The Palm Coast City Council on Tuesday voted 3-2 to table a proposed ordinance loosening restrictions on commercial vehicles in residential driveways until Nov. 18.
A first reading of the ordinance cleared the council by the same vote on Oct. 21. It allows for pickup trucks and vehicles like the typical work van to park for more than work calls or for lunch in residential driveways even if the vehicles have commercial markings and advertising. The hang-up this time is the length and height of vehicles. The proposed ordinance would allow vehicles of up to 18 feet in length and 10 feet in height to park in driveways.
The city is on the verge of relaxing a ban in place for the entirety of the city’s history. It’s come close to removing the ban before, only to stop short of that.
Mayor Mike Norris raised the objection to the length. “That technically eliminates pretty much a standard F-150 from being parked in a driveway,” he said of the common Ford pickup truck. He said his wife’s Expedition Max is 19 feet, and that a Ford Transit, a boxed van, is a little over 19 feet. He asked for the ordinance to allow for 20 feet rather than 18, and his colleagues–those who approve of changing the ordinance–agreed.
Ford has eight F-150 models on the market today. According to published specs, they all range in length from 17.4 feet to 19 feet. (for the F-150 XL, XTS, XLT, Lariat, Tremor, King Ranch, Platinum and Raptor.) The Max is 18.5 feet. The Transit ranges from 18 to 22 feet, the longer one for the passenger variety.
Norris also had a problem with the height: 10 feet, he said, is the height of a basketball goal, and wanted it lowered.
“We’re getting to a point, I think, where something that we may have been trying to avoid. So I just want to make sure this isn’t getting away from us,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said.
“Is there any specific vehicles that would be 10 feet that we’re trying to exclude? That’s the question,” Council member Ty Miller said. Even the largest Ford Transit van is barely more than 9 feet. It’s not clear if the limit will be lowered to 8 or 9 feet. (“How is the city going to enforce the height of those pickup trucks,” Chantal Preuninger, a resident who tends to address a majority of items before the council, asked. “They’re going to come with a measuring stick or something? Yeah, that’s going to be interesting.”)
Norris, Pontieri and Miller voted to table the ordinance. Council members Charles Gambaro and Dave Sullivan, who want to keep all current restrictions, voted against.
The item allowed for new, if limited, opposition to changing the ordinance. “ Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile, and this has already begun,” said Vincent Ligouri, a long-time vocal (and often influential) activist in city politics, but not so much in the last few years. “Residents are reporting increased noise, visual clutter and a loss of neighborhood character,” he said. He did not say where or by whom those reports are being documented. The city’s code enforcement manager, Barbara Grossman, told the council that she would provide a report on the new ordinance’s effects within six months of its enactment.
“The presence of parked commercial vehicles will lower property values and spark disputes amongst neighbors,” Ligouri continued, though that’s more speculation than demonstrated fact.
Norris during the discussion had a surprise for his colleagues. “We polled 986 voters within the city, we had 361 that responded to the survey,” he claimed. He did not say who “we” were, what sort of survey it was (by mail? By email? By other means?), how the survey sample was determined, how the survey was phrased, who paid for the survey, if anyone, who requested the survey, or on whose behalf it was done. The council had not discussed such a survey. The administration, when asked about it on Wednesday, had no idea what Norris was talking about.
The only thing Norris disclosed on Tuesday were the alleged results: 64.8 percent in favor, 34.1 percent opposed. “A large portion of the community wants that that ordinance changed,” he said. (When the city conducted its own survey in 2021, deeply flawed though its method, the result was 49-49). Gambaro, who called it “good input,” asked Norris what the margin of error was. Norris could not provide it just then.
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