City Commission - Regular Meeting

Make sure everyone has their mics on, and we're going to call the meeting to order on September 9th, 2026. Gary, can you take a roll, please? Mayor Miller? Here. Vice Mayor Politis?

Here.

Commissioner Card? Here. Commissioner Connors? Here. Commissioner Pendenski?

Here.

Thank you. Reverend Melissa? Is your mic on? Can you hear me? This one's on, I think. Yes. Can you hear me now?

A little closer.

Hello? Let's pray.

Loving God, we thank you for bringing us together tonight. We are grateful for the people who serve this community and for everyone who takes part in the work of making Daytona Beach Shores a place where people can live, work, and thrive. As decisions are made this evening, give these commissioners wisdom, good judgment, and the ability to listen well to one another and to the people they serve. Help them balance different needs, think about the future, and seek what is best for the whole community. May this meeting be guided by respect, honesty, and a shared desire to make a positive difference. Bless everyone gathered here tonight and the community we all care about. Amen.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Thank you. Thank you, Reverend Melissa. The first thing on our agenda tonight is the trim process, and that would be for our budget. And so we're going to go on to Section A, which would be the tentative milk freight.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners.

I'm so sorry. I need to go ahead and read the resolution for you. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and read the resolution for you first. This is resolution 2026-12. 11? I've qualified as 11. 11, a resolution of the city of Daytona Beach Shores, Volusia County, Florida, setting the tentative millage rates for the city in the fiscal year 2026 to 2027, providing an effective date.

Okay, and before he comes up, I want you to know that this is a public hearing on the tentative 2026-2027 tentative millage rate. City Manager?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Vice Mayor, Commissioners. Sorry I got started early. I'm so excited to talk about the tentative millage rate. As you know, rollback is the rate that would generate the same amount of revenue from ad valorem taxes as the previous year. Staff is proposing a rate 9.74% above the rollback rate, or 4.9998 mils. So although this rate creates a $939,000 additional revenue, our operating budget was built as if we had kept the rate flat. Staff understood that it was important to demonstrate that this was not a bloating of the budget, rather an investment to protect the residents from what is likely to come from Amendment 3. This additional revenue will be put into a fund designated for economic development and capital projects. This is not going to be revenue that's used during our operations. This rate puts us, as you can see from the slide there, in the bottom 25% of all Volusia cities and is lower than over half of the rates our residents have paid in the last 11 years. You can go to the next slide, thank you. So if you see up there, our millage rate in 15-16, our ad valorem was 5.4994. You add on to that a voted rate of 2.153 for a total of 7.653. So 11 years ago we were paying 7.6 mils, significantly lower than we are now. That came down over time and it wasn't until the 21-22 fiscal year that we ever got below five mils. So what we're proposing here isn't something that our residents haven't seen in the past. So the questions have come up, what can we do if the constitutional amendment doesn't pass? As the city has demonstrated in the past, if there is reason to lower the mills, we can always go back and lower the mills if the amendment does not pass. This rate would mean for our residents, the average single family parcel would pay an additional $14.55 a month Our condo residents on average would pay $10.93 more a month. So why are we proposing this rate? Especially if we were able to keep our operating flat. So most everyone has heard about Amendment 3, which is the legislature's proposal to increase the property tax homestead exemption from 50,000 to 150,000 next year and 250,000 the following year. That means that the city would lose $809,346 the first year after the measure passes, and $1.4 million the following and each subsequent year. Now those numbers don't account for inflation, which only excabulates the shortfall. But the amendment does. The amendment has a CPI built into it. So what that means is as inflation goes up, so does the reduction. So as we would then be reducing our revenues, our costs are going to go up with inflation. So you can see that the problem only gets worse over time. Another question came up about why don't we use our reserves to make up for the shortfall. Well, that's not sustainable. So if we are over time spending more than we're bringing in and we're spending our savings, That we can't sustain. And that's also not what reserves are for. Reserves are why we were able to respond so quickly to the hurricanes and other emergencies that come up when our fire truck gets hit intentionally and we need to replace it immediately. We have the ability to do that from things like reserves. It's important for us to also consider that ad valorem, or property tax, is the city's only unrestricted revenue source. We have other revenue sources, which you'll see when Director Irwin goes through her presentation tonight, but those can't be spent at the city's discretion. Those are already designated. So in addition to Amendment 3, what is less known is the state's new statute, which also restricts the way in which you can vote to change the millage. It was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. You can no longer vote for any raisin mills above rollback without a supermajority. So any year that we don't hit rollback, you all have to vote by a supermajority. If, as you saw on the earlier slide, there are sometimes cities need to do a 10% increase. There were two of them on there in Volusia County that are doing a 10% increase this year. If that were ever to happen, you have to have a unanimous vote for that to pass. I've also been told privately by a lobbyist that the legislature may take up further measures to restrict your ability to set the mills. So there may be more to come. That's why we felt that this needed to be done now. So now that we know that the state is attempting to restrict our ability to generate ad valorem revenue by two means, increased homestead exemptions, thus lowering the city's valuation, and restrict your ability to set the rate, staff feels it's imperative to be proactive in our approach to protecting our ability to carry out services at the level and manner in which our citizens expect. So with that, I'll turn it over to Director Irwin.

Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, I have a word to make. The city manager, he did a fabulous job. now we are here this evening this is our first public hearing so once i get done going through everything the public will have a chance to ask questions um and then you can vote on this so what we're doing is setting a proposed tentative millage rate of 4.998 mils per thousand of assessed value It's a 9.74% increase over the rollback rate of 4.5561 mils. You will hear that a lot because that is something that the state says we have to make sure the public understands this. And that rollback rate, it's the same amount. What happens is that 4.5561 GENERATES THE SAME AMOUNT OF REVENUE AS OUR CURRENT RATE, WHICH IS THE 4.5880 BASED ON PROPERTY VALUES. SO AS PROPERTY VALUES GO UP, THAT ROLLBACK GOES DOWN AND VICE VERSA. SO AS THE CITY MANAGER WAS SAYING, THIS COULD CREATE ISSUES LATER ON WITH VOTING FOR REVENUE INCREASES. Now, that tentative rate of 4.9998 mils is 9% over the current year's 4.5880 mils. Now, as the city manager had said, this generates about $939,000 in new ad valorem tax revenue. THAT WILL BE USED FOR FUTURE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES, AND OTHER STRATEGIC PRIORITIES THAT THE CITY COMMISSION WILL APPROVE. NOW, THE CITYWIDE TOTAL BUDGET, I DON'T WANT TO SCARE PEOPLE, AS WE SAID AT THE WORKSHOP IN JULY, THE BUDGET IS $116 MILLION. NOW, THIS TAKES INTO ACCOUNT ALL OF OUR FUNDS, OUR GENERAL FUND, OUR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FUND, We have several capital improvement funds and our enterprise fund, which is our sewer fund. So our general fund, which is our day-to-day operational funds, that's where money comes in, money goes out. We pay bills. We pay employees. That's our general fund. That's $24.9 million. And there will be that additional $939,000 for the additional village rate increase. will actually right now be going towards economic development but you'll see later on i'll show you where it's going into the next year it depends on whatever it is that the city decides to do with that money then we'll have a 350 000 for the economic development increase staff has asked to increase that budget for economic development as you were aware we had the uli study and they came and talked about their thoughts on what the city should do for economic development. And I know that Director Maddox will be actually with them again and going over what their final report is, I believe, at the next meeting. The capital fund budget for the general buy is $5.2 million. I'll show you later what those projects are. THE ENTERPRISE FUND BUDGET IS THE LARGEST BUDGET RIGHT NOW. IT'S $85.8 MILLION. THAT IS MAINLY DUE TO THREE LARGE SEWER PROJECTS THAT WE HAVE GOING ON. RIGHT NOW THEY'RE AT THE END OF THE ENGINEERING PHASE AND PERMITTING PHASE. SO COME NEXT YEAR, CONSTRUCTION WILL START. AND WE'LL BE LETTING EVERYONE KNOW HOW THAT IS. SO THE SEWER BUDGET IS $52 MILLION, WHICH INCLUDES TRANSFERS OVER TO THE SEWER CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT FUND. THERE'S AN IMPACT BUDGET FUND OF $16,000 AND $33.4 MILLION FOR THE SEWER CAPITAL FUND. BACK ON JULY 28TH, WE ALSO HAD A PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE SETTING OF OUR UTILITY RATES. NOW, THERE'S A TOTAL INCREASE OF 5.09%. THAT INCORPORATES A 5.25% INCREASE in processing rates from the city of Port Orange. And you can see here that the resident base rate has increased a matter of $2.18 for the first 3,000 gallons. And every additional 1,000 gallons offered that, that's an increase of $0.72. So it's a small increase to residents. You can see the non-residents. Those are people that live outside the city, but we give them sewer services. They pay a little bit more for their sewer because they're not residents. That is an increase. You can see a $3.39. And additional 1,000 gallons will increase $0.95. Then you have solid waste. Our solid waste is a contract with WastePro. The contract actually states what the increases will be based on CPI, based on fuel increases and disposal. And Volusia County actually increased their landfill rates. So now you're looking at a $24.19 for a single family home monthly cost and recycling at $3.97. Now, this summary of all the funds actually is a good breakdown because where we have that $116 million that seems like it's a lot here, it breaks it down into each fund as we did. But you can see down on the bottom, it's the second line from the bottom. Let me click here. And you have your inter-fund transfers. the money going from like the general fund or from the sewer main fund and going into the capital fund. So what happens is it almost gets counted twice and inflates your budget that way. And you can see that it's $39 million. So really when you look at that roughly $77 million is your budget of which $40 million are capital projects. So then you're looking at a $36 million budget for the whole city for your sewer fund when you look at that versus that $116 million. And you can stop me at any time and ask any questions.

I did want to ask you about the capital projects that we're planning on doing in the sewer. Do we get any grants or any funding for those? Yes, we have. Do you want to tell us how much? Do you know?

So there's several. We have $14.5 million from the federal government, and that's actually backed. We have a loan, and you'll see later on that we've accounted for some interest. And so what that does is it's a principal forgiveness loan. So the grant pays off. We take the loan from the state revolving fund, and the grant pays that principal off. The reason why I had budgeted for the interest was based on just timing, because everything's a reimbursement grant. So what happens is right now, they're looking at 90 to 180 days for reimbursement, which we would charge interest during that time.

So I think you said, did we have 85? If I went back to that other screen for the projects, was it 80? One more. What is it? Oh, the next one. Next one. OK. It's there. OK, so how much do we have in total in sewer projects that we're going to be responsible for?

Like $33 million. And so then there's another $6 million from the county, from Transform 386. It's a CDBG VR grant. And we'll actually hopefully be bringing you the full contracts the next meeting. Okay, great.

So of that, it's not that the city's responsible for all of that. And I know I have to commend you. You're excellent on going out there and getting every grant and every fund that we can get. So I appreciate that.

Our department is right now doing grant applications. Now this change in fund balance, this is an important slide. It's really your reserves. So the money that you have sitting there that you can use during a rainy day or to do capital purchases or any time a fire truck, something happens, hopefully that never happens again, we have the funding for that. What you can see there in the first line, as of 10-1 of 2026, we're anticipating having about $16.6 million in reserves. And as you can see with the budget and then using some of that fund balance, now we get to $10.6 million. This is unrestricted. We do also have other restricted reserves that go for streets, for instance. Then a lot of it is for capital purposes.

So, sorry.

Then you will also see here you have the total special revenue. This is your economic development I was talking about. You can see we start off with $491,000 at the beginning of the next fiscal year, but then we put in $1.2 million.

