In a stunning reversal, Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris today told his colleagues that he will vote against the utility rate increase and borrowing plan he supported just three days ago unless the city imposes an indefinite building moratorium on residential housing, or “no more approval of any more residential housing, to date uncertain,” as he put it.
On Tuesday, Norris was part of the 3-1 majority that approved a $615 million spending plan that includes a 36 percent water and sewer rate increase over the next 30 months. The second read of the ordinance is scheduled for March 18. Norris told his colleagues they have until then to “marinate” in his proposal, which drew sharp resistance from Council members Charles Gambaro and Ty Miller, and guarded support–and an alternative path–from Theresa Pontieri, who twice before had called for a moratorium.
There were no decisions. Norris was only giving his colleagues–and the community–a heads-up. But the council agreed to debate alternatives at length, with evidence, at its workshop next Tuesday. Today’s meeting however boxed Norris into a position from which he could not easily extricate himself. Today’s move potentially sets up a council deadlocked over a utility plan that either collapses or emerges in shredded bits that save face more than infrastructure.
Norris, who had summoned a shellshocked Jason DeLorenzo to the podium to answer his questions, asked the chief of staff how many housing units have been permitted but not built. 19,000, came the answer. If all those units were built and occupied today, would the utility infrastructure support them?
“No, sir,” DeLorenzo told the mayor, also noting that when ITT began building Palm Coast, it platted 45,000 lots but did not have the infrastructure capacity to accommodate all 45,000, since it would be built up as the houses were built. ( ITT’s oldest sewer plant, what is today Wastewater Treatment Plant 1 in the Woodlands, began in 1971 as a 300,000 gallons-per-day facility. It is now at 6.83 million gallons per day, with a further expansion planned, assuming the council approves paying for it.)
Norris then asked if the city went through with the bonding plan and the rest of it, “would we have enough water and wastewater to sustain those houses, once those other [19,000], if they came fully online?”
“No, sir,” DeLorenzo said–a shocking revelation and news to most.
“OK. So everyone, see our dilemma here? We are never going to catch up, and it’s always going to fall on the back of our residents,” Norris said.
Norris last Tuesday voted with the 3-1 majority to approve an ambitious utility plan that would raise water and sewer rates 36 percent by October 2027 and allow for a pair of bonds totaling $455 million by 2028 to expand and upgrade the water and sewer utility system. The vote was on the ordinance’s first reading.
“So I can tell you right now in open forum, when we come back for the second vote on that, I will be a no vote unless we put in a building moratorium on residential housing,” he said. “We’re not going to keep building on something that we can’t sustain and putting it on the back of our residents. They don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it. Nobody in this room deserves it. So either the developers are going to start doing industrial growth to bring in jobs, offset our tax base, or we’re going to stop doing houses altogether. When I propose it I will say to a date uncertain. Now, I know I’m going to get pushback–‘we can’t stop building, we can’t stop building.’ Well, if we don’t stop building, we’re going to be broke, and we’re going to force lifetime residents of Florida, Flagler County, to flee their homes, because they cannot afford to live in this state anymore. Plain and simple. Like I said, we are at an inflection point, and we need to fix it.”
It wasn’t clear how residents would be forced to flee if the city continued building.
“If you place a moratorium in place, you’re going to not enable our city to fix these projects,” Gambaro said. “It’s not all bond. These impact fees play a major role in our ability to move forward. That’s one, and then the impact on skilled workers, laborers in our community. Do we put them out of work by doing this? Do we create an unemployment issue, Mr. Mayor, for our community?”
Annamaria Long, executive officer of the Flagler County Home Builders Association, had no idea of this morning’s development until she started getting texts alerting her. “It’s not only the worst outcome for my industry, it’s the worst outcome for every citizen in Palm Coast, for every resident,” Long said of a moratorium. She said the utility rate study that preceded the proposal the city voted on Tuesday is predicated on coming impact fees and growth, which means new housing. “That’s about one-third of the formula,” Long said. Removing it from the equation will increase utility bills “exponentially.”
