- December 13, 2025
Upon entering the E-section home of Palm Coast mayoral candidate Charles Ericksen Jr., most visitors will not notice the ceiling. It’s smooth and flat. It’s white. It’s unremarkable.
But it used to be a popcorn ceiling.
Knowing that, the sprawling surface, from the dining room to the kitchen to the vaulted ceiling in the living room, becomes a symbol of Ericksen’s determination. He scraped the entire thing by hand, with a three-inch blade.
For some of the rooms, he had to use his neighbor’s 14-foot extension ladder or disassemble beds. In all of the rooms, he covered the furniture with tarps, and went at it, showering his head with white powder, often getting a mouthful.
He lived, breathed, tasted that ceiling for four hours per day — scraping, sealing, painting — and finished the whole house in a week.
“When I start a job, I finish it,” he says, his mayoral ambitions embroidered on his white polo shirt. “I’m a fanatic on cleaning up after myself.”
Ericksen’s father, who also became involved in small-town politics at about 60 years old, was a carpenter and builder by trade.
“He taught me how to work with my hands, and I’ve never lost that,” Ericksen says. His gaze is direct. He is still. He’s no fidgeter. “I’ve never been someone who looked for compliments. I’ve always assumed that if you do your job, that’s what’s expected.”
His father also pushed him to go to college and to enter the military, where he thrived; he earned an Army Commendation Medal, the highest award for nonmilitary action, in 1968.
He spent 35 years in insurance and customer service, managing several hundred people at times in his career. At times, he helped acquire new companies and manage them, merging old standards with new, higher ones. He learned to communicate with people and ensure that expectations were clear.
“I always looked to build a team around me that had skills that I didn’t have,” he says. “That’s the definition of a team.”
In his career, Ericksen lived in more than a dozen states, plus Mexico, before moving a decade ago, to Florida. Retired, he worked at Lowe’s for $8 per hour, until a high-end cabinet company in Naples plucked him from the retail aisles and hired him to install cabinets in million-dollar homes.
When he moved to Palm Coast, he talked his wife into buying a fixer-upper in the E-section. After a new tile floor, new kitchen cabinets, a new entryway to a formal dining room, a tiled back splash around the sinks — not to mention the de-popcorned ceiling — the home is now fixed up. He enjoys the work and has done similar projects for other family members. “I just like to do things for people,” he says. He makes a plan and he does it.
And he is consistent. Ever since he took an interest in Palm Coast and Flagler County government meetings in 2004, he has attended nearly every one, adding Flagler Beach and Bunnell city commissions at times, as well as Flagler County Airport Advisory Committee meetings.
He applied (but was not selected) to become Alan Peterson’s replacement on the City Council, when Peterson decided to run for the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners mid-term. Ericksen was also appointed to a 2009 budget advisory committee by the county.
Now, he feels he has the right qualities to become the next Palm Coast mayor.
No matter what happens, though, Ericksen will have the same consistent, determined, get-it-done mentality that he displays on his bicycle.
He doesn’t have a fancy bicycle. But at 68 years old, he knows he needs to do something to stay in shape, and preferably something that is easy on his joints. He used to bike when he lived in the Midwest, so he picked it up again. Three years ago, he began keeping track of the miles he pedaled around Palm Coast.
In the middle of this campaign season, Ericksen says, he reached a cycling landmark: He crossed the 10,000-mile mark.
No fanfare. No applause. No problem.
CHARLES ERICKSEN JR. Q&A
NAME: Charles Ericksen Jr.
AGE: 68
FAMILY: wife, Shirley; five sons
CAREER: 35 years in the insurance/customer service industry
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: None. “I’m a voter.” Was County Commissioner Nate McLaughlin’s campaign manager in 2010.
QUIRKY FACT: Has ridden his bicycle 10,000 miles in the past three years.
What is your stance on City Hall?
Eventually, the city needs a City Hall ... I think as long as we asked (residents) to vote on it in the past, we should ask them again.
Some feel the city and county duplicate fire and/or emergency services. What is the best course of action?
I would not be opposed to a committee of five to six people, with Flagler County Fire Rescue Chief Don Petito and Palm Coast Fire Chief Mike Beadle … to outline the common areas and outline the areas where they’re different …
I would suggest we have some type of committee without politicians go through and outline the basic information and then present that and get guidance as to whether it’s worthwhile going forward … The experts are already on the payroll.
What specific items would you cut from this year’s budget, if anything?
