Mayor and Commissioners, Please read this again: Winter Park – Third World City. I am asking that you each carefully consider the current Historic Preservation code, refund Charlie’s $100,000 “fine,” deny the changes before you on May 14, and replace the code with something less ambiguous and more constructive. The property owner filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Ethics who narrowly ruled there was no basis for further investigation as there was no evidence members of the Historic Preservation Board personally received any special privilege, benefit or exemption. This ruling does not appear to preclude the further pursuit…
Category: Ethics
More on Fiduciary Failure
Michael Poole, long time Winter Park resident and member of the city’s Utility Advisory Board, offered this comment in response to my post More Fiduciary Failure: Peter, I agree with your analysis. We have one of the highest, if not the highest, ad valorem taxes per capita for cities our size in Florida. What I wonder is why you always blame the Commission. Where is your finger-pointing at the City Manager, who annually prepares and proposes the budget? As you know, we have a “strong” City Manager form of government in WP. Seems the spending problem starts there. Why the…
More Fiduciary Failure
Over the past six years Winter Park spending has grown faster than inflation and the city commission has voted for over $100,000,000 in government waste. Click here for the documentation. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem! We can now add another wasteful boondoggle to the city commission’s fiduciary failures. The commission borrowed $8,000,000 in 2022 without a voter referendum to buy the Winter Park Pines Golf course, arguing that it would make money. Instead, Winter Park Pines is losing $500,000 each year. In 2022 our Mayor wrote, “This is an investment in recreation and green…
Response to Commissioner DeCiccio
Dear Commissioner DeCiccio, This responds to your recent email about playing fields. We all care about Winter Park parents and children, and about the quality of our playing fields. However, your email fails to address important questions. Before I get to questions about your vote to spend $2,800,000 outside the annual budget process and paid for using our emergency city reserve funds, I ask about your involvement in the rescission of the Orange Avenue Overlay last March. As part of your election campaign you postured as supporting the Orange Avenue Overlay. These changes to our Comprehensive Plan received final commission…
A Few Trees, Lots of Concrete, Little Expanded Park, Lots of Your Money
Views expressed here are mine and should not be construed as the views of other members of the city commission, or of the city. The editor of Winter Park Voice, Anne Mooney, has stopped her pretense of providing “news” and has gone public with her true purpose, that being to use her blog and Facebook page to promote her policy prescriptions for Winter Park. Notably, these prescriptions are underpinned by conspiracy theories and based not on fact, but on suspicion that those who actually spend their time serving the city must have some unjust ulterior motive, because they don’t share her views….
Anne Mooney and Hypocrisy
Anne Mooney is confused. The usage of “transparent” relevant to Winter Park Voice is: a transparent process, activity, or organization does not try to keep anything secret Anne claims in a recent funding solicitation that “WPV is the only transparent news source covering Winter Park issues from City Hall in real time.” She later notes proudly in bold text that “WPV was set up as a for-profit corporation specifically to ensure the confidentiality of all contributors, and is therefore not a tax-deductible entity.” Please understand. Winter Park Voice is Anne Mooney’s perspective under cloak of volunteer civic journalism. It is not “news” and it is…
FOLLOW UP: Take Action to Protect Your Rights
REMINDER: Please consider attending the Historic Preservation Ordinance Public Forum Thursday, May 7, at 9 a.m. or 7 p.m., at the Winter Park Welcome Center located at 151 West Lyman Ave. to voice your opposition. READ THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE HERE. Send a message to city commission members telling them to remove all “historic district” language from the Historic Preservation Ordinance and to focus on ways to encourage voluntary historic designation for individual properties: MayorandCommissioners@cityofwinterpark.org. Reducing the voting threshold for Historic District approval from 67% to 50+% will only create neighborhood disharmony and law suits. The current Virginia Heights Historic District came about only after strong objections….
Take Action to Protect Your Rights
Your freedom to improve your Winter Park home can be severely limited and your property devalued if a proposal being considered by the City of Winter Park is approved by our city commission. Attend the Historic Preservation Ordinance Public Forum Thursday, May 7, at 9 a.m. or 7 p.m., at the Winter Park Welcome Center located at 151 West Lyman Ave. to voice your opposition. READ THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE HERE. Click here to send a message to our city commission members telling them to remove all “historic district” language from the Historic Preservation Ordinance. The proposed ordinance allows any street or neighborhood in Winter Park to be designated…
Playing the Suspicion Card.
During my involvement in Winter Park issues over the past nine years a small group of citizens (the same people all the time) promote irrational and politically motivated suspicions about our elected officials, claiming or implying that elected officials have conflicts of interest without the benefit of evidence, or that these officials are influenced to corruption by those with financial interests in Winter Park. Those spreading suspicion receive re-enforcement from an impressionable few who follow their lead, creating a voice that irresponsibly undermines trust in both city management and our elected officials. In notable cases, including the current mayoral race, candidates for…
Let’s Cut-Thru the Nonsense
Something called “Winter Park Voice” has been sending emails around town under the pretense of providing useful information to the public. “Winter Park Voice” is controlled by a man named Tom Childers who spent his career in public relations (not journalism). Tom Childers accepts anonymous monetary contributions to “Winter Park Voice.” “Winter Park Voice” recently sent out two emails focused on the city’s consideration of a Resolution to the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) supporting a particular configuration of a proposed extension of Lee Road that FDOT may or may not construct. The “information” included in these emails deserves closer…