The historically Black coastal community of American Beach is demanding answers, after county commissioners tried to force them to pay more than $9,000 apiece for a new water and sewer system.
The county was threatening to place liens on anyone’s property who didn’t pay up. In response to community pressure, and questions from news outlets including WJCT News, commissioners called a last-minute meeting Monday to walk back its plan to dump the $1.8 million debt onto American Beach homeowners.
Now, they’re promising full refunds to property owners. But under the current plan, residents will be forced to keep making payments until the project is finished before any promised refund boomerangs back to them.
And questions still shroud the commissioners’ promise, including why the county needs to hang onto homeowners’ money for years and why the county didn’t commit a dime of its own money to construction costs until this year — even as millions in federal COVID relief dollars poured into the rural Northeast Florida county.
Residents say skepticism toward Nassau County’s actions is well-founded, given the county’s decades of neglect toward Florida’s first African American beach.
A history of neglect
American Beach is a historic community, situated between resorts and large condos on Amelia Island. It was founded almost 90 years ago by Florida’s first Black millionaire, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, as a place for his employees to vacation in peace, when racist Florida laws segregated the state's beaches.
American Beach is also along the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
Some of the older residents of the neighborhood, like Erving Gilyard, still remember visiting the beach as a kid growing up under Jim Crow in Florida. He went to the beach in the summertime with his Sunday school class as a kid.
“That was just the highlight of the summer 'cause you could just go in and splash in the water and the parents would have hot dogs in order for you to snack,” Gilyard said. “But our main thing was just being able to get in the ocean.”
The significance of the place still rang heavy when he decided to buy a home in American Beach years later.
“Black men back in 1935 had this vision for us to have a place where not just Black Americans, but Americans — that’s why it's called American Beach, because it's for everybody — but predominantly for Black people to come and enjoy themselves without being humiliated,” Gilyard said. “That just means a lot to me.”
His story is not uncommon among the small American Beach community, where many of the residents chose the neighborhood either because of its significance as a place of Black joy and celebration, or because of their own bright memories of the beach growing up.
But the story of American Beach is one of a community thriving despite the local political leadership, not because of it.
“We still have a long way to go as far as infrastructure is concerned because we were just kind of left behind, in my opinion, with the infrastructure from the county,” Gilyard.
University professor Eugene Emory is another longtime resident of the beach. He first learned about it during a visit with friends in college. After graduating, traveling and building his career, he bought a home in American Beach.
Like Gilyard, he loves American Beach, but he says that has little to do with what county leadership has done for the community.
“I think it’s more systemic in terms of the government’s position, the county particularly, with regard to American Beach,” Emory said. “For example, in all the years I’ve lived there I haven’t seen any public works projects at all.”
The American Beach water and sewer project was hailed as county leadership investing in the infrastructure of the historic American Beach community.
But the county dragged its feet in investing any actual dollars into the $10.5 million project and instead signed off on a plan that put the debts of the projects onto residents themselves.
How we got here
In order to get special, partly forgivable state loans for the project, and eventually place part of the cost of the sewer system onto property owners, the county decided to create a special taxing district in 2020.
The State Revolving Fund loans don’t require a special district to be in place, just proof that whoever is applying — cities, counties or special taxing districts — show a plan to repay the loan, according to SRF program administrator Teresa Robson.
“They just have to prove that they can repay the loan,” Robson said.
In Nassau County, instead of pledging its own county funds upfront to repay the loan — as the county eventually agreed to this week — county commissioners placed property owners' homes on the line to back the loan using property tax assessments.
And unlike 10 other special taxing districts in Nassau County, the American Beach Water and Sewer District board doesn’t have an independently elected board to make decisions.
County commissioners made themselves the governing board of the district, which Commissioner Aaron Bell said was for efficiency's sake.
“There was a lot of timing issues around getting the money from the state to do the water and sewer,” Bell said. “The Board of County Commissioners as the governing body was the fastest way to set up a special district.”
In effect, the all-white Nassau County Board of Commissioners, none of whom live in American Beach, now has the final say in forcing residents to pay for the sewer project.
There is an advisory board, created at the request of community members, but they don't have a formal vote in whether to attach debts to people’s homes.
