A Vote on Dispatch, and a Golf Course Offer That Expires Friday

The November 19 agenda asks Council to approve handing dispatch to the Sheriff’s Office, and to give direction on a $7.7 million golf course purchase whose seller-signed offer expires the next day.

PALM BAY, FL (The Palm Bayer) — The Palm Bay City Council meets Thursday, November 19, at 6:00 PM, and its biggest item is not a study. Council is asked to approve the agreements that hand the city’s police and fire dispatch operation to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, and let the City Manager sign them once benchmarks are met. The staff memo puts it plainly: the question is no longer whether to study regionalization further, but whether to approve the agreements and proceed.

The dispatch vote (Old Business 2)

The vote has three parts: approve an amendment to the city’s Tyler Technologies CAD/RMS contract adding the Palm Bay Police Department, approve the Law Enforcement and Fire Dispatch Services Interlocal Agreement with the Sheriff’s Office, and authorize the City Manager to execute both once the benchmarks are met.

Palm Bay now spends about $4 million a year running its Communications Center. The switch carries one-time costs of $347,480, split between a $70,000 transition reimbursement to the Sheriff’s Office and $277,480 to Tyler. After that, the Sheriff’s dispatch fee is waived for fiscal 2027, with the city’s equipment and consoles as the consideration, while Tyler costs $331,318. The bill runs $851,318 in fiscal 2028 and 2029, and $876,318 in fiscal 2030, a four-year total of $3,257,752. The agreement runs October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2030, either side can terminate for convenience on 180 days’ notice, and the transition is targeted for March or April 2027.

The packet projects the city saving $11,025,777 over the four years, including $1,470,590 in avoided fiscal 2030 software costs. Read that figure the way the packet labels it: “Scenario - Cost Savings (unrealized estimate).” It is the city’s own estimate, not an established result, and it assumes the current $4 million dispatch budget is fully avoided.

What the agreement does not contain is numbers on performance. There are no numerical response-time or answer-time commitments in it, only “industry standard” language. The Sheriff’s Office gets sole rule-making authority and complete operational control, and metrics are provided on request. The city proposes paying its 33 dispatchers $5,000 to stay through the cutover, plus $2,500 more if the Sheriff hires them by December 31, 2026. One packet quirk: the first $35,000 installment is dated on or before November 1, 2026, before the vote that would authorize it.

The golf course: direction only, against a Friday deadline (Old Business 6)

For the Majors Golf Course land, marketed as Eden at Bayside Lakes, the staff recommendation is that “Council to provide direction.” The packet holds a seller-signed purchase offer at $7,700,000 that expires the next day, November 20, 2026, unless both parties have signed and delivered it. The sellers, Joy, LLC and HDC Development, LLC, signed on November 11. The city’s buyer lines are blank.

The price sits at the seller’s number. The city’s appraisal (Tuttle-Armfield-Wagner) values it at $7,030,000 for 135.19 acres, effective May 22, 2026. The contract puts $100,000 into escrow, with the $7,600,000 balance wired at a closing on or before May 14, 2027, cash, no financing contingency, for about 134 acres of the 178-acre property. The brokerage is dual on its face: Scott Loveridge is both the seller’s and the buyer’s sales associate, Relentless Real Estate is both brokerages, and paragraph 23 has the city, as buyer, paying the 2 percent commission, $154,000.

The contract does carry protections for the city. Closing is contingent on Council approval and lawful appropriation of funds, with all deposits returned if either fails. An addendum keeps the deposit refundable through the due diligence period and the two 45-day extensions the seller grants; it becomes non-refundable only after the city accepts the property in writing, with all Council approvals obtained.

What the city would do with the land is mostly water: regional stormwater retention and treatment, a deep injection well, reclaimed water storage and dispersal, possible future water supply wells, a regional park of about 40 acres, and a loop trail. The memo flags what the city would inherit. Bayside Lakes residents, homeowners associations, and property owners associations may hold continuing rights in the property, and the packet calls for reviewing them. The seller reserves easements on the conveyed land for stormwater drainage and retention serving the part it keeps, and the “joint maintenance” contemplated for that easement area could become a city liability. Diligence also covers environmental assessment for historical fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide use and fuel storage contamination, plus deferred pond and drainage maintenance. One thing the memo does not do: it names no funding source for a $7.7 million purchase.

The history is prior-meeting record, not packet content. The city passed on the course around 2018 at about $2 million; Joy LLC acquired it in 2019; an Eden redevelopment once drew offers above $30 million for about 700 homes. On July 2, 2026, Council voted 5 to 0 to authorize negotiations inside an $8.5 million to $10 million ceiling, (Jaffe’s proposal). On August 6, the seller demanded $10 million, Council countered at the $7,030,000 appraisal, and eminent domain was discussed; the terms prohibit an eminent-domain waiver.

A Planning and Zoning appointment (Old Business 1)

Council fills the vacant Planning and Zoning Board at-large seat, the McNally seat, for a term through February 28, 2028. Four applicants get brief interviews before the vote, and the packet carries no staff ranking.