Where did we get that $1.2 million from?

We budgeted $350,000, and then you have the $939,000 from the excess in the millage. And then we're using $350,000, so you're looking at having $1.4 million sitting there.

Well, I know we have some treasury bonds. Where would we see that on this page? Is that included in that?

That is what is in your fund balance. We invest everything that we have that we don't need for cash flow right now.

Are we still getting good rates on those? Decent, yeah. And you have those laddered, correct? Yes. And when one comes due, do you just look for another rate and reinvest it unless we need it? Yes.

You can also see here the capital improvement budget. That is something, it's basically an in and an out. Whatever's in there, whenever there's leftover, you can see there's $338,000. That's usually for projects that maybe what we were thinking the cost would be They got better rates. And again, you saw this, the city manager had brought this up. And again, the millage history. You can see we're still down from the first five years there. And your total taxes. The monthly increase of $1,455 for your single-family home and your condo being $1,093, the difference in that is your average taxable value. As you can see, there's a $100,000 difference between the average taxable value between your single-family home and your condo. And in years past, it was basically the opposite. But thanks to hurricanes like Ian, Nicole, Milton, And then you figure a lot of the assessments that they have for insurances, it goes based on sales. And then this is again the impact of if Amendment 3 passes. And as you can see, that's $2.2 million by year two that is out of the city's revenue, right on the bottom line. And as you can see here at the taxable value by property class, we are 84% residential. So homestead parcels are 29.3%. That is in our favor that we have such a small group out of that 84% being our property here, 84% residential, because That homestead percentage for a lot of other cities, probably Ponce Inlet, Port Orange, I know the county, those homestead values are a lot higher. So if Amendment 3 passes, it's more detrimental there. I mean, we're still looking at a 22% decline in ad valorem. So the revenue, you can see, 45.8% is ADVALORUM, NON-VOTED. AND WE HAVE 24% OF TRANSFERS. THAT'S JUST THE MONEY THAT'S GOING OVER TO THE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT FUNDS. SO WE REALLY DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT THAT. BUT THAT DOES COUNT AS REVENUE. CHARGES FOR SERVICES, THOSE ARE FEES THAT WE CHARGE HERE, 9.2%. SO YOU CAN SEE ADVALORUM IS A VERY LARGE PART OF OUR REVENUE.

You're saying for other cities in the county, it would probably be even more? Yes. You know if we happen to have one of the lowest homestead or property percents?

I have not looked into that. I can look into that.

We could. We really could.

When you look at being 86% residential, I mean only 29%, that's huge. So expenditures, you can see expenditures by department. The largest is public safety. They're at 32%. I know most of you hear that usually like 48% to 52%. The reason why this is lower is because of the transfers out for capital, because that's increasing your total budget. So that brings that public safety budget. It looks smaller because of the larger overall budget. BUT THE OTHER SERVICES ARE AROUND 3%. PUBLIC WORKS IS 8%. THAT'S OUR NEXT LARGEST CLASS. PARKS AND RECS, COMMUNITY CENTER, 3%. BUDGET INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IS 4%. EVERYTHING IS TECHNOLOGY NOW. AND THEN WITH THE SECURITY, I THINK THE SECURITY IS MORE THAN This is an interesting slide. The reason I put this up here is I wanted you to see from 2021, 2020 to 2021 to current 2026, 27. If you look in the middle of the slide there, you'll see total general fund revenue of 29.7% or 29.7 million, 24.7 million. And it goes back to 22.4 million. The line above that, So right there, just in a matter of six years, you're talking an increase of $2 million overall. So now take out the next line is your capital. So that's anything that we're doing, if we're building new buildings, any projects, capital projects we do. So when you start removing that out of those numbers, we've actually been really in line for the past six years. So where we've heard the stories on social media, on the news, about cities bloating up and their budgets getting huge, that's the one thing the Shores is not doing. We pride ourselves being good stewards of our residents' money. Personal benefits this year, merit raises went from 2.89 to 4.39%. Again, this is a policy that has been voted on by commission. And so that there's certain criteria that we look at, CPI, and then it's over 20 years. So we use that when looking at merit raises. We're proposing a flat dollar an hour for all full-time employees. Health insurance, it's right about 9.5% overall increase, which usually it's 12 to 15%. And actually, our employee cost share for insurance is going to remain the same as last year. Now, going forward, we don't know. It'll depend on what that is.

We will be re-looking at something in January. What is it we're re-looking at?

Yes, we did an RFP for broker services, and because of our fiscal year, we thought it better to wait until January because we need to start the insurance as of 10-1. So the time to go out and actually research for the broker, you know, look at us, research what we need, and come up with a plan, we didn't have time to incorporate that into a 10-1 start date. So this way we'll do that in January, February for next fiscal year.

But that's different than we've done previously, or did we always do it in January?

We're not doing the insurance in January. We're going to go forward with the RFP so that they can assess the city's, all of our benefits, and then come back to us with their recommendations so then we can look at them. so that they can go into next year's budget to start 10-1 of 2027. This is the sewer. You can see the sewer budget's $52 million. CPI's $2.89. Capital expenditures are $33 million. So right there shows you what your budget differences are there. Your personnel costs are less than 1%. And your operational costs are 6.9%. Those accounts, we actually have three additional sewer accounts. So that would be someone normally going from septic to sewer. The enterprise fund, the sewer fund, you can see most of their revenue, 86.3%, is grants. Which is a good thing. Charges for services, which are your sewer, is 13.3%. And then you have interest in there. Again, for their expenditures, that transfer is the largest. That 64% of the money is going over to that capital improvement fund. And then there is that debt service is the 28%. That's that money to take care of that interest for the payments. Okay. And you can see their operations and depreciation are roughly 7%. Here's your capital improvement fund. Grants, you can see here, this is just for 26-27. The 61%, we have 12% in grants pending that we're working on. State appropriations, we have two appropriations, one for $900,000 and one for $375,000.

And then we take money out of the general fund and the sewer fund.

And here is where it's actually for the general fund broken down into each fund, but we can go into actual projects here. You can see IT. We need a Bobcat. You're looking at public safety equipment. We're doing a street survey currently that will let us know what we need to do for our streets for projects going forward.

How old is our oldest public safety vehicle? After so many years, do we happen to know?

I do not know that. I will have to respond to that.

Six years. Six years? Okay.

Uh, we're going to be doing, uh, parking improvements, possibly for the bank of America, AC upgrades to city hall, but we have an HMGP grant for hurricane shutters for city hall. And then we have, uh, the community center also has an HMGP grant for a new generator here to, um, be back up for the whole building public works. There's that facility, their public work facility expansion, which was partially granted by a state procreation of $900,000. And then we have the HVAC system down at Public Safety. And we can't forget the Pickleball Core renovations at McElroy.

I wanted to go back, too, for, you know, go back one second, too. So with Coffee with the Mayor last week, we had, back to the one where we got the, for the public safety. Okay, right there. So we had Representative Chase Tremont there, and I know that Senator Wright presented the check to us, but I want to make sure that everyone knows that it was Senator Wright from the Senate and Representative Chase Tremont, and that's what us, the city manager, and everyone talking to him, building that relationship. So we were able to thank him. We had thanked Senator Wright in person. It was nice to be able to chat with them. Representative Tremont and give him thanks too. So I just wanted to make sure that the public knew that we were able to thank both of them.

Then we have the sewer. We have the sewer TV inspection replacement vehicle and the sewer mobile unit. It's a Vactron unit. That was also being funded by a state appropriation for $375,000. So a 50-50 match, right? Yes. Now, the sewer system improvements, these are your three, totaling 32,000, 32,000, 32 million five. This is your force main, your master station and lift stations, and your manholes and sewer lines north of Dunlop. So there's a lot going on here. And an important date is September 22nd, 2026 at 6 p.m. That is our final public hearing, so we'll be doing this all over again.

What questions do we have for our finance director or our city manager?

I have a question. Actually, for Mike.

That was a very good job, director. Thank you, Laura.

Thank you. Yes, commissioner. So my question is, do you feel that we can offer the same services to the citizens no matter what happens with this Amendment 3, at least for the foreseeable future?

If this budget is passed the way that it's presented tonight, yes. We're essentially indemnifying ourselves from the effects of it, at least for the foreseeable future. By making this investment, we will be able to keep up the level of services. Had we not done this, this would be as close to an existential threat as there really is for a city. There are some cities in Volusia County that may no longer exist after this takes effect.

We don't manufacture anything here. We just give service. That's what we've done since I've been here. I'm very positive the citizens here want that service, and they don't want to change it.

All the feedback that we have received as staff is that they want the services to continue, and staff's dedicated to doing that.

Thank you.

Okay, if there's no other questions, I want to state again that this is a public hearing, and it's now open. And this is for fiscal year 26-27, the millage rate. So this hearing is to establish the City of Daytona Beach Shores tentative millage rate of 4.8%. nine nine nine eight mills which is a nine point seven four percent increase over the rollback tax rate of four point five five six one mills and it's to establish the date of the final public hearing as our director has said for september 22nd 2026 at 6 p.m at city commission chambers 3000 bellamy drive daytona beach shores florida three two one one eight I am now going to open this up to public comment to ask any questions that you want before we go on to the adoption of that tentative millage rate. I don't see that we have anyone signed up, but is there anyone in the audience that has anything to say about this millage rate? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to close the public comment. I will now entertain a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-11, setting the City of Daytona Beach Shores millage rate at 4.998 mills.

I so move.

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Thank you. Is there any discussion on this motion?

Madam Mayor, I'm sorry I don't know how to press the button fast enough to request to speak.

Okay.

I have been presented this information, uh, both in the presence of the city manager and the city finance director, and I've reviewed this over and over and over again. And I got to tell you the efficiency with which a director Irwin's department has tried to put the numbers in the right spots in the right places, and then having a contingency fund for heaven forbid any kind of storm damage or any unforeseen expenditure. They've placed us in the most comfortable position to provide the same level of service that we've provided in the past, anticipating this shortfall in ad valorem revenue. So applause goes out to you. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Any other discussion? Harry, can you take a vote, please? Okay, and as I stated before, I understand the reasonings for this increase. I know that we cannot go to rollback, but just the way things are today, I was hoping that we could at least remain flat. But I appreciate and respect the votes of my fellow commissioners up here, so this passed 4-1. Thank you. Okay, now we're going to go on to the budget portion of this. So this is resolution 2026-12 for fiscal year 2026-27. Please call up resolution 2026-12 fiscal year 2027. I want to let you know this is a public hearing and city attorney I need you to read this resolution 2026-12 in its entirety. Resolution 2026-12.

The resolution of the City of Daytona Beach Shores of Volusia County, Florida adopting the tentative budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 providing for an effective date. I apologize. Whereas the City of Daytona Beach Shores of Volusia County, Florida on September 9th, 2026 held a public hearing as required by Florida Statute 200.065 and whereas the City of Daytona Beach Shores of Volusia County, Florida set forth the appropriations and revenue estimate for the annual budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 in the amount of $116,062,800, whereas the appropriation for each fund will be general fund budget $24,974,000, the economic development fund $350,000, the general fund capital improvement fund $5,280,200. The sewer enterprise fund, $50,334,700. The sewer impact fund, $16,100. And the sewer enterprise fund capital improvement fund, $33,457,800. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the City of Daytona Beach Shores of Volusia County for that, one, the fiscal year 2026-2027 tentative budget be adopted. Two, this resolution will take effect immediately upon its adoption. Okay, thank you.

And just to, I'm sorry to interject.

No, that's fine.

This enterprise fund is $52,334,700. I think it was said $50 million. It is $50 million.