Long doesn’t question that Palm Coast’s water infrastructure is failing. She said there are water-line breaks every week, costing the city $100,000 a break to repair. “If you stop building today those water and sewer main breaks are still going to happen, you’re just not going to get any more impact fees to pay for the expansion you still need per DEP,” Long said, referring to the Division of Environmental Protection’s consent order. “The impact fees cannot be used for [repair and rehabilitation], and R&R is what the city needs in order to rectify a majority of the problem.”
Long, who is preparing to address the council at coming meetings, strongly objected to the mayor claiming that “developers have been taking advantage of this city far too long.”
“If you ask the developers, I believe the developers would say they’re regularly taken advantage of by the city in terms of regulatory fees, timelines that drag out their process, extensive review fees” forcing them to pay thousands of dollars for each plan review, Long said.
The council is without a fifth vote until mid-April, since Ray Sevens resigned. If the council splits in a 2-2 vote on March 18, the utility plan fails. That would send shock waves to the state, which has Palm Coast’s main sewer plant under a consent order, forcing the city to improve it; to investors, who may hesitate before crafting development plans even without a moratorium; and most damagingly to the city’s financial health, to bond holders (the city still owes $155 million in debt, the bulk of it from the utility), who may question the city’s stability and downgrade its bond rating.
The moratorium would not apply to the 7,500-odd so-called “infill lots” of the original ITT-platted Palm Coast, or “anything that’s in the queue that has been approved,” Norris said, which adds up to 19,000 housing units. It would apply to new development applications, though Norris was not clear on what that meant when his colleagues asked beyond confirming that it would apply to the “western expansion,” the vast empty land beyond U.S. 1 and a county enclave. But development there is not due for several years yet, and major subdivision development in Palm Coast has slowed considerably, so the threat of a moratorium may not amount to more than noise.
Pontieri is asking for a significantly scaling back utility spending plan, “and we come back with a more reasonable ask, so that we’re not laying this entire bomb at the feet of our residents,” she said. “And if we need to consider a moratorium, because that is not an alternative that is presented to us, then that’s what we need to consider.”
“We have been crop-dusted, period. The time to take corrective action unfortunately leaves us with these very drastic measures,” Pontieri said. “We’re not the only ones that are encountering this. The whole state of Florida I would say, by and large, are having these same conversations, and we’ve seen moratoriums get instituted even lately across the state. ”
She’s right. Moratoriums are not as alien as they may seem. Zephyrhills has had one since 2023. Edgewater approved a year-long moratorium in January. The same month, New Smyrna Beach extended one for Venetian Bay, a 2,000-home subdivision. The Juno Beach planning board unanimously backed a year-long moratorium last month, albeit on apartments and commercial developments only. Since last summer moratoriums have been considered in St. Pete Beach, Dundee and Manatee County. Collier and Volusia counties considered and rejected moratoriums.
To Pontieri. Norris’s moratorium does not sound like much of one. “Respectfully, mayor, the ITT lots are what contribute to the issues with Wastewater Treatment Plant 1,” she told him. “So if we excluded those from the moratorium, you’re not helping that situation much.” (The majority of ITT lots’ sewer flows to Waste Water Treatment Plant 1 in the Woodlands, which is under a state consent order to be expanded and upgraded.) She was also dubious about halting development of the western part of the city.
Pontieri would scrap the $455 million bonds, “and then we put pressure on staff, or whoever is pursuing our grants, our lobbyists and our state representatives, to get us the funding.” But that hope had the ring of Xanadu: Sen. Tom Leek, the Volusia Republican and Flagler County’s senior legislator, has repeatedly cautioned local officials that state appropriations will be scarce, and nowhere near the levels Flagler County enjoyed in the last two years. But even in those two flush years, replacing $455 million with state grants would have been an outlandish proposition: Palm Coast’s entire state appropriations over two years totaled about $150 million, and that was with its own representative, Paul Renner, as Speaker of the House. It now has an unknown freshman in his place.
