City Commission on 2025-10-20 6:30 PM - Oct 20, 2025

20-25, if I can please have the city clerk call the roll. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez. Present. Commissioner Caldwell. Here. Commissioner Howington. Here. Commissioner Novick. Commissioner Santiago. Here. Vice Mayor Harriet. Here. Mayor Avila. Here. At this time, we're going to go ahead, and if I can please have Commissioner Novick lead us in the invocation and the pledge to the flag. The pledge first. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic. At this time, if you could remain standing, please, as we bring up Fire Department Chaplain Alvarez for the invocation. If you can please turn on the button. Good evening. Blessings to all of you. Let us pray and give God thanks for this evening. Most gracious and heavenly Father, I come before your presence, Lord. I ask of you to bless each and every person in this room tonight, Father God. Father God, I pray that there's anything that needs to be resolved. Lord, let it be resolved tonight for the people of this community, Father God. Father, I bless all the commissioners that are here tonight, Father God. I ask you for a blessing over their lives and their families as well, Father. Every officer that is in this place, Father God, protecting our city. Bless them, Lord. Protect them, Lord, and keep them safe. Bring them home to their families every night, Lord. In the name of Jesus, I ask you, Father God, that you bless each and every person as they leave this facility, Lord, and that anything that needs to be done tonight shall be resolved. In Jesus' mighty name, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Commissioner Nabick, at this time, we can meet you downstairs, so we can also do the presentation of your veteran. Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners. Tonight's veteran's recognition is one of our very own Deltona firefighters. Firefighter Andrew Joseph Walters, United States Air Force Airman, 436 Logistics Readiness Squadron, four years of service. Job title was Ground Transportation, assigned to Dover Air Force Base, deployment to Al-Dafar Air Base, Meritorious Unit Award, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award, with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Gold Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism, International Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Air Force Expeditionary Service Ribbon, Air Force Longevity Service, and Air Force Training Ribbon. Congratulations. Thank you, Commissioner Nabick. All right, at this time, we're going to go to additions and deletions. Okay, we have Commissioner Santiago. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to see if we can discuss the parking and vehicle ordinance at the end of this commission meeting. Add it to the agenda. Okay, there is a motion by, or there's a request by Commissioner Santiago. There's a second by Commissioner Howington, who was on the mic. Can we try to attempt to see if the voting is working? If not, we'll go ahead and do the verbal really quick. I know, granted, because this was down, so I just want to make sure that. Okay, it's working. Request passes seven to zero. All right, so it would be 9D as in David. This time, we're going to go ahead and move to Deltona Community Events. If I can please have Catherine Barker come to the podium. All righty, we have a few events coming up, some good ones. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. So the audience knows there's a big fluke going on in a couple of cities, just FYI. So here we go. So the first one, I know we have a lot of kids in the room, so this is a great event. It's our Halloween A-Cont. It's this Friday night. Starts at 630 at Dewey. And this is just a great Halloween event, like I said, for the younger ones. We did it for the first time last year. It's a lot of fun. After the A-Cont, which is essentially an A-Cont, after that, then we'll show a movie in the park, Scooby-Doo. So that will be right after the, you know, this is for, the movie's for kids of all ages. And then for the older kids, it's our annual Spooktacular. This is a ton of fun. We have a Haunted Trail Costume Contest. There's going to be some small carnival rides this year, also at Dewey, 5 to 10 p.m. So that's a huge event for us. And then the Halloween fun continues on Sunday night, this Sunday night, over at the center. PWA Wrestling is doing a Monster Mash wrestling event there. Doors open at 5. The show starts at 530. You can get tickets on Eventbrite. And then I do want to mention a couple big events in November. The biggest is our Celtic Fest and Highland Games. We did a Celtic Fest earlier this year. We're just expanding on that, bigger and better. This is actually going to be the Highland Games. So we'll have the games, all the athletics, plus we'll have bands and Celtic food vendors and artisans, dancers. It's just going to be so much fun. On November 8th at Dewey, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. And then the Firefighters Foundation is doing their second annual First Responders Gobble Gallup. It's Saturday, November 15th. It's a 5K. So if you'd like to join the 5K races, sign up now for that event. And then I do want to mention the VC Elite Tackle Football and Cheerleading. They've opened up registration for the spring. This is for kids ages 5 to 15. So if you think your kids might want to be involved, get registered now. And those are events coming up in the next couple weeks. If any community events you want to let me know about to share with the community, cbarker at deltonafl.gov. Thank you, Ms. Barker. And at this time, I'm going to inconvenience the Dias by having us go back down. And we're going to do the Superstar Student Awards. So join me on the floor. Okay, the first name from Deltona Lakes Elementary, Brian King. Discovery Elementary, Cameron Robinson. Forest Lake Elementary, Analia Valles-Dizla. Friendship Elementary, Mia Gonzalez-Ortega. Pride Elementary, Natalie Yerke. Sunrise Elementary, J.C. Ross. Timbercrest Elementary, Evan LaRue. Volusia Pines Elementary, Kinsley Campbell. Deltona Middle School, Sarah Pagan. Deltona Middle School, Sophia Pagan. Galaxy Middle, Emily Chacon. Heritage Middle School, Delanise Pena. Deltona High, Moises Vera. And Pine Ridge High School, Douglas Jett. One, two, three. All right, we're going to give parents and students about five minutes to head out. But for those that want to head out, and we can start the rest of the meeting. All right, we're going to go ahead and move on to B, City Attorney, and update to SB 180 litigation. Mr. Good or Ms. Torsivia? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're going to tag team this one. So there are two parts to this update. I'm going to first give a brief update received from the Volusia County Attorney's Office regarding the county's efforts on putting forward some legislative changes to the SB 180 bill in the next legislative session. So they have informed us that Volusia County is working with the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida Association of County Attorneys on their proposed legislative changes. The proposed language from the county narrows the scope of enforcement to properties damaged by the hurricane and clarifying that properties, that means that properties that require a building permit to repair. And this was accepted by the FACA Growth Management Committee and is making its way through the overall association. So the county's proposed language makes changes to Section 18 and Section 28 of the bill and would clarify that for one year after a hurricane makes landfall, an impacted local government may not enforce, changing the language to enforce rather than propose or adopt, then it lists the moratorium on construction, reconstruction, or development of any property damaged by such hurricane. A more restrictive or burdensome amendment to its comprehensive plan or land development regulation on any property damaged by such hurricane and see a more restrictive or burdensome procedure concerning review, approval, or issuance of a site plan, development permit, or development order to the extent that those terms are defined in Section 163.3164 on any property damaged by such hurricane. So that's the update on the county. It appears that their proposed legislative changes are moving forward, at least to be advocated on through the Association of Counties. And now I will turn it over to Mr. Sivia on the litigation side. Thank you so much. So I sent you all an update about a week ago, and just so you know, I don't have a ton more to report, but the case was filed in Leon County. The case number, in case anyone wants to follow it, is 2025-CA-001876. So you can just go on the docket for Leon County, clerk of courts, and put that in for case number, and you can see the docket. As I had sent you all in the email, the case was filed. The summons were issued. It does not appear at this point that any of the defendants have yet been served. I did speak with Jamie Cole last week, who's the lead attorney at Weiserota working on this case, and he advised that they were working on the injunction and were hoping to file it at the end of last week or early this week. So to my knowledge, it has not yet been filed as of today. It is not reflected on the docket. With that said, it could have been filed today and just not updated yet. But that's the update with respect to the litigation. What do you think is holding them up on the injunction? Did they explain what was holding them up on the injunction? No, although I will say the lack of service is likely the rationale. I'm guessing they didn't say why. I know they're still planning to file, but because the summons have been issued, but there's not evidence that they've yet been served, they could have. And again, the docket has not been updated yet. You can file an injunction without service. It is problematic, though, and it can cause problems for you later in the litigation, and it's a reasonable defense. So I'm guessing it's because they haven't perfected service on all the defendants. But I'm also guessing that they likely are in communication with whoever they have as servers, their process servers. So they might have served them today or tomorrow, and then they'll file right after. So I don't exactly know, but because they have not been all served, because none of them have been served yet, I'm guessing the timing is related to that. Wouldn't the injunction stop any of the laws from continuing to move forward? I don't know. I have not seen the injunction. I'm not sure what exactly the injunctive relief is that they're seeking. I assume that that's what it would be, but I don't know. Now, injunctions can also be granted either in whole or in part or denied. So presumably the injunction will say, you know, pause this, pause it, enforcement, stop pending the litigation. However, the court could deny it. They can grant it in whole. They can grant it in part. So until we see the filing, we can't really opine, and then the judge will need to. So the process likely would be they'll file the injunction. They likely will file it as an emergency. I don't know that, but likely they will. The judge will try to evaluate if they think it is an emergency. They will have to file a separate filing explaining why it's an emergency. The judge will say, yes, emergency, no, not emergency. If it's an emergency, they'll get a hearing within usually two to three days, sometimes quicker. But if it's not an emergency, they likely would get set within between one and three weeks, depending on the judge's calendar. So the injunction could be granted emergency status and be heard within a few days of being filed. It could be not granted emergency status and still be heard in the next, you know, few weeks, depending on the judge's calendar. But at this point, you know, it's very early in the process. My last question is how many cities and counties have joined the lawsuit? So I can, if you would like, I can tell you. Do you want me to tell you who they are? Okay. I just need a number more than anything. Oh, I will defer to you. So it's obviously a number of cities, towns, and counties. I believe it's two counties, and the rest are cities and towns. 27, Commissioner Hawington. Okay, got you. All right, Commissioner Santiago, you're up, and then Commissioner Knobbeck. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the update on SB 180. I mean, there's no, I think everybody knows my position in suing our governor in the state of Florida. I think it's a waste of money. We've already heard from our attorneys that amendments are being worked on. It's just a matter of time before those are changed. The senator that actually presented the bill and filed the bill is working on making amendments. I just don't think we need to spend more tax money on this lawsuit. We've already done relationship damage, and Florida League of Cities is advocating for us to make amendments, so there's no need for us to go further with this lawsuit. We'd like to make a motion for the city of Deltona to withdraw from the suit against the state of Florida. There's a motion by Commissioner Santiago. I have Commissioner Knobbeck and Commissioner Howington. Are any of you doing a second? Commissioner Knobbeck? I'll second it for discussion. Okay, there's a motion and a second, and then Commissioner Knobbeck, unless, are you finished, Commissioner or something? Yes, thank you. Commissioner Knobbeck, you're up. So, as everybody knows, I wasn't here when this all went down. I guess I'll direct this to the attorneys, if I may, Mayor. Yes. Was there any attempt by the city, whether staff, the manager, or the commission, to negotiate or speak to the delegation regarding amendments to that House bill prior to anything being done? Did we lobby? Did we have our lobbyist up there working on this? That's a question we would have to ask our lobbyist. Well, she should have only been doing it at our direction. We did send a letter early on before the legislation passed. We did send a letter that the commission voted to move forward on advising that we opposed Senate Bill 180. So, we did send a letter in opposition before the legislation was passed. So, I guess I'll direct this to the rest of the commission then. Did any of the commission lobby any of the legislators to fight this? Okay. So, there was some attempt and that fell on deaf ears? As of 9-29, what I downloaded from the internet, there were 23 cities and two counties that had joined the lawsuit. There are 67 counties and there's 417 cities in the state. So, we're very much in the minority here of folks fighting this. Do we have a dollar amount of what this is anticipated to cost us in direct legal cost, not the collateral damage? Yes, Commissioner. The fee is a flat rate fee per city or county. It's $10,000 to be part of this litigation. And then, if there are appeals, it would be $5,000 at each level of the appeal we can elect if we want to participate in the appeal. And if there's another appeal, we can elect if we want to participate in that. So, it's a $10,000 flat fee to be a participant in this litigation. My concern with this isn't so much the cost of that. That's a relatively minor cost in the grand scheme of things. My concern with this is the collateral damage that's being done to relationships. Committee sessions took place over the last couple of weeks. It was very difficult for certain Deltona folks to be able to speak convincingly or to be – it was just hard for folks to be up there in Tallahassee that bared the Deltona name for different initiatives. My concern is we received, Mr. Manager, what, $2 million for a project from the state, 2-point-something? 2.5. 2.5 million. Every other city in this county had their checks delivered by somebody from the delegation. That hasn't been done here. That speaks to me. That sends a very strong message about how the delegation is viewing this city. And I'm concerned if we continue down this path, we're going to be missing out on the delegation being able to move projects forward or requests forward. And we've got a lot of serious issues across the board that are facing the city that we need the state to be helping out and giving us money. We're always concerned about the budget and the tax dollars and stuff that are here. So I'm very concerned about our relationship with the delegation. Now, they're coming in a week. I won't be here. Has anybody got any feel for how that is going to play out? Are they just going through the motions, or are they going to listen to our requests seriously on whether or not they're going to move projects forward for us? Because we've got some very serious projects that need funding. Was there any discussion about this on the dais when we made the decision to enter the litigation about the fallout or the long-term ramifications that it's going to do to our ability to negotiate with the delegation to move our issues forward in Tallahassee? And not just our issues, other people that have the Deltona name that are going up there for other funding and other requests. Are they collateral damage, or will they be collateral damage as this moves forward? You know, Reedy Creek sued the governor. They have way, way deeper pockets than we had, and they lost. And by the way, the governor's not even being sued in this. Okay, it's the Honorable Alex Kelly, Secretary of Commerce, Honorable Calvin Gunthry, Executive Director, Florida Division of Emergency Management, the Commissioner of Agriculture, the Executive Director of Department of Revenue State, and the Chief Financial Officer. The governor's not even mentioned in here, or the state specifically, in this particular lawsuit. So I don't know if legally this is even a complete list, or will there be amendments made, or will there be other spinoff cases that result out of this that are going to cost us more money? I just don't see how, at this point in time, this really benefits us. And, again, I wasn't up here when these decisions were made. And I'm sure everybody had a good reason for voting the way that they did. But I have great concerns about staying in as part of this in terms of what I personally have seen and heard now out of people that were up for committee session in Tallahassee. And I can tell you, our name is not good up there right now. And that is very concerning for the largest city in Volusia County, because people in this county should be looking to Deltona for leadership. And we should, part of that leadership, should be trying to negotiate and broker deals rather than immediately declaring war and filing litigation. Litigation, to me, should be the last thing that we do. That should be the last-ditch effort. When nothing else is going to work, then we let the courts decide it. And from what I've heard and what I've talked, and I've talked a lot to legal about this, I don't think we did that. I think we were angry. And let me just clarify for all of you, because I can see some of you looking at me, I am 110% for home rule, 110%. But this was, I don't think, the way to get us to a deal that needed to