Police Chief Tim Volkerson said the cameras help enhance safety and could bring extra revenue for the department
Aug. 11, 2026
By Gabrielle Russon
Winter Park Police are looking to double the number of red light cameras in the city, a move that the police chief said would enhance safety as well as bring in new revenue amid talk of cutting the department’s budget as the state is pushing local governments to tighten their belts.
Last year, eight cameras posted at six intersections caught 24,400 violations– from blowing through a light to rolling right-on-red turns without a complete stop – and brought in $3.8 million in revenue.
Police Chief Tim Volkerson wants to add eight more red light cameras at the same six intersections, but facing different directions from the existing cameras.
“For example, Fairbanks and Orlando (Avenue) has a red light camera for westbound traffic,” Volkerson said. “It does not have a red light camera for eastbound traffic and it does not have a red light camera for north or southbound traffic.”
That intersection proved to be the third busiest of Winter Park’s red light cameras when it comes to issuing violations with nearly 3,600 tickets last year, according to police data analyzed by the Voice.
The camera on southbound Orlando Avenue at Lee Road resulted in nearly one-third of all the red light camera tickets last year. The second highest offending intersections were eastbound Lee and Orlando Avenue with 6,260 tickets.
Chief Tim Volkerson
Winter Park’s newest red light camera is at Phelps and Aloma is an intersection with a history of significant crashes, Volkerson said. That camera resulted in issuing about 1,600 red light violations last year.
Most of the violations caught on camera throughout the city are related to right-on-red turns. According to a state-required report that Volkerson is scheduled to deliver to the City Commission on Wednesday, nearly 70% of citations or 17,300 out of 25,000 violations during the 2025-26 fiscal year were for improper right turns on red signals.
Volkerson said safety is more important than money when it comes to adding red light cameras. But the topic came up at a recent City Commission work session as Volkerson presented his department’s budget, which includes keeping a community services position vacant next year to help reduce costs.
“Anyone that has lived in Winter Park would agree that the volume of cars that we have traveling through our city has increased,” Volkerson said. “The more important thing is for us to reduce crashes and even more importantly our goal is always to have zero fatalities.”
People speeding past red lights are most likely to cause T-bone or angular crashes that can have catastrophic results, Volkerson added. And Winter Park roads are active with cyclists heading out on the trails and early-morning runners training on the city streets every Saturday pre-dawn for Track Shack’s MarathonFest.
“If a byproduct is that it brings in revenue, that’s a good thing too, but that can never be and never should be the justification for doing it,” Winter Park City Commissioner Warren Lindsey told the Voice. “I would never ever support something just because it was a revenue producer when it wasn’t emphatically and primarily done for purposes of safety of motorists and pedestrians.”
A typical red light camera fine is $158 and the city of Winter Park collects $75 of that total with $2 going to police training and $73 to help fund the police budget. The rest of the money goes to the state for general revenue, health funds, and helping people with spinal cord injuries.
Volkerson is analyzing crash data to determine which intersections have the most cars passing through and the most crashes. The state requires cities to pass an ordinance in order to add new cameras and provide a reasoning for the locations.
“There has to be a nexus for us putting them there. We can’t just decide we’re going to put one at Park and Morse. We have to justify to the state why this is going there,” he told city officials at the budget work session.
Volkerson added he was not looking at school zones since those areas don’t generate enough traffic volume and are often already patrolled by officers.
Winter Park’s potential red light camera expansion comes as Floridians will be deciding whether or not to approve an overhaul of local property taxes in November.
Recently, the Florida State Fraternal Order of Police and the Florida Sheriffs Association came out strongly against the property tax ballot initiative, arguing the increase in homestead property tax exemptions could result in fewer dollars for essential services like public safety.
Volkerson declined to comment on personal stance on the ballot amendment.
“It’s up to each person to decide and vote,” Volkerson said.
Some, like Orange County Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, fear that Amendment 3 will shrink funding for local governments.
