County Commissioner Kim Carney’s support for the county-wide beach-management plan she endorsed just weeks ago appeared to waver when she raised questions about it at last Monday’s commission meeting, potentially putting the entire plan in jeopardy, especially with an undecided Palm Coast looking on.
The commission needs a supermajority vote of four commissioners to enact the centerpiece of the plan: an half-cent increase in the sales tax. Commissioners Andy Dance, Greg Hansen, Pam Richardson and, at least until this week. Carney, were all in favor. Commissioner Leann Pennington was not. So if any one of the four retreated, the plan would fail if and when it came to a vote–a vote the commission wants to take in the next few weeks. Yet Carney is now describing the sales tax proposal as a “band-aid” and questioning its timing.
Carney had spoken enthusiastically–imploringly–in favor of the plan when she addressed the Flagler Beach City Commission about it at the end of February. So the questions she raised on Monday were a surprise, and Dance, the commission chair, tried to preserve Carney’s support.
“I may not be as optimistic as Mr. Hansen is on this one,” Carey said. Hansen has been championing the plan even before its details had been fleshed out. “I believe that we’ve given it a good try. I believe that we may have a plan. I just don’t believe, in my mind, that we have researched or done everything we can to get us to where we need to be.”
That’s not what Carney had sounded like when she spoke of the plan in the past three weeks. When she addressed the Flagler Beach City Commission three weeks ago about it, she was adamant: “It has to be done,” she said.
Carney had served on the Flagler Beach commission for nine years. She reminded her former colleagues that she and others had worked on a beach-management plan for Flagler Beach back then, and begged for 20 years for the sand that last summer rebuilt 3.2 miles of shore in the city, through a federal contract with county government. “Don’t let this sand go away,” Carney told the city commissioners. She was building support for the county plan, which would manage and periodically renourish 18 miles of beaches in coming years–including in Flagler Beach–thus relieving the city of a responsibility it has not been able to shoulder.
The plan relies on raising the sales tax by half a cent and levying a $160-a-parcel tax on barrier island residents. Flagler Beach would turn over its portion of the new sales tax revenue to the county for beach management. Palm Coast and Bunnell would turn over half their share, and gain the additional revenue for their own uses. The county plan also relies on other sources of money, but none that directly impact taxpayers differently than what they pay now. Without the plan, Flagler Beach alone would be responsible for its beaches–and the millions of dollars necessary when the next renourishment is due in six years. It doesn’t have that kind of money.
“I do not believe that you can come up with $2.5 million a year,” Carney accurately told the city commissioners, “so that when the Army Corps comes back and says to the county, we’re ready, dig out the money, and there’s no money, the county is going to use all of their money on the other portions of this beach. We’ve got to play, at least play ball.” The beach, she said, “is too important for us,” adding: “please get on board.”
Flagler Beach did. It declared itself “all in” for the county plan. And days later Carney joined three colleagues on the County Commission officially to endorse the county plan, which was crafted by County Administrator Heidi Petito and her deputy, Jorge Salinas, to ongoing praise by county and city officials.
“This spreads it out,” she said of the plan. “It’s not like we don’t have a bunch of counties in Florida using or getting Army Corps projects. They all fund it differently. We just have to find what fits in Flagler County. But they all have to fund it. They all have projects, and we just got to figure out a way to do it. That’s been the struggle here. And again, on a yearly basis, we’re going to look at this and we can make adjustments, correct? I mean, it’s not like this is carved in stone. It’s not forever. We just need to kick something off so that we can get started.”
Carney further into that March 3 meeting spoke clearly about the plan and its benefits. But she spoke differently when she raised questions on Monday.
“There are hundreds of Florida beaches that have done this before us,” Carney told her colleagues. “I would like to see how they’ve done it. Some or a lot of them are all TDC,” a reference to each county’s Tourist Development Council, the advisory boards that manage tourist-0tax dollars. “Where are we lacking? Where do we need more? But I believe that this half-cent tax thing is a band-aid. I was put up here to lower taxes, or to keep taxes, or at least not additional taxes, and I can do it. But I just don’t believe that the timing is where we need it. I am so passionate about this beach and the sand that goes on the beach that I’m worried that I’m not reacting with emotions as opposed to good, solid data.”
She continued: “I’ve done my own work. I’d like to see more work done on this before we give it a stamp of approval or move forward. I don’t see other municipalities jumping on board.” That is not quite accurate. Flagler Beach is entirely on board. So is Marineland, though that’s more of a symbolic than relevant endorsement. Bunnell is keeping an open mind, and Palm Coast, which had initially spoken of supporting the sales tax increase only through a referendum, may not be as strongly wedded to that idea. But Carney’s wavering may give Palm Coast different ideas.
“All these unanswered questions are starting to stir up a lot of stuff that I would like to again, workshop it, stick it on in a retreat where we can actually air out what actions we need to take,” Carey said.
“The questions that we still have are the same questions the public has,” Dance told her. “So ask as many questions and get as many answers, because we’re going to be turning them into Q and A’s so that the public understands exactly where we’re coming from. So as much information or the questions that you have for staff, just continue to feed that so that we can get answers done and share those answers with the public as well.”
“We don’t have a clear funding plan,” Carney said. That was not accurate.
“Well, we do,” Hansen said. “If you’d read this stuff that Heidi’s putting out, we have a very clear funding plan, very clear dollar for dollar.” (See the plan here, here and here.)
“We haven’t voted on it,” Carney said.
“No. It’s a plan that’s been presented so that we can get feedback from the different councils to be able to craft what comes back to us to vote on,” Dance said. “But yes, the whole intent of this process has been really for feedback. We’ve learned our lesson in the past about approving things or pushing things where we didn’t ask or didn’t work with our other governmental partners. And we’ve seen how that turns out. So in this process we’ve been intentional in making sure that we started out with some concepts and then got feedback, starting with the feedback from the unincorporated and then we were able to put those together as concepts to the municipalities in order to gain their feedback. And it’s more complicated on the barrier island than it is on the others. But even that part took a lot of planning in order to–how do you craft a plan where we can get buy-in from everybody.”
Thomas Hutson says
Commissioner Kim Carney Vote
Well, well seems that this all done completed TAX of the county manager has hit a rut in the road. Just one question, all of our elected officials PROMISED that they “would not raise taxes” , did they forget? They all promised during the elections “I will not vote to increase taxes.” OK , then put this issue out for a referendum in 2026, let the voters decide.