Today at the Editor’s glance: The Flagler County School Board meets at 3 p.m. in workshop to go over the items on its upcoming school board meeting two weeks hence. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here. The Palm Coast City Council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall. The council is expected to consider approving a series of land-use changes enabling future development. It will make appointments to the Code Enforcement Board, including to the seat previously held by the late Jon Netts. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here. The Flagler County Commission holds the second of two required workshops about the school district’s proposal to double its impact fees for the first time since 2005. The workshop, originally scheduled for September, is at 6 p.m., and will be followed by a special meeting. The County Commission, hearing almost exclusively from builders and Realtors, unexpectedly turned hostile to the school board’s proposal at the mid-September workshop when school officials presented the new schedule to the commission. The commission must approve the schedule if only because the county collects the revenue before passing it on to the district. The workshop and subsequent hearings should have been a mere formality. The commission instead decided to act as judge and jury of the district’s impact fees, though no government does likewise when the county chooses to raise its impact fees–as the county commission plans to do. It’s all the result of a new state law that requires local governments to show “extraordinary circumstances” when they raise impact fees more than 50 percent. The district is doing so because a previous school board unwisely raised its impact fees too little in 2005, and hasn’t touched them since. The district is in a bit of a catch-22 situation, with non record of a surge in student population that would argue for a doubling of impact fees, except projections that anticipate that surge. So the builders are not without fairly strong arguments of their own, but that’s a separate issue from the county playing the deity. See: “School District’s Request to Double Impact Fees Turns Into Hostile Inquisition by County Commission and Builders” and and “In ‘Huge Deal,’ Flagler School Board Votes to Double Impact Fees on New Construction, 1st Increase in 16 Years.” The Rotary Club of Flagler Beach invites you to participate in the annual Holiday at the Beach Christmas Parade to be held Saturday, December 4th at 1 p.m. All proceeds from the Parade will be used to cover parade expenses. Any excess funds will be used for a local charitable purpose. Only the first 50 floats will be in the parade, which has been capped at that number this year. $20 per entry. Interested? Go here.
Now Fernando Bustamente’s Misionera:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Al-Anon Family Groups
Flagler County Commission Morning Meeting
Beverly Beach Town Commission meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
Astronomy Club of Palm Coast Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
“I enjoyed that pleasure in its utmost extent; it was one week after midsummer; the earth was covered with verdure and flowers, the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost concluded, seemed to vie with each other, and in concert with birds of various kinds to bid adieu to spring, and hail the approach of a beautiful summer’s day: one of those lovely days that are no longer to be enjoyed at my age, and which have never been seen on the melancholy soil I now inhabit.”
–Rousseau, “Confessions” (1782).
