Several city employees and directors have filed a series of complaints and memos to Human Resources documenting behavior by Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris they considered rude, demeaning, offensive, abusive, harassing and inappropriately interfering with administrative duties, in violation of the city charter.
The complaints were filed well before three City Council members called for an independent investigation of Norris over allegedly demanding in a private meeting with Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston and Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo that they both resign.
The memos and complaints, all obtained by FlaglerLive, were written starting when Norris had yet to be sworn-in, when he was being oriented by staff, and continued soon after he was sworn in–in late November, in mid-December, in mid-February and late February. The incidents were reported by the city’s chief building officer, the director of human resources, the director of communications and marketing, and two members of the communications department. There may be others, but fears are rampant that Norris would retaliate.
Supporters have called for a rally in Norris’s behalf on Tuesday morning before City Council’s 9 a.m. meeting. Norris says he had no hand in organizing the rally, but agrees with his supporters that the council is retaliating against him with a call for an investigation because on March 6 he warned them that he would be calling for a building moratorium.
“They’re sowing discontent to try to run me out of office,” Norris said in a 42-minute phone interview this evening as he addressed each of the memos filed about him. He denied he said some of the more offensive words attributed to him, conceded he said most of what was alleged, but cast it all as jokes staff misunderstood and as the thin skins. He said if he’d been confronted with any of the complaints then and there he’d have apologized and explained he did not mean to offend–as he did regarding the one complaint he was told about, after he spoke harshly and rudely about the city’s Starlight Parade YouTube production.
“I have been as kind and as nice as I can to all those people up there. That’s the person I am. I never try to offend anyone,” the mayor said.
The memos and complaints draw different conclusions.
In every case, the incidents were witnessed by city employees, including one when Norris is said to have referred to the color of Marketing and Communications Director Brittany Kershaw’s painted toenails, as he was addressing her, as “fucking trash bag color,” a characterization reported by Kershaw and one other employee.
Norris, according to the memos, also sought to have Jeff Douglas, who heads Douglas Properties and is among the leading developers in town, banned from City Hall (a building built on land donated by Douglas Properties’ parent company), dismissed the city’s communications department as useless to him, insulted its production of the Christmas Starlight Parade during a meeting attended by a department employee on her first day, and told Renina Fuller during a meeting with her team that the city needed to start hiring younger, less expensive and less illness-prone employees.
Last week in a NextDoor thread that has since been taken down (see it here), Norris told Brad West, a Palm Coast resident who frequently discusses and writes about city issues, and was a former city employee, “you are making assumptions and assumptions get people killed.” He also wrote him, “Brad I walk by your house almost every day.”
The meeting with Johnston and DeLorenzo where Norris is said to have asked for their resignation was witnessed by phone by City Attorney Marcus Duffy. It was confirmed by Johnston in an open meeting, when City Council member Charles Gambaro asked her whether Norris had made the demand. Norris is also said to have told them it was a “one-way conversation.” Norris denied that he told them to resign and says he’s aware he has no such authority on any city staff. He said today the series of complaints are a pattern the city is trying to build against him to run him out. The city has forwarded the complaints or memos filed with HR to Duffy.
Norris called “laughable” the fact that the first complaint dates to his period as mayor-elect, before his swearing-in. He’d gone to City Hall to get his official portrait taken and get introduced to the marketing and communications staff. At one point Norris and Kershaw were walking through the council chamber.
According to a Fuller memo: “As Mr. Norris and Ms. Kershaw walked down the center aisle Mr. Norris said to Ms. Kershaw, ‘What color is that?’ Ms. Kershaw answered, ‘What, the carpet?’ Then Mr. Norris said, ‘No your toes’. Then Ms. Kershaw said, ‘light blue’ and Mr. Norris replied, ‘is that fucking trash bag color … ?’ Ms. Kershaw was shocked at what she heard and replied, ‘What?’. Then Mr. Norris said, ‘You know, paint colors can have weird names.’”
In addition, Kershaw wrote in a memo of her own, “When discussing the department’s services, he dismissed them, stating he had his own marketing team and praising his campaign manager, Chase. In private, the two employees who were present later expressed concern to me that they feared for their jobs due to his comments about not needing the Communications team.”
Norris in this evening’s interview acknowledged referring to the paint color–and texted an image of China Glaze nail polish with the “Trash Can-Do Attitude” tagline–but denied using an expletive. “I don’t use those words in front of girls like that. I’m an old soldier, but I don’t use–I’ve been as kind as I can to those folks,” he said.
One of the employees who reports to Kershaw was with her and overheard the expletive, and wrote of that day: “Upon meeting Mr. Norris, his temperament was immediately unreceptive, combative, and reluctant to achieve any type of rapport with the members of our department, despite our best efforts to do so.” The employee described Norris turning to a city assistant as if to signal that he was done with the communications team. “In my opinion, based on the entirety of our time together,” the employee wrote, “this was a clear case of verbal harassment on behalf of Mr. Norris that was meant to intimidate and demean Ms. Kershaw, while also trying to gauge her reaction as a means of instilling control.” The employee referred to other instances when Norris “has audibly made profane, vulgar, defamatory remarks overhead by myself and others within the confines of the community wing at City Hall,” and that if those interactions “are any indicator, it’s not a question of whether this will happen again, but when it will happen.”
