The Palm Coast City Council’s special meeting today heard and discussed an attorney’s independent investigation sustaining allegations that Mayor Mike Norris violated the charter by unilaterally seeking the ouster of top staffers, behaving unprofessionally at City Hall and repeatedly demeaning staff. But the report was almost a sideshow as the meeting devolved into often baseless screeds from the floor and self-pity from Norris.
After three hours of abrasive partisanship from Norris’s supporters, his own doleful defensiveness–he never took responsibility for any of his behavior or suggested he might amend his ways–and at times bitter criticism from the dais (Council member Theresa Pontieri, not without reason, called him a liar), City Manager Lauren Johnston delivered an unexpected a cry from the heart that could be the council’s restorative guiding principles for the next few months, if the council is looking for a path to heal.
“Our job as public servants and as neighbors is to establish a culture that reflects integrity, mutual respect and collaboration, and that starts with each of us,” Johnston said. It’s not clear to what extent those who should hear her most did. (See the full statement below.)
Watch City Manager Lauren Johnston Statement:
The council received the 50-page document on April 21, censured Norris and expressed its no-confidence in him at a meeting the next day, a meeting Norris did not attend. But the council wanted to hear from the investigator, Tallahassee attorney Adam Brandon, directly. Brandon appeared before the council today, summarizing his report, explaining some of its mechanics–how he decided to interview whom, whether anyone was referred to him for interviews. He did not add anything substantial to what was already in the record.
“The investigation speaks for itself,” Brandon said, describing Norris as someone who “speaks authentically, sometimes without a filter.”
Beyond that, the purpose of the meeting was unclear. It veered into an opportunity for Norris’s partisans to echo his conspiracy theories that the council and administration are banding up against him because he wants a building moratorium.
Council member Charles Gambaro motioned for the council to ask Gov. Ron DeSantis to remove Norris “for malfeasance”–an extraordinary motion, since Norris has not committed any crimes. The motion failed, 4-1, with Council member Theresa Pontieri unwilling to “ask the governor to remove a duly elected official at this time,” and others joining her.
The council plans to forward the substance of the investigation in the form of a complaint to the Florida Ethics Commission, but would do that at next Tuesday’s meeting. The Ethics Commission hears cases where public officials abuse their power and break the law, generally to personally benefit from their position. The complaints about Norris detail reprehensible behavior, and substantiate claims that he abused his authority. But none of the complaints allege that he attempted to personally gain from his behavior.
Norris near the beginning of the meeting made a startling allegation that had nothing to do with the investigation, and that appeared to deflect from the business at hand. He claimed that “an outside entity offered me a quid pro quo if I approve the 2050 Comprehensive Plan as written, and let it go forward. And that is a very serious matter, and we need to have a closed-door session so we can iron all this out.”
Norris cited law to claim that a closed-door session was in order. He was incorrect. State law provides for closed-door sessions of a council in only two circumstances–to discuss pending litigation, and to discuss strategy ahead of collective bargaining. School boards may also hold closed-door sessions to discuss tactical details of school security measures. There are no other exceptions. City Attorney Marcus Duffy said he’d never heard of the exception Norris was referring to. Nor had Norris discussed the matter with him before the meeting. Norris stopped meeting with city staff to educate himself on pending matters.
Pontieri was willing to discuss the issue–in the open. Norris wanted an emergency closed-door meeting on Friday. A 4-1 council voted against it, then unanimously approved Pontieri’s motion to discuss the matter in the open at the May 6 meeting of the council.
Norris also falsely accused Gambaro of breaching confidentiality on an economic development project called Project Magellan, subsequently reported by the Observer. County Administrator Heidi Petito discussed Project Magellan, and only in its coded terms, at the meeting with local media when the fuel farm off U.S. 1 was announced, on March 27. There was no breach of confidence.
