Election Looming, Exasperated Flagler Beach Commission Clashes Over Disjointed Accusations Against City Manager

Two weeks ago Flagler Beach City Commissioner Rick Belhumeur stunned his colleagues when he presented a list of grievances about City Manager Dale Martin that his son, a Palm Coast resident, had compiled from information provided to him by others. 

Belhumeur had support from Commissioner John Cunningham, who wants Martin gone, but two other commissioners recoiled at the surprise, its timing–less than three weeks from the election–and its manner of delivery. The commissioners were handed Belhumeur’s documentation that evening. Belhumeur asked for a workshop to discuss it all. His colleagues agreed only to a discussion item at the Feb. 26 meeting. 

That took up 90 minutes of last night’s meeting before an audience that filled a good portion of the commission chamber. But it proved more exasperating than clarifying to commissioners, especially to Commissioner Eric Cooley, who asked half a dozen times, like the refrain to a painful lament, “Where is this conversation going?” The furthest it got was to get Martin to answer all allegations in a report to be made public in the next two weeks, and to explore an independent audit of city policies and procedures.

Beyond that, the majority of commissioners and a few city employees rallied around Martin, complimenting his work, and commissioners, in a rare display of magnanimity, also applauded city staff and decried the pettiness of social media sniping against staffers. The voiced support for city staff was unusual: while Palm Coast City Council members routinely applaud and recognize their staff, Flagler Beach commissioners have generally and surprisingly been more circumspect in that regard, needlessly furthering what at times looks like a divide between the commission and the staff, and putting the city manager on the defensive to protect his staff. 

If Cooley was really asking whether Belhumeur wanted to make a motion to fire the manager, Belhumeur in an interview today said he had no such intention, and doesn’t want to get rid of Marin anyway. 

“I like Dale. I think we would be better off on keeping him,” Belhumeur said. “I just think he’s out of bounds on a couple of things.” As for the possibility of a motion to fire: “I didn’t believe it was going there. I could tell immediately it wasn’t going there.  So there was no reason to even consider that. I think Dale does good things for us, I just think a couple of things need to get sorted. And I definitely will stay on stormwater issues.” He added: “I’m still going to keep my foot on the accelerator.”

The statement applies whether Belhumeur is on or off the commission: he made his first marks on city issues well before he was elected a decade ago, continued to be active in the hiatus year when he was off the commission (he lost a reelection bid four years ago, then won again the following year), and intends to find ways to be involved regardless of Tuesday’s outcome. Commissioner Scott Spradley is also seeking reelection. 

Nevertheless, Thursday evening Belhumeur went through his list of grievances, most of them, anyway, with little specificity or direction, and was frequently knocked off his stride as either the city attorney or fellow commissioners jumped in. 

It was not a surprise when, about an hour into it, he all but shrugged his shoulders when Commission Chair James Sherman asked him if he wanted to take any further action. 

“No. I’m good. Just forget it,” Belhumeur said. 

What had seemed like a bombshell two weeks ago had fizzled into a fog, with even Belhumeur at one point losing his way in his own paperwork, to the extent that it was his own: the documents, while prepared in their final form by Belhumeur’s son, were the work of an unnamed resident or two who had submitted reams of public record requests and drawn conclusions from them, decontextualizing much of the information into grievances worthy of an inquisition. But the questions often crossed the line into administrative authority, where commissioners’ oversight is improper. 

Belhumeur said a “certain hierarchy is being created” through a new organizational chart that was not approved by the commission. 

City Attorney Drew Smith asked Belhumeur whether he had an issue with individual leaders on that organization chart, or with the creation and elimination of specific departments. The commission has no authority on individuals. It does have authority on the creation and elimination of departments. 

Belhumeur could not answer Smith clearly. Smith asked the question three times and twice read the relevant charter language. There still was no clarity from Belhumeur, who seemed flustered, again prompting Cooley’s question about where the discussion was going. 

“I have concerns about how some, some things are going wrong, and the city manager just makes excuses for the individuals that’s responsible,” Belhumeur said, referring to internal issues between two departments where “somebody stepped out of bounds and directed somebody in a different department” improperly to issue a building permit. He was referring to City Engineer Bill Freeman. 

