Details of Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf controversy still shady months later

Posted by Admin November 13, 2024 Golf

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A state proposal to put 45 holes of golf at Jonathan Dickinson State Park was leaked to the public in mid-August along with plans to add pickleball courts, hotels and disc golf at eight other parks throughout Florida.

Following the leak, the state tried to get ahead of the controversy, touting the plans as a campaign to increase park visitors called the “Great Outdoors Initiative”.

But the surreptitious rollout of the proposals only a few days ahead of public meetings that were scheduled for an hour at the same time on the same day statewide, led to a maelstrom of opposition from parkgoers, the general public and politicians who railed against destroying native habitat for hardscape “amenities.”

No one seemed to know — and it’s still unclear — exactly how the plans were conceived or got so far along.

James Gaddis, the whistleblower who leaked the plans and was subsequently fired from his job at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the state’s Office of Park Planning was “ambushed” by a directive to map out the projects in late July.

Gaddis, a cartographer, called the project “secretive” and said he and his colleagues weren’t supposed to talk to co-workers about it. When he would present a draft plan, he said it would come back with edits that he believes were relayed from the governor’s office to the DEP.

He said one of his bosses used the term the “givers” when referring to whoever was directing the plans.

“It was just flagrant environmental destruction,” Gaddis said in a September interview with The Palm Beach Post. “We don’t know why we were asked to do it.”

An unknown veteran’s charity called Tuskegee Dunes Foundation finally took credit for the golf course idea, hoping to persuade people in an email from a Gmail account and with no name or contact information attached that the golf courses would be an improvement to the park.

In Florida lobbyist records, Ryan E. Matthews is named as a representative of the Tuskegee Dunes Foundation. Matthews, who is now with the law firm of GrayRobinson, was interim secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Rick Scott.

It was later revealed that Tuskegee Dunes is part of the Oklahoma-based charity Folds of Honor.

Within a week of the plans becoming public, and in the face of ardent opposition, Tuskegee Dunes withdrew the proposal. A state spokeswoman confirmed the withdrawal on a Sunday afternoon. Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed the issue three days later, saying concerns were overblown, but also that he never saw the plans and they were not approved by him.

“They had a proposal, it wasn’t approved yet, there was a lot of vetting that needed to be done to take this abandoned military base in Martin County and convert it into something that can be really nice,” DeSantis said when asked about the plans following an Aug. 28 press conference.

Gaddis started a Go Fund Me page after he was fired with the goal of raising $10,000. The page, as of Nov. 7, was up to $257,463.

Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.