When the Palm Coast City Council gets its administration’s latest report on the state of Ralph Carter Park in the R-Section, it’ll have to decide how much of the sound and fury again hemming the popular park is the grousing of a few people signifying nothing or a reflection of a broader problem.
Judging from a community meeting the administration hosted at City Hall Wednesday evening, there is no broad problem. The meeting was designed to hear residents’ concerns and feedback, and to provide information about what changes or improvements R-Section residents may expect at their neighborhood park over the next few months.
The chamber was a phalanx of empty chairs. Eight city residents turned up, not all of them from the R-Section. There were six sheriff’s deputies when the meeting started, two staffers–Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo and Parks and Recreation Director James Hirst–and two reporters.
The complaints of a few–actually, a husband and wife whose complaints have a history dating back to 2010, and a third person–seemed to make up in shrillness, decibels and occasional rudeness towards DeLorenzo and cooler heads in the audience what lacked in people. If anything, Ralph Carter, named for one of the council’s early members, is a victim of its success as one of the city’s handsome parks in a limited but luxurious and well managed inventory of parks (though the fields need work).
The evening meeting lasted 90 minutes, about 60 minutes of which were dominated by Marion Petruzzi, a resident of Richardson Drive, to the northeast of the park, but not directly at the rim of the park. Petruzzi 14 years ago had led the campaign against what she then called “undesirables” who were cutting through yards to get to the park, and for a fence along Richardson Drive that the city at first resisted, then granted. The fence is still there. (“Undesirables” is the usual code for young Blacks in a whiter neighborhood that’s occasionally had racist flareups.)
When she would appear before the City Council in 2010 she claimed to “represent everybody in our group and we are actually afraid to come out of our vehicles in the evening,” though, oddly, she almost alone would appear before the council. Wednesday evening Petruzzi claimed to represent “hundreds of families,” though, oddly, she was almost alone at the community meeting. She said the others are afraid to come out, and also afraid to call the cops or the city, leaving her bearing their cross.
It isn’t clear what they’re afraid of, assuming they exist. When Ed Fuller, a representative of Crime Stopers, asked her if they ever called Crime Stoppers’ anonymous line, she cut him off, told him Crime Stoppers doesn’t work, and talked about what has been happening for 13 years. “I hear it all, and it’s all on my shoulders,” she said. Fuller tried again, explaining to her how she and others can call Crime Stoppers anonymously or leave a tip and have their information confidentially passed over to the Sheriff’s Office.
“People do not want to risk calling anyone. That’s why it’s on me for 13 years,” Petruzzi said.
There was no mention of “undesirables” Wednesday evening. Rather, it came down to this, from Petruzzi’s and her husband’s perspective: the lights at Ralph Carter Park are on too late, they stay on even after people have left, and there are way too many people at the park, yelling and screaming and preventing the “hundreds of families” Petruzzi allegedly represents from enjoying the peace and quiet everyone else in Palm Coast enjoys. (The Petruzzis’ property value has not been harmed by the proximity to the park, or to Rymfire Elementary: it has increased by 150 percent since 2010, according to the Flagler County Property Appraiser.)
Petruzzi said repeatedly that “several hundred” people are on the fields, though no organized sports offered there (softball, flag football, soccer) involve more than a couple of dozen participants per field at any given time. Bottom line: she and her husband want the city to remove the lights and the competitions to other parks in the city. “There’s plenty other places,” she said, citing Matanzas High School and the Indian Trails Sports Complex, among others.
In fact, the city has just five locations with playing fields, and only two with lighted fields: Ralph Carter Park and Indian Trails Sports Complex. Holland Park, Belle Terre Park and Seminole Woods Park, all neighborhood parks, have two or three fields each, but they’re not lit. (See the inventory here.) The Petruzzis had a point: why did the city choose just Ralph Carter Park to light up?
The lights have been in place since the park was built over 14 years ago. Back then, Petruzzi complained that the lights should not be on past 9 p.m. These days they’d been staying on until 10 p.m., if users had permits to play under the lights, but the city is moving that back to 9 p.m. In 2022-23, almost 500 permits were issued to users of Ralph Carter Park fields. The basketball and volleyball courts will still be lit as late as 10 p.m. when in use (those courts’ lights are on timers users operate.)
