Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris today filed an emergency suit against Palm Coast government and Council member Charles Gambaro, charging that Gambaro’s appointment last fall violated the charter. The suit seeks to have Gambaro removed through “a judgment of ouster” and a special election declared for the District 4 seat.
Norris has been claiming that Gambaro’s appointment was illegal since soon after he was sworn-in late last November. When the seat came open before the election, Norris asked the council to declare a special election and add it to the Nov. 5 ballot.
The lawsuit was filed days after Gambaro made a motion for the council to ask Gov. Ron DeSantis to remove Norris from the council after an independent investigation concluded he’d violated the charter by unilaterally asking top staffers to resign. The council rejected the motion on a 4-1 vote but is expected to forward a complaint against Norris to the Florida Ethics Commission.
Norris’s lawsuit was filed this morning in Flagler County Circuit Court, and will be heard by Circuit Judge Chris France. Norris is represented by Anthony Sabatini of the Mt. Dora-based Sabatini Law Firm. Sabatini was a firebrand Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives from 2018 to 2022.
The dispute centers on the seat Cathy Heighter vacated in August 2024, citing health reasons. Her resignation became effective on Aug. 23. The city charter states that the council must appoint a replacement within 90 days unless there’s an election within six months. In that case, the council may leave the seat vacant until the election.
There was an election within six months: it was scheduled for Nov. 5. But the Supervisor of Elections had to certify the ballot for that election by early to mid-September. In the council’s view, that left little time to organize an election where candidates could qualify, especially if they were to qualify by petition, to forego the cost of qualifying without petitions. Qualifying costs would have been around $2,600.
Heighter announced her resignation on Aug. 16. On Aug. 19, City Attorney Marcus Duffy recommended to the council to make an appointment to the seat after the Nov. 5 election. That, he said, would “give both City Staff and Council an efficient amount of time to go through the process of creating an application, interviewing candidates and ultimately appointing a Council member who meets the qualifications.”
The council did not wait. It set a Sept. 11 deadline for applicants and appointed Gambaro on Oct. 1. Only Council member Theresa Pontieri favored an election, but also conceded that holding one concurrent with Nov. 5 would itself favor only candidates who would afford the qualifying fee. Three of the council members who voted for his appointment–Mayor David Alfin and council members Nick Klufas and Ed Danko–were no longer in their seats once the November victors were sworn-in (Klufas and Danko lost bids for the County Commission, Alfin had lost his re-election bid in the primary already).
“I’d say, open up the applications for five days, try to get it on the ballot, and let it be democratic,” Norris had said at the Aug. 27 council meeting, pressing for an election. “We’re going to see who the community supports if you get two or three candidates on that ballot.”
The language of the charter is as follows: “If, for any reason other than recall or assuming the office of Mayor, a vacancy occurs in the office of any Council seat within the first two years of a term, the office shall be filled by appointment within 90 days following the occurrence of such vacancy by majority vote of the remaining Council members. If said vacancy occurs within six (6) months of the next regularly scheduled election, the remaining Council members may delay the appointment. Such appointments shall last until the next regularly scheduled election, at which time the seat shall be declared open and an election held for the remaining two years of the original term, thus continuing the original staggering of district seats.”
The charter’s language is unambiguous: when a seat opens with more than two years left in the term, as was the case for Heighter, it is to be filled by election, at the next general election. The council deemed the qualifying window too narrow and made a judgment call based on potential candidates’ ability to pay or not to pay the qualifying fee to opt out of an election. A judge’s strict construction of the charter may not follow the same interpretation.
The Norris lawsuit lays out the timeline:
“On August 23, 2024, Councilmember Cathy Heighter vacated Seat 4, and the City Council appointed Charles Gambaro on October 1, 2024. Therefore Gambaro’s term ended on November 5, 2024, the date of the next ‘regularly scheduled election.’ The city, however, chose to disregard the Charter, refused to hold an election, and has unlawfully allowed Gambaro to falsely claim title to the seat [past] November, 5, 2024, and continuously since.”
The suit names Gambaro, but no other members of the counci, even though the council, not the city administration, appointed Gambaro. The suit also names the supervisor of elections as a defendant, even though the supervisor was not involved beyond a negative: she did not receive any names to place on the ballot for Seat 4, and so did not.
The injunction seeks to force the city to schedule a special election for District 4 “at the nearest reasonable date.”
norris-v-palm-coast
