- November 18, 2024
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Early voter turnout in Flagler County has far from overwhelmed local polling places: 4,665 people have voted since the start of the early voter period on Aug. 11. That’s roughly 359 voters per day, split between three sites, each open eight hours a day.
Still, a dispute between Supervisor of Elections Kimberle Weeks and the city of Palm Coast over parking for scant early voters has resulted in a cascade of increasingly serious accusations: Weeks accusing the city of larceny for taking down “voter only” parking signs; Weeks calling the Sheriff’s Office nine times requesting a larceny report, then accusing the sheriff of dereliction of duty for refusing to take one; and, most recently, Weeks contacting the State Attorney General’s office and then submitting a sheaf of documents to the State Attorney’s Office in an attempt to compel Palm Coast to comply with her demands on voter parking.
A Thursday morning reply to Weeks from Melissa Clark, a managing assistant state attorney prosecutor, said the matter is a civil one to be resolved through the courts, and that Palm Coast’s code enforcement employees have authority over parking issues in the community center parking lot.
Nine calls to the Sheriff’s Office
Weeks said that she saw Sheriff James Manfre on Friday, Aug. 15 — he was at the community center to vote — and asked him for an incident report for larceny because city employees were removing her “voter only” signs on the order of City Manager Jim Landon. Weeks said Manfre told her he would not provide one.
It wasn’t the first time she had made the request, and Sheriff’s Office Attorney Sidney Nowell had already written to her in a Wednesday, Aug. 14 email (Weeks said she had not yet received it), “The positions of you and Palm Coast officials rest on an interpretation of the provisions in the interlocal agreement. This is a matter for the judicial system to decide and not the County Sheriff since it is a matter of contract interpretation” — a civil matter, not a criminal one requiring a law enforcement response.
The interlocal agreement at issue outlines the obligations of Weeks and the city of Palm Coast in connection with Weeks’ use of the community center for elections, and was signed only after months of wrangling — with Weeks presenting an interlocal agreement to the city and initially refusing to accept any amendments — until the city capitulated and signed two interlocal agreements. One was based on an interlocal agreement for elections in the city of Flagler Beach, and the other was the one proposed by Weeks. It contains the following line: “(the city) shall not remove any election related signs, with the exception of candidate campaign signs, within the city limits during early voting or on election day.”
On Monday, Weeks said, she called the Sheriff’s Office nonemergency line from the library — repeatedly — in an attempt to get the Sheriff’s Office to fill out an incident report for larceny because city staff members were removing signs.
“I wanted to file a larceny report. That started about 12:00 p.m. or 12:30 p.m.,” she said. “And I stayed till 5:30 p.m. at the library, and I called nine times. I told them that I wanted to file a larceny report, and I told them, ‘This is call number two. Call number three. Call number four. Call number five.’”
In an interview, she pointed to Florida’s election code — which states that “the sheriff shall exercise strict vigilance in the detection of any violations of the election laws and in apprehending the violators,” and said that Sheriff Manfre was neglecting his duty by not enforcing her desired use of the parking space at election facilities.
'Excessive'
Both Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon and Flagler County Administrator Craig Coffey have called the number of “voter only” signs placed at polling places “excessive.”
Weeks had, she said, initially cordoned off about 20 to 23 parking spots for early voting at each of the county’s three sites — the Palm Coast Community Center, the Flagler County Public Library and the Government Services Building.
Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon noted in an email to Weeks that the city rents out the community center for other events, including a local bridge club, and that the number of spaces set aside for voters has far exceeded actual turnout.
Asked in an interview how the number of spots designated for voters was determined, Weeks replied, “We thought that that was a reasonable number because of the number of voting booths that we have in that room.” The decision to set aside that number of spaces, she said, was “based on space, based on size. What the room will comfortably accommodate.”
She added later, “It was not my intent to make any violations. It was my intent to make sure (Landon) wasn’t hoggish and taking all the parking for his bridge game or Yahtzee or a council meeting or whatever he may have scheduled there.”
The parking lot at the community center has been at least half-empty during most of the early voting period, often containing just a handful of cars. The Observer did note one instance — Aug. 21, during a bridge club event — in which all of the regular parking spots were full. More than half of the spots marked with "voter only" signs remained open. Weeks said in an interview that poll workers told her that all of the disabled parking spots that afternoon were taken for a period of time during the event.
Weeks has told city staff that her office gets complaints about voter parking access, listing the complaints as a reason to set aside special voter parking.