But Pontieri was also on solid ground when she ridiculed the administration’s claim that raising rates now means no rate increase will be needed other than inflation increases past 2027. Administrations have been making that promise almost since the time the city bought the utility in 2003. The promise has never been true, and both mathematically and economically (since recessions are inevitable, reducing impact fee revenue and revenue from growth), it is almost certainly not true for years past 2027.
Miller wants a workshop to discuss any alternatives. “We’re proposing an alternative, but the details aren’t there,” he said, “to look at it and be able to try to make a decision and see what the impacts are and how that’s going to affect our community.” To Gambaro, the discussion of a moratorium should be separate from the discussion and vote on rate increases.
“We are sitting at a 2-2 vote right now, and our residents are mad as hell,” Norris said. “They hate us. And I get the brunt of it because I’m sitting in this chair.”
“We get it as well,” Miller reminded him, his words as if comparing spines.
Sue says
This is what is needed and necessary! There is already so many houses yet to be built that wait and see what we will need then example wider roads etc.Go Mike!!
Sarah hammond says
You must consider your elderly residents who only have social security income with a house payment , homeowners insurance that has skyrocketed and state has not helped. Add in car insurance, and the cost of every item we need to survive. Then you get a tiny increase in your social security check how are we to survive? Do you want us to lose our home and become homeless or just lie down and die? We are the residents who have worked our entire lives, no one gave us anything. We do not collect welfare checks nor food stamps nor free healthcare, we pay. our way the best we can. You should have looked to the future prior to overbuilding and made sure you had proper facilities to support the growth. Growth is good but I think you got the cart before the horse and now expect your residents to suffer. There has to be another solution.
Bad Idea says
I’m not a fan of the growth, but the reality is this town is primarily construction workers and tradesmen. You will bankrupt this town. Not a bright idea.
JimboXYZ says
Once again, it’s worse than we ever thought it was ? And Alfin had this Vision of 2050 that he moved forward with like our senile local version of Biden. The Palm Coast Observer throws out another number $ 701M. Hate to say that I told you so that the $ 455M over the next 3 years would be short of catching up and we’d hear more that day for the next round of inflationary & tax increases. It’s a perpetual cycle for rewarding this level of mismanagement. A tour of any existing facility is not going to be a feel good pride in the community for anyone. The State grants were record levels of funding that were based on BS too, they outright omitted/excluded funding for projects as a state budget “NO”, then cut project grants for what they were never going to grossly underfund anyway. Give DeSantis every penny of that westward expansion money and tell him we don’t want to grow until life is affordable again ! Looking at taxpayers to pick up growing the unaffordably planned future of anything FL. What do we have to show for 4 years of Biden ? Trump isn’t fixing that. We have a BJ’s with a couple of chain restaurants at the edge of the parking lot, pickleball courts & splash pad ? Yet a daily shower in your home will become an unaffordable luxury, flushing a toilet will become a rationed water use the way this has gone. I’ll bet the swales will still flood too, the roads will still be dented asphalt, cracking from daily traffic ? SR-100 has a bridge over it that I’ve never seen anyone use anytime I’ve ever driven a car under it. Show of hands, who has had eggs taken off their plates for grocery inflation ? I can comment that I haven’t bought eggs in almost a year now, I refuse to pay Bidenomics inflation for eggs that persists to this very day under the “Trumpster”. I simply can’t envision how employees can sit in a boardroom knowing there isn’t enough downpay to even get this done without gouging people that were lowballed thru the decades on their salaries & wages and then show up a a public meeting for an hour or whatever to listen to taxpayers say NO to it all, then turn around and vote for approval of what is a landslide NO from the people that are actually being extorted with another round of financial hardship to pay for it.
“Palm Coast is at an inflection point, he said. The city is over $155 million in debt from the original purchase of the wastewater and water treatment facilities, which require $701 million in upgrades and maintenance through 2029 to be able to serve its current population.”