There’s no question that the fields are very popular, and that Palm Coast has a field deficit, for which people like the Petruzzis are paying a price. There’s no question, either, that the fields provide an outlet for thousands of children–2,000 participate in any one of the available leagues such as Mad Dogs Flag Football (400 participants), Palm Coast Little League (458) or the four available soccer leagues (1,138 participants between them), though some of those are cross-overs.
“When kids and teens are in a park, that’s a lot better place for them to be than out in the street,” DeLorenzo said.
The Petruzzis said they support children’s sports–just not at Ralph Carter Park. “It’s a residential park, there’s houses right up against the property line and we’ve got to put up with that crap,” the resident sitting alongside the Petruzzis said. “It never should have been put in the middle of a residential neighborhood to begin with.”
Lights have been a recurring issue. Ten light poles frame the park’s two lit fields. DeLorenzo said the city’s lighting consultant, Musco, will be doubling the length of the shields on the lights, from 7 to 14 inches, and redirecting lights where necessary, to reduce light pollution. That’ll happen in mid-March. Installing LED lights was considered, but it’s too expensive and would require the installation of additional poles. The park will also be resodded in summer and fall.
“We’re trying to balance the community’s needs with fields and the neighborhood’s needs or the neighborhood’s character,” said DeLorenzo, who managed never to lose his composure in the face of Petruzzi’s repeated aggressions and mischaracterizations (“you’re a good person but you’re insulting our intelligence,” she told him at one point).
Another resident spoke more admirably of the city’s parks and its general efforts to be responsive to residents. “We’re we’re very impressed with what the city does,” he said, saying he and his family had just moved to Palm Coast five months ago. “We spent a year in Daytona and I can tell you, we couldn’t get out of there quicker, across the street from the racetrack in an apartment that was extremely expensive.” His wife complained of homeless individuals sleeping on the apartment building’s entrance.
He urged critics to give the city time to enact its planned improvement–then felt compelled to implore Petruzzi not to attack him for his suggestions. She lectured him instead. “These lights are on their house like a spaceship hovering our whole neighborhood. People call me crying,” she said.
Both de Lorenzo–who had been to Petruzzi’s house to listen to her complaints 13 years ago, when he was a city council member–and Hirst said they have not received the type of complaints from the number of residents Petruzzi claims are out there.
The meeting had begun with a presentation by the Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Lutz, a popular figure on the local circuit of neighborhood, home owners’ associations and civic groups’ meetings. He’s honed his presentation over hundreds of such meetings like a stand-up preparing a Netflix special. He summed up the state of crime, or more precisely the relative lack of crime, around the park and in Palm Coast, and talked about neighborhood watches, giving a few suggestions. “This is Palm Coast, not a lot of crime,” he said. “We are safe, crime is down, since 2016, crime is down over 50 percent.”
The local Neighborhood Watch system is not what it once was: low crime means less interest in these regimented approaches, so these days neighborhood watches are more on the scale of entire sections, and even then, the F Section’s Neighborhood Watch dwindled to the point of merging with the C-Section. The R Section has a section-wide watch, headed by… Marion Petruzzi.(“I’ve been in a neighborhood watch leader for 13 years,” she said, “and I worked real hard.”)
Lutz recommended the see-something-say-something approach when residents are out walking their dog, biking, ambling about. “If it’s suspicious to you, it’s suspicious to us,” he said. “We’d rather get 99 calls that turn out to be absolutely nothing and not get that one call where somebody’s house got broken in.” He reminded his audience that if they think someone looks suspicious, “if you don’t like them or you don’t like the way they look, it’s not really a crime.” Actually, it’s not a crime, period.
“What about the homeless, and where are the crime spots?” a resident asked.
“Well, it isn’t illegal to be homeless,” Lutz said, and there are no such things as “crime spots” in Palm Coast. There are occasional crime sprees, when teens or others decide to hit up a section’s cars for crimes of opportunity. But otherwise, crime, such as it is in Palm Coast, is one of the city’s more equal-opportunity phenomena, favoring no area in particular.
