Last Updated: 10:31
Twelve candidates have applied in hopes of appointment to the Palm Coast City Council seat Cathy Heighter resigned last month, two of whom have previously been appointed to local elected boards–including one who served on the City Council–and two who served on government advisory boards. One applicant did not qualify because she does not live in District 4, so 11 applicants will be interviewed when the council convenes at 1 p.m. today.
The application window drew more candidates than three previous such appointment rounds since 2018, likely because the appointment will be for two years, will give the winner the advantage of incumbency when the seat is up for election in 2026, and will automatically make that winner the council member with the second-most seniority once three new elected members are sworn in the first week of December. Two of the three previous rounds drew just three applicants each, the third drew eight.
The only former applicant to apply again is Vincent Lyon, who is also the only applicant to have been previously appointed to a council seat, which he did not subsequently contest. Ironically, or perhaps sadly, several of the applicants for appointment have qualifications for the job that, at least on paper, exceed those of some of the candidates in the Nov. 5 runoffs for Council.
The council decided not to hold a special election concurrent with the Nov. 5 general election, saying there was not enough time for candidates to gather petitions, and paying the qualifying fee would have meant limiting the candidate pool to those who could afford it. The council ruled out a special election later, and ruled out leaving the next council to make the appointment.
The council will interview candidates in an open meeting on Sept. 17 and discuss the applicants again on Sept. 24, when the public will be given a chance to weigh in. The vote to fill the seat will be on Oct. 1.
Here is a summary of each applicant with each application linked to his or her name.
Robert Bogges, 71, has been a Palm Coast resident for 17 years. He’s a retired paramedic and support services manager who worked for eight years before his retirement for Volusia County government, and was the director of administrative services for Daytona Beach government before that, a title he held in the culmination of a three-decade career there. He currently serves on Flagler County government’s Emergency Medical Services Advisory Board. “Whether it is supervising a group of medics in a military ER, managing employees in an emergency or office environment, I have learned that every person has something to offer to an organization to meet that organization’s goal,” he writes. He was the Ormond Beach Jaycees’ Outstanding Young man of the Year in 1980, among other honors.
Darryl Boyer, at 25 the youngest of the applicants, he gained prominence in the past year and a half as a candidate for the State House seat that includes Flagler County. He lost a bid to replace Paul Renner in that seat, a bid especially damaged when Renner–for whom Boyer had been an aide in the 2022 campaign–decided to endorse his opponent, Sam Greco, who took 64 percent of the vote in last month’s Republican primary. (Greco faces Democrat Adam Morley in the Nov. 5 election.) A 2018 graduate of Flagler Palm Coast High School (college and university years aside, he’s a lifelong Palm Coast resident), he was a legislative aid in the State House in 2023 and a clerk staffer there the previous year. The experience “has given me firsthand knowledge of the legislative process and appropriations process,” he writes, “while my work as a private investigator and legal assistant has sharpened my analytical and problem-solving skills.” He was a marketing director for the Woolsey Morcom law firm.
Regina Davis, 62, has been a Palm Coast resident for a year and a half. She’s a mental health clinician with Hopelink Behavioral Health of Virginia, a field she’s been in since 2018. She’s also a real estate broker with Richardson Realty an Lifestyle International Realty. “I have had experience running for political office in Georgia and serving as a Community Activist,” she writes. Davis had to withdraw since she does not live in District 4.
Charles Gambaro, 46, is an 18-year resident of Palm Coast and a previously appointed member of the Flagler County School Board, where he served between 2007 and 2008, when he was working for a uniform company. He’d been appointed to replace Jim Guines. He came in third in an election that eventually seated Andy Dance on the board. In November 2022, he founded a company called Spearhead Strategies for which he is the only listed agent. He describes it as “an international management consulting company that supports government and private sector clients in the supply, logistics, defense, and security sector.” He was previously on active duty in the military, chaired the Soil and Water Conservation Board and served on the executive committee of the Flagler County Republican committee.
Leslie Giscombe, 60, a resident of Palm Coast for 33 years, is the founder in 2018 and CEO of the African American Entrepreneur Association of Daytona Beach, which spurs small businesses with a focus on the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color community, and a founding member of the Flagler Tiger Bay Club. He’s previously founded other companies focused on marketing and business development to support non-traditional students or entrepreneurs. He served as an advisory board member of CareerSource Florida. He’s cultivated relationships eith large and small local businesses. “These connections enable me to advocate effectively for initiatives that drive community prosperity,” he writes.
