If the 50-some of supporters of Ragga Surf Café who turned out for a Marineland Town Commission meeting Thursday evening to hear some hope, any hope, that the café can stave off eviction from its temporary home at the River to Sea Preserve on Dec. 31, they were disappointed. The eviction stands. The earliest Ragga may have a chance to reclaim its spot, if at all, may be March, judging from what County Administrator Heidi Petito estimated, though it would likely be longer.
What the supporters and some of the café’s co-owners saw was a duel of polite recriminations between Marineland and Flagler County officials as the two sides–the two supposed co-owners of the River to Sea Preserve–deflected responsibility for violating terms imposed by the state for management of the preserve, among them allowing Ragga Surf, a for-profit company, to operate rent-free at the preserve since early September.
What the supporters realized was that even Flagler County and Marineland, like Ragga Surf, are bit parts in a larger power play by the Florida Community Trust, the state agency that has ultimate control over the River to Sea Preserve, and that is threatening to revoke local ownership and take it back.
“We hear you,” Marineland Commissioner Angela Tenbroeck told the Ragga supporters. “We just need to be thinking about how we’re going to do this going forward so we do not lose the park. That’s the one thing we have.” Tenbroeck’s words summed it all up: Ragga Surf is no longer the priority.
For reasons no one understands, Florida Community Trust is overreacting, and doing so based on some of the mounds of misinformation that have obscured facts surrounding what amounts to a tempest in a teapot–and a well-meaning tempest at that. The Trust has also refused to engage in meaningful dialogue to resolve the immediate issue, or even be present in the room as local officials have scrambled to save the preserve’s ownership, while Ragga has mounted a campaign to save Ragga. (The Trust’s Melanie Orozco did not respond to a FlaglerLive email requesting comment.)
Ragga Surf is a beloved and wildly popular business that has come to generate a substantial part of Marineland’s GDP and not a small part of its bohemian identity. Its food truck, gift-shop trailer and ice-cream trailer had sat on land owned by Jim Jacoby, the Atlanta-based developer, until he evicted them at the end of August. Marineland and county government allowed Ragga Surf to move in at the preserve’s parking lot. The preserve is a 90-acre park framed by the Atlantic and Marineland’s dolphin-chiseled boardwalk to the east and the Intracoastal to the west. Ragga resumed its business.
No one got hurt. Nothing got demolished. No turtles, no egrets, no bobcats turned up dead on the beach, no vegetation died back from Ragga’s makeshift billet at the south end of the anyway-ghastly 75-car parking lot for the Preserve. No one complained: not visitors, not any of Marineland’s six or seven residents, not even Marineland and Flagler County, who extended Ragga Surf its “Temporary Use Permit” as a favor.
It was a misguided favor, a poorly thought-out favor, an unvetted favor, an unfair favor–what other private, for-profit business was afforded the same?–one of those favors birthed by a county commissioner overstepping his authority and eager-to-please administrators corner-cutting their way to a solution. But a favor nonetheless. There was nothing sinister about this. Only short-sighted sloppiness.
Ragga Surf itself did nothing wrong, other than slyly leaving uncorrected a false assumption by officials that it is a non-profit, which it is absolutely not, though the only way the county and the city could extend that favor was if it were a non-profit. In the end, all three parties–Marineland, the county, Ragga–colluded to pretend that it was, by using Ragga’s sister-company’s non-profit status as cover.
None of this would have mattered had Florida Community Trust, the effective owner of the preserve–since it can revoke its local ownership–found out. The trust was already upset with Flagler County and Marineland over concrete slabs that had sat for years in a preserve location the county intended for tourist cottages that never got built. The slabs never got removed, either. To the Trust, that put Flagler County and Marineland “out of compliance” with the management plan of the preserve.
“The slabs have always been the issue. All the other stuff had been secondary,” Janis Fleet, Marineland’s town planner, said.
“I get it that they want to see action, it has been 10 years,” Petito, the county administrator, said, obliquely blaming two of her predecessors–Craig Coffey, who wanted to build cottages there, and Jerry Cameron, who didn’t even think about them–for prolonging the problem, though she’s been at the helm for the last three and a half years.
When the Trust discovered that Ragga was doing business there–among many other unauthorized activities–it compounded the anger, and the Trust on Nov. 15 issued a letter ordering Flagler County to immediately kick Ragga off the land. Oddly, it did not do the same regarding a surfboard rental company that sits in the same parking lot, doing business. For profit. Without having ever gone before the County Commission for permission.
Since then, only the Trust could revoke that order. But since then, the Trust has all but refused to engage in meaningful conversation either with Marineland or Flagler County. Trust officials could have attended the Marineland meeting Thursday evening, either in person (as half a dozen Flagler County officials did) or by zoom. None did, leaving Marineland, the county and Ragga swinging in the wind–and swinging at each other: left without any means of immediately addressing the impending eviction, Marineland and county officials turned on each other, and that’s what Ragga’s supporters saw unfold for the firs half hour of Thursday’s meeting until Dennis Bayer, the Marineland attorney, came up with a reasonable compromise.
But before then, Petito and Marineland’s Tenbroeck and Fleet exchanged sharp, snippy words over who and why certain things did or did not not get reported to the state in compliance with the management plan.
“It seems to me, just me, that there is, there was some other information given that wasn’t a full picture,” Tenbroeck said. “It seems as though that there was someone talking outside of our team, meaning our collective team.”
“I don’t disagree with you, I just think that it’s hard addressing an issue that hasn’t been presented to me,” Petito said.
“That is that is something that I I don’t think we should air out here. I think that’s something for you to internally work on,” Tenbroeck said. ” I don’t think there’s anybody at fault here, so to speak.”
