What seemed like throngs of residents who appeared before the Palm Coast City Council over the past few months to complain of flooding on their properties caused by new construction nearby. The issue crowded out so many others for a while, upending city priorities and triggering a call for a building moratorium. It would not have been unreasonable for the council to expect that there’d be a flood of applicants to serve on the newly created Residential Drainage Citizens Advisory Committee meant to explore solutions.
Three weeks into the application process, it hasn’t happened yet. Only two people have applied. The original application window was to close at the end of the month. The city may keep it open longer, especially when there aren’t enough applicants to make a quorum.
The City Council approved the resolution establishing the committee on Feb. 20. “It’s ready to go live as soon as council adopts this,” City Manager Denise Bevan told the council at the time, referring to the application.
It’s been up on the city’s website, first in line on its page of “Boards and Committees,” inviting the public to apply, though you have to know it’s there to get there. There is no promotional link from the home page, as there is, say, for the council members’ town halls, the comprehensive plan, Food Truck Tuesdays, and so on. (Should you be interested to apply, see the application in Word format here, and in pdf format here and at the foot of the article. Or go directly to the city’s website to access the documents.)
The ordinance that sets out the committee’s functions calls for a minimum of five members, a maximum of nine, plus two alternates either way. They would meat at least once a month, in the sunshine–they’d have to follow the open meeting law and submit all their communications concerning the committee to public inspection, if requested. Each member would serve a four-year term, with a maximum of two terms, assuming the committee lasts that long. It’s not intended to be a permanent committee. The resolution calls for the committee to “sunset,” or end its existence, on Feb. 20, 2026. The committee would have a two-year span. But the council, by simple majority, may decide to extend the committee’s life.
The resolution prevents the committee from expanding its scope. The committee will “evaluate and identify issues related to construction” on the city’s original 50,000 or so lots platted by ITT, about a fifth of which have yet to be built up. And it’ll examine the effects of construction on adjacent properties. “The Committee shall research potential resolutions to identified issues,” the resolution states. “The Committee shall identify potential funding sources for identified resolutions. The Committee shall formulate findings and recommendations in relation to potential assistance and remedies for identified damages.”
That’s it. So the committee is more like a special commission appointed for a set period of time with a focused, limited objective–like, for example, federal commissions that have studied crime, drugs, assassinations, or the more recent state commission that examined school security in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre. Drainage on quarter-acre lots doesn’t have the same weighty consequences, but to people living on those lots, it can still be the difference between a life of quality and one of hassles.
That’s what Marie Jesena-Wuerth of Birchwood Drive has been telling council members since last fall, when she first appeared with a cardboard collage of the conditions where she lives, and where a new house has risen, quite high, next to hers. Jesena-Wuerth’s property is essentially ground zero of this particular flooding issue. It was her property that last fall drew Council member Ed Danko, along with several reporters and city staffers, as the emblematic property that seemed to speak for many others. A new house was under construction next to Jesena-Wuerth’s, and it was on fill that rose significantly higher than hers, an older house on a lot that had also settled over the years.
Danko first proposed establishing an advisory committee in January. Jesena-Wuerth is one of the two people who have applied. (The other is Rich Cooper, a Frankford Lane resident and a property and casualty insurance executive in the business 20 years. He’s written “a lot of flood coverage through both [private] and the federal program,” he stated in his application, and has been a long-time Palm Coast resident familiar with its drainage issues.)
Jesena-Wuerth was back at the council with a new cardboard collage on Tuesday. “I am here today to give you guys an update as to what happened to my house,” she told the council. “They have started putting down the sod and in the back part of it, it’s about three feet high. As you can see in the picture, the pictures don’t lie. It’s ridiculous looking. And I am just so very afraid of what it’s going to be like once the rains come in. So I am here today to show everyone in this room the end result of the construction of this new home next to mine.”
She called the new home a “catastrophe,” and criticized the city (“they refused to do anything”) though the city’s authority was very limited, and its staff spent a considerable amount of time working with Jesena-Wuerth to the extent that it could.
Council members will not nominate committee members, but the council will vote to approve each member. No elected official or employee of city government can serve on the committee, though the panel will have one staff liaison assigned, as do all city advisory committees. But she was not satisfied. “He treats us with contempt like we’re idiots, you know, that department does. We’re not,” she said. “I just wish that somebody from that department would truly work with us.”
The committee is open to all residents–not just those who have drainage issues, not just those who live in the affected segments.
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