Okay, do you, Director? Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, no, I will not bore you again. Is there any questions?

Yes, any questions for our Director? Okay, doesn't seem like any. Again, I want to state that this is a public hearing. It's now open for the fiscal year budget 2026-2027 for any public comment. So this is your time, if anyone has anything to say. All right, seeing none, I'm going to close the public comment. I will now entertain a motion to adopt Resolution 2026, Adopting the City of Daytona Beach Fiscal Year 2026-2027, Tenant Annual Budget of $116,062.800. Is there any discussion on the motion?

I'll make the motion.

Make the motion.

I'll second it. Okay.

Any discussion? Okay, the only discussion I have on it, even though I did not approve, you know, my motion to stay flat was defeated. I want to let you know that I'll respect the decision that my other council commission members made, and so once the motion and the second... then I'll vote on that. Do we have a motion and we have a second? Okay, thank you. Sherry can take a vote please. And this passed 5-0, thank you. Okay, next we're gonna go on to presentations and I think this next presentation is for me, thank you.

It is, Madam Mayor. The Florida League of Cities Gold Certificate of Excellence is the highest level of achievement in a certificate program for elected municipal officials. To earn this recognition, an elected official must accumulate at least 30 points through continuing education and participation in programs such as municipal leadership institutes, ethics training, legislative conferences, advocacy efforts, and educational webinars. The award reflects a meaningful commitment to staying informed about the laws, challenges, and best practices that shape effective municipal government. Mayor Nancy Miller has consistently demonstrated that commitment through her leadership, continued pursuit of knowledge, and dedication to the residents of Daytona Beach Shores. This year marks her fourth consecutive year receiving the Gold Certificate of Excellence, an outstanding achievement that reflects her sustained investment in public service and municipal leadership. It is our privilege to recognize Mayor Miller and present her with the Florida League of Cities Gold Certificate of Excellence. Congratulations, Madeline.

You want us in front of the red or behind you?

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Okay, next we're going to go on to our citywide vulnerability assessment presentation. And we have someone here from the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council.

Welcome. Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. Yes, we have Lex Trachten and Vanessa Suazo from the East Central Regional Planning Council. And they are going to present the vulnerability assessment that we have been working on now for three years. A grant with the state of Florida for under $30,000.

And I think that's the reason we were so excited. We applied for it three years ago because I heard someone else had it. And I said, I think we can get a grant for it. So anyway, thank you, Lori, for pursuing that.

Perfect.

The printer broke today, so I was able to get all my notes out, and I wanted to make sure I could answer your questions. Thank you, Lex, for being here.

Vanessa, thank you.

Yes, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. It's a pleasure to be with you here tonight. My name is Lex Trachten. I am a geographic information systems and planning analyst at the ECF RPC. And we have a fellow planner and project manager, Vanessa Suazo, in the crowd with us tonight. And she'll be here to answer questions as well. Also, I just have to note, the weather is so beautiful. I live and work in Orlando, and it's been so gloomy. As soon as the rain let up, I saw the sun and the gloom in the background. In the ocean? Did you get to see? In the ocean. I grew up in South Florida, so I was like, oh, I miss this.

It's so beautiful, beautiful.

But we'll get right into it. So tonight we're presenting the findings and results of the Daytona Beach Shores vulnerability assessment. It was a data-driven look at current and future flood risks and the strategies available to strengthen the city's resilience against rising tide. Just to give a little introduction or reintroduction really to ourselves but also to our community members in the audience. We are the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council and we have been serving this region since 1962 as a quasi-governmental convener of local governments. We support 78 municipalities and eight counties. helping them all address regional issues collaboratively, especially those related to planning, resilience, emergency preparedness, and economic development. Our work spans a population of 4.7 million residents across East Central Florida. We partner with cities, counties, state agencies, and our fellow regional organizations to deliver initiatives that strengthen our communities and prepare us for the future. Our mission is simple, to identify and address regional issues through collaboration in order to create a more healthy, sustainable, thriving, and resilient region. and we mainly focus on weaving together regional planning and policy, resilience and emergency preparedness, as well as community and economic development. Over the past five years alone, including helping apply for this grant that we're talking about today, we've helped secure $65 million in funding for local governments through a variety of sources from federal and state funds, which is a return on investment of $13 for each dollar each of our county members pays to us each year. So let's break it down. What is a vulnerability assessment? In 2023, as mentioned, we began in a partnership to work on a sea level rise vulnerability assessment. A vulnerability assessment evaluates how flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise can compound to impact a community's infrastructure, natural systems, and residents. It helps cities understand where they are most at risk and provides a roadmap for adaptation, mitigation, and long-term resilience planning to mitigate the worst possible. Recognizing that Florida is particularly vulnerable to water-based hazards, the state acknowledges that the increasing frequency of rain events, severe storm and weather systems, and sea level rise poses economic, social, public health, and environmental challenges to residents and visitors alike. Florida Statute Section 380.093, written and established in 2021, created the Resilient Florida Program under the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. This statute requires local governments to assess risks from flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise across various planning horizons, from present day all the way out to 2100. The Florida Legislature recognizes that these hazards pose economic, social, environmental, and public safety challenges, and that proactive planning is essential to protect the people and places we all know and love. This is not something unique to you all, you know it. Located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Halifax River Lagoon, the city faces heightened risk from coastal storm flooding on both sides, from storm surge, extreme rainfall events, so not only hurricanes, and long-term sea level encroachment. Like I said, it's not hypothetical. We saw back in 2022, Hurricanes Ian and Nicole completely lash against the shoreline and break down some sea walls, even bringing some pools and homes onto the beach. So, as a baseline, adequately prepare for sea level rise. Community members must be kept informed and engaged at each step of the planning and preparation process. Community engagement was at the heart of this project. As we ran projections and modeled what sea level rise could and might look like in the future in the city of Daytona Beach Shores, we checked back in with the community for anecdotal verification and where data gaps may have existed. So we hosted two community workshops back in 2024 and this consisted of some interactive mapping exercises with community members and we had them identify where they have already noticed flooding happening historically in the city in that year and just developed in the past few months. And we were able to really talk with each of the community members and make sure that the results we were modeling were reflecting what they were already telling us and what we were already seeing. Beyond those workshops, We had the citywide resilience survey, which was hosted on the city's website back in 2024 and 2025. We had 71 respondents, which over half of indicated that they had experienced some level of flooding while being a resident in the city. And as a result of that flooding, nearly 60% had experienced utility failure. And nearly all the respondents, so about 87%, supported funding for infrastructure improvements to prevent further damage and degradation of city infrastructure from repeated losses and flooding. And 70% of the respondents to our survey were unsure whether the city had a plan to address sea level rise, extreme rainfall, compound flooding. And lastly, we had an open house where we shared the results of all of the projections we had modeled. And based on those results, we had community members play pin on the tail flying kind of lighthearted way to get community members involved. We wanted community members to think outside of the box. What protection measures could be implemented in the city and where? accommodation, perhaps even retreat in some serious cases, and avoidance. Where should we just not continue to build already? Now I'll walk through the technical findings of the assessment. Like I said, as we know, the storm surge impacts during a hurricane are already severe today. Under a category four or five hurricane, 100% of the city's critical assets are impacted by flooding. Excuse me one second, I'm gonna take a sip of water.

That's okay, bring it up with you.

So with those category five hurricane impacts, Depths are projected in the current day to possibly reach up, worst case scenario, up to 42 feet. Excuse me, sorry, I had a cold last week. Better now, but. With depths reaching possibly up to 42 feet near Dunlawton Avenue. And in a current day category five storm scenario, All major roadways, including A1A, experience flooding, eliminating emergency access and evacuation. So we already know today that the risk is significant during a hurricane category four or five storm. As sea level continues to rise, as usual scenario continues, it will continue to increase future flooding risk in the city of Daytona Beach Shores. By 2040, many of the city's critical infrastructure begin to be impacted by flooding under category three storms that do not flood today. And by 2070, all critical assets flood under category three to five storms or not rather flood, but are impacted or touched by flooding, including City Hall, Public Safety, and Fire Station 77. And the evacuation routes of A1A, Dunlaughton, South Peninsula, and the Dunlaughton Bridge show flooding across multiple storm categories, creating potential isolation of the barrier island by 2070 in the event of a Category 3 hurricane. So just to review in this assessment, the city owned critical assets, those that are crucial for daily operations of the city. We analyzed and looked at the impacts of potential flooding on the community center, the public works facility, city hall, the public safety department, the master sewer station, and sewer station number five. And then going a little bit beyond those city-owned assets, we looked at some regionally significant assets, including the Port Orange Drinking Water Facility, the Port Orange Sanitary Sewer Treatment Facility, as I mentioned before, Fire Station 77, Volusia County's Beach Safety and Coastal Operations, the Dunlaughton Control Tower, which is actually in that image above on the slide. That's the Dunlaughton Vehicle Access Ramp that collapsed during Hurricane Nicole back in 2022. And then, of course, the impact on the Atlantic shoreline. And as I've said, although these assets are not city maintained, flooding knows no jurisdictional boundaries. Damage or disruption to these assets affects not only Daytona Beach Shores, but the broader region. Multi-jurisdictional collaboration will be key moving forward in responding and planning for sea level rise. In addition to our physical critical assets that bolster our day-to-day operations, a very important asset of ours is our community members, the people who live here, work here, play here. So when thinking about how sea level rise and flooding from it may impact the population in Zaytona Beach Shores, we thought about the concept of social vulnerability. which refers to the factors that make certain populations less able to prepare for, respond to disasters, which can include age, income, disability, housing conditions, and overall access to resources. In Daytona Beach Shores, there are some unique demographic characteristics that influence vulnerability, including high population of retirees, many seasonal residents, limited mobility populations that rely on things like paratransit, and a strong reliance on the tourism industry for economic development. Together these factors can increase sensitivity to disruptions and possibly complicate evacuation, communication, and recovery in the aftermath of a storm. Based on the findings, we identified several key priority areas. First, infrastructure and stormwater. Listening in on your plan for the next fiscal year budget, it sounds like you have a lot of your capital improvement underway or in the works for your pumps, your pipes, your drainage, everything that's been identified in your stormwater master plan. So continuing to do that, continuing to focus on upgrading everything that funnels and moves water into the community will be crucial. For some facilities, you might consider elevating it, or elevating entirely or portions of it, or introducing some other flood-proofing methods such as green infrastructure, reducing your impermeable surface around your critical assets, including things like bioswales, areas for water to naturally retain. And then I apologize that is a bit hard to read at the top there, but there are several land use and adaptation tools that the city can use, including establishing adaptation action areas and developing ordinances for those areas. strengthening storm water retention requirements for new developments, integrating the sea level rise projections into zoning, enforcing resilient building codes, and incentivizing smart and resilient redevelopment. And then of course, emergency preparedness is absolutely crucial for a barrier island community like Daytona Beach Shores. So evaluate the level of evacuation planning you currently have in place. What do evacuation timelines currently look like in the event of something like a category four or five hurricane where it might be recommended to urge residents to move off of the barrier island? Expand communication systems for elderly residents. Make sure that people that might not have readily access to the internet, a mobile device, or may not speak English as their primary language have a way to understand that they might need to prepare for an oncoming storm or evacuate. And then another tactic you can use is the development of Resilience Hub, which you sort of already have here, not sort of, you do already have here with your community center, especially as you go through the generator upgrades in the upcoming fiscal year. A place for the community to go to when it might not be safe for them to be at home. There might be water, their electricity might be out, they might just need a place to cool down. and stay dry, have a nice warm meal. And then the city can also consider establishing its own EOC. I know the county has its EOC, but the city can establish its own as well to work in tandem with the county EOC. And then of course, natural based solutions provide long term protection. Experiment with the various offerings there are for green infrastructure such as dune and beach re-nourishment. I know this is something that was explored a little bit in the past and didn't quite work out. There are various methods and it can be reassessed to see why exactly it washed away so quickly. Instead of staying in, perhaps planting more vegetation and mangroves along the shore to anchor that sand in, and oyster beds as well, going into living shorelines Oyster beds are a really great way to break the waves before they hit the shore. So that is something that you can consider. I know that the city of Cape Canaveral has started doing that in the past year. And then along the Halifax River, potential restoration of wetland ecosystems that used to exist in some parts and still do but need a little bit of re-nourishment. And then there is a mirage of funding sources to support your resilience projects. including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Resilient Florida program. Now that you've completed the vulnerability assessment, you're eligible for their implementation grants, which focus on moving some recommendations and projects that you might have already identified in your capital improvement program forward. And then FEMA also offers the Hazard Mitigation Grant, which you're already taking advantage of, and the Building Resilience Infrastructure and Communities BRIC Grant, the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program. NOAA offers a host of resilience grants, and then at the federal level as well, the EPA offers several green infrastructure grants to experiment with some of this natural-based shoreline stabilization projects. In summary, Tijuana Beach Shores has a clear evidence that flooding and sea level rise already threaten and may continue to threaten its infrastructure, economy, and public safety. But the good thing is the city now understands where this flooding is likely to take place and able to plan for that and potentially mitigate that flooding in the end. The city has the opportunity to invest in resilience, safeguard critical assets, and strengthen long-term stability in the face of rising tides, as well as take advantage of several land use tools through zoning to encourage resilient development as well as redevelopment. And thank you so much for your time. I'm happy to answer any questions as well as Vanessa.

