Ragga Surf Fiasco: How Flagler County Risked Losing River to Sea Preserve Over Botched Favor for a Private Business

A FlaglerLive Special Report

---

Flagler County government and the town of Marineland have come close to losing their joint ownership of the 90-acre River to Sea Preserve, the public park, after the state’s land trust discovered that the county and the town were allowing the for-profit Ragga Surf Cafe to use the preserve for its operations since September without permission from the state and in violation of the county’s own rules and procedures.

Flagler County and the preserve were informed on Nov. 6 by Florida Communities Trust, a division of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, that they were out of compliance with the state grant that ceded the park to the local governments, and that they could both lose ownership. It wasn’t the first time that Marineland had violated state terms applying to the preserve.




To forestall loss of the preserve, the county informed Ragga Surf Cafe on Nov. 15 that it would have to clear out by the end of the year. That triggering outrage by the business’ supporters and a campaign by the business to “Save Ragga Surf Cafe.” That campaign continues.

How did it come to this?

There was a lot of good will from Flagler County and in the outreach work associated with a Ragga Surf sister company. But there was also bad faith by both Flagler County and Ragga Surf, starting with a license agreement the county issued in September that amounts to an artfully deceptive end run.

And there were zero rent payments, or any kind of payments, from Ragga Surf to the county for any of Ragga Surf’s operations.

The agreement allowed Ragga Surf temporarily to operate at the preserve. But the agreement is not with Ragga Surf. The county couldn’t issue such an agreement to a for-profit company, at least not under the terms discussed by the County Commission. It is with Ragga Surf’s sister company, Inter-United Soccer Club Corporation, a non-profit that the owners of Ragga Surf also own. (See the Temporary Use Agreement here.)

In essence, Flagler County government and Ragga Surf signed an agreement that created the impression–and the legal construct–that the county was working with a non-profit at the Preserve. It is as if, say, the owner of Captain’s BBQ at Bings Landing, another county park, also owned a non-profit, and used that non-profit to win special dispensations or favors for Captain’s BBQ.




There has been bad faith on Ragga Surf’s part, too, as it has conducted a “Save Ragga Surf Cafe” campaign that made Flagler County government–its temporary savior, essentially–into its persecutor. “This type of action is unwarranted and unnecessary to say the least,” County Administrator Heidi Petito wrote Jim Powell, the co-owner of Ragga,  earlier this week. Petito was also sharply critical of Powell apparently claiming, falsely, that the county had promised him a long-term lease, that Ragga’s rights had been violated, and that the county was not responsive to him.

Ragga Surf Cafe has portrayed itself throughout as the saintly, good-hearted organization only interested in running a community-oriented cafe and periodic markets in Marineland so it can save children from hunger and hardship from Kenya to Nicaragua and help 700 kids play soccer in Palm Coast. The county is saying it just wanted to help. Some of that is beyond doubt. But it’s not as simple as either organization is making it seem. What follows is a preliminary account of how they go here, based on interviews, official documents, emails and pronouncements at an August public meeting.

Ragga Surf Cafe is a for-profit company established in 2021 by Palm Coast’s Powell, his mother and others. It has a big and enthusiastic following. Until the end of August Ragga Surf operated a food truck, an ice cream trailer and a gift-store trailer (Raggamuffin) in Marineland on private land near the surf owned by developer Jim Jacoby. Jacoby evicted the Cafe.

Since then, it’s operated on a swath of the River to Sea Preserve’s parking lot and adjoining boardwalk. Its large food truck and two trailers, like the business sign at the edge of the set-up, are entrenched as if with entitled permanence. That part of the boardwalk is lined with 16 tables that can each seat six, with another four nearer the trailers. An enormous generator, with a jerrican of fuel next to it, powers the operation.

No such generator is mentioned in the license agreement, though the agreement prohibits the use of any materials that require a government permit for storage, treatment or disposal, including keeping the material in the open. Ragga Surf, Ragamuffin and the ice cream topper are open five days a week from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.




The business is operating without a lease, and in an arrangement not afforded other for-profit companies. It’s also operating in violation of state rules. That’s not its fault. It’s doing what it was offered: a special favor initiated by County Commissioner Greg Hansen, encouraged by County Administrator Heidi Petito and granted by the Flagler County County Commission on Aug. 19.

Raga Surf is not blameless. The commission extended its favor in part on the false assumption that Ragga Surf is a non-profit. The county did so without a bidding process or a staff analysis, without rent payments or even permits or payments Raga Surf should secure and owe when it holds its periodic “marketplace” events, which draw up to 30 vendors–on public land. The vendor events also violate state and county rules, as Florida Community Trust informed the local governments.

Most gravely and inexplicably, the county extended the favor without permission from the Florida Community Trust, the division of the state Department of Environmental Protection that has oversight on public lands even if they are in local government ownership.

Maybe it wasn’t too inexplicable: Commissioners were impressed by Powell’s other involvement with Inter United, thinking it all part of the same operation. Ragga Surf has been very popular and beloved in Marineland. And commissioners didn’t want to be hard asses. They wanted to help.

