Recently we sat down with David Alfin. He is running for Palm Coast Mayor as the incumbent, against Peter Johnson, Mike Norris, Allen Lowe, and John Scott McDonald. We asked Alfin about many of the hot topics being debated in the community including his rush to fire former City Manager Bevan, the development pace, flooding, and more. Our questions are in bold below, with Alfin’s answers following each question.
Why are you choosing to run again and what would you say are some of your qualifications to continue to hold this office? So I’ll answer the questions in two parts as they were presented. Why am I running again? So I am completing what amounted to a partial term; the lion’s share of a term, my predecessor’s. I ran and was elected to fill the current term, which now ends in November. The reason I’ve chosen to run again after much thought and discussion with my family, is that this is a very special moment in time. Different than any prior period in the history of the city of Palm Coast. I’ve often referred to it as a constellation of special stars that have aligned at this moment in time, which is really why I agreed to run for the mayor’s position in the first place.
I knew that the legislature in Tallahassee would be favorable to us when we got to this point in time, and I’ve spent the last three years working up and gearing up to make sure that the city of Palm Coast earned back its fair share of investment from Tallahassee. So the reason I’m running again is I’ve got the money coming from Tallahassee now from the last two legislative sessions, which is the seed money, that provides the capital investment to build the future of Palm Coast. So the reason I’m running again is to provide the continuity of my relationship with the legislature, my relationship with the stakeholders, and my ongoing responsibility to the residents. I think now is the time for continuity, to make sure that. We don’t add any ingredient of risk to the future that we work together as we have to plan the future to gain the investment that we have, which is quite significant, record-breaking, in fact, and I want to make sure that those funds are ushered in properly and that the city exploits them to the resident’s best opportunity.
What would you say are some of your qualifications to continue to hold this seat? Experience. I think when I first took office, we had a complete lack of decorum on the city council. I’m a firm believer that You cannot effectively demonstrate good governance if elected officials can’t talk to each other. Elected officials have to understand that you may not always agree with your peers, but you need to move the city forward, so you’re going to have to find some concessionary position so that the city can move forward if you stick to your position and are not willing to listen. To others. There are times when in our situation there are five of us, we may have five different opinions, which is great, that benefits the community and the residents, the electors, in other words, if they get to hear five different opinions. We’ve probably flushed out most of the Q and A and discussion regarding whatever the particular issue might be but then we all have to resolve ourselves that we have to make a decision. We have to come to a finish line, yay, nay, or something in between. We can’t stop debate. We have to finalize so that we can move forward because there will always be more work than there are hours.
How do you plan to combat the fact that a lot of residents are very wary of reelecting or electing anybody in the real estate market? What are your plans to kind of ease that tension? I kind of describe that as if you are a reader of the classics, you’ll remember the Scarlet A. And in those days if you offended the community, you were forced to wear, literally an A on your clothing. Similarly, I believe that realtors unfairly have been burdened with the Scarlet R, which I feel I wear on my back. Now, if you think about it, realtors don’t sell a product they offer a service that a buyer or a seller chooses to use or not use, they voluntarily choose to use a service from a realtor. Realtors are just providing a service, so I think there’s a complete misunderstanding from the community side as to what it is a realtor does. A realtor doesn’t buy or sell anything it’s not their property to buy or sell all they’re doing is providing the transactional expertise to allow the transaction to happen within the laws of the state of Florida. If we’re talking about Florida now, how do I fight or combat that? I don’t. Now, I will share this with you, I haven’t done a deal in three years. I haven’t gotten a paycheck from the realtor business in three years.
A lot of the debate amongst the community is the pace of current development. Do you feel that this pace is sustainable for the infrastructure for the emergency services, and if it’s not, how do you plan to balance them out? I just noted this morning, that if we look at USA Today’s edition, the city of Palm Coast was ranked number two in the entire country as the best city to move to in the United States, which I’m very proud of. In addition to that, we already know that the Palm Coast has been ranked the second safest city in Florida and the 8th best city in the state for financial prosperity. Those are all data points that have been released in the last ten days now to your question; so a lot of the. the pace that we’re referring to is perception because if you remember, we went through a bust, we went through Covid. We went through a financial downturn, which was significant. During that entire downturn, which lasted for the better part of a decade, you saw little or no growth, development, construction, building, or anything else. Now suddenly the country has recovered, and the financial markets have healed. And what should have happened during those ten years is happening now, except in a shorter timeline. So all that’s happened is that those ten years have been shrunk down into what you’re seeing now. Do I think that that pace can be sustained? No. And by definition, that’s why. Because what you’re seeing is ten years’ worth of what would be considered fairly average sustainable growth compacted into a much shorter timeline. I think we finished these projects and we get back to what I would consider a more normal rate of growth. Palm Coast is the 18th fastest-growing city in the United States. I don’t believe that we will maintain, nor is that a goal of mine to stay at that pace, I think that’s unnecessary. Now, I also, as an elected official or as the mayor of Palm Coast have no authority or ability whatsoever to. Control, folks decided to come and live here, I just don’t. The best I can do is to manage as smartly as I can with a great city staff with my fellow city council members with the county.
