ORLANDO, Fla. — On Thursday, a group of mayors and attorneys from various cities and towns in Orange County sent a letter to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings stating their opposition to two ballot measures that would implement rural boundary measures.
What you need to know: A group of mayors and city leaders are opposing efforts to put two proposed ballot measures on the November ballot.
The petition was signed by mayors and city officials from Orlando, Apopka, Belle Isle, Eatonville, Edgewood, Oakland, Maitland, Winter Garden, Ocoee and Windermere.
Next, the Orange County Commission will decide whether to move forward with a measure that would limit development in rural areas.
They requested a meeting with senior county officials ahead of Tuesday’s meeting to see if there are ways they can work together to address urban development in Orange County.
The proposed amendments aim to protect rural land and regulate new commercial and residential development, and seek to provide a ballot title and ballot summary for the referendum.
For more than a year, Orange County’s Charter Review Commission (CRC) has been working on a proposal that would make it more difficult to approve urban-style projects on rural land.
A public hearing and vote on the matter is scheduled for Tuesday, July 30, in the Orange County Commission Chambers.
Meanwhile, officials who signed the letter have called for a meeting with senior county officials ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.
Comprised of concerned citizens like Eugene Stockard, the CRC has been working for years on a proposal to create a development boundary between urban and rural areas of Orange County.
In their proposed amendments, lawmakers provided a definition of what local boundaries should be and introduced an annexation clause that would give counties veto power over city efforts to annex land outside their boundaries.
The letter, addressed to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, was signed by mayors and city officials from Orlando, Apopka, Belle Isle, Eatonville, Edgewood, Oakland, Maitland, Winter Garden, Ocoee and the Town of Windermere.
In the letter, they openly stated their opposition to these proposals, which “may infringe on our constitutional and statutory right to self-governance.”
Eugene Stockard said the whole goal is to give community members a fair chance to participate in the games.
Stockard added that the goal of the proposal is to make cities and downtown areas better and more unified, especially for residents like him who grew up and lived in Florida for decades.
He says he has seen first-hand how farmland has been “destroyed” by development plans.
“I first moved here in the late ’70s, my parents moved here and we grew up in Winter Park because this was actually the last area to get developed to the east. There was nothing east of here,” Stockardo said.
He said he expects hundreds of area residents to attend Tuesday’s meeting and voice their support for the proposed amendments.
Finally, he recognizes that development projects in the city are inevitable and will happen no matter what.
“As residents who have lived here for decades, we feel like we need something that gives us control over our future, and a lot of people resent people coming in, annexing, developing, and then moving back to their own neighborhoods in other parts of the country,” Stockard said.
Spectrum News reached out to the mayor and other city officials who signed the letter to Demings, but none were available for comment.
Demings himself said he plans to speak out on the issue at Tuesday’s committee meeting.