“No matter how you shake it or how you roll the dice, property tax reform has an impact on the services that any municipality will be able to provide,” said Semrad, whose district includes Winter Park.
Semrad brought up whether red light camera tickets could help supplement the Orange County Sheriff’s budget if Amendment 3 passes as county officials held their own budget workshops last month.
“Ultimately we will have less revenue than than we do now … and we need to look for strategies to fill [revenue gaps]. So red light cameras might be an option,” she told the Voice. “I would rather tax somebody who made a mistake, did something wrong, ran a camera – than finding ways to tax others.”
Lindsey, the Winter Park commissioner who is also a criminal defense lawyer, said the presence of a red light camera has a real effect on drivers to make them more aware of their driving habits.
“The other thing is they’re less expensive to maintain than a police officer obviously,” Lindsey said. “You’re able to have them up there 24/7.”
Lindsey also liked that people who get cited have a process to contest their tickets and not get penalized on their driving records if they pay the civil fines.
According to the city’s report, nearly 74% of people who receive the notice of violations pay them.
In those cases, “It doesn’t affect you in the grand scheme of things on your record,” Lindsey said.
About 16% of civil violations result in a uniform traffic citation being issued because it wasn’t paid. Some drivers contest the citations in court, but the city did not report having any dismissed by a judge, though eight cases are currently pending, according to the city’s report.
There is one way to avoid the hassle altogether, Volkerson said.
“It’s really easy,” Volkerson said. “All you have to do is stop and not run the red light.”
On the Chopping Block: Police, Fire, Community Groups, Trash Collection
This week, in an email to residents, Mayor Sheila DeCiccio asked what should be cut in the city budget as a result of state-ordered reductions
Aug. 7, 2026
By Beth Kassab
After years of stripping power from locally elected mayors and commissions when it comes to everything from regulating where apartments can be built and how tall to whether cities can ban gas-powered leaf blowers or plastic straws, state leaders have reached a new level of micro-managing local governments: mandatory lists of budget fat.
Cities and counties will be required to publish those lists starting next year as a result of a new law (HB1329) signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis this summer.
But Winter Park is getting a jump on the exercise.
With potential property tax cuts looming in the form of Amendment 3 on the November ballot, city managers asked each department to lay out cuts to reduce their budgets by 10% (This exercise will be mandatory for local governments next year as a result of the new law.)
The results?
Here’s just a sample of what’s on the budget fat list in City Hall:
Eliminate a code enforcement officer position that is currently vacant ($75,000)
Eliminate funding for the Public Art Advisory Board ($15,000)
Eliminate the mailed printed version of quarterly Winter Park Update newsletter and monthly inserts in utility bills ($71,900)
Eliminate the use of accepting cash for city services like permits or other needs at the City Hall windows ($50,000)
Eliminate two vacant firefighter positions ($200,000)
Close a Fire Rescue engine company ($1.25 million)
Begin closing the library every Monday ($210,000)
Reduce garbage collection to one day per week ($300,000)
Reduce tree plantings, canopy maintenance and eliminate residential tree permits among other changes ($600,000 combined)
Eliminate the Historic Preservation Grant Program ($100,000)
Eliminate four police detectives, one traffic officer, one community service officer and two officers dedicated to homeless outreach ($1.15 million)
Eliminate body-worn cameras and live crime center for the police department ($300,000)
Reduce funding to community organizations such as the Winter Park History Museum, the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens, Mead Botanical Garden, Blue Bamboo and more. ($243,500)
You get the idea. And that’s not the complete list.
Also, to be clear, the spreadsheet of potential cuts provided by City Hall included about 45 items. Some of those were ways to increase revenue for the city (such as adding more red light cameras, which could result in $750,000 in new revenue). Even so, the total did not add up to $9.5 million or about 10% of the proposed budget’s nearly $95 million general fund. The proposed all-funds budget, which includes the utilities and other funds, is up to $247 million.