But both the well-intentioned initiative of the county and the lofty mission of Powell’s associated non-profit did not stop either from committing a series of missteps, violations and misrepresentations–misrepresentations that, for Raga Surf, continued even today as it peddles a “Save Raga Surf cafe” online petition that blatantly and falsely blames the county for “job losses for our families and team this holiday season” and unfairly pins the blame for the eviction on the county, jeopardizing “a vital community space during the holiday season.”




No one is losing their job during the holiday season. The eviction doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1. And while the county is nowhere near blameless, its errors were the result of overzealous and sloppy good intentions. Nevertheless, county officials have been flooded with 400 or more emails–both the assistant county attorney and the commission chairman’s email accounts crashed and needed IT’s intervention to function again–characterizing the county as the bad guy.

“So much miscommunication on social media,” Commission Chair Andy Dance said. “It was entirely played that the county was issuing the termination just out of our normal course of doing business, without the background about the purchase of the property. People weren’t aware that it was purchased with community trust money,” and that strings attached to the property forbade certain uses.

Powell also claimed on social media that there’d been a “lease.” There never was. The county had issued a temporary license that was set to expire on Jan. 1 anyway. It might have renewed automatically for six months absent a 30-day notice from the county. The county issued the 30-day notice, 45 days ahead of time.

On Friday, the misinformation had gotten so rife on social media that Petito issued a public statement summarizing what had led to Ragga Surf’s eviction.

“We were a little upset because we did him a favor,” Moylan, the assistant county attorney, said. “We tried to help him out when he was in a pinch, and we do believe that they provide this community service and asset to the community. So we wanted to help. But then he puts his campaign out there online, misleading people into thinking that the county is acting capriciously and just sort of taking something away for no reason, when in reality we had no choice. We were instructed to do so, and it’s much more important for the public that the county be in compliance with the conditions of FCT than it is to have someone with a license be able to continue operating.”




The consequences of continuing with Ragga Surf under current conditions were not possible under any condition. But to the county, and the way the social media campaign was framed, it looked as if Ragga Surf was willing to put its interests ahead of the very community it was supporting, if that community included the Preserve.

“We could lose ownership of the preserve back to the state of Florida, which would be horrible,” Moylan said. “It would be a terrible outcome for everybody. We have to do what we’re supposed to do under the grant agreement with FCT. And so that’s why it was upsetting to us when we we saw this thing online about ‘Save Ragga Cafe,’ and it portrayed the county as if we were acting arbitrarily and just decided for whatever reason, we just wanted to get rid of them.”

Hansen, the commissioner, had sprung the Ragga Cafe issue on the commission for the first time at the Aug. 19 meeting. It was not on the agenda. There was no background documentation. Petito, the county administrator, backed him up. (Hansen is one of her strongest supporters on the commission: for her job’s sake she needs to keep him that way.) She summarized the situation about Powell’s operation getting evicted from Jacoby’s private land by months’ end, and  how Powell was looking for a reprieve on nearby land, which Petito suggested could be the south end of the parking lot of the River to Sea Preserve.

But even Hansen had been cautious: he wanted the commission’s consensus “subject to dealing with the staff and finalizing the exact location and the agreement, the rental agreement, or lease agreement.” It wasn’t to be a blank check.

“He does have a nonprofit, so it would be something that we wouldn’t have to necessarily bid out,” Petito told the commission. “If the board were to give us direction to move forward, we would kind of negotiate what that looks like and then get the town’s permission. It’s my understanding that the town of Marineland had already kind of given it its blessing, but it would still have to come back to us formally.”

She was right about the non-profit. But she did not make clear that Ragga was not that non-profit, let alone make clear that Ragga is for profit.  Powell’s Inter-United Soccer Club–whose IRS filings date back to 2010 (see its 2022 filing)–is  not what’s set up in Marineland. It’s not clear how the county could legally get around the bidding requirements, as Petito claimed, just because a principal of the Cafe happens to be president of a non-profit.




What followed was a series of errors by omission and commission, even as county commissioners attempted to vet the matter more clearly.

“You’d have to explain the difference between nonprofit and for profit,” Dance said to his colleagues and to Petito. “Because as I’m sitting here thinking, we really can’t just enter into an agreement. Wouldn’t that have to go through some type of public process like we did with Bow Creek?” When private, for-profit companies are involved, the county is required to issue a request for proposal (RFP) that bids out the offer equally.

Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan said the law allows leasing to non-profits without competitive bids as long as the commission did so by resolution, and showed a public benefit. But again: the commission at that point was put under the impression that Ragga Surf was a non-profit. It is not.

“We’d still have to bring this back to you for consideration in September, but to at least get the work moving,” Petito said.

“I don’t have a problem with with it in theory, then to have you work on something that you can bring back to us,” Dance said.

It never did come back. Not in September. Not in October. Ragga Surf set up shop and kept going.

Commissioner Leann Pennington was hesitant at the Aug. 19 meeting. “I’m not opposed to it as long as I guess Sean or Al [Hadeed, the county attorney] can tell us that does this need to go through the typical process we do,” she said. (Hadeed has deferred all questions to Moylan.)