As the meeting wound down, Petruzzi offered a sarcastic summary of what she’d heard, essentially deriding the city. “Everything’s going to stay the same as before, there’s still going to be hundreds of kids on the field as we’ve been seeing every single night,” she said, comparing her life to that of a prisoner in her own home. “So then we will continue to complain about the hundreds of families and and players on the field every single night.”
An R-Section resident approached a reporter after the meeting and said: “You’re a journalist. The word here is hyperbole.”
Pogo says
@FWIW
The Third Estate will have its say.
Willy Boy says
It would appear that Ms. Petruzzi is nothing more than a bitter woman. Devoid of hard facts and data, she is the queen of rambles.
blondee says
Imagine living in a neighborhood that you hate for 15 yrs or more. Might be time to move on!
TR says
Apparently Mrs Petruzzi is exaggerating when she says there are hundred of people at the park every night.I live around the corner from the park and have only seen 500 or more people at the park at any given time on a Saturday and cars parked all over the place. There in the parking lot of the park, the school next door is full and both sides of the street are lines with cars for about a a 1/2 miles on both sides of the road. However, about three weeks ago the city put up NO Parking signs on the side of the road where the park is. The problem with the signs are is that they face the street and one has to stand in front of the sign to read it. Common sense would tell someone to have the signs facing the drivers as they drive down the road. So now with no parking along the roadway. There will be limited parking in the park and the school and after that I have no idea where the parents of their little bundle of joys will park to watch them play the game they are there to play.
JimboXYZ says
Maybe the park patrons need to ride a bike to the park, consider that part of their exercise program ? I have 2 options myself for utilizing the Graham Swamp track. I can load up the bike(s) on a car’s bike rack or I can pedal over there on the paved sidewalks & bike trails. I usually end up doing the latter, realizing that a ride to the beach is far more enjoyable & safer to avoid potential Graham Swamp injuries anyway. Graham Swamp is one of the more challenging MTBing trails in Flagler County. Sometimes I’ll just do a Forrest Gump and just keep riding. Scary thing about bicycle fitness is you end up further & further from home. Some days, I’ll end up in Marineland/Matanzas Inlet/St Augustine, other times Ormond/Daytona Beach, FL. Make a day trip of an adventure out of it and the bike lanes are already bought & paid for. Even as old as I am, a metric century => century ride is more impressive for a resume of fitness than playing Flag Football. Recently rode US-1 from Palm Coast to Ormond. I intend to do bike week for Palm Coast to Destination Daytona as well. I recall last year doing that in about 45 minutes each direction for roughly under 35 miles round trip. Honestly, I can’t see how anyone finds ball sports even remotely interesting, at least with the cycling I get to see the area, go do more interesting things than fetching a ball like a dog. Credit card, day trip tourist, I can try new restaurants.
Again says
So she moved near a park and now wants the park to move? Surely there has to be some kind of mental welfare check we can do for people because things just make no sense. How can you be upset when it was your choice to live that close to the park? Swear I love this town lol
FlaglerLive says
The family owned its property there before the park was built.
JimboXYZ says
“The evening meeting lasted 90 minutes, about 60 minutes of which were dominated by Marion Petruzzi, a resident of Richardson Drive, to the northeast of the park, but not directly at the rim of the park. Petruzzi 14 years ago had led the campaign against what she then called “undesirables” who were cutting through yards to get to the park, and for a fence along Richardson Drive that the city at first resisted, then granted. The fence is still there. (“Undesirables” is the usual code for young Blacks in a whiter neighborhood that’s occasionally had racist flareups.)”
