Members of the government board overseeing the Sebring Regional Airport — which includes the historic Sebring International Raceway — tend to speak slowly in a southern drawl, but they pulled a fast one last year with the sale of 17 acres of publicly owned land.
Without properly notifying the public of the proposed sale or opening it up for competitive bids, the city-appointed Sebring Airport Authority sold the land to a partnership that included local developer Mark Gose, who has private business ties to several board members, and former board member John Haviland.
The price for the land was $325,000, an amount the board was informed prior to the sale was grossly under market value. A rival developer, Bruce Ledoux, who owns land bordering the 17-acre tract and was excluded from bidding on it, warned the board the land was likely worth twice that amount.
“I think you guys can make double if you put it out for a request for proposal,” Ledoux’s attorney, Robinn Singles, told the board before the final vote to purchase the land. “[The area] is crawling with developers right now, they’re just saying they want a fair shot at it.”
The board disregarded that suggestion and voted to sell the land to Gose at the original $325,000 price.
Less than eight months after the property deal closed came hard proof the public was severely shortchanged — insider Gose flipped the land for $800,000, at more than 150 percent profit.
Joe Decerbo, who manages the Spring Lake Improvement District, which provides utilities to the airport authority property, said he was suspicious of the deal from the start.
“This is the epitome of what can happen in small places like Sebring with good old boys b— and it gives government a bad name,” said Decerbo. “I don’t understand how they could sell that land without putting out competitive bids.”
“I’m okay with competing and I’m okay with losing,” said Ledoux, who also works as a financial advisor with J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. “But I’m not okay with dealing from the bottom of the deck.”
Developer Ledoux says the deal didn’t just rip him off, but taxpayers and everyone who uses the publicly owned airport and racetrack as well.
“No laws broken”
Ledoux puts the blame for the land sale on Sebring Airport Authority Board Member Carl Cool, who was chairman of the board at the time of the sale.
Cool has been a longstanding public official in Highlands County, a rural outpost with a population of about 105,000 people. He spent 33 years working for the county as an engineer, public works manager, and top administrator.
After leaving the county, he co-founded the private firm Cool and Cobb Engineering. It was in that capacity Ledoux met Cool after he bought ten acres of land just south of the Sebring racetrack in May 2022.
An amateur race car driver, Ledoux bought the land to build what he calls “race villas” — homes with huge garages to house race cars — for racing aficionados. When he needed an engineer, he hired Cool.
“He told me, ‘I worked for 20 years in the Highlands County engineering department — I know how to get things done,’” Ledoux said.
Despite their professional relationship, Cool double-crossed him on the land deal, said Ledoux. Unknown to him at the time, Cool also was working privately for developer Gose on another unrelated property in Sebring. It was while Chairman Cool was in the employ of both developers that he voted to sell the 17 acres of airport authority land to Gose while leaving Ledoux in the dark.
Cool was operating in an ethical minefield. While serving as chairman of the airport authority board, he voted to sell public land to a company owned by a client of his private business, while also allegedly betraying the trust of another business client who lost out on a chance at the deal.
Florida ethics law holds that appointed government officials like Cool must abstain from voting on any matter “which the officer knows would inure to the special private gain or loss of any principal by whom he or she is retained.” In this case, Cool had clients who both gained and lost on a matter on which he voted.
Cool insists neither he nor anyone else at the airport authority did anything wrong.
“There were no rules bent and no laws broken,” Cool told the Florida Trident.
Caroline Klancke, executive director of the Florida Ethics Institute, called the land deal problematic and said it was “ripe for investigation by the Florida Ethics Commission.”
“[Cool] was the chairman and set the tone for that collegial body,” Klancke said. “It is incredibly incumbent on him to show great care in the protection of the public confidence in that board. In the absence of that care, the public’s faith in the board is woefully and obviously undermined.”
The record shows that even Gose, who profited so tremendously from the deal, was concerned about Cool’s ethical quagmire. But nothing, it seemed, was going to get in the way of the deal.
“Is there a conflict there?”
The only clue available to the public that the Sebring Airport Authority planned to sell 17 acres of racetrack-adjacent land came in an agenda item for the authority’s November 2022 board meeting. “Real estate consideration,” was all it said. There was no description of the property, no address, no price.
And even that vague description wasn’t disclosed to the public prior to the meeting. State law demands that special districts like the airport authority post their agendas online at least seven days prior to board meetings. The airport authority board didn’t post the agenda (district officials later admitted it was a common omission).
Cool wasn’t the only one with conflicts of interest regarding Gose’s firm, Sebring Raceway Garages. Board Member Craig Johnson, who owns a financial management firm, disclosed in a voting abstention form submitted on the day of the meeting that an unnamed principal in Gose’s company was a client of his. Johnson also previously partnered with Gose in a company called Lake & Bay Boats, which dissolved in 2004. Johnson did not respond to messages requesting comment.
