- May 4, 2024
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Flagler Beach may file a state challenge to Flagler County over the county’s approval of boat manufacturer’s Sea Ray’s planned parking lot.
While the approval the county granted Sea Ray involves a zoning change for a parking lot, it isn’t the lot, per se, that concerns the city of Flagler Beach or the residents who’ve spoken against the lot at numerous government meetings.
The concern is that by building the lot — which would be on land south of the Sea Ray plant and not yet owned by the boat company — Sea Ray would free up space on its existing industrial-zoned property and then use that to expand, increasing emissions of potentially harmful chemicals, including styrene. The plant was recently granted a state permit to almost double its emissions.
“I don’t really care if Sea Ray needs a parking lot or doesn’t need a parking lot; it’s the reason they need a parking lot that I’m concerned about,” Commissioner Jane Mealy, who proposed the challenge and lives on a road abutting the plant, said at a July 23 City Commission meeting. “Take a bike ride on Lambert (Avenue) … or anywhere north of (State Road) 100, and you can smell the styrene.”
Sea Ray has said it needs a lot because boat molds for its yachts — which are up to 65 feet long — are stored in its current employee parking lot. That forces employees to park along the entrance road and walk in, sometimes quite a distance, and, for some shifts, in the dark.
The County Commission approved the zoning change that would allow the lot — from low-density residential and commercial to high-intensity commercial — at a meeting Monday, July 20.
At its meeting July 23, the Flagler Beach City Commission voted unanimously to have its attorney meet with staff to see if the city would have standing to bring a case against the county, and whether it would have a chance of winning.
The city doesn’t have much time: It would have to file the case within 30 days of the county decision.
The city attorney, Drew Smith, will investigate — with the assistance of another attorney, if needed — and report back to the commission at a special meeting Aug. 6.
Mealy said other options — including addressing the county commission directly in public meetings — hadn’t worked.
“(Commissioner) Kim (Carney) and I both represented the city … and it was like we weren’t speaking; nobody was listening,” Mealy said. “It’s still ‘just a parking lot.’ So the only step we had left was to file a challenge.”
She said she’d tried to set up meetings with Sea Ray, and with the county, before the County Commission vote.
“We’ve asked to talk with Sea Ray ... to see if there wasn’t some compromise, and those meetings never happened; we asked to meet with county staff and those meetings didn’t happen,” she said. “I was actually accused of being a good steward of the city of Flagler Beach like that was a bad thing.”
City Commissioner Joy McGrew warned that there could be consequences to challenging the county. She said she probably wouldn’t vote for the challenge because of “the depth of damage something like this could create between us and the county for future working relationships.”
“I just don’t know that we’ve really thought of the long-range effect of getting the city involved and fighting and possibly losing, and having to pay who knows how much money,” she said.
Mealy said she hoped the city wouldn’t have to worry about retribution from the county.
“I would like to think we have grownups in the county,” she said. “But if you read, over there, what our mission statement is, this whole project flies in the face of most of those things.”
She’d read the mission statement at the County Commission meeting, before its unanimous vote to in favor of Sea Ray: “Preserve our environment as a community asset, maintain our Old Florida heritage and small–town charm, provide a safe, healthy and clean environment, promote and support eco-tourism through our natural resources, provide opportunities for education, culture and recreation and support the development of local business to provide services to residents.”
All of that, she said, was incompatible with the expansion of a large manufacturing plant spewing increased amounts of pollutants into the air.
Flagler Beach Mayor Linda Provencher asked if the city had asked the county about pushing Sea Ray to install filters to lessen its emissions.
“We would be told it had nothing whatsoever to do with the application,” Mealy replied.
There was little discussion by county commissioners at the county meeting of Mealy and Carney’s pollution concerns: County staff had emphasized before the vote that the Sea Ray application on the agenda had nothing to do, directly, with pollution. On paper, it’s a simple zoning change application to permit a parking lot.
“They don’t care what we do. It’s just very, very obvious that they don’t,” Carney said at the Flagler Beach meeting. “They believe that they can do this.”
Commissioner Marshall Shupe said he’d gone to the Sea Ray plant at about 6:10 a.m.
“I drove in there this morning; the guard let me through,” he said, “I couldn’t find a parking spot if I wanted to. … They’re on the hill, they’re in the corners,” and in some places, he said, double-parked. “They need a parking lot. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
Shupe doubted that the massive company was concealing plans for major expansion. “I would be very offended if they were lying through their teeth to us, and I don’t think that they are,” he said.
Mealy replied that she didn’t care whether they needed a lot, but was concerned about why they needed a lot.
She said when the city has repeatedly asked Sea Ray about controlling its emissions, “We’ve been told by Sea Ray, ‘Yeah, we’re working on it. Yeah, we’re working on it.’ Well, they’re not.”
Carney asked Shupe if he realized the plant didn’t have to abide by the county’s odor ordinance. It had been grandfathered in when the ordinance was passed.
Shupe replied that he had not known that.
Carney said she had asked the county at the County Commission meeting to add a provision requiring the plant to abide by the ordinance to the zoning change approval, and “they just blatantly refused to do it.”