The Voice totaled the spreadsheet to about a $7.8 million overall reduction (including some revenue gains proposed).
“As you can see, getting to a budget cut of 10% would not be painless,” Mayor Sheila DeCiccio told the community in an email she sent out this week. “It could mean fewer police officers and detectives, longer emergency response times, reduced park maintenance, one-day a week trash collection, and fewer community programs.”
She asked residents in the email what they prefer to cut, explaining, “I’m writing this email because I believe you, our Winter Park residents, deserve to see the potential cuts that are being discussed. As always, I’m committed to full transparency.”
Winter Park staff estimates Amendment 3 would require cuts of $3.4 million in 2028 and $6.7 million in 2029. So far shy of the 10% exercise. But not far off once a few years into the new tax structure if it wins by the required 60% of voters in November.
The Voice has heard from some readers who appear to be under the impression that police and fire or other “essential services” can not be cut under Amendment 3, which would increase the homestead exemption ultimately to $250,000.
But that’s not the case. Cities and counties will still provide emergency services, to be sure, but at what level?
Florida House Republicans approved language that would ban local governments from reducing money for law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders below the level in either fiscal year 2025-26 or 2026-27, whichever was higher. But the Senate never approved that version and it died during the Legislative session.
That’s why police and sheriffs’ organizations have spoken out about the potential impact of the amendment and cuts that could result from it.
“The Florida Sheriffs Association is significantly concerned with Constitutional Amendment 3, which potentially allows Tallahassee to control your local budgets, creates longer law enforcement response times, limits communities’ abilities to provide road repairs and stormwater removal — these are a few things voters deserve to be aware of,” the organization said this week on Facebook.
And the soaring cost of police and fire service is a main driver of the growth in the budget the City Commission will consider this month.
Record-high pension costs for police officers and firefighters as well as a new labor contract with the Fire Union that included a 12% pay increase in 2026 will account for 70% of new costs in the proposed 2027 budget.
In 2021, for example, the starting salary for a Winter Park police officer was $22.84 an hour or about $48,000 a year. Today it’s $30.34 an hour or more than $63,000 a year.
Police Chief Tim Volkerson has said the increases are the result of pressure on wages from other departments who have raised pay as they have struggled to hire and retain officer.
The city has 121 full-time police staff and three part-time staff slated for 2027, up from 115 full-time staff and 13 part-time staff in 2023.
The budget for the fire department is up from $13.2 million in 2020 to a proposed nearly $19 million for next year. The department has grown from 81 full-time staff and two part-time staff in 2023 to 84 full-time staff and three part-time staff.
Translated into savings for individuals residents, homesteaded property owners would pay about $818 less per year to Winter Park. The total tax savings per year for Winter Park homeowners if the ballot measure passes would be $1,783, including the reduction paid to the city as well as the reductions in taxes paid to Orange County and St. Johns River Water Management District. (Taxes paid to schools would remain unchanged under the tax proposal on the ballot.)
The City Commission is slated to hear public input and consider portion of the budget at this meetings this month on Aug. 12 and Aug. 26 before final adoption of the budget by the end of September.
Orange Schools Ban E-Bikes and E-Scooters Unless Students have Driver's License or Permit
The change voted on this week prompted pushback from parents who say their students rely on the devices. Winter Park is drafting its own ordinance related to electric bikes and scooters.
July 29, 2026
By Gabrielle Russon
Two weeks before the new school year starts, the Orange County School Board voted Tuesday to ban kids from riding e-bikes and e-scooters unless they have learner’s permits or driver’s licenses.
The school board’s unanimous vote Tuesday came after a divided debate where school board members insisted the new rules are necessary to stop the rising number of crashes and protect children. Meanwhile, some parents and students argued the board is overstepping its bounds with a new policy that will make it harder for kids to get to school.
“This is one of the hardest decisions to make, and I think because there are so many strong compelling arguments on both sides,” school board chair Teresa Jacobs said.
Critics called the policy rushed since the first day of school is Aug. 11, giving families little time to prepare.
