The three local governments and one agency that each have a role in funding or running the Carver Center in South Bunnell have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against them filed by what they call a “disgruntled citizen” who doesn’t like the Flagler County Sheriff’s Police Athletic League’s involvement at the center, and who they say has no standing to sue.
The Flagler County School Board, the County Commission, the Bunnell City Commission and the Flagler County Sheriff earlier this year approved a rewrite of the joint agreement, called an “interlocal agreement,” controlling the governance of the Carver Center, also known as Carver Gym. The 2011 agreement did not include the sheriff or Bunnell.
The four governments, with the Carver Center’s advisory board and some community members, including Eric Josey, worked on the agreement for the better part of a year. Most of the meetings were administrative, behind closed doors, but the three government boards debated and approved the joint agreement in several open sessions, especially at the School Board. (See the agreement here.)
The county pays the lion’s share of the operation ($127,000) and maintains the building. The school district staffs it, and the sheriff and Bunnell each contribute $10,000. The district organizes most of the programming. PAL has its own carve-out of time for programming and tournaments, with the understanding that it may not deny participation to anyone who doesn’t have an ability to pay.
PAL’s inclusion is new. It was controversial. South Bunnell residents feared it would push out existing programs while giving the Sheriff’s Office an overbroad police presence, all of which the Sheriff’s Office and the other governments denied. PAL’s inclusion is a means of more effectively sustaining programs at the center, they argued, since it generates its own revenue and benefits from donations of its own.
Josey, a frequent if spaghetti-throwing litigant–his strategy tends to favor throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks; little usually does other than stains–filed suit a month ago against the three governments and the sheriff, claiming they developed the agreement in secret (even though Josey was part of many of the closed-door meetings) and that the sheriff had no authority or right to bring in PAL, or PAL to operate at the gym. (PAL is a non-profit arm of the Sheriff’s Office, not unlike the Education Foundation, the non-profit arm of the school district. But PAL is managed exclusively by employees of the Sheriff’s Office.)
He did not explain why, other than to state that it was improper. He did not have objections to other agencies and non-profits that operate at the gym, though only Pal has its own carve-out of floor time at the gym and essentially now operates the gym jointly with the district.
Josey claims the joint agreement violates state law’s provision covering such agreements because PAL is a private entity that cannot in and of itself be part of the agreement. The governments find Josey’s claim “wholly without merit,” as “nothing in the law prohibits the Interlocal Agreement.”
“Hypothetically, the County could lawfully assign space in the Carver Center to the School Board and Sheriff to serve the public purpose of providing youth athletic and academic support services without a written agreement,” the government’s motion states. “Likewise, the City could
contribute funding to the Carver Center without a written agreement. Moreover, as a threshold issue, Josey lacks standing to initiate this cause of action.”
For an individual to have “standing” to sue, the individual must show direct injury or harm to himself or herself now or in the future, and that there’s a way to prevent, or correct, that injury. Josey is a former member of the local branch of the NAACP, but has not been a member there for two years. He lives in Palm Coast. He is a local taxpayer, but the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that that’s not enough to show standing absent direct injury. Josey has also not shown any wrong to himself that may be corrected.
Based on the standing factor alone, the lawsuit should be dismissed, the governments argue. But the motion to dismiss goes on to address other factors, not least of them Josey’s “outlandish” reading of state law and huis understanding of the Constitution. (Josey is a retired cop.)
Josey, the motion states, “makes other outlandish claims which do not form the basis of any legal claim or cause of action, but which belie Josey’s true motivation for bringing the suit.” Those motivations have more to do with animus toward the Sheriff’s Office than with any specific harms resulting from the joint agreement, and appear to echo recurring but speculative, conspiratorial or misguided complaints made by a few members of the public to local government boards, or disseminated on social media.
In examples the motion cited, Josey claimed the joint agreement has “the intended purpose of marginalizing and gentrifying Bunnell’s Black community in exchange for FSPAL’s undisclosed annual funding contribution,” and that the governments “surreptitious plan to deprive the Bunnell’s Indigenous Black community of their historical facility.”
The Carver Center, according to a history of the facility by amateur local historian Randy Jaye, is what remains of what had been Bunnell’s George Washington Carver High School, a Blacks-only high school in segregation days. It closed as a school in 1974, when students were integrated in one high school. Its gym remained and became a focal point of the community as a community and activity center.
“It is puzzling why Josey has made such absurd allegations, but even assuming Josey’s assertions are genuinely felt, a general disagreement with the [governments’] decision to allow the Sheriff to provide athletic programs to the students in a County-owned building is within their lawful discretion. Josey has not raised any legally cognizable claim upon which this Court may act.”
The civil lawsuit is before Circuit Judge Chris France. The response was filed by all three governments and the Sheriff’s Office, and substantially written by Sean Moylan, the assistant county attorney. No hearing has been scheduled. The suit has no bearing on ongoing activities at the Carver Center.
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