Flagler Fluid and Advisory Group Float Pair of Plans to Keep Belle Terre Swim Club’s ‘True Spirit’ Viable

Flagler Fluid, the independent swim-team organization operating out of the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club since 2001, has submitted a plan to the school district as part of a proposal to take over and run the club as a business, potentially with a fee-based, public-use component, to reverse the district’s recent decision to end membership access to the club.

The Flagler County School Board voted in March to end a quarter-century-long arrangement that had kept the club open to district students and various aquatic sports, to its own aquatic-education programs, and to the public, through memberships or per-day uses. The board claimed with some justification that the club was losing money year after year, though it was also true that accounting methods kept some revenue from showing up in the club’s ledgers.




The pool is under te umbrella of Flagler Technical Institute, the district’s adult education division. FTI has its own money-making programs at the pool. But that revenue was never included in the club’s balance sheet, in essence making the red ink look deeper than it was. To the dismay of the club’s advocates, the slim majority of the board that voted to limit club access to students and special programs seemed uninterested in that more complete accounting. But the advocates have kept up various efforts to maintain some public access to the pool. Flagler Fluid’s is the latest.

The Belle Terre Advisory Committee’s plan is another.

Doug Courtney, who for years has led the more grass-roots efforts to keep the club open through the Belle Terre Advisory Committee, is leading an effort to build up $20-a-month memberships that would buy hour-long blocks of time at the club’s pool and the gym, replicating the membership component at less cost to individuals than the district was previously charging. (The previous individual annual membership was $420). But that plan needs a minimum of 120 people paying the monthly $20 fee to enable access to the club for one hour a day, six days a week: the district charges $50 an hour for the pool, $50 for the gym. Most members of the public use the gym, not the pool.

“I’m pretty convinced if we can keep it going we can get it up to six hours a day, six days a week,” Courtney said. (See the advisory group’s membership page here.)




Flagler Fluid’s plan is just as ambitious, but in a different way. Flagler Fluid is a competitive swimming organization whose coaches run by Carrie Purdy, the head coach at Matanzas High School and a seasoned coach with many years’ experience elsewhere, along with several assistant coaches who train local students for competitions for monthly fees that range from $75 to $120, with discounts for additional family members. The structure had originally been part of Flagler Technical Institute, but it was essentially pushed put by district maneuvering and made to run its own organization in 2021. School Board member Colleen Conklin was critical of the district’s decision then and has continued to be critical of it.

Flagler Fluid has continued to operate, and now has an enrollment of approximately 100, Purdy said. But Purdy was dismayed by the board’s decision, seeing it run counter to the spirit and mission of the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club. Last week, Purdy submitted a five-page business plan to the School Board, outlining how Flagler Fluid–a for-profit company–could run the facility, with a long-term plan for the 50-meter pool that former Superintendent Bill Delbrugge had once envisioned for the facility, two decades ago.

Flagler Fluid would lease the Belle Terre facility, paying no rent but assuming all the costs of running the facility, which run between $70,000 and $80,000. The proposal has Flagler Fluid assuming the costs in 20 percent, annual increments over five years. So it would start paying 20 percent of the costs in 2024-25, or $15,000, then pay nearly $30,000 the following year, and so on. By 2028-29, it will have assumed all costs.

“By leasing the facilities at Belle Terre, we aim to generate revenue streams that will cover operational costs and contribute to the financial sustainability of the club. This will alleviate the burden on Flagler County Schools and ensure the long-term viability of Belle Terre,” the plan states.




Flagler Technical Institute would no longer be allowed to operate its aquatic programs out of the facility, as those would compete with Flagler Fluid’s. Local government would provide ground maintenance while the district would “assist with High Costly major maintenance and repairs.”

“I feel like we need to honor the true spirit of the facility that was given to them,” Purdy said. (The grounds were donated to the School Board in the late 1990s.) “By doing that, there should be more swim lessons being provided, after school programs for middle schools to go to, utilizing the gym, and there’s so much potential in the facility and in the land. They keep making it seem like it’s a burden to have, and they keep stating, well, some–I shouldn’t say all–financially it’s a burden for them. But I also don’t feel like they’re running it properly, either, to enhance the true purposefulness and nature of that facility. My end goal of this is to bring a 50-meter swimming pool somewhere to help the Matanzas and FPC high school swim teams.”

The plan makes some optimistic assumptions, starting with a School Board that would have to be willing to cede the facility entirely to a private organization. It isn’t clear if the district can legally do that, though a decade ago it was in serious talks with the YMCA to do exactly that. But unlike Flagler Fluid, the YMCA is a non-profit organization. Flagler Fluid also would hope that the board would be willing to assume what amounts to five years of gradually diminishing subsidies as Flagler Fluid gets up to speed, running the facility. But it’s not as if even now the facility is not primarily serving district students.

“The students of FPC and Matanzas are the ones that are being pushed around and not being supported as far as their sports goes,” Purdy said. “Yes, there’s a pool available, but it’s not in working order, we can’t dive–at either pool.” (She was referring to the pool at Palm Coast’s Aquatic Center, what used to be known as Frieda Zamba pool.) “We do not have a proper built pool to hold a proper swim meet. And it’s been something that’s been a problem since my husband and I were actually looking through his 2000 yearbook: the one thing students were asking for was a pool on campus.”




Purdy said the Flagler Fluid operation and that of the advisory group would not be mutually exclusive, since the public would still have access to the pool under Flagler Fluid’s plan–just not during program hours.

The board members listened to Purdy present the proposal in her allotted three minutes last week, at the end of a workshop, and said nothing, other than thank you. She had spoken with several of them beforehand. While the plan is certain to get serious consideration from the club’s two advocates on he board–Colleen Conklin and Cheryl Massaro–the response from remaining board members is not yet known. And even Massaro has some reservations.

“My concern is the proposal obviously has us paying for everything the first year and then slowly over the years” (actually, 80 percent) “weaning down our responsibility to eventually where they take over,” Massaro said. “I don’t know how my other board members feel. I’m not sure that’s the direction they wanted to go in.” Massaro is also concerned about the legalities surrounding the proposal.

Conklin said Flagler Fluid proposed the idea in one form or another since 2021. “I’m without a doubt open to it,” Conklin said. “I look forward to looking at all the details, but if it puts the district in a positon where they’re not losing money, and they continue to give the community an asset that’s extremely important, then I only see that as a win-win. I don’t know why we would not move forward with the proposal.”

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