Infuriated Over Vague Ballot Measure Enabling Vast Borrowing, Danko Drags Council Back to Ugliest Days

Post-election tempers crackled and burned at the Palm Coast City Council this morning when Mayor David Alfin and Council member Ed Danko got into a confrontation over a proposed referendum that recalled the panel’s ugliest meetings of a few years ago. Danko snapped, yelled, derided Alfin, the city attorney and the council. Council member Theresa Pontieri called Danko “ignorant.” Alfin, striking unheard decibel levels until now, threatened to end the meeting or throw Danko out. Pontieri soon apologized to Danko, who apologized to no one. It looked like Cathy Heighter had resigned just in time.




It started with C-Section resident Gary Kunnas reading the referendum language the Palm Coast City Council approved in mid-June. The ballot language asks voters whether they’d approve removing a limit on the city’s borrowing authority to let the city “enter into public private partnerships, respond to emergencies, and have the ability to address growth by having future residents contribute to infrastructure costs.”

The City Council approved the language on July 16. It will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. The language does not include the current wording to be removed: “Unless authorized by the electors of the City at a duly held referendum election, the Council shall not enter into lease purchase contracts or any other unfunded multiyear contracts, the repayment of which: extends in excess of 36 months; or exceeds $15,000,000.00.”

The resident addressing the Council this morning said approving the measure would allow the city to borrow large sums. “What’s behind it is a $90 million stadium construction, being that the forethought is never done, it could go over 100 million, which leads to the taxpayers.”

Last February, the Council embraced a proposal for a $93 million sports complex on the yet-unbuilt western part of the city, west of U.S. 1. The city doesn’t have the money to build the complex. The proposal from a private-sector consultant outlined several financing approaches. One of them was the city issuing bonds to finance the project at least in part and a private company running the facility once built. But another option, the one the council favored, would have a private company build the facility at its expense and run it subsequently. The facility would bank on a surge in events, participants and spectators to generate revenue. (See: “Palm Coast’s Wishful 20-Field, $93 Million Sports Complex Rests on a Far Future of Dubiously Rosy Speculation“).




Whatever the aim of future bonds, currently, Palm Coast could not issue them without a referendum. If it were to hold a referendum, spelling out the goal, as it would have to, a referendum linked to a sports complex would likely fail. The actual referendum on the November ballot grants the city general bonding authority without having to go to referendum every time, and without having to specify what the bonds would be for once it does seek a bond issue.

Attention has focused on the sports complex as a motive, since, aside from general discussions about infrastructure, the city has not yet referred to anything else as a potential objective for future bonds. Officials from Rayonier, the principal land owner on the west side, have met with council members individually to discuss the sports complex plan.

Kunnas, the speaker addressing the council on the bond, framed his criticism in a mishmash of claims, some of them inaccurate, as when he said that the city hid the fact that its contract with a new waste hauler, FCC Environmental, “never disclosed” that there would be an annual inflation increase. The fact was disclosed at contract time and in news reporting. But his central complaint was about the transparency of the ballot language. It appeared as if his speech was scripted pitch to Council member Ed Danko, who almost immediately picked up after Kunnas spoke.

“I have to tell you, I agree 100 percent,” Danko said. “This bond issue that we’re placing on the ballot, this language needs to be clearly, really rewritten. It is intentionally misleading. It is deceptive. There is no transparency. What these bonds are, folks,” he said, turning to the audience, “is you are looking at giving the city council the approval of pretty much an unlimited amount of money, where we right now are 36 months to have to pay it back at a $15 million cap. We are looking at just increasing that through the roof. And I got to tell you, I’m really I have a problem with this, because you would be mortgaging your children and your grandchildren’s future by approving these bonds. And the way this is written, There is nothing that tells you what this is. It’s nothing that says we’re removing a $15 million cap and the 36 month payback and setting a much higher amount. And I’m very, very disturbed about this, because all of us on council, all of us, were invited to a meeting with Rayonier, and we all know what this is about. It’s about a $90 million stadium they want to build from your pocketbook.”




He said later on: “I was told at that meeting, and I assume you were told the same thing I was, that if we didn’t approve these bonds, the company building the stadium would exit and leave the westward expansion. And that’s what I was told, and that’s now what’s changed my mind. I don’t like something like that hanging over us.” Pontieri said she was not given that information in her meeting with the company.

Danko had previously spoken with Marcus Duffy, the city attorney asking for a rewrite. When Danko asked Duffy in the meeting if he had “something more transparent” by way of language, Alfin–who has championed the city’s expansion westward and the change in borrowing authority–called Danko out of order. The council voted on July 17 to adopt the language, with Danko in that majority, so Alfin was right: it would not be in a council member’s purview to seek out new language outside of the council’s approval.

The confrontation snowballed, with Alfin repeating that Danko was out of order, Danko saying he wasn’t, then Danko yelling at the mayor as they spoke over each other. Pontieri tried to make herself as small as possible between the two chairs: “You know what these are going to be called by the end of the day? Alfin-bonds,” Danko yelled with familiar derision, “if we don’t have this conversation. But do not interrupt me.”

