by Beth Kassab | Nov 5, 2024 | Election, News
Kelly Semrad wins County Commission seat over Steve Leary
The UCF professor delivered a clear victory despite being outspent by the former Winter Park mayor
Nov. 5, 2024
By Beth Kassab
Kelly Semrad, who ran on an Orange County Commission race focused on limiting sprawl and diversifying how tourist tax dollars are spent, clinched a decisive victory over Steve Leary, who outspent her by 4 to 1.
Semrad took 57% of the vote compared to Leary’s 43% of the vote for the commission’s District 5 seat, which represents a swath of Orange from downtown Orlando through Winter Park to the eastern rural edges of the county.
“Orange County stood up really loud and proud and said they’ve had enough with irresponsible growth and development,” Semrad said Tuesday night.
She also pointed to clear victories for county charter amendments that voters approved by wide margins to protect the rural boundary and give the County Commission veto power over landowners who want to annex into another jurisdiction such as the city of Orlando.
“It’s really clear that people are fed up with overdevelopment,” Semrad said.
That trend appeared across the county where Nicole Wilson hung on to her District 1 seat and and Mayra Uribe defended her seat in District 3.
Wilson, like Semrad, was far outspent by her opponent, Austin Arthur, who was also heavily backed by development interests.
Leary spent more than $400,000 through his campaign and a political committee he controls compared to about $100,000 spent by Semrad’s campaign, according to campaign finance reports.
“We made a commitment to refuse special interest dollars to prove we were without a doubt standing with the community when it comes to decisions that affect our quality of life,” Semrad said.
Leary did not respond to interview requests throughout the campaign season. Late Wednesday, he posted on his campaign Facebook page that he conceded to Semrad.
“I am very proud of the race that we ran and the support we had district and countywide,” he wrote. “I spoke to Kelly earlier and congratulated her on her victory and offered my assistance in any way possible moving forward.”
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by Beth Kassab | Oct 31, 2024 | City Commission, News, Uncategorized
Orange commission approves Winter Park CRA and arts funding
The Winter Park Playhouse and the Rollins art museum will benefit from tourist development tax funding set aside for community groups
Oct. 31, 2024
By Beth Kassab
The Orange County Commission this week approved two major milestones for Winter Park — an infusion of dollars that will allow major arts projects to move forward and an extension and expansion of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.
Heather Alexander, the co-founder and executive director of the Winter Park Playhouse, expressed relief after the unanimous vote of the commission that will keep the beloved community musical theater in Winter Park after it nearly lost its lease. Without the TDT dollars, the future of the organization was uncertain.
“I cried … my husband was to the right of me and he grabbed my hand and he was like, ‘OK this is it,’ and one of the commissioners made the motion and as soon as they said it was unanimous I just burst into tears,” she said. “It was a big day for arts and culture.”
The playhouse project, through a partnership with the city of Winter Park to purchase and renovate its current building after nearly losing its lease, will receive $8 million between now and 2028. The city will own the building and the playhouse will continue to operate as a nonprofit there through a long-term lease.
The same vote also secured $10 million for the Rollins Art Museum, which made a bid to take over the old Winter Park Library but was pushed aside for the Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts.
Other groups receiving TDT dollars include:
- City of Apopka: $13.1 million to construct and improve softball fields, the amphitheater and other facilities. Estimated total cost of the project is $13.3 million.
- 4R Foundation: $12 million for a community events center plus and outdoor stage and lawn at 4Roots Campus, which also includes a farm and classroom space in Orlando’s Packing District neighborhood. Estimated total cost of the project is $65 million.
- Orlando Science Center: $13.9 million enlarge and remodel the outdoor terrace and event venue. Estimated total cost of the project is $14.1 million.
- Rollins College: $10 million to construct a new art museum for new art museum. Estimated total project cost is $30.6 million.
- Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation: $2.1 million to improve the auditorium, including a patron’s room. Estimated total project cost is $3.1 million.
- Winter Garden Art Association: $4 million for a new museum next to the current space. Estimated total cost of the project is $7 million.
- Orlando Family Stage: $5.8 million to remodel and operate the auditorium. Estimated total project cost is $7.6 million.
