Marineland has a problem. Or rather, Marineland has problems. Lots of them. Its own financial and legal viability is among them. Its attorneys are sounding alarms.
The town–population: 3–is out of compliance with its audits. None have been filed since 2024, making the town vulnerable to a state takeover. The town’s record-keeping is a mess.
Records it is required to maintain under the state’s records law have vanished, making it difficult or impossible to track down even how certain commission votes went down two or three years ago.
The town’s finances are teetering, now that it has lost a third of its general fund revenue. Town commissioners want to reopen a contract with the town marina to seek more than the $18,000 a year the marina pays the town. Jeremiah Blocker, the new town attorney–with Joe Saviak, both from the Douglas Law Firm in St. Augustine–is hinting at litigation against the marina.
“Depending on what some decisions y’all make, they may require in the future a shade meeting where we as attorneys have to get clarity on how to move forward,” Blocker said. “We’re not quite there yet, but with some of the things that are discussed, it could eventually lead to that.”
A “shade meeting” is a closed-door session the public may not attend. Florida law provides for such executive sessions for local government in only two instances: when the elected are discussing collective bargaining strategy, and when they are discussing strategy in ongoing litigation. There is no allowance in law for closed-door sessions before litigation is filed.
As a 2014 Attorney General opinion states, the open-meeting law “provides a limited exception to this general openness requirement and makes litigation strategy or settlement meetings private when they are held between a board and its attorney and the board is a party before a court or administrative agency.” Even then, “the meeting shall be confined to settlement negotiations or strategy sessions related to litigation expenditures.”
Blocker, calling it a matter of interpretation, disagrees, saying closed-door meetings are legal if the commission wants to discuss whether to move forward with litigation.
In fact, when Palm Coast discussed whether to sue contractors over the poorly built splash pad at Holland Park, it did so in two open meetings in 2022. When Flagler Beach discussed litigation and opted for eviction against the lease-holder of its then-city-owned golf course in 2022, it did so in open meetings. Earlier this year, when the Flagler County Commission discussed suing Flagler Beach over annexation disputes, it did so in a series of open meetings, including an open mediation session. (See here, here, here and here.)
The town’s finances are a serious concern among commissioners. “The town has identified some financial constraints and some financial issues,” Blocker said. Turning to Mark Simpson, the financial consultant, he said: “I believe Mark you mentioned we’re not sure we’re going to have a town of Marineland in five years.”
Marineland lost a third of its general fund revenue when Marineland Dolphin Adventure’s new owners returned the attraction to a nonprofit status, as it had been before the Mexico-based Dolphin Company acquired it from the Georgia Aquarium in 2019, and last year declared bankruptcy.
Marineland may lose yet more revenue, depending on whether and how Jim Jacoby, the only other tax-paying land holder in town, divests his holdings. The county and the state have shown interest in buying most of those holdings. That would remove them from the tax rolls. If that were to happen, Marineland’s revenue would all but cease (revenue from the town marina and right-of-way fees aside), as well as the town’s viability.
In the interim the shrinking tax revenue led the town commissioners to question the town’s contract with the marina, which brings in $18,000 a year. The commissioners want to reopen that contract and demand more money. Dennis Bayer, the former town attorney, cautioned the commission against reopening the contract. Bayer’s stance added to growing disenchantment toward him from the town. That led to Bayer’s resignation last month and the town’s hiring of the Douglas Law Firm.
“Y’all are going to have to really make a choice going forward of how y’all want to address some of these contracts or a number of deficiencies,” Blocker said. “I use that terminology with some of these contracts that probably should have been caught early on.” He faulted neither the elected officials nor the previous attorney or those involved in the drafting of the contract, chalking it up to “competing interests” and making decisions in the moment. “We’ve identified some choices for y’all as far as how to move forward.”
He did not say what those choices were, noting only that they would be outlined in a forthcoming memo following one-on-one meetings between the attorneys and the commissioners. (Those are allowed by law and do not violate sunshine, though the attorneys are barred from serving as conduits of information between commissioners, or from polling the commissioners.)
“Obviously the contract has been a major concern for you,”Saviak told the commissioners, “and we want to try to get to solutions that are feasible and doable, and it also provides you with the benefit of our analysis of where those contracts are at now and then talk about options and steps going forward.”
Blocker and Saviak were still tracking down records and discovering that some records are simply no longer there, even though the town was legally required to maintain them. That complicates matters, especially if the town heads into litigation, as it creates a significant vulnerability the town’s opponent would exploit in court. Wilshem Pennick, the town clerk, even asked what procedure he should follow when he gets requests for public records that the town should provide, but that “don’t exist,” as he put it.
“The bigger question is, why don’t we have them, right? So that’s one of the channels that Mr. Saviak and I ran into,” Blocker said. “There’s no criticism of the prior team. But this is why it’s very important for local government, because you have public money and you have public trust, and you want to make sure that–we’re not talking about things that happened 30, 40, years ago. We’re talking about two or three years ago. There’s difficulty in identifying some of the basics of how votes went down, the records from those votes. So we just have to clean that up.”
Among other things the attorneys are cleaning up.
