It’s like Groundhog Day at the Palm Coast City Council. Sooner or later, especially when new council members are elected, certain issues rear up like Punxsutawney Phil, shadowing new rounds of handwringing and promises among freshly zealous council members about pedestrian terrors on Cimmaron Drive or traffic fumes on Florida Park Drive or growth anywhere and everywhere. They fire off directives to the administration to get something done. The staff tries not to look too jaded. It follows up with a presentation or two and a nominal fix, and hopes the matter is put to rest for a few years.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Council member Charles Gambaro at the end of last Tuesday’s day-long workshop brought up one of those old standards: Ralph Carter Park in the city’s R-Section and the night lights there and the children’s decibels and the commotion and so on. He must have run into Marion Petruzzi, the home-owner near the park who’s single handedly and usually singly led a number of crusades to pressure the city to dim the lights there, reduce playing hours and do something about all that noise.
Exactly a year ago–and more than half a year before Gambaro was appointed to the council–city staff had gone to great lengths and not minor expense to install shields on the floodlights at the park, to recalibrate park hours in line with residents’ demands, and to hold a community meeting to outline it all and get more feedback–a meeting whose 90 minutes was for 60 minutes dominated by Petruzzi. She did not sound satisfied. Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo, who had led the presentation with Parks and Recreation Director James Hirst, had done all he could to explain and show how the city was mitigating the light and noise issues. But it was not enough.
It started a decade and a half ago when “undesirables”–a word actually used at council meetings more than once to describe children and adolescents using the park, children and adolescents who often happened to be Black–were trudging across the lawns of (mostly white) residents to make their way to the park, prompting the city at the time to build a fence. Inch given, foot demanded. Next came the complaints about the growing number of activities at the park, a very popular spot for local sports leagues for young children especially. The came the complaints about the lights. Complaints limited to Petruzzi and a handful of allies.
Then came a City Council with the least institutional memory of all the last quarter century of councils.
“I went out there the other night to look at the blaring lights across where the residents live on the backside,” Gambaro told his colleagues. “You know, my understanding is that park was designed to be a community park, not a sports complex. And then the sound. I mean, it was loud at seven, eight o’clock at night.” He asked for a consensus to “queue up this issue for us, to lay out all the facts, lay this issue flat and and have a discussion on it.”
Mayor Mike Norris knew exactly who had prompted the concern: Petruzzi. Her name rang out from several mouths when he asked for her name. He’d met her too, and gone to her house (as had DeLorenzo, as have a caravan of council members going back to around 2009, when the park was inaugurated and named for the city’s first Black council member. Norris said more than 80 percent around the park moved in after it was built, and he cast doubt on the “inhumane living conditions that Ms. Petruzzi puts on her emails.”
“I stood out there in her driveway and that lighting is not okay. It is absolutely not okay,” Gambaro said. He also raised issues with parking, and that a discussion was necessary. But what else could be done, Norris asked, “unless we shut that park down, and we’re going to be cutting off thousands of kids.” He was not exaggerating. Mad Dogs Flag Football, Palm Coast Little League and the four available soccer leagues that use the park have some 2,000 participants between them. “When kids and teens are in a park, that’s a lot better place for them to be than out in the street,” DeLorenzo had set at the community meeting last year.
“I would say over my dead body, that will happen,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “I’m not going to be that extreme, but I will be very outspoken about that being shut down. That’s where too many kids go and play sports and stay out of trouble and have a good outlet. Team sports save so many kids and are so good for our community. I will tell you, being on council for the last few years, and this being a repetitive issue, we have taken steps to alleviate the light issue.” Light shields on all the light poles cost the city $12,000.
City Manager Lauren Johnston had conversations with one of the league organizers this week to end parking on Rymfire Drive, and shift all parking–in agreement with the school district–to the Rymfire Elementary parking lot, or face sanctions from the city (such as moving the leagues to other facilities, though field availability elsewhere is near nil). And she sought clearer direction on what sort of presentation the council would want, “because we had it before, and I don’t know if you want a copy of that previous presentation,” Johnston said.
Gambaro reiterated: “We need to address the lighting. The lighting is not okay,” along with parking and noise. In other words, the same items as previously. “What I’m hoping to come to is a happy medium, figure out how we can maintain the sports piece,” Gambaro said.
The discussion, Johnston said, underscores the need for a new sports complex in the city. Meanwhile, the council will have that new episodic discussion on Ralph Carter Park at an upcoming workshop.
