The Venice City Council met on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, beginning at 9:00 AM in Council Chambers. The meeting included a recognition award, consent agenda, public hearings on zoning and comprehensive plan updates, new business, and multiple resolutions. Key decisions included approval of a zoning map amendment for a car wash (4-3), a charter amendment referendum for annual vice mayor selection (5-2), adoption of the annual Capital Improvement Schedule, and a comprehensive plan update. The council also formalized a city-sponsored Halloween parade and approved renaming the Centennial Park Gazebo.
All right. Good morning, and let's call this meeting to order and start with a roll call, Madam Clerk. Mr. Engle Key. Mrs. Frank. Here. Mr. Howard. Here. Mr. Smith. Mr. Weed. Here. Vice Mayor Bolt will be joining us virtually shortly. Mayor Pichoda. Here. All right. We can stand for the invocation, and today's pledge can be led by Mr. Weed. Lord Father. We pray for our mayor, city council, and all who serve our community. Lord, strengthen us with wisdom and grace for the work we do every day. May our duties be carried out with respect and care, keeping our hearts pure as we work towards the best interest of all residents. Amen. All right. And that's going to be the mayor's pillar of the community award. If I can invite Mr. Campbell to join me up front, and I'll be right down. All right. So the mayor's pillar of the community awards a totally apolitical award. Basically, the design is that those folks who are pillars of our community that hold this community up get recognized for that significant contribution. There's so many wonderful things I could say about Mr. Campbell. Besides being a veteran of the U.S. Army, having a very generous and and contributing family, him being a contributor himself, but the time and energy that they put into this community and make it such a wonderful place to live through their work with Habitat for Humanity, the SCF Foundation, there's just so many I could list that they have been a part of, and what that does inside of this community to make sure that our students have the ability to go to school, become better people, that our community has the ability to participate in different programs, events. But I know Mr. Campbell, it was it was actually kind of I was waiting for the fight because he doesn't like the recognition in public. So he was very generous to show up today to receive the award. Thank you. But um, but anyway, you know, it's just an honor and a pleasure again to be able to present this to him. He's more than deserving, and um thank you for everything that you do for us. I don't know whether you heard his last words, but he said politely, don't talk too long. But the truth is it's been my pleasure to help this community in the ways we can, and uh my family is participated in this because of course when I give away money, it's less for them when I'm gone, and so in that way it's sort of a secondary participation. But the truth of the matter is the organizations in this town that we have supported, have all had really excellent CEOs, very excellent staff members, and very conscientious uh people who run those various organizations. The principal ones were the music department of the state college of Florida, which is now arguably one of the finest music schools in the entire state. We have students from the major colleges and universities coming down to study music in the music department of the State College of Florida. The Venice Symphony is arguably the finest symphony orchestra in the entire state of Florida, led by a director who is nationally recognized as one of the up-and-coming young directors in the entire country. The Venice Theater is well known because it's been here a long time.