Letter: Palm Coast's ills are not the city manager's fault

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Blame shouldn't fall on city manager

Dear editor:

The termination of the city manager in the City of Palm Coast, or any city for that matter, is a critical undertaking. The now fired manager Miss Bevan had more experience in Palm Coast government than all the council members combined. The head-spinning rapid rate of growth, the enormous drainage mess, and the snail’s pace and paralysis of road widening and new road construction is due to the city council's policies of low funding levels for roads and drainage and a $105 million dollar appropriation for a completely new road west of U.S. 1. That money would go a long way to curing our ills in the Palm Coast right here right now.

The approval of all funding for all these things was done, not by the city manager, but by the mayor and council members. It’s not the city manager’s fault just because it’s an election year and an outside consulting firm hired by the utility department calculates a monetary shortfall and concludes their report with calls for immediate fee increases.

Many have called for the city council to slow things down a little until our drainage, our roads, everything, can catch up, without a huge hit on residents’ quality of life. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, are you better off now? Charles Dickens wrote: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Which is it going to be? If we meet our needs and solve our problems together, city staff, manager, council, and residents, then we will have the city we all can be proud of. It’s a goal worth working towards.

Jeffery C. Seib

Palm Coast