Do we have any questions for?

Actually, I do.

Yes.

So the oyster beds.

Yeah.

How far out do those have to be placed to be effective? Do they need to be real close to shore? Where would they have to be?

I know it varies a little bit based on, say, your area of interest, the length of the shoreline that you want to target. For probably the Halifax area, If you were to go all along it, I've seen this in satellite beach and put it 50 to 100 feet off of the shoreline. I will say I'm definitely not an expert on the oyster beds specifically. And there are some really good case studies in neighboring communities like Cape Canaveral and Satellite Beach. And there's definitely some growing pains as well. It's a little bit of experimentation. And you might have to play around a little bit with how you do orient and re-nourish the oyster beds over time.

Thank you.

You're welcome. I'm understanding, too, we love our beach and that's what brings people here. But, you know, the beach is controlled and maintained by Volusia County. So have you been in conjunction, like with Jessica Fentress, the director there? Because any of these initiatives that you would take on the beach would have to go through the county. Right.

In addition to the city level vulnerability assessments, we also completed a vulnerability assessment for Volusia County. And each of the vulnerability assessments we did at the city level were sort of fed into that larger assessment and from there we provided some recommendations on how they could manage the beach shoreline. So I know just last year that vulnerability assessment wrapped up and they started phasing some projects into their emergency management plans.

Great. anxious to hear about that. Jessica Fentress will be our guest speaker at the next Coffee with the Mayor and I know she's going to talk about some of the projects that have been approved and what's coming down the pipe.

Anyway, any other questions?

If none, we thank you very much for being here this evening, and we're quite excited after over three years of this being completed.

You're not the only city that it's taken around three years, and then at the end, the long approval process and waiting game. We're just glad it got approved. Yeah, we're glad as well. It was paid for. Oh, we're with it. Yes, important. Well, have a good rest of your evening. Thank you. We appreciate it.

Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Safe trip back to Orlando. Thank you.

May I have a minute? Yes. I'd like to say thank you for this opportunity. It was a pleasure and a very real professional experience working with Lori, with Nancy, and Stuart. They are great. I'm really happy to having this opportunity in this beautiful city. If you need more help for a job, please. We are open to help and your offers and opportunities too. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for that offer. We appreciate it. I am really happy, happy that this is the final step. Yes, we are too. All right, thank you again for coming.

Take care. Thank you.

Next, we're going to go on to the approval of the minutes. The first one is the City Commission Budget Workshop. We held that on July 28th, 2026. Do I hear a motion to accept those minutes as is?

I so move.

Thank you. A second?

I'll second.

Thank you. Any discussion on any of those minutes or anything that needs to be changed or corrected? Not sure. Can you take a roll on that, please? And that passed 5-0. Next, we're going to go on to the city commission meetings that was held the same day, July 28th, 2026. Do I hear a motion to accept those minutes?

I'll so move.

Second?

Second.

Sherry, did you get that? Okay. Thank you. And if there's no additions or corrections on those, Sherry, can you take a roll, please? And that passed 5-0. Okay, next we're going to go on to our consent agenda. We have five items on that this evening. Are there any that need to be pulled for discussion before I ask for an approval? Okay, seeing none approved, can I have a motion to accept all five items on the consent agenda?

So moved. Oh, sorry. All right, second it.

We have Vice Mayor and Commissioner Dubinsky. Any discussion on any of the items? If not, Sherry, can you take a roll, please? Okay, and that passed 5-0. Okay, next we are going to go under old business, and that would be Ordinance 20-26-06, a voluntary annexation at 3108 Liberty Street. So again, this is a second reading on this. And city planner, you'd like to come up? Oh, and I'm sorry, attorney, can you read that for us, please?

Ordinance number 2026-06, an ordinance of the city of Daytona Beach Shores, Volusia County, Florida, relating to voluntary annexation of real property located at 3108 Liberty Street, parcel identification number 533402080040, together with associated rights of way in accordance with Section 171.044 Florida Statutes, providing for legislative and administrative findings, redefining the boundaries of the city, providing for legal effect, implementing administrative actions, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, providing for non-convocation, and setting an effective date.

Thank you, Attorney. City Planner. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. My name's Gwen Herstein, city planner. And this is the second reading, as you said, for an ordinance allowing voluntary annexation of 3108 Liberty Street. Carrie and Chris Miller are property owners of a single family residence on just over half an acre of land. Here is a location map for the property, which is about a third of a mile away from our current location. There's the aerial view of the same property and a street view. All requirements having been satisfied, tonight's staff is recommending approval of Ordinance 2026-06, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. And are the applicants in the audience tonight? I believe so. I think they do plan, unless they're waving. I didn't see them. Okay. They did plan to try to make the planning and zoning meeting, which is the next step for their

land use map amendment and they're rezoning not as many people by any means go to those planning and zoning board meetings so they thought they would say hello to them wow okay well please welcome them in so do i hear a motion to accept ordinance 2026-06 also move thank you second thank you any discussion or any questions for our city planner we're seeing none sherry can you take a role please And that passed 5-0. Again, welcome. If Mr. and Mrs. Miller are listing this evening, we welcome you to the shores. Next, we're going to go on to new business, and that's Resolution 2026-13, and this is Adopting the Vulnerability Assessment Presented. by the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council. And attorney, is there something that you need to read for us?

Resolution 2026-13, a resolution of the city of Daytona Beach Shores, Volusia County, Florida, adopting a resilient Daytona Beach Shores vulnerability assessment in 2026. prepared by the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council, providing for the use of the assessment to inform future resiliency, capital improvement, hazard mitigation, and adaptation planning, and providing an effective date.

Thank you. Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, the purpose of this resolution is the adoption of the city's vulnerability assessment. that we have been in the three years making. You just had a presentation on that. This is required for future planning and resiliency funding. The major findings were the storm surge is our biggest threat to the city. 100% of critical assets will flood in Cat 5 storm. I don't want to see that. The barrier island location increases flooding, erosion, and access risks. So the adoption of the benefits allows the city to pursue resilience and mitigation grants. And it guides stormwater capital improvement and hazard planning. It helps prioritize future infrastructure upgrades. Thank you. Do we have any questions for our finance director?

Okay. If not, then I am requesting a motion for this resolution 2026. I so move. Second.

Second.

Any discussion? Seeing none, Sherry, can you take a roll, please? And that passed 5-0. Thank you again very much for coming this evening. You can feel free to listen to the rest of the meeting, but we appreciate you being here, and it was a very good overview of what's expected. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have a petition by residents Lucas and Christy Earls related to a light installation. Director Cruz, do you have anything you want to explain? I know that we had something going in the past meeting. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, Director Stewart-Prews, Community Services Director. As you might remember, Commissioners, this all started in November of last year when a citizen came and spoke in the public comments regarding the darkness and the safety on Esperanza Avenue. At that meeting, the City Commission directed staff to look into the situation and move forward with whatever options are out there. And so staff contacted FD&L. And the solution was to install three lights on Esperanza Avenue. And I believe in April of this year, the city commission approved that agreement with the FPL to essentially have those installed and essentially charge the city about 30 bucks a month for electric power in perpetuity as long as those street lights are there. And so in July of this year, just September, so just a couple months ago, there was a citizen petition made for the City Commission consideration of the installation of one of those light in particular at 3052 Esperanza Avenue, and the petitioners are here tonight, the Earls. I did speak with them afterwards because they did show up at the, I believe it was the July 28th special City Commission meeting, and we met a mayor, asked that I go ahead and have a conversation with them. I did have a conversation with them. They made it known in certain terms that despite they would like to have that street light removed in front of their house. And they did mention on the record some of the potential impacts, and they did mention those potential impacts that they construe in the petition as well, which you have before you tonight. And so after that meeting, I did reach out to FP&L to look at the options. Some of the considerations that we had in the conversation with the residents was potentially having a timer or dimmer or some other method of controlling the light there. Unfortunately, FPNL wasn't very fond of any of those things, and in fact, they did say that they weren't capable of doing some of those things, but what they did recommend, which is their standard response, was the installation of shields. So, on the two lights that aren't in front of this property, one is at the corner of Fenn Avenue and Esperanza, and the other one is on the south end, of Esperanza, some back shields, they're actually called printed shields, but it acts as a back shield to essentially stop the light or the glare from going on the backside of that light fixture. Those were installed with those two particular streetlights location, but the one at 3052, initially one of those same prints or back shields was installed, but it wasn't doing the job as far as staff could ascertain, and obviously, you know, I did get some comments from the residents, and so I reached out to FPNL again, and they shortly installed a 360-degree shield. And so the area seems to be much improved. Staff, including public safety, did drive down there to take a look. We even turned our headlights off. And it seems as if the light is somewhat contained in that area, meaning straight down. Of course, we weren't able to visit with the property owners to see what their perspective or view is from their property. But from staff's perspective, we did the best that we could. If there's any direction from staff, we'll go ahead and move forward with that.

Now, I want to make sure, though, I mean, safety is always my number one concern. Is that not the first person that came here was concerned about safety on that street?

That's what the individual stated in the record, correct.

Do we know how dark? I imagine it was pretty dark with no lights if anyone was trying to walk in.

Yes, and our public safety director, he also personally went that way as well, and I actually spoke with him today, and he also believes that it is helpful to have the light there from a safety perspective.

I don't see that we have any speakers. Is that correct, no speakers?

Correct, but I believe the petitioner. The petitioner is here.

The petitioner is here. Okay. If the petitioner would like to come up and speak.

