Common Sense, the recently created Fernandina Beach watchdog group, sent the local media the opinion piece “The $12 million Elephant In The Room” (below) about the marina situation this week.

As you read it consider that Common Sense is not a single-issue activist group prone to rants, shouting down speakers, parading in front of city hall, holding rallies, shaking their fists, waving signs, and hollering catchy slogans. It’s a diverse group of concerned Fernandina Beach residents that discovered they have a “common concern” – the out-of-control, unexplained spending of their tax money by five elected city commissioners and their hired city manager.

Each member of Common Sense is a Fernandina Beach resident, property owner, and tax payer. These volunteers consist of business people, former government officials, university instructors, retired journalists and more. They are well educated, successful, and work just as hard at uncovering city government waste as the city government does in attempting to hide it. Their research is zealous, thorough, time consuming and revealing.

Fernandina taxpayers will soon feel the squeeze.

The downtown marina — severely damaged by Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 — became an early focus point for Common Sense. Efforts to get straight answers and information from City Manager Dale Martin proved futile. They conducted research through interviews with affected parties, public records, and Freedom of Information Act requests, a tedious, time consuming task that involved pouring through hundreds and hundreds of pages of mind-numbingly boring documents.

What they uncovered was that Martin appears to be a Las Vegas-style high roller who dragged a trio of bimbos (Chip Ross, Johnny Miller, Phil Chapman) along who didn’t understand what they were seeing and adoringly watched as he blindly gambled that FEMA would reimburse the city. He tossed the dice and went ahead with an extravagant marina rebuilding effort before FEMA committed, which proved to be a massive financial mistake that now leaves city tax payers on the hook for $12 million or more. Roy Smith, a man who was a construction executive prior to retirement, was the only commissioner voting “no”. He was rewarded with defeat in the last election. Go figure.

Here’s the details, uncovered by Common Sense. It’s not opinion. It’s not speculation. It’s not hearsay. It’s factual. After you read it you should be outraged.

Common Sense is also meeting with City Commission candidates and will publicly endorse those they consider worthy of your vote. It’s also looking at next year’s budget proceedings. Stay tuned.

OPINION – JUNE 8, 2020

The $12 Million Elephant in the Room

Fernandina Beach taxpayers are on the hook for a whopping  $12 million dollar debt — based on decisions made by City leaders — about repairs to the Fernandina Harbor Marina. You will pay for this somehow.

Our City leaders pledged money to repair and upgrade portions of the Fernandina Harbor Marina before obtaining a final FEMA commitment. In essence we tried to replace a used Volkswagen with a new Mercedes-Benz and it didn’t work. The City leadership mishandled this.

City Manager Martin claims he is “optimistic” that an appeal to FEMA will reverse a recent ruling to pay only a small percentage of the project’s cost. We are not optimistic, nor should you be. And we warn the City Commission from waving the magic millage-rate wand to cover up this terrible mess.

Based on Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA) of FEMA documents, emails between the City Manager and FEMA officials and several interviews, Common Sense asserts the following:

• FEMA’s review identified several problems with the initial analysis, and invalidated it. A new analysis was undertaken.
• This new analysis determined that, under the 50% Rule, only repairs and reasonable costs could be reimbursed using Public Assistance funds.
• No written assurances were given to the City as the early work was not approved formally by FEMA.
• The Fernandina Beach City Commission, in August 2018, voted to approve a line of credit (anyway) of up to $6.6 million to pay for marina repair and upgrades. In a nutshell the City went out on a limb financing the marina southern attenuator without formal commitment from FEMA. Now FEMA will only allow much lower funding, adding to the City’s marina debt liability by $5,796,827.00, the amount FEMA has refused to pay.

This puts current marina debt total in excess of $12 million*. This is on an operation that perennially loses money. The value of the Fernandina Harbor Marina, as a business, would be roughly $2 million (+/-) to an investor, according to knowledgeable marina owners and operators who Common Sense spoke to.

