Palm Coast Mayoral Candidate Mike Norris Talks Taxes, Temperament, and Council Salaries

Mike Norris is one of two candidates who advanced of the primary election for Palm Coast Mayor in August. Along with Cornelia Downing Manfre, Norris is hoping to become the city’s fifth mayor this November. The incumbent, David Alfin, did not advance out of the primary, nor did challengers Peter Johnson and Alan Lowe.

Though Norris did not submit answers to AskFlagler’s candidate interviews, he agreed to sit down for an in-person interview after the election. What follows is the transcript of that interview, in which Norris addresses his relevant experience, temperament, and campaign stances. Editor’s notes are listed where applicable to provide context for Norris’ answers, or to fact-check claims that aren’t widely-known commodities. Manfre will be offered the opportunity to partake in a similar interview in the weeks ahead.

Chris Gollon: What would be your top few priorities if elected mayor?

Mike Norris: “Infrastructure, we have to get the funds through the state, through our ad valorem tax to pay for our infrastructure needs. That’s why I laid out my platform the way it was, we had a meeting with fifteen or sixteen leaders within the community and we sat down and we tried to prioritize exactly what the community needed. So my top priorities were infrastructure, attracting industrial growth, and employment opportunity. Plain and simple.

“Over 90% of our ad valorem tax comes from homeowners, and we have to fix that. We have to change the ratio. We have to draw in those companies, and it all feeds into the annexation and expansion of the city boundaries and all those properties coming in…we have to designate property for industrial growth. We have to convince those people who are trying to build here, to expand west, to do that. All this property out there was sold off and it changed hands, but initially it was supposed to be for industrial growth. We have to have something manufactured here by large corporations that are going to be able to provide jobs and upward mobility to the citizens and kids coming out of high school, and we don’t have that now. Over half of our workforce leaves the county to go work somewhere else. We need to bring those jobs here.

“Infrastructure is critical, I think they made a huge mistake these last two legislative sessions. That $80 million going out there does not benefit the interior of the city, which needs to be fixed first. You can’t build out there if you don’t have water for out there. It all centers on the infrastructure and getting that straight, so that’s my number one priority. The other one is attracting industrial growth and jobs.”

CG: Were there ways you were involved in tackling those issues before you decided to run for office?

MN: “No. But I recognize it because I think I’m a product of this community. I retired in 2012 as an Army Officer and I wasn’t able to fully retire and start staying here permanently until 2019 because since [my wife] Tracy’s retirement hadn’t kicked in yet, we were waiting to let that build up a little bit more. I had to leave to go work somewhere else. I took a job contracting with the U.S. military and the Department of Defense in Okinawa.

“So I’m a product of their failures. My family is a product of their failures. We did turn that corner and I finally said ‘I’m not working for the federal government anymore, I want to do it on my own’, that’s when I decided to start my own small business. So I’m a product of what they haven’t done, and that’s my goal: I want to try to fix those things.”

CG: What’s your opinion on the City Council’s decision to appoint a replacement for Cathy Heighter instead of holding a special election?

MN: “We had enough time. Those city district seats if I’m not mistaken only require between 130 and 150 petitions. If you’re very popular in the community you can raise those petitions in a day. We walked our neighborhood and collected 90 petitions for me to get on the ballot in four hours. So you can put out a blast saying you’re raising petitions, and to meet you to sign a petition. They could’ve done that.

• Editor’s Note: The required number of petitions to gain ballot access had a special election been scheduled would have been 165, according to the Palm Coast City Clerk.

“Councilwoman Pontieri was concerned about them paying a fee and a seat being bought, but I think we could’ve put it on the ballot and have people pay the fee or raise the petitions in a couple days. I do not think that a lame duck City Council should appoint the next person, but that’s the path they took. I’m hoping they make a good decision. I would’ve rather it had gone to an election.”

CG: Some recent Council members have sworn to oppose any and all tax increases. Let’s just take millage rate – is that a promise you’re willing to make on property taxes or do you feel an increase should be left as an option if necessary?

MN: “Well you have to pay for the infrastructure and for your city employees. Our city government has grown by like 25%, that’s higher than our rate of growth. Our city is top-heavy on leadership, and it seems from anecdotal evidence that everybody’s got an assistant. There’s an assistant to the assistant to the assistant. We need to streamline our government. But you can’t sit up there and say you want to roll back the millage rate completely and not any plans. How are you gonna do that? You have to say that you’re going to cut the workforce by seven percent, ten percent to get us [there].

“Our biggest expenditures in government are salaries and benefits. Health insurance is a beast. It keeps going up like the wild west. You can ask what’s the root cause but I’m not concerned about that. I want to get my people paid, make sure they have health and life insurance, all the stuff they need to take care of their family, but keep them on board and not let them take their experience and talent somewhere else. We can’t be that top-heavy. Median household income in Flagler County is between $61k and $65k, and we have people on-staff making between $150k and $189k for the city manager. That is a big difference.

