- December 4, 2025
When Ormond Beach City Commissioner Travis Sargent first ran to represent Zone 2 about three years now, he sent out a survey to residents on changes they'd like to see.
The number one response, he said, was a more proactive code enforcement. The 2025-2026 fiscal year budget has $200,000 set aside to do just that.
"We need to have a workshop and really define what we want our code enforcement to focus on," Sargent said.
The Ormond Beach Observer recently sat down with Sargent to chat about projects, the FDOT changes in downtown, the budget and his ideas for a new nonprofit and a Technology Advisory Board.
Tell me about the Technology Advisory Board.
Commissioner Tolland, Briley, the mayor, and myself, were at the Florida League conference last weekend, and the city of Altamonte Springs received an award on technology, which reinforces what I've been pushing — to start a technology board.
The reason why I want to do a Technology Advisory Board is so they can advise the commission, obviously, on what they feel will help the city operate more efficiently. And one thing that [Altamonte Springs] implemented was with their permitting department. It went from taking planners roughly three weeks to review plans down to five minutes.
There's also municipalities that are using AI for infrastructure, so they can predict when pipes are going to burst or when things need to be replaced ahead of schedule, if you will, versus waiting for that pipe to burst and having an emergency repair. You pay a lot less if you know of the project and you bid it out versus a last minute repair.
There's also AI that you can use for road closures.
If you have it on Google Maps or anything, it's going to automatically alert you of those things.
I just think that we need to embrace technology. It's here. I know a lot of people are afraid of AI, and a lot of people don't want it to change, but I think when AI is used properly, you can create the efficiencies and reduce your taxes, and that's what I'm looking at: How can we be more efficient and not cost our taxpayers money to create these efficiencies?
You were a big proponent of live streaming City Commission meetings. Any update on when that might come live?
When I first ran, my first initiative was to upgrade all the technology within the city.
We had to rewire a lot of the fire stations, upgrade technology at City Hall with new smart TVs, cameras, we're getting an updated website that should be going live soon, and that website is also connected with AI, so it's going to have a live bot on there at some point where you can ask it questions and it will give you real-time answers without you having to search the whole website for it — another efficiency, another ease of use for our residents.
We upgraded the City [Commission] chambers to new TVs, new cameras and a new sound systems so you can actually hear, and to answer your question, I think we're going live very soon. I know there's some technology things that have to be worked out, but all the technology is installed. We just need to work out the internal kinks, if you will, on how to stream it live in a better fashion.
Looking at code enforcement issues in your district, what would you say are the top resident concerns?
Pools on houses that don't have a proper fence around them, or the screen enclosures may be ripped or torn. Storage containers that are out front or on the side that are visible that have been there for an extended period of time. Commercial vehicles that are parked for long periods of time.
I'm going to be starting a nonprofit. If people don't have the ability to correct their violations, if you will, I would like to be able to create that sense of community where people can give back and give a hand up versus a hand-out.
Some people might just not be able to to put their fence back up. Maybe it's a screw or two. Maybe their yard needs to be mowed, whatever it may be. If we have students that need, for graduation, community service hours, or if we have someone that maybe got in a little bit of trouble and needs community service hours, I'll be able to help give them hours by also giving back to the community and clean up our community. We have a lot of residents that really want to work together.
So have you been thinking about this nonprofit for a while?
I have, and I'm working with some legal just to figure out the terms and how we can get it operating. Hopefully, within the next month or so, we can go live. I want to get it going so when code enforcement does get up and running, they'll have a resource to give these people an option.
I want to be very clear on that — for code enforcement, I do not want people to go out and just get ticketed. That's not the purpose this. The purpose of this is we have rules and regulations that need to be followed, and that's all. We need to work together and respect each other.
Tell me a little bit about what the process was like to work with FDOT to bring the city's concerns about the chicanes and curb extensions that have now been removed.
The credit needs to be given to our City Manager Joyce Shanahan and our transportation consultant, Maryam Ghyabi. This goes to show you by having good relationships, working relationships, with all parties ... how those relationships pay off to get things completed.
Everything that the city has asked for, they have made right and I think that says a lot about our partnership and our relationship with everyone involved with FDOT. They've made mistakes, and hopefully when they go to the next community, they realize that, "OK, maybe we need to look at our templates a little bit more." It's not a one-size-fits-all for every community, but I think that they've done an amazing job with making things correct, and I think that's the most important thing.
In the recent legislative session, they passed a bill about sunsetting CRAs. How do you expect that will impact downtown Ormond's CRA?
I think our downtown CRA is healthy, and I think our CRA in Ormond Beach is an example that everyone in the state should use of how a CRA should operate.
You had some municipalities in the state of Florida that were using the CRA money to do parades. Our CRA money — if you looked at downtown 15, 17 years ago — looks nothing like it does right now. I think that shows that the CRA has paid off to do what they were supposed to do: Take a blighted area and make it what it is today.
Some CRA money was used for Cassen Park as well, which, as you can see, is an amazing park that's finally finished for our residents.
A lot of residents are upset about the proposed tax increase. During the workshop, you said you examined the budget line item by item. Are there more cuts that can be made?
I have not seen any. In order to cut — to get flat or to rollback — we would have to cut Leisure Services, we would have to cut somewhere with our public safety, police and fire, Public Works department.
It's important to look at where we came from to where we are today. If you look back five years, we had a police department that had 20-plus vacancies. Retention was not very good. We had our baseball fields for our residents — had big lips on the infield. Kids getting hurt. They weren't being maintained properly because there was no money.
That's when Commissioner Tolland proposed a dedicated millage rate for Leisure Services, so that there is money there to fix the baseball fields. When you look at our baseball fields now, they're in great shape. They've been redone. We were able to get ECHO grants to put LED lights at the quads on Airport Road. Then you look at what Commissioner Selby –back five, six years ago — did a dedicated millage rate for the police and fire police. So I think if we want to get rid of the Leisure Services, get rid of the police and fire dedicated millage rate, that would probably get us down to flat or rollback.
But I think that's a question that we have to ask ourselves: Do we want to go back or do we want to keep moving forward? And our residents moved here because they like the the services that are being provided to them.
Even with these increases ... we will still be the second lowest tax rate out of 16 municipalities in Volusia County for all the service that we provide the residents.
The state of Florida put out a "How to DOGE Yourself" and it's a 13-page document on how we can go through and implement what the state of Florida, their Doge program — we can look at it. I ask that we give this document to our Budget Advisory Board so they can start going through everything and letting us know if there's anything that we do need to look at.
If you could describe the state of the city in one word, what word would you use?
I think we are at an exciting point of the city.
What I'm excited about and what I think the community should be excited about is we're real close to hosting some baseball tournaments for travel leagues on the fields that five, seven years ago were not very good to play on, and now we have kids that are gonna be coming from all over — 20, 30 teams to come participate in tournaments at our baseball fields. That's exciting to me, to know that our parks and recreation are at that level where people want to come and enjoy them.
Our beach. People come to the beach and enjoy that, and visit Andy Romano Park, That's a park that the residents taxed themselves to build. They wanted it. I'm excited to get that reopened with the new seawall and everything that's coming from the hurricane damage.
I think we're in great times, and I think Ormond Beach is just a great place to live. Onward and upward.
