Jason DeLorenzo, Palm Coast government’s community development director and chief of staff for the last six years, previously a city council member for five years, and one of the administration’s most institutionally versed and versatile executives, will be leaving City Hall July 11 to be the assistant city manager in Palm Bay in Brevard County.
“I’m always looking to advance my career. This opportunity came up, so I pursued it,” DeLorenzo, 54, said in an interview this evening. “I put a lot of energy into the community through my work here and service, but it’s just the right time for a change.”
It is a move up for DeLorenzo, 54, to a larger, politically calmer city with a familiar manager: he’ll be reporting to Matt Morton, whom Palm Bay hired as city manager earlier this year and who’d hired him away from the private sector in Palm Coast in 2018 when Morton was the city manager here. DeLorenzo had spent just over a decade as the political affairs director of the Flagler Home Builders Association and a short stint with a title company.
DeLorenzo’s fortune is an exacting loss for a Palm Coast administration already short a community development director–a role DeLorenzo has been filling–a utilities director and a permanent city manager–a role Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston has been filling, and gaps she’s tried to bridge with the hiring less than three weeks ago of Flagler County Sheriff’s Chief Mark Strobridge as interim assistant manager.
“I’m sad and happy at the same time, right?” Interim Palm Coast City Manager Lauren Johnston said this evening. “You always want what’s best for your coworkers. They become family, and you always want what’s best for them. So I was happy that he’s found a wonderful opportunity and advancement in his career.”
But there was no question that she’d feel the loss. “He’s definitely made an impact in the organization,” Johnston said. “There’s a lot of people that’s going to miss him, but we’re happy for him. If you’re going on and doing bigger and better things, that’s something that should be celebrated as well.”
The City Council will likely be dismayed but not surprised. Fears if a brain drain are not imaginary. The council will have to contend with the fact that DeLorenzo’s departure is in no small degree emblematic of the price the city is paying for Mayor Mike Norris’s scorched-earth assaults on the administration since his election in November, despite the rest of the council’s support for the staff.
Norris attempted to fire both DeLorenzo and Johnston in a private meeting that violated the city charter months ago, as an independent investigation confirmed. He was censured by the City Council over that and other similar transgressions and offensive behavior toward administrative staff. His own party attempted to reel him in, urging him to take responsibility, only to face his defiance. Norris appears to have doubled down even as he’s abandoned most of his responsibilities as mayor.
Norris has continued to target certain members of the city administration publicly and privately, not least among them DeLorenzo, whose party former registration as a Democrat–he’s now a registered Republican–Norris would not abide anymore than he did his role overseeing the city’s development regulations: Unconcerned with slanders, Norris accused him of colluding with developers to facilitate the city’s rapid growth since 2018. It is almost certain that, in Norris’s bizarrely paranoid and fabricated political calculus, he will likely take DeLorenzo’s departure as a victory and gloat, or ask his often apocryphal social media disciples to gloat, that he brought it about.
DeLorenzo has maintained a professional demeanor throughout. His naturally congenial disposition hasn’t betrayed a hint of snit in his regular appearances before Norris and the rest of the council, even when he appeared before the board on Tuesday, when he knew he had the Palm Bay job (he got it last Friday and gave his notice on Monday).
This evening he diplomatically dismissed that aspect of the challenges he’s been dealing with for the last few months despite persistent questions. “I’m not on social media, so I really don’t hear a lot of it,” he said. “Occasionally something flares up, maybe someone will mention it to me, but I don’t really pay attention to that. I mean, it’s not that easy to be a public servant. It’s hard to make everyone happy, and so there’s always someone criticizing you, and I think that just comes with the job.”
But DeLorenzo conceded: Morale at City Hall, “while pretty good for the most part,” he said, “oh, I think it’s been better” in past years. “When there’s a lot of noise or chatter, it makes people nervous, and we’ve had to spend some time with staff on that. But that happens from time to time.”
He has no doubt the city’s executive staff and its directors will continue to steer the city. “They’re dedicated. They are hardworking public servants,” he said. “There are some gaps in the organization, some empty positions, but Lauren is smart, passionate, energetic, and she knows what she’s doing. And she’s been in the organization for quite a while. She knows a lot about the organization, and she is really strong on the operational side.”
Johnston had held off filling certain positions on the assumption that the council would appoint a new city manager, who’d want to have his, her or their own stamp on the appointments. No longer. She’s posting the positions as if the “interim” portion of her title were dimming. But neither she nor DeLorenzo have anyone in mind to fill his position. Perhaps Strobridge was brought in knowingly.