Stephanie Vanos represents Winter Park schools.
“I’m here to ask you to slow down before making a decision that could have unintended consequences for many families. Micromobility devices are a vital form of transportation for many students,” said parent Heather Grimmer who lives in Avalon Park. “We all want to protect our children, but protecting them doesn’t mean always taking something away.”
School board member Stephanie Vanos, who represents Winter Park schools, argued the school board held four public meetings over the last year on the issue ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
“This has been a thoughtful and deliberate process,” Vanos said. “I would be surprised if anybody on this board actually wants to ban micromobility devices. I don’t think anybody does.”
“The reality is we’re here now and school is starting and there’s nothing in place,” Vanos said.
For school board member Maria Salamanca, the ban will stop elementary and middle schoolers who are too young to drive from having to make split-second decisions on the road when a mistake can lead to a tragedy.
“I cannot in good conscience vote to encourage these devices in our campus,” said Salamanca, who represents Lake Nona schools where a 13-year-old boy was killed after an e-scooter crash on Mother’s Day. “It’s really dangerous.”
E-bikes and e-scooters are a growing concern throughout Winter Park and Orange County. The city of Winter Park is in the process of creating its own ordinance to crack down on reckless riders.
Tuesday’s meeting shows the challenge of regulating the popular devices. Nearly 12,000 OCPS students regularly went to school on e-scooters or e-bikes, according to a district survey in December. About 42% of those students were in middle school, 32% in high school and 26% in elementary school, the survey found.
Nate Clark’s four kids are among those depending on e-scooters since they live too far to walk and too close to catch a bus to Baldwin Park Elementary or Glenridge Middle School, both not far from Winter Park.
“If this passes tonight, I don’t know how they’re getting to school on Aug. 11,” Clark told the school board.
The ban is “unnecessary” and “unfair,” he said, arguing state law treats e-bikes or e-scooters as bicycles — not cars. Why is the district treating them differently?
Other parents urged the school district to focus on teaching safety rules, improving infrastructure or enforcing helmet rules instead of banning them outright from elementary and middle schoolers.
“Let the kids scoot,” said Mike Bustillos, a former teacher who advocates for a more walkable community. “We shouldn’t be removing freedom and mobility options from kids in order to make things more comfortable for cars. Kids today have precious little freedom to roam the way that I did when I was a kid.”
School board members pushed back on the criticism. Before e-scooters and e-bikes existed, working parents found ways to get their kids to school, said school board member Melissa Byrd.
“I do not believe that taking away e-bikes and e-scooters is going to cause students to not be able to get to school,” she said.
Superintendent Maria Vazquez said she supports phasing in the ban for the first month of school to get families time to figure out other transportation options.
Vazquez and school board members also expressed a willingness to revisit the ban later this year.
“I am going to vote in favor of this policy now with the hopes that our counties and cities are going to come up with some great policies and rules and we can go back and revisit this and change it,” Vanos said. “Hopefully that will happen soon.”
Winter Park Contends with Higher Police and Fire Costs and How to Maintain Roads
The city’s proposed 2027 budget is also cautious of future cuts to property taxes if voters approve a measure on the November ballot. Winter Park homeowners would save less than $2,000 a year, but the city could ‘lose some of the things that make it feel extra special’
July 22, 2026
By Beth Kassab
The Winter Park City Commission is poised today to adopt the same property tax millage for the 19th year in a row, but the steady rate belies an increasingly complex financial picture for one of the region’s most high-profile cities as it contends with soaring costs for its police and fire departments, a demand from residents for better roads, increasing prices for electric and water customers and a governor and state Legislature looking to slash property revenues.
The All-Funds Budget, which includes the General Fund as well as the utilities and other funds, is proposed to increase this year by nearly 6% to $247 million. The General Fund, which pays for essential services such as police, fire, parks, public works and administration, is growing by about 5% to $94.6 million.
