County Orders Armed Security at Palm Coast Library in Signal to Homeless, Patrons and Staff: ‘Safety Is Paramount’
Flagler County FL March 11 2019 Flagler County Interim Administrator Jerry Cameron has ordered the deployment of “round-the-clock” armed security at the Flagler County Public Library in Palm Coast in response to mounting pressure by the library director and a county commissioner to address safety concerns in the library, which has become common ground for a community of some three dozen homeless people or more who live in a camp in the woods west of the library.
The county will have one armed guard from its current security contractor, Allied Universal Security Services, which provides security guards at the Government Services Building and at Sally’s Safe Haven, for example–the location in Bunnell where supervised parental visits with their children take place. A guard would be posted for all 62 hours a week that the library is open, Cameron said in an interview this afternoon.
“I feel the safety of county employees in that situation is paramount,” Cameron said of the 16-odd employees who work at the Palm Coast branch. He said the same concern applies to patrons. The guard will not have arresting powers, but can throw people out of the library if they violate the library’s code of conduct, and summon police when necessary. “Anyone in the library that violates the law, assaults people or does things contrary to the standards of decency will be trespassed,” Cameron said.
No staffer at the library has been assaulted, nor has there been criminal incidents, but Library Director Holly Albanese said that her staff have been intimidated, at times harassed and yelled at, her library furniture has been urinated on, her floors have been defecated on–beyond bathroom stalls–and there’s been various discoveries of syringes in and outside the library, along with other paraphernalia suggesting drug activity. Littering on library grounds has also been an issue, she said.
Albanese set up a projector in the library’s Doug Cisney room this morning and showed reporters a long series of photographs what she and her staff–and patrons–have been contending with. She’d shown the photographs to Cameron the previous day during a meeting, and at one point had showed them to Commissioner Joe Mullins, who stood next to her this morning, along with Flagler County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Gerald Ditolla, who’s in charge of the Palm Coast precinct’s policing and has frequent contact with the homeless in the library community. (“I’ve been back in the camp many times. They’re good people,” Ditolla said, making every effort not to demonize the homeless.)
The community, spread around a canal beyond the west end of the library and within sights of some homes in Palm Coast’s B-Section, has been drawing relentless attention in the past couple of weeks as a Palm Coast City Council member and the chairman of the County Commission have been discussing the issue, spurring the county administration to action. The county initially planned to vacate the woods of homeless and ship them to other counties and to a camp at the edge of Flagler. That plan quickly collapsed as it was roundly condemned. But the controversy only heightened attention on the homeless issue.
Albanese seized on the occasion to show reporters that while the homeless have been getting plenty of attention, the effects of the homeless on the library, its patrons and staff have been getting much less so. But those effects, she says, have been severe–to the point that some of her staff members were very distraught when the county reversed its decision to clean out the camp of homeless people.
Albanese supports a plan that would eventually move the homeless out of the camp. That plan doesn’t exist for the moment. She said that absent that plan, she is not for exiling the homeless, nor is she for keeping them from the library. “That’s not my plan. I want to work with these people,” she said, pointing to the extent to which she has been attempting to work with them: she’s been researching various means by studying Ryan Dowd’s 2018 book on the subject (“The Librarian’s Guide to Homelessness: An empathy-driven approach to solving problems, preventing conflicts and serving everyone”) and even tried bringing Ryan to Flagler for a four-hour teach-in, though the plan was vetoed by the previous county administrator over costs.
Albanese prepared a detailed outline for an eventual white paper on homelessness and the library, exploring partnerships, “reducing homelessness through library engagement and access to services,” educating staff and the general public on the problem’s various facets, but also exploring barring the homeless from using the library and placing no-trespassing signs in the area behind the library. The white paper proposal was sidelined after the deputy county administrator’s departure.
Janet Nickels, the county’s human services program manager, is at the library twice a month to provide social services outreach to the homeless and anyone else. She is fully aware that even if and when the homeless are displaced from the camp, they will still frequently use the library: that’s what libraries have become across the country–sanctuaries of sorts for the downtrodden.
But, Albanese says, there must be safeguards, her staff must feel safe, and her patrons must still feel welcome. Some do not anymore, she says, citing a significant decline in attendance at children’s programs. “Many parents are stating they will not come here anymore because of the homeless,” she said.
Asked point-blank about the camp staying where it is as long as the county hasn’t figured out a better solution, Albanese said: “I’m OK with it as long as we have the security.”
Mullins this morning was speaking about spending his own money to contract with sheriff’s deputies to provide security at the library, what would have cost $40 an hour, or $2,480 a week. A conversation with Cameron persuaded him otherwise: Cameron did not give him legal advice, the interim administrator said, but advised him against going down that route, which creates legal difficulties. Mullins considered giving money to the Friends of the Library and having them hire security, though the Friends are barely back from the dead as an organization and are trying to get back on their feet: they would not likely be keen on taking on security responsibilities for the library.
This morning Mullins, who alerted reporters to the news conference he called at the library, described conditions in terms even more dire than Albanese–and in some cases in quite exaggerated terms, as when he described homeless people “coming in there with needles sticking out of their arms.” To date, that has not been the case. But three library chairs, each valued at $800, have been put out of commission by urine, Albanese said, and while it’s entirely possible that the urine could have been from anyone with a bladder problem, she said her staff have detected the problem after homeless individuals have gotten up from chairs.
“All that I care about is we create safety right now,” Mullins said.
Before the Great Recession, Albanese said, the library had security for 40 hours a week. But it was the first item she cut out of her budget when cuts were required. It was never restored. Cameron today said that on March 18 he will likely ask the County Commission for an appropriation for Albanese’s budget to cover security. It’s not yet clear where that money will come from. “I’ll probably request funding authorization to go beyond my authority to provide security at that location until a solution can be found,” Cameron said, specifying “an open-ended security guard at the library until we can resolve the issue.” Albanese’s budget, he said, “may get augmented on the 18th to cover it.”
Mullins has a more insurgent style, and he’s using it to pressure the commission or the administration into action, even though–like Palm Coast Councilman Jack Howell–he doesn’t have a clear plan on how to proceed beyond looking for a plan, and saying something must be done: “These guys are human beings, we need to find a solution that’s a win-win for everybody,” Mullins said today.
Meanwhile, now that the county has walked back its plan to expel the homeless from the library property, it will begin cleaning up the acreage used by the homeless Monday, Facilities Director Heidi Petito said. A county crew along with a crew of inmates from the Flagler County jail will be conducting the clean-up starting at 8 a.m. Any garbage will be cleared. Any unattended property will be catalogued and stored, likely at the library, for an undetermined amount of time, so the property’s owner can claim it. Some of the homeless themselves will help in the process. “We’re really working with them because they kind of know the community,” Petito said.
A walk around the grounds behind the library today revealed a few tent encampments as well-tended as at a state park campsite, with a small group of homeless men and women sitting around a table, playing cards, chatting and greeting passers-by. But the majority of the loop around the canal was more abject, with tents surrounded by garbage, some of the tents themselves filled with trash, and with fifth-hand furniture, bicycles, shopping carts, mounds of aluminum cans and the occasional book strewn anywhere one looked. One book was “Entertaining With Regis & Kathie Lee.” Another, half-way inside a tent and halfway out, was a Bible. Aside from the cluster of men and women under the tent at the front end of the camp, the rest appeared devoid of people.
flaglerlive.com