PALM BAY, FL (The Palm Bayer): Three days after the flood, the Palm Bay City Council met on Thursday, November 5, and the storm ran the meeting. Regular Meeting 2026-29 opened with a prayer for the families who lost someone, moved through the damage count and the first relief money, heard the city manager say plainly that Amendment 3 plus the city’s own charter cap ends in insolvency if nothing changes, and still got through the rest of its business: every motion of the night passed 5-0, and the Three Forks hearings were continued to January. The meeting agenda and packet are posted by the city.
All five members were present: Mayor Rob Medina, Deputy Mayor Mike Jaffe, and Councilmen Chandler Langevin, Kenny Johnson, and Mike Hammer, with City Manager Matthew Morton and City Attorney Patricia Smith.
The flood, as the city now counts it
The verified rainfall record stands apart from the numbers used at the dais, and readers should hold both clearly. Gauges measured 20.60 inches near Palm Bay and 24.10 inches near Malabar between the morning of November 1 and the night of November 2. City officials now describe the storm as roughly 30 inches of rain, about 25 of it in 12 hours. City Manager Matthew Morton told the council that a National Weather Service report calls it a one-in-1,000-year storm event; no such report is in the city’s published record, and we report the label as his statement, not as a documented finding.
Public Works Director Kevin Brinkley walked the council through the failure map. The Melbourne-Tillman canal system filled, then flowed backward. Four neighborhood canal crossings failed and remain closed: Caballero Boulevard, Ellington Street, Everglades Street, and Britain Boulevard, with drivers pushed onto Emerson Drive and DeGroodt Road. Emergency repairs on those four crossings alone run about $3 million, by his estimate. Fallon Boulevard, the only road into about 50 homes, washed out and was temporarily reopened by the contractor Cathcart within about a day; Port Malabar Boulevard was expected to be rebuilt and reopened within the week.
Fire Rescue’s high-water vehicles performed about 95 to 110 rescues, Brinkley said, answered 20 to 30 medical calls that standard apparatus could not reach, and searched about 70 stranded vehicles and structures. Across all responders, the rescue total stands above 160. Two Palm Bay residents, from the Bennett and Richards families, died in the flood; the mayor offered the city’s condolences from the dais.
The money damage is still being counted, but Morton gave the council the shape of it. Sixteen city vehicles were lost, and the $1.4 million fleet savings fund built up over two years is, in his words, essentially gone. The $2 million stabilization fund will go to the overtime of round-the-clock police and fire work. The Florin Pond baffle box, a key stormwater structure, was obliterated, at about $3 million to replace. Restoring the roads and bridges will take somewhere between $10 million and $15 million, he said, and if the failed crossings are not rebuilt, parts of the city could be cut off for six months or more. The storm is not yet a declared federal disaster, which is the trigger for FEMA reimbursement; the city believes the declaration is coming, and any reimbursement is likely one to four years away.
What the council directed: relief
Three actions came out of the reports by consensus, the council’s direction to staff without a formal vote:
Housing relief. At Councilman Johnson’s initiative, the council directed Morton and the city’s SHIP housing staff to activate the program’s Disaster Relief Assistance Strategy, redirecting about $1 million in unencumbered SHIP funds to low and moderate income homeowners and renters hit by the flood. Applications open at the city’s Friday sessions (below).
Emergency road money. The council authorized Morton to allocate emergency funds, checking with bond counsel on the GO Roads fund and maintenance reserves, for Fallon Boulevard, Port Malabar Boulevard, the Florin Pond baffle box, and the four failed canal crossings.
RV parking. Staff and the city attorney will bring an emergency ordinance to the November 19 meeting letting displaced residents park a recreational vehicle on their own property while their homes are repaired.
On Friday, November 6, the city holds two flood recovery sessions for residents: 9:00 to 11:00 AM at City Hall and 1:00 to 3:00 PM at the Tony Rosa Community Center. Staff will have the forms, the record-keeping guidance, and the SHIP applications, and will help residents get ready for the federal assistance process the city expects. Small business resources are on the Friday agenda as well.
Police Chief Jeff Spears addressed the complaints the city has received about towing and storage fees charged during the emergency. The department is still investigating, has asked the Florida Attorney General’s office for its opinion, and notes that the county sets most of those fees, though some charges attach specifically to tows under an emergency declaration. If the fees are price gouging, he said, the case could become a criminal one, and residents who already paid may have recourse.
Amendment 3: the 66 percent framing and the word “insolvency”
Councilman Johnson opened the fiscal discussion, and his framing was stark: he put Amendment 3, passed by Florida voters on Tuesday, at a 66 percent reduction in the city’s general fund revenues, and he posed the five questions he said the council, the citizens task force, and residents now have to answer together: what must the city provide, what can it legally and financially sustain, what services are residents prepared to eliminate entirely, what facilities can the city no longer operate, and what expectations must fundamentally change.
Morton did not soften it. On the dollars alone, he said, the city has enough to operate police, fire, and one-third of public works, and not enough to run even police and fire at current staffing once the legal, fleet, accounting, and human resources support they need is counted. Amendment 3 also adjusts with inflation, and Palm Bay’s charter caps how fast city revenue can grow. Put the two together, he said, and the outcome is written: “We will head towards insolvency if one of those inputs does not change. We need to change one of those inputs or we will be insolvent in a few years.”
