Sea Change With Immediate Notes of Assertiveness as New Mayor and Palm Coast Council Are Seated

There was plenty of ceremony garlanded in the flashbulbs and pride and smiles of big occasions at this morning’s swearing in of the most sweepingly new Palm Coast Council in the city’s history: A new mayor—and, for the first time in that seat, a woman—in Milissa Holland, new council members in Bob Cuff and Nick Klufas, and a new majority joining two council members who’ve only been there two years.

There was poignancy, too, as when Jon Netts, speaking as a mayor for the last time, urged the new council not to forget his era: “As you make decisions about the city of Palm Coast, don’t forget to look back once in a while,” he said at the end of a four-minute sum-up of his 15 years on the council. He thanked the community (“not your support for me, but your support for your community”) and credited voters for electing people “who understood what this city is supposed to be,” going back to the first mayor and council who articulated a vision of the city as “a premier city in which to “live, work and play.”

The summary was a subtle exhortation to his successors not to change course, though at least certain changes afoot were made even more evident when George Hanns, the county commissioner for 24 years, included his own fate in what he called the “historic event” that changed the council: he was voted out (as opposed to Netts, who was term-limited). “I became 70 years old and I am finally unemployed,” Hanns told the council after specifically addressing Holland, his former colleague of six years on the county commission: “I know you’re just pretending to be a little nervous. I can picture you a month from now saying OK let’s get this show on the road.”

It didn’t take a month. It took a few minutes as ceremony and poignancy gave way to business. After the swearing in Holland wasted no time asserting herself when the council parceled out its advisory committee assignments. She immediately said she was requesting to replace Netts on the Tourist Development Council, the county advisory board that recommends how to spend millions of dollars in tourist-tax revenue. The council has been an unsettled body in the last few years as it’s been absorbed by county government and taken a more aggressive but less transparent route to deal-making to bring various sports and other events to the county.

Holland had herself led the tourism council for several years when she served on the county commission, reshaping the way it operated so that it would be more transparent and accountable, with relatively strict measures of the payoffs of grant awards. The tourism council has been moving away from those standards in the past two years. Holland’s return to the TDC sets up a clash of visions there between her more accountability-driven approach and the county’s preferred laissez-faire approach.

That same approach is expected to define her mayorship from that of Netts, who was also mostly hands-off. Perhaps sensing the change, council member Steven Nobile, too, was quick to assert himself as the now senior member of the council, with Heidi Shipley. “We lost a great council, some great members, but I think they were replaced justly, and we’re going to do some great things, I hope,” Nobile said. He immediately made two agenda-setting proposals:  what he called “a more detailed, focused vision and planning for Town Center.” And more worrisomely for City Manager Jim Landon, more involvement by council members in city business: “I believe we can find a way for city council to become more involved in the day to day of city operations without interfering with the city managers and the directors in their day to day processes, purposely for allowing the city council to be a little bit ahead of the decisions that are being made. Instead of being the last part of the decision, I’d like us to be a little bit more part of the earlier decision processes.”

Nobile, who had been the first to get up and lead the ovation as Netts walked off his seat and the podium, was touching on a recurrent complaint about past councils—that they yield too much to the city manager and his administration, while serving only as a ratifying, rather than a guiding, board.

Landon did not seem to be paying attention, or at least gave the appearance of not paying attention, looking at paperwork or an electronic device instead, and did not refer to Nobile’s proposals when his turn came to speak. He spoke glowingly of Netts, placing him “on the top shelf” of elected officials he’s worked with over the years. He spoke more paternalistically, if not patronizingly, of Jason DeLorenzo, who decided to run for the county commission rather than hold on to his council seat, a bid that fell short in an election that swept off or blocked every local Democrat from office but one. He was one of them.

“Mr. DeLorenzo, I’ll give you most improved,” Landon said to the now-ex-council member, using words more appropriate from a high school wrestling coach than from a manager referring to his employer. “Young, coming in, four years ago”—five, actually—“and then wow, to watch you grow in this position, to watch you be able to actually get some of the things you’re passionate approved, and really know how to work with your fellow-council members, work with staff, I enjoyed watching you grow and enjoyed working with you.”

Such a radical change of an elected body is always unsettling for its chief executive, who serves at its pleasure and can be fired at any meeting. Landon, who’s been on the job in Palm Coast for a decade, a few years more than the average 6.9 years for city managers in the 2000s, kept up his wrestling-coach approach even with the new council: He called it “new and fresh” and added: “I like what I’m hearing and believe we will work very well together.”

Klufas and Cuff refrained themselves to the wit and humility of new council members, with Cuff nevertheless pointing out his eight weeks of “seniority” (he’d been appointed early, after winning his election, to fill the remaining term of councilman Bill McGuire, who resigned to go back to St. Louis to get married): “I’ll take what I can get,” Cuff said, recognizing that the day’s main attraction had been Holland’s swearing in.

There was a surprise for Holland and the new council (and a tribute to Netts and the out-going council): a burst of a performance of “God Bless America” by the Coastal Florida Police and Fire Pipes and Drums. Several people from a sizeable audience welcomed the new council members, among them Tori Holland, the mayor’s daughter, who was out of her seat and back at close to the speed of sound after offering her prideful congratulations.

Holland herself looked not a bit rusty from four years away from a gavel as she handled her portion of the meeting. She offered complimentary words to each of her colleagues, past and present, underscored Palm Coast’s “culturally diverse community, one we should honor and celebrate,” and got to work on what, she said, had been “an amazing journey thus far.”