“Lessons learned from the past is that I feel for the gentleman,” Dance said. “But his urgency does not mean that we have to cut corners or jump through without doing the to do proper due diligence on this thing with, you know, public input and everything.”

Then-Commissioner Dave Sullivan asked a pointed question: “Are all three non-profit?” Meaning all three trucks.

None of them are. Yet Petito said, accurately but without answering the question: “They’re all the same entity.” (Notably, in her correspondence with Melanie Orozco of Florida Communities Trust, when on Nov. 25 Petito took responsibility for failing to inform the state about Ragga Surf and one other matter related to the preserve, the county administrator not once referred to Ragga Surf as a non-profit. She only referred to the business as “a private concessionaire,” which is exactly what it is.)




Sullivan asked again: “What’s the non-profit? What does it support?”

Powell walked up to the podium at that point. It was his turn for omissions. “The non-profit that these businesses support is Inter-United,” he said. He did not say that Ragga Surf is for profit, only that “a lot of the proceeds go to the scholarship funds” of the soccer club. The obfuscation was such that anyone could reasonably assume that Ragga Surf and the club were part of the same non-profit.

He spoke at length about the benefits of the non-profit with children in Palm Coast and abroad, how the non-profit started small and grew to 700 kids now playing soccer, and so on. In the same breath, he spoke about starting with four employees and now having 35, presumably in the Ragga Surf complex, but again, never making a distinction between the soccer club and Ragga Surf.

“I hate being in this position where I have to stress and ask for help pretty quickly. And so I just appreciate the opportunity just to be here and ask for this help,” Powell said. He said he asked for an extension from Jacoby, the private land owner in marineland. He didn’t get one and said he was never given a reason for the eviction. “We have actually the Marineland marketplace that we put on,” he said, “we’ve got 30 vendors that come out now, and it’s been a powerful thing for the community and the local vendors too.”

Maybe so. But that, too, has been done in violation of county rules: no permit, no arrangements to contribute money to the park, as would normally be the case (such as when Flagler Broadcasting rents Princess Place Preserve every fall for the Creekside Festival: it contributes thousands of dollars to the county for upkeep of the preserve), meaning that Ragga Surf is pocketing all the proceeds, however munificent (and unknown) its later disbursements to the soccer club.

Pennington suggested a “special permit” to allow Ragga Surf to keep operating while the county works out the more formal arrangements. She did so on the assumption that it was a non-profit.

Moylan proposed the brief licensing agreement the county could draft with Marineland. “And again, to repeat what I said earlier, as a nonprofit, if this is the route we want to go as a nonprofit,” Moylan said, “there is the ability to enter into a more long term lease, as long as we make the findings about the benefits to the community, which would be spelled out in a resolution.” As a non-profit.




Despite clear discomfort and reservations from commissioners, the commission agreed by consensus that the administration could issue a temporary license–not a lease–so Ragga Surf could move to the park land and operate from there–as long as Petito was to bring back more formal documentation for the commission to approve in September. But again, the Commission was operating under the impression that Ragga Surf itself was a non-profit. “It’s a great story. Thank you for sharing what you’re doing,” Dance told Powell, referring to the soccer club’s outreach. “But I think you have consensus from us to continue pursuing that.”

As it turned out, Flagler County government and Marineland found themselves facing the potential loss of the River to Sea Preserve, one of the county’s major attractions and natural treasures, precisely because, as Dance had feared, they “cut corners or jump[ed] through without doing the to do proper due diligence on this thing.”

Several county officials have owned up to the county’s mistakes. “That was our fault that we did not give the proper notice to the FCT,” Moylan said in an interview Saturday. “We’re working to straighten that out. We want to be in their good graces. We very much believe in the mission, or the purpose of the Preserve, which is to provide a passive recreational amenity that balances public access and preservation of the environment together. So we believe in that. We want to bone up and do everything correctly. We’re working on that. We do have a key staff, not by way of excuse, but to be candid, we had a key staff person, Mike Lagasse, who left us and went to St. Johns County, closer to home. And so some balls did get dropped, and this would be one of them.”

Lagasse had been the county’s land manager. He left in July.

Despite numerous attempts, Powell was not willing to answer a reporter’s questions, nor were other members of the organization when visited in person at the preserve Saturday. If their trailers had been less fixed and rooted wagons, they’d have been circling.

“We are trying to strategize what we should say to the public next,” Powell said by text. “We will get in touch once we are ready.” Later Saturday afternoon he texted a link to a Ragga Surf statement posted on social media. The statement strove for accuracy and more overt gratefulness this time: “We are forever grateful for the County and Town for helping us temporarily transition to the River to Sea Preserve and granting us use of the space for the last 4 months. We believe they did the human thing – going above and beyond to help. We cannot say enough how much this means to us.”

“There’s no doubt they have a significant following, and not just from the county,” Dance said in an interview Sunday morning. “So a lot of heartfelt support for them. The accommodation was I think the right thing to work out a solution. It’s unfortunate that now because of the timing and the holidays it’s making things more difficult than it should be.”