By D. L. Norris
At the November 17th, 2020 Board of County Commissioner’s (BOCC) meeting, Veteran’s Park was on the agenda again. Last year the BOCC voted to move forward with significant improvements to Veteran’s Park. At that time, the estimated cost of the entire park was in excess of $10 million dollars. Three funding sources for the project were identified: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation at $1.5 million dollars, Pot 3 Restore Funds at $900,000 dollars, and Tourist Development District Funds (bed tax) at $2.6 million dollars with $715,000 specifically for statues of female veterans to be displayed.
The Phase I plan covers the upland portion of the park and the living shoreline portion, funding estimate for Phase I total is $6.3 million dollars with $3.8 million dollars of that total going towards construction of the living shoreline. A living shoreline consists of a breakwater, salt marsh, coastal strands, etc. During the discussion, staff stated the living shoreline was a unique item and the county has limited experience in constructing them. The upland portion of Veteran’s Park will consist of a plaza, boardwalks, walking trails and eight life size statues of notable female veterans. Cut from the original 2019 plan was a pier with 22 transient boat slips. This would have put the entire Veteran’s Park project at well over $10 million dollars thus was scrapped.
With $5.7 million dollars already budgeted, staff just needed an additional $550,000 dollars in order to start construction and completion of Phase I of Veteran’s Park. The solution the staff presented to the BOCC was to move $700,00 dollars of Pot 3 funding from a water/sewer expansion project on the Shoal River Ranch. This money was no longer needed because the county had acquired Triumph Gulf Coast funds to cover the Shoal River Ranch project. The reallocation of these funds to Veteran’s Park would cover the cost of constructing the living shoreline and staff was clear to state the funds would not go toward cost of the statues.
No big deal right? It’s just $700,000 dollars…that’s not a lot of money right? Well, if you are a life long government bureaucrat like District 2 Commissioner Ketchel, $700,000 dollars is “not a huge amount of money” as she so publicly stated. However, if you are a county tax payer, $700,000 dollars is probably a lot of money to you.
Opposition to this recommendation to reallocate funds from the Shoal River Ranch project to the Veteran’s Park project came from the two commissioners from the north end of the county, District 1 Commissioner Mixon and District 3 Commissioner Boyles.
Commissioner Boyles stated fears of ballooning costs since the project was already over budget evident by the staff stripping out larger portions of the park like the pier. He wanted the funds to stay in the north end of the county to enhance the north end watershed instead of moving it to the south end watershed. Commissioner Boyles stated that $700,000 dollars was not a small amount of money to be reallocating and requested a reliable cost estimate. He also emphasized that this was not a north/south issue but a bed tax district/non-bed tax district issue. The Veteran’s Park project is eligible for bed tax dollars but taking $700,000 dollars from a watershed outside the bed tax district and awarding it to a project within a bed tax district that is eligible for bed tax money was not sound reasoning.
District 1 Commissioner Mixon supported the park but not the reallocation of funds from the Shoal River watershed to a park in the bed tax district. He wanted to see a cap on the spending defined and chose to error on the side of caution in defense of folks who have to drive on dirt roads everyday. Commissioner Mixon asked, “If we have extra from Triumph, do we not need to offer the extra first back to them?”
Staff stated there was a timing issue involved with the Pot 3 money. The concept plan as presented to the board needed $550,000 to move forward. Pot 3 money takes time to amend outside of the set schedule and an additional cost of $10,000 dollars. Staff did not advise the commissioners that money needed to be reallocated in order to move this project forward. Staff offered no range of alternatives for reallocating funds to cover this cost. Basically, the administrative staff once again made a pre-determined decision to reallocate funds from the Shoal River watershed to the Veteran’s Park project.
If you recall from a previous post in this blog, in the December 2019 archives titled Okaloosa County: Commissioners and Eminent Domain and Separation of Powers, Oh My! , the administrative staff, also known as the executive branch of our county government, does not have decision making authority–only the BOCC can make decisions. The staff clearly did not vette the process as Commissioner Boyles said, “the first time I saw the agenda item was the day before the meeting.”
Discussion ensued. District 4 Commissioner Trey Goodwin expressed concerns over potential cost overruns and stated that the county needed to keep a keen eye on costs as we go forward. District 5 Commissioner Mel Ponder requested confirmation that no district was going to lose any funding and the staff confirmed that the Shoal River Ranch project was not losing any money in this reallocation. The vote was 3-2 in favor of the project and reallocating the $700,000 dollars. The two dissents were Commissioner’s Boyles and Mixon.
So the question raised in this agenda item was “is $700,000 dollars a lot of money?” In a county ruled by one political party, where everyone puts an R by their name to win an election, one litmus test that can help reveal who the true conservatives might be and who the liberals with Rs by their names might be is the basic question of “is $700,000 dollars a lot of money?” A conservative will tell you it is most every time; but, a liberal will tell you it isn’t most every time.
You can contact the author at dlnorris@theparadisepatriot.com