The growth in money collected by the city is being driven by higher bills for electricity, water and stormwater — the result of policy decisions in recent years and up for debate again this year by a City Commission facing big expenses to prevent storm flooding and to continue to underground all of the power lines for the city-owned electric utility. Property taxes remain a driver of growth in the general fund, where the taxes make up just under half of the revenue pie.
City Manager Randy Knight cautioned that a measure on the November ballot initiated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature to significantly alter how local governments are funded by reducing property owners’ tax bills could eat into the kinds of services the city provides by 2028, when it is set to take effect if it passes with the required 60% approval from voters.
City officials are forecasting a hit of at least $5.4 million in the first year. Translated into savings for individuals residents, homesteaded property owners would pay about $818 less per year to Winter Park. The total tax savings per year for Winter Park homeowners if the ballot measure passes would be $1,783, including the reduction paid to the city as well as the reductions in taxes paid to Orange County and St. Johns River Water Management District. (Taxes paid to schools would remain unchanged under the tax proposal on the ballot.)
“It will have an impact on city services that will be felt,” Knight said in his annul budget memorandum to the City Commission. “Winter Park will still be able to provide essential services, but the city may lose some of the things that make it feel extra special … A loss of over $5 million is like losing almost half of the Parks Department, so it will not be a small issue to determine how best to prioritize spending, but it is likely that a combination of service reductions and revenue increases will end up balancing the budget in future years.”
With just six months to go before his retirement after decades at the helm of the city and 36 years since he helped prepared his first budget in 1990 as the city’s finance director, Knight was reflective in his final budget memo of past challenges.
“As we face potential impacts from the so-called tax reform, I want to remind you that we have faced tough times before and always endured,” Knight wrote. “The 2004 hurricane season cost approximately $18 million for recovery and wiped out our reserves. The 2008 housing bubble coupled with tax reform resulted in a huge hit on city revenues. The Pandemic shuttered businesses and locked down communities, but we survived and thrived. Today Winter Park is the envy of the region, with commercial properties with the lowest vacancy rates and highest asking rents, exceptional schools, and beautiful walkable residential communities and amenities. Over 3 million visitors come to the crown jewel of downtown Park Avenue each year and our financial reserves have grown to over $24 million.”
A graphic from Winter Park’s proposed budget document shows how money in the General Fund is spent.
But the budget document also described in stark terms how expenses for basic needs like police and fire are simply outpacing revenues.
Record-high pension costs for police officers and firefighters as well as a new labor contract with the Fire Union that included a 12% pay increase in 2026 will account for 70% of new costs in the proposed 2027 budget.
“Of the $4 million in the increase in personnel wage and benefit costs in the General Fund estimated for the next fiscal year, almost a third (30%) is due to increases in public safety pensions for police and fire
retirement plans,” according to the budget proposal.
The city will have to spend $1.2 million more on the pensions, according to the document, the result of “changes in actuarial tables, the addition of new employees and the weak 2022 stock market year that still affects their formulas.”
“Staff is reviewing the possibility of making adjustments to the pension plan in the future to attempt to mitigate this growing cost,” the document said. “With property tax reform on the horizon, having a quarter of the entire annual growth in revenue going solely to public safety pensions, is not sustainable.”
Police pay has increased by nearly 50% in Winter park in recent years and the proposed 2027 police department budget is $23.2 million, up from $14.9 million in 2020. The department will keep a community services position vacant next year to help reduce some costs, according to the proposal. The city has 121 full-time police staff and three part-time staff slated for 2027, up from 115 full-time staff and 13 part-time staff in 2023.
The budget for the fire department is up from $13.2 million in 2020 to a proposed nearly $19 million for next year. The department has grown from 81 full-time staff and two part-time staff in 2023 to 84 full-time staff and three part-time staff.
Winter Park is not alone in what has amounted to an arms race in public safety pay across Florida as departments have struggled to recruit and keep candidates for jobs that require personal risk, physical stamina and no work-from-home privileges in a post-pandemic world where many offices have emptied out.