Johnston was asked explicitly whether there are worries of a brain drain, given the atmosphere. “That is always a fear in the environment that we work in. We don’t want that,” Johnston said. “But we try and prevent that. We try and have good programs that promote work-life balance. We try and be competitive in the salary market and compensation with benefits and all of that to try and keep our workforce and those talented individuals here.”
Some forces are beyond the administration’s control.
DeLorenzo will be spending his workweeks in Palm Bay but commuting back to Palm Coast on weekends, not wanting to upend his 16-year-old daughter’s high school rhythms: she’s an exceptional student in the AICE advanced studies program at Matanzas High School, and his parents live in Palm Coast, his extended family keeps moving to Palm Coast (his sister just bought a house here). His wife Rebecca, the CEO for the Florida Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, can work remotely from anywhere, but the couple will maintain their base and property in this city for now.
Turning down the noise and the detractors, DeLorenzo prefers to take stock of milestones, achievements for the city he’s proud of: delivering on a previous City Council’s business-friendly initiatives (“that was a really strong program that we’ve put together”) that vastly improved the city’s customer-service profile; the Citation Boulevard extension “the last opportunity to get an east-west connector”) that opened up an important public-safety corridor while saving the city millions of dollars by creating that access between Seminole Woods Boulevard and Belle Terre Boulevard; and as chief of staff, “breaking down silos and fostering better communication between them and be more collaborative and solution-based,” he said.
Get him going, and DeLorenzo is all wonk, all detail-oriented, thriving on the everyday DNA that makes up a city and makes it work.
“He’s caring, he’s thoughtful, he’s charismatic and he loves to talk,” Johnston said. “We would go to these functions, whether it was Tiger Bay or Chamber or even in Tallahassee, whenever we’re up there for legislative action days, and he’ll talk to anyone, and he’ll strike up a good conversation, and you’re going to come away with something good out of whoever he’s talked to at that time. This has been his community. He’s lived here for so long, and loves it here. Raised his family here, and there’s that interest that you have with wanting to make sure the community continues to be the place that you love.”
That’s what the community is losing. Unnecessarily perhaps. A portend almost certainly, if the council doesn’t mind the drain.
Gary says
No not a loss ! Big savings in very over paid individual. Had no training for the position. He was a philabuster in Tallahassee. Wasted a lot of tax payers monies. Self a claimed do nothing !
Harve H says
Amen ! One more to go, Johnston is next. Drain the Palm Coast SWAMP !
Nancy N. says
Big loss to Palm Coast. Much good luck to him in his new position.
Diana says
I am saddened but not surprised. Losing Jason is a huge loss for our city of Palm Coast. I wish for Jason all the best that he deserves. Mayor Mike you s…ck !!!
Yikes says
Did Palm Bay even google these hires? Poor Palm Bay.
NANCY SKADDEN says
This is a huge loss for our city. Thank you, Jason DeLorenzo, for your years of service to our community.
Can’t someone do something to avoid continued brain drain brought about by our mayor’s inability to measure up to his job?
Diana says
I am saddened but not surprised. Losing Jason is a huge loss for our city of Palm Coast. I wish for Jason all the best that he deserves. Mayor Mike you s…ck !!!
JimboXYZ says
Congratulations JDeL.
Palm Bay/Malabar ? What a dump that place is. Malabar is essentially is the Bunnell of Brevard County for population. Flagler Beach nearly doubles either Bunnell or Malabar. Palm Bay is about the size of Palm Coast. I say good riddance, he can go down there & ruin Palm Bay like he’s had a hand in ruining Palm Coast. Palm Bay is where Matt Morton left after Palm Coast => Fernandina Beach => Palm Bay. As Palm Coast passed on filling the City Manager position recently. One can see this is just reshuffling the same deck of cards without Aces & face cards, that the last lousy poker hand was dealt & expecting the next hand dealt to be better ? Maybe Alfin can relocate to Palm Bay & the 3 of them can do exactly what they did here to ruin Palm Coast ?
