
As Mayor Santiago Avila Jr. bills it as “a city of destiny,” Deltona continues to solidify its reputation as the most interesting city in East Central Florida.
“We need change, … and take away the nasty remarks that have been made,” freshman Commissioner Emma Santiago said at the City Commission’s Jan. 6 meeting. “We will no longer endure any nastiness and bullying.”
Sensing Deltona’s public image is largely formed by the discordant and often raucous ways in which its elected leaders and their constituents conduct themselves at official meetings, City Manager Dale “Doc” Dougherty drafted a set of standards to remake the way the government of the largest city in Volusia County appears and behaves. The meetings, often replete with vulgar and coarse language, are livestreamed and can be playbacked via the city’s website. The potential audience extends well beyond Deltona.
The latest move affecting the public-comment time at commission meetings comes a few months after city officials stopped streaming and televising that opening half-hour segment of the regular meetings. Critics have complained that that action amounts to a suppression of free speech and that it deprives Deltonans of the opportunity to become better informed about what is happening in their city.
Commissioner Maritza Avila-Vazquez, however, moved to table, or postpone, action on Dougherty’s draft policy.
“I have a lot of concerns and questions,” Avila-Vazquez said. “Have all the commissioners gone over it and expressed their concerns?”
Freshman Commissioner Dori Howington suggested a workshop be scheduled to consider the changes. Vice Mayor Davison Heriot agreed with that idea.
As the City Commission was set to consider the revised standards on meetings, controversy erupted over changes.
Key points in the draft policy include:
— Setting a time limit for meetings to end.
Dougherty proposed to allocate two-and-a-half hours for the City Commission to convene and conduct official business. That means if a regular meeting begins at 6:30 p.m., the current start time, it would have to end at 9 p.m., unless a majority of the commission votes to extend a meeting for as long as 15 minutes. Only one such extension would be permitted per meeting.
Thus, the latest end time for a regular meeting would be 9:15 p.m. That would be a contrast to the meetings that frequently last until almost 11 p.m.
— Workshops, which are informal sessions for discussion and in which no votes or binding decisions are made, would run no longer than two hours.
— At least four of the seven members of the City Commission must be present at a meeting to conduct city business. The quorum is a bare majority of the elected body’s members.
— The City Commission adopts Roberts’s Rules of Order as its parliamentary procedure. Under those rules, a commission member may speak twice, and no more than twice, on an issue before the elected body decides whether to accept, reject or postpone a decision on a pending matter. The maximum allotted time for a member of the commission to speak in the debate is three minutes per turn, with a maximum of six minutes for two segments of discourse. If a motion to act fails to gain a second, the motion dies, and the commission may then proceed to the next item on its agenda.
Some contention
Such points as these draw general agreement. The blowback came from other suggested changes in the meeting policy, including:
— A reduction in the maximum speaking time per speaker during the public-forum portion of the meeting from four minutes to two.
— A policy heading titled “Disorderly Conduct at Meetings Prohibited” and subheaded “DECORUM POLICY” [Capital letters in the document] drew fire from the audience.
“The City of Deltona has a significant interest in conducting orderly and efficient public meetings, which include preventing disruption, promoting civility, and preserving decorum,” the lengthy proposed multipoint rule reads. “However, the Deltona City Commission shall continue to embrace dissension as a civic right and work to create a climate where the public feels included and respected.”
“To that end, the Mayor, or presiding officer, or a majority of the City Commission,” the text continues, “may interrupt, warn, or terminate a speaker’s statement when that statement is too lengthy, personally directed, abusive, obscene, irrelevant, slanderous, defaming, or otherwise reasonably perceived to be a disruption to the fair and orderly progress of the discussion at hand. … The presiding officer may call to order any person who is breaching the peace or being disorderly by speaking without recognition, engaging in booing or applauding, failing to be germane to the topic …, speaking vulgarities, name-calling, personal attacks, excessive body odor, or … other conduct determined by the presiding officer to be disruptive. …”
Such behavior could result in having the speaker escorted out of City Hall by a deputy.
Public reaction
Speakers roundly decried that policy, with its several possible infractions — including the points about language and “booing.”
“What are you trying to hide?” Elbert Bryant, a frequent attendee at the meetings, asked. “All this does is make us wonder what are we hiding. What are we running from? … When you talk about language, correct yours before you correct mine.”
“I can’t even believe it made it to the agenda,” Terry Ellis said. “We’re your neighbors. … Communication is a two-way dialogue, not a one-way message.”
“It’s totally absurd,” Courtney Cross-Burgos told the City Commission. “I honestly can’t believe that you don’t want to listen to us. … Please, please, don’t approve this.”
“You’re up there because we voted for you,” Kathy Bryant said. “When you do this, it’s a bad optics message.”
“People are angry because … we get louder and are not heard, we get louder and are not heard,” Ana Loser said. “We don’t feel that we’re being listened to, when we’re trying to be professional. So we get louder.”
Loser concluded with a request to table the proposed change in the City Commission’s rules.
Former Commissioner David Sosa joined in denouncing the policy.
“Alright, let’s read this: ‘The Deltona City Commission shall continue to embrace dissension.’ Yeah, we’re going to embrace dissension. We’re going to shut you up. We don’t want to hear from you. That’s embracing dissension,” he said. “This commission, this year, I was expecting positive changes, but this is not positive. This is a negative change. It’s not positive. Positive change to me is lower taxes, better roads, better infrastructure. Those are positive changes. Trying to silence people is not a positive change.”
Not least, the mention of “excessive body odor” got attention.
Recalling the former policy of having people entering the meetings to pass through a metal detector, Sosa said the commission would not “go sniffing” people, but may instead set up a “smell detector.”
“Who’s going to be the judge of who smells?” Pat Blodgett said. “You’re well on the way to a dictatorship.”
After hearing enough comments against the draft policy, the City Commission voted 6-1 to table the matter. Commissioner Nick Lulli dissented.
In a follow-up conversation on the body-odor reference, Avila said the phrase “probably should have been better explained.”
“If a resident comes reeking of alcohol or marijuana smoke, that’s what it was meant for,” the mayor told The Beacon. “We have had complaints about both the marijuana smell and the alcohol smell.”
Avila also said he favors limiting the public comment time to three minutes per speaker, which would be equal with the Volusia County Council’s policy on public participation.