• Editor’s Note: The Palm Coast city government employs 47 positions making over $100,000 per year, out of 647 total positions according to the City Clerk. Most of these jobs are either department directors, senior administrators, highly skilled employees, or public safety leaders. Only the acting City Manager and Chief of Staff make over $150,000.

“You’ve got people in charge of your infrastructure stuff that make more money than you. We have a lot of senior citizens here that are on a very fixed income. Any increase on taxes or utility fees affects them more than the general population. So we have to keep our taxes low, but I would never promise not to raise taxes. That’s not something you can say if you’re truly honest with yourself.”

CG: You’ve been involved in verbal spats on different occasions during your campaign. Should voters use that to make inferences about your temperament?

MN: “It’s being spread throughout the community that I have a temper. I can get fired up if I see people being cheated, someone being wronged, because I have a tremendous sense of justice. I think I’ve passed that along to my kids, especially my older son Christian. He has a great sense of justice. We never want to see anybody being cheated.

“All of this comes from, at the Republican Executive Committee leading up to the 2022 election, between Cathy Heighter and Fernando Melendez, and Theresa Carli Pontieri and Alan Lowe. They violated the rules of the committee. They did a sham straw poll, and they did a fraudulent endorsement of Melendez. Then Ms. Heighter and Mr. Lowe were left off the slate card. They were registered Republicans running for a seat, and the objective of the Flagler County [Republican] Executive Committee is to get qualified Republicans elected at all levels of government. They were picking winners and losers within that committee, and I called them out on it. I got very vocal about it, because in meetings like that when you say ‘point of order’, the show stops. And you’re supposed to fix whatever rule was violated, you need to come to a consensus and fix it.

• Editor’s Note: After investigating this matter, AskFlagler was unable to procure the slate card Mike Norris referred to in order to either verify or debunk his claim.

“They beat those people up, and I was very vocal about it. Then we came down to the election to put more members on the Republican Executive Committee, in December after the election. They did it again, picking winners and losers, openly defaming people in the meeting…and I stood up and said something.

“So if I get loud and I seem like I have a temper, it’s because something’s really bad. And it’s wrong. And I’m gonna say stand up for it, I’m going to fight for people. The things that are going on in this community now with small businesses…I had to help a lady navigate how to do something with the city the day before yesterday. I gave her a course of action, how to go through it, and what she needed to do. She texted me last night saying ‘Mike thank you so much, I was able to accomplish what I wanted, your approach helped me get what I needed to operate my business’.

“I don’t think people in government should be picking winners and losers. Same thing in our political party. If your charge is to promote qualified Republican candidates at all levels of government, then that’s what you do. You don’t isolate, you don’t pick a faction not to support. When your main focus is all qualified Republicans at all levels, then you support all [of them] as much as you can. But you don’t pick winners and losers and expect people not to stand up to you and say it’s wrong. That was an unfair advantage given to Ms. Pontieri and Mr. Melendez. They handed out those slate cards as people walked into the polling station. If you’re picture’s not on there saying ‘pick one of these two’, you’re being cheated.

“I don’t want that to happen to me, and I was boisterous when I decided to run that you’re not gonna do that to me. I will take legal actions to prevent that or post that after the fact if you cheat me, because I’m not going to be cheated out of my chance for what I’m trying to do for the city.

“If you attack my family for a year straight, expect some repercussions for it. Alan Lowe’s wife approached me at the eleventh hour of the election, filming me, about a conversation he and I had at 6:00 am. It was dirty politics.”

CG: You’ve been up-front about your career in the Army during your campaign. Beyond broad values like leadership skills and public service, how would your military service influence the kind of mayor you’d be?

MN: “I think it goes back to the way you develop courses of action, how you approach situations. It’s all about problem-solving. Everything in the military is about problem-solving. I joined the military in 1988, that’s over two decades of experience. I was a [military occupation specialist], if we had a unit of 120 guys in infantry I was the only guy with my specialty. So I had to train them for all that. I trained and prepared those guys to be able to fight and win in the chemical, biological or radiological environment.

“Those leadership skills I gained throughout my career helped me transition over to the civilian sector. When I went to Okinawa I met someone in graduate school, we worked on projects together and developed a bond. He took the job as camp director, and I just hit him up as a joke asking if he had a job for me. He said ‘I certainly do: anti-terrorism critical infrastructure protection’. Because he knew I’d fought terrorists for four rotations on active duty. My third rotation, we took out a lot of bad dudes. So he asked me to come work for him postgraduate, and I was the director of the emergency operations center.

“Military installations, even stateside but especially overseas…it’s a city. We had approximately 40,000 people. I was the second in command behind the camp director on the civilian side. The camp director runs installation: everything from stormwater, utilities, housing, even the grocery store and the convenience stores. We ran all that. We had to coordinate with all the sub-units within that installation.

