Four to Carry, or Three? The June 18 Project Votes and the Bylaws' §4.6 Threshold
With six of seven members present, the board split one restriction-removal item into separate project votes; two were recorded as passing on three. The CRA statute and the bylaws both set the bar at a majority of the members present — four, with six there.
At the CRA's June 18, 2026 meeting, with six of seven board members present, the board split a single restriction-removal item, CRA-R-2026-17, into separate project votes. Two of them — lifting spending restrictions on the Senior and Wellness Center and on a six-home housing project — were recorded as carried on three votes in favor, two opposed, with one member abstaining.
Section 163.356(3)(b), Florida Statutes, and Bylaws §4.6 both let the board act by a majority of the members present, and both count members present, not members voting. With six present, a majority is four. The statute lets the bylaws set a higher bar, never a lower one — so Robert's Rules, which the bylaws make a fallback only "in the absence of any applicable procedure," cannot carry these votes on three. On the two project votes the text points to four; what is still open is what the agency will do about it.
What the record shows
At the CRA board meeting of June 18, 2026, six of the seven board members were present: Chair Critton, Vice Chair Thomas, and Directors Jordan, Greyhouse, Williams, and Mack. Director Randolph was absent. Director Greyhouse, appointed to the board two days earlier, abstained on every vote described here.1
The board's handling of CRA-R-2026-17 — an item that would have removed spending restrictions from several projects — moved through more than one vote. The resolution was on the consent agenda. The board first voted to move it into discussion: three in favor (Critton, Thomas, Jordan), two opposed (Williams, Mack), one abstention (Greyhouse). In discussion, the board decided against removing all the restrictions at once and instead took up each project separately.1
Two of those project votes were recorded as carried on three affirmative votes:
- The Senior and Wellness Center restriction lift — 3 in favor (Williams, Mack, Critton), 2 opposed (Jordan, Thomas), 1 abstention (Greyhouse).
- The six-home housing project restriction lift — 3 in favor (Williams, Mack, Critton), 2 opposed (Thomas, Jordan), 1 abstention (Greyhouse).
Two other project votes the same evening — the CDBG grant and Club Eaton restriction lifts — were recorded with four in favor. (A separate penalty-and-interest waiver, CRA-R-2026-25, was recorded as failing on two.)1
Across these votes the split changed, but the count did not. Three members voted to move the resolution into discussion; a different three voted to carry the two project lifts; only Chair Critton was among the three each time. The two project lifts are the substantive votes this finding examines. The vote to move the item into discussion is procedural — a distinction taken up below.
What the statute and bylaws require
The threshold for board action is set first by state law. Section 163.356(3)(b), Florida Statutes, which governs every community redevelopment agency, provides:
"A majority of the commissioners constitutes a quorum … Action may be taken by the agency upon a vote of a majority of the commissioners present, unless in any case the bylaws require a larger number."
Two things follow from that text. The measure is "a majority of the commissioners present" — present, not present and voting. And the bylaws may set the bar higher than that, never lower: the statute permits a "larger number," not a smaller one.2
The agency's bylaws restate the statute rather than departing from it. Section 4.6 provides:
"the TOECRA may act by a vote of a majority of the Board members present, unless otherwise provided by law or these Bylaws."
The words track the statute almost exactly. With six members present, a majority is four — under both.3
Two related bylaw provisions bear on the question. Section 4.7 gives each member one vote and bars proxy votes and absentee ballots:
"each Board member … one vote"
Section 4.9 ties the board's procedure to the Town Council's, with a fallback:
"conducted in accordance with the procedures approved and utilized by the Town Council," and "in the absence of any applicable procedure of the Town Council, the most recent Edition of Robert's Rules of Order, Revised, shall apply."
Robert's Rules, by the bylaws' own terms, fills gaps only "in the absence of any applicable procedure." Here the procedure is not absent: the statute and Section 4.6 both supply it.3
The text and the record
Documented fact set against the governing text. No legal conclusion is drawn here.
Set the rule beside the record. The statute and the bylaws let the board act by a majority of the members present. Six members were present. A majority of six is four. The Senior and Wellness Center and the six-home housing restriction lifts were each recorded as carried on three.
The abstention is where the question turns, and the governing words are specific. Both the statute and Section 4.6 count members "present," not members voting. Director Greyhouse was present — one of the six — and a member who is present but abstains does not reduce the number a majority requires. On the plain language, four affirmative votes were needed; three were recorded.
There is a contrary reading, and it should be stated plainly. Under Robert's Rules of Order, a motion can carry on a majority of those actually voting, with abstentions set aside; on that approach, three in favor and two opposed would carry. But that approach cannot govern here, for two reasons that compound. Section 4.9 adopts Robert's Rules only "in the absence of any applicable procedure," and the procedure is not absent — the statute and Section 4.6 speak directly to it. And the Robert's Rules count would set the bar below a majority of those present, which is the one thing the statute forbids: it allows the bylaws to require a "larger number" than a majority of those present, never a smaller one. A fallback parliamentary rule cannot do what the statute withholds.
On the two project votes, then, the stronger reading is not a close call: the text — statutory and local — points to four.
One step in the sequence carries a caveat the project votes do not: the vote to move CRA-R-2026-17 from the consent agenda into discussion. Adopting a restriction lift is unmistakably "action … taken by the agency" under the statute. Moving an item into discussion is procedural, and under common parliamentary practice a single member may ask for it with no vote at all. Because the board put that step to a vote and recorded it as carried on three, the same arithmetic appears there too — but an official could fairly answer that the move required no majority in the first place. That answer is not available for the two project votes that followed, which are adoptions, and which are the core of this finding.
What is still open
What remains open is not what the governing text says, but what the agency will do about it. The two project votes stand as recorded. Whether the board or its attorney revisits them — or applies a majority of the members present going forward — is unresolved on the public record.
A note on what this is and is not
This finding is about the counting rule, not the merits of the projects. The Senior and Wellness Center and the housing program may well be worth funding; the only question here is whether the threshold for board action was met on these two votes. The members voted openly and on the record.
And to be exact about the limit of this finding: it does not declare the votes void. That is not a resident's call, and it is not Cheatonville's. What a reader can do is compare the text with the record — the statute and the bylaws on one side, the recorded tallies on the other — and weigh how far apart they are. On the two project votes, they are far apart, and the text is not ambiguous about which number it names.
How this was sourced. The vote tallies are taken from the Town's published recording of the June 18, 2026 meeting. Statute text is quoted from the official Florida Statutes; bylaw text is quoted from the version reproduced in the Cheatonville Library.