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For Palm Coast Council, ‘Utopian’ Goals on Roads, Parks, Arts and Jobs Clash with Fixation on Reducing Tax Rate

April 24, 2024 | FlaglerLive | 9 Comments

Management consultant Joe Saviak and the Palm Coast City Council at Tuesday's goal-setting session, which drew fewer than  half a dozen people, other than city staff. (© FlaglerLive)
Management consultant Joe Saviak and the Palm Coast City Council at Tuesday’s goal-setting session, which drew fewer than half a dozen people, other than city staff. (© FlaglerLive)

The Palm Coast City Council has narrowed its goals for the coming year to 12. It is an ambitious, immediately contradictory list that starts with limiting government revenue by way of a rolled back tax rate as a goal, then goes on to outline costly initiatives the administration has not been able to address in line with demand for lack of money: road repairs, swale repairs, more money for arts and culture, advancing the dredging of saltwater canals, implementing the parks master plan, and so on.




The council stressed that the goals are not a wish list. Rather, they were distilled from a wish list, albeit a barely longer one (there were 14 goals to start). The goals, which may yet grow, will be set out in the council’s so-called Strategic Action Plan, the annual blueprint that sets out achievement targets and measures progress toward those targets roughly on a quarterly basis. But as it stands, the list is more wishful than realistic, as even a council member alluded.

“We can sit up here all day long and say, well, we want this utopia where we want better roads and better swale maintenance and more potable water,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “But at the end of the day, it takes money to do all those things. So we have to find efficiencies. We have to find diversification. We have to figure out how it is that we’re going to give staff the tools for that successful implementation. So I’d ask from my colleagues up here to keep that in mind as we’re driving this policy to not just glaze over what we heard from staff, because I think it’s important when they go to implement, how they realistically feel they’re going to be able to put into play what we decide is a policy.”

Mayor David Alfin thought the money question comes at a later step, but he agreed in the main: “There are hurdles that we may not encounter every day that staff would that would prevent this utopian vision from being executed.”




Pontieri and Alfin were pointing to a underlying tension between the city administration and the council. Such tensions are not unusual in government: administrators are more familiar with the mechanics of running a city, with its day to day needs and vulnerabilities and how now addressing those needs might result in more vulnerabilities in the future, so they push for what they can to fill those needs. But the elected face constituents. They have oversight responsibilities of their own. And they have political realities to contend with. They set their priorities accordingly. So the administration and the elect are not necessarily aligned.

For example last year, the administration argued for an aggressive road-maintenance and resurfacing program to stop city streets from deteriorating. The council approved a limited program instead. Earlier this year, the council rebuffed the administration’s push for higher water and sewer rates, limiting cost increases to the impact fees charged to new development.

“There was a high degree of agreement or alignment between the executive team and the city council,” Joe Saviak, the managing consultant the city hired (along with colleague Richard Levey) to shepherd it through the process, said. “You all seem to be on the same sheet of music during these interview questions.” How to get to those mutual goals, however, is the bigger challenge. That’s what the council’s portion of goal-setting is intended to clarify.

Saviak taught in the public administration program at Flagler College and led Sheriff Rick Staly’s leadership office for several years. In late February Saviak held some 17 interviews with council members and administrative directors. He surveyed all city employees, including the council, based on questions elicited by the earlier interviews. Themes emerged within four “pillars of priorities” the council had already selected–a strong and resilient economy, safe and reliable services, a sustainable environment with infrastructure priorities, and civic engagement.




The process included a strength, weakness, opportunity and threat analysis, what is referred to in industry jargon as a SWOT analysis. So the interviews were revealing in those regards. Among the strengths: the staff (an ironic finding, in light of the firing of Denise Bevan, the former city manager, and a concern among staffers that several with lots of experience have been draining away), strong finances, a strong record on public safety and improved relatons with other governments.

Among the weaknesses: as always, too little economic diversity, meaning not enough industry, not enough home-growing jobs (a large portion of the workforce commutes out of county), an infrastructure feeling growth pressures, the swale maintenance program, which tends to draw residents’ complaints for being too slow, and roads that, if not deteriorated, are on the way to deteriorating absent a stronger willingness by the council to spend more money.

