- December 4, 2025
Ormond Beach Mayor Jason Leslie. Photo by Brian McMillan
Ormond Beach Mayor Jason Leslie. Photo by Brian McMillan
Ormond Beach City Hall. Photo by Brian McMillan
Ormond Beach Mayor Jason Leslie. Photo by Brian McMillan
Ormond Beach City Hall. Photo by Brian McMillan
What is a mayor’s job? Ormond Beach Mayor Jason Leslie sees it this way: Provide relief, where possible, with taxes.
That’s why, he said, although he joined the unanimous vote to set the tentative tax rate at 10% higher than last year, he’s planning to advocate that the City Commission keep the tax rate the same as last year.
Leslie invited the Observer to his office on Monday, July 28, to talk about his ideas for saving money, and his thoughts on the state of the city. What follows is an edited transcript, for clarity and length.
CAN YOU EXPLAIN YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS ON VOTING FOR THE 10% INCREASE IN THE TENTATIVE TAX RATE?
I figured that this would be just our starting point. This is the highest it can be, and let's kind of work down from there. But even if I voted no, I was the last vote, anyway. So, it was going to pass no matter what. I figured that this would just be a good way to work as a legislative body saying, “Let's all collectively start on the same page here and then see where it ends."
THE BUDGET SUPPORTS FIRST RESPONDERS IN A BIG WAY. WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR YOU WHEN IT COMES TO FIRST RESPONDERS?
A big part of the additional millage is $2.8 million for first responders. That includes $1 million in final costs related to pay increases that took effect in 2024 (after the budget cycle). The collective bargaining agreement covering their pensions makes up the other $1.8 million, which will also be estimated till those contracts are finalized. Public Works is also included in that amount.
And this is one of the reasons why I think these contracts should come up way before budget season, so we know exactly what we're going to be spending on these agreements that we made.
WHERE IS THE BUDGET INCREASING?
The vehicle replacements are about $430,000 or so.
We have some additional costs with the animal shelter, Halifax Humane Society. We're at $115,000 now, and I think it's somewhere around a half of that number in the past. You know, so there's been an increase with that.
The commission has expressed enhancing the code enforcement to more of a proactive approach. That's $200,000. City staff hasn't really indicated what they're going to do with that yet.
They want to have a security system here at City Hall; that's just over $100,000.
They want to hire two new positions — two parks maintenance people and an IT analyst. That adds another $210,000.
But what happens with these things, though, is that if we hire these three new positions, now we're going to have those as a carry-over now year over year, right? That's going to go into next year's budget as well.
Sorry, I'm going into the weeds here a little bit with some of these smaller line items.
NO, THAT’S GOOD. I THINK READERS WOULD APPRECIATE GOING INTO THE WEEDS.
Just, where we are with the vehicles, OK? We have vehicles that we replace with the police, and we have vehicles that we replace with public works. And I've mentioned to staff a couple times and I mentioned at the workshop last week to the commission for the first time, about looking into the idea of leasing vehicles. You know, we purchase these vehicles outright and some of our expenses of a police car could be somewhere around $70,000 by the time you equip it and put all the stuff you need in it.
If we lease the vehicles, we're only paying for depreciation on them. So, if we decide to only hold on to them for three years, during that three-year course, they're going to be under warranty most of the time. There'll be less maintenance on them. And they'll be reliable, right?
And, you know, it could also lower litigation costs because we're self-insured right now as a city.
I think it'd be a nice reflection on the department, too, that we have all these nice new vehicles driving around.
Since I've been mayor, we have hired eight new police officers. And we had five in one graduating class, which is a very large class for one city to have five people.
THINKING ABOUT THE CITY’S RESERVES, HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU ABOUT STORMS?
I'm confident that we have a good response in place. We have good public safety, we have good public works. I mean, we did a great job with the debris clean-up last year.
We have good reserves now, but we don't want to make it any lower.
DO YOU GET A LOT OF EMAILS ABOUT CODE ENFORCEMENT? WHAT NEEDS TO BE IMPROVED THERE, AND IS IT WORTH THE EXTRA MONEY?
A lot of residents have asked for more of a pro approach on code enforcement.
But do we have to do that now? I mean can we put it up next year or maybe have staff come up with a better plan between now and then?
Staff is asking us to put $200,000 aside for a more pro approach, but we don't know what that means. Does that mean hiring more people? Does that mean spending more time?
I’d like to see a better plan on that.
SHOULD THE CITY INCREASE TAXES TO ENHANCE SECURITY AT CITY HALL?
There's been talk about enhancing the security here. But one of the things I was thinking about was that the county right now has a security guard next door at the library. Maybe there is an option of seeing if we can share some cost, and having them do some security over at City Hall here in the meantime?
We all have lockable doors that have special combinations for staff to get to enter into certain areas of the building. What the staff has recommended to us is that they want a more high-end uh camera system, and a key card door entry. I don't know if there's any real issues with doorways, but I know that the city manager has indicated that every time there’s a change in staff, they have to reprogram all the doors again, manually, where if they have an electronic system, it could be all done through a computer.
But, it is $105,000 that they were asking for.