For example, the pay for a starting deputy at the Orange County Sheriff’s office in 2020 was $49,296, according to the office. By 2025 it was $62,566. That’s in addition to increases in bonuses, the number of paid holidays and minimum compensation for off-duty pay and longevity pay.
A graphic from the city’s budget presentation shows the potential cumulative effect of the property tax measure on this November’s ballot.
In addition to public safety costs, roads emerged as Winter Park’s other main budget priority this year.
That’s the result of a survey of residents with about 800 responses that identified the quality of both brick and asphalt streets as a major need for improvement.
“This has been an area in which funding has been added in the past, but it has been insufficient to keep pace with the level of street deterioration and the cost of repairs,” read the budget memorandum.
The budget includes more money for contractors to resurface roads and doubles the amount for road materials with an additional $500,000. Winter Park has fallen short of its own goal of redoing 9 lane miles o road each year, typically completing just 4 or 5 lane miles with the exception of in 2025. The new goal will be to achieve repaving of 7.5 lane miles each year.
City Commissioners are slated to vote on the property tax rate this afternoon. More discussion and debate over the full proposed budget is scheduled for August with a final budget vote in September before the start of the new financial year in October.
Orange School Board Looking to Ban Electric Scooters and Bikes at Elementary and Middle Campuses
Talk of the proposed ban came this week as cities like Winter Park are attempting to finalize their own micromobility ordinances ahead of the start of the school year
July 9, 2026
By Gabrielle Russon
Orange County Public Schools board members appear poised to ban electric bikes and scooters at elementary and middle schools while only allowing high schoolers with driver’s licenses to ride them.
The board met during a Tuesday workshop to discuss a proposed policy as cities like Winter Park are also crafting new rules aimed at stopping more crashes from happening. The school board did not take any action Tuesday but could vote on the final policy at a July 28 meeting ahead of the 2026-27 school year in August.
“If we can do something to make our community safer, I believe a ban on micromobility devices coming to and from school is a way to do that,” said Board Member Melissa Byrd.
Board Member Angie Gallo, who is running for chairwoman of the school board, called banning them at elementary school “an absolutely no-brainer” but was more hesitant about prohibiting high school students because she feared it might be government overreach.
“We’re banning something that their parents bought for them,” said Gallo, adding she needed more time to make her decision before she supported restrictions for teenagers.
Angie Gallo
Banning e-scooters and e-bikes for just elementary students but not middle school students could be a “hot mess” in the handful of K-8 schools across the district, added board Member Alicia Farrant who is also running for the board chairwoman role and supported only allowing high schoolers with driver’s licenses to ride them.
Outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill last month that some viewed as a first step in addressing the problem. The Legislature does not reconvene until March, so local governments and schools are moving ahead to set their own policies and ordinances without guidance from the state.
Winter Park city commissioners voiced support again at their own meeting this week for adopting their own ordinance before the start of the school year in August, though the proposal hasn’t been finalized yet.
Commissioner Craig Russell, who works at Winter Park High School, said he hopes Winter Park can help set a standard for the state with rules that enforce safety without leaving kids with traffic citations on their records. Winter Garden, in West Orange County, already has an ordinance in place that affects the West Orange Trail that runs through its downtown.
For 90 minutes, OCPS school board members debated what was the appropriate age to allow riding e-bikes and e-scooters. Some questioned who should take the first step to regulate the electric devices — the school district, local governments or the state?
“We can’t control the sidewalks or the roads leading up to the campus,” said Gallo, who supported the district’s push to educate students on road rules. “In my mind, this is a county and a city issue that they need to deal with and provide ordinances that we would follow along with and adhere to. But just us banning them, I don’t think that that makes kids more safe on the roads as they move around Orange County.”
Board Member Stephanie Vanos, who represents Winter Park schools, agreed that the district should lean on local governments to lead on policy decisions. However Vanos viewed the safety situation as too urgent not to act now.
