- April 26, 2024
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The Florida Agricultural Museum will get a bit more time to work through financial issues that threatened to close the museum, or force it to sell off road-front property to stay open.
The Flagler County Commission in an October special meeting voted to lease the property for $1 a month for 90 days to allow the county’s insurance company to cover the Agricultural Museum, which was losing its own insurance and would be unable to allow its most profitable activities — equestrian — to continue without coverage.
At a County Commission meeting Jan. 9, commissioners voted to extend that ease an additional 60 days as the county, the museum board and the state work out a long-term solution.
The county had budgeted about $75,000 for the expense of the museum’s upkeep during the interim period, and has spent about $33,000 or $34,000, County Administrator Craig Coffey said at the meeting.
“Really the main expense coming out of it is salaries that we’re dealing with right now,” Coffey said at the meeting. The county has not transferred over the museum’s utility or light bills, he said.
Coffey said that he planned to bring the County Commission a “concept outline, at the 30,000-foot level,” for a long-term plan for the museum, with a new direction.
The plan would have the museum employees become employees of the museum and not the county, and would maintain “a clearer line of separation” between the museum and the county, Coffey said. The museum would remain the state museum, and would own its own property.
Commissioner Nate McLaughlin, who’d voted against the 90-day arrangement in October, said he’d met with Department of Agriculture officials about the issue, and the county has the state’s support.
“There’s an agreement coming up that we’re going to be able to keep the museum here in Flagler County, and it will remain an expense of the state,” he said. “We’ll sponsor it as we have historically, they’ll just have a few less assets land-wise than they have. We’re looking at an opportunity to expand the size of the Princess Place with some of that surrounding property. … I’m encouraged, a little more encouraged, than you might have seen at the special meeting that we had.”