Jerradyn Farr-Saint Fleur has lived in Palm Bay for 18 years. She works as an accountant and teacher and works with the Healing Through Christ Foundation. She holds an A.A. in Business from EFSC, with accounting and public administration coursework at UCF, and she currently serves on the Infrastructure Advisory and Oversight Board.

William Aaron Rhodes has lived in Palm Bay for 44 years. He is a Firefighter and Assistant Chief of Logistics with the Orlando Fire Department, after about 10 years with the Palm Bay Fire Department before that. He runs Rhodes Construction and Property Services Inc. and sits on the Community Development Advisory Board. He holds a Master’s in Emergency Management from UCF, and he disclosed a 1996 misdemeanor DUI in Osceola County.

OBrian Parchment has lived in Palm Bay for about 3 years. He works as a data analyst at NCCI in Boca Raton and holds a Master’s from FAU. He formerly served on the Sustainability Advisory Board.

Glen Patrick Wirsch, who goes by “Solomon,” has lived in Palm Bay for 26 years. He is a consultant and student at Centurion Innovations. He studied organizational management at EFSC and earned an MBA from Michigan Ross, with training at Army Logistics University. He is an Army veteran and a Red Cross volunteer, and he has not previously served on a city board.

Building E, the Fred Poppe bridge, and two smaller items

Old Business 4 finishes Building E. The third-floor buildout costs $2,256,502 in total: D.E. Scorpio’s $1,659,820 construction bid, the low bid of seven, plus contingency, permits, furnishings, and IT. About 54 Public Works employees move from 1420 South Highland Avenue into the shell third floor, about 32 weeks from notice to proceed. Funding exhausts the city’s ARPA interest ($1,910,004); the balance splits among the General Fund, Stormwater, and Solid Waste reserves.

Old Business 5 is the Fred Poppe Regional Park bridge and roadway, a $6,000,000 project. CW Roberts won with a bid of $5,783,096.20 plus a 3.75 percent contingency; only two bids came in, against a $6.2 million engineer’s estimate. The bridge over the C7 Canal is $1,947,438.35 of the contract, and about 1,300 linear feet of new roadway ties the park to St. Johns Heritage Parkway, giving Fred Poppe a second entrance and exit. Parks Impact Fees fund it entirely: $4,178,224 allocated, $1,821,776 new. Construction starts in fall 2027, pending a St. Johns River Water Management District permit.

The $6,000,000 is 100 percent Parks Impact Fees. Amendment 3’s enrolled text protects six kinds of spending in Article VII, Section 9(a)(2): public safety, education, infrastructure, natural resources and flood control, debt service, and retirement benefits. Parks and recreation are not among them. The packet prices the entrance. It does not say how the operating and maintenance costs behind that entrance are paid if parks revenue falls under Amendment 3. That is the question in front of Council on Thursday: a capital vote now, for a park system whose operating future the packet leaves unaddressed.

Old Business 3, a discussion of upcoming projects and financial impacts, carries no packet substance to preview. Old Business 7 is a half acre at 1305 Elliott Street, next to Ais Trail Park and Turkey Creek. Owner Shane Downing asks $197,500 against a city appraisal of $150,000, for a parcel he bought in 2022 for $250,000. About 0.28 acres sit in the 100-year floodplain, leaving about 0.22 usable. It would seed the proposed Palm Bay Land Trust, funded by Park Impact Fees if a growth-benefit test verifies.

Agency seats (New Business 1)

The annual review of outside agency representatives has no pre-set slate. The assignments include Mayor Medina as delegate to the Space Coast League of Cities with Councilman Johnson as alternate; Councilmen Jaffe, Hammer, and Medina on the Transportation Planning Organization, Johnson as alternate; and Johnson on the Risk Management Committee and as liaison to the Community Development Advisory Board. The live question is whether Councilman Chandler Langevin picks up any of the roles.

Isla 2 Townhomes (Ordinance 2026-19, public hearing)

The night’s public hearing redraws the future land use map for 7.28 acres at the southeast corner of Treeland Boulevard and Treeland Apartment Boulevard, from Public/Semi-Public and Recreation and Open Space to High Density Residential, matching the RM-15 zoning already on the land. Treeland Apartments LLC proposes Isla 2, 76 three-story townhomes of about 1,740 square feet, with a dog park and a pavilion. The townhomes will be rentals: the applicant’s representative confirmed it at the June 26, 2025 neighborhood meeting, calling them “moderate income housing for the workforce” modeled on the adjacent Isla development, and the packet contains no plat or condominium documents. A prior 140-unit apartment plan on the site was denied in August 2024. The Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval 6 to 0 on the revised plan, with conditions including a right-in, right-out driveway, a southbound left-turn lane, a 12-foot shared-use path, and all mitigation complete before a certificate of occupancy.

The budget amendment, decoded (Ordinance 2026-43)

The fifth budget amendment carries one number built to alarm, and it should not. The $55,220,246 GO Bond entry is the reversal of an ERP conversion error, a duplicated transfer between funds, not new spending. The actual new money recognized is $3,531,590, almost all to the Fleet Replacement Fund, including a $3,274,165 fire apparatus transfer for Quint 15-260 and Engine 14-166, plus a $47,079 Brevard County PSAP grant awarded in September. A further $299,751 is savings moved between lines, and about $2.46 million is category reconciliations.