What It Costs to Live Here
Your water bill went up 36 percent. Your taxes keep climbing. Your fees never go down. This is where we follow the money — and find out who made the decisions that put it on your tab.
Why Are Our Water Bills So High?
The problem was known. For a long time. And for a long time, nobody acted. The bill in the mailbox is not the cost of last month's water. It is the cost of decades of decisions — and of the one meeting where something finally changed.
They Built the Town and They Built the Rules
Before there was a city there was a pine swamp, and a corporation with a balance sheet bigger than most countries and an idea. They built it. Then they wrote the rules. Those rules are still running the place.
The Founding of Palm Coast: Governance Continuity, the Water Utility Acquisition, and Development Community Ties, 1999–2007
This is the record that makes the story defensible. Names, dates, transaction amounts, source citations, and flagged gaps — the evidentiary foundation beneath the narrative.
If we’re out of water, why are we approving new developments?
The city has told a developer, a camera, and a court that there isn’t enough water. So why do the approvals keep coming? We asked them.