Vincent Lyon, 53, is the only applicant so far who can say that he has experience as an appointed member of the Palm Coast City Council: The lawyer and now 12-year resident of Palm Coast was appointed to serve the remaining six months on the seat Steven Nobile had vacated. He was with the Chiumento law firm at the time, but has since 2021 run his own firm, Lyon Law. “In that role,” he wrote of his service on the council, “I made tough decisions and served with diligence and distinction.” In 2020 he ran for a School Board seat but lost to Jill Woolbright (who would go on to declare that she was in “satanic warfare” with her colleagues and file a criminal complaint against the superintendent over books she wanted banned). Lyon is also on the board of the Flagler Humane Society.
Demetrios Maroosis, 29, has been in Palm Coast 17 years. He is the director of analytics at Florida Health Care Plans, the insurer, where he’s been employed since 2019. His degree in statistics from the University of North Florida, he says in his application, “enables me to make decisions for the City of Palm Coast with an expert level of understanding of population growth and identifying process inefficiencies.” He writes of his leadership skills “in both my career and my church family.”
John McDonald, 48, has been a Palm Coast resident since 2021. He’s been an enterprise architect with Onix consulting for the past eight months, with a few recent stints in security consulting. He’d attempted a run for mayor this year until he had to pay the steep qualifying fee. “I am confident in my ability to analyze data, identify solutions, and make sound recommendations to the council,” he writes.
Ronald Nakabaale, 41, has lived in Palm Coast nine years. He’s been a full-time soccer referee with the United States Soccer Federation since 2017. He briefly worked at Boston Whaler and worked for several years at The Vitamin Shoppe in Palm Coast. “I grew up in a small village in Uganda where I was actively involved in all maters within the village from construction of new projects to disputes between neighbors,” he writes. “I use practical analysis, not emotions, to make decisions, regardless of whether I make the popular choice or not.” Curiously, he felt it necessary to not that “I am not a realtor, have no developer ties and am only connected with my wife here.” His wife is the he the Supervisor of Elections’ operations administrator. Kaiti Lenhart, the elections supervisor, is listed among Nakabaale’s references.
Meredith Rodriguez, 44, has been a permanent resident of Palm Coast for 19 years, is the marketing director at SunBelt Land Management, and previously–for seven years–led Marketing 2 Go’s social media and brand communications. She’s also been the communications director at Bethune-Cookman University and, before that, at the former Flagler County Chamber of Commerce. “I was born and raised in a small town in New Hampshire by my parents, who both served our community as elected officials and town board members,” she writes. ” I was later recruited by my client, SunBelt Land Management, for whom I have served as marketing director for six years, driving sales for its private residential communities across the Southeast, including two here in Flagler County. I am heavily involved in the growth and progress of these communities and have enjoyed learning from this company the impact of being a responsible, professional land developer.” She lists among her references Ken Belshe, the SunBelt executive and the driving force behind Veranda Bay, which Tuesday evening (Sept. 17) is expected to be annexed into Flagler Beach, and Cindy Dalecki, the owner of Marketing 2 Go.
Sandra Shank, 56, is well known in government and civic circles in Flagler and Palm Coast, serving on Palm Coast’s planning board since 2019–she is still a member, but would have to resign the seat if appointed to the council–and previously chairing Flagler County’s Affordable Housing Committee, an advisory board to the County Commission. She’s lived in Palm Coast for 23 years. She is a Realtor with TAG Ventures Real Estate Services, the company owned by Kathy Austrino, who ran in this year’s election for the city council’s District 1 seat. Shank is also the founding owner and CEO of Abundant Life Ministries-Hope House, Inc. Her commitments to local advisory boards, she writes, “are proven examples of my ability to serve effectively as a with my knowledge and skills.”
Jared Truehart, 39, has been a Palm Coast resident for five years. He’s a program manager with the Florida Army National Guard in St. Augustine, previously serving as an officer in the military, until 2019. Those years made him an “accomplished leader” with “experience in public service in various capacities,” he writes. He has a master’s in public administration.
An earlier version of this article initially appeared on Sept. 6, when the number of applicants totaled nine. The application window closed on Sept. 11. The full agenda package is here.
