Money Issues Raise New Questions on Locating Sheriff’s Operations Center Near Palm Coast Library

The first was that the long-awaited report from the Centers for Disease Control on the operations center was finally in. But it said nothing new: the building has problems, they can be addressed, the CDC did not associate costs to the possible repairs, and the county isn’t interested in changing course from either selling or demolishing the mold-infested and condemned building. (See the report here.)

Cameron’s second surprise was that the plan to build the next Sheriff’s Operations Center next to the county library in Palm Coast, as certain as a 5-0 vote by the county commission last April, may not be so certain after all, even though the architect has been hired for the project, and further selections are being made this week or next. The project last April was estimated at the time to run between $12 and $15 million.

“We have up until May 1 to definitively say where that’s going to be located on the site in Palm Coast or possibly some other site, if my board determines that that’s more appropriate,” Cameron said. “We’ve had some additional financial considerations to come up since those early decisions were made, beach renourishment and our match money that we have to put forward, have created some financial issues that we have to address, so that’s going to affect some of those decisions.” 

Cameron did not say what was likeliest to happen. “We have a plan, but it is possible the plan could change,” he told the commission.

Yet this afternoon he said nothing had changed. “I’m proceeding as though we’re going to build this next to the library,” he said. “Every week somebody calls me with a new idea, and they range from rehabbing the existing place to getting someone to build the place and lease it back to us. It’s all over the map.” 

As it turns out, there are possibilities that the Sheriff’s Operations Center–or Palm Coast District Office–will be built elsewhere, depending on which county commissioner you ask.

Just before the holiday season, someone contacted Commissioner Donald O’Brien with interest in buying the acreage next to the county library in Palm Coast: the land is very valuable because it’s in the heart of the city.

“There are a couple of other sites that were offered to us,” O’Brien said. “It’s my understanding that there is someone that would be interested in actually buying the library site, which would create a getter financial picture for us.” In other words, the county could make a substantial enough profit by selling acreage previously set aside for the sheriff’s center next to the library, buying new acreage in the same core area of the city, and be in a solid financial position to start building the project. 

“It’s prime real estate, right in the core area, and they had contacted us about it, and I basically handed it off to Jerry and said,  research it,” O’Brien said. “I don’t think it changes the footprint or what we want to do there, it’s just a matter of what specific location it is.” It also doesn’t change the timeline: the project continues on course for construction, the only difference being where it will actually go. “This could all be very conceptual and pie in the sky, and come May we might be right back where we started, which is fine,” O’Brien said. 

There are two substantial, unbuilt parcels in the core of Palm Coast, very near the library site: one is the school board’s old location of Flagler Technical Institute on Corporate Drive, a 7-acre site the board has been wanting to sell for several years. Asked today if the district is offering up the site to the county, Superintendent Jim Tager said, “not at this time. We have only heard talk of some interest at this juncture so we will see if that progresses.” O’Brien said the FTI site was not one of the possibilities.

The other is a set of four parcels adding up to more than 10 acres between Bridgehaven Drive and Corporate Drive, on the south side of Palm Coast Parkway. Three of the four parcels are owned by a Palm Coast-based entity called Bridgehaven Group LLC. “The sheriff wanted to explore the possibility that the property across the street might be available,” Cameron said this afternoon.

County Commission Chairman Dave Sullivan had a slightly different take on the direction of the sheriff’s operations project. “On my initiative I met with Jerry on Monday and kind of broached the money problem,” Sullivan said. “I have a concept but I don’t want to go forward, it’s not public.” Sullivan, however, said that “we’re looking at everything right now,” meaning that all options are on the table, as commissioners are clearly fearful of making yet another mistake regarding what to buy. 

“We’ve made some tragic mistakes in the County Commission concerning the sheriff’s operations center over the years,” Sullivan said, “and I want to make sure that we make the correct decision this time, that will not turn out like some of the other decisions that were made considering the other sheriff’s operations center, based on the situation we face right now.” He added: “Without just locking in on one option let’s look at all the options that we have.”

Sullivan said the Army Corps of Engineers’ renourishment project in Flagler Beach is paid for, but any other beach renourishment projects are not, and “there’s five or six things that cost money,” meaning substantial projects ahead including a new south branch library, “so we want to make sure we take advantage of whatever financial resources we have or may have.” He said the location next to the library is still “the highest probability.” But a discussion at a workshop on April 6 may better define the county’s direction. 

“I think it’d be crazy not to look at the current situation and say: what’s the best thing to do,” Sullivan said. “I want to make sure that we probe fairly every possibility there, that’s all.” 

Cameron said those are all “individual conversations” that don’t add up to a vote changing course. It’s nevertheless not clear why the commission would need to meet in workshop again on April 6 to discuss the options, if they have not been placed back on the table, at least in the mind of some commissioners.

In early 2018, three principal options had been considered for a sheriff’s operations center: one in Town center, which didn’t get much interest then or now, the one next to the library in Palm Coast, and the site south of the Government Services Building in Bunnell, next to the site slated for a south branch public library. That Bunnell site is now slated for a Bunnell district office (or operations center, as the case may be), in addition to the Palm Coast district office, but to be built at a much later, undetermined date.

There is of course no interest in returning to the disused sheriff’s operations center in Bunnell in any way. The CDC report doesn’t change that. “It doesn’t tell us anything new,” Cameron said. “It essentially tells us what we already knew and things that we knew that we would have to do when we factored in the decisions of whether or not to pursue remediating that building. So it gives us some suggestions but it doesn’t give any guarantees, and we hope to bring that decision to a close within the next 60 days and look for a way to proceed on that.” 

The county wants to either sell the property or demolish it, at a cost of some $250,000. Sullivan suggested that Bunnell may have had an interest in the property, but Bunnell City Manager Alvin Jackson said today that none of his commissioners have expressed such an interest in it, other than to ask a few questions about costs facing the county. The county is still carrying a $5 million debt on the building.

The sheriff will be at the April workshop, but the agency is staying out of the wrangles over where to locate the operations center. “Our position is basically this,” Strobridge said this afternoon. “They are the ones who will decide, they are the ones building the building, they are the ones who will decide on the ultimate location, that’s basically what the sheriff will accept.” The sheriff’s overriding goal is to save taxpayers’ dollars. If switches in locations achieve that goal, then the sheriff is for it, Strobridge said. 

“We just can’t let the project get slugged down by it all,” Strobridge said.