- April 19, 2024
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Dear Editor:
The future of Palm Coast’s Town Center District was the subject of a presentation during the Palm Coast City Council’s March 8 workshop. Understandably, this development has been through quite a bit of re-evaluation since the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic stalled investment to this mixed-use, residential, retail, and arts district.
Although currently made up of City Hall, a movie theater, one office building, several abruptly ending side streets, and multiple bulbed-out, pedestrian-friendly intersections – but no pedestrians – the city had the correct vision of using Central Park to anchor this mixed-use development.
However, moving forward, the city should be aware that stacking more apartment complexes into Town Center will push potential business further from reality, eliminating the entertainment in the entertainment district.
According to Jane Jacobs’s midcentury urban planning masterwork, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” neighborhoods are fragile, and it is difficult to strike the delicate balance that ensures their success and maintains their relevancy in a city’s urban ecosystem. Diversity is always the best way to weather a crisis such as an economic downturn.
Ultimately, it is up to the developers of the individual parcels, but the city should do everything within its purview to incentivize and attract viable businesses to Town Center, as Councilman Ed Danko suggested during the meeting. This mixed-use district will never be realized without the adjacent retail, restaurants, and other necessary profit-generators that drive economic growth.
Palm Coast has a real opportunity to construct a great, walkable retail district that will draw people from all over Flagler County. Let’s not squander its potential.
Casey C. Cheap
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
I have a suggestion to circumvent the tremendous traffic problem which is developing in the Town Center area. The streets in this area have speed limits as low as 15 mph! And, recently, there are new apartment houses being built in this area, with hundreds of tenants and cars. To make matters worse, Central Avenue has to be the worst quality street in Palm Coast.
My suggestion to eliminate all of these problems is to put a new east-west street (with a reasonable speed limit and limited access) north of Central Avenue. It should connect Belle Terre Parkway to Town Center Boulevard and Old Kings Road. It would have a connection to City Place/Bulldog Drive. At the west end of this new road, it can connect into Belle Terre where Central Avenue does now, and Central can be made branch off to the south from it.
It seems to me that this is a highly needed street, as the traffic on Central Avenue is becoming excessive.
Jesse Stoner
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
As many people have recently witnessed the outcry and walkouts staged at many public schools in Florida, I am dismayed by the lack of understanding/education of Florida HB1557. The publicity around this bill has been that it is a “Don’t Say Gay” bill; it is not that at all. It is the “Parental Rights in Education” bill.
This is one of the problems we are having with real academic education in our country today. The “cancel culture” is determined to take our educators' eyes off education and instead would rather indoctrinate our children in things that should never be focused on in public schools.
If parents really educate themselves and understand what is going on in public schools throughout the country, they should be thankful that there are those willing to stand up for their rights as parents. A couple of examples of inexcusable behavior at a couple of Florida public schools should serve as a lesson to parents as to what could happen with their children:
The case involving the minor child of the Littlejohn family in Leon County. Mrs. Littlejohn is a licensed mental health counselor and mother of a middle school-aged child in the Leon County Public Schools. Mrs. Littlejohn’s daughter, along with her two best friends, questioned her gender during the pandemic. As a mental health specialist, Mrs. Littlejohn was working with her child to address her needs related to her alleged dysphoria and other challenges. They have a loving, caring relationship.
Behind her back, her daughter’s school entered her into a transition plan. The school asked the minor child if she wanted to start using the male bathroom – thus, putting her in the same bathroom as middle school males. The child found this request to be odd and immediately told her mother when she picked her up from school that day. The public school believed it knew better than the parent, and in this case a parent who is eminently more qualified than any individual in the middle school to recognize and treat children suffering with gender identity or other important issues.
Around this same time, the Perez family in Clay County learned of their middle school-aged child’s attempted suicide. Again, another public school district decided to enter a minor child into a transition plan without notifying the parent. In this case the father of the young child is an attorney. Instead of engaging with the highly educated professional parent who, for at least as many years as the child had been on this Earth, supported, fed, and clothed his minor child, the public school hid vital information from him because it thought it knew better.
Parents should no longer allow outside interests to lobby for control over the hearts and minds of our children. Please get involved, parents!
Shannon Rambow
Palm Coast
Editor’s Note: Rambow is chair for Moms for Liberty, Flagler County chapter.
Dear Editor:
The city of Palm Coast is heralding the results of its recent Citizen Survey as showing all the good things about how the city is doing. But a closer look at the survey results and the survey itself show an entirely different picture.
The first thing to look at is the relevance of the survey as an indicator of the views of us, the residents of Palm Coast. The survey participants only amount to one half of one percent of the population of Palm Coast. This tiny number of respondents really makes any inferences about anything just little more than a guess.
The next is the combination of the categories “good” and “very good” percentages to artificially prop up the positives the city wants to emphasize over negatives. The survey actually asks participants to choose results on a scale of “poor,” “fair,” “good,” and “very good.” Knowing the breakdown of the two categories by separating the results for each would give us a better picture of what is exceptionally good and what is just one step above fair.
Finally, much of the survey responses say everything in the city is simply great and yet the categories of land use planning and zoning, code enforcement, and traffic issues are way down in comparison with previous surveys. What gives?
Jeffery C. Seib
Palm Coast
