March 10, 2024
 
Hi Everyone,
 
I hope you all are doing well. With any luck, winter is behind us and we have a beautiful spring to look forward to. Your turnout at our commission meetings has been amazing, thank you all for supporting your community. Participation is essential to the health and well-being of our city and it’s having an impact. 

New Smyrna Beach Heritage Festival

The New Smyrna Beach Heritage Festival will be held on April 6, 2024. It looks like they will be holding the event on Sam’s Avenue and the surrounding parks. The Oak Hill Saints and Sinner’s Cemetery Group, spearheaded by Dru Ann Welch, will have a display set-up outlining all that has been accomplished and all they hope to accomplish in the future. Dru Ann and her crew have been doing a fantastic job cleaning and restoring these two historic cemeteries back to their rightful state. The effort put forth by this group should inspire us all and instill a sense of pride in our community.

The Oak Hill Museum will also have a display set up at this event. The museum is managed and maintained by the Oak Hill Historic Preservation Board which is headed up by Tanya Petraca. Tanya wants to remind the community that the University of Central Florida will be at this event offering a service to digitize old photos. The resulting digital images will be placed on a memory stick and returned to the owner along with the photo. Tanya encourages anyone with historic photos related to Oak Hill to take advantage of this valuable service then bring the digital images to the museum so they can be added to the collection and displayed. The Oak Hill Museum is located inside the VIA Hall at 126 East Halifax Avenue; right across the street from the Oak Hill Public Library. The easiest way to transfer your images to the museum is to contact Tanya and make arrangements. She can be reached by text message at (386) 547-5909 or by sending her an email at oakhill.mus.pb@gmail.com.

Oak Hill Community Garden

On April 6, 2024, the community garden will host an Earth Day Celebration. This event will be held at the community garden which is located at the intersection of Flamingo Road and West Halifax. The event will feature expert advice on different gardening techniques and a seed and plant giveaway.

Oak Hill Community Trust

The Oak Hill Community Trust will be hosting their annual Easter Celebration at the Nancy Cummings Park on Saturday, March 23, 2024. The event will run from 10:00 AM until noon. Everyone is invited to enjoy an Easter egg hunt. Participants will be divided into
three age groups. There will be free hot dogs for lunch and a bounce house for fun. Don’t miss out on this.

Nancy Cummings Park

Looks like some of the playground equipment in the park has been damaged to the point that it’s no longer safe to play on. The damaged equipment has been removed. At the last City Commission meeting, the Mayor suggested that the Administrator and Public Works Supervisor get bids to replace the equipment. It turns out that eight months ago, on August 7, 2023, the City Commission opened three sealed bids and voted unanimously to replace the equipment at a cost of $59,999. Click Here to view the minutes from that meeting and see the hi-lighted section on page 3. Click here to view the winning bid. Click here to view a video of this meeting.

This subject comes up at about the one-hour mark. The Public Works Supervisor tells the Mayor that we already have bids on playground equipment. It was asked if anyone had ordered the equipment the commission voted to fund, and in response, the Deputy administrator said that the mayor stated that we would go out for a grant. I don’t think the Mayor has the authority to override or veto what the commission approves funding for. Note that in the motion made and voted on pertaining to this issue, there is no mention of a grant as a source of funding.

Also, on the same subject, during the Commissioners non-agenda items segment (at about the 1 hour and 10-minute mark) the mayor instructs the City Administrator to get bids to repair the drainage ditch in the park. Click here to view the minutes from the November 28, 2022, City Commissioner’s meeting. On page two, in the hi-lighted section you will see where the commission unanimously voted to approve funding to have the county repair the drainage ditch in the park. That was nearly 16 months ago. Click here to view the estimate from the county. Although both projects received unanimous approval from the commission, neither of them was completed, (or even started) and do not appear to be included in the this year’s budget.

On Monday, March 11, 2024, there is a workshop scheduled to start at 4:00 PM. One of the items I hope is discussed by our accountant will be to explain the accounting procedure our city is currently using to track project funding that is approved by our commission and why it keeps failing like this. I urge you all to attend this workshop – that way we can all hear and understand how the status quo, they fight so hard to maintain, is working out for us.

Ditch Cleaning

The county is continuing to clean out our storm water ditches. This past week they continued to clear a stretch of ditch that runs from Lagoon Avenue to Halifax Avenue. It looks great and is certainly a welcome improvement. They also cleaned out the ditch on the south side of Canal Avenue however, the north side is full and not flowing.

The water on that side has nowhere to go because either there is no culvert running under Canal Avenue where it intersects with River Road or the culvert is collapsed or filled with sand. With Hurricane season approaching, hopefully, someone is planning to replace the failing culverts that run under Lagoon and Halifax Avenues and the one running under Canal Avenue. That way the water flowing through these nice clean ditches will have somewhere to go. A drainage system can only work when the entire system is functioning.

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Our City Commissioner’s meeting is Monday, March 11, 2024 at city hall. The time is 6:00 PM. Click here for the agenda pack.

Please come and let your voice be heard. Your presence and participation are how we hold our commission to account.

As always, it’s my pleasure to serve you, I appreciate your support. Please let me know what I can do to help. I’m here to represent you…

Thanks again,

Joe Catigano
Oak Hill City Commissioner
Seat 3