Council Rejects Naming Palm Coast Community Center for Jon Netts in Striking Snub of Major Legacy

The Palm Coast City Council on Tuesday rejected a long-standing proposal to rename the Palm Coast Community Center for Jon Netts, a former mayor and City Council member whose 15-year tenure in city government shaped Palm Coast more than any other elected official in the city’s history.

The motion to rename the center by Council member Nick Klufas, the only member of the council to have served alongside the late Netts, did not even get a second. Mayor David Alfin, who had himself filed the nomination (he’d known Netts in New Jersey in the 1970s), was again questioning the proposal, as he had in April 2023 when the city’s parks director mentioned in passing that there’d been informal discussions about renaming the center. Netts died at 78 in 2021, of Covid.




“I think the thing that’s still missing is there’s really no outreach that I’m aware of, general outreach to the community to get the community’s input as to: is this something that the community favors,” Alfin said. He would have favored a survey to give the council an indication “as to is the public on board for this.” He still favored a survey, reasoning that so many new people have moved into the city that many would not know who he was. Of course generally the point of renaming landmarks is to memorialize a historic figure who may otherwise be lost in memory, though that point appeared lost on most of the council.

Alfin was also concerned about “opening the floodgates” to renaming requests, as if there’d been a flood of Netts-caliber mayor and council members in the city’s history (there has not). Council member Theresa Pontieri proposed renaming one of the rooms inside the community center for Netts. “I’m not in favor of this. I’m in favor of honoring him and others who have also contributed to our community like this, just not in this way,” Pontieri said.

City Manager Lauren Johnston reminded the council that the renaming was following the policy the council had approved a few years ago, and that the policy itself was the result of the council’s goal to inventory city facilities that could be renamed. Council member Charles Gambaro wants the policy rewritten, though he didn’t make clear in what way.




The city’s policy defines how city properties may be renamed. Anyone may file a request or nomination through a two-page application. The application asks a few questions about the person being nominated, including date of death and extent of involvement in the city. The application is reviewed by the city’s Beautification Committee, which recommends a disposition. The application then goes before the City Council. Last year a sidewalk at Palm Harbor was renamed to memorialize Al Krier. The city two years ago renamed a section of trail along Pine Lakes Parkway after Shirley Chisholm.

Before the policy was approved, other landmarks memorialized individuals–the Historical Society Museum named for Jim Canfield, though that hasn’t caught on much, a ballfield named for Doug Berryhill, a Palm Coast Little League volunteer, Ralph Carter Park named after the council member who died in office in 2005 after serving nearly six years, being part of the founding council, and the first Black council member. The city’s pool is still named for Frieda Zamba, the surfing champion, but the facility around the pool no longer is. It is now the “Palm Coast Aquatics Center.”

The committee recommended approval of the Community Center renaming in Netts’s name, recognizing his nine years as mayor and preceding six years as a council member and his many accomplishments: his years on the Florida Inland Navigation District, to which Gov. Charlie Crist had appointed him, his many years on the board of the Northeast Florida Regional Council, to which Gov. Jeb Bush had appointed him, his service representing Flagler County on the Northern Florida Regional Transportation Study Commission, his service on a statewide advisory committee for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, his service as director of the Palm Coast Historical Society. He was a Golden Eagle Honoree of the Central Florida Boy Scout Council and was twice the Elks Lodge 2709’s Citizen of the Year.




“A lot of the people who are here today don’t understand how instrumental Jon was to the formation of our city, and how he served this community, relentlessly, literally, since I moved here,” Klufas said. He moved to Palm Coast in 2006. “Jon has been a cornerstone. He’s the reason that we’re sitting in the city hall right now.” Netts was among the council members who pushed for the construction of what was then a $10 million city hall, controversial though that decision was at the time. The city at the time had been renting floors at City Marketplace. “It’s our responsibility as individuals who have seen that legacy and have been in it, and I’ve had the privilege of serving with Jon on this board amazingly enough, I feel that I would love to honor Jon in this regard.”

Even Klufas had some reservations about naming the Community Center after Netts. “I think he’d want to put something more water-based honestly,” Klufas said. Netts was an avid boater and lived, as his wife Priscilla still lives, on a canal property in Palm Coast’s F-Section. But Klufas was still for renaming the community center in his honor. “Don’t shy away from being Bold,” he said. “I don’t know how many other people have the magnitude of John Netts.”

“I want to see him get his due recognition,” Gambaro said, “and I’ll be here to help shepherd that with with Councilwoman Pontieri.”

“I don’t know if that’ll happen, and I think this might be one of the last opportunities to do something like this,” Klufas said, noting that Pontieri had never known Netts, nor will most of those joining the council next week.




But even long-time residents who’d known the entirety of the Netts tenure, like Celia Pugliese, were opposed, recalling how Netts had pushed through the building of the new City Hall despite a popular referendum years earlier that had opposed such a building, though Pugliese’s account was incomplete: the referendum–the last time the city floated one of that kind–had asked voters whether they’d approve construction bonds to build City Hall and community centers. The City Hall eventually build was constructed without borrowing. Pugliese brought up other issues contesting Netts’s beatification. But other than one additional resident who’d not lived here during Netts’s years but who’d “heard he wasn’t the best,” and an individual wondering what Netts would think of the cist of renaming, there was no further public objection.

“Is there any ballpark on how many hundreds of thousands of dollars that would cost?” Klufas asked wryly. Parks director put the cost at a few hundred dollars to $1,000, for a revamp that has to take place anyway, because the sign at the community center has to reflect the city’s new logo.

But Klufas was right. His motion failed. Pontieri briefly motioned to rename the larger room at the Community Center for Netts, then withdrew it when she realized the approach did not follow the current policy. She did not want to set that precedent.