The Venice City Council met on October 28, 2025, at 9:00 AM in Council Chambers. The meeting included recognitions, public comments, a presentation on the Flamingo Ditch Feasibility Study, several public hearings, and routine business. Key actions included the swearing-in of two promoted officers, approval of a drainage easement purchase, adoption of zoning and code amendments, and the reduction of a recyclable fee surcharge.
Good morning, everyone. All right. We'll go ahead and get started and call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk, if I could get a roll call, please. Mr. Engelkey. Here. Mrs. Frank. Here. Mr. Howard. Here. Mr. Smith. Mr. Weed. Here. Vice Mayor Bolt. Here. Mayor Pichota. Here. All right. We're going to go ahead and start this morning off. I'm I'm sure many of you have heard. Unfortunately, we lost a member of our utilities team. Mr. Doug Merseck passed away unexpectedly, so I'd like to take a quick moment of silence if we could. And then, Madam Clerk, if you could start us with the invocation. Today's pledge will be led by Mr. Howard. Our father, we pray for this session of the Venice City Council. Bless those who are meeting here today with wisdom to guide their discussions and decisions for the common good of our residents, friends, and neighbors. In your name we pray. Amen. And to the Republicans, one is nation under individual with liberty and justice for let us get started with the recognition piece of this morning. We have some exciting things to do today. We will start with the promotion of Master Police Officer Benjamin Neff, uh promoting him to sergeant. If I could get Deputy Clerk Barcia, Chief Liesen Ring, Mr. Neff, and your uh family if you guys want to come forward, and we will do that process first. Ben, could you uh introduce your family here for us? It's my lovely wife Aisha, uh, the babies Onyx, my daughter Olivia, and my son Orin. That's great. And uh Ben's been with us for about twelve years, so I think Olivia was probably just born, maybe a few months old when you started. So uh your family's kind of grown up along with you and with your career. It's awesome to see. Um for and during that 12 years, Ben has served with us as a field training officer, uh, which trains our new recruits, very important position. He's helped kind of organize that program the last couple years. Um he served in the Detective Bureau for a little over four years, and most recently he's been an acting sergeant for this entire year. So he's already uh well experienced and during that time certainly earned the respect of his peers and his supervisors.