Alfin maintained an even tone: “Vice mayor. Vice mayor.” Danko unholstered a jabbing finger and pounding hand as he told the mayor he did not “get to shut us down.”

“I’m not shutting you down, I’m trying to understand the question,” the mayor said, explaining his role.




“This is why you didn’t elect this guy, huh folks? I mean, seriously,” Danko said, turning to the audience. Alfin ignored the slight, which applied equally to Danko (who lost his bid for a County Commission seat to Pam Richardson.) Alfin reminded him that he’d voted for the language a few weeks ago. Danko said he was going back on his vote. But he wanted an explanation from the attorney.

“Mr. Danko, so the language has not been changed based on what council asked us to draft previously by the vote,” Duffy told him. “So I have not had any new direction from this council to change anything.”

“So what you’re proposing is basically dishonest, misleading, deceptive. It doesn’t tell the voters one single thing, what you would be voting on,” Danko told either the council or Duffy. It appeared he was addressing Duffy, though Danko’s criticism should have been directed exclusively at those who approved the language–the council members, himself among them. “When we voted on this language, I did not know what this was specifically for,” Danko said.

“Why did you vote for it?” the mayor asked, as Danko spoke over him about the sports complex, and how he learned of those details after the presentation from Rayonier. The company officials and their attorney, Mike Chiumento, had sought out the individual meetings. Danko again insisted on hearing the ballot language, needlessly attacking Duffy: “Are you afraid of it?” Danko asked the attorney.

Pontieri had the language in front of her. She read it. When she was done, Danko turned to the audience, asking for a show of hands from those who understood what was just read. It was another break in decorum, since council members are not supposed to engage with members of the audience anymore than audience members are allowed to engage with council members during deliberations.

Alfin told him to stop. Danko ignored him. Pontieri’s head was back in her palm or shielded from the bluster south of her. “What it means by ‘future generations’ is your children and your grandchildren will be paying for this,” Danko went on. “And right now, we’re not limited on any of those things in that language, it’s all fluff.” He wanted to rescind his vote and have the council reconsider the language.




Pontieri then intervened, reminding Danko that he was part of the crafting of the language, and rejecting the claim the referendum’s aim was for a new sports complex, though it can be used for it. “I am a very big proponent of that opportunity, because I, from the moment I took this seat, have been pushing for commercial development and economic development,” Pontieri said. “Now it is concern for me that you are throwing up a red flag about a sports complex when you have approved every single residential zoning variance that has come before this board and increased dwelling units. This is an opportunity to invest in commercial in our community that will bring dollars back into the community.” She said it was not a blank check. The process would require the city to prove it can pay back the bonds, and concluded with this: “You are acting ignorant right now.”

“I’m sorry?” Danko said.

“You are acting ignorant right now,” Pontieri repeated.

“You’re going to insult me? I haven’t insulted you,” he told Pontieri.

“Yes, you did,” she said as Alfin intervened, threatening to stop the meeting, then himself raising his voice as Danko continued to interrupt Pontieri: “Vice mayor, you don’t have the floor! Vice mayor! I’m going to stop the damn meeting in a second. Let the councilwoman finish her comments then you’ll have your turn.”

Pontieri said that while she’d had a similar meeting with Rayonier Danko was “misrepresenting” the matter to the community by linking the bond proposal to the sports complex. “I will apologize for calling you ignorant. I will say the statements that are being made are an ignorant opinion.”

More yelling as Danko tried to speak and the mayor told him it was Council member Nick Klufas’s turn. “I will get to you when I’m ready,” Alfin told Danko. “Or, you know where the door is. You know where the door is. Help yourself to it.”

Klufas had nothing to add. Danko urged his colleagues to rewrite the language “in such a way that it tells you honestly what they are doing.” He promised to work to defeat the referendum if the language was not altered.




“I have no issue readdressing the amendment language,” Pontieri said. “What I have an issue with is not doing due diligence and research prior to a very important vote, which I think is kind of running rampant by some on this board.” She then had a final surprise: “I will say I have been sent proposed language. I’m happy to share it with my colleagues.” That language does mention the $15 million and 36 months that would be discarded if the referendum passed. But Duffy told her that if the language were amended, it would have to make it through two more ordinance readings, with a window for advertising, leaving it no time to make it on the November ballot (those ballots are going to the printer by September 6).

Danko made a motion to remove the amendment from the ballot. It got no second. The motion died. Danko didn’t let go. “Shame on you all for deceiving the public. Shame on you mayor Alfin,” he said.

“Are you going to disrupt the meeting? Because I will stop the meeting and give you time, or ask you to leave, either way,” the mayor told him. Danko stayed put and the council moved on to its next item.

Lost in the noise was Pontieri’s stunning last-minute concession that yes, the ballot language could be made more transparent. She was willing to go that route. But it will not happen only because of timing.