Hello, I'm Chrissy Girls. I live at 3052 Esperanza. My husband Luke and I are the ones who submitted this petition. I know Luke was at the July 28th commission meeting. The light went up on the 24th and that was as soon as we could be heard just to express as quickly as possible how this was affecting us. I won't belabor the point because I know he probably did a great job that night, but there are some things that I would like to just emphasize regarding this issue. First and foremost, We understand the concerns for safety. At the end of the day, the fixture chosen is just out of scale for the street. When I'm looking at this particular fixture, it looks similar to that as what is on US 1. When you go over the Dunlaughton Bridge, where the traffic speed limit is 40 to 45 miles per hour. When it was first installed, it was like someone was parked in front of our house. and shining their brights directly into our living room and into our bedroom where we sleep because the bedroom is there in the front. We had to cover up our windows with coverings at night when we were going to bed. So, you know, that is one of the major issues is just the type of light that was chosen. I understand from my husband when he came to the meeting in July, he was told that FPL was essentially instructed just to pick a location. and install a light. And if that's accurate, that's exactly the problem. There was no site-specific planning. There was no neighborhood design analysis or meaningful consideration of the aesthetics for those of us who live in that area. We are a very, very tight-knit community. We all talk. We all communicate, you know, if somebody's getting ready to do something in their front yard, they go to the neighbors and they say, hey, are you okay with me doing this? Somebody else actually in another part of our neighborhood wanted to put up a street light and the very first thing they did was go to the neighbors and say, hey, are you okay with me doing this? You know, we all just talk, we all want, you know, what's best for everybody. And we just don't feel like that deference or that opportunity was given for us to have a say. And of course I understand that you all spoke about this at prior meetings. Unfortunately for most of us on that street, we have jobs, we can't check every single agenda, we can't come to every single meeting to see on the off chance that our properties are going to be affected by decisions that are made. So we just didn't really have a say in this happening. So the safety rationale, I would also point out that speeding is one of the biggest issues we have on that road and I think a traffic calming device would do a wonderful job and much better than this light. My last thing I'll say because I'm running out of time is that there are pictures as to what the box looks like that has been put on in your agenda packet. It's just unsightly. We're the shores, we're better than that. Thank you.

So, Director Pruitt, I guess I want to know, you know, what options are there? You know, I want it to be safe, especially on the recommendation of our public safety director that he felt was a safety issue. Is this the only light that can be chosen?

So, this is the standard FDOT new light fixture that's designed for local roads, meaning a residential area such as that.

Would it be the same as we have on A1A? No. No.

Okay. That's for a collector or arterial room.

So this is a residential light.

Correct. Based on the FDML standard.

Madam Mayor? Yes, Vice Mayor.

Director Cruz, you said they installed three lights along Esperanza? Correct.

Is this the middle one or the tail end one? So this is the northernmost one, which is in the middle of Brookfair and Avenue.

And what if we were to turn this off so that way they could have a quality of life? If we turned it off, would it substantially affect the safety of the neighborhood? Good question. It's hard for you to forecast.

What I can tell you is that it will be pitch black there. The whole street? In that area. From Brookfair? In that area. Then it will be pitch black.

Like so, Vice Mayor is asking if there's three there. If one was turned off? Yes.

So again, Again, so there's one at 352 Esperanza, which is the middle of Van Avenue and Brook Fair Crescent. And then there's one that was installed at the corner of Van Avenue and Esperanza. And then there was one that was installed at the south end, the far end near the driving Christian church at the tail end of Esperanza. So those are the three. So if you were to take off those two. I'm only asking one, whatever it affects them. Oh, so that would be the one. They're the only ones complaining. Correct. That would be the only one. So we did also reach out to FBNL, and I appreciate the petitioners, Mr. mentioned that the There was an existing, or there is an existing light at the corner of Brook Fair and Esperanza that was out, and the staff didn't know that, and so we reached out to FP&L and that was fixed. So even with that light fixed and the light at Van Avenue, that vicinity would be pitch dark, black dark. And so from a safety perspective, I don't know that I'm the expert to answer that question. That's a bad question to ask. It's not fair.

Yeah, that's not fair to you. Okay, but if the white, again, I guess I'm still not, if we... just didn't have the one on, just the one that was affecting them, would it still be safe? So tell me how far apart they are. So if I was out walking, and that's one of the things I love about Daytona Beach Shores, we have so many walkers.

Unfortunately, I don't have the exact distance between the area. I can tell you, though, Madam Mayor, that the initial request to the City Commission by the citizen was to only install a light at the corner of Van Avenue and Esperanza. But after looking at the entire area in communication with FP&L, you know, staff elected to put one at the south end because, again, it was pitch-back, dark there, and one in the middle of the Van Avenue and Brook Fair Crescent intersection because, again, it was totally dark. And because safety was a concern that the resident have and the city commission had, you know, staff felt that that was something that was necessary.

Do we have the petitioner here that had asked us about the light for safety?

They said they were going to come, but I don't see them here. They said they were going to come. Is that Chris's kid, Helen?

No, Norma. Norma, that's right, Norma. Madam Mayor, can I make a suggestion? Listen, we are here to solve problems that come in front of us, problems that come to you. So why don't we just encourage... steward to work with those that are affected by this and see if there's a way to turn that off and see how the rest of the neighborhood corresponds as opposed to leaving it like that and and not having them say well life is not better here i can i can make that request official to fp l but but i'd rather delegate to you who you have the power and you have the connections and you have the knowledge let you continue to work on the problem and then report back to us but you have to interact with

You can't go up there and shut it off. I know you have to interact.

No, it's an FPL asset. And they would act on the city's behalf at the city's request to do so. However, there might be a penalty based on the contract that we have with them. And I do know that the full removal costs of one of those fixtures is over $2,000. For them to just turn the light off, I don't know necessarily. There's going to be a penalty for that.

Yeah, if you can check into that. Again, to me, safety would be my concern. As I was saying, there are so many walkers that walk around all of Daytona Beach. I feel that that's part of life being better, that you can walk around in safety.

Mayor, can I speak?

Sure.

I'm a little confused. The lady, the petitioner that just was up here, He was talking about the aesthetics of the light, and you said there was a 360 degree shield. I did not understand. Are they still saying that the light is shining into their bedroom?

I didn't get that. I didn't get that from the presentation tonight. They would be the ones to speak to that, but I do know that when I reached out to Mr. Luke and asked if this was helpful, I didn't get a response, so I can't answer that question. They would have to answer that question.

Do you mind seeing if you can get a response from them about, would you mind asking them again after the meeting or whatever? I know that we don't usually ask the people.

I have a letter here from Dan Miller that says that the shield did help. He'd rather the light be taken down, even though.

But those are not the petitioners, correct?

This is a letter from...

He's a neighbor.

This is at 3054.

I would really like to help them out there. That's not what I'm saying. I just want to understand. We're dealing with a safety issue. And we're dealing with a privacy issue. So I didn't get, do we still have a privacy issue?

I don't know that answer.

I'm sorry, what did you mean, privacy?

Light shining in their house.

Okay.

Blinding them. So if it pleases the city commission, I can reach out to FPNL and ask them to just go ahead and turn off the light. And then if there is a cause, I can obviously come in.

You can bring it forward before we make the final decision. Yeah, because $2,000 is... I mean, that's a lot of money right now, but that's to take it completely down, right? Yes. But you're going to check to see, just turning that off.

I know they weren't amenable to a timer or dimming. They said they couldn't even dim it, which is kind of hard to do. Sorry, I'm on the record.

All right. But anyway, so if that happens, though, there will still be two other lights there for safety for the people who walk around?

Correct, one in Esperanza and one all the way in the south end of Esperanza. Okay.

does everybody agree that we'll go ahead with that decision on just that particular oh I'm so sorry

yes i do see you there i think there's a few things that we need to consider and i'm sensitive to their uh their request however we do have increased traffic there in the evenings now because pickleball has become so popular and this is uh adjacent to the park so this is a walkway to the park and there are no sidewalks there that's another thing we could look at if if safety is what we're seriously interested in is maybe sidewalks would be a better answer for everybody the other thing is we have gotten very positive feedback about the same light from other residents so instead of having director crews work directly with with one resident i'm going to suggest that we reach out to multiple residents there because again we've we've been thanked for having those lights installed And I think the best thing to do, like she said, they're a close-knit neighborhood. Work with everybody to come to a compromise where everybody can be happy. I think that's a great suggestion. I have a question.

Yes.

If they were to put a sidewalk in, would that mean the sidewalk would have to go into their yard?

Well, it would go along the right of way. There's a fairly generous right of way that the city and county have on all of those properties. I suspect that that would probably be a less popular. All right.

So I guess the final thing is that we're going to reach out to more residents. And how will we get that done? I mean, will the director?

That is going to be up to the director. He's empowered to make that happen. All right.

And I'll get with the residents.

Thank you. All right. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay. All right, and the next agenda item is the voluntary annexation discussion. Hi.

Thank you again, Madam Mayor. So the last city commission meeting, Commissioner Card had requested that the city commission have a discussion on annexation, and I was directed to go ahead and do so Madam Mayor, and so staff has done some preliminary analysis. The city planner and even the finance director and even our PIO have done a lot of work in anticipation of this conversation and whatever direction that the city commission gives to the staff. So what we have determined is that there's over 500 properties that are within the various enclaves here on Beachside from Thames Avenue down to Marcel. And so, out of those 500 properties, there's about 196 properties that are actually contiguous and meet Florida statute and are eligible right now for voluntary annexation should those property owners want to, or petition to annex into the city of Dayton and the Shores. And so I just wanna briefly just mention what an enclave is, right? An enclave is essentially a pocket of unincorporated bullish county properties, various sizes and shapes and whatnot that are surrounded by a city or surrounded by a combination of cities and natural features such as a river in such a way that service provision by the county is kind of chopped up, if you will. And the center or the core of the county is detached from these enclaves. And so the Florida statute actually has the Florida legislature policy on enclaves and that is essentially to reduce enclaves. And this is actually codified in the Florida statute under 171 part one. of the Florida statutes. So if the city commission had direct staff to move forward with anything regarding annexation, I just wanted to share with you that there are four essential ways that properties can annex into a local government, into a city corporate limits according to the Florida statute. One is by voluntary annexation in which a petitioner petitions a local government for annexation the other one is through a referendum a vote of the electors within that particular area that's subject to the proposal and then the other one is through a specific interlocal agreement for enclave reduction with and that would be done through a local agreement with the city and the county and then the final one is through what's called an interlocal service boundary agreement or that's a fancy name for a joint planning agreement essentially and so In order for a property to annex into a local government, the property has to be compact, it has to be contiguous, basically physically touching the jurisdiction of that corporate limits for that municipality, and it has to be done in such a way that it doesn't create an enclave. So those rules apply to the vast majority of the annexation methodologies I just mentioned to you, with the exception of an interlocal service boundary agreement. If an interlocal service boundary agreement with the city and the county were to be done, then those properties don't necessarily need to be contiguous to the city. It just has to be in that general boundary area, that basic area that the city and the county have agreed to. And so if the city commission desired to direct staff in some sort of manner to move forward with annexation, what staff is proposing is essentially a voluntary and and volunteer approach. And what that means is there's no forced annexation that the city would be promoting. Essentially it would be a very tight process in which voluntary annexation is what would be sought. Every owner of every unincorporated property that is eligible for annexation to the city would be the ones that we would essentially target for annexation. And when I say target, I don't mean in a bad way. I mean approach them and say, hey, life is better here in the Shores. What are you doing? What are you waiting on? Essentially, that's what we would be doing through this voluntary annexation approach. And through a volunteer approach, what I mean by that is that in lieu of staff having to go out there door to door, and in lieu of forming a formal or informal or even advisor committee to do this work, what we would do is we would seek out capable volunteers from both the county and the city and ask them to essentially conduct an outreach program for us and they would be going door to door with outreach materials that the city would provide and they would be directing potential NXCs and people who are willing to do this voluntarily to city staff and we would essentially process those applications. So in summary, that's the icebreaker for this conversation. If there's any questions for me, I'll be happy to take those.

