In a further display of dysfunction that highlights Marineland’s increasingly absurd status as a town, rookie Mayor Douglas Dewey Dew attempted to fire Town Manager Suzanne Dixon and Town Attorney Dennis Bayer on Wednesday and Thursday, but was unsuccessful. The attempt began with an email on August 20 asking them to resign immediately. He wrote the email on his own initiative, outside of a public meeting, and without the commission’s approval.
He followed up with emails to Dixon and Bayer just before Thursday’s Town Commission meeting, supposedly providing nebulous, subjective justifications for the dismissal, which he mistakenly believed to be a suspension.
Both Dixon and Bayer joined the town when Dew was still in diapers; Bayer joined soon after Dixon in April 1996. In 1994, Dew was born. The town is currently on its third town clerk of the year after losing its mayor a few months ago. At a time when the town is struggling to become a municipality and its creaky, privately operated sewer plant is impeding new economic activity, the community would lose nearly all of its institutional memory, administrative expertise, and procedural ethics without Bayer and Dixon. Jessica Finch, the town’s sole other commissioner, stated that there are a lot of issues that are currently looming over the entire community.
Less than a year ago, Dew emerged victorious in a contentious race. In May, Dew took over as mayor after Gary Inks passed away. Against Bayer’s recommendation, Dew made the legally questionable decision to nominate Finchin on his own initiative, citing the counsel of his own lawyer, Rick Rumrell, whom he had brought into the meeting.
After speaking with a number of county and municipal lawyers, Bayer recommended that the town get the attorney general’s view on how to proceed with an appointment to the commission in the event that it does not have the necessary majority. Dew declined, claiming that Bayer’s counsel was negligent and not in the town’s best interests. At the time, it was not apparent what Dew meant by town, a noun that seemed more closely related to Dew in that context.
In May, Finch told a somewhat antagonistic audience that she had just plunged into a fire, and I can assure you that it is a fire. She wasn’t making this up. She maintained that she was merely accepting the position to support the town. On Thursday, she fulfilled her promise by refusing to participate in Dew’s power play. On behalf of Dixon, who receives a meager $250 per month for labor that usually considerably outweighs the compensation, she was offended to receive a copy of his emails to the two municipal authorities.
Finch refused to vote to fire any of them, saying, “I don’t think that anything has been laid out against these two that is enough for dereliction of duty or neglect.” She was surprised with Dew’s arbitrary and careless behavior (not just on that issue Thursday evening). Due to a tie vote and the vacancy of the third commission position, Dew’s attempt was unsuccessful. Knowing that his gambit had failed, he did not insist on a vote.
The mayor may suspend any officer or employee, but only in cases of egregious neglect or dereliction of duty, as stated in the municipal charter. In order to provide the commission a chance to approve or disapprove the suspension, the suspended individual must be invited to the next commission meeting, when the mayor will have to defend the decision.
Despite having the authority to suspend Dixon and Bayer, Dew inexplicably persisted on not doing so on many occasions during Thursday’s commission meeting. He claimed that he had just requested their resignation, something he is not authorized to do by the charter.
Dew accused Bayer of fabricating information in a memo regarding the appointment and proceeded to assert, without supporting documentation, that it was ill-advised, unnecessary, and unwarranted, with the malicious objective to spread false information and needless drama throughout the Northeast Florida community.
According to Bayer, he had really conferred with Drew Smith, the well-known municipal lawyer in Flagler Beach who oversaw the entire situation for his partners’ law company, Shepard Smith and Hand, which is among the largest local government law companies in Central Florida. They accepted my viewpoint and offered a remedy, which you were not interested in hearing. Bayer also conferred with Al Hadeed, the county attorney at the time. Bayer informed Dew that he was also a little worried about it. Naturally, he also drew on his extensive experience. Dew isn’t a lawyer. He works for an IT company that deals with healthcare. But Dixon seems to have been lawyered by one of the emails he gave her, which she read at the meeting.
Even as he asked her to resign, Dew heaped Dixon with praise in the first, separate email to her. In response, she said: On April 1, 1996, the Marineland town commission nominated me town manager. I have dutifully served many commissioners and five mayors since then. You can only imagine how shocked I was to receive an email from Dewey Dew, the sixth mayor, asking me to step down right away. I decide not to step down. If you want to fire me, you have to do it in person at a public gathering.
After wrongly accusing Dixon of secretly opening ballots last year, Dew defended himself. According to Dew, the town manager broke election regulations by taking the ballots home and opening them without a witness or adequate supervision.