In an interview with the Palm Coast Observer, Weeks said, “We get complaints all the time” about voter parking problems. But none of those complaints are documented; Weeks said people have called in their complaints, or complained to poll workers after entering a building to vote, leaving no record. She said she couldn’t recall any complaints ever being emailed to her office.
Asked to clarify how many phoned-in complaints she had received since early voting began Aug. 11, or how often they came in, she said, “I want to say maybe four to five so far. And then we’ve had some that have personally come in.”
Asked to describe the individual four or five complaints she had received in the form of phone calls, she said, “Some were that they couldn’t find a spot. Some were that they angry because there was even any voter parking designated at all, that they didn’t think that there should be any parking designated. There were a couple of those complaints.”
'Voter only'?
Perhaps the crux of the parking issue has revolved around the placement of signs on disabled parking spaces, some of which had been marked with signs reading ‘voter only,’ messages the city has said could place it at risk of being in violation of the law for not providing adequate disabled parking spaces at its facilities.
When asked in an interview about the voting signs on disabled parking spaces, Weeks said Thursday that poll workers had only ever marked disabled parking spaces with “disabled voter parking” signs containing the disabled access symbol.
Friday evening, shown a photograph taken Thursday evening of four “voter only" signs, without the disabled access symbol, placed in front of two disabled parking spaces outside the Supervisor of Elections Office — appearing to convert the two disabled parking spaces into four voter parking spaces — Weeks said, “That was not placed there by us. Somebody must have moved it from a regular spot. That wasn’t our placement there.” She said she didn’t know who would have moved the signs in front of her office.
And she said the “voter only” handicapped parking signs — which say "voter only" in large block letters — aren’t meant to dissuade nonvoters who are disabled from parking there.
“I’m not saying you have to be a voter to park there,” she said. “I’m just letting the voters known if you’re a voter and you’re disabled, that I’m making provisions for you as well, and this is a handicapped spot,” she said.
City staff told her that adding signage to the disabled spots was illegal, and sent her a copy of the Florida Accessibility Code that reads, in part, “An alteration that decreases or has the effect of decreasing the accessibility of a building or facility below the requirements for new construction at the time of the alteration is prohibited.”
That would remain the case, staff said, for Weeks’ “disabled voter parking” signs placed on disabled parking spots.
Those spaces, Landon wrote in an email to Weeks Aug. 155, “are to be available to ALL qualified drivers at ALL times. The regulatory signs designating the handicap parking spaces are required by law and enforceable by law. No other signs or other items are to be attached or placed on these regulatory signs or within the entire handicap parking spaces.”
In an email about to the Palm Coast Observer about the passage of the accessibility code cited by city staff, Weeks wrote, “An alteration to decrease disabled voter parking did not exist. I would like to remind you that the regulations that were in place were not removed or covered up.”
Still, Weeks moved some of the “voter only” disabled parking signs from regular disabled parking spots, and made her own signs with the handicapped accessible symbol in the center, framed by the words “voter parking,” and placed them in other parking spots that were not created for handicapped parking.
That, County Administrator Craig Coffey wrote in an email to county staff and county commissioners, is also a problem.
“The city, county, and Sheriff’s Office have all told Ms. Weeks she cannot control these parking spaces,” he wrote. “Today she decided to have her own H/C signs made and designate them herself without consultation with the county (see picture). Besides the lack of coordination with the County of its engineered and permitted parking lot, the problem is that the signs, their height, the size and markings of the parking spaces, and the prohibitive curbed access all do not meet and State or Federal law. These spaces would actually force a disabled person in a wheelchair into an unsafe situation, namely navigating behind vehicles to gain access.”
He added: “With the fairly slow turnout for early voting this level of non-cooperation is even more confusing. I have directed staff to remove these signs as well.”
'No authority'
In a meeting with the election canvassing board Wednesday afternoon, Weeks appealed to judge Melissa Moore Stens to intervene with the city. Moore Stens spoke with the Chief Judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, then directed County Attorney Al Hadeed to mediate the dispute between Weeks and the city of Palm Coast.
Weeks said she believes no events — including parties or bridge club meetings — should be held at early voting locations in the future during early voting hours.
In an interview Thursday, she cited the following section of Florida code — “Public, tax-supported buildings shall be made available for use as polling places upon the request of the supervisor of elections” — and said it gives her full authority over any such building she wants to use.
“It says the building shall be made available or my use. So when (Landon) says I have no authority, what’s he talking about? I have authority over the whole building. He has no authority when I’m using it.”