It was a Cool Hand Luke realization all officials agreed on, all of them sounding like Stroher Martin’s Captain: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” They could have also added with the Captain that “some men you just can’t reach,” The Man in this case being Florida Community Trust, whose absence had the same effect as the Captain’s truncheon.
Dennis Bayer, the town attorney who has the advantage of having worked for years with almost all local parties involved, proposed that a committee be stood up, involving himself, Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan, Assistant County Administrator Jorge Salinas, the county’s land manager and Marineland’s Fleet to draft a memorandum of understanding between the two governments that will more clearly define roles and responsibilities and prevent further such breakdowns. The document will be disseminated publicly before Marineland’s Jan. 16 meeting of the town’s Community Redevelopment Agency (or CRA, a sub-government entity that involves the same commissioners), where it would be discussed and presumably approved by the town and the county.
Everyone agreed, grateful for any kind of breakthrough. The two sides also agreed that a county staffer would from here on accompany County Commissioner Greg Hansen, the liaison at Marineland’s quarterly CRA meetings. It was Hansen’s request to Petito in August that triggered the hurried favor for Ragga, a request that originated in the unvetted chatter of a Marineland CRA meeting.
That done, all the county administration’s officials, who’d sat in the first of three rows of chairs in front of the commission, filed out and the town commission continued its more routine business, until 90 minutes into the meeting, when several of Ragga Surf’s supporters, who’d waited their turn, addressed the panel with more pleas to please do something.
“These are people you want to help, and it’s Christmas time, so whatever you can do, I appreciate you. You’ve tried, but we could do more while these ordinances are going through,” Carol North told the commissioners.
“Yes, Ragga is a bigger draw to this community than my damn sea turtle hospital,” Catherine Eastman of Whitney Laboratory’s Sea Turtle Hospital said. “This, I know is not up to you guys. Those that could extend their temporary use agreement was in this front row and walked out the door. So hopefully you guys can share a message and say, Hey, extend that temporary use agreement while everybody works this stuff out.”
But it’s not up to the county officials any more than it is up to the Marineland officials to extend that use agreement. The state has made that clear. It’s the only thing it’s made clear. As far as local officials are concerned, the immediate urgency is not Ragga Surf. It’s the removal of those concrete slabs once meant for cottages. Petito said that between the securing of contractors, asbestos testing and permits, it could take weeks. No agreement of any kind, no request for proposals affording any concession organization–not just Ragga–the chance to do business at the preserve could be issued until those slabs are removed. Petito mentioned March as the earliest date when all of that would be done, but an RFP itself takes a few months to go through its regulatory steps, so March may be overly optimistic, and even then, nothing says Ragga would emerge the winner of the bid.
And there was one voice of dissent, distinct as an ascending lark’s. “They’re wonderful people. The experience is wonderful, but I don’t care,” Veronica Peterson told the commission. “I care about River to Sea. I care about that park, the wildlife within that park. I’m an avid bird-watcher. I’m there two to three times a day, walking those trails. And while I absolutely want them to be able to have the opportunity to stay where they are, I am urging you to make certain that you do whatever you can to ensure that we don’t lose that park.”
Peterson added: “I absolutely want us to be able to maintain the fantastic opportunities for all of the culture, everything going on there, but don’t let us lose this side of A1A also. Because we all want to be supportive. We do. We want to be supportive, but there’s a lot of creatures over here that do not have a voice. They can’t sign the petition with 8,500 signatures. They can’t do so much. They can’t go on social media and tell everybody, let’s save, let’s save. They just have you. And I’m asking you to remember that.”
County Administrator Heidi Petito Friday evening provided the following statement:
I am writing to address the characterization of last night’s meeting with the Town of Marineland in your recent Flagler Live article. Your report described the meeting as a setting of verbal attacks, deflections, and accusations. However, this depiction does not accurately reflect the tone or content of our discussion.
The meeting focused on addressing the concerns that Florida Communities Trust (FCT) has with the River to Sea Preserve. It was apparent that there was a difference in the amount of information available to participants, which stemmed from prior gaps in communication. For example, at the start of the meeting the town misstated that the foundations for the cottages were from 2004, it was correct by the county that they were from 2014. Another comment was made, something to the effect, that it was so long ago, its likely none of us were around. Which is why I began providing the history of this project starting under Craig and it being on hold after he left, to Jerry starting and having other, more pressing issues to deal with (i.e., hurricanes, Sheriff’s Operation Center, etc.), to me being in this position for three years, our attempt to get grant funding for construction, however we were unsuccessful, and therefore we will move forward with removing the slabs. My statement was to provide clarity and context as to what has transpired, because it was apparent the information wasn’t known to everyone in attendance. It was not said to deflect and blame prior administration, and to suggest otherwise is just wrong. It appears that the former Mayor may have some additional information that wasn’t made available to us prior to the meeting, which is why I stated that I can only address the issues that I know about from the FCT correspondence. And that if she had some additional information that she was willing to share, then to please send it. Despite this, the discussion remained professional and civil, with all participants engaged respectfully, focusing on finding constructive solutions to the River to Sea Preserve. At no point did the conversation devolve into verbal attacks or unproductive behavior.
It is important to us that the public has an accurate understanding of our efforts and the way we conduct ourselves. We welcome coverage of our work and remain committed to maintaining transparency and professionalism in all proceedings.
I believe that we have established a good plan moving forward, with staff’s attendance at the regular town CRA meetings, the development of an agreement (MOU & ILA) between the town and county, and an update to our management plan with FCT. Staff and I attended a call with FCT today and we will have a joint follow-up phone call with FCT and Marineland in January, along with our letter of intent outlining our path moving forward.
