The Palm Bayer

Palm Bay, FL -- The Planning and Zoning Board spent nearly two hours Wednesday night on a single question that now hangs over every large development in the city: can Palm Bay deliver police, fire, and school capacity alongside the homes it keeps approving? The board sent Lennar’s Everlands West to City Council with a recommendation of approval, but only after a fractured vote that exposed exactly...

Palm Bay, FL -- Brevard County will hold three days of free tire disposal for residents April 16, 17, and 18, 2026. Each household can drop off up to 24 tires at no cost. The program is a direct response to a public health concern: discarded tires collect rainwater, and standing water is where mosquitoes breed. In a county that led Florida in locally-acquired dengue cases last year, that is not a...

Palm Bay, FL -- The third of four public feedback workshops for the Phase 2 Land Development Code update is scheduled for April 8, 2026 at 4:00 PM at City Hall. The topic is Community Development. Residents can attend in person or submit written comments to landdevelopmentweb@palmbayfl.gov. The Palm Bayer examined growth management provisions in six Florida cities comparable to Palm Bay. The revie...

Palm Bay, FL -- Colie Lee Daniel, 28, of Indialantic was a registered sex offender under Florida law. His 2018 conviction was for lewd or lascivious battery on a victim between 12 and 15 years old. When he was convicted, Lucas Sander Jones, the 19-year-old now charged in connection with his death, was 12 years old. Both men were from Indialantic. On March 28, 2026, Daniel’s remains were found insi...

Palm Bay, FL -- Palm Bay has 130 full-time positions sitting empty. That is not a staffing glitch. It is a symptom. And the symptom has a number attached to it: $23,000. That is roughly how far the city’s median employee salary falls short of the income needed to buy the median-priced home here. The city pays its workers. The workers just cannot afford to live where they work. This is a math probl...

Palm Bay, FL -- The City of Palm Bay will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Fire Station 7 on April 14 at 10:00 AM at 2144 Palm Bay Road. Residents and media are welcome to attend. The opening marks the end of a multi-year public safety gap in the city’s northeast quadrant. That corner of Palm Bay had been without a dedicated fire station since the former Fire Station 1 was demolished in...

Palm Bay, FL -- A Vero Beach ranch company has filed an environmental permit application to build roughly one mile of the St. Johns Heritage Parkway through its 1,346-acre property in southwest Brevard County. The move is the first concrete public step toward a 2,000-plus-home development on land that sits outside Palm Bay’s city limits but remains legally entitled to Palm Bay water and sewer serv...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- Thursday’s Regular Council Meeting carries the most significant administrative restructuring City Manager Matthew Morton has proposed since taking office in spring 2025. Three ordinances on final reading would rename the Community and Economic Development Department, strip it of its housing functions, and hand those programs to Growth Management. The same age...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- Wednesday’s Planning and Zoning Board meeting carries an unusual combination on its agenda. The city is bringing forward a comprehensive plan amendment to formally adopt measurable fire and police response standards for the first time. The same night, it is asking the board to recommend approval of a 1,198-acre development at the northwest intersection of St....

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- Home values here have fallen more than 3.5% over the past year, rents are essentially flat, and the city’s overall cost of living runs 6.2% below the national average. For anyone looking to buy or rent in Palm Bay right now, the numbers are the most favorable they’ve been in several years. The complication is wages. Local earners trail the national average by...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- City Manager Matthew Morton will host Coffee with the City Manager on Tuesday, March 31, from 7:30 to 8:30 AM at Palm Bay City Hall, 120 Malabar Road SE. The city has not announced a specific topic for this session, according to Public Information Officer Christina Born. That is actually good news for residents who want to ask about things that matter to them...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- On April 2, 2026, Police Chief Mario Augello will walk out of the Palm Bay Police Department for the last time as its chief. He joined the department in 2000, a U.S. Army veteran looking for a second career in law enforcement. He retires 25 years later having served as patrol officer, crime suppression unit member, SWAT commander, Deputy Chief, and finally Ch...

LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE: Palm Bay, FL -- Florida ranks first in the nation for drowning deaths among children ages 1 to 4. Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for that age group in this state. Research shows formal swim lessons cut drowning risk by 88 percent. Registration for spring swim lessons at the Palm Bay Aquatic Center opens Monday, April 6 at 9:00 AM. Spots fill within hou...

LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE: Palm Bay, FL -- Council Meeting 2026-10 packed a full agenda on March 19, 2026, producing one headline result that drew a packed room: a 5-0 vote to deny the Lotus Palm Bay development, a 1,350-unit mixed-use project that had been in the pipeline since 2022. The rejection came after Deputy Chief Jeff Spears of the Palm Bay Police Department told council that priority-two re...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- Two of the nation’s largest homebuilders sold $90 million worth of homes in northwest Palm Bay over the past 12 months while simultaneously locking down finished lots for thousands more. Brevard County Clerk records show Lennar Corporation and NVR Inc. (parent of Ryan Homes) recorded 234 home sales and 42 lot acquisition tranches across five subdivisions in t...

Listen to this Article: Palm Bay, FL -- The city’s new monthly block party finally gets its moment. Treats, Beats & Eats takes over the City Hall plaza this Friday, March 20, from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Free admission. Free parking. The series was supposed to launch February 27, but severe weather forced a cancellation just an hour before showtime. March 20 is the real debut. What to Expect The city...

Palm Bay, FL -- The city’s Parks & Recreation department is hosting a free screening of “Jaws” at the Palm Bay Aquatic Center on Saturday, March 28. Attendees can float in the pool while watching the 1975 classic projected right from the water. No ticket required. No admission fee. First come, first served. 📅 Saturday, March 28, 2026 📍 Palm Bay Aquatic Center, 420 Community College Pkwy SE 🏊 Op...

LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE: Palm Bay, FL -- Brevard County launched a free digital library card program on March 16, 2026, letting any county resident 18 or older get immediate online access to the library system without visiting a branch. No trip required. No waiting. The card is free, valid for a year, and works the same day you apply. If you already hold a physical library card, you already have ac...

Listen to this article: Palm Bay, FL -- Starting March 26, the eastbound outside lane on Port Malabar Boulevard will close between Clearmont Street and Bianca Drive. It stays closed through October 30. That is 218 days. If you drive that corridor daily, plan now. The city posted five traffic advisories over three days this week. Most are short-term FPL utility work. One is not. Port Malabar Blvd:...

Listen to this article: Palm Bay, FL -- Marlys Mae Bakke Sather, 56, left her job at Harris Corporation during her lunch break on September 5, 1990, and never came back. She was found later that afternoon bound, beaten, and burned in her home at 1340 Jarvis Street NW. Her next-door neighbor, Chadwick Scott Willacy, 22, had killed her. He has been on death row for 34 years. Governor Ron DeSantis si...

Listen to this Article: Palm Bay, FL -- The Malabar Road Bridge goes back under construction starting Monday, March 16. Brevard County Public Works has contracted RUSH Construction, Inc. to complete repairs on the bridge, which was previously damaged by a vehicle. Drivers should expect intermittent single-lane closures in both directions between Bending Branch Lane and Bavarian Avenue . One travel...

Listen to this Article: Palm Bay, FL -- The Palm Bay City Council meets Thursday, March 19 at 6:00 PM at City Hall for its regular meeting. Four interlinked votes on the Lotis Palm Bay development dominate the public hearings portion of the agenda, but the night also includes a contested church settlement, three ordinances reorganizing city departments, and a 112,500 small business agreement that...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- This morning, The Palm Bayer reported that the federal lawsuit filed by the estate of Jeffery W. Pedersen against the City of Palm Bay settled with the terms sealed. We were wrong. The document that proves it was sitting in the city attorney’s office the whole time. After publication, the city attorney’s office provided The Palm Bayer with the settlement agre...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- The federal lawsuit filed by the estate of Jeffery W. Pedersen against the City of Palm Bay has been dismissed with prejudice, closing a case that began with a 2020 incident in which police officers tased and arrested a man in mental health crisis instead of taking him to the hospital. Pedersen went into cardiac arrest after being pepper-sprayed in handcuffs...

Listen to this article Palm Bay, FL -- The City of Palm Bay holds its second Land Development Code feedback workshop Tuesday, March 17, at 4:00 PM at City Hall. The topic is Infrastructure and Environmental. That covers the rules that decide how new development connects to roads, water, sewer, and stormwater systems, and how the city protects land that shouldn’t be paved over in the first place. T...