So previously, up to this point, we waited for someone to say, oh, my next-door neighbor's in the Shores. I know I'm eligible. You know, we've had several annexations in the past couple years. Why are we doing any more than what we did before, waiting for people to say, yes, I want to be in the Shores?

So this would be a concerted effort to essentially square off the city. So the Florida legislature, under 171, they said reduction of enclave is important and it's actually their policy, the policy of the state. And the reason why they cited this is because they're planning growth management and delivery of services issues when you have enclaves and you basically have a Swiss cheese type jurisdiction on B side where there's essentially four local governments. You've got the county, You've got the Shores, you've got Daytona Beach, and you have Port Orange. And I can tell you, people all the time- They don't know where, yeah. Gwen and other finance department, we feel questions every day. People are like, I'm trying to pay my bill, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to get a permit, whatever. They're all over the place. They're in the county or some other local government. And so from a planning standpoint and a future growth and development and in terms of scoring off our boundaries and making life more predictable for the residents on B's side, it would make sense to go ahead and do this. But staff is not going to move forward with this unless we get direction from the city commission.

And then the last thing that you said, and I think we have other questions here, when you talked about a county employee coming along too, why would the county want to... I don't want to say lose. Why would the county be proactively helping us by going along door to door to... Volusia County resident.

So a Volusia County resident and a city...

I thought you meant somebody from the county.

No, no, no, no, no. I apologize if I misspoke. So we would be seeking volunteers, residents, you know, of this area, the B-side community. The B-side community is the B-side community, right? Somebody mentioned earlier that, you know, water doesn't, you know, know any boundaries. Well, B-side doesn't know any boundaries either, for the most part. And so the community is integrated into one community, and so having a representative for several representatives from the county and from Daytona Beach Shores, and these would be individuals who understand the dynamic of the county and the city, they would be the better interface than staff, from my perspective, to engage these potential annexees.

Okay, and then I'm sorry, I have one or two more questions. So I know when you talk about it, too, we always go to the county to get, I don't know if the right word is to get the permission to annex in, to release this, to go in. Has the county ever not applied

Yeah, so Florida Statute requires that we actually do a formal notification after the adoption, but what we as staff do, and a lot of local governments do this as well, is whenever we get an application, and Joey Posey, who's sitting back there, he's very familiar with it as well because he's been working with Gwen and myself on annexation over the years, is we typically reach out as a courtesy to them and get their staff to buy in before we actually adopt, and then we send a formal notice to the county and then there's a potential for deny. So to answer your question, during that informal process in which we try to get the county to buy in, we have been informally denied. And actually, I remember the guy's name, I'm not gonna mention it, but I remember one guy from the county adamantly, I'm not gonna quote what he said, but he adamantly said that he would not support a particular annexation, which in the past, prior to him being there, he's no longer there at the county by the way, would have supported.

all right and i think you have a question um my main my only concern with this really is to use residents of volusia county in the city to go out knocking door-to-door to get this message out if they get hurt in the process you know i think we're subjecting the city to liability they could get bitten by a dog they can get hit by a car they could you know they could trip on somebody's property And I think that's an unnecessary risk. I'm not a big fan of that aspect of this. My question to you, Director Cruz, would be can we just send out flyers to all these folks that are eligible and then maybe have a meeting at some point in time once this is advertised on Facebook, through the mail, any other way?

So that obviously is an alternative out there. However, I feel that and this is just my opinion, obviously the city commission is the ones whose opinion really matters, I believe that personal one-on-one interface is important. In terms of the risk, I'm not an attorney, but I'm sure the city attorney can find an indemnification type agreement in which the city would be protected if these volunteers, who again, would volunteer to volunteer on the city's behalf, could basically minimize that risk, if at all. But I have had this conversation, just so you know, with city attorney Becky Voss, and that particular issue did not come up. But yes, to answer your question, there is a potential for us to just send out flyers, but from an effectiveness standpoint, I don't know how good it would be. I mean, I can tell you I get mail all the time, and it just goes in the trash. I totally understand that. Do you have a question? No.

I have a, actually it's more of an observation. I know people that live in the county that are not contiguous to the Shores, but they want to annex. And I know they would love to get their neighbors to annex so that they could annex. So I think you'll find some, volunteers from Volusia County that live in the county of Beachside that would help us.

I can tell you over the years we've gotten several, several, actually not several, many, many inquiries for people who aren't contiguous to the Shores who would like to annex into the Shores. And so, you know, this effort, if this is what the city commission pleases, could be helpful for that.

Any other questions? So this was just a discussion just to get our feelings on things.

The city commission wants the right staff to do anything. We're more than happy to do so. And I believe the city manager

I was going to say, we would like your direction on where you would like to see it go. Commissioner Carvey, you're the one who would ask us to look into this.

And did you have a particular reason for looking into it?

Well, the Amendment 3 is the biggest one. OK. We will have a shortfall. And just like you said, there are multiple people who have approached me. Referred them to Stewart and they want to come into the shores They're not able to just because their neighbor is not so and what we talked about also and I talked with the city manager is if we Directed towards us an area of maybe 40 50 houses. We if we get some foothold on something like that and You know, the thing about it also is our firemen and our police officers are going to these if they're in the county, if they're in Port Orange. We're still servicing them. It costs us something. We do get a little bit of a stipend back from these cities, but we should be getting their tax money if we're servicing them. And they do, most of them don't realize that their taxes will be lower, their water bills will be lower. Almost across the board, everything will be lower.

So I had one other question on this. So it still doesn't change the facts, even though we're, you know, doing this thing. They still have to be contiguous to another property, right? That doesn't change that. So these people that are saying, I want to come in, I want to come in, that he's talking about, if you're not next to anyone.

So as I mentioned, there were four ways to antithetical government. And there is one way in which they don't have to be contiguous. to the city and it could be annexed and that's through the interlocal service boundary agreement and that would require city commission and county commission action and there's a long process that's established on the Florida statute part two as to how you go about doing that. So it would require engaging the county to see if this is something that they're willing to do.

And that could be cumbersome I would imagine. That would have to be individual properties. Or could you do a whole block if... No, I don't mean to interrupt you, I apologize.

So essentially the county and the city agree to a general area. The general area can be from Thames to Marcel, just as an example. And so if that is established, you know, pursuant to Florida statute, then essentially any property, whether it's on Riverside, in the middle, wherever, it doesn't have to physically touch Daytona Beach Shores, if they can petition. So again, it's not forced annexation. It's not forced annexation. Any property that wants to annex, it's within that established area that both local governments have agreed to, can petition the city to annex into it. But it has to be logical as well. So I don't want to give a carte blanche that it's just willy-nilly or whatever. There has to be a logical process.

And then I think one of the other things we have to be careful about is that he just said lower taxes. it might not be lower taxes with what we just approved and the county only came up with a 3.2 mil it might not be so we can't arbitrarily is that correct currently we are still lower today okay so but I wouldn't want to give anyone the false you know and sell it that way correct and they're you know I'm not a false person I think there's so many other things there are many variables you know so I mean

You know, even though we're looking for direction tonight, you know, that direction, I don't want to speak about the city manager.

So you you've heard, um, it sounds like there are a very large number of county residents who are not contiguous, who are interested in coming into the city. And I know, uh, everyone on staff has heard from multiple people who have requested to do that. If the commission directs, uh, staff can reach out to the county. and work on a joint planning agreement and see if that is something that the county is amenable to where we could begin to allow non-contiguous properties into the city. However, there are a couple things that we need to consider, I believe, going forward with that. The ones that have been done in other cities, Ormond Beach and New Smyrna Beach, have the joint planning agreements. And once over 50% of the houses on any given street come into the city, the city takes over the street, owns the street. So that is forced annexation. Well, it's not forced annexation. It's the liability of maintaining the street. You own the street at that point, where for the most part now we don't own many streets whatsoever. The other thing we need to consider is with Amendment 3, is you may be annexing in properties that are valued at $250,000 or less. So you are now providing services for a property that essentially pays no ad valorem tax to the city. But those are things that we can do further analysis on. But if the commission wishes, staff will reach out to the county and see if we can come up with a proposed JPA that we could bring back to you for your consideration.

Is everyone in agreement on that?

Yes. I am, but Stuart, would you get with the city attorney and ask about any potential liability if we use residents?

I like the idea of the volunteers and myself squaring off the boundaries. I think I'll go along with this, but I think you could end up with a... kind of a fractured people in the middle of the street, like we have now in areas where one house is in the city, one house is in Port Orange, and one house is in the county.

And I'm sorry, what is your preference?

I would rather do what the original discussion was, that we would have volunteers going out, trying to get contiguous properties into the city, and then just working our way backwards. But that is more convoluted, I understand that. The joint agreement that you talk about would be simpler. Madam Mayor, I made a request to speak.

Oh, I'm sorry.

As long as Commissioner Dubinsky's done.

I'm sorry, I got off of that screen. Vice Mayor?

I think let's just be very clear. I would like to give the authority to our city staff to explore the possibilities of annexation, both with volunteers as well as with some communication with the county, and then report back to us. We're not going to do anything yet. We're not going to prove anything yet. But we're going to give them the authority to go out and investigate and further sophisticated presentation that we can all make an intelligent decision on. That's what I got to say.

Thank you. And Chris, I'm sorry. I see you're up here. Did you get to talk or do you? I did. All right. And city? I did. You got to talk. Okay. All right. So I think the direction is to go back and investigate more on both options. Please make sure we reach out to the city attorney if we do have volunteers, what liability the city has.

they were to step on something and break somebody's property contract. Well, we're not even there yet. We haven't even agreed to that.

They're going to try and ask if there's interest in volunteers. They're going to talk to the county, and then they're going to report back to us and sophisticate a presentation. And then by then, they'll already have addressed any waiver of liability or indemnity.

As long as the city attorney addresses it, that's fine with me.

So when you're doing your study, in case we go the route of the volunteers, have that caveat there that we know.

All right.

Thank you. Anyone out in the audience have any comments on it that you want to make? Even if no one signs up, I always like to hear from our residents. Okay, so next we're going to go on to approval of commercial real estate brokers.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Commissioners. Nancy Maddox. Community Engagement Director. Staff Issued. an RFP for commercial real estate brokerage and advisory services to assist with acquisition, leasing, valuation, marketing, and strategic management of real property. We received submittals from Coldwell Banker, Commercial Benchmark, Hoyer's, Richmond & Wakefield, The Urban Group, Inc., Turbo Auctions, Inc. All of the submittals qualify, and staff is requesting approval of the five proposed so that it will allow the city to select the firm best suited for each assignment based on the property, required expertise, and scope of services. I'm going to make it very brief because it's been a long night.

So I do have a question. So if we put them on the list and Don't ever use it. Well, first of all, they have more or less specialties is what you're talking about. These ones are different. That's why. Okay. If we put them on and never use them, is there any cost to us whatsoever? It's only if we use them. Only if we use them. Okay. And at that time, do we have rates now or we'll negotiate that at the time? Yes, the city manager will be doing that. What other questions do we have for our city manager or for our director? So right now, do you just need an approval to put the five on? Do we need a vote? Okay. All right. So we'll take a vote on this. Do we need a motion? Oh, I'm sorry. We need a motion.

I so move that we accept all five commercial real estate brokers on the RFP. I second. Okay.

Any questions for either? Okay. If not, then Sherry, take a roll, and we are voting on putting all five on. And that passed 5-0. Okay, next we have a consideration or request for a reduction of a code enforcement for 3225 South Atlantic Avenue. We waited a long time, right? Normally our meetings aren't...

I did.

Introduce yourself. I don't know how many people know about our new code enforcement officer.

Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, my name is Neil Georgescu. I'm the new code enforcement officer for the city. So I'm very excited to be here. Thank you. I'd like to introduce the next agenda. Actually, I wrote this down. It's not very long.

Okay.

This agenda is a result of a request from the property owner at 3225 South Atlantic Avenue, Mr. Jay Makwani, to reduce previously accrued law enforcement fines. These fines will be accrued between April 30th, 2024 and October 23, 2025 to a total sum of $135,000. And they were reduced to $70,000 by the special magistrate on May 28th, 2026. The property owner who purchased the property on May 27, 2025 is hereby requesting a full rescission of the fines.

So the original fine was $135,000 and it was reduced by $65,000? By $70,000. $65,000 and it's now $70,000. Now it's $70,000. Does anyone have anything they want to talk about? I think that was quite gentle. Mr. Posey, did you want? Yeah, Mr. Posey. Okay, thank you.

I don't mean to take more time. I know you guys are busy. Joey Posey, 420 South Nova, attorney for the property owner who's also here. I just wanted to give some context to the hearing. The magistrate, I thought, did a fine job. Nothing in that regard. What I was a little taken back by was, I think, some of the structure that he analyzed it under. From his perspective, he has a limited authority. And I get his process and the quasi-judicial nature of what he's doing. But in my experience, and I've done compliance all across the county. I've never had a situation where the extraordinary effort of an owner to fix a property doesn't really make it go away. Because that's the goal. The goal from co-compliance is to ensure compliance and to get properties back on the books looking good, generating revenue, making the city look that everybody I would imagine in this room is after, which is a nice building with actual life to it. And I brought this up to the magistrate because I said I think what you're encouraging is the opposite when you say that. penalizing somebody for doing the right thing when it's not supposed to be a profit center. I'm not sure that's the message. And I think across the county that's, and again, that's each individual locality is, within their discretion and it's their right to set the rules as they want to set them, but to, I guess, encourage the goal of making the property the best it can be in the quickest manner possible. The message you send is it doesn't matter how fast you work. It doesn't matter what efforts you make. There's just certain things we're not going to put on the table and you know some of this too and my client at least wanted me to mention this is that you know had we been at the negotiating table at the front end and known that there was a stipulated agreement process to try to figure this out I imagine he's a good owner he's you know a somebody who owns a number of properties in the city that he probably would have still taken on the effort he did but you know that opportunity wasn't there too so He took the risk to say, look, I'm here, I put the money into it, I did the right thing, and after the fact he's saying, okay, now that I've encouraged the behavior I think co-compliance is trying to achieve, the punitive nature of this, Is it possible to reconsider? And that's why we're here. So he made a trip from Fort Lauderdale with another prior commitment to be up here. And if you had anything to add, I at least wanted to add that context and try to find a way that I think that sends a positive message saying, look, we recognize what you're doing. We get that you're doing the right thing. And we want to commend your effort and try to work with you.

Thank you. Our code enforcement officer come back up again. Can you give me those dates again of when? So I think you said April of...

So April 30th, 2024. So the fines are accrued between April 30th, 2024 and October 23rd, 2025. So like 18 months? That's 18 months, yes. Okay.

Do you happen to know why it took 18 months? Okay, so it was the first time that he appeared before the special magistrate was on April 30th?

I have here that he... I can check that for you quickly.

Madam Mayor, it was a different owner at that time. Mr. Baumann purchased the property. It was after, yes.

Okay, when he purchased the property, was he aware that there was fines on it?

No, that's correct, and he would even say that to you too in that he still wanted to make the 600 000 effort to try to do the right thing and again there's no guarantee that he wouldn't still be in a review of permitting process and you know it i've never seen somebody work as quickly as he has in those four months to get compliance through the extra efforts of site plan approval there's a substantial number of permitting so I think he's doing good by the city of trying to act expeditiously, and really what he's asking for is, even if it's some relief on the other parts of this, those four hurricanes that occurred during that time period that the magistrate wouldn't consider given that it was a prior owner. Well, I don't want to substitute his judgment, but I can't magically make that other owner try to achieve compliance during four hurricane periods and emergency orders. And these are the factors that the magistrate was very clear that I don't have the authority. You have to go to the higher powers to ask these questions and try to find Roe v. Wade.

Yeah, it sounds like it, yes.

Now, obviously the owners knew of the $135,000 fine. Did they use that in negotiating the price to actually buy the property? So was it reduced by $135,000 or more?

No, at the time it was what name?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioner. No, there was no reduction in price for it. We were aware of it. And I want to make a correction to the record. It wasn't $135,000 when we got started. The fine was $90,000 approximately to hold me to about $90,000, $94,000 when we purchased the property, with the understanding that the fine was still ongoing throughout the corrected period. So the magistrate, after we went to the hearing, after bringing the property into compliance, and I just want the commission to know, too, that we actually pulled permits prior to our ownership. As you know, when you're working on the coastal line, you're working with Volusia County, you're working with the city, and you're also working with FDEP. Our work started prior to even ownership to get these approvals and permits in place to finish this project in the fastest time possible. Obviously, we ran into some obstacles and some obstacles that we weren't aware of. But needless to say, we still completed the project. And we completed it in a record time. When we did complete it, we went to the magistrate. We asked to have the fines reduced. He only took into consideration things that happened during my ownership. He would not look at any prior fines. So when you say, oh, he reduced it from 135 or 140 to 70, he really only gave me time for the time that I put into the project. look at the prior hurricanes, the prior ownership's ownership interest and what he was doing. And I want to bring up something else to the city. I've had a knack of doing this with a few other properties and I don't want to bring those up, but this property in particular had a very big problem with the ownership and the people on the property. The relationship with the city was not very good. So I came into a very contiguous situation and I corrected I think even a bigger problem for the city by correcting is probably not just the blightness, but removing that ownership group and the manager from this property. So I think at the end of the day, my request is, you know, I will tell you, we didn't make that much money financially. Probably wasn't, you know, real great, great gain after we got finished. But I do think that you should send the right message to the community that, Hey, if someone's going to pick up a property that a prior contractor couldn't bring into compliance, that there was a prior GC involved, and now you have a new ownership coming in, and he's gonna do it at record speed, and he's gonna bring compliance, bring back tax revenue, bring back city revenue, remove some obstacles in the city. I think you need to send the right message to that, and I just don't agree that I should be stuck with the prior fines that was there when I purchased the property.

That's where my question came from, is you've been in this business, I'm sure, a long time, you know, better than I do, there's probably more, um, individuals, more corporations, more limited liability companies that would not buy properties like that because there's $135,000 fine. Um, so that's my concern is why I was asking that is if, for example, and this is hypothetical, if you have gotten that property reduced from the buying price, 135, and then we, these, all these are waived, that's kind of a windfall to you and it's not fair to the city. So that's why I was asking that. So, you know, again, you're taking a risk by buying that property, and I'm glad you did. That was a nice thing, and what you did was extraordinary to do that, knowing that you might still have to pay these. But that's my concern is if there was a reduction in negotiations, and you may not want to tell me, if there was a reduction in negotiations of that amount, then further waiving of this would be a windfall.

And my concern is, you know, coming before us, too, and, you know, we weren't at any of the special magistrates. The ones that I go to, I think he's more than fair. I mean, sometimes I'm like, why are you doing that much? So, you know, I know he's a very, very fair man. My concern here is setting a precedence in the city. I mean, we have other properties in the city that have, you know, outstanding fines, and for us to reduce this any more If I was buying something, I would say, well, let me just sit back because they always seem to reduce the fines anymore. So from $90,000 you thought were the fines to $135,000, so the reason they went up is because I think they were like $250 a day. So did you understand that it was $250 a day for every day you weren't in compliance? I did.

I did. I did understand that would be ongoing. But at the time when I had the hearing, also too, well first I want to tell you, first I want to emphasize, why are we here? We're here because of four hurricanes hit Volusia County. We're not here because you had an ownership group that wasn't taking care of their property, or an ownership group that was renting to the wrong people and ran a derelict building. We're talking about life changing, 100 year floods that came through here, and that's why we're here. So I don't think most people will just jump into projects like this thinking there's gonna be a windfall. Someone had to be in the area, had to have experience in the area, and had to know how to deal with these municipalities. So I don't think you're gonna send that message, let me clear that up, that hey, if you come to Volusia County and buy a property that's damaged, you're gonna get the fines waived. I don't think most people would take that on.

Can I say something to that point? And I at least wanted to echo what I think Jay's saying to that point. I mean, that's the reason you do grants. That's the reason you do facade improvements. You're encouraging good behavior. The goal of co-compliance, doing it in the inverse, encourages non-action. Because whether the difference is 100 to 130 for an owner who doesn't plan to pay anyway, it's non-consequential. What's consequential is the interested party who wants to come in and redevelop the property and says, well, okay, now this is added cost, and this is something that I may walk from because I'm not going to take on that cost. And from the city's perspective, it's tax revenue. It's not a question of what the property was sold at. And if the encouraged action is, hey, we want to send a good message to the community and say, hey, we want your investment, and that we're willing to work with you within reason, of course, then that would be aligned with your goals. Just a hoover thought.

Was your original intent when you thought the fine was $90,000 when you purchased the property, was your intent that you knew that it had $90,000 in fines that you were going to pay those $90,000?

In my experience in other municipalities, usually the most important thing is compliance and getting the property repaired. And I was quite confident, to be honest with you, that once it was brought to compliance that most municipalities do reduce it because ultimately that's the purpose of the fine.

Okay, so you went in thinking that it would be reduced.

I was thinking it was going to be reduced, but I didn't get any deduction for it or take a deduction off that. And being that I was in this town. I'm a property owner in this town, and I've done it before with prior properties where I didn't get a reduction, but I'm saying I did do it with other property. I just figured my record would speak for itself with the city and the county, and they would know that I'm doing good for the county and for the city. I mean, I like the Shores. I'm a multiple property owner in the Shores, and I personally took a personal interest to see. I thought it was the best thing to do for the city and for my property. Thank you.

We have any other comments? Yes, Vice Mayor.

I'm actually clicking the button. I made a request to speak.

You're doing good, and I'm not looking.

First of all, it's okay. Thank you for speaking, and it's good that we heard from you. I would not support an additional request for reduction for several reasons. One is I'm not fully informed. I'm sure code enforcement had a package and had a lot of information and evidence presented. And I think that's why Magistrate Delaroche took it into consideration. I agree with Madam Mayor. It does set a dangerous precedent for others to come before and say, well, I got a little bit tipped off from the Magistrate, let me get some more from the City Commission. The last reason why is I don't have any matters of mitigation. I don't know, I know there was gutter, there was soffit, there was fascia, there was roofing, this, and I walk by this property on a daily basis with my buddy who we walk A1A for recreation, not for inspection. However, I don't have the whole history, so I could not, I could not in good With good faith, make them agree to the reduction. So for those reasons, I'm not going to agree to any further reduction.

Are you sure it sounds like you have something else to say?

You know, the agenda for tonight was 1,375 pages, and I do my best always to read these things. i read yours that's and and i appreciate the work you did and i am very sympathetic to be honest with you i would like a little more time to to look at this because i want to help you um because you know you've done some great work there um but again you know there's a reason for these fines and and i i agree with the mayor and the vice mayor as well um you know that These are an important tool that we have to enforce compliance. You complied. That's your biggest argument, and you did it ahead of time. You took the measures to do this before your group even bought the property, which is pretty extraordinary. So I appreciate that. I want to help you. To be honest with you, and this is not a cop-out, I just need a little more time to think about this. and look at some more.

We're happy to hear the rest of the commission, but we actually were privately talking that if time to digest this a little more is the appetite of the commission, then we have no problem packaging it maybe a little more digestible or trying to our heads around, you know, how do we find the best outcome for the city and for the property?

So, Mr. Posey, before we go on, and we'll listen to the both of the other commissioners, I just want to make sure, and I don't know if it's a question, and I don't know why I should do it. No, since he's in compliance, if we did a continuous, you know, to the next, probably not the next meeting because it's our budget, you know, to the first meeting there, he will not incur any more fines. Is there anything that he would lose if we gave us ample time to look at it? Everything would be, okay. All right, do you feel like there's anything you'd lose? All right, so I'd like to hear from Commissioner Carr.

Yeah, I would like to talk to the people that made the find. I'll be at length about this, get a little bit more information on how this happened and so on. So I agree with Commissioner Economos. We can give this another month, I think.

Commissioner Jabinski?

I'll hold my remarks until they come back.

Okay, all right. So right now, Sherry, what would that first meeting be in October?

October 7th.

October 7th, okay. And then, you know, if we can get additional information, because I said I feel like we're at a disadvantage, you know, I've been to several of the code compliance meetings, and, you know, you get all that information right there. And, again, we had the exhibits, but unless you hear of everything that's going on, you are at a disadvantage. So if that's all right. Attorney, can we just continue this? I apologize.

I was thinking your copy with the mayor is October 7th.

Our meeting is October 6th. October 6th. All right. So, attorney, is that a continuous or how would we award this?

You can ask for a motion to continue the session in consideration of the request until the October 6th meeting. All right.

Do I hear a motion?

I'll make that motion.

Second.

Thank you. Mayor Mast, the city attorney. Now, can we reach out to our code enforcement folks and Discuss this and everything. Okay.

Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Thank you. We didn't vote.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, okay.

I think we kind of decided what we're going to do. Just to vote to continue it to October 6th, correct?

Yes, to October 6th. That's what the motion was, to October 6th. Okay, and that passed, so we will see you on October 6th. Wait, I have so many up I have to... I think next is city attorney. Do you have anything for us? I do not, ma'am. City manager, what do you have for us?

Thank you. We received notice that our FEMA Hurricane Ian reimbursement final approval has come through. That will result in $408,214 from FEMA with an additional $22,678 coming from the state for a total of $430,892 in reimbursement. So I'd like to thank Director Irwin on navigating the FEMA system and all the documentation that went into that to get us back that $430,000. Thank you.

Director, will that go into the general fund?

I can answer that.

Okay, well, I'll take a minute.

Go ahead.

Go right ahead, sir.

No, no, go ahead. She's been giving me lessons on finance.

That does go into the general fund, but it'll go into reserves, basically. Thank you. Reimbursement for what we've already spent. And my team did a great job with it.

I bet they did. Please say congratulations. Anything else?

Yes. Aldi, I had told you that mid-September they expected to open. That has been moved back to late September due to a fire suppression system change that they are making. I want to provide you an update on the Peninsula sinkhole. As you know, a contractor damaged the city's sanitary sewer gravity line at 3221 South Peninsula Drive, which is causing a depression in the roadway there. FDOT's working with the contractor, and there's a detour in place. The road is expected to be down until later this weekend, but it could potentially go into next week.

Before you go on any longer, where did we hear, you and I were in a meeting, or where did we hear that the state was thinking about leveling out the road or doing something? Oh, that's coming.

Yeah, that's on the list. But that was at the Chamber of Commerce event in Port Orange. And we had a discussion. So first, we talked to them about mowing the right-of-way. In the 2,903,000 block, we've gotten many, many complaints, as has FDOT, about their contractor not keeping that up. And when the weeds hit knee-high and grew over the sidewalk, causing a safety concern. We went ahead and authorized city staff to take care of that. So city staff was out there last week, got that mowed. It looks much better. Tom Brown, our deputy director, met with their contractor today. They have promised us that they will put that on a better schedule. So we will continue to monitor that. But thank you to Director Cruz and his staff for getting that done.

So I do want to say this is why someone here left. Life is better in the shores. I mean, I went by one day and I called the city manager and said, we have to do something about that. Even though most people know it's a state highway, it just looks bad for the shores. And he assured me we will work on that, but if it's not done. So, again, our city workers went out and did that. So a round of applause, kudos. Thank you so much. to yes that we wanted it to look better.

Mr. It was so bad that one of the workers told me just to edge the sidewalk was three tanks of gas and they went through an entire blade. That's how out of control it had gotten. So we won't let it get to that level again. The peninsula repaving project, FDOT had told us that that had been on hold because they were looking at a potential swap. That process has taken so long that they've gone ahead and started the design process for repaving of peninsula. The design process itself, they told us, takes up to two years. So we are hopeful and expectant that after that it will start there. You know, if the swamp is still on or, um, I heard through the grapevine, I think the quote was it's on life support. So I don't have any direct information. So, um, 2323 South Atlantic Avenue, the Lexington, that's the high rise, uh, hotel that has been abandoned for several years. I'm happy to report that it is under contract to be purchased by the parent company of Compose Hotels. The prospective owners have already met twice with staff and indicated that they intend to start with improvements to the exterior of the building, which would provide an immediate public benefit to get that cleaned up. That's turning into an eyesore, and we're very happy about that.

Yeah, may I ask a question on that? Sure. Who would answer the question? Whoever can answer it. Is there a fine on the Lexington right now?

Yes.

Okay, so I think that's a good example of... And they're aware of it. They're aware of it, okay. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think enough said that, you know, that property, and I'm going to bring up another one too, where the car wash is down there. I know there's a substantial fine down there. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So when owners are coming into the property or potential buyers, they have to understand, do your due diligence and see. So, you know, when it said that this one set of precedents, Those were two more right there that it absolutely could.

And don't forget Pick and Save that has a half million dollars worth of funding on that too. Yep. The lights at the pickleball courts, we were happy to see that Musco showed up today unannounced and work on the lights that are out. However, we discovered that due to the lightning strike, the impact of that strike that took those lights out, There's some underground work that needs to be done, and the city will be initiating that work as early as tomorrow. And finally, I want to give a thank you to Lieutenant RJ Meadors, who is still here from the code enforcement. Many of you know that our economic development team targeted SoNapa as a potential new business for our area, and they came in and they very much wanted to open for the holiday weekend. Lieutenant Meadors was on board Scheduled to be on vacation on Friday when they were actually able to do their final inspection. He canceled his vacation. He came in, failed, and had a big problem with a hood system. They were able to get that, somebody over, get it repaired. He actually stayed late. He, as well as Stewart's folks, stayed. And just extraordinary that they're putting in that kind of work. But that's the concierge service that our businesses and residents have come to expect. They were able to get that approval done late, late Friday afternoon. We got them open for the weekend, which was a really big deal because it was packed. And I'm getting text messages how busy it is tonight, too. So thank you to them. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

We appreciate it. That's why life is better on the shores. And for anyone that hasn't been yet to SoNapa, please go and visit it. It's gorgeous. The service was great. The food was great. Anything else, City Manager?

That's it, I guess.

Okay, any questions for our city manager? Okay, if not, we'll move on to commission comments. Vice Mayor?

No, no comments tonight.

Commissioner Economist?

Yes. The city is actually looking for a person to fill the vacancy for the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Volusia-Flagler TPO. We had a couple people and they weren't able to stay on and we actually need an alternate as well. So what would happen is they meet once a month and discuss various issues. related to those topics. And so if anybody is interested, please let us know. And Director Cruz, is it okay if people contact you? Okay. And I know we've put out this request before, but we definitely need two folks. One would be an alternate as well. And I think there is actually an event on Saturday the 12th of September, and it's at the City Center in Port Orange. And it's a The Volusia Flagler TPO is going to have a table from 11 o'clock to 3.30. And again, it's at 1005 City Center, Port Orange. And they'll be sharing how to stay safe when walking and biking and how to properly fit a bicycle helmet. So I'm going to try to make it out there in the morning. And so I hope we can see as many folks out there as possible. Thank you.

Bringing up a date, I know on September 19th, I signed up to do a beach cleanup.

What did I talk about?

Was there something that I talked about?

No. Stewart will provide, when we get to your comments, Stewart will have that for you to read for us.

Okay. All right, so we will start down here with Commissioner Dubinsky.

All right, no comments tonight.

Thank you. Commissioner Card.

I just want to say thank you to the staff for getting SoNAP up and running. Well done. Awesome.

And Director Cruz, you have something you want to read for her or you want me to?

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Commissioners.

Madam Mayor, I think you know that we had announced before that we get a reduction on our flood insurance because we comply with a federal program, and the reading that Director Cruz is going to do here is required for us to maintain that. So it is a requirement, and he will take care of it now.

I apologize. So on September 19th, 2026, which is... Next Saturday. Yeah, next Saturday, Volusia County and Dayton Beach Shores will participate and all the other communities in this area will participate in the Ocean Conservancy's for the 41st International Coastal Cleanup. Residents are encouraged to participate in this beach and river cleanup event. If you're interested in volunteering, please see me after the meeting. And I will essentially tell you and show you how to register for this cleanup. And it's something that's very, very helpful to not only Village County, but the Bay County Shores as well. Because as someone mentioned earlier, actually several people have mentioned, the beach and the waterways that we have here in the Bay County Shores and in this area on Visa is critical to our economy. And that's the main reason why people come here to the Bay County Shores.

And I have signed up for, there was different locations you can do, and I signed up. right in my backyard started frank rendon park so i encourage everyone i would love to be there but i will be out of town so i apologize in advance yeah all right well if there's anyone else that's interested let us know um oh so that's not the day of what's the date of the thing that you talked about that's uh this saturday the 12th oh okay all right but the 19th i'll be out of town And the only other comment that I have is that we're going to have a special event on Tuesday the 15th. As you know that our director Maddox has been in cooperation with the Brown. So we're going to have the Brown Museum in Motion presents Particular Persons in Florida History, a talk on colorful figures and unusual tales from Florida's past at the Shores Community Center. Again, that'll be Tuesday, September 15th at 2 p.m. And then Friday the 25th, there will be our free concert in the Shores Pavilion at McElroy Park. And the band is, is it Time? Time. Okay, that's it. Is there anyone else that wants to speak from the audience? Yes, Sandy.

I will hurry. I mean, a lot of information to unpack tonight. But Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commissioners, I even came last month when we didn't have a meeting because I owe everyone, including Nancy Maddox and the staff, an apology. It's because I wasn't a big fan when it was first introduced of the ULI, the Urban Land Institute. I was so impressed. I went to the realtor panel and then after that, I came to the presentation that they made here verbally and I'm looking forward to when it's ready, the written report, but that we have access to so much talent And so I was wrong.

Well, thank you for coming up and admitting that, and I think it's all good. Thank you so much, Sandy. All right. Anyone else have anything? If not, do we have any recommended items for next agenda? And remember, we are having two meetings this month, so our second meeting will be Tuesday, September 22nd at 6 p.m. that we will have.

the final reading of the budget I do have something I brought it up maybe a year ago and I know we're in the middle of a budget season and money is hard to come by but I would like to explore the possibility of hardening downstairs of the City Hall where the finance folks are I know we talked about it before and I'm sure that if we decide to do something like that it would not be cheap but at least like to start exploring that and of getting an idea of what we can do and how much that might cost. I'm sorry, what does hardening mean?

Hardening.

Yeah, just protecting, so these folks that are back where Lori sits and they can be protected in case something happens.

Oh, you mean like bulletproof glass?

Yes, yes.

I wonder if we can take it out of the bank building.

We can look at that.

All right, well anyway, so come in.