- May 3, 2024
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Last month, the DeLand City Commission approved three “compassionate” ordinances focused on helping homeless people off the streets and connecting them to services and programs. The Ormond Beach City Commission could soon follow in its footsteps.
On Tuesday, Feb. 20, Mayor Bill Partington asked city staff to schedule a workshop to explore ordinances similar to those passed in DeLand. According to the West Volusia Beacon, DeLand’s three-pronged approach includes an “anti-camping” ordinance that seeks to relocate people asleep on public property in their downtown to a homeless shelter, an ordinance that makes it harder for people to leave their belongings in public spaces, and a ordinance targeting people lying on benches or streets.
The request for a workshop comes after the city has received various complaints about the rise of homelessness and panhandling in Ormond Beach.
“We’ve been a part of First Step (Shelter) for years, since the beginning, and I don’t feel like we’ve gotten the value out of it just because we haven’t utilized it as much as we could,” Partington said.
First Step Shelter opened in 2019 at 3889 W. International Speedway Blvd. The shelter, which partners with several municipalities — including Ormond Beach — aims to help unhoused men and women find jobs and permanent housing while connecting them to resources they need, such as mental health programs.
The homeless ordinances, Partington said, are meant to encourage compliance and encourage people to get connected with services.
“That seems like a smart way to do it,” Partington said. “I talked to the DeLand mayor ... he said the shelters support it, they had no real pushback on it.”
There were concerns from the DeLand homeless community, but Partington said he’s hopeful that the ordinance will benefit them once its enforced.
Homelessness is an issue Partington said he’s been hearing about every week in Ormond Beach.
“There’s violence, there’s unsanitary conditions and other harsh conditions, health issues, experienced not only by the homeless people who live in these camps,” he said.
Prior to Partington speaking on the issue at the meeting, City Commissioner Harold Briley had expressed interest in looking into similar ordinances to the ones DeLand passed.
City Manager Joyce Shanahan said that the city was discussing with its legal team what options were available, and that other cities had also passed similar ordinances.
City Commissioner Lori Tolland suggested the city reach out to FAITH, or Fighting Against Injustice Toward Harmony, an nonprofit coalition composed of almost 30 religious congregations in the county. The coalition has bee working to address homelessness and affordable housing for several years.
“I agree, it definitely needs to have a discussion, and I know we’re having a lot of workshops, but we have a lot of things going on,” Tolland said.
When City Commissioners gave their thumbs up for the construction of a 137-room hotel on the beachside in January 2023, a sidewalk on Seminole Avenue with ADA access to the beach was part of the proposal.
The developers now want to remove the access point from its plans.
A neighborhood meeting was held on Monday, Feb. 19, to discuss the issue. Mayor Bill Partington reported to the commission at its meeting the next day that the developers, Ormond Beach Holdings LLC, seek to remove the sidewalk because while the county agreed to accept ownership of the sidewalk, it refused to maintain it.
The developers’ solution to remove that component from the development didn’t sound good to him, Partington said.
“Losing any kind of beach access sounded like a non-starter,” he said. “It also sounded like a bait-and-switch, if you will, because we approved that thinking that beach access was going to be there.”
He inquired about interest on the city maintaining it, or asking the county to pay to maintain it.
Is it time to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety on the Granada Bridge?
On Tuesday, Feb. 20, the City Commission approved a request to submit a grant application to the River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization for help completing a $100,000 feasibility study on enhancing the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians crossing the bridge.
The grant requires no local match, according to the consent agenda item.
With the Ormond Beach Municipal Airport operating with a negative budget of over a million dollars, City Commissioner Travis Sargent said at the Feb. 20 meeting that he wished the Aviation Advisory Board met more frequently to figure out a plan to address this.
“Year after year, it’s operated at a negative, which I know is what it’s always been,” Sargent said. “... We have an Aviation Advisory Board that its purpose is to advise the City Commission on aviation policies related to the development and operations of the municipal airport.”
The board met twice in 2022 and three times in 2021. According to the latest agenda on the city’s website, the board last met on Feb. 13, 2023.
City Commissioner Lori Tolland agreed that she would like to see all boards meet more regularly.
