- April 28, 2024
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City Councilwoman Theresa Pontieri. Photo by Brian McMillan
City Councilman Ed Danko. Photo by Brian McMillan
Palm Coast resident Jeremy Davis. Photo by Brian McMillan
Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin. Photo by Brian McMillan
Palm Coast Storm Water and Engineering Director Carl Cote and Deputy Director Lynn Stevens. Photo by Brian McMillan
The meeting room was full for the Jan. 16 Palm Coast City Council meeting. Photo by Brian McMillan
Palm Coast will not have a moratorium on infill lot building in the city, but will be forming a Citizen Advisory Committee to look for solutions to the flooding problem facing residents.
Vice Mayor Ed Danko proposed the committee to the council during a discussion on Jan. 16 on the new technical manual updates addressing flooding and drainage on some homes in Palm Coast. The committee was unanimously approved by the council, and staff will return at the next workshop meeting with more details on the process of forming the committee.
“[The committee] should be open to all folks in our community, including those who have actually flooded, but also members of our Home Builders Association, our business community and other concerns citizens,” Danko said.
The Citizens Advisory Committee, Danko said, should report to the council and have staff members appointed to attend the meetings to offer guidance and assist committee members. One thing the new committee should do, he said, is review options for financial assistance to residents impacted by these flooding problems.
The council also adopted new standards to the technical manual that go into effect immediately, including a 22-inch height maximum for new home builds, with a 10-inch differential for neighboring homes.
MORATORIUM MOTION DIES WITHOUT SECOND, SOME RESIDENTS READY TO SUE
Council member Theresa Carli Pontieri did motion the city adopt a pause on infill lot building. She modified her initial motion from 90 days to 45 days, with the option to extend the pause once. But the motion died without a second, much to the outrage of residents who have pushed for immediate action over the last several months.
“My question is, what are we worth?” Resident Krystal Kirkland asked the council. “It’s been really interesting to see the perspective and where the heart actually lies … and it seems to me that all it is is money, money, money, money, money.”
Council member Nick Klufas said the flooding problem residents are experiencing would take longer than the proposed 45-day pause to fix.
“Even if we had a stop of 45 days, I’m not certain that would grant anything that doesn’t already exist,” he said.
Palm Coast resident Candace Stevens is the founder of the Facebook page Flooded in Flagler County where residents have shared their experiences of flooding and drainage when empty lots are built out with new homes. She said the council needs to add permanent drainage into the building code.
“We’re not beholden to developers,” Stevens said to the council. “‘No’ is not a bad word. ‘Slow down’ and ‘no’ are good words.”
Residents like Stevens have organized through Flooded in Flagler County, even hosting a meeting for the group to meet in person and discuss the situation at hand.
Several residents who spoke up about their flooding plights in the meeting said they are ready to go to court over the issue. Stevens told the Observer that the residents in their group were waiting to see what the council would do in the Jan. 16 meeting, but unless the city takes action, many residents in the Flooded in Flagler County group are ready to sue.
"I don't think they're taking the mistakes they've made seriously," she said.
THE NEW STANDARDS
Danko said he was proposing the committee instead of supporting a moratorium because the proposed changes to the city’s technical manual were going in the right direction to solving the issue.
Danko said. “I see no point today in pushing for any temporary pause of construction.”
The flooding issue first came to the City Council’s attention when Birchwood Drive residents Mara Weurth and Paul Fink noticed the home between theirs was filled in noticeably higher than their own properties.
But the problem is not new, residents say. Stevens said several of the members of her Facebook group — herself included — have been dealing with water collecting on their property for years.
The problem was that new homes were required to be built to a minimum 12-inches above the crown of the road, but the city had no maximum height requirement for lots. Since then, City Manager Denise Bevan formed a specialized task force to address the issue.
Section 300 of the city’s technical manual, outlining the Stormwater permit requirements, is what is currently being updated and reviewed, Stormwater Deputy Director Lynn Stevens said during her and Director Carl Cote’s presentation.
Lynn Stevens said the task force has 163 properties with flooding issues and staff has visited 97 of them so far. The remaining 66 should be finished by the end of January, she said.
Lynn Stevens said during their investigations, staff found that one problem causing the standing water is the existing homes were built to drain onto vacant lots, and when the new homes are built on their lots, the pre-existing homes are now retaining their own stormwater.
Ground compaction over time also changes the water flow of a lot, she said, as do homeowner modifications like clearing trees, re-sodding or re-landscaping.
The changes made to the manual relating to stormwater are as follows:
A 22" maximum finished floor height; a maximum 10" height differential between the new home and existing homes; the front property line must be equal to the edge of the road, instead of the crown of the road.
Cote and Stevens also said there were several additional items staff was considering that needed more research before being implemented: requiring gutters on homes using the maximum building space, requiring a certification by an engineer in addition to the licensed surveyor for the final lot grade, and requiring silt fencing on all infill lot construction sites.
Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin suggested adopting the items in the future considerations as well “and take our lashes down the road.” He said he would trust that other cities that have enacted similar policies have not done so illegally or against the Florida Builder Code.
Pontieri did not agree, pointing out that Lynn Stevens and Cote just said the items needed more research to ensure compliance.
The council passed a motion to adopt the additional measures in a 4-1 vote, with Pontieri dissenting.
“We shouldn't haphazardly just pass these things in order to avoid a 45-day pause,” Pontieri said. “We have to get this right.”
Danko asked Cote to assure the public that the new standards meant "that we're not going to have this problem moving forward."
"These changes are going to have a positive impact," Cote said.
“In that case, hopefully we’ve solved this problem moving forward,” he said.
A previous version of this story misspelled Krystal Kirkland's name.
