Good morning and welcome to the public participation portion of the Volusia County Council meeting on September 7. At this time I have no one wishing to speak. , and give your name and address and we will give you three minutes.
My name is Corey Roman an area that Ormonde the beach. I'm doing some research on the real estate taxes in this county and it is quite concerning that this county is the number two highest tax rate accounting in the state of Florida. Broward County is number five, Miami
is ten and the amount of tax rates going on in this county does not help people on fixed income and retirement. People that don't have the means and the abilities to keep paying these exorbitant tax rates. The city has their portion they take as well but I think overall there should be other ways this county could generate revenues to offset the personal property taxes of your residents. I own two houses and considering selling one and relocating one of my rental properties into Myrtle Beach which is one third the tax rate. Basically it comes down to what we are buying, paying for and getting. I know I purchased a property and my taxes went up $2000 in the last year. I know the services on that property didn't increase $2000 worth of burden nor did the police officers, fire department or city workers got that type of phrase. My revenue does not work that way. It is disheartening we constantly have to challenge and burden and I think there needs to be an overall adjustment to this county's position on taxing the homeowners. The risk to the other revenues with tourism, there's got to be other ways for generating revenue to take up the burden of the homeowners. Otherwise, people won't come and people will leave for lower tax rate district. That is all I wanted to say.
Thank you, very much.
Just one quick statement, the taxes on this property in 2016 were less than 2015 and in 2005 the 2,002,005 the taxes were $5168 and last year $3122. With the decrease in the value of property, most people are paying less in property taxes today than they pay ten years ago. Because property values have not reached back to the levels they were at that time, we lost 40% of the value and I don't like property taxes. I wish there was another way but when the state dictates that way we have to do it and with school taxes coming out and making 40% of it, there is not a lot you can do. Thank you.
[Captioner on stand by]
Good morning, we have one minute and we will start at 10:00.
Good morning, it is 10:00. If I get asked everyone to come to order we will call the September 7th meeting. Those of you in the back that are talking, thank you, very much. Welcome to the September seventh meeting of the Volusia County Council. At this time we will have the indication given by Tom Carey and follow that by the legible legions and those in the audience --
Good morning, thank you. Let us pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this day and we think you your mercies are new every morning and this is a new morning so your mercies are new to us. Speaking of mercies, we pray you have mercy on us and the rest of the folks that stand in the path of hurricane per month. I pray Lord you would direct firm a North and East and out into the Atlantic to dissipate and not have a devastating effect she is predicted to have. You can do this your hand is strong and we pray you do that. I just pray Lord you be with all of those who are busy making preparations in our county to get us as well situated as we can before anything that might come our way. Bless the county and all government workers up and down the state and help us be prepared as possible and the effects to be as minimal as possible. Lord, I ask you bless the Council today. In the book of James is his you give wisdom freely and I have heard you will give them wisdom today and they have so much to talk about and consider and help them in that endeavor. We thank you and praise you in your listening ear in visiting here in Jesus name. Amen.
"I pledge alligence to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Thank you, Tom. If any of you here and listening online the leader of your faith community would like to offer the indication and you can contact us here and we will make sure it happens. me we have the roll call?
[Roll Call].
Thank you, very much. I understand Council member Lowry had an emergency at his home this morning he has to take care of and will be here at 11:30. Any comments on the consent agenda? I know mister Dineen wants to comment on item K K.
Mr. Chair, that is EE.
Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?
I make a motion to approve the consent agenda.
Second.
No objections, the motion carries unanimous. Since EE comes before
KK, I will go with you.
I represent the area of the city of tax and this is an agreement for fire and emergency medical services for the city. Those new on the Council, because of the cap, this is not part of their -- we are charging them a fee for their fire services. We are not subsidizing in any way. I think some people think we subsidize and we are not. We are saying if they had to pay this out of their general fund it would be over the $10 million cap and we are trying to help them out with that. We think they can't help themselves and we wish they could had the opportunity to annex properties that would be wise for them to start doing that. There is a significant piece of property after they could annex and it would be a tax base is contiguous to their property so we should have some conversations with them and Council would encourage them to look at these opportunities out there.
Mr. Chair if I can add to his comments, we have tried to deal with all of our cities especially ones we have contracts with. In the case of Lake Helen, one of the issues they have to be cognizant of is we accept the payment for them but it is at the cost of us running that service and there was a time when they started to talk to us about some kind of special deal we could give them because they were having financial trouble. There is no latitude. We cannot subsidize somebody else's fire service with general fund money. Or police. Mr.Paterson, that become a serious issue as people reach their caps because the services we provide, there is no authority to subsidize so they have to pay the bill. He has got a point. They have to find a way and restructure how they do business.
I will make a point to talk to Mayor Snowden.
[Indiscernible] I thought this is an opportunity to encourage them to start doing things. There is a significant piece of property that is going to have some major development and it is an opportunity that we would encourage them to start annexing them and working on that.
Mr. Dineen, on item KK you have a comment.
