The 35 or so people who turned up for Wednesday evening’s Flagler Tiger Bay Club candidate forum, and the 80 or so who watched at least a portion of it on YouTube (at last count) would have gotten a general understanding of where the candidates stood on several local issues. But sharp differences between the candidates were surprisingly rare, and specific answers to questions even rarer, though too many questions lent themselves to open-ended speculation and the sort of bromides no one can quibble with: everyone wants lower taxes, everyone wants more jobs, everyone wants a capable city manager, everyone wants Tallahassee’s help.
A few questions about temperament, public private partnerships and the “westward expansion” yielded more insights, and the candidates themselves had moments more revealing than they may have intended.
The forum featured just six candidates in four races, three of them for Palm Coast City Council seats: Cornelia Manfre and Mike Norris for Palm Coast mayor, Ray Stevens and Andrew Werner for the District 3 City Council seat, and Jeff Seib for the District 1 seat. Ty Miller, who is facing Seib in that runoff, was ill with Covid, so did not attend. Adam Morley, the Democratic candidate for the Florida House district that includes all of Flagler, was seated between Manfre and Norris (as if those two needed a blue helmet between them). His Republican opponent, Sam Grego, was a no-show.
The main event seemed like the mayoral race between Manfre and Norris–whose results soundly defeated incumbent David Alfin. While the strong personalities of previous mayors made it seem like they were leading a strong-mayor form of council–Jon Netts, Milissa Holland and David Alfin all fit the mold–the winner on Nov. 5 won’t have greater power than other council members. Either Manfre and Norris would nevertheless continue that tradition of strong-personality, if not strong, mayors.
They drew the first question. Its poor wording aside (an irony, given the context), it was on the most current and controversial topic of the day: the city’s proposed end to borrowing and leasing limits that have been in place since the city’s founding. By charter, those limits may only be exceeded with voter permission through referendum. The charter amendment would lift that barrier. The proposal has been controversial on its merits, but also because of its poor wording–so poor that two of the four current council members voted to remove it from the ballot. They failed. Most candidates for the council have spoken against it, including the two mayoral candidates. A month ago the question might have seemed hard-hitting. It has since mushed into a soft and threading ball. Both Manfre and Norris enjoyed whacking it.
“I think I was probably the only person in the city that stood up at the time on 2 July and said, Hey, you guys shouldn’t do this. You should just amend the charter to account for inflation,” Norris said. He’s willing to lift the current borrowing limit of $15 million to $60 million. “They’re asking for something that they shouldn’t have, and we should limit the borrowing power of the city, and I won’t back that referendum,” Norris said.
If it were a council meeting, Manfre would have seconded him. Or vice versa. The referendum is not worded properly, she said. It gives the council “carte blanche borrowing power. And I believe that our founding fathers wanted us to have some kind of controls on what we are going to borrow for, or you go out to the public. I do not agree with this referendum.” Her more immediate concern is a sewer plant the city has not built, with capacity running out.
The question was later rephrased to focus not so much on the referendum as on its private-public partnership component: the referendum, if successful, would more easily allow the city to enter into such partnerships, most of which can be intractable and difficult for the public to understand, especially since a legislative change that could diminish oversight and accountability. Seib was more amenable to partnerships, but he did not seem comfortable with the subject. He went into a tangent about tax breaks to private companies, which he also supports.
Stevens took a different track that didn’t seem to have much to do with the question. “I don’t think the city should be putting itself in a position to enter into competition with private enterprise,” he said, whether it’s a YMCA or a golf course.
Werner provided the more thoughtful and pragmatic answer, and the most specific to a council member’s responsibilities. It was also one of the clearest answers of the evening: “It depends on what the proposal is,” Werner said. “Some things that I think that we really need to be looking at before we enter in something like that is to make sure everything is absolutely transparent and in the public. If we’re going to be entering into a public-private partnership, everyone should understand exactly what we’re getting into. I think that the details need to be laid out in a timeline, just so that we know exactly what to expect. And I also think that the partnership should be even for both sides, and we should have everything in place to know exactly what is expected of both sides, and it needs to be followed through. So if you can do that, and it is something that is favorable to the community, I think that that could be a good thing.”
Manfre piggy-backed on Werner’s answer: “What is it? Where is it going? What’s a profit? Who’s getting the money?” she asked rhetorically.
They were less specific about how to improve the city’s economy, other than, in Manfre’s view, “collaborative work with other cities” and attending conferences, or in Norris’s view, advertising for industry. Seib referred to the tax base being “skewed” toward homes and said the city should fund an “economic development ecosystem,” but the response did not go beyond the generality. Stevens said it should start with improving infrastructure, “But I think it’s pie in the sky to think that we’re going to to attract major industry here in Palm Coast, like Mercedes Benz world headquarters,” though no one on the panel had raised that possibility. He said the city should attract companies in electronics. But he didn’t say how.