Beyond the sewer project, as long county commissioners retain control over the American Beach Water and Sewer Advisory District, the county’s leaders could threaten liens against people’s homes again in the future.
As all of these discussions about how to obtain state loans played out, the county also received $15 million in coronavirus relief act funding, and was later promised $17 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, earmarked for infrastructure projects.
But Nassau commissioners stayed firm on their loan plan, touting the benefits of the partly forgivable portion. Not a dollar of the federal COVID funds has been allocated to American Beach’s septic-to-sewer conversion project to date.
County threatened liens on homes
In May 2021, Nassau County commissioners sent a straw ballot to each person with a home or property in American Beach, outlining their plan to charge each homeowner an annual fee to repay the water and sewer loan it planned to take out.
About 55% of everyone surveyed actively supported the plan. Forty-five percent of residents either did not vote or voted against the proposal.
“The county continues to search and apply for grants,” the ballot promised. “The grant funds are being sought to reduce the special assessment required to repay the borrowed amount.”
The county did obtain one grant after that, but it was still going to owe $1.8 million on the loans. Commissioners asked the state to cover that cost but hasn't received a decision yet.
“It is the Board of County Commissioners’ desire to fully fund the septic-to-sewer conversion and avoid placing an annual assessment on individual property owners of this small disadvantaged historic African American coastal community that is vulnerable to storm surge,” the request to the state Legislature reads.
But before hearing back from the Legislature, county officials sent out tax bills of about $9,000 last fall to move ahead with its loan plan, without knowing the final amount they were actually going to charge homeowners.
A newer resident to American Beach, Pam McCorkle Buncum has been an outspoken voice against charging the residents for a basic utility.
“You don't say that you want to fully fund this project and not do it,” Buncum said. “We're holding them to their word.”
American Beach residents were given the option to pay the bill over the course of two decades, but with extra interest costs if property owners didn’t pay in full upfront.
Buncum said the threatening property tax bills, which noted the possibility of liens on the property of people who didn’t pay, caused widespread confusion and panic.
“Many property owners are feeling pressed to make some type of move, either to sell property or to get family members involved where they can try to strategize to get the money to pay it,” Buncum said in January.
NAACP member and spokesperson Bishop Thomas Coleman has also been advocating for those feeling pressured by the charge. He has strong family ties in American Beach and said his great-great-grandfather donated the land for the local church on the main street going to American beach.
“Most of them are senior citizens; some live by themselves,” Coleman said. “For them to be on a fixed income trying to pay additional tax money is a disservice to those people because they won’t be able to afford it, especially for a duration of 20 years.”
He added that given the history of the county’s treatment of American Beach, not everyone is comfortable pushing back against the county’s assessment. The county has outlined a hardship program, but it would require extra paperwork and documentation to qualify.
“Most people are really timid to speak out, especially when it involves their property because they feel like it could be some type of retaliation that could come against them if they go against what the county is trying to do,” Coleman said.
Questions shroud promised refunds
In response to rising community pressure, commissioners called a last-minute meeting Monday to walk back the plan to saddle the American Beach homeowners with the $1.8 million debt.
Now if the state doesn’t cover it, the county will use sales tax dollars to refund the residents for the sewer system. That's a pot of about $14 million a year, according to Commissioner Aaron Bell.
But this is the first time in the yearslong process the county has committed any of its own money to the project, and even still, it's unlikely to have to pay up.
“We're cautiously optimistic that we'll get some portion of that if not all of it from the state,” Bell said.
And questions linger about the commissioners’ promise, including why commissioners are still telling residents to pay upfront. State Revolving Fund program administrators told WJCT News that loan agreements can typically be amended to account for new funding commitments.
And, as it stands, residents will still also have to pay a connection fee to attach to the sewer system. Community advocate Bishop Thomas Coleman says that’s another undue burden on the majority-Black community.
“I just believe that people shouldn’t be forced to do it,” Bishop Coleman said. "The federal government should supply the tie-ins for the water and sewer because in the long term the residents are going to be charged for its usage anyway.”
By contrast, in Jacksonville, long-delayed septic-to-sewer construction and connection fees are fully funded by the local government.
