Five Sebastian council candidates face voters on growth, taxes and the lagoon

SEBASTIAN — Growth, the city budget and the Indian River Lagoon dominated a Friday night forum for five candidates seeking two seats on the Sebastian City Council. The room was full.

The forum, in the Tiffany Room at Capt. Hiram’s, was presented by the Sebastian River Area Chamber of Commerce, the Taxpayers Association of Indian River County and Sebastian Daily. Taxpayers Association President Lance Lunceford moderated. Candidates had not seen the questions ahead of time.

Two seats are at-large and nonpartisan. Each carries a two-year term. Voters inside the city limits will pick two of the five on Nov. 3. The seats are held by Council members Ed Dodd and Sherrie Matthews. Matthews is seeking another term. Dodd is not on the ballot. After the election, the five-member council chooses the mayor and vice mayor from its own members.

The full forum was recorded and is available from the Sebastian Daily YouTube channel and Facebook page. The recording runs about 73 minutes.

Mayor Fred Jones, Dodd, Council member Christopher Nunn and County Commissioner Laura Moss were in the audience.

Seated left to right were Robert Gable, Damien Gilliams, Richard Gillmor, Matthews and Deborah Shellenberger.

Gable, who said he has lived in Sebastian 15 years and raised two daughters here, told the crowd he had spent most of that time on the sidelines. Development is coming, he said, and the question is how the city handles it. He said he wants clean water, a working waterfront and the small-town feel he moved here for.

Gilliams, a former council member, was recalled by voters in 2020 after his arrest on perjury and Sunshine Law charges. A jury convicted him. Gilliams served jail time and he was ordered to pay the city $26,098.50 in restitution.

He used his opening on that case. He called the prosecution political, pointed people to a flyer on the table and talked about cost overruns on public-works work at the airport.

Gillmor, who said he previously served on the council about 10 years ago, argued the budget has grown faster than the city. He said it was $22.5 million when he left office and $50 million last year, a jump he put at 123.5%, while population rose 16%. He said the city has not taken care of property it already owns, pointing to Hurricane Harbor. He said it was allowed to fall into disrepair.

Matthews said she has lived in Indian River County a little more than 50 years and has been involved in the community for more than 40. She is raising a grandson here. On the budget figure, she said grant money inflates the total and that the operating budget is closer to $37 million. She said decisions still coming from Tallahassee and Washington are reason to stay on the course the council has set.

Shellenberger said she worked 23 years as a nurse and about 25 as a physician assistant. She cast herself as newer to the city and said that might be useful. She praised last year’s budget work for holding down the increase.

Gilliams said the city cannot land new business without the infrastructure to support it, starting with a cleaner lagoon. He said Sebastian should push the county for sewer money.

Matthews said she would like to see more family-owned shops, and that waterfront buildings should keep a fishing-village look.

Shellenberger talked about small manufacturing, more local restaurants and the same infrastructure problem. Gable said he goes to Vero Beach or farther north when he wants a mall, and that Sebastian should stick with family restaurants, bait shops, fish markets and boats.

Annexation split the panel on how, not whether, the city grows.

Gillmor said Sebastian has a character he does not want changed. He said commercial property along U.S. 1 and County Roads 512 and 510 can help pay the bills. Residential annexation, he said, does less of that. He would rather the city collect the taxes than leave the land in the county.

Matthews called her standard “evolve with grace.” She said she was speaking for herself. Annexation has to give something back for the long term, she said, and she will not support a deal that is not sustainable.

Shellenberger said annexation is the city’s chance to control growth and decide what goes on the land. She wants the extra tax base, housing people who work in Sebastian can afford, and a hard look at whether a project hurts the environment. “If you don’t grow, you die,” she said.

Gable said annexation puts the tax money in the city’s hands and lets the council set lot sizes and decide where the stormwater goes. He said he could support it if the annexation benefits the whole city, not one developer, and mentioned a small shopping area on the other side of County Road 510.

Gilliams said environmental groups, including the Audubon Society and Friends of the Sebastian River, belong at the table. He asked who in the room would refuse campaign money from developers, called for an annexation attorney and a master plan, and warned against packing eight to 10 units an acre onto ground where people are used to quarter-acre lots.