“We had five major typhoons when I was over there. We had one typhoon hit the island that was so big, when you were in the eye of the storm you thought it was over. I was the administrator on Facebook telling people, ‘It ain’t over! You’re getting the backside of the storm! Stay inside your house!’ All that preparation for storms, all the recovery operations, not to mention contingent operations if we went to war for evacuating civilians from the island. We had a brand new naval hospital. All those functions of the city, we did it.

“So that’s what I bring to the table, especially critical infrastructure. I’ve done many assessments of critical infrastructure. Just like what we’re facing now in the city. The military is just a basis of my life. I started out as a private (E-1), I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division for most of my career. I got selected to be a drill sergeant so I trained people. I received my commission, I was a platoon leader taking care of bad guys and taking care of men and women, I never lost a soldier thank God. I came back and taught at Georgia Tech as an assistant professor of military science. I had my own campus at Kennesaw State. I got my graduate work done.

“I have a broad world perspective that most people don’t have. Now it’s just me and Tracy here with the animals. The boys are all gone. Christian’s in the Navy, Sean’s at university, so I can focus my attention on the needs of the city. I’m not beholden to anyone, because it’s just me and Tracy here. We don’t owe anybody in this county, we have been blessed to have a nice house, we’re living our lives. I don’t owe anybody here and I think I’ve built up a strong coalition. I’ve met people and people like what I have to say. They like my background. And I do benefit from being prior military because we do have a large military community here. We have over 13,000 former military people. They see the value in what I bring to the table, and they like that I’m up front.

“I’m a problem-solver and I take things very seriously. I want to make sure that we’re not wastefully spending. I don’t want your taxes to raise. Efficient and effective governance without taxing and burdening the residents and getting into their lives.”

CG: You’ve been present and engaged at City Council meetings for most of the duration of your campaign. Is that something residents can expect to see you continue to do in the event you don’t win the election?

MN: “If I don’t win I’ll continue advocating. The people that I’ve met along the way are my friends. Some of them you’ve gotta be leery of, but if something’s wrong I’m gonna stand up for it. The first time I ever stood up at a City Council meeting in my entire life was when they were proposing that pay raise. I stood up and said, ‘if you pass this pay raise I’m gonna do everything in my power to get you out of office, you’re no longer welcome in our government’. It was wrong. Those three gentlemen that were on that Council at that time, they are no longer in government. Like I said in the video, promises made, promises kept. I promised to get rid of them. I hope my campaign and my contingent of people that support me will help facilitate that goal of getting them out of government.”

• Editor’s Note: Of the four Council members who voted in favor, three are still in office but are outgoing at the end of their terms this year. David Alfin lost his re-election bid, while Nick Klufas and Ed Danko lost their races for County Commission. The fourth yes vote, John Fanelli, was a Council-appointee to fill a resigned seat who left office at the end of 2022. Once the 2024 general election is over, a new Council will be sworn in consisting entirely of members who were not present for the Council’s pay raise vote in 2022.

CG: If you are elected, do you have any intention of revisiting the pay raise and potentially reverting it back?

MN: “I already pledged to give $10,000 of the mayor’s annual salary to charity. $5,000 towards a food pantry, and $5,000 towards a scholarship. Christian did very well coming out of high school but I think Sean, our youngest son…I don’t think he was treated fairly in the scholarship [process]. We’re gonna create a scholarship and pledge $5,000 towards it. There’s a couple things we’re trying to focus on and one of them is STEM, those types of kids who are focused in on those hard science courses. And we’ve got a couple other things we’re working on.

“Now, those other four [Council members] will not have been involved in that pay raise. They’re coming in with the expectation that that’s the money they’re going to receive for their services to the city. But if I can get a winning vote, and it’d have to go through discussion, I’d see what they think about it. I would be [in favor of] rolling it back by 50%. But that’s up to them.

• Editor’s Note: The City Council’s pay raise was by 151%, bringing their salary from $9,600 to $24,097 for Council members and $11,400 to $30,039 for the mayor. Assuming Norris’ 50% rollback proposal is a percentage of the entire new salary, this would bring the Council salary to $12,048 and the mayor salary to $15,019. This would effectively

“I’ve said before that me having the seat as mayor, I shouldn’t have to be a deciding vote. We should be able to work as a five-person contingent and come to a consensus where most decisions are unanimous. But I will not concede my ethics or my morality to pass something completely abhorrent. I’m not gonna vote for it. I can’t in good conscience vote for that.

“If the incoming Council wants to roll it back, we’ll roll it back. I don’t think they should’ve passed that raise the way they did it. From the public outcry, that was one of the nails in Alfin’s coffin. My campaign platform says ‘R.A.I.S.E.’, because I want everyone to see my banner saying it’s time to give the people of Palm Coast a raise, and think ‘wait a minute…those are the people that gave themselves a 151% pay raise’. I think that’s resonated.”