Council Takes Step Towards Approving E-Bike Usage On Beaches 931coast.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from 931coast.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
DELAND Nearly three years after Volusia County s medical examiner resigned in protest over working conditions in the overcrowded and understaffed morgue, the county has chosen the site for a new facility double the size.
The Volusia County Council voted unanimously Jan. 2 to put a new morgue on a 2.7-acre site along Tiger Bay Road west of the Emergency Operations Center and authorized spending $993,000 to design the facility.
That contract was awarded to Orlando architecture firm SchenkelShultz.
Chief Medical Examiner James Fulcher, hired in 2019, said the operational problems raised before he was hired have been resolved and the new facility will enable the county to seek accreditation from the National Association of Medical Examiners.
We are in for another season of arguing about beach driving Volusia County’s favorite political exercise.
This season was kicked off by the election of Jeff Brower as Volusia County Council chair. Brower is a staunch advocate for beach driving. In office for only a month, he snubbed a meeting at the Hard Rock because of the no-drive zone behind the hotel.
This is a topic everyone has an opinion about as witnessed by the collection of letters in Sunday’s News-Journal.
I have been covering this controversy since 1981, when I first reported on the Town of Ponce Inlet’s move to impose a beach toll along with a traffic-free zone. There was litigation and outrage, but other beachside cities soon moved to do the same thing beach tolls with traffic-free zones at the city limits.
DAYTONA BEACH Volusia County Council Chair Jeff Brower and the owner of the Hard Rock Hotel both reported a “frank” discussion on Thursday after emerging from an hour-long closed-door meeting about beach driving and the poles that limit it behind the hotel.
But did they come to any terms about beach driving? Brief statements after the meeting didn t indicate any agreement.
“We’re going to continue to talk; it was very, very frank,” said Brower, who pledged to make beach driving a priority after his November election win. “It was very cool, very friendly, but to the point.”
Almost the same words were used to describe the meeting by Abbas Abdulhussein, head of the company that owns the hotel, Asante Asset Management LLC. The company was previously known as Summit Hospitality Management Group.