HOLLY HILL -- It's party-hearty tonight at the Second Street Farmers Market where a rum festival has been underwritten by $1,400 in CRA taxpayer monies.
The "Real McCoy Rum Festival runs from 4 to 8 p.m., featuring rum and seafood vendors, reggae and calypso entertainment. The guest attraction is the "Pepper Pots" Steel drum band.
"The CRA funding was for a mailing to let the citizens know we're having this rum event," City Manager Jim McCroskey said earlier this afternoon.
"The CRA funding was for a mailing to let the citizens know we're having this rum event," City Manager Jim McCroskey said earlier this afternoon.
When informed by Headline Surfer of the CRA funding for a street-party event, County Chair Jason Davis that is precisely why the County Council is looking at stricter regulations drafted by County Manager Jim Dinneen that he supports and believes will win passage.
"Right now we don't have any control and that's a big problem," Davis said.
The county plan is opposed by a group of municipal leaders led by New Smyrna Beach Mayor Adam Barringer, who is chairman of the Volusia County of Governments, and whose membership went on a letter-writing campaign last month in hopes of having Dinneen's plan watered down so that the municipalities can continue spending as they see fit.
in New Smyrna Beach, Barringer has led the charge for more than a million bucks in CRA monies to upgrade bars, including $60,000 for Trader's Pub on Flagler Avenue owned by his boyhood friend, Dave Fernandez.
Since winning election in 2009, Barringer and his fellow elected commissioners also have appropriated nearly half a million dollars on nighttime alcohol driven street parties, including fireworks, on Flagler Avenue for a half dozen bars where a large banner is displayed during the events with the wording, "The Party's on Flagler.