- November 16, 2024
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After the last of a series of contentious public hearings, Sea Ray boats has the county’s permission to break ground on a new employee parking lot on land south of its plant off Colbert Lane.
Monday’s County Commission meeting on the issue attracted about 65 people, and was in many ways a do-over of a meeting almost a week prior, when the county’s planning board held its vote on the matter after hearing presentations and public comments from many of the same people. As at the planning board meeting, about a dozen Sea Ray employees attended in beige Sea Ray T-shirts.
The County Commission in favor of Sea Ray unanimously and with little discussion, approving the boat manufacturing company’s request for a zoning change from residential low-density and single-family to commercial high intensity so it can build its lot.
The company’s current employee parking lot, Sea Ray Operations Manager Craig Wall said in a presentation before the commission, is jammed with boat mold for the 17 models the company produces, forcing employees to walk in along an entrance road, sometimes in the pre-dawn dark. Opponents of the parking plan have said it could be cover for an expansion of manufacturing operations. Wall said it was not.
The County Commission vote July 20 followed a Tuesday, July 14 vote of approval by the county’s Planning and Land Development board. That vote, unlike the County Commission’s wasn’t binding, but the unanimous planning board vote was a turn-around from an earlier vote on the parking lot proposal, in which the planning board voted unanimously against Sea Ray.
With the planning board supporting the manufacturing company, and the County Commission voting in Sea Ray’s favor once before — at a March 16 hearing attended by more than 400 people — in spite of the planning board’s recommendation not to, the July 20 vote came as no surprise to the parking lot plan’s opponents.
“Everyone in this room knows how you’re going to vote tonight. It’s no secret; you’ve made it clear,” Roseanne Stocker, an opponent of the plan who has spoken against it at each of the previous government meetings and lives near the plant, told board members before the July 20 vote. “So let me tell you where you’re wrong,” she continued. “First, you’re supposed to treat all applicants fairly, and you’re not supposed to approve spot-zoning requests to benefit one landowner to the detriment of others.”
Stocker said the plan was incompatible with the county’s comprehensive plan and with the nature of the surrounding area. “Please show me somewhere else where you can find where there’s an almost-1,000-car parking lot located abutting single-family residential zoning,” she said. “What about the 10-year history during which the 51 families bought or built on land there? This isn’t a case of moving in next to an airport and then complaining about the noise. These homeowners bought or built while the parcels were zoned residential and conservation. You guys are ripping the rug out from under them now.”
Flagler Beach City Commissioner Jane Mealy, another a resident of a street near the plant, also spoke at the meeting, repeating much of what she’d said a week before at the planning board meeting: that the lot proposal could serve as a cover for Sea Ray to increase production, and with it, the emission of harmful chemicals.
“I was elected to preserve our city’s vision statement,” she said. She read it, as she had at the planning board meeting: “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.” If the county approved Sea Ray’s request, Mealy said, it would be preventing the Flagler Beach City Commission from fulfilling its vision statement. “An environment stained by pollutants — and I know you’re going to say it has nothing to do with it, but it does — will no longer be a community asset, nor will it be safe or healthy,” she said.
As in the planning board meeting last week, Flagler Chamber President Rebecca DeLorenzo spoke in favor of Sea Ray, noting that it’s a major employer of local residents.
“Sea Ray’s request before you tonight are simple and without hidden agendas,” she said. “It’s about a business with deep roots in Flagler County, and to improve safety for 650 team members, and to enhance operating efficiency, again, by building a parking lot. … Voting yes will send a clear message that Flagler County values the businesses that choose to operate in our community.”