Cooper to Represent Winter Park at FL League of Cities
Will Receive ‘2015’ Home Rule Hero’ Award
Mayor Steve Leary appointed Commissioner Carolyn Cooper Voting Delegate from the City of Winter Park to the Florida League of Cities Annual Conference, to be held August 13 – 15 in Orlando. Leary announced the appointment at the June 22 meeting of the City Commission.
2015 Home Rule Hero
At the conference, Cooper will be among those to receive the Florida League of Cities “2015 Home Rule Hero” award.
Advocate for Municipal Issues
The work for which Cooper is being honored includes membership on the Growth Management Legislative Committee, the Finance Legislative Committee, Board of Directors for the Tri-County League of Cities, and as a member of the advocacy team that addressed municipal issues in Tallahassee.
Local Voice on What Matters to Cities
“These local government officials earned this prestigious award for their tireless efforts to advance the League’s legislative agenda,” wrote Florida League of Cities Legislative Director Scott Dudley. “These men and women are some of the Florida League of Cities’ biggest advocates for municipal issues, always willing and ready to contact legislators and travel to Tallahassee to be sure a local voice is heard on issues that are important to cities. It is clear that these public servants have devoted themselves to Florida’s citizens and will remain loyal to their cities and state far into the future.”
-
By: Anne Mooney
Anne Mooney has assumed the editorship of the Winter Park Voice from founding editor Tom Childers.
Mooney got her start in New York as a freelance line editor for book publishers, among them Simon & Schuster and the Clarkson Potter division of Crown Books. From New York, she and her husband and their year-old toddler moved to Washington, D.C., where the two ran a newswire service for Harper’s magazine. “We called it Network News,” said Mooney, “because it was a network of the Harper’s writers, whose work we edited into newspaper style and format and sold to papers in the top U.S. and Canadian markets. We were sort of like a tiny UPI.”
The newswire ceased operation with the death of Mooney’s first husband, but Mooney continued to write and edit, doing freelance work for Williams Sonoma cookbooks and for local publications in D.C.
In 2005, