The Flagler County School Board and Flagler County Commission are preparing to sign a joint agreement that will lease the old courthouse in Bunnell to the district for just two years, with two five-year renewal options and an option to buy. Some school board members have reservations about the quality of the building, but will not stand in the way of approving the lease.

The district will use the building’s three floors for more than half a dozen specialty programs currently located on campuses across the county, but not for regular, traditional school classes.

The monthly rent has yet to be determined. The district’s facilities manager previously estimated the monthly rent at $7,676 plus $10,000 in utilities, or $212,000 plus $635,000 in renovation costs. The district factored that higher amount into the first year of its current five-year capital improvement plan.

The Flagler Historical Society would potentially be given about 800 square feet on the ground floor of the older part of the 50,000-square-foot building, either for storage or for exhibits. The area would be closed off from school functions, and if members of the public were to visit, it would have to be by appointment, said operations manager Dave Freeman.

The society had more ambitious hopes for space in the courthouse, which was intended to be a natural extension of its presence in the Holden House, the historic home across the street that is itself part of a property that houses the society’s archives. The society scaled back its ambitions after the district dashed its hopes by entering into negotiations with the county.
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Freeman announced last week that SMA’s Flagler Access Center for Mental Health, which currently occupies the 5,000-square-foot building at 103 East Moody Boulevard — the old post office building near the courthouse — could eventually be vacated. “Once they create another space for that organization, the county is looking into whether that could be a possible location for the Historical Society,” Freeman said. (SMA’s space was previously home to Sally’s Safe Haven, the county’s only place where parents with custody restrictions could meet or spend time in supervised visitation with their children. The county was unable to find another location for the safe haven, which was summarily closed to make room for SMA.)

Some school board members have reservations about the courthouse. Sally Hunt thinks it’s a “great” building, but not good enough for Flagler schools. “To me, it’s not 100 percent what I want Flagler schools to be, at least from an aesthetic standpoint,” Hunt said. “If we use it for even two years, it’s two years of our students and staff using this building where the floor tiles are peeling and there are a lot of rooms that are admittedly pretty rough. And so my preference would be for our students and staff to live in a building that they’re proud of and that’s on par with our other buildings from day one.”

That would be expensive, she said, but then admitted: “Once it’s freshly painted and filled with the love of Flagler and the energy of Flagler, it’s going to be a great place.”

Will Furry, a real estate agent and chairman of the school board, was not enthusiastic about the club’s use of the building – unless there was no specific use for the 74 square meters.
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He was also concerned about the quality of the building, but saw the limited lease term as putting the district “in a better position to mitigate risks.” He was also concerned about the historic facade. “The only other concern I have personally in the lease is what obligation do we have to preserve the historic value of the facade out front. Again, that can get very expensive, and that’s just one concern. I think it’s wonderful that we’re preserving it, but at whose expense? And that’s what I would be really concerned about.” Furry must not have understood the part of the lease concerning the facade, which is not the district’s responsibility. The county is still responsible for maintenance. “The district is not allowed to do anything it needs to do to preserve the facade. Changes to the historic facade of the historic courthouse,” the lease states (emphasis added), “and any work performed on the facade requires the prior written approval of the County.”

Furry seemed happy with the short term of the lease. “In two years we can evaluate whether it’s feasible for us,” Furry said. “Because it’s an old building and we’re a school that’s advancing technologically. Our needs are becoming more technological and an old building may not meet that future. It may meet our needs for a while, but eventually we may move somewhere else and one day this will be a museum, right?”

The two-year lease reflects the county’s reluctance to move into a building with a storied history. (See a photo gallery before it was renovated in 2015.) The city of Bunnell was once gifted the building by the county but then turned it down due to liability concerns. (See: “No thanks: Bunnell votes 4-1 to return old courthouse to county, citing costs, liabilities.”)

“We believe we’re getting a good building, and we had a very good report on the air quality in the building,” Freeman said. “So our two-year lease was just a smart move to find out what the maintenance needs were.”

Furry feared the cost of renting the building would be more than $8,000, which Superintendent Dave Freeman said was the rent the previous tenant had been paying “for years.” According to the lease the county submitted in May, the rent for First Baptist Academy, the Christian school that has leased the building since 2015, was $3,000 for some months, $6,000 starting in August 2015 and $7,000 in 2017, with no further increases since then – at least not according to the document submitted by the county. In 2015, the county also agreed to spend up to $375,000 on renovating the building for the school. That amount was reportedly covered by a 30-year, interest-free loan to the school, while the school said it had invested $650,000 in the building.

The academy is moving to a new campus in Palm Coast. First Baptist Christian Academy is among the private schools whose students can receive up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student – money taken from the Flagler County School District to subsidize the private school. One of the reasons the district needs the courthouse space is to save money on portables and free up classroom space to meet budget constraints created at least in part by losing money to private subsidies.

First Baptist – “Raising Champions for Christ” – is one of 16 private schools in Flagler County alone that the state itself is promoting to parents as an opportunity to leave the district. (See: “Flagler Schools Lose $10.8 Million to Fund Private, Religious or Home-Schooled Education for 1,250 Students.”)

The school board is expected to approve the lease next Tuesday. The contract is not on the county commission’s agenda Monday. Last week, the commission assigned county administrator Heidi Petito to negotiate lease and maintenance costs. Petito said today she is still working with school board staff on options that “include the cost of insurance, utilities, monthly maintenance, etc.” but could not yet provide a final figure.

The agreement includes an option for the county to pay all future maintenance costs in exchange for a rent reduction, as well as an option for the county to purchase the 54,000-square-foot building in two years. Whatever happens, the property will be protected under title both for public use and to preserve the historic facade of the courthouse, which was built nearly 100 years ago.

2) Interlocal agreement with the school district to rent a courthouse