Joe Saviak. (© FlaglerLive)
Joe Saviak. (© FlaglerLive)
The session Saviak held with the council on Tuesday was intended to narrow down the goals to a feasible list the administration can enact. It started with Council member Ed Danko pushing for a rolled-back rate this year, as was done last year. That triggered a brief but pointed debate among council members, revealing less cohesion on the proposal than may have been the case last year, until Saviak and Mayor David Alfin deftly sidestepped the heart of the proposal by making a rolled-back rate more aspirational than mandatory. “The goal I’m suggesting is that we work towards a full millage rate rollback,” Danko said. (See: “With One Exception, Palm Coast Council is Not As Eager for Repeat of Rolled Back Tax Rate This Year.”)

That put the most contentious proposal out of the way, leaving the council members to roam over their other objectives more collegially.

Those can be summed up this way:

Council member Nick Klufas is pushing for an audit of the city’s capacity to convert to solar energy. Doing so, in his view, would yield additional dollars that could be spent on the city’s arts district in Town Center, for example. (It’s notable, and not a small matter, that when he first ran for the council in 2016, one of Klufas’s leading proposals was to turn the city’s Fibernet broadband system into a money-maker. “FiberNET represents a unique opportunity for Palm Coast to create a profitable municipal utility,” he said at the time, using language almost identical to the language he is now using about solar. Fibernet never turned into a money-maker.)




The council favors a citywide plan for road repairs, though the administration already submitted that last year. It favors a plan for swale maintenance (swale maintenance is paid for out of the stormwater fund, not the general fund. Property taxes go into the general fund. The stormwater fund is financed through fees on residents’ utility bills.) The council, as it reasserted last week, wants the saltwater dredging initiative to remain a priority, though to date it knows more about the significant costs of dredging than about how to pay for any of it. (See: “Should Palm Coast’s Saltwater Residents Pay Special Tax for Dredging? Survey Will Ask.”

Internally, the council has three objectives–improve citizen engagement with the city through more timely customer service, develop a technology-focused capital improvement plan for the administration, and put more emphasis on economic development efforts with higher-paying jobs in view. That’s been every local government’s goal for at least a generation. None has cracked that nut. “If that means incentives, if that means certain different tax breaks, whatever it means, in order to make that happen,” Pontieri said, “we have to understand that there’s got to be dedicated funding for that as well.”

The council is also keep on implementing its recently unveiled parks master plan–by developing an implementation plan. As with the economic development objective, all the other objectives would cost money.

Externally, the city wants to improve what access residents have to public transportation, which would be feasible only in a partnership with county government. The county does provide those services on a per-ride, point-to-point basis, which requires reservations.

The council wants to conduct an analysis of its current housing stock and study how to improve options for affordable housing and senior citizens. It may consider doing so through policy. “We can’t dictate to property owners, you must build apartments, you must build this,” Dank said. “I think we have to find incentives or encouragement along the way.”

Finally, the council wants to identify a steady funding source for the arts district it established in 2020 in Town center. The district has languished as little more than a designation since. If anything, it lost its anchor when the Palm Coast Arts Foundation dissolved. (See: “Palm Coast Will Establish an Arts District in Town Center as New Spur for Commerce of Culture.”)

The city will be getting back its citizens survey on May 10. Only then will the list of objectives will be refined with the survey results in mind. Meanwhile, Alfin said, “having this realistic dialogue is incredibly energizing for this process.” The next goal-setting session is tentatively scheduled for May 28.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. MJ H says

    April 24, 2024 at 3:13 pm

    Who’s BSing who??? It may make political brownie points with those who do not understand finance. Reality is that Palm Coast and Flagler County has grown significantly in our ten years here.

    What has been slow is road repaving and repairs. Also, there are drainage issues and canals that need cleared. What about amenities?? There are parks; a well maintained golf course (no more ridiculous soccer potholes on the fairways. Now there is a problem financing the Belle Terre Swim Club. What about new schools and special training facilities?

