- October 9, 2024
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When the attorneys representing Hunter’s Ridge approached the city of Ormond Beach with a public records request — filed about a month before the city filed a lawsuit against the developer and Flagler County — the attorneys were informed that the records they sought would cost over $91,000 to produce.
Attorney Philip Crawford, who represents Hunter’s Ridge developer U.S. Capital Alliance, said he’s never seen such a high sum for a public records request.
“We’re not looking for hard copy documents,” Crawford said. “We’re just looking for someone to do an electronic word search of the information requested and send it to us electronically.”
Ormond Beach filed a lawsuit against U.S. Capital Alliance and Flagler County on Oct. 27, 2023, after finding the developer in noncompliance with the 1991 Hunter’s Ridge Development of Regional Impact because the developer hasn’t granted almost 300 acres of conservation lands to the city and because it issued Flagler County a 60-foot wide road easement for a logging road known as the 40 Grade. The city also claims that the developer failed to prepare a hydroperiod restoration plan for the conservation lands, though the developer argues this was done as dictated in the DRI.
On Nov. 21, 2023, Flagler County invoked the Governmental Dispute Resolution Act, requiring a conflict assessment meeting — or mediation — between the governing bodies, alongside the National Audubon Society and the St. Johns River Water Management District. The county attempted to schedule the meeting as early as Dec. 15 but, County Attorney Al Hadeed said, Ormond Beach kept putting off the meeting.
Hadeed said all parties finally landed on a mediation date of Feb. 6.
The 18-paragraph records request filed on Sept. 29 and answered on Nov. 15 sought email correspondence and documents between city attorneys and non-city employees regarding the Hunter’s Ridge development, the installation of water wells on lands controlled by either Flagler County or the developer and a conservation parcel located within Hunter’s Ridge.
“It is my understanding that the public records request was voluminous,” City Attorney Randy Hayes said in a statement to the Observer. “It was handled by the city clerk’s office in accordance with established policy.”
An email from the city clerk’s office to Crawford on Nov. 17, 2023, stated that there were over 160,000 emails and files found in the preliminary search results for their request, amounting to 2,615 hours of research time needed.
Crawford challenged this, saying that the $91,190.27 estimate for the records was equal to an employee working on the request for eight hours a day, five days a week, for 15 months straight.
“I mean, no one can imagine that someone is going to be working for 15 months straight ... to answer our 18 questions,” he said. “It’s just nuts.”
Jake Beren, chief operating officer of Hunters Ridge Acquisition and Development LLC, said he wants the issue with Ormond Beach and Flagler County resolved.
Because Hunter’s Ridge was found in noncompliance last fall, the city threatened to withhold utilities for new homes in Hunter’s Ridge until the violations are addressed. But, Beren said they received utility permits for one of the new Flagler subdivisions last week.
Beren said the conservation parcel hadn’t been granted to the city yet because he and his team were waiting on mitigation credits.
“We have conservation easements in, we have our surveys in — we’re just waiting for [SJRWMD] to sign off on it, and then that’s it,” Beren said. “The district can have it and the city can have it. ... Was it necessary to hold a public hearing and put us in noncompliance for this? Over what? Two months?”
Beren said he also doesn’t understand why the city filed suit against Flagler County for the 40 Grade easement.
Flagler County sought an easement in 2017 so it could access 2,000 acres of Flagler County conservation land for management work and to fight illegal incursions, Hadeed told the County Commission last December. Hadeed told the Observer that the 40 Grade roadway was previously in place from when a logging company owned what is now the county’s conservation land. The easement request, Hadeed said, was the Flagler County acting as a “good steward.”
The 40 Grade, spanning one-third of a mile, granted Flagler unpaved access into the conservation land. The DRI process of requesting the easement, Hadeed said, requires public notices sent to the general public and all parties involved.
Including Ormond Beach, he said.
“We gave the city formal notice,” Hadeed said, referencing the 2017 process.
And no one, he said, objected during the process.
Flagler County did place shell on areas of the 40 Grade where the road needed structural support. Shell, he said, is a common material used in conservation areas.
Hayes previously told the Observer that the easement granted to Flagler County could allow it to build a public road through the conservation lands in the future.
“Which means that as Flagler County develops out portions north of Ormond Beach, that all of those residents would have direct access to State Road 40,” Hayes said in an October 2023 interview “... So that’s why it’s critically important, I think, that people understand what’s at stake here.”
Crawford said Flagler County attorney Sean Moylan swore under oath that a road would not be constructed in those lands.
“And he correctly pointed out that if they ever changed their mind and somehow wanted to put a road, who do they have to go to for approval?” Crawford said. “They have to go to the municipality on which the road would be built, and that’s Ormond Beach.”
Crawford and Beren suspect the city’s attention on the conservation parcels and 40 Grade easement has to do with the city’s interest in building wells. A $20 million well project was included in the city’s recently Capital Improvement Plan, slated to be budgeted in the 2027-2028 fiscal year.
But, Crawford said that the conservation parcel cannot be tapped for wells.
“We think there’s some ulterior motive that we can’t figure out exactly or find the paperwork to back up,” Crawford said. “... My client has wanted to work with Ormond, continues to offer to work with Ormond and they just keep getting their hand slapped away.”
Hayes said the city has no plans to build wells in the conservation land.
In a Dec. 18, 2023, email to an attorney with SJRWD, Hayes clarified that the city’s 200-page CIP is a planning document and that it originally included a topographic map showing a tentative location for the city’s West Ormond Raw Water Wellfield.
“The conservation lands are not specifically identified on the map,” Hayes wrote. “The text/comment box on the map appears to generalize a tentative location in the vicinity of the conservation lands. A portion of the conservation lands abut the western edge of land owned by the city for use as a water plant facility. The location maps have been modified to eliminate any confusion regarding the possible location of future wells.”
Any future wells, Hayes added, would need to be reviewed and approved by SJRWMD.
All three parties — U.S. Capital Alliance, Flagler County and the city of Ormond Beach — were supposed to meet later this month for mediation.
Hayes said that the conflict resolution meeting was difficult to coordinate due to the holidays.
“The primary issue is Flagler County’s unlawful exercise of power extraterritorially,” he said.
The city of Ormond Beach has also amended its lawsuit. No substantial changes were made, according to Crawford, but it slows the legal proceedings.
For Flagler County, the amended complaint outlines several areas where Ormond Beach says the county violated state statute by entering into the easement agreement and by taking actions like placing shell material on the 40 Grade without the city’s consent.
Flagler, Hadeed said, has been drawn into a dispute between Ormond Beach and the developer that doesn’t involve the county. He said the lawsuit was a waste of taxpayer dollars for both municipalities.
“Whatever issues they have with the developer, we have nothing to do with it,” Hadeed said. “We were brought into the suit. We’re a stranger to their controversy.”
Beren said he has no interest in fighting with the city.
“If the city called me up today and said, ‘Hey, let’s just put this all behind us. We need you to do X,Y and Z’ — meaning there’s an actual thing I can do ... I’ll get it started today,” Beren said. “But when you take it out of my power and say I need to force Flagler County to give up access (of the 40 Grade), I can’t force Flagler County to do it.”
If mediation can be skipped, he said he’s all for it as well.
“If they’re ready to just put this behind them, make it go away and make everything nice and friendly, let’s do that,” Beren said. “I don’t need to ‘win.’ I just need it to go away.”
