Flagler County’s $114 million beach management plan is looking like a sand castle on the county’s critically eroded shore, and the water is rising.
The Flagler County Commission today could not give its administration–or itself–anywhere near the clear direction needed to forge ahead with a plan every one of its five members agrees is critically needed. Three commissioners find the plan’s revenue formula problematic.
The workshop ended with deeper uncertainty as commissioners gave their administration direction to produce yet more alternatives, none of which can or will come close to the revenue that needs to start building up this year.
The obstacle remains the proposed half-cent increase in the local sales tax, a central tenet of the two-pronged plan County Administrator Heidi Petito crafted and has been pitching to local governments and civic groups for weeks.
Three county commissioners–Leann Pennington, Pam Richardson and Kim Carney–would not support the new tax, even as all three don’t think “doing nothing” is an option.
“I want to vet every opportunity we can make to fund what we need without raising a half a cent tax,” Richardson said. “I just don’t want to raise taxes. I just don’t. I said I would hold the line. I want to hold the line.” She’s for cutting other areas of the budget to make it happen, though she could not say which.
Carney favors a referendum–if not an immediate referendum on the tax, then a future referendum in 2026, when the Environmentally Sensitive Land referendum comes up for renewal. Carney, in a stunning proposal, thinks it may be time to shift that ESL revenue to beach management.
“Maybe the county is ready. Maybe we have exhausted our search for ESL,” Carney said of the program Flagler County voters have three times over three decades renewed with huge majorities. The program acquires and protects land against development in perpetuity. Carney was suggesting, against all evidence, that there are no more environmentally sensitive lands to protect.
“That is one of those alternatives that keep spinning around for me,” Carney said of shifting the money to beach management. If that doesn’t pass, she would be open to a half-cent sales tax, just not this year (although if it doesn’t pass for beach management, it also means that the revenue for environmentally sensitive lands will have ended). As currently constituted, she said the plan is “over-taxing.” In veiled criticism of the administration, she said she “asked for options, and I did not get one option.”
Richardson also complained that she asked for alternatives to the Petito plan without getting them, though from Petito’s perspective, the plan was itself the result of a commission asking her to come up with a comprehensive way of managing the beach in the shorter and longer run. Petito thought she had. Commission Chair Andy Dance and Commissioner Greg Hansen thought she had. So did Richardson and Carney who, at one point, endorsed the plan, at least in principle, before walking back their support.
Pennington was first to outright oppose a new sales tax weeks ago, when Petito first proposed the plan. “Do nothing is not an option this year,” Pennington said. She supports the county working on the 10 miles of unincorporated beach, then putting the half-penny on a 2026 referendum, either strictly for the beach or for the beach and other needs, without foreclosing the possibility of shifting the ESL referendum to the beach. She said the commissioners could pledge to campaign for the half-penny referendum.
All of this will confuse the cities, which are waiting on resolve from the county to decide whether to support the plan or not. The plan depends on the cities agreeing to give up their share of revenue from the sales tax (in full for Flagler Beach and Beverly Beach, in part for Palm Coast and Bunnell, which would give up roughly half). Those agreements would have to be worked out through joint agreements, or “interlocal agreements,” typically referred to as ILA.
“I feel like there wasn’t a consensus on it to day, that’s for sure,” Pennington said afterward. “We need to further discussion before an attempt to make an ILA with the municipalities.”
Commissioner Greg Hansen and Commission Chair Andy Dance have been strong and unwavering supporters of the Petito plan. (Richardson and Carney had once supported it, then walked back their support.) The half-cent tax increase would need a majority of at least four commissioners to pass, absent a referendum. That majority appears nowhere in sight.
“Referendums rely on people’s trust with government,” Dance said. “We’re probably at an all-time low countywide in that department.” He is suggesting approving the half-penny sales tax by a vote of the commission, but limiting its span to a few years as a test case, before returning to voters and then asking them to approve it in a referendum.
“Well, we know that this commission is not going to approve the half-cent,” Commissioner Greg Hansen said.
Dance bristled. “We have not said that yet, Greg,” he said. “She just said she wants to keep the conversation going.”
“I don’t want to fall apart and then have nothing again,” Pennington said, again suggesting a referendum, and meanwhile re-focusing the county’s efforts on 10 miles of unincorporated beach.
“I want a beach plan. I just want some better numbers, and I’m never going to get them,” Carney said. “Whatever the numbers work out to be, well, we’re going to have to look at them. So yeah, I’m all right. I want to do something.”
Members of the public reflected the commission’s splinters.
Richard Hamilton, a resident of the barrier island, summed up the last couple of months’ national chaos and economic uncertainty ahead before thanking the county for remaining calm. He had been an enthusiastic supporter of the county’s beach-management plan. “But right now, I got to say, personally, my attitude has completely changed in two weeks, two month,” he said, urging prudence.
“I am now at the point where I am cutting back on expenses, capital projects. I think everybody, and a lot of my neighbors, are all uncertain about where we’re going,” Hamilton said. He proposed defending the most critical areas of the barrier island this year, putting off more overarching projects “so you can carry on to defend what’s necessary on the beach, while we look at a longer-term plan, the beach nourishment and how to do that.”
Jim Ulsamer, an Ocean Hammock resident (he also chairs the county’s library board), asked for more courage from the commissioners. “I see a lot of hesitancy. I don’t see too many real resolution here or resolve to do something meaningful,” he said. “Yeah, putting the half cent to a referendum, that’s the easy way out. Putting the half-cent tax on the ballot would doom it to failure for lack of enough support on the commission.
Meanwhile, the county is on its third round of emergency-sand dumps along the unincorporated portions of the beach. “The word emergency should have some meaning, and I think that if we continue to vacillate and not make a decision, we’re going to kick the can down the road,” he said. He pressed for the Petito plan as “the fairest plan,” and on the commission to “make it happen.”
He was immediately followed by a resident who objects to paying a higher sales tax: she is not a beach user, though her proposal was to charge people who use the beach–as non-starter a proposal as charging people to use public parks.
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