“I’m trying to come in here and understand how this operates,” he said, adding, “I’m coming from a good place here.” (Dixon and Bayer claimed that since July, he has not responded to their emails regarding town-related issues.) “I have good intentions,” he added. When I do this, my heart is in the proper place. I hope this place is successful. All right? And we’re simply being honest about how we’re abiding by the rules, even though everyone has been trying to trip me up at every turn. With all of this, that’s what I was doing.
Dixon wasn’t happy. She added, “You’re doubting my honesty about the election and the processes.” Please don’t ever accuse me of tampering with the ballots; I didn’t. I have tried my hardest to help you in every way throughout the past year, and I am honest and morally upright to the core. I don’t hold anything against you. She disqualified another applicant last year, Dew also claimed. The write-in candidate wasn’t seated.
During a public comment period, when the termination was still a possibility, Catherine Eastman, the program manager at the Sea Turtle Hospital at Whitney Laboratory in Marineland, informed the mayor, “This is completely absurd.” Without this historical information, I’m not sure what sort of town you think you’ll be able to manage, but it won’t be a town. To have either of them is a blessing. Ms. Finch is currently on this commission. You’re running it straight to the ground without them. Government is not available to you.
Others who spoke were no less bluntly critical. It makes people wonder, what s the motivation behind this?Barbara-Anne Battelle, who for 30 years ran the University of Florida s Whitney Laboratory in Marineland, told Dew. People that have done their jobs and that the community obviously supports, like, what s the agenda? What s behind this?
Near the start of the meeting, Dew gave a strangely sycophantic homage to Jim Jacoby, the town’s developer and main landowner, claiming that Jim Jacoby’s visionary leadership was largely responsible for Marineland’s revitalization, restoring the historic oceanarium, and bringing new life to the town. It isn t clear what town Dew was referring to: the town is down to three residents, the oceanarium is in bankruptcy, Jacoby islooking to divest, and the town commission itself is in upheaval.
Finch, referring to recent controversies, said the town commission needed to revamp its procedures wholesale and get away from what Dixon said was a hand-me-down culture of administrative operations. Bayer proposed a future workshop on the subject. The charter has never been revised or amended since its adoption in 1969, when the town was so different that it was to have a town judge, a chief of police and a fire chief. It has none of those.
Marineland was known for pioneering surreal underwater filming. The filming is long gone. The surrealism is not.
It has three registered, eligible voters: Dew, Finch and Joseph Pinder. Three additional people are registered in town but no longer live there, so are not eligible to vote, according to the town manager: Kelly Fischbach, Brandon Powell, and Barrett Wilson.
The town is holding an election to fill the commission s third seat on September 2. The voters are Dew, Finch and Pinder. It s not clear why there is an election since Pinder would be uncontested as the only eligible candidate. Pinder is almost certain to be elected. So the only three residents of the town will be its three commissioners.
They may choose a new mayor next month. Given Dew s gift for stumbles and overreaches, they may opt for either Finch or Pinder, who are close, and who each were elected officials in other towns, Finch inWelaka, a town of 700 people south of Palatka, Pinder in Islamorada in the Keys.
Pinder is related to Jim Jacoby, the Atlanta-based developer and owner of most of the only privately held properties in town, whose tax revenue essentially underwrites a majority of the town budget. Dew is also a Jacoby advocate, and Jacoby s shadow looms larger in town than its now-bankrupt Dolphin Adventure, which is$91,000 in arrearsin taxes owed the town.
Meanwhile Flagler County and three state agencies are in talks with Jacoby, through the North Florida Land Trust,to acquire 35 acres of JDI Marineland, the Jacoby-owned concern. Those parcels together generated about $150,000 in property tax revenue for Marineland, which JDI pays promptly. Marineland sentire budget is $257,000.
So JDI accounts for 58 percent of that (the proportion is significantly higher when a non-recurring federal grant is excluded from the accounts). If the land trust deal is successful, the land will immediately be off the property tax rolls, since it will be government land, and Marineland will lose that revenue. It ll be left with $22,000 in Florida Power and Light franchise fee revenue, a little rental income, and other minor revenue sources. It will not have the means to function even as a dysfunctional town.
Bayer brought up the land trust deal Thursday during the separate, earlier meeting of the town s Community Redevelopment Agency, with County Commissioner Greg Hansen as one of the CRA board members, along with Finch and Dew.I don t know if we ll be successful or not, Hansen said of the potential land deal. You know, working with Jacoby, I don t know, Hansen said, his laugh hinting at the unpredictable nature of those negotiations.
He s a good man, Dewey said of Jacoby. He was not interested in discussing the matter further.