be made. And it sounds like now there are options on the table through the League of Cities, through the League of Counties, and Volusia County seems to be kind of taking the lead on this at this point. I just have some really big concerns about how much penance are we going to have to pay and what are these people going to lose out on in terms of stormwater projects, emergency medical services, sewer projects, fire stations, you name it. But there is a huge laundry list of things that our grant writer could be writing for grants for Tallahassee. We could be working with our delegation to try and get some of these projects, get some assisting on funding for them to offset the cost to our citizens. And I think we're kind of behind the eight ball with that right now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Commissioner Howington and then Commissioner Avila Vasquez. Thank you. If the city of Deltona chooses to withdraw from SB 180 lawsuit, that decision is going to directly reflect how we represent the people of Deltona, a charter city whose residents made a conscious decision to determine their own future, not have it decided by Tallahassee. Withdrawing from this lawsuit before taking any official action to submit an amendment, which, by the way, has not been put forth by anybody who opposed the lawsuit, would, in my view, be a dereliction of duty. It would violate the oath that we took to uphold the constitutional rights of our residents, as SB 180 has been shown to be unconstitutional in many ways, and now it's just got to work its way through the courts. I want to remind everybody that before SB 180 was even passed, many organizations, cities, municipalities, and counties across the state of Florida asked the legislature to revise this bill. Those requests were ignored. Initially, they were heard, they changed the verbiage, and then at the last minute, they put it back in. The bill was rushed through at that point without fixing the flaws, the flaws that they knew existed, despite widespread concern from local governments. So for us to now consider backing out of this lawsuit in hopes the same group of legislators will correct what they refused to fix before, that's the definition of insanity. They did it once. We asked them to fix it. They changed it, and then they put it back. And now we want to ask them to change it again, and we want to rely on that. So for us to now consider backing out of this lawsuit in hopes that the same group of legislators will correct that, we can't do it. We can't rely on them. Our city hasn't even taken a fictual action to ask for an amendment. We're relying on others to do the work for us. That's making us followers. You want to be leaders? This is turning us into a follower. Backing out without first submitting an amendment is foolish. I'll always respect the will of the commission. However, I cannot in good conscience support withdrawing from this lawsuit. Doing so would be both financial and legal detriment to our community. If this injunction goes into place, and we do not know if they will impose the same rule that the Supreme Court did, it may or may not apply to the entire state or just the parties to the lawsuit. We don't know. With that said, if the injunction is granted, we can ask for a stay in our current legal battle. We've already said that we would do that if the injunction is granted. Withdrawing for the lawsuit potentially puts us at risk with that lawsuit. Stepping away now exposes our residents to unnecessary financial risk. And we've already invested the $10,000. That money's spent. The attorneys have done their work. They filed the case. To go back and attempt to get them to refund our money is almost embarrassing. We stood up for our residents. It's what they wanted us to do. Standing up for home rule, which is a huge part of this bill. I would love to think our legislators would come back and amend this, but they didn't do it the first time. And to expect them to do it now, I've heard what Senator DeSiglie is saying, and I also know the day that he made those comments, it was the same day that Thousand Friends of Florida had their webinar with almost a thousand participants. So we have to ask ourselves, is it the lawsuit that's making them finally act? And will they follow through if people like Deltona start backing out? To back out now would be to bend a knee to Tallahassee. An act of political convenience for others, but not our residents. Rather than principled leadership. We weren't elected to just fall in line. We were elected to be the voice of our residents. And I can tell you I have a lot of residents reaching out and saying that they do believe in the fight against SB 180. And that's why the person sitting in your seat previously supported that effort. Because when you look at the detriment that's happening to our community on a daily basis, I talked to our county chair the other day, and he told me that he was in a meeting with the other counties, and not one single county said that they agreed with SB 180 and the detrimental effects it's having on our state. So, did I realize that it could potentially hurt our relationship with the legislators up there? Absolutely. But they are hurting our residents. And it's infringing upon their constitutional rights. And at that point, it's our job to be their voice. Because who else will be their voice if it's not us? We have 100,000 residents that we represent. And I will always stand up for their constitutional rights. And this one is huge. And so, if those legislators want to hold that against us because we believe in following the Florida Constitution, so be it. That shows their corruption. Thank you. Commissioner Avila Vasquez and then Vice Mayor Herriot. Thank you, Mayor. So, I said this once, I think twice. I went to two seminars where three, four maybe state representatives, elected representatives were there to speak. And the description that they gave of SB 180, or supposedly why they came up with this SB 180, that was put together by the House, passed over to the Senate. Senator Glenn State approved it, now realizes the mistake that was made, or omitted, or missed, now the one that is being corrected. It was aimed to protect the people whose homes were destroyed by hurricanes. It was put together to protect homes by the coastlines that were destroyed, and their cities were denying them grants and money to fix their homes. This is not the reason why I voted in favor of SB 180. I voted in favor of it to slow down the process of more homes, more developments going up, to give the city a chance to find out where our flooding problems are coming from, to give the city a chance to fix the problems that we are being confronted with, where new residents are being destroyed because we have no idea. And I know staff is doing a great job fixing and looking, but every time a new development comes up, more flooding comes up. I don't know whose fault it is. Did we miss something? We probably did. But we're just asking for time to find these problems and resolve them. Now, I got to tell you that if Deltona is in the bad name of Tallahassee, so is 27 other names. I was shocked. My daughter lives in Destin. If anybody knows Destin, they know what city Destin is like. They're on the list. I was shocked to see Destin on that list. Okay? Number one, they were the first one on the list. League of Cities? League of Cities, they're supposed to be protecting us, helping us with the wrong rules. And they're the first ones who approved this SB 180. So I don't even know if we can count on them to protect us or protect the residents of the city of Deltona or all the other cities. You said something, Commissioner Nabic, about something coming within a week. What's coming within a week? Because like everything else, nothing is shared with us, at least not with me anyway. So I have no idea what's coming in a week. Could be a, well, thank you for telling me, but I didn't know that. Did you know that, Commissioner Steve? Thank you. There you go. So here again, what we're doing here is to protect our residents. I know you were not here, Commissioner Nabic, but everything I do, and I'm speaking for Maritza, everything I do, I do it to protect my residents. And I do it because I speak to my residents. And they tell me what they look for me, what they look for me to vote, to defend them, to protect their homes. And I listen to them. Even if I don't like it, I have to do what they tell me to do to protect them. There's nothing on the SB1A, there's nothing that I voted on, that says that the city, I don't want the city to give residents money to fix their homes that were damaged. I don't want the city to fix families to raise their homes from the water damage. I don't want the city to give the residents anything. That's not what we said. What we're asking is for time to fix our problems. And I don't think SB180 is saying that. This is why I voted for SB180. I can tell you it's not going to pass today. But I still respect my residents, and I will still stand by you. And I will still stand by SB180. Thank you. Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. So to answer Commissioner Novick's question, I did share my concerns about the loss of potential loss of funding. I shared those concerns over three or four meetings with lengthy discussion at each, and it felt like it fell on deaf ears. Quite frankly, at those meetings, it felt like there was more anger driving the conversation than reason could ever overcome. I have also spoken with many of our local delegation that are supportive of these amendments. They are supportive of this process, the process of going through the Florida Association of Counties, the Florida League of Cities, to get these changes signed. The risk that we have taken being in an extreme minority on this lawsuit goes directly against what the city has requested from the state and received, especially this last year. And I continue to hear that our residents want relief from flooding. And that is not a one-solution issue. In fact, there are a couple things on our agenda tonight that actually have implications on flooding. I truly believe that this is one of the largest ones. The financial burden is not on our residents for the cost of the lawsuit. I don't want to say that any amount is insufficient or, you know, meaningful, but the $10,000 cost that we have spent pursuing this lawsuit is menial to the amount, the millions of dollars that we give up in state funding over the next few years. The idea that the injunction would follow the process set forth in case law of the U.S. Supreme Court is highly unlikely. It will most likely follow the process of the case law for, I believe, Form 1, where the injunction took place and applied to everybody in the state, not just those that were party on a lawsuit. The lawsuit also doesn't actually slow any growth. The goal of the lawsuit is to get the bill amended. If we can get the bill amended, not sue our delegation, work to repair our damaged reputation so that we still have a chance of receiving state funding over the next few fiscal years, then why would we continue to shoot ourself in the foot while we know that we need help? If we can accomplish the goal and still receive funding, that sounds like the definition of a win-win. And again, the lawsuit doesn't actually slow any growth. Slowing the growth comes from changing our policies and updating our policies that we have continued to update over the last few months to a year. And those are the lasting changes that will continue to maintain healthy growth that doesn't put our current residents at risk and preserves their way of life. I don't need to harp on this again. And, you know, we've harped on this for four or five meetings already at this point. I'm glad that this item came up for discussion and look forward to voting on it. I'd like to do public comment, and then I'll go back to you, Commissioner Novick. Matthew Borgans. Yes, if you can just fill out the yellow form in the back and leave it right there. You can speak on this specific topic. Good evening. Many of you guys talked about 180 and saying it's going to hurt our reputation. I've seen a lot of things that we talked about submitting to the county. It doesn't get represented by our person that's here, David Santiago. Every time I watch his YouTube forum, it's always about the district where his wife's at, which is kind of upsetting to Deltona that he represents the area where his wife's at but not the rest of the county. And so that's upsetting for me. There's been a lot of organizations that oppose 180 and saying it is harmful for flooding and it's harmful for our local government, and it's going to take it away from us and put it to the state. And every time something comes around here, it's always going to Orange City. It goes to Delan. It goes to Daytona Beach. It doesn't come here. We're always – you say we're the biggest county and we have the most residents, and yet Orange City, Delan, and everything else gets more than we do. And that's upsetting. Every time something comes by, they say, well, we're going to put a sports complex. Let's put it in Orange City. Let's put it in Daytona Beach. They don't say let's put it in Daytona or Deltona. We have the best fields here according to our parks and recs, and yet they didn't look at us. They went everywhere else. And so this representation that we have in the state level, I'm not seeing it as a resident. You may see it at the commission, but I don't see it. And then every time that somebody talks about the benefit that we're getting as residents, I'm only hearing it from certain people, and it's back to our splits. You know, Marissa just mentioned about communication. It's back to the commission being split. Half of the commission gets the information, half doesn't. Half gets support from up in Tallahassee, half doesn't seem like they're getting it. The governor already stated that he's going to fight 180 until he's, you know, done with it. He's not going to change it. He's gone on record saying he's going to fight it. So if this has gotten to the point where we're getting changes now, then why are we going to pull away and open ourselves to more litigation? We're just going to tell developers that say, hey, we can't stick to anything. And that's what Deltona's been for the years. We start something and then never stick to it. You know, we talked about ordinances. You know, we've been waiting on our ordinance committee for almost a year now. And we're approving ordinances without going through it. You know, and so we can't get an ordinance committee even in our own local city. How is this going to affect us? We're supposed to be leaders, and we can't even take care of our own stuff. And so Tallahassee says you can't take care of it as a city, we're going to do it for you. And that's what 180s want to do, open it up so Tallahassee can come in and take over the city for us. Thank you. Kathy Bryan. Good evening, Kathy Bryan. You know, I remember the arguments and talking about, well, we're breaking the law. Well, there's good laws and there's bad laws. I mean, let's face it. If nobody had fought for women's rights to be able to vote and do stuff, half of you wouldn't be up there. My issue with this is that developers are being able to take advantage of something that was meant to help residents. You talked about losing money for things we need like flooding, stormwater, et cetera. But how much more money are we going to need if developers, if we develop more and there's no control on it and you lose more of your permeable land surface? Where's the water going to go? Into the bowl of Deltona. Talk about broken relationships. Well, they're supposed to be up there to protect the people of this state. Is there something fascinating over there? And so if they can't listen to the cities and counties on what the people need, then shame on them. They don't belong up there. I'd be curious, like, who's working on these amendments? I mean, if we had the ability to, you know, if they're going to listen to what the cities and counties have to say and put in the input of the people on what should be amended versus what they think should be amended, I wouldn't have a problem with that. But is that what's happening? That's my question. I mean, I'm all for people being able to rebuild. Now, when it comes to our coastal cities, that's a little bit different. They chose to build there. The shoreline changes. That's partially on them. But in any case, I think there's opportunities for us to be able to work on stuff. But let's not just leave it to the state legislators who are going to do what they want and whose heads are turned by a dollar or a million dollars or whatever they get. Because you know that developers have deep pockets. We don't. So y'all decide what you're going to decide. But if you decide to let up on the litigation, and that's a good talking point for the litigation. Okay, we won't sue, but we want input on what we think needs to be amended in this bill that will most serve our residents. Is there a reason why we couldn't do that? That's kind of all I have to say on it. Thank you. Albert Bryan. Albert Bryan, Deltona. There's a couple problems with this bill. One, we have a B-PUD that y'all are going to rezone tonight or whatever you're going to do with it. This bill allows me to sue you over that rezone. Period. Pull stop. So how much litigation do you want? It's either we take the litigation to the state or we take the litigation to you. It's real simple. Because anybody can sue you over impact fee changes, over code land changes, anything that's not storm related. This bill was supposed to be storm related. Only a little bit of it is. A fraction of the 4,000 pages this bill probably is. That's a problem. The other thing is when you have a governor that states in a public forum that he didn't read it. He signed it but didn't read it. And then he goes on to say that he takes and has problems with some of the bill but didn't ask to reform it. Why? Is he scared of the developers? Is he scared of the insurance companies? Why? Oh, that's right. Insurance company actually put money in his campaign. A tune of $13 million. So, we also have a problem with the fact that you have the ability, or actually I should say I have the ability, to sue you now for anything unrelated to storm. It doesn't matter. This bill gives me that choice for anything non-related to land use. Anything. And land use included. So, you're asking yourselves tonight, do you want to pay $10,000 for litigation to throw this bill out? Or at least to ask them to completely rebuild this bill just for storm-related stuff. Because you all also have impact fees coming up. If you change those, the attorney here, she could take and sue you over that. Buy this bill. So, how much litigation do you really want? Do you want this one-time litigation, or do you want the next 30 years? Now, think about this. If you change your impact fees within three years of a hurricane, the state can sue you. Hmm. Isn't that interesting? Now, the other thing that I have a problem with with this, because