Maybe she needs to stop mincing words & just say “Trespassers”. Bottom line is the homeowners bought a property, City of Palm Coast drew the lines for those properties. The homeowners paid for that property, what happens on that property line is that homeowners concern. How hard would it be for the Trespasser(s) to respect that boundary line as personal property, not a public road or trail to get to the park. Sounds like a parenting or even younger adult issue of a thing for cutting thru another’s yard/property. I get any homeowners concern for the potential for injury, crime or whatever else may happen as a result of another’s laziness to cut thru to get to the park. The fence shouldn’t have been a City of Palm Coast’s push back for any homeowner. Parks are generally good things for a community, this is an example where a good thing is ruined by trespassers. Petruzzi family is probably most vocal because they would be the biggest victim(s), every time for routine trespasses. So the Petruzzi’s become the implied “racist” over simply being the victims of where the City deemed to locate a park after the fact of a home purchase. I think Petruzzi used the term “undesirables”, because that’s what they are. I don’t think she called out any particular race demographic out for it, if the trespassers are of a certain race, then that’s simply what the race demographic is for the trespassing. I doubt Petruzzi has much tolerance for any trespasser regardless of age, race, gender. If the Petruzzi family doesn’t know you, didn’t invite you to be a guest or authorize their yard as a shortcut trail to the park, respect that. It may be inconvenient to walk another 50, 80 or 125 feet for the dimensions of that property line, but that shouldn’t be the Petruzzi family’s problem, they are the victims here, not the park guests. The Petruzzi’s don’t go to those people’s property to assume an intrusion regardless of rental or ownership of that property. And the complaints are evidence that the Petruzzi’s aren’t onboard with any intrusion for a trespass. Respect their wishes, their property lines & oblige them. That’s the difference between good neighbor vs bad neighbor. Try being the good neighbor & stay off their property. The road & sidewalk/swale as an easement is the only public land anyone not named Petruzzi or their guest should ever use to get to that park. I doubt she has ever attempted to impede anyone from using public land to get to the park. The Petruzzi’s are playing by the rules. Until you’ve had a neighbor’s guest drive into your yard. Until you’ve had a neighbor’s child destroy trees on your property (like I have), passing this off as acceptable is just disrespectful of the victim(s). I stand in support of the Petruzzi’s, especially when the trespassers won’t own property damages they cause & pay for that out of pocket. I perceive the Petruzzi complaints as heading off an issue before it becomes a FCSO phone call that requires that level of intervention. I may be wrong in an interpretation of the true situation, but I have to assume the Petruzzi’s are merely mitigating issues, perhaps even damages before they happen. You may not like the rules on that property, but they are the rules. You’re free to go to any/another park or choose another roue to get to that park. It shouldn’t involve trespassing. There are reasons boundary lines are drawn, because a child, young adult or whatever else one may identify as demographically fails to comprehend the rules of law & order, of society, that has become the victimization that the Petruzzi’s face daily. In a lot of ways, we’re looking at it on immigration/USA border as the same nonsense that is running & spilling over for property owners at the US borders. The Petruzzi property is not a democracy as private land ownership, know that difference ?
As for the field lighting, yet another community running over a smaller resident homeowner. I’ll bet someone leveled the tree line that might block out the flood lights that are on the better part of the day, perhaps even 24/7 to, at a minimum, deter vandalism at a public park ? Why does something have to escalate into a problem over what the City of Palm Coast just assumed would be what anyone who lives close enough to the park would become a victim of.
Again says
Jimbo you wrote a whole essay on a part of the issue that had been taken care of years ago, this article isnt about the trespassing. Even if it was, she’s complaining about people passing through HER property to get to the park, why should the city have put up a fence? Pool together with the other “complainants” and pay for your own fence, it is private property after all right?
Tired of it says
Did you miss her comments on the hundreds of people using the park? She isn’t angry at trespassers, she doesn’t want citizens using the park, period. She sounds like an angry, bitter woman. If the lights are rurned off , she will complain that there will be more “crime”. In fact, reports of crime at the park are non existent. And why not throw in some irrelevant comments about immigration…the bottom line is that this about hating anyone who doesn’t look, speak or fit with your image of an American.
JimboXYZ says
Yeah, like nobody has ever used a public park to conduct drug deals & whatever else, some have their “dates” at the parks, he lewd & lascivious lover’s lane arrests. Real estate generally places a premium on location to these community amenities. Trust me with the fighting & criminal activity that happens at schools, the last property I’ll ever buy is in the 20 mph school zone across the street property. There’s close & then there’s too close. Apparently what fence the City put in place is inadequate. Nobody wants to have a fight, drug deal/abuse, rape, murder at a park. Google Laken Riley. the city put a band aid on a problem that is dynamic, Maybe do a sexual offender/predator search & see who some of the neighbor’s are. Being a public park the indesirables can & will find elsewhere to be. You know where Daytona Beach/Volusia County rounds up a lot of their undesirables ? It’s the beach front parks. Even St John’s County (Crescent Beach) has a police station at the beach park. At what point will those type of activities becomes that solution for any park City of PC/Flagler County ?
