Last June the Palm Coast City Council called on the carpet its lobbying firm in Tallahassee after voicing dissatisfaction over the city’s record haul in state appropriations. On Tuesday, the council renewed its contract with the firm, but only for one year, not three, as the administration had proposed. The city will pay the firm $72,000 for the year, up from $60,000 in the last contract year, and leave the option open for four renewals.
The one-year probationary-like contract signaled continuing unhappiness with the firm’s performance during the last legislative session even though the city netted $82 million in state appropriations. But the entire haul went for new road-building for vacant lands west of U.S. 1, with no appropriations secured for the city’s water and sewer infrastructure, on which council members had banked heavily.
The Southern Group’s Oscar Anderson and Laura Boehmer strongly defended their performance to the council in June, saying they couldn’t think of any other local government in the last 10 years that had secured as much state funding as Palm Coast in the last two. Palm Coast had counted on Paul Renner, the speaker of the house for those two years, and Travis Hutson, in the Senate’s senior leadership, to steer millions toward the city, lobbied by the Southern Group.
“I’m not in favor of going three years,” City Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “I was not happy last year with the performance in the fact that we lost out. And we can talk about until the cows come home what the governor did as far as vetoing water projects and all that. I get it, it’s not lost on me. We’re in a dire way.” Grants will not make up for it, she said. “We need to be focusing on infrastructure. I want the Southern Group to earn years number two in three.”
Council member Ed Danko credited Renner rather than the Southern Group. He may be more right than he intends: Palm Coast, Flagler County and other local governments may be looking at a comparative drought in state appropriations in coming years, with junior, back-benching members representing them in the House and Senate.
The Southern Group has been the city’s lobbyist at the state Capitol since 2017. The council hired the firm during Council member Nick Klufas’s second year of his first term. “I think they are the strongest lobbying group in Tallahassee,” he said. “I’m impartial on whether it’s one year, three years.”
The city issued a request for proposal in August and got four responses–The Southern Group, GrayRobinson (the firm representing the city in unrelated lawsuits), Pittman Law Group and Sunrise Consulting Group. Southern Group ranked a unanimous first in the city’s analysis, conducted by a procurement committee.
Other council members agreed with Pontieri. “We are still going to give them the opportunity for that full five year renewal term,” she said, though as Mayor David Alfin interpreted it, the renewals would have to take place every year.
Sally says
When will the City of PC Officials ever get their act together? Can we please replace them all and start over from scratch.
JimboXYZ says
Why don’t we give all the grant lobby money back to the State/DeSantis & thank them for the generosity of underfunding every project & kill the growth plan & Vision of 2050. It’s obvious the growth is never goin to pay for this, axpayers don’t have & aren’t willing to incur deeper debt to ruin Flagler County & Palm Coast for any of it. It’s not having the job creation & revenue impacts that were touted as growth paying for expansion. It was all a web of deceitful lies from the Federal (White House) down to the Mayor’s (City of Palm Coast) office & his/any staff’s for budgeting the projects to actually be a realized expansion. I mean just eyeballing the millions Build Back Better (sb Nothing) is just a pipe dream for the amounts sought to perform & received, that ultimately were vetoed. This is like building a new city & then finding out that there is no money to pave existing roads for the current footprint of the city. Even the SFT plant guru said on the article(s) prior to this that replacing the swale system would take $ 100’s of millions, if not billion(s) to make that happen for gutters & whatever else is that pipe dream. This obviously is forced debt. It’s more of an extortion when the state threatens lawsuits & fines. Let’s see a copy of the legal documents that are forcing taxpayers to comply with the fraud of growth & Vision of 2050 ? We all know the Government can deliver forms & letters with threats. The tactic seems to be threaten with litigation for extortion. This is what we get when the legal team is dismantled for the pay as you’re sued for firing the woman that got blindsided by every legal threat to the City & County. First it was the Flagler School Board lawyer, then it was City of Palm Coast that went pay by lawsuit model. It’s just incredible how this keeps unraveling into a bigger mess. How can Palm Coast or Flagler County defend itself vs anything really, when they create the suits in a sue happy world of entitlements & cave to every threat of lawsuit with a hush money settlement. Another, the county is being sued for the emergency responder fire department sexual assault & rape. That’s going to be the easiest slam dunk case & award for damages for the victim in that.
SFT-1 sought $ 35 million, Grant for $ 1 million, vetoed. Can’t handle sewage needs for growth, the solution is obvious, no growth. And since the State never provided the $ 1 million grant money, there’s zero to return. Mothball that project or expand only enough to cover the growth we were duped into as good faith growth. Moral of the story there, get the money first before committing resources when Biden-Harris drops the ball on “Building Back Anything”. If I ever take on a project, I get my quotes, if the money is there, that’s a Go decision I make, no money to pay for it, I guess I go another direction that ranges from an alternative solution that is less expensive that the money covers, to just putting the project(s) on hold & going without. Unfortunately, sometimes the one desperately wanting the contract that dies the same fate as the dream of the project. That grocery list of projects are all contingent upon each other being adequately funded. What good was $ 496 million in wants getting $ 151 million for grant funding that gets vetoed to $ 82 million. There’s easily $ 414 million that the City of PC & Flagler County isn’t willing to spend or even has for debt. Fiscally Irresponsible & incompetence is the only conclusion anyone could come up with. This is no better than the door to door salespeople harassing the residential looking for projects that they want to gouge & contract for. That’s the Biden-Harris era for Covid 2020 lies. Distractions & lies of anything Biden-Harris-Walz needs to end. Fabricated crisis with crappy fraudulent non-solutions for wars, border crisis that created these infrastructure issues nationwide with inflation & higher interest rates for the debt. I get I’m railing on Biden-Harris-Walz, but the reality is that the sequence of events to get us here is no coincidence. The last 4 years, how unlucky would the taxpaying masses have to be for all of this to fall into place ?
https://flaglerlive.com/desantis-vetoes-palm-coast/
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
You do have your chance coming up on November 5th, choose wisely.
PC God Mother says
Now the the city is in a bind, we the residents will pay dearly. We will have numerous utility hikes now to cover all the new infrastructure we need due to over development. More money, more traffic, more rude people AND more taxes. Yay!