FEMA Releases $8.8 Million Long Owed Flagler County’s Beaches After a Campaigning Congressman’s Nudge 

In a tour of the county’s eroded beaches two weeks ago county officials asked U.S. Rep. Randy Fine for a little help pressuring the Federal Emergency Management Administration to release $8.8 million owed the county since Hurricane Milton sheared off what remained of the dunes in much of the unincorporated portion of Flagler’s shore. 

The money was due the county by July 1. Fine made a call or two, and the money was released.  

“That was coming to us. All he did was get it released out of FEMA. That’s all he did. But that’s a good thing,” County Commissioner Greg Hansen said. “This is not a windfall or anything like that. We knew it was coming. But we just couldn’t break it loose from FEMA, we don’t know why. But he went and got it done. He went and got the lady or man or whatever it was to sign the letter and get it released.”

In other words, the congressman did what members of Congress are primarily responsible for: providing constituent services. In this case, the constituent was Flagler County government. 

On Wednesday, Fine–who has so far drawn five Republican challengers to his re-election next year, including Palm Coast City Council member Charles Gambaro and Flagler County School Board member Will Furry–thought that was worth turning into a campaign stop thinly veiled as a press conference. He appeared at Bunnell’s Emergency Operations Center behind a “Randy Fine Delivering for Flagler County” sign, though it was really FEMA and the Flagler County administration.

“I have some powerful friends in Washington. That’s why I’m in Congress,” Fine said, without naming anyone (he is among the rare Republicans other Republicans in Washington openly criticize for the violence of his rhetoric and extremism). “But we got that signature on that letter, and that $9 million is delivered.”

He criticized FEMA–the very agency whose money he was boasting to have just secured–and how “the Democrats love to talk about FEMA,” saying it’s “not about how many employees it has,” a rebuke of Democrats’ criticism of Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions that FEMA should be abolished. 

The campaign was much on his mind, as was boasting about his appearances, an implicit rejection of the repeated criticism that he does not live in the district, nor knows the district. “My district is bigger than the state of Connecticut, so we’ve been all over the six counties over the last five weeks to this is probably our 75th stop that we’ve made,” he said. 

The district is not larger than Connecticut’s 4,850 square miles. Fine may have been confusing the combined total square miles of all six counties that form the 6th Congressional District. But four of the six counties are only partially in the district, reducing its size significantly. Still, he twice repeated the Connecticut comparison, the second time to explain why he’s not moving into the district: the legislature is about to redistrict, and he wouldn’t want to move twice. 

As for questions about the FEMA money just secured, he deferred to county officials, particularly to Ansley Wren-Key, the county’s coastal engineering administrator. 

The project funding for Hurricane Milton repairs is $11.7 million. Of that, FEMA provided $8.8 million, or 75 percent, and the Florida Department of Emergency Management and Flagler County had to provide the remaining $2.9 million (Flagler County’s share was $1.5 million). 

The money will reimburse for 115,600 cubic yards of sand trucked in. (It would have been much cheaper if the sand were dredged from an offshore borrow pit, as was the case with the beach renourishment project, as will be the case again regarding a separate, $35 million dune-rebuilding project further south along Flagler’s shore.) 

The dunes will be rebuilt from Mala Compra Road to Marineland, skipping Washington Oaks Garden State Park, though the county may soon be tasked with rebuilding those dunes as well, with additional dollars. 

The dunes will be rebuilt to their pre-storm conditions at a rate of 6 cubic yards per foot, County Administrator Heidi Petito said. The dunes will be skinnier than the dunes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt in Flagler Beach’s renourishment project in 2024. Some 46,000 native plants will be planted on the dunes, according to figures provided by Wren-Key.

“We’re still waiting on another $5.5 million from Ian and Nicole,” Petito said. Hurricane Ian struck in 2017. Nicole struck in 2022. The money is hung up at FEMA, because “anything over $100,000 has to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security,” Petito said. 

The county went through a similar process in 2018, spending around $24 million to rebuild dunes to their pre-storm conditions after Hurricanes Matthew and Ian. Those dunes lasted a couple of years before they washed out in subsequent storms, as they are designed to do. They are sometimes called sacrificial dunes.