$15 Million Over Budget, Nothing Built Since State Guard Facility ‘Broke Ground’ in Bunnell in 2024. Sheriff Is Not Pleased.

The Public Safety Coordinating Council is a quarterly gathering of Flagler County’s judges, law enforcement chiefs, prosecutors, public defenders and social service agencies. Sheriff Rick Staly chairs the group. As Andrew Williams of SMA Healthcare was providing an agency update at the beginning of the meeting, Staly acknowledged the rapid building of the future SMA residential treatment facility in Bunnell. 

“I was down on Justice Lane the other day, and I see your new facility is coming along,” Staly told Williams, who thanked many of the people around the table who had turned up for the November 18 groundbreaking. 

“You’re able to come out of the ground a lot faster than the Florida Department of Management Services trying to build a training complex,” Staly said. You could detect a rueful tone. “In fact, all the land clearing now has to be cleared again, they’ve taken so long. I don’t know. It’s my first experience with DMS, and I’m not impressed. Behind schedule and over budget. Moving right along.”

If anything, Staly was understating the issue, and his immense displeasure, which verbalized more explicitly in an interview immediately after the meeting. 

“I told speaker Renner this over the weekend,” the sheriff said, referring to Paul Renner, the former Speaker of the House whose district had included all of Flagler County. “I wish in hindsight now he would have just got that money through the state and given it to me as a grant, because it’d be done by now. And it would be done within budget.”

For years, Staly has been trying to bring a regional training facility for law enforcement agencies to Bunnell. In what essentially amounted to a major coup, Staly in June 2023 successfully negotiated with then-House Speaker Paul Renner and other state officials a lease agreement to locate the relatively new Florida State Guard’s training facility off Justice Lane in Bunnell.

Justice Lane branches off of Old Haw Creek Road near State Road 11, and leads to SMA’s Vince Carter Sanctuary and the future residential facility, the current John R. Keppler training facility for cops and firefighters, and dead ends at the county jail. The State Guard was to build a $10 million range and training facility there, and share it with local public safety agencies. 

The legislature appropriated the money. Flagler County government and the State Guard signed a 30-year lease in December 2023, since the facility would be built on 62 acres of county land. The facility consists of administrative offices, a firearms range, a tactical shoot house, and a parking lot, all at no cost to the county. 

With fanfare, with a police dog’s showmanship, with Col. Mark Thieme, the Director of the Florida State Guard, present, and with Renner making his very last public appearance as House Speaker, and possibly ever as an elected official–his gubernatorial bid is having as hard a time as the training facility to get off the ground–the State Guard broke ground on Nov. 4, 2024. It was already five months late. Groundbreaking was supposed to take place in July 2024. 

The groundbreaking, of course, was ceremonial, as all such groundbreakings are, though often, the heavy equipment is not far behind. But there’s been no movement on the acreage for more than 14 months. When SMA broke ground last November, it gave its employees a long lunch, and one of them drove his truck onto a shady, deserted spot of the future State Guard’s land, which by then was overgrown and as if back to its natural state. 

“Everyone that I talked to that has dealt with them in the past,” Staly said of the state Department of Management Services, the business and employee-services arm of state government, “tells me they’re always behind schedule and over budget, and the estimates that they have provided significantly more than $10 million.” 

The estimate today? “They said it’s $25 million to build it out. And frankly, I told them they were nuts,” Staly said. “Now it’s not my project. It’s a Florida State Guard project, and they’ve been nice enough to let us have input. They’re not even required to do that. But that’s where the money is. And because it’s a Florida State Guard project, they have to use Florida Department of Management Services.”

The state has selected Allstate Construction and an architect, spending $2.6 million so far just for design and preparatory work. DMS now claims the range alone will cost around $8 million, leaving Staly in disbelief. He’s spoken with Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (one of Renner’s competitors for the governorship), with Renner and with DMS, getting an update as recently as a week ago. 

“They’re thinking that for $8 million they can build the range and do pad ready for the other structures,” Staly said. The training room would cost close to $5 million. For the Sheriff’s Operations Center, Staly said he had a 5,500 square foot metal building built for $300,000. 

“The State Guard, basically, we want DMS to get out of the way,” Staly said. “They’ve got to finish the project as a DMS project, and then let it come back to the State Guard and let the State Guard and myself and the county work together.” 

The latest estimate the sheriff got was for the construction to start in the first quarter of this year. “I’ll believe it when I see it, because they’re, like, two and a half years behind, and they’ve spent a lot of money already,” the sheriff said.