Two years ago Marineland paid the Reddish & White accounting firm in Newberry $25,000 to conduct its annual audits. For 2024 and 2025, the firm has either not done so or not turned in the audit report to the state Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, as required by law. The 2025 audit is due in June.
“They have not performed under the 2024 audit, and we’ve paid them in full,” Simpson said. “They have not started the fiscal year 2025 audit.” He is under the impression that the firm is out of business, though the firm’s website appears active. “The bottom line is, they are not performing,” Simpson said.
FlaglerLive calls and texts to the firm’s two principals, Doug Reddish and Job White, were not returned.
“We are out of compliance,” Blocker told the commissioners, cautioning them against losing control of the town’s finances. The commission directed him to send a demand letter to the auditing firm and an extension request to the legislative committee.
It’s not a minor matter for Marineland’s self-governance, which is potentially in jeopardy. “There’s a mechanism that’s happened a few times where basically the state of Florida can step in and take over a municipality,” Blocker said. “They’ve done it with school districts. They’ve done it with essentially when you lose control your finances.” The two purposes of an audit, he said, are oversight, but also to get an organization back on track if loses control of its finances.
“We’re in the early to mid stages of that. We’re not quite at the critical juncture,” Blocker said. “Communication is essential.” That’s where the letters come in.
James Moore and Company, which audits many governments in Volusia County, another accounting firm, has agreed to conduct the 2025 audit for $20,000, less than the $25,000 Reddish and White was charging, but more than the $10,000 that accountant Brad Million had charged until his death in 2024.
“Their whole excuse was that they had to rebuild everything,” Town Manager Suzanne Dixon said of Reddish and White, “because Brad died with all the intellectual background and memory, he took it with him, and there weren’t any records that Reddish and White had of what he had done.” James Moore and Company will increase costs by $1,000 a year. The town commission voted 3-0 to engage James Moore.
The seeming accumulation of problems led the new attorneys to take a systematic approach.
“Y’all are the custodians of Marineland. Y’all have the role and responsibility of guarding the financial integrity of Marineland as well as the public trust. And even though Marineland is a smaller municipality, the magnitude of that responsibility carries over, whether it’s New York City or Marineland.”
To that end, Blocker said he wants the town to draw up clearer rules and procedures on voting and record-keeping.
“As Mr. Saviak and I have kind of gone through some of the record keeping–and you have a great clerk who’s done a great job of keeping the records, and you’ve had great employees before–but there hasn’t been the level of record keeping documentation, the attention given to that, that was probably required.” He acknowledged that the town was taking steps to fix the problem, but he’ll be presenting suggestions, among them a new procurement policy proposal.
Commissioners also agreed to hold a quarterly workshop to better stay on top of issues. The first one will be on May 26 at 5 p.m., ahead of the commission’s 6 p.m. meeting.
JimboXYZ says
It’s a city of of a dozen people ? Of course money is going to be an issue. And new lawyers are going to find a reason why the city would be sued. Marineland was essentially a tourist attraction that went bankrupt & was sold. They are a pay as they go city model. They aren’t Flagler Beach even. As long as anyone stays on A1A, drives the speed limit & stays in their lane , their beaches are swim at your own risk even, that should be a lawsuit free city really. Before, even now, being insured adequately and there really wasn’t anything much going on there.
Who would sue Marineland ? Someone trying to score a payday for insurance fraud ? Live a simple life there for the rural beach town that it has always been & still is ? Would there be any reason to ever be sued ? I have no doubts the money spent from their meager GF & revenues there has been a relative payment for minimal operations for services and minimalist approach to existing as a city of sorts. The last 6 years ? The rest of Flagler county for cities has spent more money on studies & litigation. Take the Splash Pad thing ? Was that litigation more than Marineland’s Annual Operating Budget ? When there aren’t but 12-15 residents of Marineland, any lawsuits would be the equivalent of suing your parents ? There aren’t enough residents to have a Government, 1/2 of those residents aren’t even within “city limits” for extended periods during a given year ? A majority of the residents are disconnected from the concept of governance. They have a mayor, a city council would essentially be the 40-50% of the entire population of Marineland.
Deborah Coffey says
How’s it going Republicans? Still think you should keep voting for more and more Republicans? On the larger scale, you’ve got an illegal war going on in Iran and practically the entire Middle East with a 37-count felon who’s in love with Putin and Saudi Arabia running it! How’s the economy? How does it feel living in fear of what’s next around the corner? What has your Congress done to help YOU? The last decent Republican President you had was Poppy Bush and you voted him out after one term because the Gulf war caused a fairly mild recession and he realized he needed to raise taxes in order to keep the country secure…breaking a campaign promise of “No New Taxes.” How many campaign promises have been broken by today’s Republicans and their president? Are they even keeping their oaths of office? It’s time for real reflection and for recognizing the fact that “trickle down” economics and deregulation don’t work. They didn’t work before The Great Depression and almost every single recession since. Just think about it.
Keep Flagler Beautiful says
“Marineland Dolphin Adventure” is a disgrace. It certainly isn’t an “adventure” for dolphins stolen from the wild or who were born in captivity to stolen and enslaved mothers. I doubt the well-meaning buyers knew, or even know now, how reviled these sorts of marine mammal captivity parks are. The documentary “Blackfish” tells the story.