Skibum says
So just what is the best solution to this very serious problem that Palm Coast is now faced with anyway? It sounds to me like the city is in a “catch-22” dilemma. The city’s utility systems head was brought to the podium and he said the city’s current wastewater treatment capabilities are not sufficient to sustain the 19,000 residential homes slated to be built in the near future. Others are saying the 455 million dollars in bonds to upgrade the water treatment system is dependent on the future residential homes that will be built because of developer’s impact fees that will be collected by the city to help offset the cost. So, which is it??? Can the city afford a residential construction moratorium if it is being forced by the state to spend millions to upgrade our wastewater treatment plant? Can the city afford to continued the unabated residential construction that has been going on if the city’s infrastructure is not, nor will it be able to handle that level of growth? If the two sides are this diametrically opposed in their views, should other experts be brought in who have the knowledge and expertise to help guide the city through this rocky process? It seems mind boggling to me that there appears to be no clear answer as of yet to these serious questions when the city is already at the point where they are voting on issuing $455,000,000 in bonds that city residents will be paying in increased utility rates! Am I missing something here?
Greg says
I see a bit of sanity on the city’s part. The city is destroying the quality of life here. Mayor, please stick to your guns here. Thank you. Glad I voted first you.
Dakota Brooks says
I agree with Mayor Norris—this is the more practical option.
And Pontieri made a great point… she asked for other ideas multiple times, but there were crickets. Yet somehow, there was plenty of time to put together that epic, never-ending slideshow.
Are we really supposed to believe that a 30% rate hike is the only option? Hard to imagine that a team this talented couldn’t come up with a better solution.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
I for one think that tearing down every square inch of grass and trees to build more homes is brilliant. We should build houses everywhere. We should build houses on top of houses. We should float them down the intracoastal waterway on barges, because certainly more houses is a great idea. Without a doubt, the population of palm coast has the ability to fill up all of those houses with people and it certainly won’t drive the market down and make it impossible for people trying to sell and leave this state of insanity.
In all seriousness, Norris is right.
Ed P says
Observation
Waste water treatment is a city issue only. Island residences have septics primarily.
Should those on the Island start railing against any water rate increases that may fall upon them like their neighbors in town have about beach renourishment?
Dennis C Rathsam says
It’s good to see our mayor, has seen the light! This shit has to stop now. I’m glad he borrowed TRUMP,S balls, & stand up for the residence of P/C
Jake from state farm says
@skibum.. the city could stop trying to run a golf course that loses a ton of money every year. They could stop other frivolous spending…
Land of no turn signals says says
Finally somebody with balls.
Sparks says
Mike Norris thank you for working for us!! We’re so glad we voted you for Mayor. Keep up the good job. We are behind You 100%. No more building houses. There are no good paying jobs in Palm Coast.
Sue says
The building in this town HAS GOT TO STOP!!! Driving down SR100 has become ridiculous. You have to give yourself an extra half an hour to get somewhere, the roads are so crowded. Are we really looking to become the biggest city between Jacksonville and Miami? Is that what everyone moved here for? You can’t fit the cars on the roads now, and you haven’t even built the rest of the thousands of houses that are planned. My water pressure sucks now, not to mention what my water bill currently looks like. Dread to think of what will happen when they raise the prices. Disable electricity, I live in my home at night with one little lamp on. I’m a senior citizen who wanted to live here because of the affordability and the beauty. The former mayor and his cronies ruined all that, and got rich on it.
Sayre Berman says
Aren’t the developers paying into a fund to build whatever additional infrastructure is needed to support any new development? If not, why not?
RWBoggess says
A lot of people have made a lot of good points concerning the dilemma that the City of Palm Coast is in.
The fact is the city is in a no-win scenario. One in which it should never have had to face. Here is the simple math. The city needs $1.00 to fix existing deficiencies in our water, wastewater, and sewage system, but all it can get is $.50 without ‘barrowing’ against future impact fees. A building moratorium, however, will prevent the city from ‘borrowing’ that extra $.50 for the capital improvements needed to handle the already approved (and paid for in the form of impact fees) growth. Then, if nothing is changed, growth continues, impact fees remain the same, the incompetent consultants are hired, and the politicians do nothing, the City will find itself short on infrastructure needs again in 4-5 years and short on money to pay off the debt.