y'all stated that y'all want to amend it. I can remember a few years ago when they did a lottery. Said, oh, it's going to pay for all the education in the state of Florida. For every dollar they gave us from the lottery, they took $2 away from education. Why do you think our teachers in Volusia County are the worst paid in the Quad County area? The worst. And I know that for a fact. I talked to somebody today that told me for a fact. We're lower than Flagler. We're lower than Seminole. We're lower than Orange County. We're lower than Lake County. And yet, our population is no different than theirs. Matter of fact, our population is right in the middle. So, are we going to take and trust legislators that couldn't get that right and still don't? They still take money from the education system? Hmm. That's an odd bet to take, people. No other comments, sir. Commissioner Knobbick. Thank you, Mayor. In response to Commissioner Avila-Vasquez's comments about knowing where the flooding is, we've known where the flooding problems are since Rod Cash did his report in 2005. And as a commission, even the eight years that I was on, we didn't have the will collectively to properly fund the stormwater program in order to complete the projects that our hired analyst told us about. That book exists today. That book exists today. Those projects are there still today. I've asked stormwater to bring that book forward to find it so that we can look at having a workshop and discussing that and putting some stormwater projects together to look, to take to Tallahassee to the delegation, to look for grants with our new grant writer, and to make a determination of whether or not our current stormwater fees are adequate enough to be able to fund those projects and maintain. I heard at one of my last couple of meetings, it might have been the budget meeting, I don't remember, the comment was made, we don't generate enough money with the stormwater fees to even do our maintenance on the existing system, let alone to do the projects. So when we talk about pumping the brakes that this legislation, this lawsuit that's going to fight this legislation is going to help us to identify where our flooding problems are, that's BS. We know where they're at. We've known since 2005, and Public Works and Stormwater has that document. It's a large three-ring binder. I saw it when it was produced when I was still working here and worked in the EOC in 2004 and 2005. So those plans have existed. We've not executed them collectively as administration, as staff, as the commission to fund them. So this legislation doesn't help us identify where those problems are. It may help us identify, give us some time to identify where some new problems are. But this litigation and the moratorium that were put in place are two entirely separate issues, completely. The moratorium is buying us time, but we're not flooded with new projects. I think we have one or two. Is development services here? I can't see. Mr. Manager, can I, can I, Jordan? Jordan, if you can please come to the podium. Please click the button, and I'll turn the podium mic on, please. Since the commission put the moratorium in place, how many, how many, how many new projects, non-commercial, because the moratorium doesn't affect commercial, how many new projects is staff carrying that, that are not existing? Because we have a bunch of existing projects that have been in the process, I understand that. But how many new projects since the moratorium? One. One? One or two, correct. One or two? Yes. Okay, so we're not, we're not being flooded. You're not inundated or overwhelmed with, with projects that we, we couldn't do this research and, and have a consultant come in and look at flooding issues if, if we so chose to do that. You're, you're not overwhelmed with new projects. No, sir, staff is, staff is not overwhelmed with new projects. Okay, thank you, sir, that's all. So, you know, it, it's, I understand what you're saying, Dory, about representing the, the people and having the will. I just think we picked a fight with a really big bear and, you know, David did beat Goliath. I, I get that. It, it, it could be, it could be winnable. I'm just, I'm just not seeing that it's, it's in our, our best interest. The governor has doubled down on this and, and I feel he's, he's very, he wants retribution. And I think that it, it, it could only work against us even if the delegation were to put forward some of our wishes and we could get sponsorship to move a, a project forward for funding for something. I don't know that the governor would sign it at this point. So at some point we, we may have, we may have to figure out what the penance is going to be. And I think I, I, I, in my older years now I've tried to learn that it's maybe best to put, be the one putting the olive branch forward and saying, okay, we will give you an opportunity here. We're going to, to back off of this and we're going to take you at your word and see if you'll fulfill your, your, what you've said you would do. You would be willing to, to amend this to some of, you know, the delegation and the Senate. Um, one of us has got to give in first, I think. And I think we're the, we're the ones that stand the most to gain by offering that olive branch up at this point. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Commissioner Howington, and then we're going to go to a vote. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm not sure if you're aware, but we have five subdivisions that were built over the last five years that all have faulty stormwater systems. Every single one of them. As a matter of fact, we had a developer out working in those stormwater system ponds and nobody here at the city can tell me what the heck they were doing. Because apparently they were doing unpermitted work. I still don't have an answer as to what they were doing. They were working on three ponds. We have residents, probably close to a thousand residents or more, living in these communities with faulty stormwater systems. We've heard it was the geotechnical firm that had a problem. If you talk to the developers, they'll tell you it's our code. SB180 has taken away the ability for us to even fix our code. So if we have a stormwater problem with the way our code requires developers to build what we're asking them to put in these developer orders, then all it's doing is creating flooding problems. But at this point, we don't know what the problem is. We had a moratorium. You're right. It was a separate issue. Why in the world a moratorium is wrapped up in SB180 for emergencies? I have no idea. I can't explain that. Other than they thought it was a great idea to create a moratorium on moratoriums. I find that kind of ironic. You know, with the fact that we can't update our policies at this point, to the vice mayor's point, I mean, we can't correct the issues. He said that we should do that through our land use codes, but we can't do that because we'll get sued. We are getting sued, you're correct, and we will continue to get sued. Vice mayor, don't interrupt. We've heard the scare tactics. We were actually told before the governor even signed off on our $2.5 million that we got from the state, there were members of the dais here that did say the governor was going to redline it, and we wouldn't get it, and we did. Even with all the publicity, and I can't imagine he didn't know, but yet we still got the money. The senator who put this forward has said that they can put all the amendments forward they want, but it's up to the governor to sign it. And you're right, the governor is not included in the lawsuit. The people who are included in the lawsuit are the enforcers. Department of Commerce, that's who's delivering these demand letters to these cities and counties saying your comp plans, that you're required to update once every seven years. You can't do that. Because unless you adopt the same thing you had seven years ago, one person thinks it's more restrictive or burdensome, guess what? Lawsuit. You decide you don't want to have somebody build too close to a wetland? Well, I don't like that idea. Lawsuit. That's where we keep going with this. And to say that we would lose that $2.5 million as a scare tactic, they were wrong. We got it. So Senator Wright didn't come in here and give us our nice fuzzy photo idea that we could, you know, use in our campaigns when they hand us the pretty check. Who cares? We got the money. And several people up here said we wouldn't. And we still did. If they are going to hold our residents accountable for us standing up for something that truly does hurt our residents and our community, then those are not the right leaders for our community. Have I heard the rumors that people have said that as long as I'm up here, they're not going to give Deltona a dime? Absolutely. I've heard that from some members of our Volusia delegation that they've told that to people. Secondhand information is coming back to me. But do I think that if we back out of the lawsuit at this point in time that it's going to change that? Not a chance. Their minds are made up. We saw it a couple years ago when all of our funds got vetoed, what, I believe it was two years ago? And it had nothing to do with the city of Deltona. It had to do with our delegation. Made it through, but it didn't get through the governor. So we can back down. I'm sure we will because I've heard the rumors. I've heard the rumors after Commissioner Lulee left and before the appointment that that was the entire goal of having the fourth person put on the commission. There's a reason why I showed up today with a document prepared for this moment. Because everybody in the community knew what the four people here had planned. It's widely known. It's not a secret. They would be happy if we develop every corner of this city. Commissioner Howington, point of order. The person on the tax need to stop. I get you want to start campaigning with everybody else, but enough is enough. Campaigning for what? For whatever it is you're campaigning. I show you on social media every day all over the state. Saying that I want you all removed from office? Absolutely. All right, point of order. Are you done with your statement? Are you done with your statement so we can move on? This is a huge mistake. And this is exactly the type of leadership that our residents have not been asking for. Thank you. Vice Mayor Harriet. Don't clap. You'll get removed. Thank you, Mayor. Real quick, the five developments that we're currently having issues with, we're having issues, stormwater, specifically stormwater issues, because they weren't built to the city code. Because over those five years, we had five, seven city managers. It's a lack of leadership that has brought us to where we are. The suit only names state employees. It doesn't actually name the state or the governor. It's not meant to solve the problem. It's meant to create more chaos. And the last point that was made during a public comment, the residents of District 1 greatly appreciate the fact that our county commissioner supported and helped get Transform 386 funding to alleviate the flooding problem at Lake Helen Osteen and Elkham Boulevard, along with another project, if not two projects, I believe, in Districts 3 or 4. So, we are getting funding from multiple levels. But I'll tell you, I'm excited for the leadership that we've got tonight that we're going to help mend these relationships at the state level so that we can continue to get additional funding and address some of our problems that we have known about for a long, long time from the state. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Novick, we're going to go ahead and vote. Did you need to say something? Okay, go ahead. Commissioner Howington, up until your last comment that you just made that was a personal attack, I was on the fence. But thank you for helping me make my decision. Mayor, we'll call the question. All right. If I can please, point of order, point of order. If I can please have the city attorney read the motion, and then we're going to go ahead and do the vote. Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is a motion for the City of Deltona to withdraw from the SB 180 litigation. Can you read out for public what the votes were, please? Your microphone, please. Madam Clerk. Mayor Villa? Yes. Vice Mayor Harriet? Yes. Commissioner Villa-Vasquez? No. Commissioner Caldwell? No. Commissioner Howington? No. Commissioner Novick? Yes. Commissioner Santiago? Yes. All right. Now we're going to go ahead and move forward to consent agenda. Is there any consent agenda items that are willing to Vice Mayor Harriet? I'd like to make a motion to approve consent agenda items A through C. There's a motion by Vice Mayor Harriet. Commissioner Santiago? Second. There's a second. Is there any public comment on the consent agenda items? No, sir. All right. Please vote. Motion passes 7-0. At this time, we're going to go into ordinance and public hearings into a quasi-judicial hearing, and I will have to turn it over to the city attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a quasi-judicial public hearing. Please be advised that the following item on the agenda is quasi-judicial in nature. If you wish to comment upon this item, please indicate the number you would like to address when the announcement regarding the quasi-judicial item is made. An opportunity for persons to speak on each item will be made after the applicant and staff have made their presentations on each item. All testimony, including public testimony and evidence, will be made under oath or affirmation. Additionally, each person who gives testimony may be subject to cross-examination. If you do not wish to be either cross-examined or sworn, your testimony will be given its due weight. The general public will not be permitted to cross-examine witnesses, but the public may request the commission to ask questions on their behalf. The full agenda packet on each item is hereby entered into the record. Persons representing organizations must present evidence of their authority to speak for the organization. Further details of the quasi-judicial procedures may be obtained from the city clerk. At this time, commissioners must disclose any ex parte communications concerning this item on the agenda. Commissioner Emma Santiago, is there any ex parte communication? Not that I'm aware of. I know that I did receive a request from Kim to meet, but I don't think we ever met, as far as I know. So, no. Commissioner Maritza Villavascos? Yes. I met with the lawyer. Spoke to the lawyer. Commissioner Dori Howington? Yeah. Way back when, when we were first talking about this, I spoke with Jordan Smith, Jessica Edelweiss, Zach Good, Gemma Torsivia, Albert Bryan, and then I recently spoke with Kim Booker as well. Commissioner Stephen Caldwell? Meeting with Ms. Booker this past week. Commissioner Chris Nobick? Yes. I had an email from Ms. Booker and I declined to meet with her. I advised her that if I had any questions, I would come in contact with her afterwards. I did meet with Jordan Smith, getting brought up to speed on this project, and had made some suggestions to him to place into the developer's agreement, which he did speak with Ms. Booker on, and I received an email from him on the 20th of October with regards to that, that she had agreed to those two conditions. Vice Mayor Harriott? Thank you, Mayor. I spoke with two members of the development team, along with staff, city attorneys, a couple members of PNZ, and then a few residents. I know I spoke with a few residents. I don't remember exactly which ones. And I had an email and a meeting with Ms. Booker and somebody from the development as well, if I'm not mistaken, and staff. That's it. At this time, I will ask the city attorney to please swear those participate. Yes, Mr. Mayor. At this time, I will swear in any person who wishes to testify on the quasi-judicial item. Please raise your right hand. Do you hereby swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help you God? Thank you. And before Mr. Smith begins his presentation, I will also read the title of the ordinance into the record. This is ordinance number 32-2025, an ordinance of the city of Deltona, Florida, amending the official zoning map to rezone approximately 7.93 acres of land located at 930 Howland Boulevard from retail commercial C-1 to mixed-use plan unit development, MPU-D, providing for recording, conflicts, severability, and an effective date. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Good evening, Mayor, Commission. The item before you is ordinance number 32-2025, a request to rezone approximately 7.93 acres at 930 Howland Boulevard from retail commercial C-1 to mixed-use plan unit development. The applicant is proposing a two-phase commercial development, including a self-storage facility and a future commercial out-parcel. And the applicant, per Chapter 74, did hold a community meeting, and I believe there were no attendees, and they just received one email. So the subject property, the site is located along the East Howland Boulevard corridor, directly north of Pine Ridge High School. The land is currently vacant and wooded. The zoning is retail commercial, C-1, and it has a commercial future land use designation of MPUD. The project will be developed in two phases. Under a development agreement, Phase 1 is 5.11 acres with 800 storage units, 57 RV and boat spaces, and a small office. Phase 2, which is 2.82 acres, is reserved for future commercial use. The MPUD designation supports the city's goal of creating coordinated, high-quality commercial centers along major corridors. It allows a range of compatible non-residential uses, such as offices, restaurants, and retail, but specifically prohibits certain uses that do not align with the corridor vision, such as discount retail stores, large-format retail, standalone automotive uses, and car washes. The project provides 26% open space, exceeding the minimum requirements. It includes a landscape stormwater pond with walking trail and seating areas. The plan provides 20-foot landscape buffers and a 35-foot front yard setback on Howland Boulevard. A decorative six-foot fence and berm will screen the storage facility, and all buildings will feature four-sided architectural treatment consistent with the city design standards. The key points of the development agreement, it establishes, the development agreement formalizes development standards phasing in prohibited uses. It requires the undeveloped parcel to be maintained with enhanced landscaping until the Phase 2 development is constructed, and the applicant has agreed to prohibit car washes and establish a minimum 2,000-square-foot building size for any quick-service restaurant, limited to a single drive-through lane. These conditions reflect concerns raised by the Planning and Zoning Board and align with staff's corridor design goals. This input is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan. It advances policies promoting compact mixed-use development, economic diversification, and coordinated corridor design. The project supports goals in the future land use element, economic development element, and transportation, and is particularly for corridor revitalization along Howland Boulevard. Under Section 74-14 of the Land Development Code, the request meets all rezoning criteria. It is consistent with the comprehensive plan. It is compatible with surrounding commercial and public uses. It has adequate infrastructure and services. It has logical zoning boundaries, and there is no anticipated adverse impacts to adjacent properties or the community. The Planning and Zoning Board reviewed this request on August 20th. The board voted 4-3 to recommend denial. Concerns included the project's compatibility with surrounding area and traffic safety near the high school. Since that meeting, the applicant had modified the development agreement to address several of those issues, including removing car washes from the permitted uses. Staff recommends that the City Commission conduct a public hearing on ordinance number 32-2025, and then the second reading is scheduled for November 17th, 2025. Available for any questions, and then the applicant is here as well. I'm going to take a quick point of privilege, and then I'll go to Vice Mayor Harriet. City attorneys, question for you. When we're doing these type of agreements with the developers moving forward, are we making sure we put the recommendations and we put what they have agreed to in their contracts? Because to Commissioner Vila Vasquez's point, there's been a habit that they come back, and I'm not saying you, Ms. Booker, but others have come back, and for example, they'll say we're going to build luxury apartments, and then we come to find out they aren't building luxury apartments, they're just going to put whatever they want, or they say we're not going to put a gas station, and here they go, they're putting a gas station. Are we making sure that if they say they're not going to put a car wash, that is going into their agreement? So any conditions that the applicant stipulates to, either prior to or during a public hearing, do get included in the development agreement, and all of the applicant's conditions that they have stipulated to are included in the development agreement? So if they want to turn around in a couple, two years, and say we couldn't find commercial for this, we're going to build housing, they have to come back to us no matter what? Yes, sir. Or we couldn't find something that fits, so we're going to go ahead and build a car wash. They have to come to us no matter what? Yes, sir. Okay. Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. So I just wanted to, before I make a motion, I just wanted to point out that it was in fact, it was the fact that PNZ recommended denial of this motion, or of this project, that led me to reach back out with them after meeting with the developer team. I was here at that PNZ meeting as well, and the concerns that they largely raised were regarding a car wash and more drive-through restaurants, specifically the big multi-lane type restaurants. And it was after discussions with a few members of the PNZ, and then meeting with the development team, that the ones that voted to deny it seemed to support the project with the exclusions of the car wash and the multi-lane drive-through. So for that reason, I will be supporting it tonight. I believe this is a District 6 project, so I want to respect the District 6 commissioner and allow him to make a motion, if he wills. Well, the motion gets done later on. I'll call for the motion at the time. Thank you. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez? Going back to, well, I have a question. Why are you removing the car wash? I mean, I would think that's a perfect spot for it, being that there is nothing on that side, but that's only me. Going back to the question that the mayor made about what needs to be added in the agreements, I think more important than what needs to be added in the agreement is, how long are we giving these developers to start developing? Take, for example, Catalina project. How long did we approve that? Not even a tree is down yet. So I think that's something that we need to look at. We approve that, and nothing has moved, not even a leaf. So I don't have any questions for you right now, Jordan. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez, I believe the city attorney was going to respond. Sir. So I can't speak to the other project you mentioned. I just made that as an example. Yeah, but there is a three-year time limit that from a final site plan approval, there must be vertical construction on this. Three years? I'm almost finished with my second term. Not even a leaf has moved, but thank you for the information. On this particular project before you tonight. Okay. Thank you. Okay. There's no other questions on here, so we're going to go ahead and move to the applicant's attorney. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I'd like to point out that we have included in the DA, there were some concerns about the language. We specifically made revisions. We included a minimum of 2,000 square feet. We've also limited the number of drive-throughs. We have a three-year period, specifically requested changes that were made. There's a three-year expiration date. There's also requirement to provide an updated traffic analysis, traffic report study. And so that should address your concerns. We have a brief presentation. This is obviously the site. It's next to the high school. There is a strip of land that I believe the city is acquiring or trying to acquire, and a veterinary clinic, the south border, and it's on Howland Avenue, the east and north borders on the high school. It will be a secured area. It will have fenced. It will be fenced. It will be secured. It will have security systems. It's only open during the daytime hours. So I know that there was some concern about any kind of safety with the high school students. But it will be a fortress compared to other types of businesses where they will have cameras and security, specifically for the RVs. And so I think the staff report already did a really good job of indicating the compliance with the comprehensive plan. It meets your code to be fostering the integrated mixed-use commercial developments in key areas. Designation allows for non-residential uses across the entire site, promoting economic development and providing community benefits. One of the community benefits I know that was expressed is open space. It does have a 26% of the site being utilized, which is 25% is the requirement as open space. The stormwater pond includes a walking trail and a bench and some additional landscaping to meet that requirement. So it does go beyond that to provide a benefit to the city. Also, there's a great need for boat and RV storage in this area. Code enforcement officers are very busy citing individuals for these types of matters. And if you see these are just pictures taken, driven around the city, it's a big problem. There have been, this is the $15 million project. This will be at the rear of the property, which I think is ideal for this type of use, the self-storage use. The commercial retail will be at the front. But there's a tremendous need for this type of storage in the area. They have statistically done the analysis where in this area, typically nationally, it's 6.3 square feet. I think, let me, I want to cite the actual statistics so I don't get it wrong. It is 6.3 square feet per capita. And currently, Deltona only has two square feet per capita. It's going to create at least 100 construction jobs, four operational, 15 indirect jobs for the self-storage facility alone. There will be additional possible jobs through the commercial retail portion of this. It could be a daycare center. It could be a retail center. It could be various things. So the number of jobs will be based on whatever that end user is. So this is a possible site plan, which shows a daycare center in the front portion of it. The retention site and the open space with the walking trail, you will see there in the front portion between and in front of the self-storage facility. The self-storage facility is located in the rear, and the RV and boat storage will be located on the west end. At least that's, and this is not the final site plan because we don't have that, we're not at that stage yet. As far as there were some traffic concerns, we do have the traffic engineer to address any of those concerns, but it meets all the requirements. There will be certain improvements done based on that traffic study for the project and based on whatever the site plan that is submitted, you know, based on the end user on the commercial, whether or not there have to be any other improvements. If you have any other questions. Is there any questions for the commissioners, for Ms. Booker, Commissioner Novick? Ms. Booker, can you go back, I think, two slides to that site plan? Yes. Jordan, you might want to guide me here a little bit. Is there any opportunity or reason you can think of to create a, designate a location for future joint access agreement? There was some discussion that the city might have the ability for that strip, that they were gaining control of that, and the developer indicated they'd be willing to work with the city, but right now we don't have any ability to provide that. Are you talking about on to Howland, or are you talking about? Being it's on Howland Boulevard, I like where we have joint access to be able to move traffic internally without having to go out on Howland Boulevard. So I'd like... That will be a shared driveway for both facilities. But internally, for anything that may come down the pike in the future, I'd like to have a spot designated possibly that we could create joint access to. Well, because we don't know if the vet's going to stay there, we don't know if you're going to stay there, what it might be in the future, and it's probably easier if we can look at for second reading. It doesn't have to be developed, but just designate it for future joint access agreement and have that memorialized. At the site plan stage, but yes, I mean, mutual access or shared access. Commissioner Novick, really quick, you're describing somewhat like what they have in Honest One and that car wash there where they can... Yeah, where you can move traffic internally between businesses without having to come out on the highway. Just designate an area. What good me on that was when you said something about daycare. Yeah, if they have a... If, in fact, the other site develops would be the time that you would... They would connect into that. But if we designate a spot for that, then it's there and we don't have to come back and revisit negotiating with you where that's going to be. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, thank you. Another question? Commissioner Howington? I'm not sure who the question would be for. It's related to Exhibit D. It looks like the allowed uses within the MPUD for number 15 states that other uses which are similar or compatible and which promote these intents and purposes is allowed. But then if you go to prohibited uses within the MPUD, number one says all other uses not listed as permitted are prohibited. It seems like that's a bit contradictory in that in one it's saying, well, if it's similar or compatible, but then your next one says, if it's not listed above, then it's not allowed. So how does that work? Which one preempts the other? Generally, in land uses, you have certain things, for instance, that may say storage or self-storage or it may say enclosed storage. There may be various terms used for a particular use. So that language is usually included to address so that you can match the intent of the agreement. So the intent of the agreement is not to have a car wash. So anything that's similar to a car wash is not going to be permitted. Now, one thing I'm not seeing... You can't be so specific that there is no movement because it's with the intent. Otherwise, this agreement will be 500 pages long. One thing that I didn't see mentioned at all is apartments. Apartments? Apartments, yes. We're not asking for any apartments. Yeah, that's not part of the request tonight. There's no residential on this. Okay. Well, obviously tonight, I'm thinking a year and a half, two years down the road. Do we know that we're not going to have apartments? Because I know I read through and it talked about vertical development. There's no apartment uses. Okay. Commissioner, this is an unplugged, just commercial uses. Yeah. And it's residential is not even in the development agreement. Yeah. If a future developer, you know, if in the future they wanted it, they would have to come back for an amendment. If it's not currently in the plans, would you be willing to put it in the development order to not have apartments in the future? Because, I mean, it looks like one of the amendments that we received today was... Yeah, we're fine with that. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And that's all the questions that I had. Okay. Anybody else? Thank you. Okay. I don't see any other questions, so we're going to go ahead and move to... Is there any persons with standing? No, sir. Is there any public participation? Yes, sir. Kathy Bryant. Good evening, Kathy Bryant. This area is already zoned as retail commercial, so I'm not sure why we need to change it to an input. And my concern with that is that while I know you said this doesn't allow residential, and you said we're not planning to put apartments there, it doesn't mean that if for some reason these businesses back out, that eventually the backup plan could be apartments. And what does apartments mean? Lots more people, lots more traffic. The other question I have is your ingress and egress from this, and I was looking at the map, and where it comes out, is there going to be any, and because you have the school right there certain times a day letting traffic in and out, special events, et cetera, is there going to be any traffic signals planned for there? And I'm not, I hate traffic signals, mostly because on Howland they're horrible, but, you know, those are my concerns, and especially with it being so close to the school, is how that flow of traffic's going to go and how it's going to interfere with the safety of that school. So, you know, leave it, we want commercial. Why can't we leave it as commercial? I guess I'm very confused about that, because that's what we need. And people will tell you, oh, apartments, they make so much money. Yeah, they do, but that doesn't give people a place to go like they want to do. So, consider, please consider that. Thank you. No one else, sir. That's it. Ms. Booker, would you like to, on this quasi-edition, have our opportunity to rebuttal or to answer any questions that Ms. Bryant might have posed? Prohibited use. Correct. Correct. Thank you. All right. At this time, we're going to go ahead and call for a motion and a second, and because this is in District 6, out of respect to Commissioner, oh, you're already on the board. Go ahead, Commissioner Novick. I make a motion to approve ordinance number 32-2025, the official zoning map to rezone 7.93 acres of land located along East Holland Boulevard Corridor, Pine Ridge High School, from commercial C-1 to mixed-use planned unit development at first reading. There is a motion by Commissioner Novick, Vice Mayor. Second. There's a second by Vice Mayor. Mr. Mayor, if I can please have the City Attorney read the ordinance once more. Yes, Mr. Mayor. This is ordinance 32-2025, an ordinance of the City of Deltona, Florida, amending the official zoning map to rezone approximately 7.93 acres of land located at 930 Howland Boulevard, from retail commercial C-1 to mixed-use planned unit development, MPUD, providing for recording, conflict, severability, and an effective date. And because this is a quasi-judicial vote, I will ask the City Clerk to call each of us individually and for the Commissioner who is voting to express if they are supporting or not their vote and the reason for it. Mayor, if you don't mind, does the motioner's motion include the prohibition on residential? City Clerk. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez? Yes. Commissioner Caldwell? No. Commissioner Howington? No. Commissioner Novick? Yes. Commissioner Santiago? Yes. Vice Mayor Harriet? Yes. Mayor Avila? Yes. 5-4, 2 against. Okay, the motion passes 5-4. Thank you, Ms. Booker. All right, at this time we're going to go ahead and go to Section B, which is a public hearing. If I can please have the City Attorney read the public hearing or the ordinance. Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is Ordinance No. 34-2025, an ordinance of the City of Deltona, Florida, amending Section 110-319. PUD, Planned Unit Development, of Article 3, Establishment of Classifications and Official Zoning Map, of Chapter 110, Zoning, to reduce the minimum parcel size required to establish plan unit developments, and Table 1, permitted use table of Article 3, Establishment of Classifications and Official Zoning Map, of Chapter 110, Zoning, to update uses in plan unit developments, providing for conflicts, codification, severability, and an effective date. All right, at this time I'll entertain a motion and a second so we can begin discussion. Commissioner Santiago? Yeah, I hereby move to approve Ordinance 34-2025, a second and final reading. There's a motion by Commissioner Santiago. Is there a second? I'll second for discussion. There's a second by Vice Mayor Harriet. Is there any public comment? Yes, sir. Tim Blodgett? Mr. Blodgett, if you push the button, I will turn on the mic. I probably should have put in from the last one, but I think this is probably pertinent to the same thing. I believe a lot of this is coming around because most of what we have left for commercial development is kind of a cookie cutter of what's left. All the good lots have been taken up by residential, and what we have left, like we talked about in the last discussion, and what we were doing that kind of missed the whole discussion was that we had to take smaller spaces and make them useful for what we were going to do. It's kind of tantamount to taking a restaurant and turning them all into a hot dog stance. The last one was particularly well done. I followed that through P and Z, and they dotted all the I's. They crossed all the T's. They addressed all of the concerns right down to Florida-specific wildflowers for the area. I'm really glad to see that, but I would really prefer, and what I came to talk about this time is I'd rather see it as an exception than the rule. I think that you should all be looking at this on an item-per-item occurrence. We have our standards, and as the commercial lots become more and more scarce, I think we're going to run into this more frequently. That was pretty much my only comment on that, and I wanted to let you know. As far as what's going on in Catalina, east of Howland Avenue, I saw some surveyors out there for the raising of Catalina, and on the west side, they started to do the residential. They have piles of pine trees that they're harvesting as they're clearing all of the woods back there. I'd just let you like to know. Have a nice night. Mayor, you look great. Joshua Tavares. Mr. Tavares, are you going to? Okay. No other comments, sir. Go ahead, Ms. Bryant. Ms. Bryant, if you push the button, I will turn on your mic. There you go. Okay. Kathy Bryant, Deltona. I'm kind of leaning towards what Mr. Blodgett just said. I don't think we should just overall give this to one-acre minimum sites because then you – I feel like we need some larger sites, et cetera, and especially for planned unit developments. I would either keep it as is or do smaller sites by variance. That's what I have to say. Thank you. All right. We have a motion by Commissioner Santiago and a second by Commissioner Harriet. Commissioner Howington, you're on the board. I can wait until Mr. Smith is done speaking. To answer your questions. Okay. So I'm curious because six months ago this came before us to increase to five acres, and now it's being recommended that we decrease. And additionally, one of the reasons cites the impact on infill lots and redevelopment. To the points that we just heard from Mr. Blodgett and Ms. Bryant, why are we not handling those as one-offs if they don't meet the current criteria, if they have a smaller lot, if it was bought that way and it's been that way for years, why wouldn't that be an exception rather than just blanketly changing it? I just don't understand why something would be brought to us with the recommendation that we increase to five acres to create more space, better mobility. I just don't understand why you're coming back now recommending that we now decrease it and increase the density. It seems like that goes against everything that we've been trying to work towards. So, Commissioner, you are correct that back in March, staff did bring to your ordinance number 05, there's 2025, requesting from an acre to five acres for PUDs. There's not a lot of developable land left in the city of Deltona. So, we're requesting to go back to the minimum one-acre size, which helps create more flexibility in site design. All projects that go for the PUD process have to follow the PUD guidelines. So, there's strict guidelines that they do have to follow. And if I may just add on to that point, one of the particular challenges that planning and zoning staff has encountered is that within the JPA, there is a requirement for parcels to rezone to a PUD. And in that area, there are many parcels that are below that five-acre threshold. This was, frankly, I believe an unintended consequence of the changes to the PUD regulation that now there are challenges for development within that JPA area that, frankly, deprives landowners of some of the use of their property. So, are we referring to Deltona city lots, or are we referring to unincorporated Volusia lots when you speak to the JPA? There are unincorporated Volusia lots that are required to annex into the city if they're going to use our utilities. But they have not annexed, and I've had several residents beg me not to annex their community. So, we're looking at blanketly changing our PUD size requirements to appease lots that are not even part of our city. Who brought this forward as a request? Where did this generate from? City staff. We realized that, as Mr. Good said, it was an unintended consequence as we're working, as we're having pre-abs and as we're talking to applicants. We're having flooding issues out in that area, correct? But we're talking citywide. We're not just... Well, we're not talking citywide, because this pertains to the city. But now I'm being told that we're changing this to accommodate unincorporated Volusia that has not been annexed and would require a rezone. Zach was just bringing up another example of what I stated earlier. It is citywide. So, within the city, why couldn't we handle those as one-offs? Because, again, we're creating higher density. We already have a flooding problem. I get that we only had 17 houses that flooded during Milton, which you are so keen to point out, but that doesn't mitigate the 200 that flooded during Ian. And the more we create the high density, the worse it's going to be. That concerns me. We make decisions, and then they get brought before us again to change them again, over and over. Why can't these be handled as one-off items? Commissioner, the reason that a change is required is because in order to seek the PUD process, the minimum requirement, those minimum thresholds have to be met. An applicant would not be able to seek a variance without, that an applicant would be unable to seek the variance to that minimum requirement of the PUD rezoning because it's, they have to meet those requirements in order to seek the process. Didn't we have somebody who had a pool request come before us, and it didn't meet the requirements, and they were still able to get an approval as a one-off item? I guess I'm just understanding, if somebody makes a request to do something that does not fit, why it can't come before the board for discussion? Why does this need to be blanket? I hear over and over, our residents are concerned about the density, about the flooding, but yet here we are, yet again, we want smaller lot sizes. So, Commissioner, seeking a variance to a portion of the code is, one of the code requirements, like in that case was pervious area, is different from not meeting the minimum requirements to seek a rezoning. So, that's the, the nuance here is that the individual who does not meet the minimum requirements to seek a rezoning does not have the variance process available to them. Can that be fixed? Can we, can we create an ordinance or something that we can use to create a mechanism for those lots to come to us, rather than, again, blanketly changing our code? This ordinance does that by changing your minimum requirements to meet the conditions of what is available in your city. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if we can create a mechanism for people with one-acre lots to come to us and ask for a variance. Can we create something from scratch that might not exist today, rather than just blanketly changing our ordinances? Frankly, I need more time to look into that. I do, I, this time, I'm not prepared to answer that question. Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. Jordan, thank you very much. I appreciate staff recognizing the unintended, unintended consequences of our prior ordinances and making the corrective actions to allow our city to expand commercial development wherever it might be. So thank you again. That's all. All right. Seeing nobody else on the board, can we please vote? Can you please call it out? Because I, there it goes. Motion passes four to three. All right. At this time, we're going to go ahead and move over to action items. We're going to go ahead and move to 9A, which is a consideration of an alternate appointment to planning and zoning board. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is, as you stated, consideration of an alternative appointment to the planning and zoning board. This may be done via motion tonight. Thank you. Commissioner Howington, you're up first. I'd like to make a motion to appoint the following alternate member of the planning and zoning board for a term to expire on March 15th of 2028, that being Christian O'Brien. Is Commissioner, or sorry, Vice Mayor Harriet, you're up next? Second. There's a motion and a second. Motion by Commissioner Howington, second by Vice Mayor Harriet. Is there any public comment? No, sir. All right. Seeing that nobody's on the board, can we please vote? Motion passes seven to zero. We're going to go ahead and move to action items nine B as in boy. This is a request for a resolution. If I can have the city attorney read the request for the resolution. Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is resolution number 2025-145, a resolution of the city commission of the city of Deltona, Florida, amending the Deltona city commission operating guidelines and meeting rules and procedures, superseding resolutions on the same subject, providing for conflict severability and an effective date. Commissioner Vila Vasquez, you're up first. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to make a motion to keep the original commission meeting rules in place. I also would like to ask to add or make a change. I would like to add that, let's see how I'm going to read this. I would like to make a request that the meetings be adjourned by a motion to adjourn be requested from the commissioners so that a motion is requested from commission to adjourn the meetings rather than the way it's been done now where the commissions have no saying after the end of the meeting if they have something to say. I have spoken to many other cities and they do have a motion requesting a motion to adjourn. There is a motion by Commissioner Vila Vasquez. Commissioner Howington, you're on next. I'll second. There's a second. There's a second by Commissioner Howington. Commissioner Caldwell, did you want to speak on the matter? Yes. Okay. Is there any public comment before we go to Commissioner Comments? Yes, sir. Matthew Borgans. Mr. Borgans, if you push the button, I'll turn you on. I'll turn on your mic. Good evening again. As there's been many things in the city that has done really great and like I said, we have done great. Doc has helped with a lot of events and stuff. This is one here that I think if you adopted the new policy, you would actually be in violation of some of the laws because you're trying to limit what the audience could do but not curtail some of the actions that happened on the dais with the comments, the rolling eyes, the things under the breath, even just now with what just happened. But there is Jones versus Heyman that has decided that some clapping and some public emotions is legal. So you can't deny that. And even though you've tried that a couple of times, um, so, and then you can't put a blanket, uh, for applausing our certain actions that you have in this new policy because it can't, it is unconstitutional. Um, same thing with, uh, this area, um, being semi private, you can't limit anybody or kick them out and deny I'm coming in here. Uh, I've heard, I heard that. Um, like I said, there's been a lot of changes that's been good. We've asked for the, the ordinance committee to come up here to help. And there's been a lot of things in the city that is improving. Um, I do think that we need to come together and stop some of this bickering back and forth between everything, both sides, audience and the diocese. But again, uh, reviewing some of the laws and the case laws that, uh, limit the ability of you, uh, being able to hit the gavel and stop people from clapping or saying a comment, uh, after somebody comes up here emotional or, or, you know, saying, uh, anything like that, that, you know, like I said, that is kind of hitting their unconstitutional, uh, amendments there for first amendment speaking. Again, I want to thank everybody, which you guys do. Um, nobody wants to be up there. And like I said, it is a thankless job, what everybody does in the city. So you guys being up there with doc and the city does is a great thing. You know, most people come up here, myself included, when there's a problem, nobody comes up here when there's something good. So I do thank what you guys do. Um, so again, keep up the good work and we need to work together and not against each other. Um, so that's all I have to say. Thanks. David Markle. Good evening, mayor commissioners. I'll take this off. Sorry, not feeling too well. Um, I stand before you as not just a concerned citizen, but as a voice for many in our community who feel increasingly unheard. I'm here to express my strongest approval for the recent decisions to limit public comment during commission meetings. This action strikes as the very heart of excuse me, democratic participation. Public comment is not a privilege. It's a right. It is the cornerstone of transparency, accountability, and civic trust. We understand that meetings can be long. We also understand that order must be maintained, but silencing or restricting the voices of the people who you were elected to serve is not the solution. It sends a dangerous message that efficiency is more important than engagement and that discomfort with criticism justifies censorship. So I ask what prompted the decision to make these changes? Was it truly about decorum or is it about control? And more importantly, who recommended the changes? The citizens of Deltona deserve to know which commissioner commissioners supported limiting our voices so we can hold them accountable, not just at the ballot box, but in every forum where democracy lives. If this commission believes in transparency, then I urge you to publicly disclose which commissioners recommended this policy change, reconsider and revise the current limitations to ensure they do not infringe upon our rights. And most importantly, listen, not just when it's convenient, but when it's uncomfortable. Because democracy doesn't thrive in silence, it thrives in dialogue. Thank you. Kathy Bryant. Kathy Bryant, Deltona. Um, I remember when we had a workshop on this and there was a lot of discussion. And I remember one of the things in the discussion when it came to, um, cutting down the time for public forum or to speak after an issue that that's on the agenda, we recommended three and three because we were also going to increase the workshop. But yet when I read over the finalized ordinance, it still left the regular meetings at two and it did do the workshops at four. I'd love to keep the workshops at four, but I would say, do not vote for this as is. There was that seemed to be a reasonable, um, compromise between everybody. And I think there's no reason why we can't do these meetings at three minutes. And then again, if somebody has a little more to say, because they're at the grievance, whatever, then it's up to the dais to give them a little additional time. But so no, that's number one. Number two, Robert's rule of orders. It is not a firm rule, hard and fast. It is a guideline. So the other thing we had discussed at that was about the commissioners being only able to speak twice on the same question and only having a certain time limit, which in some cases with some former commissioners would have been a blessing. But when there's something that's controversial and you guys need more, have more questions or need more time to speak, you should have it. So keep that in mind because that's still in there. And you guys all said, oh no, we should be able to come back and ask and stuff like that. So I'm like, okay. The other thing is, is that, you know, Mayor, you're always talking about how people should bring their grievances. Well, not everybody comes with grievances. Sometimes people come to tell about some kind of a community thing that's going on, or they tell the city they're doing a good job. I do that every once in a great while, but usually I come up with a grievance or I come up with an idea. And don't shut us down on that. And that's where that information should be shared. It's become a tyranny up there. I know you want things to run business like, and we had some people that came up here that were just out of hand, but you never gaveled them down. It took you a long time to do that. And then you went from here over to here. Let's pull it back towards the middle a little bit. Give your public a little leeway. We're here because we love the city. We're concerned and we want to see good things happen to it. And we try to tell you that how we feel. And when people clap after somebody speaks again, I tell you again, listen to it. It means the bulk of your audience says, yes, we like this. It doesn't have to get out of hand. Put your superstars before the meeting. Then you don't have to wait. You guys talk about wanting to get out of the meetings early. You don't have that transition time anymore. Do some of that before the meeting. Who wants to see all that? Mostly you guys and the parents and families of the children getting the awards. I would be here if it was my kid. I was always at those things with my kid. But it wouldn't have bothered me if it was before the meeting started. Once again, people have a hard time getting here. When you make it this early and you cut off the time for them to be able to even sign up if they get here late. I know you've heard this before. So have a little leeway. Thank you. We're still not doing that. You have to understand that's a disruption in the meeting. I implore you to try that in a court of law and see if that's the same outcome you get. All right. Commissioner, is there any more public comment? No, sir. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez, you're up. I'm sorry. I skipped you, Vice Mayor. I'll come up. Commissioner Avila-Vasquez, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to point something out that there are two policies that were being presented to us. The one I chose is the original policy, which still gives you three minutes to speak on both times. It's not the two minutes. The two minutes is the updated policy. I am making a motion to stay with the old policy, which gives you three minutes. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Mayor, if I may, because there were some public comments that dealt with constitutionality, I'd like to just give a little bit of context about the law and public forum. I will try and be as brief as possible. There are three essentially prongs of law that govern what we do here in this forum, that being the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Florida. We have the Florida's government in the sunshine, chapter 286, and then we have our local code and policies that govern our meeting procedures. So there are various types of public forum. There's a traditional public forum, a designated public forum, a limited public forum, and a non-public forum. So traditional public forums are what you think of as a, when you say public forum, which are public parks, sidewalks, areas that have been traditionally open to political speech and debate. In a traditional public forum, the government may not discriminate against speakers based on the speaker's views. The government may subject speech to reasonable content-neutral restrictions on time, place, and manner, and restrictions are only allowed if they serve a compelling state interest and are narrowly tailored to meet the needs of that interest. That comes from Perry Education Association versus Perry Local Educators Association, which is a U.S. Supreme Court case, and also Cohen versus California, which is another Supreme Court case. So a designated public forum is a place when sometimes the government opens public property for public expression, even though the public property is not a traditional public forum, right? So that might be an auditorium that is not traditionally open to the public, but it's opened for a certain event. So after opening a designated public forum, the government is not obligated to keep open, so you can open and close for an event. Speech in that forum receives the same First Amendment protections as speech in a traditional public forum. This would be, like I said, a theater or a meeting room at a state university are examples of a designated public forum. A limited public forum is a type of designated public forum. Here, the government may limit access to a designated public forum to certain classes or types of speech. Commission meetings, including the public comment portion of those meetings, are limited public forums. There are multiple Florida cases. The most recent is McDonough versus Garcia, which is an 11th Circuit case in 2024. And in a limited public forum, the government may restrict access through content-neutral conditions for the time, place, and manner of access, all of which must be narrowly tailored to serve a government interest. So these commission meetings are limited public forums. So you are allowed to restrict the class of speech, right? You restrict speech to being on your agenda items. And you may have reasonable restrictions in order to preserve the efficient running of these meetings. And then the last piece here is the non-public forum. So a non-public forum is something like an airport terminal or a polling place, right? Those are not places that are open to the same type of, you know, free speech as we see in other areas. So just wanted to kind of get that on the record because there were some questions about constitutionality and what we are and are not allowed to do. I will say your commission guidelines do meet constitutionality. And with that, I will stop. Vice Mayor Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. Mostly what I wanted to get clarification on was addressed by Commissioner Vila-Vasquez and the city attorneys. And so Commissioner Vila-Vasquez, you are, your motion was for the option, the first option presented in the agenda? The original, whatever minor changes were made. So I only have two options in my agenda is that the first option, this appears to be what you're pointing out. Okay. Correct. Thank you. Commissioner Howington. Thank you. Yeah, I believe that would be the red line version is what we're referring to. I was just confused because we had the two different versions. And when we were at the workshop, I thought that we had all agreed on what we wanted to have changed at that time. And so I was a little perplexed to see that one that we had worked on as a body came back, but then another one that we didn't even address was brought forth for us to vote on tonight. And so that was kind of concerning to me, which is why I'm supporting Commissioner Vila-Vasquez and, and using the, the policy that we actually sat down and crafted in a workshop. Thank you. Commissioner Santiago. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Just on the point of the meeting adjourned by a motion to adjourn. So after the city attorney comments, city manager comments, city commission comments, requests and reports, you have adjournment. So we're going to take a vote to adjourn. I don't see why we have to do that when it's on here, but okay. And then actually the new proposal kind of gets rid of some of the things that I don't think we really need in here. Um, kind of actually kind of just five pages from 13 pages. So, uh, uh, seven pages. So it looks good. No, that's all I had. Thank you. Uh, before we go to a vote, I just want to clarify. So you want option one, including the motion to adjourn. Okay. Could you please go for a vote? Yes. Gotcha. Motion fails three to four. At this time, we'll entertain another motion. Commissioner Santiago. I'd like to make a motion to approve the new proposal. The seven page one provided by the city manager. There's a motion by commissioner Santiago, commissioner Novick. Can I amend that? What is your amendment request? My amendment is for all of the speaking times to go to three minutes. Is the original motion or okay with that? I will second with the amendment. There's a motion to approve with a minor amendment of changing it to three minutes each, the workshop and the city commission. And then there's a second by commissioner Novick. Can we please go for a vote? Uh, commissioner Howington, go ahead. So in this version, so we're using Robert's rules of order in this, which is Robert's rules of order for parliamentary procedure to accommodate a body of 650 people, not seven. And one of the tenets of this is that the commission is only allowed to speak twice on topics. And in order for us to have the back and forth communication, many people frequently speak more than twice because somebody might say something that might trigger them to have another thought. And so we've seen that back and forth and it's actually been working really well within workshops as well. And so I think limiting the commission from having the appropriate conversation is a concern. In parliament, it makes sense to limit 650 people. And I believe this is, is this also the version that takes the meetings down to two hours? Because if it is, I mean, we've been here since 630 and we're not even through the agenda yet. So how many additional meetings or how many things are going to have to get pushed if we can only go two hours and then we can only extend one time. So we'll never have commissioner comments. If somebody wants to drag it out, that will easily happen. We get through two topics on a workshop night in two hours and we can have three or four quasis in one night. If that happens, how do we move forward? Does anybody, has anybody thought about what we would do in that instance? Would we have to call a secondary meeting later on that week or the following week? If we have three quasi judicials and we time out at two hours and we haven't gotten to one, what happens at that point? Can the attorneys possibly answer that? Yeah. So the way these are drafted, it's two and a half hours and the meeting can be extended once by a vote of the majority of the commission for a maximum of 15 minutes. If you're, if you strictly follow these commission guidelines, then yes, you would have to adjourn the meeting and resume at another time. However, you can amend these regulations now, if you'd like, to have that two and a half hour clock and then eliminate that it may only be extended once, right? So allow for multiple extensions. Um, you know, and frankly, this is your meeting. You are the elected body. And if you would like to make a motion to extend and it gets seconded and proceeds by a majority three, four, five, six times, or a motion to extend for three hours, you are the elected body. That is, this is your meeting and you would be within your rights to do so. Except for we've been told multiple times that we have to follow the letter of the law and we are not allowed to extend it. beyond that time. It's happened many times. So, so, but these are your rules and we've told you before, you're allowed to suspend your rules, change your rules on the fly in the moment, as long as you have a majority vote. You are correct. The law is the law is the law, but with respect to these rules, which are your rules for how you run your meetings, if in three months we have eight quasi-judicial and we're here till midnight, you all as an, as a body can make a motion that says tonight we have eight on the agenda. These are time sensitive. They've all been advertised. I'd like to say tonight, we're going to waive all time restrictions and we're going to stay here till they're done. And as long as the majority votes, you can, you can do that just so you know, you have that option. And then beyond that, I mean, in the workshop, we didn't discuss this other item. It was not something that the commission reviewed. And so I don't feel comfortable voting on it until I have a chance to go through it the same way that we did with the other one again that go ahead for the record commission. This is pretty much the same information that was given to the commission in August of last year, and then brought back, I believe in the winter time for discussion, which led to a workshop. So this isn't the first time this was brought to the commission. It's actually the third time, I believe at this point, but it's also put in the air for everybody to review leading into the meeting. And, uh, that was our hope at this point. If, if you see the difference between the two, then commission to vote one way or the other of, of seeing things that you might like to mix together. Uh, and that's the way it was brought to the staff by staff. When we go to a workshop and we agree as a body and then it comes back as something completely different, that is a concern. It was two options. The one that you talked about at the workshop, which of course is never a vote, uh, and more further discussion takes place after those meetings. Uh, the option from staff was here's information you choose, which way you'd like to go, uh, rather than just saying, here's the only thing that was discussed because again, I don't believe it's a vote that took place at the workshop. So yeah, the options in front of you and one is clearly the one that you guys just voted on. Okay. So essentially we will be adopting the policy that was written by the city manager for us to follow and we will be following his guidelines. Thank you very much. Commissioner Vasquez. Thank you, mayor. So you're right. Uh, city manager, we did discuss these two policies, but at the workshop we chose one and we chose and we in, um, gay direction to legal to make changes and auditions to the ones that we chose. We didn't choose to like we, we presented with right now. So it's true. We make decisions, but when we come to the dais is not what the decisions that were made among everyone is among the decisions that are made among a few. We chose one policy and we stated to make the changes that we all requested to be made to that one policy, but we still were presented with the policy that was denied at the workshop, but it's still being pushed, which is just approved. Thank you. This is a quick point of order. We, we all agreed on a policy and here we are. The motion that just failed was what we agreed on with things that you guys, that you specifically requested to be added. So obviously when things come before us, all of us up here are guilty of changing even the stuff that we agreed to on, on workshops. So I wouldn't put this on staff or city manager. We, we tend to do this as a whole. All of us are guilty of that. So just, just, I wanted to clarify that that was not a personal attack. Go ahead, Commissioner. No, it was not a personal attack. I was just bringing up a point. We chose one policy. I made the motion, I, or I, to, to select the original policy. And then we all made changes. We all, um, made, uh, comments on what to change or what to add to that one policy that was selected. But now we have two policies up here at the dais. One that was turned down at the workshop, but it's still here. So it's not a personal attack. I'm just saying that this is a normal thing now here at the dais. Something doesn't pass, but a month or something later, it's back on our face. You know, even though it was not passed, it was denied. But I'm getting used to it. Believe it or not, I'm getting used to it. But thank you very much. All right. There is a motion on the table by Commissioner Santiago with an amendment for the timing and a second by Commissioner Novick. If we can please vote. Motion passes four to three. This time we're going to move to section nine C, which is a resolution request. If I can please have the city attorney read the resolution request. Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is resolution number 2025-151, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Deltona, Florida, amending the Deltona Commission policy and procedure policy number CC99-003, elected official travel and expenses, superseding resolutions and votes on the same subject, providing for implementation and an effective date. All right. This time I'll just hand a motion and a second to begin discussion. Commissioner Santiago. I move to approve resolution number 2025-151. There are two options that are attached. All right. Mayor, maybe I'll just give an overview. Staff's offering two options that you have to consider that's from the same travel policy from 2013 with an adjustment for the per diem and the conference language that was discussed from three conferences a year and permission to need for out-of-state conferences to events only what are in the current budget would allow. So $4,000 budgeted this year for commissioners with an interest in possibly attending a national conference. It's unlikely that a commissioner will probably attend a third conference at this point, let alone any more than that anyway. So it kind of is synonymous changing the number to the actual equaling the old policy. Option one also removes a reference to fax machines, not useful since 2013, and other minor adjustments. Option two includes updating all the information, including the information that was discussed at the workshop, which is changing the per diem. But there are other things in a 13-year-old policy that don't exist, that do exist in the option of two that has been included, including use of city vehicles or even personal vehicles, I believe. So again, going back to Commissioner Vila-Vasquez's concern or question is, there are two options. One is the old one from 2013 with a couple of words changed. The other one is actually updating the policy to include proper things that would be involved in travel that are not in the 2013 one. But the information as far as changing per diem and the conferences changing from a number of conferences to what's actually budgeted, which we passed in our budget this last month or so, is included in both of the options. Just one is more updated language. The other one is just the old language from 2013. All right, Commissioner Santiago, can you please re-read your motion? I move to approve resolution number 2025-150-151. Item number two, or the second one, it's a four page. There's a motion by Commissioner Santiago. Vice Mayor, did you want to make a second because you're on the board? I would, but I would like us to also take a look at section two. I think that we could word that just a little bit better in reference to attend any conference related to our official duties as elected officials in the city of Deltona. And then I would like to change the language that says, as long as the full cost to attend the event does not exceed the amount budgeted. I would like to change that to as long as the reimbursement request does not exceed the amount budgeted. Is the motioner okay with those requests? Yes. Vice Mayor, did you want to second? Second. All right, there's a motion by Commissioner Santiago, second by Vice Mayor Harriet. Is there any public comment? Yes, sir. David Markle. Mr. Markle, if you hit the button, I'll turn on your microphone. David Markle, Deltona. Good evening, Commissioner again. Thank you for the opportunity to express my view and concern regarding the proposed changes of travel policy for elected officials and to offer constructive recommendations that I believe will better serve our city and its residents. First and foremost, I urge the commission to reconsider any fixed or arbitrary per diem rates for meals and incidentals. Instead, I recommend that we align our policy with the current GSA standards for per diem rates, which are updated annually to and reflect the cost of living and inflation in specific travel destinations. This approach ensures fairness and accuracy, recognizing that not all cities have the same economic conditions. So if you're traveling from here to California or here to Atlanta, Georgia, you're going to have a little bit of a different per diem. Transparency and accountability are pillars of good governance. To that end, I propose that any elected official who attends a conference or training event be required to present a summary of their experiences and key takeaways at the next attended commission meeting. This not only informs the public, but it also demonstrates the value of the travel to our community. Additionally, I recommend that all travel by elected officials be disclosed and approved by the full commission prior to any departure. This measure promotes transparency and builds trust with our citizens, ensuring that travel is purposeful and aligned with the city's goals. I also strongly support the continued requirements for receipts to be submitted for reimbursement. This simple but essential practice reinforces fiscal responsibility and transparency, both to the residents and to the dais. Finally, I encourage the commission to establish a clear 30-day deadline for submitting all travel-related receipts and forms. This ensures timely processing and accountability to help maintain organized records for auditing and public review. In closing, these recommendations are not about restricting travel. They're about ensuring that travel serves the public interest, is conducted responsibly, and is communicated transparently. I believe these changes will strengthen public trust within the dais and demonstrate our commitment to ethical leadership. Again, I thank you for everything you do for our city and for your time and for listening to me. Thank you. Kathy Bryant. Kathy Bryant Deltona. He expressed some of the stuff that I was going to, one about following the GSA recommendations, because it is location to location, state to state, etc., and it does change. So you're not having to go back and update this so often when the cost of living changes. That would include for lodging as well. I know you guys have your budgets, but typically when you go on a business trip and you're going out of town and you're staying the night, the lodging is also usually limited by GSA. You got your $4,000, but here's my other concern, is if you choose to, let's say you've got a conference in Orlando and you want to stay the night because it's a two-day conference. Well, Commissioner A wants to spend the night and they use up their $4,000 real quick-like. And then they come back to the commission because, oh, I only got to go to two conferences. I want to go to a third one. So now they have to come back to the commission to get more money to travel. Commissioner B goes to Orlando, comes home, goes back to Orlando for the two days. It's not that bad of a, it's a bad drive, but it's not like you're going to Miami and back. So they've got plenty of money left to do more conferences, etc. So might I recommend that you disclose that if you're staying at a hotel within a certain mileage, because that was one of the things that came up in the first go-around before you talked about the individual budgets was if they were going more than 30 miles that they needed to stay at, they could stay at a hotel. Well, dang, I drive to Orlando for 30 years, worked 12-hour shifts, and drove back and forth three, four days in a row. You can do it for one conference? Really? So I, and I agree too, there needs to be some accountability. When you go to like something like where you're going to a state thing, where