    We rely on the sheriff to police this largest community. Have we enough to handle crimes; rage incidents; and traffic violations etc.?

    Seriously, time to grow up and realize that we cannot go back ten years or more to keep taxes low while ignoring growing issues.

  2. Joe D says

    April 24, 2024 at 4:45 pm

    The BOTTOM LINE for budgets is the MATH! Your local government has to balance its budget. Citizens have to decide what they PRIORITIZE… there is a limited amount of money…you CAN’T afford EVERYTHING!

    Citizens need to decide what they are willing to either pay MORE for ( in taxes or fees), or cut other services to pay for them.

    Once the Citizens decide what they want to TRADE OFF, the elected officials need to make the HARD decisions to set the budget accordingly!

  3. Robjr says

    April 24, 2024 at 4:48 pm

    WTF!!!!!
    Road maintenance is not a Utopian goal.
    It is part and parcel of managing a city infrastructure.
    Even though I did not agree with John Netts’ brand of politics, the had an executable plan to pave roads.
    How did he lead the effort to pave roads and these folks cannot?
    They didn’t have a problem when it came to voting themselves an increase in salary.

  4. Dennis-Edward says

    April 24, 2024 at 7:53 pm

    The city of Palm Coast and is struggling to hike property taxes to fill the gap.
    We first must understand that the financial crunch the city is now facing, deteriorating roads, 50 year old water treatment as well as sewage treatment facilities, storm water management flooding roadways and yards. The question that should be asked is how come everything is wearing out or failing to meet the resident demands.
    How about thinking about the 24 years since the cities inception and their failure to anticipate these issues and putting money away for the rainy day which now has arrived.
    How about first doing an evaluation of city employees salaries and credentials and comparing their salaries to other Florida cities of similar size. I think they will find city staff is grossly over paid, particularly considering their qualifications/credentials. There are city staff positions whose salary’s could be cut by at least 1/3, let them experience what we have dealt with now for nearly 4 years.
    Real estate still continues to rise, that would represent additional right there if they just keep tax rate at a status quo.
    Then the are all those vacant properties that over the past year have been converted to home and commercial sites, again more tax revenue.
    The problem as I see it most of the council wants more tax revenue, not to address our infrastructure needs, but to build more pet projects like the newly built sports complex. I suggest that the city council member take a few economics classes, and stop coming to the residents for more money when most are already stressed financially due to inflation and the dollars shrinking buying power.
    We can’t keep electing stupid people to the council who have little to no experience running a business, the city is a business, it’s time it’s run like one!!!

  5. The Sour Kraut says

    April 25, 2024 at 6:08 am

    How about cutting out vanity projects? Splash pad, (ugly) pedestrian bridge to nowhere, road to nowhere, proposed sports complex with no guarantee it will be used. How about not reducing impact fees on developers? Just some crazy thoughts on helping to balance OUR budget.

  6. Tammany Hall says

    April 25, 2024 at 9:57 am

    Let’s hire another inexperienced City Manager, Let’s re-elect another 4 years of Danko to higher office for yet another place for him to cause chaos.

    Do your homework people there are good candidates to get the job done.

  7. john Stove says

    April 25, 2024 at 1:02 pm

    The City and Council need to restrict and pause all projects that are not tied to “core services”.

    Core Services are Water, Sewer, Roads, Canals , Drainage…..everything else has to be put on hold or eliminated.

    Yes getting a grant for a park or something is great but you must immediately start to maintain it once completed which means draining maintenance funds.

    Enough of Alfin and Danko and their sanctimonious BS….fix what we have first before anything else.

  8. William Lyon says

    May 5, 2024 at 9:52 am

    Paving roads is not “Utopian”. It is required. It is what city government is supposed to take care of. For anyone to suggest that we should reduce taxes when all of these needs are identified and documented by staff is poor management. Does one learn about Utopia in barber school?

  9. Dennis C Rathsam says

    May 5, 2024 at 5:28 pm

    Dennis Edwards…….Run for mayor, the city needs you!

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