- April 9, 2026
On the heels of dealing with two major development-related lawsuits, Ormond Beach City Commissioners want an opportunity to have a say in hiring outside counsel for new litigation.
During his closing comments on Tuesday, April 7, City Commissioner Travis Sargent asked staff to look into the city ordinance on legal representation and bring back a consideration to add language concerning the use of lawyers outside of the city's legal department.
"I'm not trying to take away anything," Sargent said. "I'm just trying to add to our decision-making process."
Sargent cited similar ordinances by the City of Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach. Daytona's code states that its attorney must seek permission or receive direction from the commission to seek outside counsel. New Smyrna's is similar, with an additional clause that the commission would determine the outside counsel's compensation.
On March 24, the commission reluctantly approved a development order to construct 254 homes on the shuttered Tomoka Oaks golf course property amid a state and federal lawsuit, the latter of which was likely to be won by the developers, based on preliminary arguments. Losing the lawsuit would have cost the city millions and result in the possibility of more homes being built on the golf course.
Then a week later, the commission once again rejected a $2.3 million settlement offer in the ongoing Avalon Park dispute with the developer and the City of Daytona Beach. A suit has now been filed at the federal level, claiming the delay in development caused by the utility dispute (Ormond was designated as the water provider for the land in 2006) has caused Avalon Park a $50 million loss.
Abraham C. McKinnon, of Ormond Beach law firm McKinnon and McKinnon, has represented the city in both lawsuits.
Mayor Jason Leslie agreed with Sargent, saying he had been thinking about how the city uses outside counsel as well.
"We have a lot of decisions to make here sitting on the dais, right, and then some of these other decisions are made outside of our purview here," Leslie said. "... Things change. These ordinances that we have, things were probably done differently back then than they are now."
City Attorney Randy Hayes was absent at the April 7 meeting, with Deputy City Attorney Ann-Margret Emery filling in for the night. Emery told the commission that one thing they should keep in mind is that the city legal department deals with many different issues, not all of them major. Some of these require time-sensitive responses.
"We get a lot of trip-and-falls on sidewalks," she said. "We get various claims, a lot of them are frivolous, but we get them. You have to understand that we have like 20 days to respond to them. So when we get those kinds of cases, for us to come back to the City Commission, we could be outside the time to respond."
Sargent said he was OK with not seeing every matter. But what he wasn't OK with was "begging for legal for a deposition."
"I didn't know who was going to represent me in the deposition," he said. "Those are things I'm trying to prevent in the future because I'm very frustrated."
Sargent didn't disclose which lawsuit he was referring to during his closing comments. He was on the commission when officials denied a rezoning request for Tomoka Reserve in 2024. He also voted against rejecting the settlement agreement for Avalon Park.
"God forbid someone has to go through this again," Sargent said. "I want to set up the parameters to make it better."
Part of the orientation process for a new commission, he added, should include a review of all pending litigation matters so everyone is brought up to speed.
Commissioner Kristin Deaton said that the city may want attorneys with different approaches depending on the case they are litigating.
"One we might need more of a fighter on," Deaton said. "One we might just need somebody to mediate."
