The month before he died in 2013, Bud Asher, longtime Daytona Beach city commissioner and mayor from 1995 to 2003, called to talk about a list of topics, including community redevelopment areas, known by their initials as CRAs.
“I can’t believe the county wants to stop CRAs! Nothing would be happening on the beachside without CRAs!” he declared.
He was incredulous that there are people in the world who do not love CRAs and some of them were on the Volusia County Council.
“Now, you gotta write something about that!” he told me.
The county does not love CRAs because when good things happen in a CRA district, the county’s tax base sees no benefit. And when you have a bunch of these districts — as Volusia County does — it starts to choke the county’s flow of property tax money.