Here is the timeline:

• October 2016 Hurricane Matthew
• May 2017 Bellingham gives cost estimate for Northern and Southern Attenuators.
• October 9, 2017 the City of Fernandina Beach received approval from FEMA to proceed with 10 minor REPAIRS to the Fernandina Harbor Marina related to Hurricane Matthew.
• December 19, 2017 FB City Commission marina discussion (from official meeting minutes):
  • Commissioner Smith reminded all that doing any repair work prior to receiving FEMA money will not be approved.
  • Commissioner Chapman stated that the City Marina needs to attract bigger boats that will spend more money locally. Noting there is a cost to doing business and there will be a return on investment. He stated dragging out the process because FEMA won’t reimburse is not the answer and suggested being more forward thinking.
• June 2018 the Fender Marine contract was awarded.
• August 7, 2018 Commission Meeting official minutes: The City Commission unanimously passed a resolution authorizing a line of credit up to $6.6 million to fund capital improvements including certain IMPROVEMENTS to the Fernandina Harbor Marina. The city resolution stated the note is a limited obligation of the City payable from “certain FEMA reimbursement” – AND FROM NON-AD VALOREM REVENUES BUDGETED AND APPROPRIATED.
• September 2018 FEMA re-inspects damage and prepares estimates.
• April 2020 New estimate prepared with published results.
• May 28, 2020 FEMA informs the City of its final appraisal, denying most of the fund request for the southern dock/attenuator – denying $5,796,827.00 of the $6,421,595.00 applied for by the City.
• June 3, 2020 City Manager informs commission of the FEMA denial.

What can you do?  Contact your city officials and demand they explain how they plan to fix this. Will they add to the already high millage rate? Will they finance with long-term debt? Ask them how it will show up in your taxes. Or, better, where else in the City budget – reserves, operating costs – they plan to find the money and eliminate this debt.

This is YOUR money that has been gambled away. It’s time to speak up!

City Manager Dale Martin. dmartin@fbfl.org

Mayor John Miller.  jmiller@fbfl.org

Vice Mayor Len Kreger.  lkreger@fbfl.org

Commissioner Phil Chapman. pchapman@fbfl.org

Commissioner Mike Lednovich. mlednovich@fbfl.org

Commissioner Chip Ross. cross@fbfl.org

Common Sense is a citizen’s group focused on good government, transparency and financial responsibility in Fernandina Beach. For more information about Common Sense:

Jack Knocke – (470) 295-4365. Email: jack@iotadvisorgroup.com

Frank Quigley – (312) 259-1741. Email: frankquigley2@gmail.com

Feel free to post on our Facebook page: Common Sense Fernandina  www.facebook.com/commonsenseFB/ and follow our web-site: http://www.commonsensefb.org/

*Pre-existing Fernandina Harbor Marina debt; A pre-Hurricane Matthew capital refunding note of $3,528,000.00 A line of Credit #2 for northern attenuator repairs/replacement anticipated at $2,290,000.00. The anticipated 2019-2020 budget deficit of $372,081.00. The utility Fund transfers (intergovernmental loan) of $3,800,000.00.  

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More Common Sense: Common Sense member Jack Knocke sent the following statement to the City Commission last week. I have no idea if it was read at the proceedings, but I thought it important enough to print it here. It details how difficult it is for a citizen to get straight answers out of government officials on how they spend our money.

Commissioners:

Because of limited seating and limited comments at the June 2 meeting, please read these comments into the record on my behalf.

My comments tonight relate to the current budget process.  Last year when I spoke to this commission about the budget, it was “too late” because decisions were made.  This year, I would like to get ahead of the process.

Commissioners state that the city is open and transparent, yet when we ask the city manager about his plans are for the budget, we get only platitudes, vague statements, and little indication of direction.

We requested the guidance that was given to department heads by the City Manager.  His guidance was apparently only verbal, because he has not shared any written guidance that was provided to the staff.

To satisfy our public records request, the city provided a 200+ page data dump of the journal entries as of May 7 for the departmental budgets. The city attorney confirmed that all budget documents are public documents, but we have yet to receive anything other than a data dump from May 7.

My ask of the City Commissioners is to provide guidance to the City Manager on the 2020/2021 budget to start with a budget that starts with the mil rate of 4.48048 which would have been last year’s rollback rate before the 32% increase in the mil rate.  If the rate is kept consistent with the current rate (excluding the one-time conservation .5 mil last year) taxes still go up because property values once again went up between 6 and 9%.  Recognize that residents have experienced a particularly challenging start to 2020 with COVID, lost jobs, lost revenues, and a challenging outlook.  This is a time that the city could go a long way to help citizens who need a break.

With the recent tax hikes, recognize that the city has increased spending dramatically and built reserves of $7 million (beyond the $4 million recommended).  Extra tax money is used to cover costly mistakes like Amelia Bluff litigation, 20% increase in city staff, $250k beach cleaning bill, lack of effective county service coordination, and a challenged relationship with FEMA that could cost the city $15 million in un-reimbursed repairs at the marina.

