Wednesday night's City Commission meeting was a study in awkwardness for both the City Commission and its interim city manager. What should have been a work session on coming to consensus regarding a possible city manager contract, was deliberately changed by someone in City Hall into a special meeting where votes are possible.
NSBNEWS.net videos by Sera Frederick. The City Commission at an intense meeting Wednesday discusses the parameters of what it is willing to offer Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio in a salary contract to allow her to bcome permanent city manager.
Mayor Adam Barringer has been designated by the City Commission to "negotiate" a new contract with Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio at 3 p.m. today at City Hall commission chambers, 210 Sams Ave. New Smyrna Beach.
NSBNEWS.net photo by Sera Frederick. Former Mayor Sally Mackay sits in the back of the commission room chambers at City Hall with her husband, Richard Spangler, during Wednesday's special meeting of the City Commission for action on Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio's contract. Former Mayoral candidate Marilee Walters, shown here partially in the photo, was also in attendance as was new Mayor Adam Barringer.
NSBNEWS.net videos and photo by Sera Frederick. Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio and Mayor Adam Barringer discuss her contract in a negotiating session Friday at City Hall. Also in the photo is City Attorney Frank Gummey.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio was insistent on a beginning salary of $120,000, which was what she was hired at in July, as part of negotiations today on a permanent hiring, a demand that is $10,000 more than what the City Commission has proposed.
Contributing photos. These photos (at left and below) were e-mailed to NSBNEWS.net by Jeanette DiCara, showing the early Saturday morning sleet on the plants outside her Edgewater home. Overnight Saturday temperatures are expected to plunge to the coldest levels so far this year with lows in the teens, according to the National Weather Service in Melbourne.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- A casualty of the freezing rain Saturday was the weekend BalloonFest at New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport. The good news is there is no more freezing rain expected this weekend.
NSBNEWS.net photo by Henry Frederick. Many of us woke up Saturday morning to sleet on our motor vehicles, plants, decks, orange trees, etc.
It is so c-c-c-old out there. Day or night it doesn't matter.
NSBNEWS.net video by Sera Frederick. Seth Converse, a former server at Denny's restaurant on State Road 44 in New Smyrna Beach, performs his Tuesday Night Acoustic.
PONCE INLET -- Gary Comfort favors conversion of the town's desire to convert the remaining half its residences from septic to the more costly sewer service hook-up with nearby Port Orange, especially as a benefit for the environment, but like all causes, it comes down to money.
PONCE INLET -- Town police Detective Max Binz said the already overworked force has had to adjust to yet another responsibility in dealing with the recession: keeping an eye on more than two dozen foreclosed homes.
"It's something we've had to deal with, especially in the past year," said Binz, a 12-year veteran and the department's lone detective.
"That's an extra patrol we have to do, but everyone has had to tighten their belts and we're no different," Binz said. "Still Ponce Inlet remains a great place to live where residents pay more because of the quality of life."
Revis Gale Rhodes Jr. 78, of New Smyrna Beach, and Rumson, N.J., a former copyright and patent law
attorney who served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant and then graduated Chicago Kent
College of Law in 1960, died Friday, Jan. 8, 2010.
Kent A. Williams, 72, of New Smyrna Beach, a retired utilities company executive, who moved from Earleville, Maryland to Ormond Beach in 1995, then to New Smyrna Beach in 2003, and enjoyed family, fishing, boating and photography, died Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010.
Jacquelyn Spring Daly of West Roxbury, Mass., who grew up in New Smyrna Beach
