After a Protest, Flagler Beach Again Changes Rule for Large Annexations, Requiring Supermajority Vote

Fourteen months ago the Flagler Beach City Commission hurriedly–too hurriedly, as it turned out–approved a significant change to annexation rules. Until then, any time the city sought in any calendar year to annex more than 5 percent of its land mass, it would have to get residents’ permission first through a popular referendum. Last January, a unanimous commission scrapped that requirement.

The city was in a hurry because it was courting the developer of Veranda Bay to annex, Veranda Bay’s acreage would far exceed the 5 percent threshold, and Flagler Beach feared that Palm Coast would annex the development first.




“The developer literally was going to annex into Palm Coast,” Flagler Beach Commission Chair James Sherman said. “There was paperwork. It was started. That was my conversation with the developer the first time.” Palm Coast officials have consistently denied that there was any such paperwork, while Ken Belshe, the developer, has never said publicly that he would annex into Palm Coast, or at any point attempted to play the two cities against each other. He’d only signaled he was interested in annexing into Flagler Beach, and last April made that formal.

Nevertheless, Flagler Beach dropped the 5 percent requirement, which exceeded state law’s requirement and had been in place for a quarter century, according to a former city commissioner.

Last week, the city commission approved an amended version of that rule. The 5 percent threshold is not back. But if the commission were to approve an annexation that exceeds 5 percent of the city’s current land mass of 2,614 acres–or anything exceeding 130 acres–it would have to do so by a supermajority of the commission of at least four votes. The commission approved that change in a 4-1 vote, with John Cunningham opposed. Cunningham is not opposed to the supermajority threshold, but to removing the referendum requirement.




The commission revisited its vote from January 2024 after John Tanner, the former State Attorney and the lawyer representing Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek, the non-profit that has largely opposed Veranda Bay, raised concerns about the way the commission had noticed its proposed ordinance a year ago–“what is being perceived as a lack of transparency,” Tanner said. (See how it was presented in the January 11, 2024 commission agenda here.)

Last month Tanner addressed the commission to say that when the ordinance went up for first reading, it had not been properly, publicly noticed, and when it finally was, the wording of the notice said nothing about taking away the people’s right to a referendum. “They didn’t know you took away the vote until we got into the annexation process, and people started looking and saw what had happened,” he told the commission last month. He recommended a return to the pre-2024 version of the ordinance.

“If I stare at a proof of publication long enough, I can always find things that I wish were stated differently in the affidavit,” Smith said of the original notice. But after Tanner spoke, he was uneasy with leaving any possible issues hanging. He proposed redrafting an ordinance that either ratifies the ordinance passed in January 2024 or that returns the wording to its previous version, restoring the 5 percent threshold for a referendum. “That resolves any lingering notice issues that they may think are out there,” Smith said of the Preserve group. “It also gives them that idea of transparency. And so if there were things people didn’t get to say they wanted to say, give them that opportunity.”




Tanner again appeared before the commission last Thursday, urging the commissioners to preserve the referendum requirement. “There was great deal of angst about that as people began to learn about it,” he said. “What are you getting out of not allowing the citizens to vote? Why is that something good for the commission or good for the community? We think it is not.” The four other people who addressed the commission spoke likewise.

County Commissioner Kim Carney, a Flagler Beach resident and a former city commissioner, recalled that residents a quarter century ago “for whatever reason, they got their commission to write this ordinance, and there was a reason behind the ordinance.” She said residents “deserve what they asked for 25 years ago.”

R.J. Santore called it “a pretty drastic step, when we went from a citizen referendum to a process where only three of the commissioners can make that a deciding factor, not even just a super majority, we went right to just a majority.” So speaking, Santore planted the notion of a supermajority vote in commissioners’ ears, which they went with even as they defended their decision from a year ago.

“The pendulum was too far the other way, when you’re talking going to referendum over 5 percent that handcuffs you significantly,” Commissioner Eric Cooley said. But he suggested requiring a supermajority vote. There was some discussion about enabling a referendum should a supermajority vote fail. But commissioners weren’t thrilled about that. “I don’t like the idea of forcing a referendum if it only gets three votes,” Commissioner Rick Belhumeur said. “It doesn’t get four, it doesn’t get four.”

“I personally want to really separate this ordinance from Veranda Bay,” Cooley said (though realistically, that’s a difficult thing to do: the ordinance change would not have been prompted without a looming annexation of Veranda Bay.) “But the to just go back to the old ordinance, I think, is not practical for where we are at as a city today.”




A year ago the change got a 5-0 vote. The difference this time was the first example of Jane Mealy leaving the commission and getting replaced by Cunningham, who was sworn in earlier that evening. The second reading of the ordinance is expected in two weeks. The new ordinance as now written has its own flaw: the larger the city gets, the larger annexations can be without tripping the 5 percent threshold.

Meanwhile the Veranda Bay annexation has been halted by a separate threat to sue over what had been the city’s plan to annex the whole Veranda Bay acreage, creating an enclave of county land, which opponents of annexation could have contested in court. Veranda Bay is expected to bring back an alternative annexation proposal.