DELAND – Want to change the world, at least in Florida?
The 60-day sprint that is the Legislative Session starts on March 4, so with less than two months before all the lawmaking and budget setting commences, the six legislators who represent Volusia County gathered at DeLand City Hall for the annual delegation meeting.
Sens. Tom Wright and Tom Leek and Reps. Webster Barnaby, Chase Tramont, Bill Partington and Richard Gentry listened, mostly, for more than five hours to 100+ people. County and city officials, presidents of universities, a Volusia County School District official, leaders from healthcare organizations and social-service agencies and nonprofits, plus residents with wide-ranging concerns each took three minutes to try and convince the lawmakers to get behind what they were selling.
Here are some themes and highlights from the meeting.
‘Flooding, flooding, flooding’
Volusia County Council Chairman Jeff Brower said flooding has “ravaged” Volusia since Hurricane Milton hit on Oct. 10.
“Families were displaced. They lost their homes, lost all their earthly possessions,” Brower said. “We need your help.”
Some of those families appeared before the lawmakers.
Pat Joslin, who’s lived on the southeast side of DeLand for more than 20 years, said flooding has destroyed more than 60% of her organic vegetable farm’s production.
“We are flooding because of 1,900 homes built east of us by Victoria Hills, Victoria Reserve and Sawyer’s Landing, and they built up 8 feet,” Joslin said.
Other residents blamed flooding on development, particularly nearby developments that used fill to elevate homes.
“I’ve lived here since 1986,” said Lisa Smith, one of Joslin’s neighbors. “Flooding has never been an issue in all the years we’ve been here until about two years ago.”
City and county officials haven’t done enough to slow “overdevelopment,” Smith said.
“These are our homes that some of us never even got to spend the holidays in,” she said.
“Flooding, flooding, flooding,” said Edgewater Mayor Diezel Depew, who urged lawmakers to help his growing city purchase up to 10 lift stations, at an estimated cost of $350,000 each.
Edgewater Mayor Diezel Depew speaks to the Volusia County legislative delegation Tuesday in DeLand. Depew was among numerous local government officials expressing a need for more state funding to address flooding.
The wastewater treatment plant is at 75% capacity, with more needed to accommodate an anticipated torrent of growth, he said, and Edgewater’s sewer system failed during Hurricane Ian in 2022, leaving more than 6 million gallons of raw sewage in the streets. He told Leek the city is prepared to provide a 50% match for any state funds granted.
Orange City Mayor Kelli Marks said a building housing the police station and City Council chambers flooded during Hurricane Milton and has since been uninhabitable. For the 2025 session, she asked lawmakers for $1 million to help complete the design work on a new emergency operations building that can withstand hurricane-force winds. That’s projected at $20 million for construction, for which Marks said the city has more than $8 million set aside.
Brower called on legislators to prioritize flood-mitigation projects and “the purchase of properties that face habitual flooding,” through the state’s new hazard mitigation and Elevate Florida programs.
Senator takes Daytona Beach to task
Leek, who served as the House appropriations chair the last two years and is again on appropriations committees in the Senate, took a look at Daytona Beach’s funding requests – including nearly $2 million for backup generators at 178 sewer lift stations and millions more to construct a new public works building and for unspecified projects to reduce flooding.
Florida state Sen. Tom Leek challenges a Daytona Beach official over city spending during a legislative delegation meeting in DeLand on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025.
“Where is your mayor today? Why is your mayor not here?” Leek asked Hardy Smith, the government relations administrator who presented to the delegation. “Why is your city manager not here?”
Smith said he could not answer.
Leek said he was asking because he said it’s important “the public become acutely aware of what’s going on,” then asked whether the city took COVID relief funds and allotted each city commissioner $500,000 and the mayor $750,000 to spend as they saw fit within their districts.
“There was a mix of how that allocation, if you will, of those funds was done and any expenditures of those funds whether it be from the city or individual commission member initiatives were in accordance to the guidelines, rules and policies of the program,” Smith responded.
“You’re coming to us and asking for money,” Leek said. “When each of the city commissioners, the mayor has control over this pot of money that they’re not using to spend on the very things that you’re asking the state to spend money. So how is it appropriate to ask the state to in essence prop up these, for lack of a better term, slush funds?”