“We really sell ourselves here on Palm Coast, we have been rated the second safest city in the state of Florida,” Warner said. “I can’t think of a business who wouldn’t want to come and be a part of our community.” Other than complaining about “red tape”–an old trope that the city administration has gotten over in many regards–he did not provide further insights on why businesses weren’t moving to the city.
A question repeated to most candidates about the specific type of companies they’d bring to the city lent itself to more speculative answers, though the candidates weren’t to blame for that. Not a single council member going back to the founding of the city (or county commission member going back further) has ever “brought” a company to the city. The closest such successes were Holland’s negotiations to bring the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University to Town Center–not companies, but educational institutions. The feat hasn’t been repeated nearly as often as the question asked of candidates, despite its inapplicability: elected officials aren’t recruiters.
The question was more aligned with a council member’s capabilities when a panelist asked Seib what he would do to make it easier for start-up companies to establish themselves in the city. Shorten the time for permitting, he said–or provide tax incentives. Seib may be the most well-rounded and educated of the candidates, with the deepest history in Palm Coast (who else could make a reference to Jerry Full, the ingenious founding council member?) He alone has the sort of institutional history the council has lost. He is the only candidate with long service on city advisory boards even preceding incorporation. But he’s also the wonkiest of the candidates, the best skilled at underselling himself, and often the most wooden in his public presentations.
“I became involved with the Palm Coast Community Service Corporation, immediately attending meetings with then and then being appointed to the council in 1997 to 1999,” he said. “I also worked with Jerry Full at that time to have the abandoned Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks converted to the Rails to Trails program.” (Another undersell: instead of taking credit for seeding the city’s celebrated and famous trails system, he referred to it by an age-old reference few remember). He served eight years on the Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee. “I am a fiscal conservative and an environmental conservationist. I have run my campaign as a low budget grassroots effort. Money shouldn’t buy a position, words and actions should achieve it,” he said. Civil to a fault, he never alluded to Miller, his opponent, let alone take advantage of his absence.
Aside from one Morley quip about Greco–who, in all fairness, deserved it–none of the candidates sniped at each other. Not even Stevens, the retired New York cop with a pugilist’s twinkle in his eyes: he and Werner jokily leaned away from each other when someone took a picture of the two. During the forum, they each held their fire, though they didn’t seem to have any anyway.
It was a matter of time before the so-called “westward expansion”–Palm Coast’s designs on doubling the city’s size, west of U.S. 1–would come up. It did at the half-hour mark, with a question to Morley and whether he’d continue to support it legislatively–as Paul Renner, the representative he hopes to replace, very much did by sending $105 million Palm Coats’s way in legislative pork. The money is to pay for the loop road between Matanzas Parkway and Palm Coast Parkway, through the vast, currently empty lands of the west.
“I’d like to let my opponent answer first,” Morley said, too quick for the questioner, who did not get the joke. “He’s not here, and he hasn’t been, and he probably won’t be once he’s elected, either,” Morley said of Greco without saying his name. (Morley is one of the sharpest candidates to run in the past decade in any local races, but he’s done so as a Democrat, the political equivalent of a suicide run in an ever-reddening district, and without the bricks of political action committee money Republicans can depend on.)
Morley’s all for the expansion, but not as currently planned–or unplanned. “The state has done away with the Department of Community Affairs, which used to help communities better manage their growth,” he said, referring to former Gov. Rick Scott’s demolition in 2011 of the state agency once responsible for balancing growth with environmental stewardship. “When the state did away with that, it was left up to the communities, and developers kind of just came in and did as a pleased. Now, as we are getting back towards a more conservation minded public, I think that we need to start focusing on better strategies of growth. But yes, I am willing to work to continue that, that project and getting the resources here to our district.” (Morley was equally strong in defense of small businesses as an investment in local communities.)
Werner, asked how he’d ensure that the city’s legislative gravy train would continue–unlikely, now that Renner and Sen. Travis Hutson and the privileges of leadership they’d brought have been term-limited out–didn’t go beyond saying that he’d work closely with the new legislators: it’s all elected officials can do. But the salient question in that regard–would the new council members retain the Southern Group, the city’s lobbying firm that weathered some criticism in June, was never asked.
Almost every candidate spoke then or on the campaign trail of keeping the lid on taxes. Every candidate has also spoken of the importance of investing in infrastructure. One of the questions asked them to explain the contradiction. Responses largely dodged. Norris said it was a matter of “diversifying our tax base” with the previously mentioned mystery industries that aren’t coming.