The last thing I would cut is fire services. That’s always been a scare tactic ...
There are continuous ways to make people more productive … Simple things. Right now, the city sends out 440,000 individual utility bills a year — about 38,000 a month; 38,000 times a month, your home or someone else’s home is visited by someone who reads your water meter. That involves probably a team of people doing it, a number of trucks doing it. I don’t know why we can’t cut that by 50% by doing it every other month, or even quarterly. This is the first place where I’ve gotten billed monthly … I will bet we could save in excess of $200,000 on that one thing.
My specialty was large groups of people. I managed up to 750. I incentivized these people to think smarter. I just think that there are things we could look more in-depth on the administrative part of the city, also.
What votes or actions made by Netts would have been different if you had been mayor for the past four years?
It’s kind of hard of me to say which ones would be different: 97% of the items presented to the City Council are approved unanimously. The Supreme Court isn’t that good.
I would love to see more challenges anytime an issue comes up and even more explanation to the people who are listening or watching what the city’s about. I think people are suspicious of what the government does. And we keep giving them more and more reasons to be suspicious.
Right now, we’ve got this Waste Pro contract. We now finally know what the three options are, but no one has brought forth that fact that there’s a half-million-dollar-a-year hidden tax in that contract, to the people here in Palm Coast. The city has a franchise tax applied each year to the contract. So that $500,000 included in any contractor’s bid is going to be paid back to the city as a tax. So, instead of $7.7 million, without the franchise tax it would only be $7.2 million.
People need to understand that millage isn’t the only tax you have in the city …
I’m disappointed in the council not challenging the recommendations and making sure all the necessary questions have been answered. Staff doesn’t talk a lot to the people, and that’s what we’re here for. Hopefully the council and mayor are the people accountable to the electorate. They need to ask the same questions that people in public participation part of the meeting would ask. The people need to hear that those questions are being asked. Government needs to be more receptive to being challenged without tightening up.
You have never been a mayor. What advantages does that give you, if you are elected?
It gives me an ideal. I’m going to look at these things all over again, and not from a politician’s point of view … The best thing that I found in an office was bringing in new people who would question things in a positive way, question why you do things today the way you do them …
I can bring a new perspective to the way we look at finances … It ought to be good and easy for you to pick up a document and see fewer items in the “transfer to other” category in the city’s budget …
The enterprise fund for the tennis courts should be breaking even. And it’s not. This is now the fifth year. Every year, we have to take $125,000 from the general fund and shore up the tennis fund, either because we aren’t charging enough, or we’re not efficient enough. Even the budget says, if it is inefficient or not breaking even, you will have a plan to get it there within three years. And that’s just $125,000.
Take a look at our utilities fund. It’s a cash cow for the city; $52 a month — even if you don’t turn your water on or don’t have your garbage picked up. That’s $600 a year if you do nothing. That’s $600 for these foreclosed homes. That money funded Old Kings Road improvements for the Walmart that still hasn’t committed to coming here. It’s paid for a lot of projects.
(I understand) the city can only count on ad valorem taxes as a given. So there’s got to be ways of raising money. (But) let’s be honest with people.
I like people to come in to council meetings not to have to protect themselves but to learn.
What should be the city’s role in improving the local economy?
I think there’s some things we could back off a little on. One thing that I hear from the businesses involves signage. If they put a sign up, and the trees grow around it, they can’t trim the trees; and then the people can’t see (the sign). So they resort to putting up these big place cards up on the roofs of their cars …
I (favor) backing off, at least temporarily, on allowing signs on pickup trucks in people’s driveways. In the past four weeks, there have been 46 new businesses in Palm Coast, 40 of which are at home, and that’s great. These are probably all of those people who have exhausted their unemployment, who have exhausted every attempt to find a job, and it’s either fish or cut bait. They have to do something, so they’re working out of their homes. To tell the guy who cuts grass that you cant’ keep the trailer there, that you have to go down and pay $60 to (store it offsite), that’s a killer. That’s two more paying customers he has to have just to pay for that.
Code enforcement is necessary, but I don’t think so at the level we’re doing it.
And if new businesses want to come in here, we shouldn’t categorize them as ones we don’t want. Personally, I still don’t see what the big hoorah is over Internet cafes. I’ve yet to go in one and not see people older than I am …
Small businesses are the backbone of America, and even if these one-person, mom-and-pop shops can add a second person, that’s great, but we’ve got to do something to clarify this economic development and get it out of first gear. We’re wearing that transmission out.
