Amid flooding concerns, Volusia voters face big choice

Just a little more than two years after Hurricane Ian's unprecedented rain and flooding in Central Florida, Patrick Scott Davis still doesn't have doors or floors in most of his home.

"It flooded and they started warping," Davis said. "The floor, it was actually floating."

It's clean, but on this September morning, the house on Davis's three-acre property just west of Port Orange still smells slightly musty. On one of the few remaining doors, there are waterline marks where floodwaters rose more than a foot high.

Davis is still trying to get help repairing his home, which was fully paid off and not insured when Ian hit; meanwhile, he dreads it flooding again.

Just a few weeks ago, Davis got another scare. Several inches of water crept up onto the vegetation separating his property from the adjacent Westport Reserve community within Port Orange's city limits, he said.

"Five, six days, we had constant rain," Davis said. "The water was up there and I'm going: here we go again."

"Urban country"

Tomoka Farms Village is a small, rural community of roughly a thousand families, a surprisingly quiet respite from all the development happening elsewhere in Volusia County. Or, at least it used to be.

"It was peaceful," said Davis, who's lived in this area for 18 years. "I call it urban country now."

A Local Plan within the county's comprehensive plan defines Tomoka Farms Village as an area that should remain at a low density residential scale, to preserve its "rural, agricultural, natural cultural and scenic values." That's why Davis said he and some of his fellow Tomoka Farms Village residents were caught off-guard a few years ago, when they learned a new, mixed-use development project with hundreds of single-family homes would soon be built next door.

Now, Westport Reserve sits less than a hundred yards away from where Davis lives in the village — and it's created problems for his property, Davis said.

Specifically, Davis and other village residents blame the development for making flooding worse: mainly because a drainage swale just off Davis's property line, meant to channel water into a nearby ditch system is not being properly maintained. Port Orange's Code Enforcement division has an open case against a management company for Westport Reserve, regarding that swale and a stormwater retention pond elsewhere on site, a city spokesperson confirmed.

"Land use proposals in the vicinity of the Tomoka Farms area should not have an adverse effect on the existing character of the community," according to the Local Plan.

But that's not what's playing out in reality here, according to Mike Poniatowski, Davis's neighbor in Tomoka Farms Village, who's been helping organize community members to learn about and push back against the area's rising development pressures.

Ninety people recently packed into a church for a town hall meeting Poniatowski helped coordinate about ongoing water concerns: including flooding allegedly exacerbated by the development right next to Davis's place.

"We'd never had that flooding before, until they raised the pasture land around six and a half feet and built those homes," Poniatowski told those at the town hall.

Back in 2016, the City of Port Orange approved a variance request from Westport Reserve developers, allowing them to build a smaller wetland buffer than is normally required by Port Orange's land development code, according to site plans kept by the city.

The county is required to maintain the village's "low density rural single family residential and agricultural land uses," according to the Local Plan. Still, as the region's population rapidly grows, other proposals for developments surrounding the village keep popping up.

"All of those areas are contiguous to new development," Poniatowski said. "And it's only gonna get worse."

That's why Poniatowski is organizing community meetings, including an upcoming town hall Oct. 10 with the Volusia Council candidates running to represent the area and county as a whole.

"How are you going to protect us? What are you gonna do for the village?" Poniatowski said. "We want to make sure they're steadfast behind [our village plan], and not willing to change it."

The current chair seeking another term

In nearly four years of serving as Volusia County Council Chair, Jeff Brower came to be known as an outspoken critic of overdevelopment, a reputation he understands and accepts, at least to some extent.

"I've been screaming about the that we're developing, that it's causing flooding," Brower said. "I'm not against development. I'm against development."

Brower seeks to renew his term in a runoff election next month, after winning the August primary by 42%: to give "a voice" to the people of Volusia County suffering unfairly from the county's unfettered growth, Brower said.

"The people need a voice. They're clamoring for help," Brower said. "I'm trying to bring people together, to say it's time to pause what we're doing [with development] and do something more deliberate, more thoughtful."

Brower said he meets and speaks with many Volusians all dealing with different versions of the same highly nuanced, often expensive and life-altering conundrum: water flowing where it shouldn't.

"We're developing in some areas where we just shouldn't, in wetland areas," Brower said. "We're harming the public, in some of the ways that we allow [development]."

But as Chair, Brower has at times faced strong opposition from some of his fellow council members who say they don't want to see developers turn away completely from opportunities in Volusia County because that, too, would hurt county residents.

"[We] have heard time and time again that it's our responsibility to keep taxes low," said At-Large Council Representative Jake Johansson during a February council meeting. "In order to do that, we need to balance our portfolio of taxpayers. It can't be all residents."

At that meeting, Brower cast one of just two votes that would have solidified a temporary, then-pending ban on development in parts of the county zoned for heavy industrial uses. Council had initially approved an ordinance for such a ban, following a private company's request to build a massive fuel terminal in the unincorporated county: technically outside the City of Ormond Beach, but only steps away from a 55+ living community within the city limits.

