Westward Expansion: The Anomolies

The land sat unnoticed for 11 years until Jason DeLorenzo stepped to the podium to present staff’s legislative priorities:

PEP. When you lose power, you lose PEP and things get backed up into houses in the most unpleasant manner.

Old Kings Road. This had been a nightmare for years.

A road out west, vaguely described, to grant access to a couple of parcels. You really need to listen to the audio.

No one at the meeting — aside from, perhaps, Jason DeLorenzo — had a clue that the landowner had signed a contract, 11 years earlier, to pay for the road.

But the outrage doesn’t end there. Vice Mayor Pontieri asked many times for assurances that the stated priorities would be honored by the state, and was told there was no priority — the state funded whatever it pleased.

But this wasn’t true, and it would be a firing offense in the public sector. There’s a well-defined process that doesn’t begin until the city makes a request. So what did they do?

They filed twice in 2023, twice in 2024 before finally making a request to fund their number one priority — PEP tanks — in 2025.

One could rightfully argue that this was a trick; that those we elect were deceived, hoodwinked, suckered — pick your word, they all fit — but to stay within the boundaries of journalistic fairness, we’ll just count this as the first procedural anomaly, and perhaps the most outrageous.

Then there was the award-winning festivities surrounding “Imagine 2050,” perhaps intended to form a resounding body of excitement and advocacy to enable the shining city of the future, or was it (as many still suspect) a veil under which the strict DRI would morph into an MPD, quietly guided along by staff.

Thankfully, Vice Mayor Pontieri did her homework — or, based on the intended schedule, we’d probably already be seeing stick houses going up across the tracks.

Then, at the planning meeting, the county’s attorney revealed that the county had not been afforded the opportunity to weigh in because a letter had not been included in the agenda.

It was not a letter of support. She didn’t like the whole deal: “What is before you is essentially an agreement to agree.”

The school board’s attorney also weighed in. He told the board the impact of this project on the district comes to 4,400 students and a $188 million cost. Impact fees would recover about $111 million of that. That leaves a $77 million deficit.

To which Councilman Charles Gambaro took great exception six days later during a meeting of the Palm Coast City Council. He even called him out.

He called it “unprofessional and unacceptable,” said he wasn’t sure what the attorney’s “personal agenda” was.

Fighting words? You decide.

In that meeting, Gambaro — a candidate for U.S. Congress — crowed mightily about the billions the project would bring, waving around an economic study attached to the project that laughably assumes impact fees will pay the way, and that water and sewer are all one quick and easy connect away.

Throughout this drama, the landowner has not been silent. They’re moving quietly through the halls of power, looking to shape policy as is their right, and they’ve even popped up in public a couple of times.

What have they said?

Stay tuned.