By John Pacenti
When it comes to unhinged moments for this Delray Beach City Commission, admittedly, the bar is fairly high, as meetings routinely have devolved into shouting matches during Mayor Tom Carney’s term with the gavel.
Yet, the Dec. 8 commission meeting may live in infamy.
Carney verbally sparred with Commissioners Tom Markert and Juli Casale over his favorite punching bag: the Downtown Development Authority.
For a mayor who insisted months earlier that his colleagues follow decorum, the meeting was a lesson in Robert’s Rules of Disorder. One longtime political player called it “chaos.”
It started simple enough.
The commission was set to approve the DDA’s interlocal agreement and disperse $700,000 — funding for running the Old School Square campus that was delayed because of an audit about that management spearheaded by Carney.
The DDA gets most of its $2.7 million budget from an additional property tax of $1 per $1,000 of taxable value for property owners who live within its boundaries, generally along Atlantic Avenue and surrounding properties from Interstate 95 to State Road A1A.
The audit found “control deficiencies and documentation weaknesses,” but said the DDA agreed with recommendations to tighten up policies — by March — on purchasing and credit card use, among other things.
The DDA “admitted and, in the documents, they didn’t have all the receipts. So how do you not have any fraud?” Carney asked.
Carney proposed holding back some of the money from the DDA until the implementation of promised changes — and bedlam ensued.
No longer allies
It’s easy to forget that Carney, Markert and Casale ran as a slate and were elected in March 2024 in races that focused on development, city management and taxation.
The mayor refused to allow other commissioners to speak, interrupting them.
Markert, who says he has the most corporate experience on the dais, told Carney that the city audit was completely normal, finding insignificant deficiencies. “I would say, whoopty-do,” he said.
“I, as a commissioner, would like to know what is going on with your attitude toward the Downtown Development Authority,” Markert told Carney. “You take a swipe at them every time you can. We just finished an audit. I was hoping today you’d be coming in apologizing to the DDA.”
When Markert asked Carney about his experiences with audits, the mayor told him, “With my banks.”
“Where’s your bank? I missed it. Where’s it been?” Markert retorted.
Carney’s father established Carney Bank of South Florida and other financial institutions — none of which exist today.
Markert has been a strong DDA defender, saying that the organization has played a key role in making downtown a destination for locals and tourists alike, with its plethora of restaurants, unusual shops and thriving businesses.
The DDA also stepped into the void in 2023 when the city couldn’t find anyone to run Old School Square — its pavilion, its museum, its banquet space — when the nonprofit that managed it for years was kicked out by a former commission for lack of financial transparency.
It got even uglier at the Dec. 8 meeting when Casale — as if tagged in like a wrestler — took over for Markert and tried to defend the DDA, saying the mayor was wrong that 60% of the DDA’s budget goes to administrative costs. “You can’t keep saying inaccurate things,” she said.
She said Carney’s obsession with the DDA extended to writing a misleading op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Casale didn’t mention that Carney also insisted on sitting on the DDA’s board over the summer after he discovered he was allowed to in the City Charter. Some appointed business owners said they were uncomfortable.
He made a public records request for the DDA’s financials when DDA Executive Director Laura Simon said she would provide them in a one-on-one meeting.
Taking it to the state
Now, state Sen. Mack Bernard has gotten the state involved, using the mayor’s op-ed on the DDA as justification. “It is legitimate to question the continued necessity of its existence,” Bernard wrote to the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee. That committee voted at its own Dec. 8 meeting to authorize Bernard’s requested operational audit of the DDA by the Florida Auditor General.
Bernard called the DDA “a monster” at that meeting.
The Legislature could dissolve the DDA, which it established in 1971.
“Mack Bernard got a call one month ago, at exactly the time we all found out that this audit wasn’t going to produce misconduct, fraud, or misuse of taxpayer funds,” Casale said at her commission’s meeting.
Decorum? What decorum?
Carney repeatedly talked over Casale, saying he would not stand for being accused. It came down to decorum, with Casale saying the mayor had violated the city’s code of conduct and refused to support an important partner in the DDA.
She said four different people told her that Carney is intent on eliminating the DDA or reducing its scope.
Carney said the DDA has ignored businesses west of Swinton Avenue. The mayor has explored creating a new taxing district for that area.
At one point, Casale had enough of the mayor’s interruptions and shouted, “Please stop!”
“I don’t understand why you want to eliminate them,” she said. “Just answer the question. It’s obvious, why?”