Let us not overlook, the housing market right now is in a state of flux and faces a potential collapse again like in 2007/2008, with the rising cost of construction, high interest rates, stagnant income, etc. If that happens, all this impact money evaporates, leaving the city on the hook for $300-$400 million in debt. This could be a double edge sword – if growth evaporators it relieves the stress on capital improvements, but it will also mean the future impacts fees that are being barrowed against will also evaporate.
How did we get there? And can it be prevented? Well, it seems that’s a problem as well. Somewhere along the line staff and consultants (and the politicians on the Council), screwed up by low-balling the impact fees and, since impacts fees were increased (and apparently not increased enough to cover future needs as intended) last year, there is a restriction that impact fees can not be increased for another four (4) years (presumedly because of State law, I assume). The City isn’t even in a position to FIX the past mis-judgement or mis-management. Its hands are tied for the next four years or so.
If the city can survive this screw up, it first needs to find a consultant that will present realistic and probably difficult to accept estimates of needs and impact fees. Then the City needs to find staff that can make the case for the city’s financial and infrastructure needs. Finally, we need a city council that responses to the needs of the city and its citizens and not to the wants and greed of the developer. This cannot be done overnight. This mess wasn’t created overnight so it won’t be fixed overnight.
The only sane option at this time is to adopt a short-term residential building moratorium with an option to renew every six (6) months until a reasonable and attainable resolution can be resolved – if one can be found. At the same time, the city budget needs to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb and, again, difficult decisions will need to be made – suspend to a minimum park, recreational, etc. budgets, and prioritize needs and stick to those priorities.
Billy says
This is a broken record! Every smaller town follows the same destructive path until it is a huge crap hole like Daytona, Jacksonville,Orlando. Growth and expansion are the death sentence of town! Stop the building of new homes, tighten up your belt and maintain the town to excellence on what is here already!
Dakota Brooks says
There were several statements made at yesterday’s meeting and on other forums about who would be impacted by potential job loss.
According to the US Census Bureau as of 2022 – about 10% of the population has a construction or related occupation. While 25% work in a management or sales occupation.
You can see the other breakdowns at this site:
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/palm-coast-fl
Certainly we don’t want anyone out of work – but we all need water and solvent city. There are some hard choices ahead.
Jane Gentile-Youd says
I don’t live in Palm Coast but I spend most of my time somewhere in Palm Coast almost every day and cannot thank the mayor enough for having the courage to rethink an issue and not let an ego stand in the way like so many other politicians.
The congestion on SR 100 from I-95 to US 1 is soooooo bad that I drive up US 1 ( Old Dixie Highway to US 1) to SR 100 – Moody the same way I did 23 years ago before SR 100 was completed. The westerly traffic on SR 100 is as bad as Miami-Dade at all hours of the day and is only getting worse and worse – road needs to be 6 laned . Added housing would turn many of us off who will now go back to Ormond Beach too shop like we did when we moved here,. At least they have some sanity
...or is it Bad Facts? says
Um, Bad Idea, can you back up that statement? Any employment data, or just your circle of friends? This may equally be just *my* personal perspective, but our workforce seems diverse enough to counter your statement we are “primarily” one type of industry.
Damocles says
Thank you, Skibum, that’s exactly what I was wondering. Seems like the $455 million is a perverse incentive: “We have to make the problem worse in order to get the solution to make it better!”
THANKS ALFIN says
At least someone is paying attention. No more residential development. Just the stuff that’s already been approved by Alfin & Holland should keep construction workers plenty busy for a long time.
I don’t want sewer overflowing in the streets or water outages, but if we have to swallow even larger utility bills, we need a guarantee that we won’t just have the same thing happen 5 years from now. Stop the bleeding before its too late!
Paul T says
An outright moratorium probably isn’t a practical solution but restricting resale and construction on lots in the ITT platted area might help.
As for the development of areas on the periphery of the city, satellite sewage treatment plants are absolutely feasible and could be made a requirement, paid for by developer consortiums while expansion of the water treatment system might be funded by an increase in impact fees.
