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The half-cent sales tax increase the county administration proposed to pay for the long-term management and preservation of Flagler County’s 18 miles of beaches died today after weeks of comatose uncertainty. Commissioners Kim Carney and Pam Richardson summarily killed it.
With that death went any chance Palm Coast and Bunnell will get some of the additional revenue the new tax would have generated. For Palm Coast, that would have amounted to $2.7 million in the first year, growing after that.
The 18-mile beach-management plan itself may not be dead. At least the sales tax’s executioners don’t think it is. Carney moved for the commission to workshop a deep dive into the management and funding plan with alternatives to the sales tax that would generate the $12 million a year necessary to pay for beach maintenance.
How that money will be generated without a sales tax increase is anybody’s guess. Commissioners will not raise the property or any other tax to generate it. The tourist tax doesn’t generate anywhere near the needed revenue beyond what it is already contributing to the plan. Barrier island residents are grumbling about a special taxing district that would generate only some of the revenue, and mainland residents have rejected a previous plan to tax them, when the sales tax was not on the table.
Carney insisted today that she was not rejecting the 18-mile plan, and spoke as if convinced that the necessary money can be generated to make it work. “I’m not workshopping this Andy anymore,” she told Andy Dance, the commission chair, apparently referring to the sales tax, only to ask for a workshop.
She asked the commission “to develop and implement a beach funding plan, including all 18 miles, and eliminating the half-cent sales tax,” in her words. “I would like this Board of County Commissioners to have a workshop totally dedicated to the beach Management slash funding plan, with a facilitator and subject matter experts.” And no sales tax on the table.
Commissioners Greg Hansen and Dance have had those deep dives. The $114 million plan County Administrator Heidi Petito crafted at their direction, including the sales tax increase, was the result. Flagler Beach embraced it, aware that it is its only hope of ensuring that the Army Corps of Engineers’ renourishment project can continue over the next decades, with the needed 50 percent local match every time sands are added to the shore.
Absent a sales tax increase, Hansen told Carney and Richardson, maintaining projects of that size are not possible, and cuts would be devastating.
“If you want her to figure out where that money is coming from, we have to give her some guidance on what to do,” Hansen told them, referring to Petito. “So we should tell her, you have the authority to come to us with a plan that cuts programs, cuts people, and eliminates jobs, because that’s what’s going to take, by the way.” Otherwise, he said, “she’s going to come back with the same numbers.”
If the administration were to generate the needed savings of several million dollars, however, those would be one-time savings that could not be replicated the following year. The plan, however, requires recurring revenue.
Four county commissioners had supported the plan in early March, including Carney and Richardson. That supermajority of four would have been the needed margin if the commission were to enact the new tax. But within weeks Carney, soon joined by Richardson, withdrew support.
They became staunch opponents of a new sales tax, saying they’d asked Petito for alternatives since March but got none (and offered none that would be viable). Today, they said they weren’t on the commission through earlier workshops when the basis for the plan was developed. They wanted their own. And they wanted a plan without a sales tax increase attached.
“No half-cent sales tax will be my stance today, and always,” Richardson said, pushing for a vote to that effect. Commission rules foreclose on a vote on items not on the agenda. Citing alternatives to the sales tax, Richardson thought gas-tax revenue a “viable” option. But it is not. Gas tax revenue may not be spent on initiatives not directly related to transportation.
Richardson today became the first commissioner to vote against the county’s emergency proclamation extending the state of local emergency due to dune erosion. The commission had unanimously renewed that proclamation since 2016. Richardson’s vote was materially meaningless, but symbolically shocking. (Monday evening, Richardson in a phone call said she had not meant to vote against the emergency proclamation, and had been intending to vote against the sales tax only, had that vote been called.)
Dance, who has tried to be the management plan’s Capt. Sully, chose not to battle the defeat of the sales tax so much as to take heart in the door Carney was opening.
“If we do a pause to be able to properly review what we’ve done, educate the public, and go back to looking at different funding options, all of this is fine. My goal is to get to an end game, like you said, that covers the 18 miles.” It will delay the initiative further, but he doesn’t mind as long as the 18-mile goal remains.
But Carney wouldn’t let him forget: “The funding option should not include a half cent sales tax,” Carney said.
“Got it,” Dance said.
Carney was bothered by the way her shifting stances have been portrayed on social media. “I’m ready to do my job, unlike what social media posts are saying, I am ready to make the tough decisions,” she said. “I don’t have what I want. If you would like me to tell you what that is in a workshop, I want the workshop to be totally dedicated to the beach, with an educational component for all of us, presented by subject matter experts.” She said County Administrator Heidi Petito can “participate,” but she wants engineering experts, and funding options. “And one of those options is not the half-cent sales tax.”
