- October 12, 2024
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For unknown reasons, the final dune easement holdout has yet to sign a hold harmless agreement with the county, despite the looming threat of a trial.
A planned Army Corps of Engineers project to shore up the dune in Flagler Beach requires signed easements from all property owners in the project area. Just one, Cynthia D’Angiolini, has not signed, delaying the project. D’Angiolini also had not disclosed her ownership of two beachfront parcels in a bankruptcy case, giving the county leverage to push her to sign.
County Attorney Al Hadeed told the Flagler County Commission at an April 3 meeting that the county will be going to a pretrial hearing on April 4 for the D’Angiolini’s bankruptcy case.
Hadeed and Scott Spradley, who is representing the county in D’Angiolini’s bankruptcy case, attended an initial bankruptcy hearing in Orlando on Jan. 31 in which D’Angiolini agreed to sign a hold-harmless agreement. The agreement does not pay D’Angiolini anything in return for the easement rights to the two properties, but is instead about rights assurance, Hadeed said at a February commission meeting.
Now, over two months later, D’Angiolini still has not signed the agreements, though her lawyer has repeatedly assured the county she would.
“We cannot simply rely on endless assurance that she is going to sign,” Hadeed said.
Hadeed discovered in early December that D’Angiolini had failed to disclose her ownership of the two beachfront properties when she filed for bankruptcy in 2019.
In the fall of 2022, she finished paying off her debts from the bankruptcy case without ever disclosing those two properties and their value.
The judge in the bankruptcy case indicated Jan. 31 that there would not be a trial if D’Angiolini signed the agreements, Hadeed told the Observer. Hadeed said he is sure the judge would ask at a future hearing why she has not signed. But until then, the county will prepare depositions for the possibility of a trial on April 17.
“We’re going to be taking depositions of potential witnesses on the issue of the fraudulent concealment,” Hadeed said, “because we want to be prepared on the day the trial commences.”
Flagler County Commissioners are looking to change part of the county’s policy on how county buildings are determined to be red-tagged for demolition.
The change follows the decision to demolish the Bull Creek Fish Camp restaurant after it sat in flood waters for months from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole. For the Bull Creek building, the inspector used the value on the county property appraiser’s website, but Commissioner Leann Pennington said at a February commission meeting that that value was less than the building’s actual value.
At the April 3 workshop, the County Commission directed staff to investigate a process for getting an outside appraisal when deciding if a county building should be demolished. Vice Chair Andy Dance also suggested that if a building is selected to be demolished, the proposal should be brought to the board — and the public — for transparency.
“There’s a history to the buildings,” Dance said. “People have become so attached to the buildings that I think it’s part of the grieving process.”
The Bull Creek building is still going to be demolished. Now, residents in that area hope the county replaces the restaurant with something residents can still enjoy, Bunnell resident Charles Cowart said.
“I'm speaking on behalf of the community here,” Cowart said. “It wasn't the historical value so much it was more along the lines of like, we like to eat there, we like the view.”