- City of Winter Park : $8 million to acquire, enlarge and remodel the Winter Park Playhouse. Estimated cost of the total project is $10 million.
- Friends of the Mennello: $2 million (request was $13 million) to enlarge and improve the folk art museum. Estimated total cost is $30 million.
- Orlando Museum of Art: $2 million (request was $7.2 million) to repair the roof and HVAC system. Total cost of the project is estimated at $7.5 million.
- PAST/Wells’ Built Museum: $2 million (request was $5 million) to acquire the property and construct and improve the museum and auditorium. Estimated total cost is $10 million.
At the same meeting, the county took the final step to continue Winter Park’s CRA until at least 2037 rather than sunset it in 2027 and grow the boundaries along Fairbanks Avenue toward Interstate 4.
Larger boundaries mean more property tax revenue that would typically go to the county government will remain in Winter Park for projects such as sewer infrastructure, road improvements and other needs.
The new CRA, which is controlled by the City Commission, is projected to generate between $162 million and $213 million in revenue through 2037.
“It’s a very elegant mechanism to make sure more of our taxpayer dollars stay with the city,” said Peter Moore, director of management and budget, at a city meeting earlier this year.
CRA’s are used across Florida by cities and counties as a way to finance redevelopment and specific projects. It works like this: property values within a CRA’s boundaries are frozen at a certain year — in this case that year would be 2023. Then, as values rise, any taxes on those properties collected above the frozen amount go into a CRA fund rather than back to the city and county that would typically collect them. (The city and county still collect taxes each year up to the frozen amount and school board taxes are not affected.)
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by Beth Kassab | Oct 31, 2024 | Election, News
Steve Leary goes negative against Kelly Semrad in final week of county race
The attacks in the race for the District 5 County Commission seat, which represents Winter Park, lack context
Oct. 30, 2024
By Beth Kassab
With less than a week until Election Day, the battle for the only open Orange County Commission seat on the ballot took a negative turn.
Steve Leary, the former mayor of Winter Park, unleashed a barrage of attack ads against Kelly Semrad, a UCF professor who bested Leary in the Aug. 20 primary by 2,800 votes.
The contest has pitted Leary, who is heavily backed with financial contributions from developers and the tourism industry, against Semrad, an outspoken advocate for checks on growth, particularly in the still rural areas of the county’s eastern edges.
But in a television spot, Leary attempts to paint himself as the environmental advocate and Semrad as supporting sprawl.
Semrad has “no plans to protect Orange County’s environment from urban sprawl,” the ad’s narrator says, going on to say that Semrad’s neighborhood is the “very definition of sprawl” and that her husband works for a developer.
Leary did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story. The Voice reported last month on a text poll sent to some voters that attempted to test potential attacks against Semrad, including the line about her husband.
Semrad called the assertions “outlandish” and pointed to Leary’s list of campaign donors that include companies tied to proposed developments in Orange County that she has worked to stop.
Semrad is an officer in Save Orange County, a group that dates back more than a decade to protect rural lands and fight some proposed housing developments. The group was instrumental in building support for two county charter amendments that will appear on next week’s ballot. One would protect the rural boundary and the second would require county approval for voluntary annexations into other jurisdictions such as the city of Orlando.
She lives in a subdivision just south of Lake Pickett Road in the eastern section of the county where a number of development fights have unfolded. She purchased the home in 2013, according to property records, as she left a job at the University of Florida to become a professor at the University of Central Florida.
She said plans began to unfold in the 1990s for her subdivision to replace diseased citrus crops, a history she learned after moving to the area and said she began to understand what was at stake across east Orange County.
“The entitled rezonings that I live in were the first step in losing the east,” she said. “I didn’t know that when we purchased our house … So we had two choices: to move out or to try to stand up and advocate with (other east Orange residents) and I have been very relentless about trying to advocate for them and with them for a very long time. I’ve never hid where I live.”
Her life partner (they aren’t married) is an engineer who works for a Sanford-based contractor that prepares development sites with clearing, paving, utilities and other services, according to the company’s web site.
Semrad said her opposition to sprawl and her push for more checks and balances of large tracts of land being turned over for development should not be mistaken for a blanket opposition to all development.
