- January 19, 2025
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The creation of an environmental advisory committee at the county level continues to move forward, as the Volusia County Council on Tuesday, July 19, voted unanimously to authorize its formation and laid out the committee's structure.
While initially planned to be a nine-member committee, the council decided the Environmental and Natural Resources Advisory Committee will have 14 members, with each council member nominating two people from any district. While not a new concept to Volusia County — an ENRAC was active from 1987 to 2003 to work with county staff to recommend minimum standards for environmental protection, according to a press release — the committee's resurgence came after a growth management workshop held in June.
Members on the committee may be from citizen advocacy groups, civic organizations, professional associations, agricultural interests, arborists, foresters, other governmental organizations, environmental consultants and universities. The goal of the committee, the county stated in its press release, it to have a balanced representation of all these groups.
Councilwoman Barb Girtman was the first to state that she wanted to select two members for the committee.
"I think this issue is broad enough that, for District 1, there should be more than one person speaking to the concern because I think it's a challenge to find one individual to represent the full voice," she said.
The original ENRAC membership criteria had each council member appoint one representative for their district, and the remaining four representatives were appointed by the council as a whole from various sectors of the community like professional development and academics.
Steve Crump, executive director of the Volusia County Farm Bureau, spoke before the council at the meeting and said the organization supported the creation of ENRAC. He asked the council to include representatives from the agricultural committee.
"We would like to remind the council that we believe most of the land in the county that is available for future development is currently in agriculture," Crump said.
After one member of the public asked the council to look into representatives' backgrounds further before appointing them into ENRAC, County Councilman Danny Robins asked staff to see what other counties are doing in terms of background checks. He wished to expand the county's background checks to extend to criminal charges.
If something showed up in an applicant's background check, Robins said the board could discuss it further to see if it's acceptable.
Councilwoman Heather Post said she thought they were "stepping into the weeds" by doing that, and said that it would be hypocritical of them to discuss someone's specific background when people with criminal histories are able to be elected into public office or work for the county. ENRAC would be a volunteer board.
"If anybody has any giant ethics violations or something with someone that is brought up, that's the whole reason we vote on whether or not someone specific is viable," Post said.
Robins argued that they would need that information to determine if someone can serve, and Post responded that he could look up applicant's criminal histories himself.
Council Chair Jeff Brower, frustrated, said the council was "making an absurdity out of this." Robins asked for his motion to be tabled until the council's closing comments, at which point the motion passed 4-3.