He also called the provision of city dollars to each commissioner to spend “a remarkably bad process.”
Swimming against the tide of declining state spending
A December report by the estimating conference of the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research projects economic growth to slow the rest of this year and next to 2.1 and 1.9%, respectively, after hitting 4.4% and 4.5% in 2022-23 and 2023-24, so lawmakers have warned they don’t anticipate a lot of money for local projects.
Many local officials acknowledged that fact, but still came with requests.
One, Craig Uppercue, president of the Volusia County Cultural Alliance Board, asked lawmakers to reverse steep cuts made during last year’s session, which he said amounted to a $32 million cut statewide affecting 600 arts groups and facilities.
Uppercue noted that Volusia County’s spending on arts amounts to less than 0.01% of the budget but has supported 945 jobs, generated over $31 million of household income and provided $1.27 million in local tax revenue, as nearly 1 million people attended arts programs and events in Volusia last year.
“These numbers confirm what Plato observed centuries ago, which was: ‘A society that invests in the arts invests in its own moral and civic health,’ “ he said, while also asking legislators to reconsider a nearly 80% cut in a state early childhood music initiative.
“We’ve seen firsthand how early exposure to the arts shapes children into imaginative, collaborative and empathetic adults,” said Uppercue, who’s also a fine arts specialist for Volusia County Schools.
Can changes in sentencing laws save Florida money?
Several family members and advocates for Florida Department of Corrections inmates urged the senators and representatives to consider a variety of initiatives.
“My name is Eric Oxfeld,” one speaker began, “and I’m going to tell you how you can save some money.”
Oxfeld, who lives in Ormond Beach, said he has a “loved one” in state prison, so he began volunteering to correspond with prisoners.
“There is a need to improve shockingly inhumane conditions. I hope this delegation understands how dire the situation is and I’m asking you to take a step toward improving conditions,” he said, which include poor medical care and substandard meals, rodents and leaky buildings that are “drafty and cold in cold weather and hellishly hot in hot weather,” plus widespread drug abuse by prisoners.
Oxfeld urged lawmakers to change harsh sentencing laws that have resulted in more than 18,000 prisoners who are 60 or older.
“Many are men in their 70s in wheelchairs with serious health conditions. They’re costing the state a fortune in medical expenses while receiving substandard care. Why are we holding on to these and other people who are no threat to public safety?”
Another advocate, Karen Stuckey, whose husband Stephen is serving 30 years after being convicted of stealing six DVDs from a Sam’s Club, talked about how keeping him so long has cost the state.
“Incarceration has aged him prematurely. At 61, he’s the equivalent of an 82-year-old man. … The state has wasted over half a million dollars incarcerating him.”
Stuckey said there is no avenue for compassionate early release in his case, as the state also offers no parole system. She was moved to tears when one of the state representatives pledged to look into his incarceration.
“I want to let you know that I’m deeply touched by your husband’s incarceration and I want you to know I will do everything I can to look into this matter,” Barnaby, a state representative from Deltona, said.
“I appreciate it,” she said.
ATVs in Tiger Bay State Forest?
Legalizing ATVs in Tiger Bay State Forest is an idea that has come and gone, and come and gone and is back again.
When the Volusia County Council voted 6-1 last month to include it among its legislative priorities, it drew ire from environmentalists.
“Knowing how unpopular this idiotic idea is, its sponsor sought to hide it from public view until the last minute,” said David Hargrove, corresponding secretary for the Environmental Council of Volusia and Flagler Counties.
“Once again, this bad idea resurfaces like a bloated corpse in a stagnant pond,” he said, reciting a list of reasons why it should be opposed, including the cost of maintaining ATV trails, “a recipe for disaster” by mixing horse riding and ATVs, and potential damage to animals, birds and plants that are species of special concern.
He and others noted the Florida State Forest Service has deemed ATV use is incompatible with the management plan for Tiger Bay State Forest.
Karen Walter – president of the Florida Native Plant Society and a Volusia resident, offered up another reason for opposing ATVs in Tiger Bay.
“One of the plants that would be potentially damaged … is the Deeringothamnus rugelii or small banana paw paw, and it grows only in Volusia County,” she said. “To me, that is a very important thing to maintain.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: 5 takeaways from 2025 Volusia County Legislative Delegation meeting