Union County conservation board gone, Clay and Bradford’s could be dissolved
BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
STARKE— Area supervisors of elections said a new law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis affected candidates running for soil and water conservation district seats in Bradford, Clay and Union counties.
DeSantis signed SB 1078 into law on June 15, putting all soil and water conservation district seats on the 2022 ballot, and restricting candidates for those seats to individuals employed in the agriculture industry or those who own or lease agricultural land. The bill also allows retirees who have worked in the industry for ten or more years to qualify.
To document that candidates qualified for seats, the law requires candidates to complete an affirmation form attesting to their involvement in the agriculture industry.
Clay County Supervisor of Elections Chris Chambless said one candidate for the soil and water conservation district in his county failed to fill out the affirmation form, disqualifying the candidate.
“However, all candidates were made aware of that requirement prior to that date,” he said.
“There was also another individual that said: “Hey, I’m just not going to do this,” Chambless added.
The timing of the new law’s immediate effective date left candidates less than 48 hours to complete a new qualifying affirmation form.
However, Chambless said that soil and water conservation district candidates in Clay knew the legislature had passed the bill and that the governor could potentially sign it.
“They had plenty of time,” Chambless said of the candidates. “They were here in the office on several occasions prior to the bill being advanced. It was actually stated that this additional requirement would be potentially in place. Everybody was following this very closely.”
Three Clay County candidates who filed to run for seats on the soil and water conservation district failed to qualify: Travis Christiansen, Richard Darby and Matthew Charles. Out of the five seats on the district’s board, two will be vacant next year.
In Bradford County, Supervisor of Elections Amanda Seyfang said all four candidates running for conservation district seats met the new requirements: Sherman Carnes in District 2, Oksun Broxton Burks for District 3, Amy Elizabeth Morie in District 4 and Paul Still in District 5. Since none of the four candidates had opponents, they all won their respective seats.
No candidate qualified for the District 1 seat, which will remain vacant.
“All five seats were up because of the new law,” Seyfang said, “and only four candidates qualified, so we do have a vacant seat (District 1) now because of that.”
“That one wasn’t supposed to be up,” Seyfang said of District 1, “but it became up once that bill was signed into law.”
In Union County, no candidates qualified for the conservation district.
Supervisor of Elections Debbie Osborne said the board in Union has been inactive for several years.
Education and activism
The federal government encouraged states to create conservation districts in response to the dust bowls of the 1920s.
There are now around 3,000 such organizations across the U.S., generally with one in each county.
Their mission is to develop locally-driven solutions to natural resource conservation.
The boards typically encourage tree planting and sponsor educational programs that teach the importance of soil and water conservation.
Over the past few years, the Clay County board’s activities have centered around education, like touring tree farms, preparing a presentation for the board of county commissioners, and hosting an exhibit at the county fair.
However, the conservation district has taken a more activist role across the river in St. Johns County. Critics of SB 1078 say the legislation is a reaction to the St. John’s group’s activism.
In 2014, a subsidiary of Gate Petroleum planned to build a 66-home subdivision near the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve south of Ponte Vedra Beach. To execute its plan, the company had to persuade the county commission to change its comprehensive plan, designating 74 acres as residential.
St. Johns Soil and Water Conservation Board Chair Nicole Crosby led a successful effort to defeat the change.
Crosby claimed that when her seat was later up for election, a company controlled by the family of State Senator Travis Hutson contributed $10,000 to her opponent.
Crosby added that after she won reelection, Hutson sponsored SB 1078 in the Senate to strike back. Since Crosby does not work in the agriculture industry, she is ineligible to run this year.
Critics of the measure have also said that as environmentalists have filled many of the seats on conservation district boards across the state, SB 1078 is intended to thwart that trend.
Hutson has said he sponsored the bill to weed out inactive boards within the state.
Bradford and Clay boards in danger
SB 1078 explicitly dissolved the soil and water conservation districts in Baker and Martin counties because the state’s office of economic opportunity previously declared those boards inactive.
The new law could also abolish the boards in Clay and Bradford because one of the new law’s provisions declares that “All five supervisors of the governing body of each district shall meet at least once per calendar year in a public meeting.”
Since the Bradford board will have only four members and the Clay board three after the general election on Nov. 8, it will be impossible for all five supervisors of those districts to meet.
Another provision of the new law states that if the five supervisors fail to meet at least once in a calendar year, the board will be automatically dissolved on Jan. 1 of the following year.
