Palm Coast Council Will Appoint a Replacement for Jack Howell and Set November Special Election

The council will interview applicants at an open, public meeting on Aug. 4, and likely choose the next council member at that meeting. The appointment must be made before Aug. 9.

Candidates who will be seeking to run for the seat in November will be asked not to apply for the temporary, three-month appointment, so as not to gain an unfair advantage. Brief though that appointment will be, the appointee will be voting on next year’s budget and tax rate, among other items.

Howell resigned unexpectedly last week, citing health issues as he is facing a recurrence of cancer. The city is required by charter to appoint a replacement within 30 days of a seat being vacated. If the seat is vacated, leaving more than two years in that term, then the council is required to open the seat to an election at the next-scheduled general election.

The winner of that election by plurality will be the winner of the seat. The candidate will not need to clear the 50-percent margin, nor would there be a run-off between the top two vote-getters. So if five candidates are running and the top winner gets 28 percent of the vote, that’s the winner. “If there’s a tie, then we do the coin toss,” City Attorney Bill Reischmann said. (Two city council members have taken their seats by coin toss in the city’s 20 years.)

If the city were to hold a stand-alone election, if would cost $127,000. “So this is a substantial saving” to have it held in conjunction with the regularly scheduled election, City Clerk Virginia Smith said.

But first, the appointment. On Wednesday, Smith will send out letters to former council members, city board or committee members and graduates of the Citizens Academy who live in District 2. (The district’s most famous Palm Coast politician: Jon Netts, who served 15 years as a council member and two terms as mayor. He ran against Howell two years ago and lost, getting 44 percent of the vote to Howell’s 56 percent.)

The position will also be advertised on all local media outlets. The application deadline is by July 24 at noon. The council will short-list the candidates  on July 28.

The application is included in the document embedded below, and may be sent in, or click here for the document.

“We want someone who knows a wide range of issues we deal with on a daily basis,” Mayor Milissa Holland said. She also agreed with keeping potential candidates in the election throwing their name in for appointment.

“That’s a good policy for us to continue,” he said, recalling the time when Bill McGuire resigned his seat just ahead of an election cycle, but far enough ahead of it that the council needed to fill out the period until the next election. Vincent Lyon, the attorney, was appointed, and served quite effectively, taking part in key decisions. (Lyon is now running for a school board seat.)

Holland favors interviewing the candidates in what amounts to open court, at the council before the public, with no need for one-on-one interviews, as had been the custom of the council in the past. All council members agreed.

As for the election, the council debated whether to require candidates to seek out petitions in order to qualify for the ballot, or keep in place the $960 fee required to run. If the city was not facing a pandemic and if the time span was not as brief for qualifying, it would not have asked itself the question: the petitions or the fee would have been required. But council members were reluctant to open up the process too broadly, so as not to end up with a slew of candidates and the possibility that a council member be elected with a very small number of votes.

“If you really want to serve, show me that you really want to work for it, at least,” Council member Eddie Branquinho said.

Council members have to collected 150 petitions from within District 2 only. Council member Bob Cuff favored keeping the petition requirement in place, but making it easier on candidates to collect petitions, including electronic means. The petitions may be distributed electronically, but must be returned to the candidate in person. The candidate then submits them to the supervisor of elections for verification. “It’s a lot of work but I think that’s a lot fairer to the citizens of Palm Coast than winding up with 12 people in the race and the winner winding up getting 120 votes or something like that,” Cuff said.

“We’ve only got the time we’ve got,” he said, favoring as much room for candidates to qualify as possible, within existing constraints.

No members of the public addressed the council during the brief special meeting it held this afternoon. The meeting was partly in person, partly online.