Melbourne City Council Meetings — Melbourne, Florida

The Melbourne City Council holds its regular meetings on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m., according to the City of Melbourne, which notes that the schedule has some exceptions. Every regular meeting is open to the public. The council is the policy body for Brevard County's largest city: under the charter's Council-Manager form of government it passes laws and adopts the annual budget, and by majority vote it hires a City Manager to conduct the city's daily business and a City Attorney to protect its legal interests.

Melbourne's calendar listing for the City Council Meeting blocks out each session from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Its 2026 dates run February 10 and 24, March 10 and 24, April 14 and 28, May 12 and 26, a single June meeting on June 9, July 14 and 28, August 11 and 25, October 13 and 27, November 10 and 24, and a single December meeting on December 8. As of October 8, 2026, the next date shown is Tuesday, October 13, 2026.

The gaps follow a published rule. The Melbourne City Clerk's Run for City Council page states that the meeting schedule is usually adjusted in September to accommodate the budget public hearings and in June and December for summer and holiday travel, which is why the 2026 calendar shows one Tuesday meeting in each of those two months and none in September.

Meetings take place in the Council Chamber at Melbourne City Hall, 900 E. Strawbridge Ave. The City Council page states that meetings are video live-streamed, that recordings can be watched online after each meeting, and that all videos are closed-captioned. Recordings of regular Melbourne City Council meetings are also televised on Space Coast Government TV.

The broadcast setup changed in late 2025. The City of Melbourne says it recently switched to a new video streaming service, and that videos of City Council meetings held before November 25, 2025 are kept on a separate archive page. The change lines up with an item on the city's Budget page: among the fiscal year 2025 amendments, the October 14, 2025 meeting adopted Resolution No. 4386 for a Council Remote Broadcast System, Project No. 11525. Agendas are posted through the City Council Meeting Agendas portal linked from the Melbourne council pages, which runs on the CivicClerk platform.

Most of the meeting paperwork runs through one Melbourne office. The City Clerk's Office, on the fifth floor of City Hall, provides administrative support to the Mayor and City Council, drafts ordinances, resolutions and proclamations, attests contracts and other legal documents, and administers Melbourne's records management program, including training employees on the Sunshine Law and Public Records Law.

The city's meeting listing directs anyone with questions about the agenda, the minutes, or speaking before the City Council to the Office of the City Clerk, at [email protected] or 321-608-7220. The Melbourne web pages fetched for this page do not publish a per-speaker time limit or a speaker card procedure, and the agenda portal does not display without JavaScript, so the Clerk's Office is the documented point of contact for those details.

The About the City page describes when public input is built into the process: citizens may speak at public hearings, which are held before any new laws are approved and before the annual budget and property tax rate are finalized. For Melbourne ordinances, a second written step precedes the vote. The council's Business Impact Estimates page explains that Section 166.041(4), Florida Statutes, requires a Business Impact Estimate prior to adoption of all ordinances not specifically exempted, and it lists the current Melbourne estimates; on October 8, 2026 that list showed Ordinance No. 2026-30, a zoning text amendment request (TEXT2026-0009) on public use, with a first reading on August 25, 2026.

State law sets the minimum that applies to the Melbourne City Council as a municipal body. Section 286.0114 of the Florida Statutes provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on a proposition before a board or commission, including one of a municipal corporation, and adds that the opportunity need not occur at the same meeting at which the board or commission takes official action.

The council has seven seats: the Mayor and six Council Members, each serving four-year terms. All are elected by a citywide vote, and each Council Member represents one Melbourne district. As listed on the City Council page in October 2026, the members are Mayor Paul Alfrey; District 1 Council Member Marcus Smith; District 2 Council Member Mark LaRusso; District 3 Council Member David Neuman; District 4 Council Member Rachael Bassett; District 5 Council Member Mimi Hanley; and Vice Mayor and District 6 Council Member Julie Kennedy. The Mayor's page gives Alfrey's term as November 2024 to November 2028.

Two appointed officers work alongside the elected members. The City Manager's Office names Jenni Lamb as City Manager of the City of Melbourne, appointed by the City Council and responsible for preparing a budget for the Council's consideration. The City Clerk's Office names Kevin McKeown as City Clerk. Last verified: October 8, 2026, on the City of Melbourne website.

Serving on the Melbourne council carries modest pay. The Clerk's election page lists a mayoral salary of $10,350 per year plus a monthly expense allowance of $415, and a Council member salary of $7,475 per year plus $255 a month. Candidates must have lived in the city for one year, and district candidates must have lived in their district for at least six months before qualifying; neither a Council member nor the Mayor may serve more than two complete consecutive terms.

Budget work runs through the regular Tuesday meetings for much of the year and then moves to dedicated sessions. The city's Amendment 3 page records that during the June 9, 2026 City Council meeting, staff presented the revenue impact of the proposed state property tax amendment, with the discussion on Item 17 starting at 1:28:30 in the video. A City Council Budget Workshop Meeting followed on July 29 at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, and the FY2027 budget and millage rate were then taken up at the First Budget Public Hearing on September 9 and the Second Budget Public Hearing on September 23.

The Melbourne Budget page explains that City Council adopts the budget in September after two public hearings, held pursuant to Florida Statute, which provide an opportunity for public comment. Changes after adoption also come through the council table: portions of the budget may be amended during the fiscal year through formal resolutions during Council meetings. The 2026 record includes Resolution No. 4420, the 2nd Quarter Budget Review, dated June 9, 2026, and Resolution No. 4443, the 3rd Quarter Budget Review, dated September 23, 2026.

The same seven members also sit as the city's redevelopment board. According to the Community Redevelopment Areas page, the Melbourne City Council serves as the Community Redevelopment Agency for the Melbourne Downtown CRA and the Olde Eau Gallie Riverfront CRA, so the meeting schedule for the Community Redevelopment Agencies mirrors the City Council meeting schedule, although CRA business may not appear on every agenda. Volunteer advisory committees for each district, the Melbourne Downtown Redevelopment Committee and the Olde Eau Gallie Riverfront CRA Advisory Committee, review projects first, and their meetings are open to the public.

Below the council sits a layer of appointed citizen boards. The Municipal Boards page counts approximately 100 volunteers on 13 standing boards and committees, ranging from code enforcement to affordable housing to energy efficiency in city operations, and notes that most provide recommendations to the City Council while some make final decisions. The Melbourne City Council appoints members by majority vote, and the Clerk's Office recruits applicants, processes applications and trains new board members.