you're talking about trying to get us money, or you're going something to somewhere, and you learn that there's some different ways to do things. I would like to see that brought back publicly, for not only for other members of the commission and staff, but the residents as well. Bring that stuff back. Talk about it, because that sure didn't happen when you came back from Washington last year, because everybody got so caught up in the whole hoopla. And lastly, there should be no reason for no, any commissioner coming on onboarding to not know these rules, and what your commissioner ordinances are. And I fully expect going forward that there will be orientation period, and these things will be reviewed, so there's no excuse. That's my comments. Thank you. Matthew Borgans. Good evening. I've done a lot of work on this travel policy with the diocese over this last year. We talked about the workshop, about aligning it with the Florida statute. I didn't see that mentioned, except at the end for fraudulent. So then you're missing some of the things. You're accepting some of the Florida statute, but not all the Florida statute. Again, with the Florida statute, it includes not just elected officials, but city officials under the one policy. Then you can make your own procedures afterwards. I didn't see that anywhere in there. So you're starting to pick and choose what you can take from the state versus the state has their policy and then adding to it like we talked about in the workshop. And so that's some of the things I brought up. I was bringing up in the workshop, and I think that it needs to be added before approving this. Again, everybody had mentioned about going out of state and everything else with all those there. So I won't keep reiterating them. But again, some type of checks and balances, you know, who's checking it, who's not checking it. Is there any type of auditing afterwards? So those are some of the things that need to be addressed in here. And like I said, having that one rate going around. So again, we need to follow what the state statute says, and then add to it per what the state statute says. We're only limited to what the statute says. We're all in Florida. We have to follow the law. It's been stated multiple times throughout this year and throughout this diocese here that we need to follow what the law says. So the law has the specifics for a travel policy, and then you add to it. So that's what we need to do. And that's what we talked about the workshop. I don't know how we went from what we agreed from at the workshop to here. That's happened multiple times tonight. That's been said. Same thing on a lot of things. One thing gets said here, and then they come up later in writing, and they're different. Like I said, Doc and his team's done a lot of great work on these policies. I think, you know, doing them is great. It's just making sure they're consistent with the law and everything else and getting everything together. And then, of course, like I said, reading them and make sure there's an onboarding policy. Like I said, the city officials, they do great. Doc's team, they do great. You know, bringing this up, it's just getting it over the last hump. Thank you. No more public comments, sir. Commissioner Knobbeck. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor, can you go a little slower for me this time? You went pretty quick on your motion. What was the language in Section 2 that you referred to changing? The language that elected officials are permitted to attend any conference, changing any conference to add something to the effect that it is related to their official duties as an elected official for the City of Deltona. Okay. And then what was the second section? The middle of that paragraph. Section what? Section 2 also. It's that same sentence. Okay. As long as the full cost to attend the event does not exceed the amount budgeted, I would like to change the part that references the full cost to attend as the requested reimbursement for the event does not exceed the amount budgeted. Okay. I think there are a lot of cases where, maybe not a lot, but I can see where a case would be that the full cost to attend an event would be more than what we have budgeted. But as long as we're not requesting reimbursement for anything more than what we've budgeted, if each of us are willing to pay for our own way up to that or beyond that amount, then I don't want to prohibit anybody from going to an additional conference. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Howington. So, I believe it was voted via consensus at the workshop that we would use the GSA per diem rates. Is that not the case? I believe it was discussed. It was not absolutely said that's the only way to go. We didn't do a consensus vote because I thought we actually took a vote on it. I'd like somebody to go back and watch the video before we vote on this because I have a concern that what's being presented to us is not what we discussed in the workshop. And we have to be able to have the trust that what is being presented to us is what we agreed upon in the workshop. And GSA was definitely something that we had agreed on. And it seems like more and more these things are coming before us and they're changing. And that is a concern. Because how do we trust staff to bring us actual actual factual data if it changes? I just want to be able to trust what I'm being handed to make decisions. And this does not look like what we discussed in that meeting. So, everyone's clear the difference of GSA is every city has a different price. Right. Clearly, when you're staying downtown of any major city for any major conference, it is extremely similar in price. Unless you're going to New York City or you're going to Chickasaw, Alabama, there's clearly going to be a difference between those. But any national conference is going to be very similar. So, instead of our finance department going to follow up the check to make sure that the GSA number you used was for San Antonio and not Dallas, Texas, which could be off a few dollars, it's easier just to have a standard number that pretty much covers a good chunk of the major cities in the country. And that established price doesn't have to change every year by any means. It could be a little higher, a little lower from different cities. But finance has one set number to look at so they know this is what the per diem is. Otherwise, they're going to have to follow up to check every city to make sure that we went to the right city for per diem. So, that's part of the reason why there's one set flat fee, which is much more efficient than changing it to every city you go to. That would have been great information to have during the workshop. Unfortunately, again, things keep changing. And I'm not the only one that's noticing it. How do we get to a point to where we have a comfort level that what's being handed to us has not changed? Because I've just looked at two documents that were handed to us and it is not what we discussed in those meetings. I'm sorry, I have no confidence that I can trust what is handed to me to vote on. Thank you. Mayor, this is the same document again, just like the other one that was given to the commission in the past. This is not the first time we're seeing any of this. But I might just point out that staff is bringing these things to the commission. These things weren't requested necessarily by the commission. So staff is bringing opportunities to try to be more efficient, updated with today's language and not 12 or 15 year agreements or policies that we found out in January that may or may not be appropriate. So when staff is bringing things to the commission, we're trying to come up with different ways to be better. It's not that the commission said, put to find the travel policy force. We're bringing it to you and saying, here's an updated policy. Here's updated guidelines. Here's what the rest of the country is doing. So again, I take offense that your implication is that we're lying to you and you can't trust anything. Staff is actually bringing it to the table for you to consider things. If the commission says we don't want anything, let's go to original and do nothing tonight. That's that's an option also. But I'd encourage my staff to continue bringing things to myself and to the commission and not just stay with the way it's always been, which is really at this point, we want to have this discussion if it wasn't for staff to bring to the commission some opportunities to change for the future. Commissioner Novick, then Commissioner Howington, then Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. For the manager, this is also consistent with what the city employees are currently under. Yes, it is, Commissioner. Thank you. Vice Mayor Harriot, then Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to reiterate that point, that last point that Doc made. I greatly appreciate staff bringing policy back to the city commission, including our input from workshops, but not limiting the changes strictly to what was said verbatim at workshops. It takes staff doing their job to provide input. None of us up here have the bandwidth to recreate these policies and update every single word in them the way that they need to be done. So again, I greatly appreciate the work that staff's doing. I greatly appreciate their interpretations of what is discussed at workshops, and I would really like to see this continue. Commissioner Howington. What is the purpose of having a workshop? When we specifically ask for something to be written a certain way and then staff comes back to us with something completely different for us to vote on, what is the purpose of a workshop? Why do we have that meeting? Because if staff's just going to bring us something to vote on, then just bring us something to vote on and we won't even discuss it beforehand. We'll have our little four days to review it and be done with it. Go ahead. Mayor, this is why we should have agenda review meetings with commissioners and any questions in advance. This is why we put the agenda together in advance. If there's questions or concerns, I don't think they should be brought to the commission meeting to say I didn't read this. I don't understand why this is here. I need time to look at this. That's the point of having the agenda out on Thursday or meet with commissioners or take questions and calls all weekend or at any other time. So this is part of I think the discussion of my meetings go on for as long as they do. I think that we can have this taken care of in advance of any conversations on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday before we lead to the meeting. Thank you. That would be great. And we did have meetings previously, but then I started to feel like I couldn't trust what I was being told. And so in that, so in that instance, you're right. This time we didn't meet. Yes. You had told the attorneys that you would no longer meet with, with staff, myself, and the deputy. So at this point, there's where we are in. Right. Because I feel like I'm being lied to. 930 at night. And if that is the impression that I have, then yes. Well, you weren't lied to, Commissioner. And I will have the conversation here. You weren't lied to, Commissioner, about anything. You've been informed just like everybody else has. So that's it. Honestly, I don't know that that's the case. What's your point of order, Weizemar? This, this bickering's got to stop. Commissioner Harrington point received. We've just got to move on. Please finish your point. Commissioner Harrington. You know, I, I don't like that we've gotten to this point, but literally the statement that was just made made it sound like I didn't do my homework. I did, which is how I knew that this policy did not match what we discussed and did not match what we came out of that meeting expecting to be presented to us. So when that happens, and then when I go in here and think, oh, well, we discussed this and then I start looking at it and little things inside of it are different. Yeah. That concerns me. And it raises questions as I think it would anyone. So I'm sorry that we've gotten to this point, but I need a confidence level that I, I can trust what I'm being handed. Thank you. Commissioner Colwell. Yeah. I just want to be clear moving forward. So this is no longer the will of the commission. When we have discussions, it's, it's the input of the staff. The commission had two options in front of you to discuss and look at. Not the first time, the second one was seen and has been available since Thursday last week. If the commission takes a vote and says they want to do the first one, the vote's done and we move on. It's over. I'm not sure what the circumventing the will of the commission, the commission's the one taking the vote. Because I spent my time in workshop discussing this thing. Yes. And when we came to a conclusion, and now it's different. What was the difference? What's the conclusion difference? There's some input in there put by some of the staff, the per diem and the change of the $4,000 from the budgeted number that's in there. And that's what's being approved tonight by the commission. Two different ways, either a or B. It's the same information. Commissioner Santiago. Thank you, mayor. Really quick. I'll just make this really quick. I just want to say thank you, doc, for updating the travel policy. This is exactly what we spoke about. We did speak about the GSA. We may not have voted on it, but we did. So it's efficient. It's more effective. It's just like these city employees. And it saves time. So I want to say thank you. Thank you for meeting with me. Thank you for answering my question. The same goes to the attorney staff. For any time I have questions, specifically to anything that I have and the agenda, I get it done before I sit here in front of this dais. And if still I have a question, I will answer it. But I appreciate all the hard work that you put into this. It's like I said, more efficient, effective, and it saves more time. Thank you. Commissioner Novick. I wasn't here for the workshops. I looked at the two documents that were provided with the agenda package. I made some comments to doc about making some changes. One of them was what the vice mayor had said with regards to being more specific about the type of conference. And so that was the only change that I had. Again, I don't know what you all discussed at the workshop. The new one is a slimmed down version. It reflects what the city employees are currently using. And at this point, Mayor, I will call the question. All right. There's a motion on the floor and a second. And if we can please go ahead and put the vote. Motion passes four to three. I'm going to request a extension for 9D. If not, we're not going to have enough time. Vice Mayor Harriot? Second. No, I need a motion. I'll make a motion to extend the meeting for 15 minutes for the purpose of discussing the additional item 9D, parking ordinance. Commissioner Novick? Second. All right. This time, we're going to go ahead and enter into section 9D, which is the parking ordinance. And I will let Commissioner Santiago lead us in that since she was the one that requested the addition. Thank you, Mayor. I'm just going to make it really quick. We, I was against originally from this parking and vehicle ordinance that was brought up by Commissioner Caldwell. I believe you brought this up. I think it's caused a lot of issues and problems in our order. I apologize. Vice Mayor brought something to my attention. We need an actual, can we do a verbal vote, please? I apologize for the extension of the meeting. Yes. Commissioner Avila Vasquez? I have a life. No. Commissioner Caldwell? Commissioner Howington? No. Commissioner Novick? Commissioner Santiago? Yes. Vice Mayor Harriot? Yes. Mayor Avila? Yes. Four to three? Four. Okay. Good. Commissioner Santiago, please finish. Thank you, Mayor. There have been like a petition that's been going around and there's been issues about it. I just, at this time, I just want to suspend the, I want to make a motion to suspend the enforcement of this ordinance 23-2025, the right-of-way parking restrictions. All right. There is a motion by Commissioner Santiago. Is there a, Commissioner Howington, your? Just for clarification, it's not currently being enforced, is it? We're doing a courtesy period. Can you click on your? Good evening, Commission. The temporary, we advertise the right-of-way parking, yes. But the rest of the ordinance, we were started to enforce. You've been ticketing? We did. That was supposed to be in a courtesy period? Ticketing, we've been doing ticketing for parking properly, blocking the sidewalk, wrong direction, yes. But as for parking in the actual right-of-way, no. We were giving, we were providing educational materials. The PAO actually helped us out with that, putting that out in social media. And we will pass out the flyers as of last Wednesday once we had everything in place. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Commissioner Novick, did you want to second the motion so we can continue the discussion? Can the clerk read the motion back to me, please, before I second it? Can you say that again with your microphone on, please? The only thing I have so far is a motion to suspend the parking ordinance. Thank you. Commissioner Santero, did you want to bring maybe time-specific or something like that or to be brought back that way? It's more clear of a motion. Thank you. So it would be to suspend the implementation of the enforcement of the ordinance immediately. And then, is that what you want, the time period? Would that be okay, Gemma? Okay. Zach, can you give some more clarification just because we don't want to have this? Yeah. So you all can provide, via motion, this direction to suspend the implementation and enforcement of either the entire ordinance or the portion of the ordinance, which seems to be causing the most trouble, which is the prohibition of parking within the rights-of-way. And through this motion, you could direct staff to bring back amendments to the ordinance in order to revert to the previous condition, which allowed parking within the right-of-way with a limitation on time. I, Danny, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was three days. Two days within the seven-day period was allowed. On the third day, they'd be in violation within, you know, that seven-day period. Yeah. Or, you know, we can also bring back different options for you all or take it to a workshop if that's the will of the body. You all can just suspend this one portion until you're ready to deal with it. You don't have to put an end time. You can just say, we're going to suspend this one portion and then let things go. And when you want, if you want, at some point, you bring it back. Commissioner Novick, if you can. Okay. I see it. Hold on. I think the language that you might want to use is suspending the portion that deals with parking in the right-of-way. If you suspend the whole parking ordinance, yeah, then you got mayhem. So if you want to restate your motion. Okay. Motion is to suspend the implementation enforcement of Ordinance 23-2025 just for the right-of-way parking restrictions effective immediately. Vice Mayor. I'll second. But I've also got some other comments that I'd like to make. Okay. You're next on line. So there's a motion by Commissioner Santiago and a second by Vice Mayor. Go ahead and start with yours. And then after you, it's Commissioner Avila Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. So I've seen the comments, the posts. I've seen all of that on social media. I've also received quite a few phone calls, ran into a neighbor this afternoon that we're all extremely supportive of this ordinance. I think that we have some challenges. I don't think they're unique necessarily to Deltona. But I think that we do have some challenges with this in the sense that we are an urban center. We are a developed city. Generally, parking on the right-of-way in some communities isn't probably that big of a deal. It's the norm in a lot of communities. And it has been in Deltona for a long while. Some of the concerns that I have specifically with parking in the right-of-way that I would like to ask the city engineer to look at are related to stormwater retention and detention in the swales. Specifically, when we come to commission meetings or we talk to residents and, you know, quite frankly, even see the Facebook posts regarding, we had a 20-minute rain and water's ponding in my swale. It's been there for an hour and a half. It's been there for two hours. It's been there for a day or two. I would like to understand from an engineering perspective the impact of a vehicle constantly compacting that soil on the retention and percolation of water and and what the contribution to the problem is. The majority of the city is not a curb and gutter development, although we do have a growing amount of curb and gutter developments within the city and within those communities specifically. Parking in the right-of-way or street parking has become a challenge when getting first response vehicles through these communities. I think that that's been acknowledged by staff, that's been a concern of staff, so we need to also address that. I want to acknowledge that this is not a one-size-fits-all kind of issue. I think that there we should look into the difference between street parking and right-of-way parking. We're in the bulk of the Deltona that was developed with swale drainage systems, no curb, no gutter. It's really easy just to pull off the side of the road. You're in the right-of-way, seemingly out of the way, but it also has an impact. It was also mentioned many times. I've seen it mentioned many times regarding temporary events, you know, people having children's birthday parties or Fourth of July parties or Super Bowl parties even to the extent that we have lawn maintenance services or repairmen or, you know, you name it. So I want to make sure that any changes to the policy moving forward, take that into account and don't prohibit those services from being performed. And then lastly, I want to make sure that there isn't no way, shape, or form the ability to weaponize this policy by anybody in the public or from the dais. I don't think that is the case with this dais. I do or have heard concerns from residents from past commissions, and so I want to make sure that that is also something that is looked at or at least considered, just thought about the new ordinance should be looked at in a 360-degree perspective to make sure that that's not an issue that we could be creating. Thank you. Commissioner Vila Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. Danny, so you're not really restricting anyone from parking on the right-of-way for temporary time, you know, for unloading or having a resident or visit a member coming over for the weekend. You're just for those people who are making the right-of-way their parking spot. Am I correct on that? The new ordinance that was approved 2023-2025 did not allow any exceptions except for unloading, loading, or dropping somebody off or picking somebody up. So gatherings was not in the ordinance as an exception, so they will be in violation under the order. I thought that that was made an exception, parties and stuff like that. I might be wrong, but I thought that was made as an exception. It was in there at the very beginning of the early stages of, you know, going over the ordinance, but by the time it was completed and it was presented to the commission, that portion was removed, all the exceptions. Okay, I honestly thought that that was still in there, but I just want to say again because I always say this because of past experience. I've seen it. My street is called Waterfall and at one point it did become a waterfall because somebody put a dumpster on the right-of-way and that dumpster sank and sank until it broke the main water line on my street. The whole street, the whole circle was shut down and I know the city paid a lot of money because it even took half of my driveway. There are electrical wires, Spectrum, AT&T, our own pipes and stuff like that and something else that I know that I see and I shake my hand is people parking their cars on top of their septic tank without realizing how expensive it is to have a septic tank replaced and they have no choices now. That old septic tank breaks, you got to go with the new, which is triple expense. So these are just things that we're trying, we're not trying to scare our residents, we're just trying to tell them what can possibly happen, right? If they continue parking on the right-of-ways, parking on top of their septic and stuff like that. We're just trying to be helpful. I know that I also heard from residents saying thank you so much. It's making our streets look much presentable. I know that you know there's two streets in my neighborhood that I always talk to you about. You go around, it's cleaned up, they wait a few weeks, you go back again, it's like, you know, they count the times that you guys are not around. So I don't know, you know, there's, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, we're trying to make the city of Deltona look presentable. I drive by, I see three, four, five cars in Park of the and the garage door is open and it's all storage in there. So I'm not trying to be, give the citizens a hard time, but there are people that just had it with loads and loads and trucks and cars and RVs parked in front of their homes. I do have one question for the commission. In the communities, parking on the streets, that was a big concern when emergency vehicles trying to get through. Is that suspended also? Or is that, that's not part of the suspension? We don't govern any choice. They're governed by themselves. They're public streets. We do govern. That's another issue for our, you know, our EMS, our first responders. And I know you've been in my block. I mean, you can't even see when you make that turn, right? I mean, you make that blind turn. You don't know what's on the other side. There's no lighting. There's nothing. So imagine a car parked on the street, around the corner, around the bin where I live. It's, it's just very hard to please everyone. Like, like I said, and I know I heard the vice mayor say the same thing. He's heard from both sides. So I don't know. It's, but thank you, Danny, for everything that you're doing out there. Thank you. Commissioner Caldwell. Thank you, mayor. Um, yeah, I've heard nothing but good things from, uh, people out there, uh, saying thank you for having this ordinance passed. Um, one of the reasons we headed down this avenue was because of the difficulty for you enforce the original one. Um, is that correct? It would take three different days within a week period to address our house just for parking in the right. Just for parking in the right? Unless it was parked in the wrong direction, or, you know, blocking the sidewalks, those are different. But, uh, yes, we would have to come back three times and have proof that we've been there three times in order for us to proceed for that. So with it, with this new ordinance, it's much easier for you to enforce it, do your job. It'll be a violation that they would get there if it's parked in the right way. With that, no parking in the row. We've also offered an opportunity for you to put additional parking in your, on your driveway extensions and things like that. Have we not? We did approve. We didn't close off all options for them to be able to park. We did, um, you all approved, um, driveway expansions on the, on the front yard. In part of this, um, chapter, we also allow it used to be two, but now we moved it up to three parking behind the front face of the house, right side of the house in the backyard. So we've given them options to not park in a row. That's correct. That's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Howington. I don't know if a full suspension is the best way to go because there is definitely some issues that need to be addressed, but I do believe that there's clarifications that need to be made. We've had questions about commercial workers coming out to like pool service and things like that. Caregivers who are there for just a very limited time, not even 24 hours. Um, you write the narrow roads in those new subdivisions, which is an issue that was created by decreasing the lot size, creating those 40 foot lots, narrow roads where two cars can barely pass. So the issue was created through our own land use codes. And now, unfortunately, residents have to pay the price because our emergency vehicles can't traverse those roads. And that puts us in a position to weigh safety versus convenience for the residents. And that's another area where the land use codes need to be addressed because we keep shrinking and yet we're taking away places for people to park. So I'd like to see this brought back. Well, before tonight, I would have said I would have liked to see this come back so that we could potentially identify the areas that need to be clarified and corrected. However, I don't have faith that it would come back in any way that we would discuss. So, um, I don't know what the solution is to that. All right. Just because we're out of time again, do we want to do a motion until this specific item is finished? Well, and then Commissioner Novick, you're on the floor, but we have a current motion and we're out of time. We're literally at 945. So can we, can we go ahead and do a vote then? The motion is, yes. All the votes there? Well, it's already up on our- Oh. Well, it's the travel policy. Okay. Yeah. Well, and as a matter of fact, before we finish the vote, uh, we have to listen to public comment. So, uh, it's not going to work. We're either going to have to kill it there or I'm going to, you are going to have to retract your motion, Commissioner Santiago, and your second, uh, Commissioner Novick. And we're going to have to extend the meeting until this, it could be extended until this specific item is finished. I'll make a motion. Hold on. I'll make a motion to extend the meeting until we finish. Can you withdraw your motion, please, Commissioner Santiago? Do you withdraw your second, Commissioner Novick? Yes. All right. Go ahead. Now, uh, I'll make a motion to extend the meeting until this specific item is completed. All right. There's a motion to- Second. There's a second by Commissioner Novick. Can we do a quick raise of a hand? If you, uh, are yes. If you're no, raise your hand. Okay. Motion passes. All right. Go ahead, Commissioner Novick. You were on the floor. And then before we actually go to a vote, we'll go to public comment. We have to have a motion again. Oh. All right. Commissioner Santiago, you're up. Took me three times to do the motion. Let's see if I get it right. Motion to suspend the implementation enforcement of ordinance 23-2025. Just the portion of the right-of-way parking restriction effective immediately. There's a motion by Commissioner Santiago, second by Commissioner Novick. And you're on the floor, Commissioner Novick. Thank you. Real quick. You know, there's a lot of moving parts to this. You have people that have the need and don't have the ability to create the extended driveway, if you will. And they have a work truck. The husband has a vehicle. The wife has a vehicle. One of their kids has a vehicle. And they only have room to park two in the driveway. Um, so you have that issue to deal with. How will we deal with that? Um, the definition of the right-of-way is not just the swale. It also includes the street. So when you say they can't park in the right-of-way, they can't park in the street. The street is part of the right-of-way. Okay. So that language needs to be addressed. And since way back in my other life, when I was the fire marshal and we became a city, I've been trying to tell this city to not allow parking of any type of vehicle back behind the face of the house in between the houses, that's a defensible space. There is a reason they're seven and a half feet from the lot line to the buildable line, creating 15 feet between those structures. When you park a fiberglass boat in between there, or you park a motor home between there, you now have created a piece of conduit that allows fire to go from one building to that piece of conduit to the next building. And if you don't believe me, get the report on Palm Coast of 1998, when they burned Palm Coast to the ground for the second time and created the Firewise program, which specifically talks to that. So this isn't going to be resolved here tonight. It's a very in-depth conversation that needs to take place with a multitude of professionals, not necessarily with us. We need to absorb and then give direction, but you need some professional traffic engineers to be brought in and give us some good logic as to how to deal with this problem, because ain't nobody up here smart enough to figure it out. That's not our forte, okay? We can give direction after we get some professional folks to come in and give us direction. So, Mayor, let's call the question and go home. All right, public comment first. Yes, sir. Matthew Borgens. Good evening. I'll try to make this quick. I agree with what the vice mayor is saying. I took 10 minutes for a fire rescue department to get into my residence area to save someone's life. He ended up dying. He was a first responder, and it took 10 minutes to go a five-minute drive from Tivoli to Saxon by the Walmart. I talked to the fire chief. Commissioner Novick knows they're going around and can't get around these vehicles. Then the other thing is if they can't get around them, they're going to knock them over. They're going to push them out the way. So now there's the who's going to spend, who's going to pay for all the cars that are being destroyed? You know, there's never been parking allowed in these areas. We just streamlined it to help code enforcement. It went through a code process. That's why we had the ordinance review committee coming up. The city, the code, the guys out in the field went through this and approved on it. It's not that it's changing anything. We're just streamlining it to help code enforcement do their job, trying to go back and mark out how long they've been there. If there's been there, you know, two days, one day, and then they move five feet and it starts over again. This is making it easier for the city to clean up. Everybody wants to clean up the city, but we're not giving them the tools to do it. This is making a safety hazard. And it's, again, we're an aging city. This is going to destroy our infrastructure. So getting them off the right of way and out of these areas is, you know, is there. And it's, it's, you know, yes, we allow the multiple families go in there, but you have to look at your house and realize, is it going to be big enough or not? And then, then go from there. Everybody has to play the music, the people I've seen on Facebook, they don't want to play the musical cars. I'm sorry. That's, that's something you have to do when you start allowing your kids to grow up. That's, that's part of being a response, a responsible adult. But when, when EMS and fire rescue can't get somebody's house and it burns down or somebody dies, I don't think that's acceptable for anybody. One life is not enough for saying it's okay to park on there. Or yeah, I've heard it when it first came up, I have parties. I'm sorry, a party, code enforcement already says we can, we can see those instances and we can make a judgment call. That's why they're in their position to make those judgment calls. It doesn't say they have to, they have to give it, but the ordinance is there to sit there and put it in place. And then when there's a repeated offender and it's an issue, then they can go for it. But if it's goes in there and I can see it, there's a party code enforcement, it's smart enough to know, hey, there's something going on. Let's not do it. But again, you're putting these vehicles out there. And some of them, I've seen one that has been there for months, left abandoned, the windows all broken, inviting more crime, inviting the look of the city of Deltona that we don't want here. We want to bring in businesses, but when they drive down Saxon and see nothing but cars parked there, they don't want to come here because it looks terrible. This is something that is allowing the city, the code enforcement, docs team to go in there and do their job. Let's give them the tools to do their job. That's why I don't agree with suspending this. And we need to enforce it, because if we don't enforce it, it's never going to change. It's not that the issue is parking in the right of way. It's the enforcement part. We have to start enforcing our rules and regulations. The ordinance has never been there. Commissioner Novick, you've been here. It's always been not parking in the right of way, whether it's two days, 48 hours, overnight. The last one said you couldn't park there overnight. So what's the difference? If you can't park there overnight, that means you have to move and they're not moving. Most of these vehicles are there overnight. You go down Tivoli, they're all there overnight. The last ordinance says you can't park overnight. So they're in violation there. So nothing's going to change. You're still supposed to be violating them and we're not. We need to start enforcing our ordinances. Again, that's what the ordinance committee was supposed to be doing. We have a lot of people wanting to get on there and we haven't, we haven't activated that yet. We need to get that there. So then it's them making a decision and them doing the research to them to bring it to you. So then it's not here being discussed. Thank you. Thank you, sir. No more. No others. Okay. Can we please go to a vote? Motion again, please. Sure. Did you want to read that again, Zach, please, before we go for a vote? Yes. The motion on the floor is a motion to suspend the implementation and enforcement of the portion of ordinance of the ordinance that relates specifically to parking within the right of way. Oh, it's because this is an added item. Okay. Yeah. Motion passes four to three. All right. Meetings adjourned.