The council balanced this year’s budget in part by spending reserves so it could adopt a lower tax rate. Matthews, who voted for that, said she would do it again in order to keep money in residents’ pockets while Amendment 3 is unresolved. Shellenberger said reserves can be used when the city needs help getting through a year.

Gillmor disagreed. He said the city was dipping into savings, and a storm could wipe out what is left. He said the city would start the next year about $300,000 short and eventually raise taxes to refill the account. Gable said reserves are for hurricanes, stormwater and public-safety repairs, not daily bills. Gilliams said the same and told voters to read the city’s audited financial report, not just the budget.

Amendment 3, on the same Nov. 3 ballot, would raise the homestead exemption on non-school taxes and cut the cap on assessment growth for non-homestead property from 10% to 5%.

Matthews said she does not support it. Cities can chase grants, she said, but they still have to take care of the people who live here. Gable said passage would be hard on Sebastian. Law enforcement has to stay funded, he said, and street work would be the first thing pushed back. He does not want special assessments to fill the gap.

Gilliams supports the amendment. He said every department can spend less, pointed to the cost of city trucks and police-car wraps, and said the city can find other money. Gillmor said the city already proved it can shrink. In the years after the housing crash, he said, the workforce fell from 207 employees to about 150 and garbage still got picked up and parks still got mowed.

Shellenberger called the amendment a Trojan horse. She said the owner of a $300,000 house might save $1,400 to $1,800 the first year. The city, she said, could lose $2.7 million or $2.8 million, and the county would take a hit too. She told voters the ballot language bundles more than one change and that they should read it themselves. If a city cannot pay its bills, she said, the state can step in.

Indian River County, not the city, provides sewer service in Sebastian. A state push to move properties off septic tanks has a 2030 deadline. Several candidates said they sat through a recent county presentation that left residents unclear on the plan. Another meeting is set for Oct. 12.

Gable said he left a fairgrounds meeting angry. He said the county told people to organize their neighbors and figure it out, and that Sebastian should demand a plan and a funding source. He said he has heard sewer talk for 15 years.

Gilliams said he had to run a sewer line to his own business because none was there. A big hookup bill, he said, is more than people on fixed incomes can pay, and the city should ask legislators for more time. He raised a moratorium on permits where sewer is not available. He said state waterfront money is paying for an inventory of unconnected sections near the river, and he pointed to Vero Beach’s smaller-pipe system as something the county has not pursued.

Matthews urged residents to watch the Oct. 12 presentation, even if they cannot be there. She said she has called state representatives about wording changes that took effect July 1, 2024, and that those changes will decide what the city can do next.

Shellenberger said one county idea, a nitrogen-reducing tank for houses that cannot connect yet, runs on electricity and would fail in an outage. She does not want that used here. Grant money, she said, depends on income, and there is not much of it.

Gilliams said the inlet is Sebastian’s edge, and that spraying herbicides and pesticides in stormwater canals and on golf courses has to stop. Gillmor put the blame on septic waste, carried toward the lagoon by groundwater coming off the sand ridge. He said the city should get scientists on well tests before it picks a fix.

Matthews said the city has put in treatment filters, about nine of them, and can add more. Shellenberger wants seagrass and oyster reefs, cleared ditches before a wet El Niño season, and a stretch of the year when lawn chemicals are off limits.

Gable, who said he has fished these rivers for years, credited earlier councils for the oyster reefs and said more of that work depends on volunteers, not a big check. State drains near the waterfront, he said, still dump into the lagoon in a hard rain.

Matthews urged residents to watch the meetings before they repeat claims about votes the council has already taken. Mail ballots are going out, she said, and she asked voters for another term.

Shellenberger said most people she has talked with do not think the city is telling them what is coming.

Gable said he has watched the council for 15 years, good meetings and bad, and wants on a board he thinks already works together.

Gilliams told voters to pull minutes on the city website and see who voted for annexations and zoning changes after residents objected.

Gillmor said he made good calls and bad ones in his earlier term and can start without a learning curve. “I want to keep Sebastian Sebastian,” he said.