NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The Volusia County Council needs to carefully weigh the motives of municipal leaders before committing to new CRA districts and that starts with an honest assessment of what taxpayer money has been spent on and continues to be doled out for -- primarily bars and alcohol-fueled street parties. It's one thing for the county to put off a decision on funding mechanisms for how CRA monies are to be disbursed, it's another to ignore the abuses that have become so prevalent.
There is no greater example of such abuse than the $60,000 in Community Redevelopment Agency funds granted by the New Smyrna Beach City Commission acting as the CRA authority for the remodeling of Trader's Pub on Flagler Avenue, operated by Dave Fernandez, the boyhood friend of Mayor Adam Barringer.
The mayor, along with Commissioners Judy Reiker, Jack Grasty and then-Commissioners Jim Hathaway and Lynne Plaskette, approved the expenditure prior to the November elections. New Smyrna Beach has not explained how this large expenditure addresses blight on a street that is the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean.
And as if that weren't enough abuse, consider the city has provided more than a quarter million bucks to the Flagler Merchants Association in the last three years alone to fund alcohol-driven street parties that cater to the bars. These same bars generate a lot of police activity. Fernandez himself is no stranger to law enforcement with nearly a dozen arrests or complaint affidavits of his own forwarded to the State Attorney's Office.
In fact, while awaiting approval on his CRA application, Fernandez was mired in legal troubles stemming from an alleged beating of a man that led to him reneging on a pre-trial intervention agreement and the charges ultimately being dismissed. It is these kinds of abuses that County Council Chair Jason Davis and elected members Deb Denys, Joshua Wagner, Joyce Cusack, Pat Patterson, Doug Daniels and Pat Northey need to start discussing openly and frankly, if the public is to be sold on new CRAs, especially with big ticket items like Sunrail.
County Manager Jim Dinneen carefully crafted new and restrictive guidelines intended top cut out these abuses and excesses. Now what?
So why are municipal leaders resisting? Because in the case of New Smyrna Beach, they won't be able to take care of their friends.
In Southeast Volusia, a finite group of elected and government officials, business and community leaders though the SEV chamber created an intricate network where they benefitted from taxpayer monies rom the CRA, the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority, indigent care monies from the SEV Hospital Authority as well as county ECHO grants.
The abuses created a scandal, which remains in limbo with the firing of SEV Director Nicole Carni, whose ascendency to the top post two years ago has yet to result in the county being made whole with alleged misappropriation of monies that forced Dinneen and his staff to take over the authority until last year's hiring of Tim Hamby.
This network of insiders has provided tens of thousands of dollars for such critical blight issues as a $27,000 artificial Christmas tree on Canal Street that has cost nearly $60,000 in the five years since for electrical wiring, putting up and taking down.
Another benefactor of the public monies through this intricate network were Robert and Michele Lott, former owners of the now-defunct weekly Observer newspaper who received tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer monies from the city of New Smyrna Beach, the hospital, the ad authority and the CRA. The Lotts staved off more than half a million in debts through bankruptcy last year.
The abuses are not limited to New Smyrna Beach. Daytona Beach, for example, used nearly $7,000 in CRA funds for its New Year's Eve party on Main Street -- where alcohol was not only allowed on the public street, but served there as well. The event drew close to 20,000 people, many of them parents with children in what was clearly an adult-oriented party.
The Fernandez deal is just one example, though the most blatant or close to $1 million in CRA funding for New Smyrna bars. Yet, not a single public official has dared to discuss these issues while they go around in circles, having already devoted three meetings to the discussion of CRAs only to defer again last Thursday -- this time for another 60 days. You haven't seen any of this pointed out in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, itself the benefactor of CRA funding to advertise these very same street parties, which they conveniently don't cover.
The scandal in New Smyrna Beach is far reaching, with former CRA board members rewarding themselves with grants and Barringer himself caught up in a scandal with appointing a fellow restaurant-bar owner -- Chad Schilsky -- to the CRA two years ago and then tying to piggyback on a construction project for his Barringer Construction through a $10,000 grant for Schilsky's That's Amore restaurant. The grants were later rescinded because they were illegal, something City Attorney Frank Gummey -- recipient of a $210,000-plus salary and City Manager Pam Brangaccio with a $125,000 salary, failing to recognize.
Another bastardization of the CRA was Barringer and Company, acting as a de facto CRA before disbanding the board with Schilsky and his colleagues -- and rewarding former Mayor Sally Mackay $50,000 in rent money for The Hub on Canal. She then received another $50,000 this fiscal year. Such arrangements would not be allowed with a new CRA.
Bringing these issues into the Sunshine through vigorous reporting is dismissed by Barringer and Brangaccio as "muckraking" or simply blogging, but the journalism is sound, backed by the public record with thousands of pages of documents as well as audio and video recordings showing abuses going back decades to the start of New Smyrna Beach's CRA in 1985.
Ironically, Flagler Avenue, which has received intense CRA funding for the benefit of alcohol sales is not part of New Smyrna Beach's proposed new CRA, but Canal Street is. For 30 years, millions have been pumped into Canal Street, benefitting well-off property owners and merchant leaders like Cindy Jones of Southern Trends and Jay Pendergast, an architect and former campaign manager of Mackay's, who now is the New Smyrna CRA architect, making his living off the taxpayers. Like Jones, another benefactor is Debbie Peterson, who recently opened a wine bar on Canal. She and Jones pushed for the Christmas tree and are the architects of the Christmas onCanal that has benefited from CRA funding as well.
Barringer and Brangaccio not only have engineered CRA funding to take care of a finite group of people, they created a public relations arm through the "NSB Waterfront Loop," to the tune of nearly $200,000 with press releases and calendar listings that do nothing to address so-called blight. And while the city has talked about wanting downtown residential traffic to support Canal Street, the commission rejected a workforce housing development on the North Causeway that would have provided for that, caving to the NIMBY interests of the upscale Venezia development.
Now the city finds itself in a lawsuit with the developer. Meanwhile, complaints with the Florida Ethics Commission filed by citizen watchdog Bob Tolley continue to mount against Barringer, Brangaccio and company for such transgressions as using a taxpayer credit card for a private retirement party at the mayor's wine-bar restaurant for Hathaway and the mayor cursing out a cop (sarcastically shaking his hand and calling him a "prick") who wouldn't let him cut through a closed street for the NSB Christmas Parade.
That officer, Ralph Hunnefeld, is a combat veteran of the Iraq War. At some point, the county's elected leaders are going to have to make a decision as to whether 30 years is enough for Canal Street with CRA funding or if they'll reward NSB with another 20 years?