- January 20, 2025
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Zone 1 City Commissioner Dwight Selby often speaks about his family from the dais. He has announced the birth of his grandchildren, of which he now has five, and will share tidbits about his two sons.
So when it came to making the decision against seeking a fourth term on the commission, Selby said family played the biggest role.
"I've served for six years, three election cycles, and it takes a lot of time," he said. "I just felt like now feels like now feels like a good time to pass the baton — to allow somebody else to serve in that capacity."
Selby, who is the CEO of Selby Realty, Inc, was first elected in 2016. And since being elected, there's several issues he's proud to have been a part of. One is the creation of a dedicated millage in the city for public safety. Another is the environmental push to reduce the effluent being discharged into the Halifax River. While his push in 2019 to begin the process to convert septic tanks into city sewer was not supported on the commission, the city is moving forward with a septic tank conversion project for Magnolia Drive, Oak Drive and Bonita Avenue, a project that recently received $532,000 from the state.
The city is also pursuing the acquisition of a 147-acre site within Ormond Crossings to create a 100-million gallon lake for reclaim water storage.
"I'm ecstatic," Selby said. "I'm so excited about that because that's the way to do it. Storage was the whole issue from the very beginning, we don't have enough storage, and that's the most cost-effective way to do it and the most environmentally-friendly way to do it."
The Ormond Beach Observer spoke with Selby on Friday, June 24, about his time on the commission.
What do you think has been the biggest learning lesson in your three terms?
I think one of the first things that jumps out at me is it's a team sport. You can't get anything done if you don't have a majority. So in our case, you have to get three votes.
If you have three yeas and two nays, that's OK to get started, but you really need 4-1 or 5-0 to really get [things accomplished].
The second thing is the Sunshine Law, and I'm not complaining about the Sunshine Law, but the Sunshine Law makes it very difficult to make bold moves because frequently there are topics that need to be discussed that you can't discussed, or that you're reluctant to talk about in a public meeting. That's something that requires adjustment.
The other thing is we talk about running government like business, and there are plenty of ways to make government more efficient, but there are also a lot of obstacles to doing that, and some of them are intentional so that you don't end up with a tyrant — you have an open process.
People get frustrated with that because government rarely moves quickly. It's very methodical and it seems like there's a state law or some charter, whatever, that controls almost everything so your range of motion is limited or restricted in some way. But I think overall, when you have properly motivated elected officials, highly competent staff people and you have an open process, which I think for the most part we do, I think the city runs pretty smoothly, all things considered.
Septic to sewer in the north peninsula was definitely one of your biggest issues that you tried to propel forward. So now that there's a little bit of movement in that direction, what are your hopes for the city's future?
There were two big objections in my mind, and we didn't really address those objections. The reason is, and this was maybe another problem, was that our messaging wasn't very good. All we were doing was designing and permitting phase 1 — that's all we were doing — so that we would be ready to apply for the [state] money that now is pretty rampant and other people are getting millions of dollars of it. The city of Ormond, we got $500,000 for Oak, Magnolia and Bonita, but if we had done what we said we were going to do, if we hadn't backtracked, we would be killing it right now. We would be raking in the money and the taxpayers' share of the costs would be in my mind, very minimal.
That really leads to what I think were the two major objections. Number one: How much is it going to cost me? We couldn't answer that question, and when you can't answer that question .... the people say, "The guy's lying to me. He's not telling me the truth."
Number two, we're not their government. Ormond-by-the-Sea didn't elect us. They elected County Council people. So those two things really have to be worked out before that project can move forward in a big way. I think it will someday. In the meantime, what we're doing is we're focusing on the condos on A1A.
There's 20 or 22 condos, over 1,000 units, that haven't hooked up, and we're getting them off of their package plants and onto city sewer. So that'll be huge, and we'll learn a lot from that. It will make a big dent in the overall impact up there.
Is there an issue that you wished you would have approached differently, or perhaps even voted differently?
