Palm Coast Council Member Theresa Pontieri’s Statement on Westward Expansion Development Proposal

Palm Coast City Council Theresa Pontieri delivered the following statement at the end of the April 14 workshop of the council. It is transcribed in full. Pontieri does not mention the land owner-developer by name. It is Rayonier, the Wildlight, Fla.-based company that owns the majority of the 20,000 acres slated for the western expansion. See: “Calling It ‘Garbage,’ Theresa Pontieri Vows to Block Westward Expansion Unless Rayonier Pays More for Infrastructure.”

Unfortunately, I have to talk about something that has, I think, come to all of our attention. But I wasn’t going to really address it, or I should say, go hard in the paint on it today.

But in looking at the capital improvement plan and looking at all of the expenses that we have before us, our staff working diligently and really hard to try to make all of these projects happen on very limited funds, the amount of taxes and fees and everything else that our residents pay, and that our builders pay in the form of impact fees, and looking at how hard we up here tried to manage all of our projects, all of the infrastructure needs, everything, all of the obligations that we collectively have to worry about on a day-to-day basis for the future of our city, I literally got sick to my stomach when I saw on one of the slides today: $126 million for the Loop Road in the form of appropriations, which is just a fancy word for taxpayer dollars.

And I say that because I sat on this dais about two years ago and I exposed the fact that the westward expansion landowner was supposed to pay for that Loop Road. They’re a multi-billion-dollar company, and per their development orders, there are two in place for that entire swath of land [see them here and here], per those development orders, they were supposed to pay for that Loop Road.

Instead, this City Council, not the people up here, decided to ask the state for appropriations for the payment of that Loop Road and the state appropriations were granted. Again, that’s just a euphemism for taxpayer dollars. State taxpayers, I want to be very clear about that, not local, wasn’t local city monies, but it was state tax dollars.

That Loop Road is the connection between current Palm Coast and what people have termed Palm Coast 2.0, and when we transmitted the [Comprehensive Plan], there was an effort to abandon or set aside the old development orders, or I should say, the current development orders that are in place for that piece of land. And this was attempted to be done in a very sneaky way, I have to say, because the development orders were not given to City Council at that time, and the people that were in charge of that endeavor are no longer with the city. So I want to make sure, I’m very clear, that it’s nobody sitting in the back of the room.

I took the initiative to read the development orders, and when I figured out that this Loop Road was supposed to be paid for by that landowner, I was sick to my stomach, and I got that same feeling today, and I wasn’t going to, like I said, I wasn’t going to expose this in this way, but I can’t sit here. I feel like I would not be doing the right thing if I let this go. So here’s what I’ll say about this.

We have, all of us, been briefed on the current master plan development that has been proposed by the landowner. This master plan development, this MPD, is supposed to replace the current development orders that are still technically active, until we as a city council decide that we are going to replace them with the current proposed master plan development.

I got the master plan development about two weeks ago. When I read it the first time it read to me like a horror novel. When I printed it out and made notes all over it, like I do all the City Council packets every week, I was so disgusted and disappointed, because it’s my firm belief that we need the westward expansion to be successful. We all know up here that we have very limited lands. We don’t have land for industry. We don’t have land for commercial. We are very much handcuffed in our efforts to diversify the tax base. I know Mr. [John] Zobler [the city’s development director]’s strong struggles with this. I know Mr. [Craig] McKinney [the city’s economic development director] struggles with this. From an economic development standpoint, our city is a nightmare. And it’s not by any fault of anybody up here. We are trying very hard to diversify our tax base. We cannot do that without creating more developable land, and the way to do that is to expand west.

So we know we need it for that. We know we need it for a sports complex. We talked about this sports complex. We need that for the community. We need that for sports tourism. And wonderfully, the old development orders say that the developer or the landowner is supposed to pay for that sports complex. That sports complex is supposed to include an Olympic-sized pool, which we’ve all been agonizing about. How are we going to fix the pool? How are we going to pay for the pool? How are we going to pay for a YMCA? That development order says they have to pay for it.

Not only that, it says they have to pay for sports fields. Another thing that we have all been struggling up here to figure out, how are we going to create this for our community? How are we going to bring in more tourism dollars with the creation of these rectangular fields? Well, we could look to the development orders.

Now, I was told by the developer, those development orders are not workable for us. Okay, fair enough, they were entered into, gosh, two decades ago. So let’s take another crack at it. So for the last two years, I have been trying to work with this landowner to come up with something that is good for the community and that is workable for that landowner and that developer, so that we can start to expand west so that we can fix our economic development and so that we can increase sports tourism, bring in jobs, all of the wonderful things we should be able to do in the westward expansion, and what they gave to us is 117 pages of absolute garbage. I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t hold back anymore on this.

Not only do they add 10,000 dwelling units to what was previously in place, but they don’t pay for the sports complex. They don’t pay for any fire stations or police stations or schools. They donate land for those, but they’re getting impact fee credits in exchange, which that’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that, that’s pretty standard. Most importantly, and most egregiously, to me, is the fact that in the old development orders, there was a specific order in which they had to develop. These old development orders say that they had to develop a certain amount of commercial before a certain amount of residential dwelling units could come into place. That requirement does not exist in the new MPD. There are phases, but there’s no teeth to those phases. There are more suggestions than anything else.

There’s a lot of other stuff in here that I’m not going to get into from a granular perspective, because from a high level perspective, it doesn’t pass the sniff test. So what’s the point? I sat up here and told the developer two years ago, when I found out they got $110 million of taxpayer money, which I guess it was actually $126 million–so that’s news to me–but at least $110 million in taxpayer money for something they were supposed to pay for. I held up their DRI [Development of Regional Impact] and I said, You better fix this. Matter of fact, Mayor, you put it on your Facebook page.

It’s been two years and you haven’t fixed it. I feel like I’ve been talking to a wall for the past two years, and I feel this whole entire council and our residents have been disrespected because there is a known issue that we have a problem with–a lack of jobs, a lack of industry, a lack of infrastructure. And in exchange for an opportunity to help us flourish, we get 10,000 extra dwelling units and minimal infrastructure contributions.

So I am going to ask this landowner one more time, please, as a representative of this city who refuses to mortgage the future of our city on this MPD that I will not accept, please make it right. Please fix it. You can and you have the ability to fix it. I know that there’s a good product that can come out of the westward expansion. I’m confident we can get it done. But I cannot be more clear about this. I will not accept this as it is. And if this doesn’t go through before I am off this council, I ask you members of the council that will be here, please do not allow this to be acceptable to the future of our city.