Manfre gave candidates’ well-worn answer in almost every race for every local government since the dawn of local governments: “The city needs a city manager that can get in there and look at all these departmental budgets and see where there’s potential for cutbacks.” (Palm Coast’s administration has repeatedly gone through that exercise over the past few years. At almost the very same time that Manfre was answering, Council members Nick Klufas and Theresa Pontieri were saying in a council budget hearing how proud they were of the staff’s diligence in finding cost-savings, and in its transparency.)
Werner said it’s a matter of priority. “Identify some of the biggest areas of concern for our residents and make it a priority through the budgeting process,” he said, describing what the current council has been doing, albeit by short-changing itself by repeatedly reducing the tax rate. Seib alone was not opposed to adding a half-penny sales tax (if the county commission were to approve) to pay for public safety. But Seib alone was asked that specific question.
“I am in everything that has to do outdoors type of guy,” Werner had said, describing himself in his introduction. “We all want safe roads. We all want safety in our community, clean water, good schools and good services,” along with “economic vitality.” But it was something he said at the midpoint of the forum that seemed to sum him up in his approach to public policy. He is not an ideologue who sees things in black and white, he’s not a firebrand, he’s not into showmanship. “Somewhere in the happy middle is where I land,” he said. He was referring to growth. But the characterization seems to be his calling card.
Stevens was more blunt: “My core beliefs, number one, first and foremost, once again, is to put the brakes on what I and many others believe is this uncontrolled or poorly planned development that’s putting a strain on our infrastructure to include, but not limited to sewer, water, roadways, general, overall quality of life,” he said. Secondly, he’s opposed to tax increases “until all other cost saving measures have been fully explored and exhausted,” although in that regard no other candidate would speak differently.
Manfre and Warner spoke of supporting a YMCA in Town center, a plan only fractionally funded by the Legislature, but not without hope from private sector partnerships (which is how YMCAs are typically built). Neither provided specifics on how to get past the wish.
In her opening statement Manfre delivered one of the stronger lines of the evening when she said: “A mayor has to have the temperament, a balanced temperament, not a temper, to be able to focus on getting a council to come to agreement on the major issues that have to be put before us in the city.” The statement was clearly directed at Norris, whose temper, documented on video and spoken of by members of the Republican Executive Committee past and present, has been a concern.
One of the questions, gently put to him by one of the panelists, asked him about how he’d “manage constituents who speak their mind during council meetings.” The question would have never been asked, say, of the late Jon Netts, or even Alfin when he ran three years ago. Norris answered in a circuitous way, speaking of the various organizations he’s been a part of, then of the people who came into his office (“treat them respectfully and take care of their needs”) and of the public speaking he’s done over the years. “Dealing with organizations and meetings, it’s no problem for me.”
Norris did eventually fall into his own trap, though the question wasn’t intended as such. He was asked how he’d handle city staff and limitations on council members’ authority to direct staff. It is illegal for an elected official to direct staffers. They may issue directions only to the city manager. Manfre made that clear. “It is not the place for the City Council to be directing the staff at all,” she said.
Norris’s answer was more revealing–and concerning: “Believe it or not, being in the military and the things I’ve experienced in my life, the city manager, city council-type of government that we have within the city fits my personality fine,” he said. “I like being able to go to one person say, Hey, Adam, can you make sure that happens? So I think that that’s great.”
But that, too, would be illegal–unless Norris had the consensus of the council. Aside from routine check-ups into, say, a missed garbage route or a troublesome pot hole or a constituent’s inability to get answers about something, no single council member may go to the city manager and request (or demand) that anything policy-related be done.
The panelists weren’t done with Norris. The last question posed to him queried him about his “leadership style and temperament to build consensus and collaboration amongst city council members while remaining compliant with Sunshine laws.” He reverted to comfort corporate words. He said he’s always been a team player–couldn’t have been in the military for so long without being a team player. “I have been a leader my entire adult life,” he said.
It was the only temperament-related question posed to Manfre. “I really believe that Palm Coast would like to see a calmer City Council,” Manfre said. “I believe I have the leadership skills for providing that.”
There were questions about the kind of city manager the new council will want to hire. The question elicited responses such as “professional manner,” “apolitical,” “proven track record,” “problem solvers,” “financial capabilities,” “demeanor.” Manfre said “I would like to see our processes tightened up, our employees trained on the time value of money.” The characteristics all could be summed up in one word: technocrat. No one mentioned creativity, originality, daring, humor, culture, intelligence, worldliness. Palm Coast’s Levittown origins never seemed so sharply in its future.