“I’m also honestly just not willing to wait for it,” Vanos said.
In the wake of DeSantis vetoing the bill, Farrant said the district should take the lead.
“We can either point fingers or hope somebody else does it,” Farrant said. “We need to rise up as leaders and do what we can to do our part.”
“We still can only lead so far,” OCPS Board Chair Teresa Jacobs countered as she said she hoped the state would pass a law. “An electric vehicle ought to be regulated similarly to a car.”
The recommendations were discussed at an Orange County School Board work session earlier this week.
Stephanie Vanos
OCPS’ proposed policy would also completely ban modified or Class 3 e-bikes that go faster than 28 miles an hour.
Charging the devices on campus would also not be allowed for safety and fire prevention.
The older students eligible to ride e-bikes and e-scooters would need to register with school administrators.
Superintendent Maria Vazquez warned it would be up to school staff to enforce the rules and oversee the permits.
“I’ve had a few conversations with some principals that see this is going to be a burden because they do not have the staff to follow through and monitor this the way it needs to be,” Vazquez said.
The district will also need to add better signs and more storage and parking for students to park their e-bikes and e-scooters as well as create a safety video.
Alicia Farrant
“From an education standpoint, we are developing a comprehensive informational video for parents and students to improve awareness and micromobility safety, district expectations and responsible use of e-bikes and e-scooters,” said Joe Silvestris, the district’s senior director of the safety and emergency management department.
Some school board members were skeptical the district’s proposed policy could meaningfully solve the problem on campuses.
“Who is regulating it? Who is standing at the door ensuring that the kids riding up have the permit?” Farrant said. “When I’m going out and about, the kids are running through stop signs as if they own the road. … I don’t know that a little video is going to really fix the problem.”
OCPS’ action comes as school districts across the country and state are tackling the issue in different ways, Silvestris said.
Some districts have banned e-bikes and e-scooters completely while others prohibit the class of high-speed electric devices, he said. Schools that allow them require students to dismount on campus entrances and walk them to parking storage areas, he added.
“Schools are experiencing significant increase in student use of e-bikes, e-scooters, and other micromobility devices,” Silvestris said. “This rapid growth has contributed to a rise in injuries and near-miss incidents on and off our school campuses.”
Already the district drafted an incident reporting and data tracking process to better understand the scope of the problem at OCPS and established a working group with principals to share feedback and look at the challenges, Silvestris said.
Orange County and city of Orlando representatives attended Tuesday’s school workshop with Jacobs saying, “Our entire community has a stake in this.”
Safety Rules for Electric Bikes and Scooters Vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis
Improving safety regulations, especially near schools, is a priority in cities like Winter Park where officials have already begun drafting their own ordinance
July 3, 2026
By Gabrielle Russon
Some local officials expressed surprise and frustration after Gov. Ron DeSantis recently vetoed a bipartisan bill considered an important step in tackling the epidemic of electric bike and scooter crashes.
DeSantis’ decision came less than two months after a 13-year-old boy was killed in Orlando’s Lake Nona area while riding his e-scooter to buy Mother’s Day flowers.
Without a statewide safety law, rules will fall to local governments like Winter Park, which has already begun drafting an ordinance that city officials say they want in place before the start of the school year in August.
Roads near schools are of particular concern to local officials because so many students use e-bikes and e-scooters on a daily basis.
“We know they’re dangerous. We know they’re killing students. And so I’m not sure why we needed to delay taking any action knowing how dangerous they are. … All of us were hoping that we would get some guidance from the state,” said Orange County School Board Member Stephanie Vanos, who represents Winter Park. “It just doesn’t seem like the governor cares all that much about what’s happening to our kids.”
Senate Bill 382 won unanimous approval from the Legislature in March, but DeSantis has expressed concerns it could lead to more police surveillance and bring unintended consequences.
“What it will lead to is more surveillance of people by law enforcement and we don’t need that. I think there were problems with it,” DeSantis said when he spoke to journalists late last month during a press conference. “Certainly, I don’t want to do anything that’s going to lead to more surveillance.”
