Treasured, Embattled Whispering Meadows Ranch Has New Home as County Seals Partnership Deal

On Monday, after nine months’ negotiations, the Flagler County Commission voted unanimously to grant Whispering Meadows a new, 15-acre home on public land at the County Fairgrounds off County Road 13. The vote ratifies a partnership between the county and the ranch. Technically, the vote was in approval of a special exception for the ranch to operate at the fairgrounds, the same sort of special exception the ranch had applied for at the end of 2020, but to stay on John Anderson. It had operated without such an exception for many years, but also without being compelled by the county to obtain one until neighbors complained.

Mary Helene and Richard Davis have owned the 5.4-acre property off John Anderson Highway for 23 years. They started the ranch some 15 years ago. It has four or five horses in various pens–the working pen where the therapy takes place, the pens where the horses feed and relax, and a modest barn that keeps them secure from the weather. The ranch is invisible from the road. It is a quiet operation, and it is rigorously sanitized. A property owner immediately to the south has been seeking to sell the property, unsuccessfully, and blaming the ranch for it. John Tanner, the former state attorney and a close neighbor of the ranch, led the opposition to the ranch’s continued presence in the neighborhood, which he said amounts to 50 homeowners.

Monday’s vote ends the squabble and the un certainty, ensuring not only that that Whispering meadows will continue operating, but that it will have room to expand.




Adam Mengel, the county’s development director, described the arrangement at the unused Fairgrounds acreage as a “public use being reserved for nonprofits, and those that act in a quasi governmental role in lieu of government providing a public service.” The ranch will take up less than half of a 44-acre parcel, at the west end of the grounds. “Semi public use, you typically see these for churches, but this kind of application, this sort of operation really lends itself very well to semi-public use.” He described the ranch as “this unique thing to Flagler County.” He and Assistant County Attorney were chiefly instrumental in resolving the issue from the county’s end, while Flagler Beach attorney Dennis Bayer, who has been associated with the ranch from its earliest days, negotiated on behalf of the Davises.

The ranch will operate sunrise to sunset except for special events, with no parking permitted along County Road 13. The facility will not have to apply for permits for fundraising events, or pay a fee to the county for them. But the ranch will be limited to four fund-raising events per year.

Two questions remain: when the state will approve the lease arrangement, and when the ranch will start operating at the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds are state land, leased to the county. So any lease arrangement there must be ratified by the state. The county is working on that with the Department of Environmental Protection and expects the ratification “any day now,” Mengel said.

The start date is less certain. The uncertainty drew yet another email from Tanner to Mengel, on Jan. 10, remonstrating that “it has been nearly year since the Ranch’s prohibited business operation in the R-1 neighborhood was reported to County Code Enforcement.” R-1 is the residential zoning designation. “The surrounding neighbors have been more than patient and have willingly afforded this business time to relocate, without loss of services to those needing therapy or just wanting to horseback ride.”




The email was written with more of a blade’s edge than a quill, the repeated reference to the “business” leaving silent its non-profit, non-intrusive status, which at heart is not much dissimilar from Tanner’s for-profit work at home, as a lawyer, and the reference to those “just wanting to horseback ride” undermining the ranch’s more serious purpose. But the county could not ignore Tanner: he had the county’s own land use rules on his side. He pressed his advantage, demanding that the County Commission “set a timeline for staff and the applicant to complete the permitting process and site preparation work necessary for this business to move.”

The county planning board, recommending approval of the special exception with conditions, did not set out a deadline or a look-over-their-shoulder requirement. In his presentation Monday evening, Mengel was ready to give updates to the commission on construction at the ranch, in view of an eventual opening. Commissioner Donald O’Brien found the suggestion “insulting.” The dig was the only overt response to Tanner’s suggestion. Tanner has been a burr in the county’s side for a while: he is also one of the attorneys defending Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek, the citizens’ group opposing The Gardens, a development on John Anderson Highway, further up from the ranch.

“If we’re going to agree to do this, then we would expect our staff to be engaged and work on it in an exponential manner, just like we would any other thing that we agreed to,” O’Brien said.

Bayer, the ranch’s attorney, sought to reassure commissioners. “Staff and my clients have worked very hard to get where we are right now and I can give you my word as somebody that’s been involved with this project got started,” Bayer said. “We’re not going to just sit here and drag our feet in getting this. We’ve made the decision. We’ve worked with the county. We’ve expend a lot of time. And now once we get to this stage, we have to go through the fundraising stage. So our financial sponsors are going to want to make sure there’s progress being made and that these are funds that they’re donating are getting spent the way that they’re committed to doing so. I can give you my word. There’s gonna be no delays.”

Bayer credited Moylan, the assistant county attorney, and Mengel, for the county’s help, and cited the numerous letters of support that the ranch drew over time, whether from individuals, clients, service organizations or college students who fulfill service hours at the ranch. Those letters were echoed in the several statements from members of the public to the commission Monday evening, none either opposing the move or asking for a timetable.




Christina Blackburn, a former resident of Flagler whose son has been going to the ranch for over 14 years (she just moved to Samsula), described the ranch as “my son’s second home. That’s the place where he belongs.” She struggled as she spoke, emotions overtaking her. She was grateful for the “peaceful resolution, and there’s no more undecidedness of what’s going to happen, because with children with disabilities, when there’s an uneasiness, there’s no spoken words. They feel it, they feel it from us.” Her son, she said, needs to continue riding, going there on Mondays to see his friends, his therapists–his home.

Others spoke in the same vein. A licensed mental health counselor in the Flagler County school system spoke of the services the ranch offers to people with mental health difficulties–or to some that do not, including first responders and veterans, the latter a frequent clientele at the ranch because of post-traumatic stress disorders. But those who have suffered abuse and assaults also benefit from equine therapy. A veteran soon spoke after the counselor. “So keep that in mind as far as putting things into a scope,” she said. “The potential for this program and the outreach and the support in this community is infinite.”

Michele Ficocello, the victims’ advocate at the Flagler Beach Police Department spoke similar words, recalling an advocate retreat held at the ranch some time back. “You can’t help but jump in and want to help further their cause,” Ficocello said. “And also referring clients, crime victims, the need for alternative therapies, because a lot of people when they experienced trauma, they don’t want to talk about it. They need other ways to express themselves to work through it. And Kristen and her team, they have that ability.”




Ficocello was referring to Kristen Aguirre, who runs the ranch with her parents. “So the possible expansion of their program is so important and to be able to have it here in Flagler County and have our community have access to it, I can’t even begin to say how important that is.”

Scott Sowers, a County Road 13 resident who would neighbor the ranch, and who is well known in the community for his involvements in the Rotary Club, the former Chamber of Commerce, and Cline Construction, spoke as the aren’t of a child with special needs “to say that I wholeheartedly support” what the ranch does. “We’d love to see them there,” he said of the new site. “Can’t wait for it to happen.” (An earlier version of this article incorrectly placed Sowers’s residence on John Anderson Highway.)

The Whispering Meadows Agreement:

Click to access whispering-meadows-exception.pdf

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