"When we consider property rights, does this council not have the responsibility to look at all the property rights of the people that live around them?" Brower asked his colleagues in February. "Or just [the rights of] a specific property, if and when it comes up?

Brower knows he frustrates some of his colleagues with his support of strategies to curb the pace of development, however lucrative it might be for the county.

"I meet a lot of resistance from the council," Brower said, adding he's aware several of his fellow council members volunteer for his opponent's campaign. Still, Brower's staying his course. Right now, he's gauging local interest in the idea of a future rural boundary in Volusia County .

In Central Florida, rural boundaries are somewhat of a familiar concept. Seminole County has one, which voters could choose to further strengthen next month; Orange County voters will see two charter amendments on their ballots which would establish a rural boundary.

Ideally, a rural boundary would make it harder to change Volusia's comprehensive land use plan, something that currently happens too often when development projects are proposed, Brower said.

"We change it all the time," Brower said. "That should not occur without a supermajority."

If he's reelected, Brower said the first thing on his list will be producing the litany of stormwater studies Volusia County still must complete, to evaluate current drainage infrastructure and necessary improvement projects to reduce flooding.

Stormwater studies exist for 11 of Volusia County's 16 watersheds, or basins. But the newest one was finished seven years ago, and most of the others are at least 20 years old, completed when the county looked — and drained water — much differently. Most of the drainage projects recommended in the 2009 stormwater study for Tomoka Farms Village were never done, according to information provided by the county.

"I think that's the most important thing we can do right now, is look at what's causing the flooding. If that requires a moratorium in areas that are severely affected, I'm ready to pull the trigger on that," Brower said.

The first-time candidate challenger

Brower's opponent is Randy Dye, a local businessman and first-time political candidate without Brower's experience in elected office, or accompanying track record of votes and other actions to affect local policy directly impacting Volusia County residents.

But Dye does have some evidence to show he's a good collaborator, able to successfully persuade and negotiate with different partners to reach a common goal.

"It should be a win-win," said Dye, a former race car driver who owns two car dealerships in Volusia County.

Recently, Dye helped convince a friend and longtime local developer to reconsider plans to develop his nearly 500-acre ranch near DeLeon Springs into a planned community, according to Dye's campaign. Instead, developer Scott Vanacore agreed to explore partnering with Volusia Forever , the county's award-winning land conservation program.

"You've built enough wealth. I'm just curious: what is another development going to do for your legacy?" Dye said he remembers asking his friend, Scott Vanacore. "How about let's do something different?"

Now, negotiations are underway for the county and Vanacore to solidify an agreement to acquire the land and set it aside for permanent conservation.

"Selfishly, I'm hoping that [Vanacore] starts a new trend," Dye said. "This is a developer who goes: hey, I've done enough. Let's set some stuff aside. We don't always have to develop property. We can preserve property."

Dye's appetite for collaboration could serve Volusia County well, Dye said. He wants to help the county and its 16 incorporated municipalities all "get on the same page," and communicate more effectively about how to best manage the area's "explosive growth."

"There's a lot of that [growth] that happened just suddenly, and so it feels very chaotic. And we need some management of that," Dye said.

But because all property owners have rights, Dye said, the key is to ensure developers build responsibly by working those developers — not trying to avoid them altogether.

"If you tell them you're never gonna talk to them, they're gonna do whatever they're gonna do," Dye said.

Dye has experience befriending corporate interests with deep pockets. As of October 1, his campaign raised nearly $460,000 between monetary and in-kind contributions, including many large donations from entities tied to development, construction and real estate.

For example, Dye's campaign received donations from at least 11 different entities owned by University of Florida Board of Trustees Chair Mori Hosseini , who's also the founder and CEO of one of Florida's largest residential homebuilder/developers, ICI Homes. Meanwhile, the nearly $89,000 in monetary and in-kind donations raised by Brower's campaign as of October 1 came largely from individuals and a few local businesses: a tiki bar in Daytona Beach; a preschool in Edgewater.

If elected, Dye said he would make "common sense decisions" from a "business-like approach," drawing a line between himself and what he described as the more typical, politically-minded kind of candidate usually seeking an elected role.

"I am a businessperson; I'm not a politician," Dye said. "I have no aspirations to do anything more than be the Volusia County Chairman."

"The more they raise the land, the more we flood"

Hurricane Ian brought historic levels of rain to Central Florida. Even if developers had never built Westport Reserve next door, Davis's property would have still flooded.

But exponentially more stormwater from new development, now flowing down from higher ground, seems to be making things worse, according to residents of Tomoka Farms Village and other, older neighborhoods in the county

"The land was capable of holding the water. It's not anymore," Poniatowski said.

Homes in the new development just next to Davis's home did not flood during Ian because they are on higher ground, Poniatowski said. But Davis, Poniatowski and other village residents experienced disastrous flooding.

"You don't know if you can manage it again, the mental toll," said Poniatowski, reflecting on all the damage to his property from the historic storm.

"But it's going to happen again," Poniatowski said. "The more they build, the more they encroach; the more they raise the land, the more we flood."