Flagler County School Board member Cheryl Massaro is almost certainly the person most directly familiar with the running of the Carver Center in Bunnell, also known as Carver Gym: for many years, when Massaro ran the Flagler Youth Center, she also ran the Carver Center, a facility she cherishes for its own sake, but also as a facility staffed and run in large part by the school district.
So Massaro is not ready to sign off on a new agreement between all the entities involved in financing and running the Center, including Flagler County, which pays the largest portion of the bill, Bunnell government and the Sheriff’s Office and its Police Athletic League.
Months in the making, that updated agreement was supposed to have been signed by all parties late last year, clearing the way for PAL to set up shop at Carver center. The School Board raised objections at the last minute and pulled itself out of the rotation to red-line the agreement again. The document now appears on the consent portion of the School Board’s Jan. 23 agenda, where it would normally be approved without further discussion. But Massaro said Monday she will seek to pull it from the agenda over one more objection.
“My concern is that at the very last minute, they threw in a statement about funding,” Massaro said, referring to the county. The line in question in the proposed agreement is this: “The establishment of fees for events or use of the Carver Center will require approval of the [County Commission],” while the collection of funds and their accounting will be done by the county with advice from the School Board and the Carver Advisory Committee.
In other words, the School Board’s ability to set fees for certain events at Carver Center will be taken away from Bonita Robinson, the existing director. That, combined with PAL taking up to four nights of the week for its own events, will severely reduce Robinson’s ability to run and pay for some programs as she has in the past, with revenue from event fees that she could generate in addition to what funding the county was providing.
To run the center, the School Board must provide $10,000, the Sheriff’s Office $10,000, and Bunnell government $10,000, all paid to the county. The county in turn will then provide $97,500 a year to the School Board, which is responsible for staffing and running the facility. The county owns the building and its grounds and continues to maintain those. But those funds are insufficient to alone underwrite operating costs, Massaro said. That’s where facility rentals come in, and help pay the rest.
“All the money that the district gets from rentals goes into the operating costs for Carver, so Miss Robinson has whatever monies raised through any kind of events there,” Massaro said. “And it’s not a lot. It’s going to run maybe about a little under $10,000 a year. But that helps her because that money goes in for operational costs so she can do programming and activities. There’s not a budget for them in the school district, there’s not a budget for them in the county.”
With PAL using four of the five nights a week, it’ll “drastically” cut down Robinson’s operational revenue, especially now that the county wants the authority to set all rental fees. “I’m not agreeing with that,” Massaro said, “because originally it says we’re in total control of operations of the building, but obviously we’re not if they’re wanting to set the rental fees.”
The district uses an electronic system through which it had set its own fees. The county now wants to use that system, and change the fees. “If they’re going to just adopt the fees that we recommended, I can live with that. That makes sense, but I don’t know what their position is.” The fees have not been set, though officials on all sides have pledged not to set fees that would make it an obstacle for anyone to participate in activities at the Center. “That’s the only drawback that we have at this particular time.”
For months last year, there was resistance to a new joint agreement (technically referred to as an “interlocal agreement,” or ILA) between the various parties as the Carver community feared that PAL would displace existing programs, make it more expensive to participate, or give the Sheriff’s Office the semblance of a police presence at the center–all of which Sheriff Rick Staly repeatedly dismissed as unfounded fears. All that appeared to have been resolved by the time the County Commission approved the document in mid-December, but only for the school district to announce that it was yet again conducting its own rewrites. (See: “Approval of Carver Center’s Joint Agreement Is Upended as School Board Has Late-Breaking Changes.”) The Bunnell City Commission, meanwhile, has yet to approve the document, presumably as it awaits a final version from the district.
Carver Center ILA School Board rev 1-16-2024
Celia Pugliese says
Massaro is straight on point and she needs the community support given her expertise as former director of the Carver Center.
The county just utilized over 15 millions of these residents taxes in reserves, to protect it affluent costly water front residents houses and businesses, so the $97,000 a year to invest in the community youth looks like a sad drop in the bucket.
Pierre Tristan was right in September 2011 when he said: No money? Keep in mind that the $400,000 the county just dedicated to “economic development” (and will re-dedicate next year, and the year after that, in likely fatter sums but without ceremony) will be spent on very expensive salaries for a few individuals with very important titles who know all the economic development buzzwords and how to photoshop splendid reports that talk about economic development and summarize economic development conferences they will have attended in wonderful venues on per diems that could easily pay for a couple more of those entertainment centers at Carver every year. For an eighth of that $400,000 the county could also pay for weekend hours at the gym, providing a place for Bunnell’s youths who presumably have their future ahead of them.
Let’s preferably believe there’s no money. It’s easier. And there’s still plenty of applause.
https://flaglerlive.com/pt-carver-gym-rededication/#gsc.tab=0
Ed P says
Celia,
Just for the record, A1A washed out multiple times.
The 15 million is actually coming from the state. The county has to fund it short term waiting for reimbursement.
35 million from Feds
And I’m confident that not everyone that lives along the shore is affluent.