- April 7, 2026
Palm Coast has run the numbers on its budget using Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia’s formula for wasteful spending, and is only over by around 5%, according to Finance Director Helena Alvarez.
After Ingoglia made his report on the state of Flagler County’s financial spending, Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris asked Alvarez to review Palm Coast’s budget using the same formula. Alvarez said she ran the calculations using the approved general fund budget numbers from 2019-2020 and 2025-2026, accounting for inflation, population growth and the same consumer price index Ingoglia used.
In 2019, the city had $27 million in ad valorem revenue, she said, and $43 million for the 2025-2026 budget. The millage rate was 4.689 in 2019 and is now 4.0893, she said.
Norris said people could argue Ingoglia’s methodology, but his takeaway from the CFO was to either consolidate down and reevaluate or “become irrelevant.”
“If the state says we're going to cut $10 million from your ad valorem, that's going to be devastating to the city,” Norris said. “So we need to cut and trim, become as efficient as possible.”
Ingoglia held a press conference on March 26 at the Hammock Dunes Club where he told a select group of Flagler stakeholders the county had wasted around $59 million of taxpayer money in the last budget.
Ingoglia’s formula is based on the pre-COVID budgets and calculates waste by taking the base 2019 budget and accounting for inflation and population growth. Anything over that number is considered wasteful spending.
Councilman Charles Gambaro said the entire council sat with Ingoglia in Tallahassee and went over Palm Coast’s budget.
“We went through it, and he looked at all of us and said, ‘I think you guys are in good shape,’” Gambaro said.
“He wouldn't have come to Flagler County and skipped us if he had a reason to beat us up,” Councilman Ty Miller said.
Miller said he wasn’t sure he agreed with Ingoglia’s method, but he did agree with the premise.
“I think it's kind of like a chainsaw to do surgery, kind of methodology there,” he said. “However, having a baseline of fiscal conservatism is good.”
The Palm Coast City Council will be starting their individual Strategic Action Priority meetings this upcoming week, Norris said. With budgeting beginning in May, Norris said he would like to see the city reduce its ad valorem revenue.
“I would like us to cut our ad valorem, which is strictly from property tax, around $8- to $10 million,” Norris said.
Norris said he had other ideas for cost savings, too, including possibly selling the Southern Recreation Center.
“The Southern Recreation Center is a drain on our money, it is,” he said. “We've been talking about the golf course, but the Southern Recreation Center is a bigger drain.”
The Southern Recreation Center opened in 2024 and between September 2024 and September 2025, made $418,000 in revenue, with expenses at $625,000 in that first year of operations.
In September 2025, the council had the opportunity to join a contract for the United States Tennis Association to manage the center for potential cost savings, but the council at the time wanted to give the Southern Recreation Center more time to gain more revenue.
Vice Mayor Theresa Carli Pontieri said everyone in the council is onboard with trying to achieve a rollback millage rate in the upcoming budget. She said she doubted any changes to property taxes would happen this year but she would like to see an analysis of the city’s reserve funds and if there would be enough to soften the blow the first year.
What is frustrating for her, Pontieri said, is the council is being sued over its recent update to its impact fees, yet the council is talking about cuts to the budget. The Flagler Home Builder’s Association filed a lawsuit against Palm Coast in September after the city doubled its impact fee rates.
“We are talking about cuts that detrimentally affect our quality of life, and at the same time, being sued because we are trying to allow development to pay for itself,” she said.
The government has grown, she said, but that is largely due to the population increase Palm Coast has had since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Norris said if the state shifts the tax burden away from property taxes, then the burden would just be felt in other areas, like bond rates. But as the new budget season begins, he would like to see a “full millage rollback.”
“Nobody up here does not call themselves a conservative,” he said. “Conservatives try to conserve, and that's what we're going to continue to do.”