Even if that was the case, it is not in the commission’s purview, Cooley said, though Smith noted that while the commission may not interject itself in administrative issues, it may address the  managerial style of City Manager Dale Martin. 

“Commissioner Belhumeur is wrong,” Martin said flatly. “Nobody went and directed staff outside of the limits. I’m not sure where he got that information from. And there was no building permit issued. There was no need for a building permit to be issued. It was for site clearing for which no permit was required.” 

“I built a few houses in town, and I know where the procedure has always been,” Belhumeur, a builder by trade, said. “You can’t clear a lot without getting a full building permit. Now I get that they did it a different way, but still I don’t get how you can start clearing a lot without the planners checking off on it. It was not in the system that the planner checked off on it. That’s a problem.” He was referring to the Legacy Point construction project. City Planner Lupita McClenning said she didn’t have an answer for that other than that “a single family residential home is different than a subdivision,” and that the lot needed to be cleared before a silt fence was put up, though the city’s technical review committee had reviewed the project ahead of time. “It didn’t violate anything,” McClenning said. 

On a different matter, Belhumeur said the city spent a lot of money to accomplish a stormwater study, designating needed projects. “I’m concerned that we’ll never get any of them done,” he said.  On yet another matter–a recurring issue he’s spoken about previously–he said the city engineer did not meet minimum standards when he was hired, and is now filling the role of an assistant city manager, with pay equal to or exceeding that of the city manager. 

Martin defended the hire of Freeman, his qualification and his salary, with the salary approved “unanimously by the city commission.” 

Cooley was getting impatient. “You don’t like the engineer. Is that it? And then what?” he asked Belhumeur. 

“We’re not getting things done as a city,” Belhumeur said, connecting the issue with Freeman to languishing stormwater projects. Which projects? Cooley asked. “All of them,” Belhumeur said. Commission Chair James Sherman, too, was losing patience. He repeatedly attempted to walk through the list of nearly a dozen Belhumeur concerns, briskly soliciting questions, if any, from his colleagues and directing Martin or others to provide answers. Martin was prepared, answering each issue with his own explanations. “Stormwater is going to be a challenge. I mean, again, nearly 50 percent of the city is in the flood zone,” Martin said. 

Cooley asked his questions again. “I’m not hearing anything clear,” he said. 

Belhumeur said most of his issues were about stormwater improvements not moving forward, while some, as on Flagler Avenue, have been done over several times with no progress, wasting money. On that score, Cooley agreed that a workshop on stormwater capital projects would be useful. “What can we add? Let’s get whatever we can get done, done,” he said. 

Commissioner John Cunningham joined Belhumeur in the inquisitorial questions, citing the hiring of a project manager that he said did not follow normal procedures, based on the timing of the posting of the positions. Martin said there’d been no internal applicants, and a qualified external applicant was hired, based on the hiring qualification requirements, which included a college degree. 

“I don’t think you should automatically reject someone because they don’t have a college degree,” Cunningham said. “I don’t have a college degree. College degree of Uncle Sam was what I got, and that’s where I got all my experience, and to eliminate, or not even consider someone because they have experience, because they don’t have a college degree, that’s poor.”

“The issue was just raised that I didn’t follow the minimum hiring qualification for the city engineer,” Martin said. “But now it’s okay to ignore the minimum qualifications for the project manager. I guess that’s where the dichotomy comes in.”

Almost an hour into the discussion, while the specifics of Belhumeur’s–and now, Cunningham’s–disenchantments remained difficult to narrow down to the point of actionable items, this much was clear, though it wasn’t particularly news: Martin has lost Belhumeur’s and Cunningham’s confidence. 

Yet again, Cooley said: “I don’t know what brought this to us, what action we are supposed to be taking on this. I keep bringing this up. Where is this going? And I keep bringing this up. Where is this going? What’s part of this? Because no employee has come forward to date that said, ‘I didn’t get this job opportunity because I was snubbed from this process.’ No one’s done that.”