Believe it or not, I thought Palm Bay/Malabar was a destination for a relocation at one point. Then I made a couple of trips down there to look at the properties there. It’s NASA’s toxic waste dump site for pretty much the same time that Palm Coast has ever existed. There’s a price for having NASA & KSC in your back yard. The Space Programs aren’t exactly environmentally friendly. And outside of that Titusville, Cocoa Beach, Rockledge, the Space Coast is an aging community that has been neglected & abused for the toxins that have accumulated for +/-65 years. If FL has a Flint, MI for contaminated & polluted water, ground zero is Brevard County. See for yourselves ? I really dodged a cancer dump by avoiding Brevard County anywhere in that triangular toxic wasteland. Brevard can be as beautiful a paradise of FL as any place FL, it isn’t what is visible, it’s what is invisible to the naked eye there. The signs are there though. Occasionally a marine mammal’s carcass drifts it’s way from Brevard to Volusia or Flagler county ?
https://flaglerlive.com/no-evidence-links-wind-turbines-to-whale-deaths/
Turkey Point Nuclear Facility & even the abandoned Aerojet Dade Rocket facility in Homestead, FL was actually in my relative back yard for South Miami for a couple of years. Turkey Point has been leaking radiation for decades. Brookesville, FL even had a nuclear plant (Crystal River) that was shut down decades ago. Trust me, when I comment that opposing growth for Flagler County s based upon everyone’s best health & well being for interests. More people is just more pollution. All this BS about zero emissions, carbon neutral is all nonsense. And Biden-Harris selling that brochure of lies, at least Trump-Vance has the decency to keep it real. Every life brought into this world at any point is a polluter, myself included. There’s no such thing as carbon neutral, that’s a lie t0o, concocted by con artists charading around as experts, getting (over)paid well to put that in everyone else’s back yard, but their own.
https://www.fight4zero.org/post/crisis-in-paradise-examining-florida-s-toxic-triangle-and-its-impact-on-the-space-coast
https://www.advocatesvoice.com/2021/10/nasalagoonplan.htmlhttps://flaglerlive.com/no-evidence-links-wind-turbines-to-whale-deaths/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malabar,_Florida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnell,_Florida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagler_Beach,_Florida
Greg says
Good reddence. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. Another win for the city.
Michael J Cocchiola says
Jason is a good man and a great public servant. I wish him success in his new role.
Wall Street says
Good luck, nobody deserves to be attacked while you are at work.
Palm Bay is lucky to have you!
Diana L. says
Another loss for the comminity. Jason was a professional and was a great comminity servant.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Mr Morton, take more of the P/C SWAMP! Our city is crawling like the bugs in the swales, Mayor Mike,s no dummy.He has already fiqured out who the swamp creatures are. We took P/C to the darkside with Holland & Alvin….. They pissed away more money, in their time as mayor on poor choices. They did nothing to releave the traffic, nothing to stop the over building! Notice you havent heard a peep out of either one of them, since their folly was over! Ive never lived in a place where there were so many homes for sale. Yet they continue to build, continue to kill P/C. I fed the 2 baby deer in my yard yesterday, they looked lost, I looked & looked but I couldnt find mama. So sad…..The whole city is going to hell in a handbag & YOU let it happen!
celia pugliese says
Maybe now we can finally get our two traffic calming islands for which Engineering Carl Cote had us pay $163,000 for Lassiter traffic study and engineering design and then Alfin Klufas and Danko voted NO in the inititial additional cost of $200,000 to build both, sending to the waste basket the $163,000 of our hard earned taxes instead: https://flaglerlive.com/florida-park-drive-calming/. Also maybe we can get back to reopen Forest Grove by the schools that was shut down to 5000 vehicles a day traffic in 2015 by Carl C, Jason and Netts approval ! Maybe now also we can get away from the YMCA in Palm Coast forced subsidized by more pressing priorities our 10 millions or more tax costs. Maybe now City Staff highly compensated will do more of the work in house other than spending millions in consultants! Maybe also now other applying and using 1,2 miillions grants for an unused Water Front Park kayak pad to promote the Miami owned (gone) rental business, we ask for grants to help our roads repaving destroyed including PC Pkwy by the loaded semis with sand for the beach front repair and his lobbied developers huge growth! Maybe now we will not get another Wawa in the very center of a traffic clogged Palm Coast Pkwy generating more mayhem while promotes speeders raving their exhaust unsilenced engines comming out of it totally unmonitored. Maybe now other than spending over 7 million to remodel based in invented excuses the beautiful White View Pkwy designed by ITT, those funds should be requested to instead repave our city roads badly deteriorated with over 25 years of neglect! Also same, other than unnecessary millions repaving od Seminole Woods Pkwy in perfect condition, both cases to enhance developers plans in the areas. Yes how could we ever elect or worst employ in our taxpayer dime a former director of the local FPC Builders Association of over 10 years? How come Jason could be a past and even present a KFIN airport Stake Holder and entity that allows its flight schools bombard training 24-7 adjacent Palmcoasters taking away their safety, health, quality of life and value of their homes! Just like Mr. Watson in 1920 said (Palmcoaster and those we elect to represent us) need to THINK. Those to bash me please have the courage to not hide behind alias TY.
