Category: Policy

Strident Historic Preservation advocate Betsy Rogers Owens says, “I’m not here at all to put a hard sell on anybody” while she tries to enable historic preservation oversight for all improvements to your property. The city is seeking public comment on another proposed revision to our Historic Preservation law at both 9AM and 5PM on Wednesday, October 7th in City Hall Commission Chambers located at 401 S. Park Ave. Please consider attending one or both of the October 7th meetings and argue against the Historic District aspects of the law. Does the Historic District law apply to my property? YES. The…

As I have noted in previous writing (here and here), historic preservation policy for private properties in Winter Park needs to offer meaningful incentives and be less threatening to encourage voluntary participation. Current policy and the proposed draft both compel private owners into compliance with a deeply flawed “historic district” policy. Current policy requires a 66+% vote of neighbors to compel participation of 100% of properties within a proposed district. The draft policy proposes to reduce this threshold to 50+% resulting in even more likely neighborhood fights and related legal action. When a critical mass of our 8,500 single family…

I continue to promote voluntary agreement by property owners to participate in historic designation as the wise choice for Winter Park. As we consider the current and initially proposed Historic Preservation ordinance along with the Historic Preservation Board and the City Commission, I thought it useful to explore some of the background of how we got to today. I love history, real history, history being a recounting or observation of lives, events, and places from our past that make us think and gives us a perspective that informs our own lives, values, and behavior. The realities of “historic preservation” in Winter…

The agenda for the Historic Preservation Board meeting of July 8th includes the schedule for further consideration of possible changes to the existing ordinance as follows: August 12 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting with draft ordinance review (citizen group comments may be available at this meeting) September 9 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting, receive and final recommendations from the citizen group Community Forums in late September October 7 – Special Historic Preservation Board meeting to consider any amendments October 14 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting to approve the ordinance and final report November 9 – Ordinance amendment…

The Historic Preservation Board will be having a work session (no public comment) on Wednesday, June 17 at 6 PM at city hall to discuss the draft ordinance and input from the May 7th public meetings. Click here to email members of the Historic Preservation Board (HPB) and ask them to re-think the current draft ordinance. “Especially in politics, any relationship between the effect of policy, the goal of policy and the stated goal is often incidental to the point of randomness.” Holman Jenkins Jr. In this post I analyze the stated goals, actual goals, and the effects of our current…

The following is a brief history of Winter Park single family residential zoning resulting from my research of the zoning code and discussions with city staff.   Residential zoning in Winter Park started in the 1930’s (before that you could build anything). From 1930 to 1985 criteria limiting the size of a home was primarily a 35% footprint, meaning a two story home could have as much as 70% floor area. In today’s terms (Floor Area Ratio) a typical 13,000 square foot lot could have a house with as much as 9,100 square feet. As a practical matter there was no limitation….