- May 18, 2024
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Volusia County Council Chair Jeff Brower estimates he receives 150 emails a day.
It's the nature of the job, one Brower said has been full of long hours and hard work since he was sworn into office in January, but has also been rewarding. The most important part of the council's duty is to listen to constituents, the chair explained. The 150 emails mean the public is using their voice.
"If you ask the public to respond, to make their voices heard, they will do it," Brower said. "That’s been very encouraging. When I see things coming up, I try and let the public know, for this or against this, you need to contact your representatives and let us know how you feel about it."
The Ormond Beach Observer spoke with Brower on Tuesday, March 30 about a few key county issues raised in the past few months, including the Loop, beach driving and water quality.
Number one, it’s native. Number two, land is rapidly disappearing there. Number three, it’s needed for safety. My goal was to get this land to start a bicycle trail/pedestrian trail to go all the way up to Walter Boardman, where you can cross the road and head to the Bulow trail system. Then, you would really have a loop where people could get off the road, ride their bikes or walk, just enjoy nature and do it safely.
The other reason that I think it’s really important was best expressed by the Historic Preservation Board last week when this project came to them for consideration. I believe it was the chairman of the board who said, "The big question here is why was this property ever platted for development to begin with?" Now that it’s been brought to the attention of the county and they’ve hired an engineering firm to see if it had historic value, to check everything from highlands to wetlands, they all agree that it is absolutely historically significant, and once we destroy that, it’s gone forever.
One of the criticisms is it’s not that big of a property, but I look at it and say, "So what?" It’s critical property. It has historical value and it’s one step on a three-step path to making this safe bicycle loop.
I have heard from so many people in Volusia County, I mean hundreds and hundreds. I received two negatives. It’s what the public wants and that’s probably number one in why it’s important.
Here’s the issue. We’re pretending like there’s no short-term rentals occurring in Volusia County. Yesterday, there were 7,352 unique short-term rental properties being offered on all of the platforms where people go — AirBnB, VRBO. Within unincorporated Volusia County, there’s over 2,000.
It’s already here and it’s a growing thing. So we can either hire 10 more code enforcement people and say, "Go shut down these 7,000 operators," but I think the bigger question is, with that many, where are the complaints? They’re not coming in. It’s a complaint-driven system that sends code enforcement out to investigate these properties. With the amount of short-term rentals there are, compared to the amount of complaints, it doesn’t even register.
However, even if there’s one really serious complaint where a short-term rental is destroying a neighborhood, I want it shut down. Yesterday, I did a conference call with a group that has a system of managing short-term rentals, managing it in a way that reduces and eliminates complaints, or they put people out of business. So there are ways to manage it in order to preserve the integrity of a neighborhood.
I know it’s sensitive. I know there’s areas where there’s people that abuse it and that would have to deal with it, and that would require some teeth in an ordinance to rectify that and to stop it. The simple fact is that you can’t ignore the 7,352 people that are doing it.
I haven’t suggested they have free access. We’re taxing our local Volusia County property owners and renter [twice] because we all pay for the beach through a property tax. The beachside is not doing well. In some places, it’s absolutely died like in Main Street, East ISB, the core area of Daytona. So it would bring more locals there. I want year-round traffic on the beachside from locals to support the businesses there, the entertainment venues, and yes, the beach.
We’re looking at less than a million dollars a year of peak revenues [from] local day-trippers that would pay to get in. Is there a way to recoup a million dollars? There is, in increased business revenue on the beachside, but I’ve also proposed to bid out naming rights for all of our beach approaches, just like it’s commonly done for arenas and stadiums.
When you talk about funding, you have to think outside of the box and look at different ways and how can we use market forces of supply and demands to fill this gap.
I want to work with each of our beachside municipalities. I’ve proposed two areas to open up for beach driving. Let’s deal with the Hard Rock first, it’s 410 feet of beach. We’ve got the poison poles there to restrict the traffic, but it affects miles of beach because it’s a choke point. If you drive to the north, you don’t get very far before you hit those poles. You only have one exit and reentry on your day pass. So it’s a problem for people.
The only other section I have said I wanted to see open is [East ISB]. All those businesses around the boardwalk to East ISB, we’ve just killed them when we closed that section of beach. Leave the Hilton alone, but start at the boardwalk and open the beach down to East ISB.
Let’s just experiment. Let’s open up that little section and see if the business owners are correct — will it help revive their business? Will it draw more people down there? Will it allow them more place to park to enjoy the beach and then walk Main Street? I believe it will, but it’s worth the experiment.
No, my position hasn’t changed, because the science hasn’t changed. But yes, it is possible and it’s happening all over the county because of state regulations.
At a wastewater treatment plant, we test what’s coming out the other end, and know exactly how much nitrogen and phosphorous is in it. We don’t in septic tanks. So we can’t say we’re following the science when we’re making a guess, even if it’s a well-educated guess. It’s too expensive.
I’m not trying to protect every septic tank in Volusia County. I just want to know what the science is so that we’re working on the right problem. It’s a multi-trillion dollar problem to convert every septic tank in Florida. It’s a billion dollar problem to convert them here in Volusia County. Is that where the biggest bang for our buck comes from? That’s all I’m asking. Let’s find out if this is a problem, or is it coming from stormwater runoff, fertilizer or wastewater. We know that some of it is coming from all of those, but septic systems have been raised to the top of the list. I’m suspicious, I really am, because homeowners with septic tanks are the only people in Florida that don’t have a strong lobby to protect them.
The biggest issue that Volusia County faces now and certainly in the future is water quality and water quantity. The problem is when you just focus on that one thing, it encompasses so much more because of the way we develop. Every new home that is hooked up to water is reducing the amount of water and we really do have a problem that the aquifer is not keeping up now with the amount of water that we have.
That’s going to keep me busy for four years. Then the little things that give me joy and pleasure, like we just accomplished last week: Giving graduating seniors four tickets instead of two, for their families to come [to their ceremonies]. There’s going to be lots of things like that which come up and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to do more than that as the COVID numbers continue to decrease. So there’s plenty to do.