Mike says
Don’t know the gentleman but wish him the best. I enjoy living in Palm Coast despite the issues the city faces. If the negative nellies dislike it so much why don’t you find your piece of paradise somewhere else. I remain optimistic.
Dave says
I love how everyone blames Norris, it’s just like how they blame Trump for everything! He is leaving because the city will not work with him and they refused to change anything! He’s tired of fighting them on issues that should have been looked at and resolved YEARS ago!!! We are 500 million in debt and rising. They lost a great asset and have nobody to blame but themselves! Johnston will be leaving next, this city is an absolute joke, they fire people in public, blast them in the papers and argue like school children in council meetings. All the candidates for positions run for the hills after getting a taste of what its about here! I guess Norris caused the 500 million in debt too lol! Open your eyes people and get a clue as to what’s REALLY happening here and start reporting REAL news!!!
Andy Montgomery says
Any one that does not recognize Jason’s professionalism and contributions to Palm Coast and our community has been blinded by the political vitriol spewed in our little bit of paradise.
I wonder when leaderships strategy to run off the staff without folks to do the job becomes unworkable.
Running cities our size requires a lot of education and experience. It’s not a trite task with quality applicants beating down our doors for employment.
Good city managers must have recruiting skills.
Insults at the ball park permeate the recruiting process and limit leadership choices.
The vitriol faction is clueless to governing. Just watch the videos.
If Jason, Lauren and Thersia Pontieri did not read the agenda this city would collapse. It requires knowledge of agendas and discussion to make decisions.
Watch the rush to vote by the leadership on topics obviously has not mastered.
Capturing wild pigs concerns that were already being addressed professionally by staff was his outstanding achievement at last meeting.
I guess Mikes love of BBQ should remain a focus.
PeachesMcGee says
This is only the beginning to an unfortunate ending. Sadly, the citizens of Palm Coast will suffer.
STOP THE BUFFOONERY!
Critical Eye says
Sad for such a loss for Palm Coast. I hope Jason is much happier in his new position. He’s such a great guy and has been a wonderful asset to our community. Unfortunately for Palm Coast the person leaving is not the “King Swamp Chief “ Mike Norris along with his loyal swamp troop goons leaving Palm Coast/Flagler County/State of Florida instead.
Palm Coast could sure use some good luck for a change to rid ourselves of the most criminal minded self absorbed mayor we have ever had in the past 25 years since being incorporated. Mike Norris is responsible for all the despicable disparities going on in our city government. Shame on Mike Norris.
Congratulations and all the best to Jason DeLorenzo for being able to find a decent place with a much better atmosphere than Palm Coast currently has to offer.
Johnson's Fence says
This town is just so fulla deep blood red hate. Read most of these comments above – from nearly all of whom don’t even know this dude. This man worked with our town during its largest growth period in history. Tolerated immeasurable political nonsense from the deplorables, yet stayed the course and did his job. Now presented with a significant new job opportunity and of course jumps all over it. Every single last one of you would do the same! I betcha he’s very proud of the work he did for our city, but I also suspect he’s quite glad to be rid of us too. This is a loss as we continue our downward spiral.
Bye bye RINO says
This guy has never had 1 accomplishment that he is truly responsible for. He is a true RINO and lucky he was able to skate by as long as he did.
Tony Mack says
Brevard County — isn’t that where our new Congresscritter Randy Fine resides? Maybe that’s how he got the job…
JC says
celia pugliese, your newest comment and I don’t know how it is related to this article.
Logean Billups says
Best of luck to you and Rebecca. Some changes aren’t bad.
Enjoy the next chapter of your life.
SMC says
If you want to know what he did to harm some residents of Palm Coast: http://flpkdr.com/InfoFiles/MayorAlfin18Jan2023.pdf
Kenneth N says
I say good riddance to another swamp creature who contributed to an over-abundance of issuing permits to developers and allowing our city to drown in too many homes constructed & the attendant traffic mess all the while ignoring our infra-structure, water resources, roadways, canal walls, etc to crumble – not to mention our total lack of attracting industries and business toPalm Coast which would have given us a better tax base and taken away some of the burden from we homeowners. Thank you Mayor Norris for standing with we the people and helping to drain the swamp – – please don’t stop!
Like Donald Trump…..”promises made, promises kept”. Next to go: Gambaro & Ponteiro!
celia pugliese says
JC I I kindly requested :”Those to bash me please have the courage to not hide behind alias TY.” He was the One running this city until now and all I described was brought up, presented and promoted by his approval, specially the YMCA plans.
Kevin Peck says
Known Jason for a long time. His expertise will definately be missed