In Major Leap for Public Art, Palm Coast Will Require Developers to Devote Portion of Project Costs to Art Fund

It’s taken 25 years, but Palm Coast appears ready to take the arts seriously. The City Council today agreed to a plan that will require developers to pay a small portion of their development costs into an arts fund that would be used to pay for public art installations. If such a fund was in place last year, it would have generated close to $1 million, city officials said.

Until now, the entirety of the city’s investment in the arts has been the annual set of a dozen or so cultural arts grants to local organizations, a notoriously stingy  appropriation that has hovered between $20,000 and $30,000 a year most years. The city designated an arts district in Town Center several years ago but never followed up with any kind of financial commitment, and the organization set up to oversee it–United We Art–fell apart a few months ago, losing many of its board members.




Today, Parks and Recreation Director James Hirst, at the council’s direction, submitted a plan with options for the city to to build a public arts program with new revenue. One approach would have entailed drawing on tax dollars in a variety of ways. The other would do what numerous cities and counties do, from New York City to Sarasota: require developers and builders to devote a portion of their project cost to a city-run arts fund.

Council members Nick Klufas and Theresa Pontieri embraced that approach, and quickly won consensus from Mayor David Alfin and Council member Cathy Heighter. As usual, Council member Ed Danko had other things to do than attend to his public responsibilities: he was campaigning. (Alfin and Klufas are also running campaigns, but not at the expense of their meeting commitments. See: “2 Fellow-Council Members Sharply Criticize Ed Danko for Leaving Meeting to Campaign After Firing City Manager.”)

“If we can use dollars that are collected from development, over a million dollars dedicated to a cultural arts program, it seems like those options become much more palatable,” Council member Nick Klufas said.  “I would love to see a dedicated portion of development, over a million dollars, go to enriching the arts.”




Some local governments, Hirst said, devote a percentage of their annual capital improvement plan–from 0.5 to 2 percent–to commission public art works that would be installed in or near the newly constructed building. Orlando provides 1 percent of such capital costs for art installations.

In Sarasota, however, property owners and developers who apply for building permits are required to contribute the equivalent of 0.5 percent of their project cost to a public art fund, or alternately provide public art at the site of the development, or in a public place. The ordinance applies to apartments, mixed-use developments and commercial buildings. The city has so much public art, including murals and sculptures, and more than 20 private art galleries that it has a dedicated pair of trolleys that tour the art district and hosts “muralist meet-ups” (and holds arts competitions to select what works are installed at roundabouts.)

“If we were to go this route, just from commercial buildings only in the last 12 months, with a half a percent, we could look at $978,000 [contributed] to an art fund just in our city,” Hirst said.

Council member Theresa Pontieri supports the idea. “The city of Sarasota has a really good structure here, where it’s a small percentage, but when we’re looking at these large developments, it ends up being a good chunk of change,” she said.  She’s looking for a more detailed proposal along those lines. Pontieri referred to the nine-page spreadsheet Hurt and his staff had provided the council, illustrating the variety of municipal arts programs across the state–and how much of a laggard Palm Coast has been in that regard. There’s “a ton of cities in Florida that have done similar things like this, and we’re really behind the eight ball on this,” she said. “So I think that it’s good that we’re doing it. I think we should move expeditiously on it.”




Pontieri and Klufas recommended some caveats, such as exempting affordable housing complexes from having to participate, and ensuring that developers don’t spend all their required dollars on the site of their development by scheming ways to evade their obligation–or to have art limited to private development sites, Pontieri said.

The city has to have leeway in administering the dollars “so that we can allocate the dollars how we see fit,” Klufas said, “and not necessarily because they have one piece of art that they value at half a million dollars, that it absolves them from this obligation.”

Other cities take different approaches. In Houston, for example, “The Cultural Arts Council of Houston receives a percentage on the hotel/motel tax for art,” Hurst’s presentation states. (No organization by that name could be located on the web, and a directory pointing to such an organization’s website led to a dead link.)

Phoenix funds the arts through general revenue, state lottery dollars and grants, according to the presentation. Phoenix’s current Office of Arts and Culture is budgeting $10 million  for the coming year, in a $4.7 billion budget, not including $81 million for the city’s convention center. The city budget does not list lottery revenue, and the 2023 mandated funds receiving Arizona lottery dollars don’t include the arts. San Diego funds culture through its tourist bed tax.




A referendum is another approach, as in Volusia County, where voters since 2000 have approved  devoting a portion of the county budget to the arts. The revenue is from a dedicated property tax levy of 0.2 mills a year, or $30 for a $200,000 house with a homestead exemption.

The so-called ECHO fund (the acronym is for environmental, cultural, historical and outdoors) has generated over $100 million since 2000. Organizations can get from $12,500 to $600,000 awards, with match requirements.  Voters again approved renewing the program, by a 72 percent margin, in 2020, for another 20 years. (See the list of all ECHO grant awards through the years here.)

What appealed to the Palm Coast council members most was the avoidance of any talk of tax or public money.

“I’m all for the contribution from the developers, because I think we all can relate this directly to the same comments we make about, let’s say, the school district,” Alfin said. “The more we invest in the arts and culture and history piece, the more valuable our city becomes, not just for the residents, but for the future. No question about it. So I would certainly be in favor of the investment from the development community.”




To further its arts fund, the city is expecting to realize considerable savings in utility costs by going solar, as it has at the Southern Recreation center. The city is also getting money back–30 percent of its investment–which would generate about $11,000 in savings that could go toward an arts fund. But that wouldn’t be before 2028.

The City Council wanted to know what breaking arts and culture out into its own department, away from parks and recreation, would cost. One option would cost $540,000, with more than half that cost for salaries. If the operation remained under parks and recreation, but as a division of that department, the cost would drop to $450,000. Pontieri was not in support of any such breakout, at least not right now.

But it is not as clear who in the city would administer the arts fund–who would judge and pick and locate arts and cultural projects. The city has a beautification committee that has, until now, been responsible for vetting what few art installations the city has benefited from in Town Center, and for vetting monuments at Heroes Park. But its role would change and grow if it were to oversee the aesthetic part–the most important part–of the city’s new arts initiative: anyone can add and subtract dollar figures or verify the just proportions of a monument. Few can discern art from trash.

For now, as the city is “scraping for dollars right now, specifically to fund public safety, which I think has to be prioritized over arts and culture,” Pontieri said, the structure should remain under the purview of parks and recreation “for at least two years until we can look at the budget and say, Okay, now we built up enough monies to actually break this out or recategorize it.”

Further details of the public arts ordinance the council asked Hirst to write  will presumably spell out some of the responsibilities. Beyond the details, however, Tuesday’s action by the council was a momentous if unexpected step in the city’s quest for becoming a public art venue. The ordinance, however, has yet to be drafted, builders and developers, including the powerful Flagler Home Builders Association, consulted, and next week’s election survived (by Alfin, anyway) before the council has something tangible to vote on.