Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Charter Amendments topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Palm Coast council vets recall, vacancy and debt limits in charter amendment workshop
Summary
City attorney presented three draft charter amendments on council recall procedures, vacancy election timing and a higher unfunded‑contracts threshold; council directed targeted revisions to recall and vacancy language and asked staff to return with clarified draft language and election‑timing options.
City Attorney Marcus Duffy walked City Council through three draft charter amendments at the April 14 workshop, focusing council attention on three governance issues: recall/ removal procedures, how to fill mid‑term vacancies and whether to raise the city’s cap on unfunded multi‑year contracts.
The first draft would add a process permitting the council — by supermajority — to request gubernatorial removal of an elected member after specified grounds (conviction of a felony, violation of city standards or repeated censures). Duffy said the amendment would not strip the governor’s independent authority to remove elected officials but would give council an additional statutory route. Council members raised due‑process concerns and asked that the language clearly distinguish between criminal conviction, ethics‑board findings and political censures; staff was asked to re‑draft the measure so it does not unintentionally require three censures in cases (for example) of felony conviction.
On filling vacancies, Duffy outlined a proposal that timelines for an appointment versus a special election be tied to when a vacancy occurs relative to an upcoming regularly scheduled general election. Council asked for a narrower, “scalpel” fix to the particular timing problem that caused confusion in a 2024 vacancy — rather than a broad rewrite — and asked staff to coordinate with Supervisor of Elections Katy Linhardt. Linhardt explained the practical constraints of qualifying windows and overseas ballot mailings and cautioned that very short special‑election timelines can be costly and complex.
The third proposed amendment would raise the city charter threshold for unfunded multi‑year contracts from $15 million over 36 months to $30 million and index the cap to inflation, and to lengthen the permissible term to 30 years. Chris Row, the city’s bond counsel, advised that state statute already imposes substantive restrictions on municipal borrowing, that bond markets expect certain debt‑term lengths and that communities that prescribe local limits typically couch them as dollar caps with indexing. Council indicated support for adjusting the local threshold to reflect inflation since the charter’s adoption and asked staff and counsel to fine‑tune the proposed language.
Next steps: staff will revise the draft amendments — clarifying the censure/conviction mechanics and vacancy timing keyed to qualifying deadlines — and return to council for further review. Council asked staff to ensure any changes do not inadvertently alter governor removal powers provided by state law.