We need to focus our 2020/2021 budget on meeting capital improvement needs and efficient operational management.  This requires prioritization of the highest needs for in the upcoming year and less kicking the can.  It also requires conservative operational budgeting that eliminates waste, trims non-essential activities, leverages coordination of services with the county, and drives key city and resident priorities.

Would you each be willing to have the City Manager deliver a budget based on the 4.48048 roll back rate from last year as a starting point? This is a reasonable approach to an effective budgeting process.

Jack Knocke, city resident

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Headline of the Week: “Drew Brees Sets New NFL Record For Number Of Apologies” – Babylon Bee.

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“Hey, Sven I Think You Took A Wrong Turn At Iceland!”  According to a new book “The Year 1000” by Valerie Hansen, the Vikings were way ahead of everybody else when it came to globalization, landing in North America more than one thousand years ago. Even more astonishing, the book claims that the curious Vikings probably made it all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula. Murals in ruins there depict Viking-like boats and their yellow-haired, light-skinned captives being sacrificed by the Mayans. Tourists headed there 1,000 years later can expect the same treatment from Mexican drug dealers.

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Things I Wish I’d Said: “X AE A-12? Isn’t that more of a girl’s name?” – “National Review” Magazine commenting on Elon Musk and his girlfriend Grimes about the choice of a name for their newborn son.”

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Cleaning Up: Following the virus pandemic many households will be chock-a-block full of more containers of hand sanitizer than they’ll have hands to sanitize. So, what to do with all that liquid soap? Here are a few thoughts that I’ve read about and a couple I’ve tried effectively. Polish your silver — the stuff cuts through tarnish quickly. Clean eyeglasses – it removes fingerprints, hair spray and more. Use as a deodorant – it kills underarm germs effectively. Use instead of dry shampoo – squeeze a bit on your fingertips and massage gently into hair roots. Get permanent marker off white boards – write over the marker on the whiteboard with a dry-eraser, then wipe with hand sanitizer. Treat stains before laundering – rub sanitizer in and let it sit for one to three minutes. Clean your keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, and touch-pad – use a microfiber cloth. I wonder of the loud crowd of extreme environmentalists know that hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment come from hydrocarbons created by the hated “big oil” companies?

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“Dear Mr. Sulzberger, if you have any openings…..”

March Of Ignorance: The not-for-long last print newspaper in the area, the News Leader, headlined its Page 1 lead story this past Wednesday “March against violence”, an article that had nothing to do with anything that took place in Fernandina Beach or on Amelia Island or anyplace nearby. It described a small group of mostly young locals who walked around town holding signs complaining about causes about which they are clearly clueless. One sign quoted that great social scientist – Jimi Hendrix. Why are these folks upset about the death of one man in Minneapolis — George Floyd —  and yet they never take to the streets to protest the murder of thousands of black men by other black men in Jacksonville, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Baltimore, etc.? The majority of the article quoted a young local black man. He didn’t mention that the Great Society programs enacted some 55 years ago under Democrats have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, Medicaid, public housing, rent subsidies, federal aid to public schools, food stamps, and more have all been dismal failures. Since the 1960’s the Democrats or “progressives” are so embarrassed by their failures that they are new blaming them on something called “white privilege.” Mr. Floyd was murdered by a white man wearing a blue uniform. But that’s a rare event, whereas the large number of senseless black-on-black murders that take place in our nation’s big cities are commonplace. The paper never mentioned that in 2019 the reason blacks die of homicides at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined is criminal violence.  The article and the inside editorial by Editor Peg Davis — who claims her “white privilege is well-documented” — never mentioned the fact that when police pullback, black communities suffer the most. When police legitimacy is undermined chaos ensues. The rioting and anarchy the past week is an example. You’d think they would be more concerned about preventing a thousand murders than just marching about one. Why didn’t the News Leader ask? The hapless newspaper announced recently that it is selling its Ash Street building and moving. Where? The paper didn’t say, but my bet is it’s only going one place — down the tubes. It’s down to one section, ads are rapidly dwindling, it’s far-left editor Davis, has alienated the mostly conservative community it serves, and its circulation is declining faster than Ms. Davis’s popularity at the local American Legion and VFW Posts or the Nassau County Republican Party HQ. If the paper survives to the end of the year I’ll be surprised.

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Public Service Announcement: “Due to the virus, all riots need to be by mail. Ship a brick through Amazon and the driver will throw it through a window of your choice.  We’re in this together.”