Marineland has a new regime. It’s an unusual one, but not an unprecedented one.
Joseph “Buddy” Pinder last week was sworn in as the town commission’s third commissioner, joining Dewey Dew and Jessica Finch and returning the panel to full occupancy since Angela TenBroeck was forced to resign in February after she lost her residency following an inexplicable eviction.
She lived in the mobile homes on land owned by Jim Jacoby, the developer who owns most of the privately held acreage in Marineland, and who is floating a 275-home development for the town that somehow neither the town planner nor the town attorney nor the town commissioners have heard of, though it was presented to the Matanzas Shores Homeowner Association this month.
Pinder, who is Jacoby’s nephew, was elected to the commission in the Sept. 2 election. Pinder won 100 percent of the vote. Two votes were cast, one by Pinder, one by Finch. We know that because there are only three registered voters in town–the three commissioners–and Dew said he did not vote.
Pinder and Finch are in an intimate relationship. They live together in Marineland, in the same compound from where TenBroeck was evicted. They are both former mayors elsewhere with significant electoral experience, she in Welaka, he in Islamorada.
The town commission holds its annual organizational meeting every September after the vote. Shortly after Pinder was sworn in, Finch nominated him for mayor in place of Dew, who had filled that role since the death of Mayor Gary Inks in May. Pinder was elected mayor by a 2-1 vote, with Dew opposed.
In a show of magnanimity, Finch–whom Dew had appointed to the commission during a contentious meeting in May–nominated Dew for vice mayor, the role he had held before Inks’s death. That vote was 3-0.
In essence, the couple’s two votes elected Pinder and made him mayor. Dew was visibly bothered by the new dynamic during the meeting, expressing that bother with his decision to vote against Pinder’s nomination for mayor. He had another reason to be bothered.
“I find it disappointing that after I appointed Jessica Finch as Vice Mayor, she orchestrated a vote to install her companion as mayor following his commissioner appointment,” he said in a statement to FlaglerLive. “Despite this, I support the new Mayor and commission and am ready to move forward collectively to do what’s right for our community. I remain confident in my abilities and contributions through healthcare advocacy and international trade missions, which have strengthened Marineland’s global and local impact.”
Finch didn’t think it would have been appropriate to let her decisions be influenced by any sense of allegiance–to Dew or to Pinder. “If I just did something as payback because he appointed me, that’s more telling than me appointing the person I thought would do the best job,” Finch said. “I don’t see government that way. It would be more wrong for me to do that because I felt that I owed him.” She said she nominated Pinder because of his experience, and because she herself was not in a position to take on the mayorship right now, with work commitments.
It’s rare that couples serve on the same elected board. It’s not unheard of, especially in Flagler County and Marineland. When Dennis Bayer started as the town attorney in Marineland in the late 1990s, when it consisted of five members, there were two married couples on the commission. Shawn and Jan Byrnes, married 34 years at the time, were both elected to the three-member East Flagler Mosquito Control District board in 2008.
But a couple getting elected to the same board in an election of 34,000 ballots cast is different than a couple serving together on a board after an election when the couple’s votes were the only ones cast. While perfectly legal, the situation is still unprecedented, and it underscores the strange status of a town hanging to its designation as a town by a thread and a $192,000 budget overwhelmingly dependent on one landowner’s property tax revenue.
For all the recent drama and unsettled atmosphere in and around the town commission, Marineland now has eight years of cumulative electoral experience between Finch and Pinder, nine including Dew, and a collection of earnest, sharp and unquestionably engaged commissioners, none of whom appear interested in just warming a seat. They may be actors in a strange play, but the strangeness is not of their making, willing actors though they are in Marineland’s insistence on pretending to be a town.
The state’s nepotism law does not prohibit relatives from serving on the same elected board, and it does not consider cohabiting couples who are not married relatives. But it places limits. “A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, or advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a position in the agency in which the official is serving or over which the official exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official,” the law states.
Finch said she researched the legalities of serving on a board with Pinder and contacted Dennis Bayer, the town attorney.
“He’s not going to be my boss, he’s already elected, and one of us is going to be in that role, so to take away my right to nominate him doesn’t seem right,” Finch said of Pinder. Walking into the Sept. 18 meeting, she was not sure what she was going to do just yet, and she was surprised hers was the only nomination. She expected either Pinder or Dew to make a nomination of their own. She sees how her nomination can look odd.
“Not being a relative was one thing, but I can certainly see that the relationship is similar, although the state doesn’t see it as similar,” Finch said. She always wants to avoid improprieties, even perceived improprieties. “I just figured: I want the best person for the jo. I like Mr Dew. I don’t have an issue with Mr Dew, except I don’t think he has the experience as much as Mr. Pinder has the experience, and I want the town to be in good hands. I didn’t actually want to take anything away from Mr. Dew, but here we are.”
Finch had been a commissioner and mayor of Welaka for several years, and recalled how she had not been ready to be mayor in the first year. Finch had rapidly shown her independence on the commission since May–and a naturally assertive but not confrontational leadership style–as when, last month, Dew may have been surprised when she did not support voting for a sister-city idea Dew proposed. Finch opposed a vote because nothing had been presented in writing that she could study first.
Pinder, the former mayor of Islamorada in the Keys and a former member of the board of directors of the Florida League of Mayors, sees no issue with the current dynamics. “She was put on the council way before me, and I was duly elected,” he said of Finch, whom he referred to as his girlfriend.
“Mr. Inks had bugged me for three months to get on council and I didn’t want to do it,” Pinder said. But there would not have been a full council had he not decided to stand for the Sept. 2 election. “I am not her boss, and she’s not my boss,” he said. “This is about accountability, this is about doing what’s right for the public, and this is transparency.”
He said in a lengthy interview that he had discussed his participation on the town commission alongside Finch with Bayer and Al Hadeed, the just-retired Flagler County attorney, whom Pinder considers a friend.
“He did speak to me and Dennis Bayer around the same time period and actually Dennis and I spoke briefly,” Hadeed said, “and I simply told him what the law was as I understood it, and Dennis concurred. I don’t know whether the two of us opining in that fashion led him to do whatever he did. I did tell him that there is sunshine law implications, that he cannot discuss anything that might reasonably appear on the town agenda.” He should not do so with Finch outside of public meetings, that is. “But he actually was very aware of those things. He is very knowledgeable of local government matters.”
Bayer said there may be matters on the commission’s agenda that could require one or another member of the commission to abstain from voting, though he couldn’t think of any. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” Bayer said.
At the end of last week’s meeting, after Pinder was appointed mayor, Marineland Marina Dockmaster Eric Ziecheck thanked Dew for stepping in as mayor after Inks died. “It was hard transferring from the situation. So Gary definitely made us all think hard about what we’re trying to do,” Ziecheck. Town Manager Suzanne Dixon wanted to speak similarly to Finch, who she said “came in at a very difficult time, and it has not been an easy road to hoe, the last seven weeks.”