The dude says
Yelling at the clouds energy…
JimboXYZ says
When it’s at the doorstep of your residence, we’ll see what is “yelling at clouds” & what somehow becomes a genuine concern for the quality of you & your family’s life ? Like I said, some folks have to have a concrete hard victim before they do anything about what was so obvious to see, then fall back on “if we knew” or even “failures to connect dots”. The politicians/legislators that we have even at the local level, move the line for what is criminalized/decriminalized for anything, then hide behind & call it a social movement & democracy. It always starts as a discounting, perhaps even a vilification of the most vocal, doesn’t it ? Just look at the title of the article, the discounting, then the article vilifies the Petruzzi’s ? But there are 2 others that complained, they just weren’t as vehemently vocal to be named out loud as the evil racist(s) the Petruzzi’s must be. Just too much like rewarding 2020 all over again for anyone to be having an assembly for this topic in
the 1st place ?
“More Sound and Fury Than Broad Problems as 3 Residents Complain to City of Ralph Carter Park’s Popularity”
Again says
Park was there before she moved jimbo, grow up.
Kerry says
Imagine your claim to fame being neighborhood watch for 14 years and being so upset about children and families playing outside that you have a hour long meeting about it. Give me a break.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
“In a lot of ways, we’re looking at it on immigration/USA border as the same nonsense that is running & spilling over for property owners at the US borders.”
Nice to see Jimbo comment on the U.S. Border after his beloved savior and the GOP controlled House put an end to that bi-partisan border bill that was put together in the Senate that the GOP said was the best deal in years and should get past.
JimboXYZ says
Looking at the Google aerial map of the area. There is no solution as it stands in the moment, because Rickenbacker Drive is the only road in & out of the entire residential sub-section. Rickenbacker Drive goes to either Rymfire (most direct pathway to the park) or Royal Palms Parkway (the longest pathway back to the Park). Everyone in that residential sub-section is a Rickenbacker Drive hostage. This is more of a Alfin grow City of Palm Coast rubber stamping unaffordable residential housing problem than it is the Petruzzi Family & 2 others that are chronic complainers. There are irrigation canals in that sub-section. The residential dwellings aren’t designed to be overutilized/overpopulated. Rickenbacker Drive like so many other sections can’t handle overpopulation. The lots are the larger 80×125 at least, and 4/2, 3/2 & 2/2 dwellings aren’t supposed to have more than a shared occupancy for a room or two. Certainly not 5-6 full grown adults that need automobiles to commute. I stand even more in solidarity with the 3 residences that are most vocal about the intrusion onto their properties. I bet if the trespassers went over a house or two, that those property owners would be the new complainers in short order.
The only solution(s). The City would have to acquire land from the property owners & build a trail from the residential to the park. Remember this is a city that doesn’t have residential sidewalks or storm water irrigation beyond a swale system. The likelihood of the city paying FMV for land to do that entails taxing the city more and that’s in addition to the roads that need repaving. Recall how long & the cost to build a bridge to the elementary & middle school on Belle Terre in the P-section ?
Another is to create more entry & exit points for every street in that sub-section. That’s not happening in our lifetime’s either. A 3rd solution is everyone that lives there, suck it up & use Rickenbacker Drive as it was intended & respect the property lines as they were drawn by the City of Palm Coast. Lastly as a solution, those that have a problem with the 3rd solution, those families need to move to a more convenient location, rather than try to bully and run over another that isn’t a transient renter family, the one’s that retired here as was the original plan for Palm Coast, not the Alfin fantasy of a Realtors Utopia of a busier turnover for a housing market for buying & selling properties more frequently for commissions.
Anyway, link provided below, see for yourselves, that residential is bottle necked by Rickenbacker Drive by city planning design. This is no different than the new residential flooding of existing properties.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Richardson+Dr,+Palm+Coast,+FL+32164/@29.5047993,-81.253485,1100m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x88e694a989e4f97f:0xa1e96942e4292645!8m2!3d29.5047947!4d-81.2509101!16s%2Fg%2F1tgptfkh?authuser=0&entry=ttu