So do I have any regrets?
Regret might be a big word, but sure.
There was one meeting where I got upset. I got borderline angry. I don't remember what the topi was, but I remember afterwards thinking that was not who I wanted to be. It's OK to be passionate, but you really should never get angry.
You're the city's liaison on the MainStreet Board. The commission has approved a lot of redevelopment in that district. Is there something that you would like to see in the future in that district?
First of all, thank God for Bill Jones. When you really drill down on it, between the river and U.S. 1, he's the player in that area.
We have some other people, like Lewis Heaster as an example who's made some pretty significant investments, and I was talking to a young person the other day and they were talking about new things that are coming to the area, and they said, "We don't need another whatever. We need more cool things."
Then I got to thinking — there's basically no chains, especially in what we call the downtown.
That's pretty special, because you drive through wherever in America now, and there's about 40 or 50 chains that you're going to see everywhere. If somebody could just drop you into a town and you would have 40 or 50 selections of those companies. No soul; you'd get all the stuff you need, but no heart and soul. And we do have that heart and soul, so that's a pretty big deal.
So I would like to see more of that. I would like to see more o people who want to express themselves through a business — whether it's a retail sale, or some kind of service or a food and beverage – having the opportunity to do that in the downtown.
I know faith is very important to you. How has that impacted the way you serve the public?
I always tried to be a public servant, not a politician. And I've always tried to be honest with people, even when I know that they don't want to hear that — that I could probably end this phone call or I could probably respond to this email quickly by just saying something, I don't normally do that. I usually take the time to explain what's going on and why, what direction I'm leading or how I feel about the topic, and why I feel that way, with the hope that people will understand and respect.
Sometimes that works, and a lot of the times, it doesn't work, because generally when people reach out to you, they're not gathering information. They've already made up their mind and they want to persuade. They don't need any more information; they don't want any more information.
What do you think about the fact there will be three open seats on the commission in the upcoming elections?
It's bizarre. The good news is that there are some really good candidates — very competent, very capable candidates out there for all three of the open seats.
What are your thoughts about the direction the city is headed?
I think that when most people talk about growth and over-development, the place where that really impacts their lives the most, I believe, is traffic. I think traffic is what causes people to feel like the area is growing too fast.
In Ormond, we only have one east-west road, and it's four lanes. In my opinion, [Granada] will never be more than four lanes. Period. It's never going to be a six-lane road. You'd probably get me out of my wheelchair if somebody started talking about that because it would totally destroy the heart of Ormond Beach.
I value the quality of life of a four-lane road. A Hand Avenue extension, if that's ever going to get built, would help; it wouldn't cure. It's really not a full alternative to Granada, but like Airport Road, it's one of those circuitous ways to get around. People who don't like the traffic, they're gonna find alternative ways. It's going to take them an extra five or seven minutes to get to wherever they're going, and that's what they're going to do. I think that's what's going to have to happen.
The state of Florida is booming. Volusia County — we're going way slower than some other counties are. We're not growing anywhere near their growth rate, but we are growing faster than we were used to growing. And why is that? Well, in part because it's a great place to live. The secret is out. We've been discovered.
I think we have to manage it. We don't have the ability to shut it down altogether. So f people are asking for density increases, why? Why would we agree to that? Should we focus more on infill? When infill projects have come up, people have complained about some of them and I'm thinking like, "Well isn't this exactly what we're supposed to do?" Aren't we supposed to get more people into the core area? You've got a piece of vacant land, or you're going to redevelop something, then isn't that a good thing? Isn't that smart growth?
Any advice for people that will be on the future commission?
One thing I have learned is that it's almost never anywhere near as bad as people say it's going to be, and it's also almost never as good as people say it's going to be. So all the fear-mongering, all the naysayers that say, 'This is a terrible" — it never turns out to be that bad. And all the people that say, "This is panacea, the best thing ever" — it never turns out that good either. It's somewhere in between, and cooler minds prevailing is probably a good thing.
