaming the Palm Coast Community Center after the late Jon Netts–the city’s longest-serving councilman and mayor, who died in 2021–it looked as if Mayor David Alfin was attempting to derail the effort.

He wasn’t. Alfin was merely put out by what appeared to be a procedural shortcut: the administration had approached Priscilla Netts, the late mayor’s spouse, to discuss renaming the Community Center after him, before a formal request to do so had been filed.




The council ended up debating the matter a bit more contentiously than anyone intended: Netts was a genuine city founder who, policy clashes aside, never knew controversy in his years on or off council and helped established Palm Coast as a major exurb on the state’s east coast.

This week, in an undated document that goes before the city’s Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee Thursday evening, Alfin himself filed the nominating form that asks the committee to consider renaming the Community Center after Netts.

“I went and met with Priscilla and I had her blessing to carry this forward,” Alfin said. “So I’m just the administrator of the process. But the blessing comes from Priscilla herself.” Alfin said he is doing so as a citizen of the city rather than as mayor (the word “mayor” doesn’t appear on the nominating form, but Alfin gives his address as that of City Hall).

Of course, Alfin’s name is on the nominating form, so there’s no escaping that. “I feel obligated to put the nomination forward as a resident of the city of Palm Coast,” he said. “And I think I do have a right to do that. And they’ll have to interpret that in their own way. I think it would be unfair for me to go and market or to promote the initiative any further than that.”




Alfin does not intend to speak to the beautification committee, or even appear before it at Thursday’s meeting. That’s more a city staff role, he said. “I feel attending those committee meetings tends to violate the the partition between city council and city staff,” the mayor said. “I think those committees are a part of the city staff and the operation. So I would not want to unduly influence their opinion.”

Obviously, the Alfin name will speak for itself before the committee, as it does at the council: with Alfin behind the proposal, the Beautification Committee’s recommendation is all but assured. With Netts’s name on any nominating form, a recommendation would have likely been assured regardless. The recommendation will then go before the council at a meeting next month, where approval is also veery likely but for Council member’s Ed Danko’s resistance: he would prefer that such proposals be subject to popular referendums, to avoid appearances of cronyism.

It was, ironically, an attempt to avoid cronyism that Alfin two weeks ago raised his objections to the way the nomination was proceeding, seemingly outside of norms. (It wasn’t, really: city staff was only following directions to test the waters of a Netts nomination by discussing it with his family. It was following council guidance.)

“I was commenting on process, and it’s a relatively new process as well,” Alfin said. “So I wanted to make sure that process and procedure were in good order, because there may be others that come forward in the future with other nominations. I want to make sure that we are fair and deliberate in our decision-making process for the future, so that we don’t err, we want to make sure that this is a good thing for the community and not viewed negatively in any way.”




Alfin met Netts more than a decade ago when Alfin attended his first session of the city’s Citizens Academy. Netts was the presenter. “The impression he gave me was the beginning of a long journey of community engagement and ultimately, service to the community,” Alfin said.

He then found out that Netts before his Palm Coast retirement had been an elected city councilman in Norwood, N.J., when Alfin’s family was building a warehouse for its perfume and cosmetic business in the area. Alfin’s father and his partner knew Netts and worked together on the project. “It’s such a small world that you could run into somebody that way. It’s like Palm Coast seems to be full of those kinds of stories, which is very, very interesting.”

Of course, Netts’s name could adorn numerous public buildings or locations. There was consideration for renaming the Palm Coast Marina after him, because Netts was a boater and lived on the water. But that is not publicly owned. So the name might not be able to be there in perpetuity. “We needed to make sure that his name was attached to a municipal-owned building or place that there would be no change in the future,” Alfin said.

The community center became a natural fit, not least because Netts saw its reemergence as mayor when its newer version was in the design phase. He was also there, no longer mayor, when the walls of the old center–a structure that had once housed a YMCA and City Hall–tumbled in 2017, to make room for the new. Maybe these details will be part of the building’s archival breadcrumbs.




“We mark these kinds of buildings and monuments and things with folks that we consider to be very important, but I don’t want them just to be important for today’s community,” Alfin said. “I want the people and the kids in the future to understand who these folks were. And I truly believe going back to when I first met Jon that he steered us or was the navigator through some of the most difficult times that this city has ever known. And he also moved us away from the original ITT template to what I consider to be the modern era of Palm Coast, and allows us to look forward and grow further in the future.”

There will be more to the naming of the building. Alfin intends to ask the Palm Coast Historical Society to provide an annual homage to the city’s founders and help residents current and future become more aware of them. Netts’s name would be honored that way. “We have reached a point in time where we have history that is important to to share with all of our new visitors, new residents and the next generations to come,” Alfin said.

The re-dedication, when it happens, will not be complete without a commemorative shot of Black Label.