“We need development and we need growth,” she said. “If I could say anything about my partner’s line of work it’s that he designs the infrastructure that Orange County needs so desperately,” though she said he does not work on projects in Orange County.
The ad promoting Leary also says that he “turned developers down” as mayor of Winter Park and “put a stop to out-of-control growth.”
It’s not clear what specific developments the ad is referring to and the campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.
As mayor, Leary oversaw major zoning changes to the stretch of Orange Avenue between Park Avenue and U.S. 17-92. The changes to the area known as the Orange Avenue Overlay raised concerns among some residents in the city who did not want to see six-story buildings there that they believed would erode Winter Park’s small town charm and character.
The City Commission elected after he left office took swift action to alter the overlay rules, reducing building heights and adding more green space, among other changes. Those changes prompted large landholders along Orange Avenue to sue the new commission.
Another Leary ad says Semrad has “extremist ideology” and has “met with leaders from Iran and Palestine.”
The basis for those claims?
Semrad spoke at a 2013 meeting in Turkey on behalf of the University of Florida, where she worked as the assistant director of the university’s tourism institute. A number of tourism leaders, including from Iran and Palestine, attended a meeting of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“This was an organization that was trying to use tourism as a catalyst to alleviate poverty and provide a catalyst for peace between nations,” she said.
According to notes from the meeting on the organization’s web site, Semrad gave an academic presentation about the costs and benefits of tourism in the least-developed countries.
“When you take something so far out of context to try to manipulate someone’s mind, I’m just going to call that a lie,” Semrad said of the assertion that she’s a political “extremist” because she attended a conference related to her job.
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by Beth Kassab | Oct 23, 2024 | City Commission, News
Live Local Act helps Ravaudage secure more housing units
The City Commission also approved a raise for the city manager and the money needed for two more police officers
Oct. 23, 2024
By Beth Kassab
The mixed-use Ravaudage development at Lee Road and U.S. 17-92 will gain the right to build an additional 113 housing units than originally approved after the developer made a request citing Florida’s Live Local Act, which is intended to provide more affordable housing.
The change approved in a 4-0 vote by the City Commission on Wednesday says 50% of the newly entitled units must be offered at rent affordable to individuals at or below 120% of the median adjusted gross income for Orange County. The revision also comes with a reduction in the square footage of office space in an attempt to keep future traffic associated with the project about even and the potential to convert proposed future hotel rooms to housing units.
The Live Local Act, originally passed by the Legislature in 2023, limits the ways in which local governments can restrict affordable housing developments. For example, developers are allowed to build affordable units at the highest density the city allows as well as construct buildings as tall as the highest residential or commercial building within one mile or three stories, whichever is higher.
In this case, the city originally approved Benjamin Partners LTD, which is led by Dan Bellows, to build 14.76 units per acre in Ravaudage. But the city allows as high as 17 units per acre elsewhere.
“The applicant is asking to make up the difference,” said Allison McGillis, planning and zoning director.
Mayor Sheila DeCiccio and commissioners Marty Sullivan, Kris Cruzada and Todd Weaver voted for the changes that would allow 56 new affordable units and 57 new market rate units. Commissioner Craig Russell was unable to attend the meeting due to a family emergency.
City manager earns raise
Commissioners also voted to increase the salary of City Manager Randy Knight by 3.5%, in line with the increases received by other city employees. The raise will bring Knight’s pay to about $260,000, the second highest of local city managers falling only behind Orlando’s, according to Sullivan.
DeCiccio made the recommendation for Knight, who has spent 33 years with the city, citing his recent work on expanding the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which gives the city control over more county tax revenue for projects such as stormwater drainage, library programs and more.
Orlando approves CRA, now it’s up to the county
The Orlando City Commission this week approved the expansion of Winter Park’s CRA boundaries, which includes a tiny slice of Orlando. The final decision now rests with the Orange County Commission, which is scheduled to take up the matter next week.
If approved the CRA will be active until at least 2037 rather than sunsetting in 2027 and expand to more properties along Fairbanks from U.S. 17-92 to Interstate 4.
Dollars added for more police officers
Winter Park will pay to add two additional police officers to the new budget as a result of winning a $130,000 grant that will help fund a portion of the positions.
The grant will pay about $65,000 per new officer and commissioners opted to move about $282,000 from the city’s $450,000 contingency fund to the police department to make up the difference for the outfitted vehicles ($77,000 a piece), equipment ($32,000 a piece) and wages and benefits (about $97,000 a piece).
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by Beth Kassab | Oct 18, 2024 | Election, News, Uncategorized
Steve Leary and Kelly Semrad in final fundraising stretch for District 5 Orange County race
The two are on the Nov. 5 ballot in the only open seat this year for the Orange County Commission
Oct. 18, 2024
By Beth Kassab
Former Winter Park Mayor Steve Leary remains the fundraising leader in the District 5 Orange County Commission race against UCF Professor Kelly Semrad with donors from the tourism and development industries continuing to drive his total.
Leary raised $322,000 and spent $218,000 through his campaign account and a political committee he also controls, according to the most recent filings. The bulk of that came in before the August primary, when Leary trailed Semrad to a second place finish by 2,800 votes.
Recent Leary campaign donations include $12,000 from hotelier and philanthropist Harris Rosen and his companies plus another $1,000 from Frank Santos, a member of Rosen’s executive team.
On Thursday, Leary posted an endorsement from Rosen on his campaign Facebook page in which Rosen says Leary is “the ONLY candidate qualified to serve.” Leary wrote that he is proud to have Rosen’s support and called him a “TRUE tourism expert” — an apparent dig at Semrad, who is known as an expert in tourism economies and conducts research and teaches at UCF’s college of hospitality management named for Rosen.
Neither Leary nor his campaign responded to a request for an interview for this story.
The Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association’s political committees recently gave Leary $2,000.
Another $2,000 came came from a company affiliated with the developers behind the proposed Sustanee project that includes nearly 2,000 homes on ranchlands in east Orange County. The developers sued the county over the commission’s rejection of the project earlier this year.
Kelly Cohen, a lobbyist for Lake Nona developer Tavistock, which is also attempting to develop additional rural lands, gave $500. Developer Alan Ginsburg and BusinessForce, the political committee for the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, each gave $1,000.
Development of rural lands and how the county should divvy up the dollars collected from the Tourism Development Tax are key issues in the District 5 contest as well as the races for Districts 1 and 3.
The Nov. 5 ballot also includes two questions for voters related to development. The first asks voters to designate a rural boundary in the county and the second would give the County Commission the power to stop potential developers from voluntarily annexing their land into other jurisdictions such as the city of Orlando.
Leary has said he supports establishing the rural boundary, but has not answered a question that would give the rural boundary measure its teeth: Whether he supports the move to allow the county commission to block annexations by the cities.
Semrad is a vocal advocate of both ballot questions and is also pushing for more tourist tax money to be spent on local projects such as transportation vs needs exclusive to the tourism industry.
She has trailed in fundraising with a total of $86,000 so far, according to the available filings. She does not have a political action committee.
Her contributions include $1,000 from Orlando Democrat Rep. Maxwell Frost’s political committee, $500 from Ruth’s List and $1,000 from the Orange County Firefighter’s Association. Her supporters also include local names such as political pundit and advocate Dick Batchelor ($250); retired Judge Cynthia McKinnon ($100) and others.
Semrad said she knows she won’t make up the fundraising gap between her and Leary, but is focusing on talking with as many voters as possible.
“We’ve got more than 100 volunteers who knock on doors every weekend and waive signs,” she said.
While few voters open to door to talk with canvassers face-to-face, she’s noticed many speak to her or the volunteers via phone through their doorbell camera apps — either from inside their homes or wherever they happen to be.
“Those interactions have been way more informative,” she said. “They’ll say, ‘I love your platform,’ … Our numbers are coming in really strong.”
While Leary has a significant fundraising lead over Semrad, he is behind the top fundraisers in Districts 1 and 3 where Austin Arthur raised about $500,000 through his campaign account and political committee and and Mayra Uribe has raised nearly $500,000 through her campaign and committees that have supported her.
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