Having served over 50 years as a fiduciary, my greatest disappointment as a Winter Park resident is how little interest our voters have in how our city is run. Did you know almost all spending and policy issues are decided by 3 of 5 votes on our city commission? Did you know that 3 of the current 5 members of the city commission were never elected? They were seated because no one ran against them. Did you know that when there is an election, less than 32% of registered Winter Park voters participate on average?
Well, Winter Park governance is now officially an amateur show where the winners are paid a bit over $15,000 a year to mess things up. I’m sure they are all nice people and well intended. Some of them are, however, lacking the skills and experience to do the job on behalf of our 30,000 residents.
The latest example is Commissioner Elizabeth Ingram, a music teacher who was seated and thus never vetted by the voters. Ms. Ingram has acknowledged that she accepted free tickets to a Magic basketball game last April, provided to her through Rabbi Dovid Dubov. Rabbi Dubov represents Chabad of Greater Orlando, an organization with an active development application before the city commission. See Rabbi Dubov’s follow-up request for a meeting and Ms. Ingram’s response.
Under Florida Law, Public officers, employees, local government attorneys, and candidates are prohibited from soliciting or accepting anything of value, such as a gift, loan, reward, promise of future employment, favor, or service, that is based on an understanding that their vote, official action, or judgment would be influenced by such gift. [Sec. 112.313(2), Fla. Stat.]
As a third party can rarely tell if there was such an “understanding,” the only acceptable behavior by a public officer is to decline any offer of anything of value from everyone. (Note that the lobbying effort by Rabbi Dubov is legal.)
Ms. Ingram blew it. I suppose she had no idea that accepting the tickets was inappropriate and potentially illegal, and that is the problem. Her vote on the development project scheduled for October 28 is now compromised.
The larger issue here is that Winter Park has at least a thousand experienced residents with proven judgment qualified to serve on our city commission. If you believe you are one of them, please run for office. We need you.