Commissioner Pennington Assails County Administration Over Ragga Surf Fiasco

Flagler County Commissioner Leann Pennington late Monday night sharply criticized the county administration, including its legal department, over a series of errors and missed steps that led to a state rebuke of the county’s permission to Ragga Surf Cafe, a for-profit company, to use public land at Marineland’s River to Sea Preserve to run its business.

County Administrator Heidi Petito and County Attorney Al Hadeed defended their actions.


Ragga Surf’s food truck, two trailers and 20 picnic tables took over the south end of the preserve and Marineland boardwalk since early August on the strength of a temporary use permit the county issued, valid until the end of December. The county informed Ragga Surg that the permit would not be renewed, triggering a vast “Save Ragga Surf” campaign targeting county commissioners, and crashing some of their email servers. (See: “Ragga Surf Fiasco: How Flagler County Risked Losing River to Sea Preserve Over Botched Favor for a Private Business.”)

Ragga Surf supporters continued their campaign Monday evening in the earlier portion of the meeting, but had cleared the room by the time Pennington brought back the issue. (See: “Ragga Surf Cafe Supporters Urge County Commission for Eviction Reprieve, But Hear Only Silence.”)

The commission in August had by consensus, and on the urging of Commissioner Greg Hansen, given County Administrator Heidi Petito direction to draft an agreement with Ragga Surf, which had just been evicted from private land. Hansen had brought up the matter essentially as a favor to Ragga Surf. It was not on the commission’s agenda. There was no preparatory documentation. Petito did not mention the state-required management plan restrictions that apply to the River to Sea Preserve.

The commission gave that direction on two assumptions: that Ragga Surf is a non-profit, and that Petito would bring back a formal document for the commission to act upon before the agreement goes forward.


Ragga Surf is not a non-profit. Petito did not bring back the proposed agreement. She issued it unilaterally. Nor did Petito inform the commission that such an agreement would have to be approved by the state before it is issued. If the county violates state rules controlling public land, it could lose ownership of that land–in this case, the preserve. The Florida Community Trust, a division of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), issued a notice of non-compliance to Marineland (which co-owns the preserve) and the county on Nov. 15.

“I thought that legal told us that this was going to be requiring a resolution to be brought back, and it would be formally brought back,” Pennington said at the end of Monday night’s meeting, past the 9 p.m. mark. “So I guess my question is one, why didn’t we ever get to that step? I guess maybe I’ve missed something. And then two, and to some others who spoke, we should have known that the DEP was going to require action there before we put someone there. And that goes back to the no good deed goes unpunished. So those are big issues right now for me, with staff and legal. How do we get here? I think we wanted to do the right thing, and probably should have been briefed that those two issues didn’t get handled properly.”

Petito voiced a defense of her actions since August, summarizing the August meeting segment that led to consensus on an agreement.

“At that meeting, Jim Powell actually came forward and kind of explained his nonprofit status, as well as his for profit businesses that support his nonprofit status,” Petito said of one of the co-owners of Ragga Surf.


That’s not accurate. Powell said Ragga Surf supports a non-profit. He never said that Ragga Surf is itself a separate, for-profit business. He never said that only Inter-United, the soccer organization it supports, but is an entirely different creature and unrelated to the operation in Marineland, is a non-profit: “The nonprofit that these businesses support is Inter-United,” was Powell’s phrase. He did not lie. But it was crafty, and left at that before he went on to confuse the matter by describing at great length the good works of Inter-United, rather that speak to any of the business aspects of Ragga Surf.

Petito did not make the distinction either. Nor did Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan, who stressed that the county could enter into an agreement with an organization at the preserve only if it were a non-profit. It was based on those assumptions–false assumptions–that the commission green-lighted an agreement with Ragga Surf, on a further assumption that the proposal would return to the commission in September for review.

Petito continued her defense, shielding her actions by invoking Moylan’s name: “There was consensus provided from the board to move forward, as outlined by Sean Moylan, and they and the board had instructed staff to work on bringing back a formalized approval at the following month. I probably should have said something then, but when you think about a formalized approval, that would have meant that we have to develop either an RFP or an RSQ. That process alone is 10 weeks. Then when you add in there that when we prepare our board agenda, we prepare it two weeks in advance, so that we can get it out there, that would add another two weeks. So realistically, we couldn’t have had anything come back to you for at least 12 weeks.”

Petito never spoke of that timeline at the August meeting. Rather, she made it explicit: “We’d still have to bring this back to you for consideration in September,” the words Pennington was referring to.


Petito then explained why she went the route of a temporary use agreement. “It is something within my purview that didn’t need to come back to the board,” she said. The RFP would have had to–and of course would have been accompanied by all the commission vetting that did not take place with the temporary use agreement. The RFP process, Petito said, was delayed by various circumstances, among them a hurricane and engineering matters.

Hadeed claimed the temporary use agreement “had to be consistent with the management plan. It wasn’t a situation where, oh, we forgot about the management plan. It is in there.” It is, but as a single mention requiring Ragga Surf to be “in compliance with applicable laws and other agreements affecting the premises,” including the management plan. The agreement does not specify what the management plan calls for, and of course makes no mention of FTC-required approval.

“then the hurricane end, and that threw the momentum off. It threw the momentum off.”

Contacted about the issue last Saturday, Hadeed had told a reporter that Moylan was handling the issue. In fact, “I spent a whole day at Marineland, surveilling these things, talking with people and finding out the facts so that we could communicate back to FCT,” Hadeed told commissioners Monday. “We tried to set up conversations. They didn’t happen. It was a situation was overtaken by events. If we had been able to do it in an orderly fashion, we would have had an RFP or RSQ process, which we could advise FCT: this is what we’re doing, and have an orderly timeline as to how we were going to do it. We just never had that opportunity. The opportunity never presented itself. There was never any intention ever to dishonor the management plan.”

Pennington was not placated. “So knowing that you knew about the management plan, I think this board knowing would have helped to make a better decision that day,” she told the attorney and the administration, referring to the permission FTC required. “Two, I think consensus was made because we thought we’d be seeing it again within a month or so. So just lots of lessons out of that whole thing. I know I will not be doing anything that pops up like that, that wasn’t on the agenda, that I couldn’t research in the future.”