Winter Park City Commissioner Warren Lindsey said he would prefer cities draft the new regulations for their specific needs instead of the state imposing one set of rules for all of its 23 million people.
“My opinion is that it’s better to regulate that by local ordinance rather than state statute,” Lindsey said. “In a time when you’ve got preemption, where the state’s taken away local governments’ ability to regulate anything, this one is good because what works in Winter Park may not work in Maitland. What works in Winter Park may not work in Orlando or Ocoee so I’m in favor of local ordinance.”
Winter Park is developing an e-bike and e-scooter ordinance with the goal of rolling it out before school starts on Aug. 11, said Lindsey, who was the only city commissioner who responded to an interview request for this story.
Some of the potential regulations could includesetting a speed limit for e-scooters and e-bikes on sidewalks, increasing the helmet age requirement from 16 to 18 years old and imposing fines for those who break the rules.
Winter Park Commissioner Craig Russell, who is also a teacher at Winter Park High, held a community meeting about e-bike safety earlier this year and has advocated for a local ordinance. School Board member Stephanie Vanos (third from left) sat on the panel.
Lindsey, whose day job is a criminal defense lawyer, called e-bikes and e-scooters “definitely a public safety issue.” However, he said he is mindful that minors don’t end up with traffic records as the city drafts a policy.
“The purpose of the proposed regulations are not intended in any way to be punitive to children but rather to be educational and to protect them because they’re inexperienced and to educate them on proper and safe operation of e-bikes and scooters,” he said.
In 2025, nearly 500 e-bike and e-scooter crashes were reported in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, according to MetroPlan, Central Florida’s regional transportation planning organization.
MetroPlan is focused on working with local governments, like Winter Park, to lower those statistics.
“We were expecting for some action to be taken at the state level, but I would say that the fact that it didn’t pass isn’t significantly changing how we were planning to proceed as an agency for metropolitan Orlando,” said Lara Bouck, MetroPlan project development manager.
The group is considering whether to draft a model ordinance to help local governments. Bouck said she hopes a Winter Park representative joins a working group expected to take on that task.
“The intent there is to give each of our municipalities, including Winter Park, a starting point that they can sort of pivot off of if they’re going to adopt their own ordinances, which I think will be a priority now that nothing passed at the state level,” Bouck said.
MetroPlan also launched a pilot program offering a free rider safety online course for parents at selected schools.
If DeSantis had signed SB 382 into law it would have required all law enforcement agencies across Florida to document micromobility device crashes the same way and record crash date, time and rider’s age or if the rider has a valid Florida learner’s driver license or regular license as well as other information.
The challenge is law enforcement agencies currently don’t report crashes in a uniform way, making it hard to understand the big picture.
Another provision in the bill would have allowed police to write $30 nonmoving traffic violations if an e-bike goes faster than 10 mph within 50 feet of pedestrians.
“I understand law enforcement has a job,” DeSantis said. “Do we really want to have policing of e-bikes? Are you going 10 miles or eight miles? I think it was a little bit of overreach.”
The bill would also have created a statewide task force to propose recommendations by Oct. 1 how to regulate “micromobility devices” like e-scooters and e-bikes.
Vanos acknowledged the bill wasn’t “perfect” but said it was “moving us in the right direction.”
She testified in Tallahassee during the Legislative Session to urge lawmakers to give schools representation on the task force.
Both Vanos and Orange County Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, who represents Winter Park, said improving safety also means addressing bigger infrastructure challenges in communities.
“Devices that can reach higher sustained speeds are increasingly being operated in mixed-use environments—roads, sidewalks, and multi-use trails—without consistent rules, training requirements, or clear expectations for right-of-way behavior,” Martinez Semrad wrote on social media Thursday. “The result is a preventable risk environment: faster vehicles, denser shared spaces, and no modernized regulatory framework to govern how they interact.”
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