All this and more before Brandon, the attorney, finally took the floor to make his presentation. But again, Norris attempted to control the process, seeking to have “witnesses” sworn in, presumably to have a chance to interrogate them, and summoning Renina Fuller, the human resources director, to sit up front with Brandon.
It took Duffy’s forceful intervention to focus the meeting back on the investigation as the council as a whole had intended it to be discussed. “We are not rehashing this investigation,” Duffy said, looking at the mayor. “I do not want this to be an interrogation. I do not want witnesses being asked questions right now. At the direction of this council, Mr. Brandon is presenting his investigation. Now, if this council wants to ask other witnesses questions, that’s fine, but the purpose of this meeting was for Mr. Brandon to present his investigation. It is my advice to this council that no other witnesses should be asked questions today.”
For Duffy, it was a coming out of sorts for a city attorney who only a few months ago, as a new hire, looked every bit the rookie, at times overwhelmed by the demands on his parliamentary role by an erratic council. No longer. His command today was reminiscent of Bill Reischmann, the long-time attorney who arbitrated many a chaotic meeting during the Covid years.
The audience wasn’t used to that from Duffy, nor was Norris expecting to be so decisively put in his place. (Duffy, like the mayor, has a military background.) There were groans and jeers from the gallery, jeers that would become louder as the meeting progressed, often with insults hurled at the council members, drawing only the mildest rebukes from the mayor, if any: he does not silence his supporters as he does his detractors. There was just one exception when he hammered his gavel and curtly threatened to throw out people who were arguing among each other.
Each council member asked Brandon questions, in essence confirming the conclusions of the report, including a rapid-fire back-and-forth between Gambaro and Brandon that again restated the fact that Norris sought the ouster of top staffers. Norris attempted to undermine the report by claiming that some of its facts were the result of sunshine violations. Pontieri corrected him. Norris repeated that he had never demanded anyone’s resignation. The attorney corrected him.
“The question in my mind was not whether this was a demand or a request, but whether under the charter this constituted interference,” Brandon said. “I don’t see how you would take one council member asking for two key employees to resign as anything other than interference.” Brandon said the investigation found that the mayor wanted others fired as well. “No individual council member, including the mayor,” Brandon continued, “has the right to request the resignations of individual employees. That has to be done collectively, and then two, the Chief of Staff is not someone who can never be terminated by the full city council, so his involvement with it was problematic.” (The council may collectively hire or fire only the city manager or the city attorney.)
Norris questioned Fuller, the HR director, as to why she did not bring some of the complaints to him. Fuller told him–correctly–that she followed the chain of command, bringing the complaints to Johnston, the city manager. Norris asked Johnston why she didn’t bring them to his attention. She reminded him that he would barely meet with her for more than a few minutes and was only interested in making his own demands. “You asked for three things for me at that meeting,” she said. “I was there for about five minutes, and so it was difficult to try and go through some of these things with you.” (Norris has refused to meet with Johnston for weeks.)
Again and again, Norris attempted to paint a picture of himself as unfairly attacked or criticized, of someone with an open-door policy anyone could approach, and someone who spoke from the heart and joked from the heart. He made the seemingly outlandish claim that he was “personally credited with killing 75 terrorists” and in the same breath described himself as “a passionate human being” whose team “rescued 26 malnourished children, special needs children, in Iraq. We set the standard for humanity in Iraq. And I have served as an HR director.”
He said he’d never been “treated like this,” though several employees felt the same way about how he treated them. His tangents went on. He made accusations against his opponent during the election, blaming city staff for not doing what it’s supposed to be doing, or for approving too many houses.
Then he offered an apology that was more of a preface to blaming others for not coming to him: “If I offended anybody in this city, in this organization, I’m sorry. I am,” he said. “But you should be able to come, you should come to the mayor with an open door policy and say, sir, I’m sorry I was offended by that.”
He never took responsibility for any of the complaints against him.