Another board member, Pete McDevitt, a Realtor, counted Gose’s firm or one of its principals as a client, according to a voting abstention form filed on the day of the meeting. McDevitt and Haviland — the former airport authority board member aligned with Gose— were also former partners in a company called Lake Clay Corporation, which also dissolved in 2004.
While not a direct conflict of interest, Board Member Mark Andrews’ son Daniel was a partner in a business with Gose called Make Sebring Great Again, LLC. Andrews didn’t abstain from the vote.
At the meeting, Gose presented his plan to develop “car condos” on the property similar to the ones Ledoux was planning to build next to the raceway. Cool, who hadn’t publicly disclosed his business relationship with Gose in any way, led the ensuing discussion and asked board attorney Bob Swaine what steps the airport authority needed to take to sell the land.
“I’m not aware of any requirement for you to have an auction or put it out there for the world to throw bids on [the land],” Swaine said. “You’ve got an unsolicited offer. You could, you know, say, ‘We got one offer, are there others out there?’ And let the rest of the world give their proposals if they have them.”
(Swaine had some family ties to the land buyer as well. His father, J. Michael Swaine, who preceded him as attorney for the airport authority, had once been a business partner of former board member John Haviland, Gose’s partner in the land deal, Florida corporation records show.)
When Cool raised the idea of soliciting bids for the property, Board Member Johnson, without mentioning his conflict of interest, said putting the land out to bid would be unfair to Gose after he’d done the “background work.”
“Unless you tell me we’ve got to put it out for bid, I don’t know why we would, unless you think that’s what we are supposed to do,” Johnson said.
“I don’t think you have any requirement to put it out to bid,” said Swaine.
The board then voted to sell the land to Gose and his partners for $325,000. Johnson announced he was abstaining from the vote, as did McDevitt. The other four board members present, including Cool, voted to sell the land to Gose.
With the matter seemingly concluded, Gose suddenly addressed the board.
“Can I ask a question?” he asked Cool. “I just signed a contract with you guys, with your firm. Is there a conflict there?”
Cool asked who the contract was with.
“Cool and Cobb,” answered Gose, naming Cool’s own engineering firm. “… I was just wondering if you should abstain. I don’t want that to mess up the deal.”
Cool then for the first time publicly acknowledged his own apparent conflict of interest.
“We do business with Mark Gose,” he announced.
Cool then claimed he was allowed to vote on the matter because he had a contract not with Sebring Raceway Garages, but another Gose-owned development firm that is renovating a building in downtown Sebring.
“The offer [for the land] did not come from Mark Gose,” Cool explained. “The offer came from a different corporation, and [Cool and Cobb has] not ever done business with that corporation. So Bob, should I abstain?”
Swaine clarified Cool had not done business directly with Sebring Raceway Garages and said, “Good to go.”
“Look forward to working with you,” Cool told Gose before the meeting was adjourned.
Cool insisted to the Trident that he did nothing wrong by voting for the deal.
“Swaine advised me that he didn’t see a conflict,” he said. “I voted with the other members of the airport authority board.”
Upon further questioning, Cool hung up the phone, and later referred all questions to attorney Swaine who refused to answer any questions about the land deal before also hanging up the phone.
What wasn’t revealed at the meeting was the fact that Cool at the time also counted Ledoux, who would be Gose’s competitor, as a business client. But because the public was never notified of the plan to sell the land, Ledoux had no idea the deal was in the works — or that his engineer, Cool, was selling the land out from under him.
“You Hometowned Me”
Ledoux said Cool mentioned the land for sale shortly after the November meeting, but didn’t tell him he and the board had already voted to sell it to Gose. Instead Cool told Ledoux there was a parcel of land available next to his property and asked him if he would be interested in buying it.
“I told him, yes, we want to buy it,” Ledoux recalled.
Ledoux said Cool invited the authority’s executive director, Mike Willingham, to meet him at the airport’s Runway Cafe a couple weeks later. He said Willingham, Cool, and Cool’s wife, a local Realtor, attended the lunch.
Ledoux said he was stunned when Willingham told him there was no airport authority land for sale, making the lunch a disappointing bust. The following month, Ledoux was shocked again.
“In the third week of January [2023], Carl tells me, ‘The land sold, you missed it,’” said Ledoux. “And I’m thinking, how did we get from no land being sold in December to now the land is sold in the third week of January?”
Cool told him Gose showed up at the airport authority with the idea to buy the land prior to the November 2022 meeting. Knowing Cool was the chairman of the board, Ledoux said he immediately suspected he’d been double-crossed.
