NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The city economic development crisis is far more severe than even NSBNEWS.net reported in breaking the story online Wednesday: Not only were planning documents dating back five years not sent to the state for compliance purposes, the final applications were never even created in the first place.

NSBNEWS.net asked City Clerk Johnny Bledsoe to make the documents available for inspection Thursday under the state's Freedom of Information statutes, either electronically on city computers or paperwork in file folders. Bledsoe got back to NSBNEWS.net about an hour later stating:

"They don't exist." So it's not simply a "procedural" matter as city officials were quoted as saying in other news outlets.

Mayor Adam Barringer said tersely this afternoon when NSBNEWS.net informed him of Bledsoe's finding: "I know. On so mant fronts it's unfathomable. It's our liability."

The lack of filing the applications for final approval by the state not only brings the scheduled August groundbreaking of the Super Walmart on State Road 44, near Interstate 95, and the proposed 112-room Hampton Inn & Suites on Flagler Avenue, to grinding halts, but dozens of other projects as well, including the United Church of Christ, which was to break ground Sunday. Now those plans are delayed indefinitely.