PHILOSOPHICALLY, HOW IMPORTANT IS IT, TO YOU, TO CUT TAXES? IS IT OK TO RAISE TAXES SOMETIMES AT THE LOCAL LEVEL?
I don't feel too warm about the current tentative rate right now. I would have liked to have seen what each department in the city asked for and what the change was. So if there was just 3% added on from the year last year — what exactly were we spending it on?
I'm not saying that we have a DOGE problem here, but I just think that what happens sometimes is that when departments submit their budgets for the year, are we actually going through every line item to see: Do we really need this anymore? Do we really need that anymore?
Maybe a zero-based budgeting would have been nice: just to start from the ground up on each department. If we just cut back on 1% of everything in every department, that could be a big factor in what the current budget is now.
SO STAFF HAS BEEN WORKING ON THIS DURING THE SUMMER, AND THIS IS THEIR PROPOSED BUDGET. SO WOULD YOUR MESSAGE BE, RESPECTFULLY, GO BACK AND CUT MORE? WHAT MILLAGE RATE DO YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH?
I would like to see the millage be at the same as last year: 4.161.
Even with an increase, we would still have the second lowest millage rate in Volusia County. But with this tentative rate increase right now, it equates, for a home value at $235,000 after the Homestead Exemption, that would be an increase of $106.92 a year.
It doesn't sound like a lot of money, right? So, maybe for some people it’s like $8 and change a month. But with everything that's been going on, the cost of everything is going up — your home insurance, your car insurance, your groceries.
The only thing I can control, as far as anything in my position, and why I got elected — it was your taxes. And I would like to at least come back to the residents and say, "You know what? We didn't really change much or we didn't raise it that much."
When you go to the store, I mean, we see the price of these things that we used to pay a lot less for — and not too long ago. And those rising costs are being carried over into our city, too. We spend more money on gas, we spend more money on tires, brakes, we spend more money on benefits, our health insurance for the staff. All that stuff has gone up.
Keep in mind, too, that we are voted by U.S. News and World Report as one of the best cities to live in, in 2025. There's a cost that goes with that too, you know? I mean, if we didn't have any fire or any police or any nice parks, we would really fall off that rating pretty fast. So that's something else to keep in mind, and that's also what helps preserve our property values.
Our main priority as elected officials is public safety, right? And when you look at this year's budget, what's the major thing in that budget? Public safety.
But then there's concerns. And I think a lot of this comes from concerns about the federal government and some of the wasteful spending that happens. Now I'm not saying that Ormond Beach has any wasteful spending. But when people look at things that are happening at the national level, they tend to think that it trickles down to the local level. And they start thinking, “Well, what is happening in my local community?”
Meanwhile, if the federal government was to dissolve tomorrow, who would be here to provide these services that we need? Your local government, right?
These people are behind the scenes a lot of times. I mean, when you turn on the faucet every morning to brush your teeth or turn on that shower, those are the services that we're paying for. Or if we need a police officer, or we need a firefighter, these are all services that are being provided, that we rely on every day.
But we have to be fiscally responsible too.
So, I don't know what that final number is going to be for the millage rate, but I will say that I don't think that I'm comfortable with that whole thing. I think that we should have a little bit more of a conversation on these new positions that they want to hire. Can we delay the hiring on them? Maybe just have one parks maintenance person and maybe roll another one in later on. The IT analyst, what's the importance of having that right now? The city hall security, is there anything else we can do for security in the meantime? We do have police officers already on staff. Can they do more patrolling here?
As an elected official, I was voted in to represent the people and look after their best interests, and I'm going to continue going through this budget to make sure that everything is accounted for and it's money well spent, and that's what I'm going to continue doing before I make a final decision on where I'm going to vote with the final millage rate.
Currently, I'm not really that comfortable where it's at.
DANNY FLORIAN POSTED ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE: “HAS A LOCAL GOVERNMENT EVER CUT COST, EVER CUT BACK ON SOME SERVICES, OR JUST AUTOMATICALLY INCREASE TAXES EVERY TIME THEY WANT MORE MONEY?” DO YOU FEEL LIKE THAT’S A COMMON SENTIMENT?
I can understand the concerns. I've been there, too, as a resident, and this is how I got involved in this thing. We need somebody in here that can really look at these things and find out what's a need versus a want. Do we have too many wants on the table?
I've said it numerous times that public safety, that's our main goal, right? All these other things that we get involved in — we fund some nonprofit programs out there and things like that. But those aren't our main goal.
I came from the private sector. And in my business, if I don't have enough money coming in, I can't just tax people as a way to close the gap on my expenditures, right?
And the government is like, “Well, we don't have enough money, so we're just going to tax you. And if you don't pay it then we're just going to take your property." It's a crazy world that we live in, when it comes to that, right?
I'm sitting here in my office today, going through this binder here, of all these different things in our budget. I'm talking to staff, getting some questions answered. And I'll just go through everything I possibly can to figure out exactly what it is that we can do, what kind of scenario we can get in where we can try to do something to give people some kind of relief. You know?
If I can at least provide some kind of relief, I'm going to do it.
I want to really provide relief to them in some way, while still providing a high quality service.
I'm ready to work with the commission, work with staff, find some solutions where everyone can try to be happy.