He was not ready, two days after the vote and in the middle of flood response, to name what stops. He named the near-term efficiency moves already in motion instead: departmental consolidations, a parks and facilities merger worked out with the union, holding vacant positions unfilled in parks, facilities, and public works, charging external users the full cost of growth-related services, and hard trade-offs on basics, possibly including a pause in mowing rights-of-way and Malabar Road so crews and dollars go to potholes and traffic safety. He also said the state owes the first move: the special session state leaders promised, with real solutions. The flood has now consumed the reserves that would otherwise have cushioned the transition, which he said makes the next few weeks’ decisions urgent.
Three Forks: continued to January 7
The night’s expected main event never began. Because the Planning and Zoning Board’s November 4 meeting was cancelled, the applicant for the two Three Forks items, the final development plan (Case FD23-00013) and the development agreement (DA24-00002, first hearing), asked to continue both to the council’s January 7, 2027 meeting. The Planning and Zoning Board now takes the cases on December 2. The council approved the continuance 5-0 at the top of the meeting. Our Three Forks preview carries the full plan: 664 homes, an RV park, and about 50,000 square feet of commercial space on 124.56 acres off Malabar Road.
The consent agenda, approved 5-0 as one block
Minutes of Regular Meetings 2026-25, 2026-27, and 2026-28.
Ordinance 2026-43, fifth budget amendment (first reading): a year-end closeout amendment of $3,531,590. It moves $3,274,165 in fire apparatus funding from the general fund to the fleet replacement fund, recognizes a $47,079 county grant for the 911 dispatch answering point, corrects a $55,220,246 accounting error from the city’s software conversion at a net cost of zero, removes $2,293,286 in non-project funding from the Edge Switch Upgrade into the operating budget, and reallocates year-end savings, including $89,405 for procurement staffing help and $210,346 to the fleet fund.
Septic to sewer, Zone A: a $398,800 engineering design task order with Kimley-Horn to convert about 99 homes from septic systems to sanitary sewer, backed by $3,721,422 in state cost-share grant funding; Utilities Director Gabriel Bowden confirmed homeowner hookups are fully grant funded.
Fuel: Mansfield Oil’s purchase authority rises from $120,000 to $950,000. The lower cap, staff said, was an inadvertent figure that never matched the city’s actual fuel use.
The two public hearings
Ordinance 2026-42 (final reading), vacating part of the rear utility and drainage easement at Lot 6, Block 2343, Port Malabar Unit 44 for Tony and Alina Badillo, passed 5-0.
Emerald Lakes: the council approved, 5-0, the first amendment to the Emerald Lakes RAC PUD development agreement (DA26-00001) with Excess Land Investment, LLC, covering 1,106,700 square feet of non-residential development including a 400-room hotel and 652 multifamily units, a 700-foot St. Johns Heritage Parkway extension, and a battalion chief vehicle funded at the 200th residential certificate of occupancy. Those fire terms belong to Emerald Lakes, as our October 15 recap covered; they are not part of Three Forks.
A new face on the infrastructure board
After interviewing both applicants earlier in the evening, the council appointed William Aaron Rhodes, a City of Orlando firefighter and assistant chief of logistics who has lived in Palm Bay 44 years, to the at-large seat on the Infrastructure Advisory and Oversight Board left open by Jimmy Backus’s resignation. The vote was 5-0. The other applicant, Wilkena Luma, owner of Simply KE Financial and a 20-year resident, also answered questions; she spoke during the evening in support of the Emerald Lakes item as well.
From the public comment cards
The storm and Amendment 3 ran through public comment too. Bill Battin pointed at the same contrast this paper noted on election night: voters approved a property tax cut and renewed local taxes on the same ballot. Efrain Molina asked for municipal recall petition forms naming the city manager and later argued for cutting the police budget. Donald Bersing urged the council to keep Palm Bay’s own 911 dispatch rather than transfer it. Sheena Wallace questioned the non-emergency line, the timing of the Melbourne-Tillman canal gates, and the flood deaths, and called Emerald Lakes a planning Ponzi scheme. Dr. Allen Miles brought in a floated fiber-optic box lid from his yard and asked for a cease-and-desist order and a $100,000 bond from fiber contractors; Brinkley noted all right-of-way fiber work sits under a stop work order during the emergency declaration. Doug Hook urged the city to protect the green space that absorbs stormwater. Laura Revels pressed, again, on the Pineapple Cove Classical Academy traffic loop in Lockmar.
The meeting also carried its ceremonies: the Mayor’s Business Spotlight proclamation for Shapes Precision Manufacturing, and the National Native American Heritage Month proclamation accepted by the Native Rhythms Festival organizers. The Utilities Department’s South Regional Reclamation Facility update was withdrawn. Two board vacancies stand open, one on the Community Development Advisory Board and one at-large seat on the Planning and Zoning Board.
The mayor closed on the city manager. Morton had been on the west coast for his mother’s celebration of life when the storm hit; he flew a red-eye home, landed at 7:00 in the morning, and led the response from there, while ill. “Thank you for your sacrifice during this time,” Medina said, “and taking this event so seriously.”
This story is also published at The Palm Bayer.
