Month: December 2021

The problem with narratives is that they don’t reflect reality. Making city policy based on narratives is unwise as it wastes human and financial capital, while also having significant opportunity cost. Our current commission is more interested in narratives than governance. I understood we had a problem when shortly after their election in March 2020, two members of the Winter Park City Commission sent city wide emails expressing empathy for the “victims of racism and police violence” in reaction to the national media narrative about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While empathy is nice, these commissioners used their…

Please see earlier posts about the redo of the Orange Avenue Overlay (OAO) codes. Well, they are almost done redoing the Orange Avenue Overlay (OAO) codes after almost two years of tortuous detailed consideration by five amateur city planners otherwise known as the Winter Park City Commission. (Oh Pete, can’t you be nice?) They consumed nearly two years of our planning department’s manpower on this as well. Keep in mind there is no audience. No private interests have come forward to invest within the OAO area exactly because the new codes are not worth investing in. The commission endlessly nit…