Existing homeowners really should not be saddled with the cost of expanding services needed for poorly controlled housing growth.
Marie Labientoento says
Than you Mayor. I support free enterprise, however profit has turned to greed in this once peaceful and beautiful city. As is said, “Better late than never”
James says
Well, a moratorium on residential building might mean something, if it were a means to the end of getting builders to accept paying higher impact fees.
Otherwise we’re still all stuck with the infrastructure tab for decades of not… “If we build it, they will come.”
Nor, “They won’t come, if we don’t build it.”
But (decades of)… “Yeah, if they come, then we’ll build it.”
Just an opinion.
Bob says
Thank you Mr. Mayor! Finally someone to stand with the residents. No way Palm Coast was planned with 10,000 more houses on US1. There should of been industrial buildings. But in the past, Palm Coast told companies like Mercedes-Benz what color to paint their building, and where their entrances will be. They said go scratch,they built in JAX
Using Common Sense says
This is what happens when City employees work for the interests of developers and landowners to push Growth at Any Cost under a mandate masquerading as an “Airport Master Plan”. Those involved are still getting rich off these backdoor deals, knowing full well there was and is no infrastructure to support them. So, the residents get screwed again, more traffic, ridiculously high water and utility bills, no quality of life from excessive nuisance noise of training aircraft polluting our air and water, no peace of mind for the safety of our children and families, no industry or quality high paying jobs. The threads of corruption run deep and are being exposed and those complicit and responsible need to be held to account. Greed has been destroying Palm Coast for too long and it is time for a reckoning. Thank you to Mayor Norris and Ms. Pontieri for standing up for the RESIDENTS.
JustBeNice says
Thank you Mayor Norris. I’m glad you are leading PC!
Brad W says
This is why populism is bad. It stops people from thinking rationally.
#1 A moratorium is an infringement upon property rights plain and simple. The City will get flooded with lawsuits which will end up costing more than the $400M and development will continue.
#2 Listen to what the Mayor is saying. He will vote yes to take on over $400M in debt and still saddle us with 37% increases if there is a moratorium.
#3 A building moratorium will decimate the local economy by destroying local jobs and industries that all tie to construction and home ownership.
So what is being solved here with this proposal? Nothing at all and in fact we still have the first big problem plus a slew more with huge price tags.
Palm Coast citizen says
I support Mayor Mike Norris’ call for an indefinite building moratorium.
Ty Miller is closely connected to the Flagler Home Builders Association via his wife who is the immediate past vice-president and was employed by the Palm Coast Observer before that. Do you think Ty Miller is going to vote for a building moratorium? No. His allegiance is to the group who got him voted onto the city council . . . The Flagler Home Builders Association.
I support Mayor Norris’s call for a moratorium.
LET'S SEE IF MICKY LIKES IT! says
Finally a Mayor with balls! Not a butt kisser to PC administrators,
developers, Toby Tobin, and COUTY butt kisser commissioners and cronies. Our new
campaign about Micky: Life Cereal Micky Likes It Commercial HD – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLQ0LZSnJFE
FlaPharmTech says
Curious, does any of my fellow Woodlands residents smell sewage at certain times of day?
FlaglerLive says
Waste Water treatment Plant 1, the city’s oldest, largest, and most overburdened, sits in the heart of the Woodlands.
Robjr says
Finally an elected official who will stand up to the residential building special interests and the residential real estate special interests.
James says
Wait, $614 million?
Does anyone else here realize that’s like requesting a billion dollars for this infrastructure project? Wasn’t the original estimate $300 million for the waste facility?
“… Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…” and Palm Coast apparently. For quite some time… and it stinks to high heaven.
How did Palm Coast ever get to this point?!?!
I really have my doubts now that ALL those dollars will be going only to a waste water treatment facility. Perhaps they’re thinking of throwing in a stadium… and maybe some canal dredging, etc.
Just say’n… I’ve seen the light!
Jane K says
Thank you Mayor Norris. Please stop the insanity with all this building.