Flagler Beach Approves Conflict-Resolution Window to Stave Off County Litigation Over Summertown Annexation

The Flagler Beach City Commission in a brief special meeting Thursday evening formally approved a delayed timeline allowing for less pressured negotiations between the city and the County Commission in hopes of staving off a lawsuit by the county against the city.

The County Commission last week started the preliminary process that could lead to a lawsuit. The county is objecting to the city’s annexation of what will be the Summertown development on the west side of John Anderson Highway.

The county wants a commitment from the city that it will provide reclaimed (or recycled) water capacity at its sewer plant (though the county also notes that the city is burdening its residents rather than the developer for the cost of the plant). The county also has issues with floodplain protections and with traffic impacts on John Anderson Highway.

The city and the developer, SunBelt Land Management, represented locally by Ken Belshe and land use attorney Michael Chiumento, have repeatedly said that the issues are resolvable and don’t rise to the level of litigation.

Whether they do or not, state law requires local governments sharpening their litigation tools to first attempt unmediated, face-to-face conflict-resolution. That means negotiations between attorneys in the background, setting up negotiations between commissions in open meetings.

The conflict-resolution step starts a clock that gives the two sides limited time to reach a solution. If they do not–if they get to an impasse–then the lawsuit is filed. Last Wednesday, the County Commission started the clock, but also agreed to extend the “jurisdictional timeframe” to file a lawsuit, assuming the Flagler Beach City Commission approved. Normally, a lawsuit must be filed within 10 days of reaching an impasse. The agreement the two sides signed extends that to 20 days.

Thursday’s special meeting was for the City Commission to formally vote to approve that agreement, which it did, unanimously, in a meeting that took all of six minutes.

“All this agreement does,” City Attorney Drew Smith said, is “it allows us to move through that process without the county feeling like they have to file suit first in order to not lose their ability to file suit later, if there’s not a resolution to these issues. So it really changes nothing about the process itself. It just gives that time so there doesn’t have to be a lawsuit going on.”

The two sides’ managers and attorneys are meeting at 1 p.m. on Feb. 13 “to kind of go over what the issues are, so that we can narrow those issues,” Smith said. “And if there are potential resolutions, those get discussed at that meeting. Also, it is a meeting that’s open to the public, and there is notice being provided by the county for that meeting. Anything that comes out of it, though, would come before the boards.” It’s still up to the two commissions to ratify–or not. “But it does have this opportunity for the administrators to work together to try to narrow the issues and come up with solutions that they agree on, that they can then present to their boards. And I’m optimistic that that will happen here.”

Smith pointed out that one of the main issues, the recycled-water commitment by the city, is a “no-brainer.”

“Yes, the city of Flagler Beach is committed to that development, whether it’s in the city or not in the city, that development is going to have reclaim water, because it’s essential to us getting it out of the Intracoastal,” Smith said. “I’m not saying anything that anybody on the dais disagrees with, am I?” He was not. State law requires Flagler Beach to stop dumping recycled water into the Intracoastal early in the next decade. Veranda Bay, Summertown’s sister development on the east side of John Anderson Highway, already nearly halfway built up, was built with recycled-water piping ready to accept the city’s discharges.

“I know at that meeting, I had suggested to do a tolling agreement, or at least to discuss it, as opposed to doing the dispute resolution statute, that you don’t need both,” City Commissioner Scott Spradley, an attorney, said, referring to the legal term of temporarily suspending a deadline. “But here we are. So with that said, my opinion is that the tolling agreement is the way to go.”

He said the city was left with “a couple of unsatisfactory options” either way, “but to me, this agreement is the better of the unsatisfactory options, just from a legal perspective, and also practical.”

Belshe will not be directly involved in the negotiations, but he will obviously be involved, as he has been at every step so far. Today he said he could not speak for either side. “However,” he said in a text, “I can report that I think preliminary discussions seem to be amicable between the parties, and I am optimistic that a resolution will be forthcoming.”

The county’s litigation threat has again chilled the City Commission, which earlier this month approved, on first reading, the annexation of Veranda Bay. The county has threatened litigation on that score, too. But that’s an issue yet to come, and is not included in the ongoing conflict-resolution process. Michael Rodriguez, the county attorney, said previously that at some point he hopes to merge the two matters. The city hopes the Veranda Bay dispute (the county is questioning whether Veranda Bay residents have signed annexation agreements) will soon be moot.