“I went at him, I said, ‘You hometowned me on this,’” Ledoux recounted. “He said, ‘I was never in on those discussions, but I know there were backroom discussions on this.’”
Cool told the Trident he may have mentioned the land deal to Ledoux but denied speaking with him about the possibility of Ledoux buying the land.
“Mr. Ledoux had never expressed to me an interest in buying the land,” Cool said. “He never ever said a word to me about possibly buying the land.”
Cool also denied the lunch with Ledoux and Willingham had anything to do with the land or that he asked Ledoux to enquire about the land. Voice messages left with Willingham by the Trident seeking comment were not returned.
“He’s Stone-Cold Lying”
Ledoux said his relationship with Cool became strained as a result of the strange and contradictory communications regarding the land and their professional relationship was severed. (The two are currently involved in dual lawsuits against each other related to their previous business relationship.) But Ledoux still wanted a chance to bid on the land.
When the final vote on selling the land to Gose was scheduled on April 20, 2023, Ledoux sent his attorney, Singles, to the board meeting to argue his case. In addressing the board, Singles pointed out the board had failed to post meeting agendas online prior to the meetings as required by law.
“The purpose of the Sunshine Law is to put the public business out in front of everybody, and … I don’t think it was out in the sunshine for everybody to consider,” Singles told the board. “And we know that actions that don’t comply with the Sunshine Law are void from the beginning.”
Singles relayed an offer from Ledoux of $380,000, 20-percent more than the existing deal with Gose. Citing a recent property sale in the area, Singles said the parcel was likely worth twice as much. He also encouraged the board to simply put the land out to bid so the public could get the best deal possible.
“This will allow a fair and competitive process for anyone that’s interested,” Singles said, “and more importantly the revenue that’s received will go back towards this airport and make it a better place for the users of it.”
Gose told the board he was “shocked” the land deal was being challenged.
“We came here to make a deal because we thought we had one,” he said.
Cool said he was surprised his now-former business client, Ledoux, was interested in buying the land.
“Today I’m wondering if I have a complication or a conflict of interest with the airport,” Cool announced at the board meeting. “When I was doing work for [Ledoux] I didn’t know that he was interested in this property. Now he is interested and I don’t blame him for being interested. … I’m gonna need an attorney’s opinion on what to do or not to do going forward.”
“He’s stone-cold lying in that meeting,” Ledoux told the Trident.
Board Member Stanley Wells then urged the board to vote for the original deal with Gose.
There was talk of tabling the item to the next meeting, but Gose objected to delaying the vote.
“I love every one of you guys, I respect every one of you guys, but we feel blindsided here,” Gose said. “If we did something wrong, of course you know, back off and do what is right. … I really would like you to consider giving us a deal because I don’t know what’s gonna happen if you table it, what’s gonna happen in the next 30 days.”
“Ethically, personally, I would never back out on a deal that went that far,” Wells said. “Whether it’s right or it’s wrong, I’d have to go forward.”
Board member Andrews, whose son at the time was still listed as a principal in the “Make Sebring Great Again” corporation with Gose, made a motion to accept the original $325,000 deal with Sebring Raceway Garages. Johnson, who abstained from the previous vote due to a business relationship involving the firm, seconded the motion.
The vote was unanimous in favor of Gose, with McDevitt and Cool abstaining. This time Johnson voted in favor of the deal. What changed regarding his previously reported conflict of interest isn’t clear; Johnson did not return calls for comment.
When contacted by the Trident, Gose answered but immediately hung up the phone when a reporter identified himself.
The Big Flip
The airport authority’s land sale to Gose closed on August 31, 2023. In April, less than eight months later, Gose sold the land to another developer, Apex Motor Garages, for $800,000.
Ledoux said the airport authority was wrong for not putting the land out for bid, but Cool noted state law doesn’t require special districts like the airport authority to open up land sales for competition.
“[Ledoux] thought airport land had to be sold the same way county land had to be sold – with bids,” said Cool. “The staff at the airport knew that was not the case.”
Ledoux said he and attorney Singles explored filing suit against the airport authority for Sunshine violations, but decided against it. He said he filed complaints with several law enforcement agencies, including the Florida Attorney General’s Office and Federal Bureau of Investigation, to no avail.
Decerbo, the district manager for the Spring Lake utility, said he supports an investigation as well. The “good old boys network” is nothing new in Sebring, he said, only now it’s finally coming to light.
“I feel bad for the guy because he’s doing this with integrity,” Decerbo said of Ledoux. “And it’s obvious he lost that land because of a lack of integrity. And the public lost out too.”
About the Author: Bob Norman is an award-winning investigative reporter who serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Trident and journalism program director for the Florida Center for Government Accountability. He can be reached at journalism@flcga.org. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability.