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…
Winter Park Residential Zoning History (overview)
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….
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…
Congratulations to Steve Leary and Greg Seidel
Congratulations to Mayor Steve Leary and Commissioner Greg Seidel. We now have two young, professional leaders on the Winter Park city commission. Let us all give them our respect and patient consideration as they assume responsibility with our other commission members in setting and following through on policy matters important to the management and leadership of Winter Park. Leary and Seidel offer us a fresh and thoughtful perspective that will in my opinion provide us with sound policy decisions. Both are objective thinkers who base their judgments on relevant facts. This can only be good for Winter Park. Regards, Pete Weldon
Mackinnon’s Density Fraud
Desperate to convince you Leary is a bad guy, Mackinnon sent a picture of a dense development showing what she portends would happen if Leary was elected Mayor. The picture is a fraud intended to scare the people of Winter Park. What the picture does not show is that the planned development proposal required a limit of 47% total building coverage and 25% green space. The picture shows virtually 100% of the land covered with building and virtually no green space. Winter Park Land Development Code Planned Developments: Section 58.83 (e)(3): Maximum building lot coverage. The maximum building lot coverage (footprint)…
Steve Leary For Mayor
Vote for Steve Leary on March 10. Cynthia Mackinnon based her campaign on the false premise that “Our city is headed in the wrong direction.” Every piece of evidence I find after years of service on city boards supports the opposite conclusion. I find it very disappointing that Mackinnon chose to campaign on completely false narratives, narratives that mislead the people of Winter Park. Also, Mackinnon’s decision to pursue the politics of personal destruction with her negative mailers damages our city. The person we want as Mayor of Winter Park needs to be a positive and forthright advocate of the varied interests of our citizenry,…
Over the Partisan Moon
This post continues to document information relevant to the “partisanship” issue Mackinnon has attempted to exploit to tar Leary. Anne Mooney runs Winter Park Voice. Winter Park Voice is organized as a for-profit entity to avoid revealing it’s donors. I have no problem with this on its face. What is problematic is that Mooney continues to posture Winter Park Voice as a politically agnostic journalistic operation when it is not. In her February 24, 2015 message Mooney says. In the mayoral race, Cynthia Mackinnon confirmed that at her January 7, 2015, kickoff party, volunteers from the Orange County Democratic Party offered to help her…
Ed Sabori Puts His Name On His Vote
February 25, 2105 I publish the following from Ed Sabori. PJW – Against advice from her supporters, Cindy Mackinnon asked to meet with me before and after she made the decision to run for mayor. As such, I was tempted to discuss those conversations via a public forum but decided it would not serve any purpose other than to make it look as if I were ‘piling on,’ so to speak. Instead, I decided to focus on the positives of why I chose to vote for Steve Leary and sent the following email to a list of friends and neighbors: Dear…