Commissioner Scott Spradley, a lawyer who instinctively analyzes commission documents with a lawyer’s mind–with an eye to fairness, proof of documentation and procedural norms–intervened. He was flummoxed by Belhumeur’s documents calling for “further review” and “further investigation.” 

“I’m kind of stuck with that, further review by who?” Spradley asked. “Further investigation by who? I’m just not sure what’s being asked and what we’re going to be doing, going through all these things, if these things warrant further investigation with some unnamed source. And I would just like to try to get to the point of what Commissioner Cooley is suggesting. What are we doing here?” 

He was further exasperated when Belhumeur turned to questioning permitting procedures that weren’t on the agenda. “What are we doing?” Cooley asked, his voice rising. “Is this just an agenda to complain? We have to decide, where is this agenda item going? We’re going to spend four hours, just blanket gripes.” 

Belhumeur then brought up the firing of an employee whose personnel documents were altered. Martin did not deny it. He said there were two versions of the same document, both of which remain in the personnel file because they are both public records, but only one is the official record.

Belhumeur then shrugged. “I’m not going to dig into this any deeper,” he said, prompting Sherman to pick up where Cooley left off: “Where do we go from here?” the chair asked. “No motion? No further action? Commissioner Belhumeur?”

That’s when Belhumeur said to forget it. 

Belhumeur explained the context of that reply in today’s interview. He said he’d been under the impression that as an agenda item, he was to have the floor for his own period in order to focus on his points, point by point. “A couple of points I made got shot down. I don’t agree with the answers,” he said. He intends to still pursue the matter of organizational chart changes without the commission’s agreement. “I still believe that Bill has too much on his plate and he’s serving as an assistant city manager, to some degree. I’ll just bring them up one item at a time.” He’s also displeased with the meek answer to the tampering of the personnel file, and doubts the veracity of the responses about the permitting issue. In essence, he was just as exasperated as Cooley, but for different reasons. 

Sherman at the meeting asked that an independent audit of policies and procedures be conducted, along with “better record-keeping.” He said he  would seek answers for some of the material Belhumeur submitted, including other matters brought to his attention “that kind of startled me a little bit.” Sherman said information was brought to him in confidence by a resident he spent a cumulative eight to 10 hours conversing with since September, resulting in a set of questions he submitted to the city manager. 

Sherman, too, could not clearly define the scope of work he was looking for. “I’m also wanting to have some sort of response to address the issues at hand,” he said. “I want to move forward with this. I want to squish this. We’ve got a lot of other big ticket items here as a city.”

Mayor Patti King suggested that Martin could provide written responses to all questions raised by Belhumeur and to Sherman, and to make the document public. Sherman and the rest of the commission agreed. 

Several residents addressed the commission, one of them calling it “a huge waste of time” even as he complained about city procedures and lack of follow-up when issues happen. One lent Belhumeur’s questions support, another–a civil engineer who’d applied and been turned down for a job–supported the city manager and the administration, and questioned, like Cooley, “why are we doing this?” 

R.J. Santore, the third candidate for next week’s election, was among the speakers. “I’ve gone through the documents, and it seems like there might be a couple things that need to be addressed, but the process it’s gone through and doesn’t seem like the correct process,” Santore said. 

Remarkably, three city employees, including the most formidable among them–City Clerk Penny Overstreet, who has generally been the no-nonsense moral center of the city administration–lent their support to Martin and the administration. Colleen Kuhn, the deputy city clerk, spoke highly of him, another said Martin “has been a driving force behind meaningful and measurable progress.” 

Overstreet spoke of the risks of making assumptions on too little information. “Public records have been requested, many of them from my office,” Overstreet said. “I can say that if you don’t understand the totality of a record you receive, you can read just about anything into it.” She described how one of those records was misinterpreted as it morphed into one of Belhumeur’s complaints. “I can’t read minds. I can’t give every record. I give what’s asked for,” she said. 

There was no action beyond the commission agreeing to the mayor’s suggestion, which Martin is expected to fulfill over the next few days. Belhumeur’s son did not speak.