Surfside repeals 2024 single-family zoning rules in 3-2 vote

Surfside’s Town Commission voted 3-2 on Tuesday, Nov. 10, to repeal the single-family zoning rules a previous commission adopted in 2024, Florida Politics reported Thursday. The town had not posted minutes of the meeting as of Thursday evening, so the vote count rests on that report.

The repeal, on second reading, undoes Ordinance 2024-1785, which rewrote setbacks, yards, lot standards and accessory structures in the town’s H30A and H30B single-family districts and added floor area limits there. Mayor Shlomo Danzinger, Vice Mayor Dayana Benmergui and Commissioner David Weingot voted for it; Commissioners Andrea Travani and Gerardo Vildostegui voted no, according to the report.

Homeowners planning to build or expand in those districts now fall under the rules in effect before Oct. 8, 2024. The town attorney’s memo in the agenda packet says one side-setback provision the commission chose to keep at first reading on Oct. 13 stays in place. The town had already been applying the older rules while the repeal was pending, Florida Politics reported.

Before the vote, commissioners struck the phrase “or 10 feet minimum” from the ordinance after a resident who supported the repeal said it had been marked wrongly. A former commissioner and another resident spoke against returning to the older code, criticizing the size of new houses, the report said.

The 2024 rules came from the commission that served while Danzinger was out of office. Property owners filed claims against them under Florida’s Bert Harris Act, which lets owners seek compensation when a rule burdens their land, and in 2025 the town settled one by agreeing not to enforce the floor area limits on a Biscaya Drive lot, according to the report. Voters rejected floor area caps for the two districts in April 2025 and again in March 2026.

Danzinger defended the repeal by citing the lawsuits and the failed referendums, telling residents the 2024 code “is not what this town wants,” Florida Politics reported.

Red Sidewalks previewed the vote last week. The same meeting’s Sister Cities vote was reported Wednesday; results of the night’s other items, including new building permit fees, had not been posted.