- July 12, 2025
As Flagler County officials have yet to find a solution to funding a beach management plan, a citizen grassroots effort has emerged.
Jennifer Herold, a resident of the Hammock, has launched an initiative called Protect Flagler's Beaches. The initiative calls for a holistic government approach with involvement from elected officials at the local, state and federal level to help find funding to conduct beach renourishment on all 18 miles of the county's coastline.
"We've just been seeing a lot of this indecision locally with our elected officials," Herold said. "We just decided to go from there and see if we could get more people involved, raise a little bit more awareness and see f we could maybe get some other players in just to help us get toward a final goal here."
Earlier this month, the Flagler County Commission asked county staff to nix the proposed half-cent sales tax push and instead bring them an alternate funding plan to find, or generate, $12 million in recurring costs to maintain the beach. A sales tax needs a supermajority vote of 4-1, and the initiative has yet to reach that level of support on the commission.
“We have been working on the funding plan for two years," County Administrator Heidi Petito said in a statement to the Observer. "It does include state and federal partnerships, in the initial construction, emergency work and ongoing. Even with state and federal dollars, there needs to be local dollars included, or these grants won’t be available moving forward.”
Herold said she understands that there have been "a lot of good attempts at trying to get things done locally." But that maybe, it'll need to take leadership from state representatives, and perhaps the governor, to fund the beach long term.
"Residents of the beaches are not opposed to necessarily a tax increase, but we'd like to see that every other option has been exhausted," Herold said.
Ideally, she said, she'd like to see dollars from the state and federal level help fund the plan.
Protect Flagler's Beaches is advocating for a roundtable meeting where all elected officials can propose solutions and discuss current funds.
"Maybe there's something we're not thinking of, but so far, what we've done isn't working," Herold said.
She started the initiative with her husband, but has since gotten support from other locals.
Flagler County is the only coastal county in the state without a funded beach management plan. That's difficult to see, Herold said, as the county relies on its beaches as an economic driver and as its first line of defense during storms.
"We're lagging behind everybody else, so I think that's why we're hoping, whether it's new leadership or new voices coming to the table, will help get us out of tis circle that we're in we can't seem to get out of," she said. "I do think all of the residents in the county, and really in the district, we deserve clear answers — transparency."