You touched on infrastructure being one of the most pressing issues facing Palm Coast; what are some of your plans if re-elected? I spent, like I said, the better part of the last three years, I’ve developed a very good relationship with our legislature. And I was able to get us what I consider a lion’s share of investment for just those projects, wastewater roadways, the utilities that you often refer to. So those monies are now a part of our forward-looking capital improvement plan. So if you look at the actual appropriation request, you’ll see the actual names of those projects, so that’s been in consideration all along. And one of the biggest things, as you know, because you’re at all of the city meetings is the flooding issues. That’s a very large portion of the ponding and the drainage issues. I reserve based on my experience with our former county emergency director Kevin Guthrie, who is now the top dog in the state. He made a very interesting quote when I was up there because I spent a lot of time with him, which is that water goes where water will go. And in his opinion, water has found new places to go where it didn’t go before. I thought that was very, if you think about it for a while it’s very interesting, this is an example of that. So this is an example of when you start to approach the build-out process and we’re specifically talking about the, we’ll use the term ITT lots, a lot of people don’t quite understand what that means, but it’s a set number of lots, which is dwindling now as we finish the construction project in Palm coast. Grading is not a permanent feature of any topographical description of land. Grading is something you do when you first build. Grading is something that has to be maintained over time. So if you add trees, take away trees if you add bushes, take away bushes, Whatever you do, or just by natural erosion and the weather cycles. The grading. The topography of the land changes with time. It’s never static, it’s dynamic.
Why the rush to remove the city manager months before the election? And why not let that wait until after the election? I wouldn’t agree with the word rush, I think timely; I think I work in a very timely, organized, and thoughtful manner. So this is a project that I’ve been working on for some time. I’ve also been deeply embedded in Tallahassee for the better part of the last six months. So rush, just in advance of the budget makes perfect sense, because if you’re going to put new people in, you’d want them to participate fully in a budget. I wouldn’t want to see a city manager go through an entire budget process and hand it off to someone who had not been involved at all. So rush is not at all, was not a factor in any way whatsoever. Some people objected to the method, but I would have to point out that the city charter is very clear about the method by which this needs to happen. It’s not a choice some people felt, it was some people, I think, intimated that it should be done in a dark room behind closed doors, which they seem to object to all the time. That can’t be done in other words, it has to be done by a full majority vote of the city council. The only place that a full council can vote is in the sunshine at a city council meeting. There were no surprises. No one was surprised. I had had many, many discussions, and I consider the city manager a very close working friend.
Anything else you would like to add about your platform, transparency, trust, or other relevant topics to the position? The audit. We had an audit at the highest possible level. You can’t get a better opinion than what we got. Unfortunately, I’m going to guess that few, if any, residents out there in our 100 and it was 103, I don’t know what it is now, 100 plus thousand residents are even aware of it. Now that’s a real transparency. I mean, they went through everything, but nobody even came to ask a question to make a public comment to say, hey, I don’t understand where all of that money went. Well, here’s where it went, okay? Here’s what came from, and here’s where it went now, I don’t expect everybody to be well-versed or experienced in sophisticated accounting. I’m not, I mean, I’m just been in business for a long time, so I understand some things pretty well, but I would think that those would help inspire questions if you don’t know how the money is being spent. Here it is, if it’s not clear if you ask us, we will explain it. We have one of the best financial departments in the state. You can prove that by looking at the awards that they have won every single year. And those are not just awards that are given out. Those are awards that are done by a very professional panel that compares what our folks do compared to what every other city in the state of Florida does so it’s there now. Sometimes you can’t convince people if you don’t want to hear if people want to suffer through conspiratorial thoughts and theories, so be it. But I’m data-driven, I work on the facts and it’s all there and it balances every penny.
