- April 25, 2024
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Flagler Beach’s city commission voted unanimously Monday to approve the city’s 2014-2015 budget, and voted 3-1, with Commission Chairwoman Kim Carney as the sole dissenting vote, to approve the city’s 2014-2015 millage rate at the rollback rate of 5.0573 mills. Commissioner Joy McGrew did not attend the meeting.
Carney has wrangled with the rest of the commission over the planned purchase of a $600,000 fire truck called a quint, and the Monday meeting was the latest, but will not be the last, commission meeting concerning the contentious truck purchase, which inspired a resident petition opposing it and led Commissioner Steve Settle to add an agenda item to the upcoming Sept. 25 commission meeting calling for Carney’s removal as commission chairwoman.
Flagler Beach Mayor Linda Provencher said at the meeting that she supported the commission’s vote of approval for the budget, but is wary of the fire truck, a pumper-ladder hybrid called a “quint.” But, she said, that money could be set aside in the budget now and reallocated later if the commission decides against the purchase.
“I have no trouble passing the budget, I just hope we don’t go out and buy this truck tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable, and I won’t sign the check for $600,000 right now. …With this kind of money, we could not only get another truck, we could fix up the ladder truck and add an employee.” The $600,000 for the truck would be pulled from an infrastructure surcharge account.
Provencher was also not pleased to learn Monday, she said, that a $50,000 figure that had appeared in presentations about the truck purchase as the amount city staff expects to receive by trading in an old fire truck is only a rough estimate, and that the figure could be as little as $800 if the city’s trade-in truck is scrapped.
“You’re now telling me the $50,000 we were going to get for the trade-in, we may not get that. That’s huge,” she said to City Manager Bruce Campbell. “To find out that the $50,000 that’s been in every single presentation or the trade-in is now not?”
“I don’t know that,” Campbell said.
“Well, that’s the thing, Bruce, we don’t know,” Provencher said. “So how can we budget for something we don’t know?”
“What crystal ball do I have to say exactly what we’re — “
“— Then why was it put in every presentation?” Provencher said. “So we went with the highest? $50,000?”
“Hey, I’m not going to argue with you,” Cambell said.
“Well, I think you might want to, because I don’t understand how $50,000 now it could be $800? Is that what you said?” Provencher said.
“If they scrap it,” Carney said.
Settle asked Campbell if the city was doing anything differently in this purchase than it does in purchases for other city vehicles. Campbell said it was not, and that the city often trades in old vehicles when buying new ones.But, he said, “To jump to conclusions all of a sudden that we’re not going to get or we are going to get — I don’t have the answer yet. We’re working on it. We’re going to get a quotation, it’ll be part of the purchase order, and that’s what it will be. …We have to have to make some estimate in terms of putting this thing together, but until you do the actual purchase order, and you strike the deal with the supplier or whoever it ends up being the one that would take the tower truck, I mean it’s a forecast.”
Several residents spoke against the truck purchase, including Arthur Woosley, who’d helped organized the petition drive and said the quint should not be staffed with two people, and Rick Belheumer, another truck purchase opponent, who said the quint, made by the Rosenbauer corporation, wouldn’t be able to be serviced anywhere nearby.
Called up to the podium by Campbell to respond, Fire Captain Bobby Pace said, “There is a mobile technician that would come to the fire department at any given time if there’s an issue with that truck. We’re not in a position where we would not be receiving repairs when needed.” For heavier work, he said, the company would have the work “farmed out.”
Another firefighter said that any of the trucks the department could get recommend more than two firefighters, but that of the options, the quint best fits the department’s needs.
The City Commission’s next meeting will be Thursday, Sept. 25. Agenda item 15 for that meeting, requested by Settle, is “Discussion and possible action to consider a motion to vacate the Chair of the Commission and appoint a Chairman Pro-Tem for the duration of the current session of the City Commission.”
Carney, speaking after the meeting, said she didn’t know why Settle had challenged her position as chairwoman, and called the motion “unprecedented.”
Settle said in an interview that he was one of the three votes that gave the chairmanship to Carney and that he no longer supports her in that position.
“I just believe it’s become too violent; it’s become too nasty and something’s got to give,” he said. “The norm for a commission changing their minds, which we can do at any time, is the vice chair” — that would be Commissioner Marshall Shupe — “normally steps up and takes over for the duration of the session.”
Carney, the sole voice on the commission against the truck purchase, laid out laid out her case against the quint in a lengthy PowerPoint presentation at an Aug, 18 commission meeting.
Settle said he’d prefer to be able to just talk the issues among his fellow commissioners, but Florida’s open government laws prohibit such private conversations between elected officials discussing government business.
“I wish I could just pick up the phone and talk to my colleagues and say, ‘Hey, I think we’ve got a problem, what can we do about this,’” Settle said. “In the state of Florida you can’t do that. What we’re doing is the only possible way I can bring this up and discuss it. …So we’ll talk about it, get over it. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But that’s to me not as important as talking about the problem and getting hopefully to the point where this kind of stuff won’t happen again.”