That is indeed the question.
DDA in the crosshairs
Simon says the DDA has always been transparent about its finances at its meetings. It has only been in the last few years, when the DDA board turned over, that the issue has emerged.
“We overcommunicate our financials,” she said. “We have had very little — if any — concern from the public regarding our financials.”
Some city staff and community leaders say the DDA has a reputation of being aloof and not playing well with others. Still, Simon says property owners in the DDA aren’t looking for a tax break by getting rid of the DDA.
“The property owners rely on us to keep their businesses in business,” Simon told The Coastal Star. Certainly, the blogs and newsletters are abuzz with the issue. So much so, the city auditor was forced — sources say by Carney’s complaining — to respond with a letter to the commission.
Internal Auditor Elena Georgiev on Dec. 15 clarified that while she did not find any fraud, her look at the finances was limited in scope. “The audit was not designed or conducted as an investigation, and no conclusion of wrongdoing was done in my report.”
But Georgiev also said that her findings were “significant in a public-sector context because they increased risk and reduced transparency, even in the absence of fraud.”
Which begs the question: Why didn’t Carney ask for an investigative audit?
Behind the scenes
Speaking on background, city officials and leaders have their suspicions that others could be pulling Carney’s strings.
Mary McCarty, the former city commissioner who went to prison for corruption while on the County Commission and got a pardon from President Donald Trump, is often seen gesturing or even shouting out to Carney during meetings. At a Dec. 1 commission meeting, Casale had to tell her that her behavior was not appropriate.
The Coastal Star has a pending public records request for communications between McCarty and Carney.
McCarty says she is not the impetus behind Carney’s obsession with the DDA — though the audit findings do cause her concerns. She explained her gesturing.
“I get very frustrated with the way Tom runs a meeting. He doesn’t ever ask for a motion,” she said. “It’s like they’re sitting up there around their kitchen table.”
And then there is the theory involving Andre Fladell — that the longtime political player is no fan of the DDA because of events it holds on the beach, which he considers his turf. Fladell is also an ally of McCarty.
Fladell, when contacted, said he was the one who reached out to Bernard, a former city commissioner, after Carney’s op-ed. He said he was disturbed by the audit’s finding on gifts.
“I alerted Mack Bernard. I said to him that there is an issue with employees of the DDA spending money on alcohol and gift cards and not keeping track of who is receiving bottles of wine and gift cards,” Fladell said.
He said he had the same conversation with McCarty. He said Markert’s shot at Carney Bank on Linton Boulevard was “really bad” because the bank would give loans to small local businesses when the corporate banks would not.
He did describe commission meetings currently as “chaos.”
Casale said the alliance among her, Carney and Markert is no longer. “It went from Tom, Tom and Juli to Tom, Mary and Andre,” she said.
Carney’s big cudgel currently is his contention that 60% of the DDA’s budget goes to administrative or outside marketing costs.
“The city auditor found the DDA had a lack of financial controls and the state has now opened a full audit,” Carney told The Coastal Star. “I don’t understand why my colleagues continue to protect the DDA at the expense of transparency and accountability to taxpayers.”
Turf war?
Simon appeared in front of the state’s Joint Legislative Auditing Committee on Dec. 8 without any support from the city and has told Carney the DDA would gladly give the keys back to Old School Square if the city is unsatisfied with its management of the campus.
At the Tallahassee hearing, Jim Knight — chairman of the DDA’s board — said: “We don't want to run Old School Square anymore. We think it’s better to be run by a private agency, as opposed to a taxing authority, so forth. So we’re looking to hand that off sooner than later."
Simon told The Coastal Star that she clarified for the legislative committee that the figure for administrative costs is 30%.
Make no mistake, Simon is Delray Beach royalty, with her family being among its earliest settlers. And the question that Carney is just engaging in an old-fashioned turf war hasn’t escaped her.
Carney, after initially refusing to meet, finally sat down with her over the summer.
“He said, ‘It’s just government, it’s just political. I do this to every board I join,’” Simon recalled. “He says, it’s not personal — it’s personal.”
Carney denied ever making that statement.
In the end, the mayor got his way at the Dec. 8 meeting. Only half of the DDA’s budget for Old School Square — $350,000 — was released while the DDA amends its policies and the state starts its audit.
At the end of the meeting, Carney had one more thing to add as City Manager Terrence Moore made a casual mention of city directors celebrating birthdays. It was Mary McCarty’s birthday, too, he noted.
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