On November 22, three days after Norris’s swearing-in, Fuller was meeting with him to introduce him to two of her employees and explain her department’s role. “During our conversation,” Fuller wrote, “Mayor Norris commented that employees’ salaries and health insurance are the city’s biggest expenses. Mayor Norris looked at me and said ‘we need to start hiring younger employees. Old employees cost us a lot of money and younger workers are in better shape and would cost the city less.’ Later in the conversation, Mayor Norris asked about random drug testing. I told him we have a system that generates the randoms. Then he said ‘I heard there is a city employee driving around in a city vehicle with ‘clean piss’ and I don’t want junkies or druggies working for the city.”
Norris this evening said he’d requested a spreadsheet listing all employees and salaries and asked who were the “essential” employees–the employees the city would absolutely need as in a hurricane emergency, for example. “The spread sheet Ms. Fuller sent me, everyone is an essential employee,” he said. “That can’t be.” He disputed the wording Fuller attributed to him about younger, healthier employees. “I didn’t say that, but it’s kind of easy to ascertain when you look at the statistics. But I didn’t say that.” He said he was “trying to state facts.” As for the “clean piss,” he said that was true: someone had reported the case to him.
In mid-December, another member of the communications team wrote HR of how Norris had called the Starlight Parade live stream “garbage,” repeating and stressing the word in a hallway front of an employee from another department. He then interrupted a meeting with three communications and marketing employees, “yelling,” the employee reported: “‘It sucked, it was trash, it looked like horse shit.’ No one in the room responded, and the atmosphere became tense. He then asked, ‘You’re going to tell me that you think it looked good?’” When an employee suggested using a different camera, Norris is said to have replied: “‘I ain’t buying another damn camera,’ and then turned back to me, yelling, ‘I don’t wanna hear excuses. Fix it!’”
Norris said he’d given the team “plenty of compliments,” and said “I kid around those guys all the time.” When Johnston told him that he’d upset the team, he said he called them into his office and worked things out, saying he hadn’t meant to upset them. He said that’s what all other employees filing complaints should have done: confront him then and there, and he’d work it out.
In February, Fuller, the HR director, reported of an ongoing E-Team meeting as follows: “Mayor Norris came into the meeting saying ‘I am here to ruin somebody’s day.’ [Norris said he was kidding.] He went on to say he saw Mr. Douglas (a builder) come into city hall and he wanted to know who he came to see and why.” Jeff Douglas is the CEO of Douglas Properties. “Then he stated, ‘they are not our friends and I don’t want them back in city hall’. Ms. Johnston reminded the mayor that this is a public building open to the public.”
Norris did not deny the interaction. His “ruin somebody’s day” line was “a joke, they should be able to get my humor, but if they don’t, they don’t,” he said. As for Douglas, he said he hadn’t logged in, or at least his signature was not clear, nor was the name of the person he was seeing. Norris said he wanted to know who that was, because a company associated with Douglas is suing the city under the Bert-Harris Act. “So I want where that gentleman is going when he’s coming in my city hall–our city hall,” Norris said. “And you’re not my friend if you’re trying to sue me for $12 million.”
Patrick Buckley, the city’s chief building official, reported in writing an incident that took place on Feb. 24. A resident had called him, frustrated with a contractor who was refusing to install windows, claiming previous repair work had been done incorrectly. The resident went to City Hall to meet with Buckley. On the way in, Norris happened to be walking in at the same time, and was heard by another city employee walking nearby at the same time tell the resident: “Let me know if he gives you any shit,” presumably in reference to Buckley. In the event, Buckley’s interactions with the resident were courteous. (Norris said he knew the resident on a first-name basis and may have told him that if he had any trouble, to contact him. He’d help. “Isn’t that what a mayor is supposed to do–help?” Norris said.
When asked about whether the recurring complaints suggest he might have done things differently, Norris said: “Not really. I just wish if people had a problem with the things I did or I said I wish they had confronted me right then. I don’t sugarcoat anything, but I certainly wasn’t trying to be offensive to anyone.” He said on several occasions he’s sent flowers to city staffers–to Johnston when she got her master’s degree, to an executive assistant when she lost a close family members. “I have been as kind and as nice as I can to all those people up there. That’s the person I am. I never try to offend anyone.”
And he’s convinced: “They’re sowing discontent to try to run me out of office.” Remarkably, the accumulation of complaints appears to have had no effect on his approach to the job, or to suggest that perhaps he may be at fault for being too abrasive, rather than everyone else having too thin a skin, though several times during the interview he referred to himself as “an old soldier.” Palm Coast government, however, is a civilian organization.
“I’m just doing my job,” he said. “If they want to get me–whatever.”
