- June 15, 2024
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Flagler County wants to increase its emergency shelter space by building a multipurpose facility at the Flagler County Fairgrounds.
The county will ask the state for $10 million for the project as part of its next round of legislative requests. Chief of Special Projects Holly Albanese told the County Commission at its Sept. 6 workshop meeting that the county has a deficit of special-needs shelter space.
“What could be a special-needs shelter when needed could also be used as a facility for community events,” Albanese said.
A significant portion of Flagler County’s growth consists of older adults, and households with older adults are more likely to have special medical needs when sheltering during an emergency, according to meeting documents describing the proposal.
The $10 million would fund fairground field improvements as well as the special-needs shelter, according to documents describing the proposal.
Albanese told the commission that when the county does submit its legislative requests, that request will emphasize how the shelter would help with emergency preparedness.
The shelter proposal is one of nine funding requests the county will submit to the state at a Flagler County Delegation meeting on Oct. 13, alongside 10 policy priorities the county would like the state to support.
Among the policy priority items, the county would like the state to change its definition of a rural community to raise the population cap for the "rural community" designation.
Albanese said Florida Statute 288.0656, which defines rural community population levels, hasn’t been updated since 2009. The county will lose its status as a rural community when its population exceeds 125,000.
Rural community status makes the county eligible for small-county funding grants, so losing rural community status means losing access to that grant money, Albanese said.
“This is imperative to get them to change this,” Albanese said. “This will affect us in so many ways.”
The Palm Coast City Council is also preparing its legislative requests, including a request for funding to build a YMCA in Palm Coast.
Council member Theresa Carli Pontieri and Mayor David Alfin asked staff at the council’s Aug. 8 workshop to add the item to the the city's request list, with consensus from their fellow council members. At a Sept. 5 business meeting, Alfin also asked staff to add the expansion of the Old Kings Road to the list of requests.
“I am concerned, and with increasing anxiety, about our north-south evacuation routes,” Alfin said. “I’d like to get [Old Kings Road] on the books. I think we’re going to need it with increasing urgency.”
Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo said the almost $55 million in state funding the city received last June included funding for a study for the expansion, but the city could ask for design and construction funding.
The County Commission is also considering improvements to Old Kings Road, but decided at its Sept. 6 workshop to reach out to Volusia County first — since the road extends into Volusia County — and make a joint funding request.
Albanese told the commissioners that if cooperation with Volusia County couldn’t be arranged in time, she would remove the ask from the list for this year, and staff would continue to work on it through the next year.
Palm Coast is also asking for funding to help build a Maintenance Operations Center, preserve historic Fire Station 22, perform a flood map study in the Blare Drive and Colbert Lane area for flood mitigation, protect environmentally sensitive areas like the Palm Coast Parkway hardwood tree canopy and the Bulow Creek relic dune and burial mound, and several projects intended to protect the city’s water supply and water quality.