Provencher said that most of the plant’s opponents seemed to come from Lambert Avenue, the street that runs next to it. Those residents have concerns beyond pollution: As Lambert resident Roseanne Stocker said in public meetings, they’d bought their homes when the land Sea Ray built on was marshland zoned conservation and residential, and now they may be looking at a parking lot which could affect their quality of life, and possibly their home values.
“Here’s my question,” Provencher said. “There is another development and community just to the north. How many of those people have gone to the county over these last meetings and taken a stance like we have?”
“I have,” one person shouted from the audience.
“There are,” Carney said.
“OK, OK.” McGrew said. “Forgive me, but there are how many people that live in Plantation, Grandview, all of those, that whole development north of that? When the wind blows from the south to the north, how many of those people call up their county, their city commissioners and say, ‘I have a problem with the styrene smell’? Does anybody know the answer to that?
“It doesn’t matter, Joy, if they smell it or not,” Carney said.
“Sure it does, because that’s what you all are talking about, the smell,” McGrew said. “That’s exactly what you said, ‘North of (S.R.) 100, or east of Colbert.’ I mean, you’re talking about the smell.”
“Well the only way you control it is through the smell ordinance, because they’re not going to control it any other way,” Carney said.
“I don’t disagree with that,” McGrew said.
“They don’t have to monitor, they don’t have to do any of it,” Carney said.
“I don’t disagree with that,” McGrew said. “My question to you was: Out of all the other communities and all the other people that live in the same vicinity that all —
“Oh, Joy, it’s just like saying that everybody that shows up to the golf course (meetings), everybody else doesn’t care because they don’t’ show up. That’s not true!”
Commission Chairman Steve Settle asked if there wasn’t a clause in the county’s comprehensive plan that states that the county would consult neighboring jurisdictions before taking action.
Smith replied that there was.
Settle said the county hadn’t done that.
“Based on that we made numerous requests to the county to sit down to air and discuss some of our problems. Every time we talked to the county, we were basically ignored, is that correct? So we’re in a position right now where we either stand up for Flagler Beach city government or we do nothing and let somebody get away with something.”
“That’s a good synopsis,” Mealy said.
“I think I’ve made up my mind,” Settle said.
Of ten people who spoke during the meeting’s public comment period, eight spoke against the Sea Ray plan, and many urged the city to file a state challenge. One man suggested the city “Sic the feds on ‘em,” by filing a challenge under the federal Clean Air Act.
“I am thoroughly disgusted by the way this was handled by Flagler County,” one Flagler Beach resident said. “They are only interested in jobs at any cost, and have no concern for our environment, and the pollutants that Sea Ray continues to emit into our air.” She said that the new parking lot would “free up space on their current footprint so when needed, production can increase” without approval from local or state government.
Another woman said she’d bought a home on Lambert a year ago, and then “Watched the county ignore us and do whatever Sea Ray has asked for.”
Stocker said that the day of the city meeting, she couldn’t enjoy her property because the smell was so bad, but she also said that she agreed with attorney Drew Smith’s suggestion that the city investigate whether it had standing to challenge, and a chance of winning, before rushing into anything.
“I don’t think there’s a person in this room or in this city that wants the city of Flagler Beach to mount a challenge that they don’t have reasonable feeling that they could win,” she said. But, she said, “The county has no intention, as they have clearly show, of controlling the odors, because this was their golden opportunity to do that, and negotiate, and they did not. … This is a big business. This is the largest manufacturer of boats in the Unites States abutting little Flagler Beach. They are not going to do this unless they’re forced to, and we have nowhere else to go, except to you guys.” She mentioned that Sea Ray, as Sea Ray Operations Manager Craig Wall said at County Commission meetings, has closed down numerous factories elsewhere and brought that production to Flagler County.
Leah Stokes, another city resident, disagreed. “What you’re challenging … is exactly what’s already been approved,” she said. “It’s a fait accompli, and you’ve already spent I have no idea how much money of our city staff time, with our planner, our attorney, our manager, our administrative staff, and now you’re talking about hiring another attorney for the city to challenge something that is about a parking lot?”
If commissioners have a problem with the plant's emissions, Stokes said, “I respect that. … That’s a totally separate issue than what you’re talking about tonight. You’re voting on challenging something that is about building a parking lot. And commissioner Shupe, I thank you for going to Sea Ray because I don’t know if anybody else has. I went there, and I saw the same thing that you saw. And they need a freaking parking lot. … You’re using my money and my taxpayer dollars to fight for eight people who live on Lambert."
Flagler Chamber President Rebecca DeLorenzo said Sea Ray’s request for a zoning change “is reasonable and straightforward, and has nothing to do with increased emissions,” and asked the city not to challenge the county.
The city commission voted unanimously to have Smith research the issue of the city's standing for a state challenge and report back to the commission.
It voted 4-1, with McGrew dissenting, to authorize City Manager Bruce Campbell to hire an additional attorney, Jim Morris, to assist Smith if needed.
Smith will report back to the commission at a special meeting at 2:05 p.m. August 6.