Mr. Chair, this is a project where the county has been awarded by St. John's through the water management district the cost share program that will -- about 33%. This is an ongoing project and a situation where we had repeated flooding and grants with FEMA and other agencies we are purchase over 21 flood prone homes and removed them and putting in a storm water pond. I would like to introduce Abby Johnson from St. John's water management. She is here to present us the check for that grant and we really want to say thank you to all of her hard work and the hard work that the district and the county has been a big beneficiary working with the district.Judy Graham who is also there is a road and bridge director and the storm water director and probably one of the busiest people in the county in a few hours so she has also here on this project.
I will make my remarks we debrief. We are thankful for the county and every opportunity we get to partner with you to make improvements for all of their communities particularly when it comes to projects that restore natural systems or remove people and nature out of harm, water conservation and projects. Thank you for taking the time to apply. It is a stiff competition districtwide and competing against 119 municipalities each time.
That area has been badly need of drainage systems.
We are thankful. I just want to present you this check.
You are earning your pay, I think you only started at the first of the year. She is starting good. We don't want to remove you off of our good list.
[Indiscernible] you will be on social media very soon.
It is a good project. Where we were able -- we got some from St. John's as well in the area when we had the five-day 25-inch flood. This area probably suffered m ore. All the area along the boundaries -- it is a great project. Thank you.
My hats off to the district and Ms. Johnson in particular who has worked with our staff. We are fortunate to have firm and the relationship we have with the district. Do the years we have evolved into a really good
relationship in helping people every day and we appreciate that.
Thank you, very much.
With that we will item 2. I thought I saw Mr. Dineen. I would bring Sheriff
Chitwood, come on down. This storm has got me crazy.
I think it has got everybody crazy.
Someone made a note on Facebook, they started not using speed limits and they don't use their indicators to turn anymore and with some it is standard procedure. And it is a full moon.
We wanted to acknowledge two deputies today but both deputies had family emergencies in the last 12 hours so I would ask to bring this back.
Thank you. At this time we will move to item 3, this is a public h earing.
Good morning Mr. Chair and members of the Council. This is a pretty straightforward agenda item we deal with quite often with vacation and the abandonment of some platted rights-of-way. The petitioners Mr. And M rs. Jones purchased a home recently in the Sam Sula area east of County Road form under 15 South of pioneer in North of 40 for. Aviary rural area. The home they purchased built in 1945 had encroach is into platted right-of-way easement. The county has deeded right-of-way.We had evaluated it and it does not impact any public purpose so staff is recommending approval of this.
I have no one wishing to speak in a public participation part. Is there a motion to approve?
Mr. Chair, I move to approve the vacation -- page 40 for in the abandonment of a portion of right-of-way by deed or book 3214, -- Sam Sula area.
Seconded by Mr. Patterson. Any objection to the motion?Hearing no objection, the motion will stand. Thank you. At this time we will move to
item 5.
Mr. Chair, what we have today as you sought in saw in the information we received from Thailand is a request to reinvest in the Spring Hill CRA in terms of the resource ource center. In a second we will have the parties come forward and explain the request. The mayor is here. As you saw by the material they are requesting we match them dollar for dollar up to $250,000 for each part of the resource center. I will let them explain the nature of their request and we can take it from there.
Good morning. Bob Askar mayor of Deland and Chairman of the Spring Hill CRA. A thank you in advance to the County Council in senior staff and the sheriffs department and the public works and the fire department for all the work they will be doing over the next three or four days to keep Volusia County and the citizens safe once the storm passes. The Spring Hill CRA started as a partnership between the city of Deland and the County of Volusia. Councilmember QSAC and Mr. Patterson are members of that board and have been very supportive of the efforts of the Spring Hill CRA. Early on there was a resource center and the resource center was intended to be a temporary facility while the recession made it into a semipermanent facility. Today we are in the position to move forward with a better resource center and in a moment the manager of the CRA will add some greater detail than I am. The purpose of the resource center is to help improve the quality of life in Spring Hill, to help keep job training and people out of poverty, prevent homelessness and post training to keep them moving forward. It arrives a variety of s ervices. After Mr. Green those concludes his amounts, at the suggestion -- update the Council on the homeless project. We appreciate your consideration for funding to assist in construction and thank you to each and every one of you please stay safe.
Good morning. I'm the assistant city manager and the CRA manager for Spring Hill. I know sometimes when he to know a little background on what the resource Center does. The resource
center provides job search assistance, resume creation, unemployment compensation, notary services, health care coverage assistance, school supplies, computer access services, core volunteer hours, HIV assistance and other programs. There is also a community workshop held in the center because of the location. Recently we did a credit counseling session and a first-time homebuyer education program at the center. We do administration as far as property improvement grants. People come in and can apply through CRA funds and sewer connection assistance grants when money is available we also administer. They do a lot of special events. There is a lot of activity for the residents and again as the mayor stated we are running out of space and in the current facility we don't have the proper land to expand. We need to purchase land to right size and have the right amenities. Going into that request, we are asking for a match of $250,000 for this assistance request. The funding would not go to operating. It is a one-time capital requests. The city and CRA will fund the operating of the center even though we have a new center with the bigger facility there is still no operating -- on the County and all absorbed by the CRA and the city. This funding will help the CRA instead of paying down a debt note on the