The Ocala City Council held a work session on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, at 12:00 PM to review and discuss the structure, membership, and operations of numerous city boards and commissions. The discussion also covered proposed changes to Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) grant programs and advisory committee functions. Council members provided direction to staff on several items, with plans to return with ordinance changes and updated policies. One public comment was received.
Boards & Commissions Comprehensive Review: Council President Ire Bethea Sr. led the discussion, noting that the goal is to produce a comprehensive code edit covering all boards and commissions. Staff presented a policy document (Appendix A) with recommendations for each board.
CRA Advisory Committees and Grant Program Changes: Roberto (Economic Development Manager) presented proposed changes to align with Vision 2050. Key recommendations included:
Can you please make sure security knows good I have moved to the case? I hope they are insight. All right. Good good afternoon. Good afternoon. It is June. What did they do? 9th. At 12 noon. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Mr. Pete. Yes, sir. Thank you. So we have two items, and they're both related. One's the boards and commissions, as we told you, and then we'll talk about the CRAs at the end of that. To expedite this, I'm going to handle driving through this from my position on the on the dais, and the staff will come up as we need them. As we go through, the plan will be to edit the code, but this will be a comprehensive code edit. It'll take it'll take a little time to come back to the board to approve. We'll have to go through with the attorneys to make sure that we capture everything in the ordinance and all the references to each one of these commissions if we make any or boards if we make any changes to it. Our intents really to modify we have a policy. I laid it on the desk next to you on the left on the left side of your tablets, and it has appendix A on the top of a its policy, it's a policy and procedural guideline. Um that governs generally boards and commissions. Um it'll reference back to the place where those boards were created in the code. Um Mr. Sexton and our staff will oversee that. So getting into you and you'll have click through this, but you also have, and I apologize if I've already been put on notice about the the size two font that's on the front page of this. The rest of it you can read. I think it's not quite so small. But that page is small. So the the first one is the planning and zoning commission. Um two alternatives, or two alternates, I'm sorry. Jeez. Um the school board member would remain a non-voting member. The term's four years, it would stay that way. But what we are in the page is right behind planning and zoning are the Brownfield's advisory committee and the Board of Adjustment. We are proposing that we roll all of those into one board. Um and that they handle the administrative and quasi-judicial aspects of the Board of Adjustment, and that they handle the brown brownfields function when we we're in Brownfields. We will just we we'll have a language change in the code that uh establishes the brownfield functions as a part of planning and zoning or whatever we call the planning and zoning commission. Um, they handle all of our brownfield sites. Um they get public comment. We have at least two meetings per year when we have a brownfields when we when we're uh a brown field community. So you're saying you're gonna combine planning zoning, brown fields, and board of adjustment, yes, sir. You sure you want to do board of adjustment? Well, we're gonna that's to that's what the open discussion is about. Here's here's the thing. The board the Board of Adjustment meets infrequently, more due to lack of quorum, not like lack of quorum, but lack of items to consider. Um you know, they hear an authorized special exceptions and variances. They act as an appeals board when it's alleged that there's an error made by the building official in enforcement of the code. They also are authorized in one ten of the code to be the signed board of adjustment.