And he reverted to criticizing the administration, to approving noises and applause from the floor that became louder every time one of his partisans took to the lectern for his or her three minutes, giving those segments of the meeting a cultish atmosphere. The chamber was mostly empty. Between two and three dozen people showed up. But the public comment segments occupied the larger portion of the meeting. Norris partisans used their speaking time to dismiss the allegations against Norris as an orchestrated cabal without merit. They attacked Gambaro, Pontieri or Council member Ty Miller, and ridiculed Council member Dave Sullivan’s technological miscues at a meeting last Tuesday, which he attended by zoom.
“I’m asking people to think about if,” Pontieri asked those partisans at one point, “if the shoe were on the other foot, if there were somebody else in the seat that you didn’t agree with, that you didn’t like, but they were conducting themselves in the same type of behavior. Would you be condoning it in the same way? If your answer is yes, then your answer is yes. But I think everybody has to honestly ask themselves that question, and that is the question I’ve asked myself, because, Mayor, I have been a supporter of yours. I need your votes. To be quite frank with you, you and I vote [together] on a lot of things, mostly, but I can’t condone this type of behavior. Doesn’t matter if I need your votes. It doesn’t matter. It’s the behavior. It’s not you.”
On rare occasions, there was a touch of wit. “We need to resolve this. You need charm school,” an ex-cop told the council.
Mostly, people lectured and hectored the council over its criticism of the mayor (“We want you to stay,” “I stand with Mike,” “we need to stick with Mike because that’s who we voted for. We don’t have to love his personality. We just have to love what he does, and that’s what he’s doing”). One spoke about last Tuesday’s council meeting, when the board could not agree on a city manager candidate, as a “circus.” A few made conspiratorial claims, such as the council maneuvering to appoint Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo city manager (he did not even apply in the last round), or that Pontieri was maneuvering to have herself appointed mayor.
Another held up a plush puppet and accused Gambaro of being one and of not belonging on the dais. “The only one who belongs up there is Mike,” that resident, Gary Kunnas, said. Another, drawing on his many years in the military, defended coarse language and name-calling in the workplace: “We called each other names and we did our jobs,” he said, before blaming the council for embarrassing the city.
“I’m not going to retort to everything that was falsely stated by many people,” Pontieri said, inviting residents with complaints to contact her by phone directly. “I don’t think that this back and forth about me personally is healthy for the city, and I’m not so self-centered that I need to defend myself up here to every little thing. But I do encourage each of you to reach out to me and we can speak, because I would like to clear some things up and everything correctly stated. You don’t want to hear it, you don’t have to reach out.”
On it went for three hours.
The last word went to Johnston, the acting city manager. It was the only surprise of the day, and the most pointed. She gave the council a way forward.
“I know this was difficult, but I just wanted to take a moment to speak, not as your city manager, but as a fellow member of this community,” Johnston said from the dais. “The tone we set at the dais in our organization and across our city: It matters. The hostility and divisiveness we’re seeing, both inside and outside this chamber, is damaging to the fabric of our community. At the end of the day, we’re all human. We make mistakes. Sometimes we’re sinners. None of us is perfect, and we’re all learning and growing, and sometimes, yes, we’re falling short. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop working towards better outcomes.
“Our job as public servants and as neighbors is to establish a culture that reflects integrity, mutual respect and collaboration, and that starts with each of us. We acknowledge that many of the challenges we face today didn’t begin yesterday. They’re inherited. Some are rooted in decisions made long before any of you took office or any of us assumed our current roles. But the responsibility to address them lies with us now. The Council and us has an opportunity and an obligation to guide the city forward, not by dwelling on blame, but by embracing solutions. Not by tearing down, but by building us up. Let’s move forward as one city and one community committed to unity and the well-being of all of our residents. So I know that today was incredibly difficult, not only for the council, but for us as well. Just wanted to say thank you.”
There was a smattering of applause.
The Norris Investigation:
Palm Coast Investigation – April 18, 2025 (1)
