Palm Coast Council ‘Retreat’ Vows Six Months of Action to Defy Lame-Duck Label

At a half-day “retreat” at the Southern Recreation Center on Monday, the Palm Coast City Council insisted that it is not a lame-duck even as three of its members will be gone by early November, and that it still has goals to meet over the next six months, chief among them the development plan for the so-called “western expansion.” 

As the final exercise of the retreat, Acting Deputy City Manager Kyle Berryhill prompted the council members each to draw up a list of about three priorities they wish to accomplish together in the next six months. “We have a limited window with this group,” he said. 

Council members each had individual goals, but where they intersected most was in their intention to approve next year’s budget, though they don’t have much choice in that regard, and to approve the Master Planned Development (or MPD) Raydient has been working on with city staff for months, ahead of the planned development of 22,000 acres west of U.S. 1. 

Raydient is the development arm of Rayonier, the timbering company that owns the near totality of that acreage. Raydient is looking to scrap two older development orders that projected 11,000 housing units, and is now proposing a single development order with 22,000 homes by mid-century. The development will add close to 70,000 people to Palm Coast’s population. By then, the 6,000 remaining unbuilt ITT lots are expected to be built out as well, adding some 18,000 people. Combined, the new developments will bring the city’s population to close to 200,000, or roughly the size of Tallahassee today.  

To Council member Theresa Pontieri, the aim should be to pass a  budget with a “mindset” of going back to rollback even if it may not be entirely possible to do so. Pontieri isn’t interested in sacrificing certain services to blindly adopt a rollback rate, though striving toward one should drive the budget preparation. (Rollback is the property tax rate that would generate the same amount of revenue next year as it did this year, outside of new construction.) 

Beyond that, she’s all for focusing on the Raydient MPD as long as the developer picks up its share of infrastructure development costs “and not sacrifice the future of our city by not paying for it.” If it’s not done right, she said, “let’s stop it and move on, focus on Palm Coast, focus on being prosperous and what we have already.” Pontieri has twice blistered the developer for not doing its share. 

Notably, and with the exception of Mayor Mike Norris, who aligns with Pontieri on the Raydient development, the rest of the council has been more mum than supportive of Pontieri’s bluntness–as it was on Monday. 

Some of the council members’ goals were more abstract or general than specific, achievable work over the next six months, such as Council member Dave Sullivan’s wish “to maintain local control as much as possible” against “a lot of threats from the outside, especially the state legislature right now, taking away our ability to make decisions.” He also wants “careful growth” with a focus on the commercial base, and finding ways to reduce duplication between local governments. That’s been a goal since the founding of the city. It’s also a goal in the county. 

Council member Charles Gambaro, after promising that “all of us are running all the way to the tape,” cited infrastructure and following through on the council’s approval of the largest debt in the city’s history to pay for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements. (Gambaro, along with Pontieri and Sullivan, will not be on the council past the November election. Gambaro is running for the local congressional seat, Pontieri for a County Commission seat.) For Council member Ty Miller, finding more funding outside the city’s tax streams is crucial. His attention is on business and economic development. 

Misnomer aside, retreats, which are essentially more relaxed workshops, are generally a chance for an elected body’s members either to to know each other better, to work out dynamics on a board, to set out some goals. As retreats go, this one reversed roles somewhat. The elected officials spoke least, City Manager Mike McGlothlin and Berryhill spoke most, leading the various sessions in hopes of getting a clearer understanding of what the time-limited council wants to achieve and how. 

Council members were seated at separate tables, each with a group of city directors. McGlothlin started the morning with an overview of what the council has achieved, listing ongoing projects across the city, before turning the floor over to Berryhill, whose cheer and optimism set the tone for the rest of the sessions. “We got a ton of great things done,” he said. “There’s so much to be proud of in our city.” 

He credited the council, then launched into the first of the morning’s exercises: prioritizing values, or rather, culling down stacks of cards, each bearing a one-word “value,” down to a few. Some of the values that made the list: ethical, knowledgeable, transparent, loyal, cooperative, responsible, leadership, mission-oriented. (Some that didn’t, at least from most tables: calm, generous, sincere, wise.) 

“Do we want to talk about ethical?” Berryhill told the room. “I can say this, that if we miss on this one, we kind of hurt every other opportunity here. Ethical is kind of the floor for local government. It’s definitely been throughout my 21 years here in the city.” Accountability was big, too. 

Then came the “SWOT” analysis–strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats–that darling of corporations and governments since it evolved out of a military contractor’s anxieties about staying ahead in the 1950s. Again each table was tasked with drawing up lists, and again the lists got pasted up on boards around the room.

Quality of life, public safety, access to the beach, low turnover, a skilled and capable staff, community support and “Palm Coast’s history of fiscal responsibility” were among the strengths. A dearth of affordable housing, work opportunities for young people, a lack of diversity (whoever wrote that felt compelled to add, in parentheses, “tax base,” possibly so as not to be fired now that a state law bans diversity initiatives in government), and “population age” (Palm Coast’s population is significantly older than the state average and at this rate could give The Villages a run for its demographics by mid-century.) 

Also in the weaknesses column: training skilled and capable staff (which seemed to contradict the earlier mention of low turnover and highly skilled staff in the strengths column), a lack of youth activities, and again, a lopsided tax base. 

“Fear of growth” somehow appeared under “threats,” even though Flagler County led by Palm Coast, added 25,000 residents between 2020 and 2025. Inflation, the weather and lack of funding also appeared in that column. Under opportunities: lots of land, creating a new downtown, improving infrastructure, the YMCA, and so on. 

Then came the council members’ turn to speak of their goals. The retreat had been scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It ended almost an hour ahead of schedule. Not a single member of the public who wasn’t either a reporter or a political candidate for the council attended. Redefined Food, the company that holds the concession at the Southern Recreation Center, catered lunch. And the word “bougie” was not spoken once. At least not loud enough for others to hear.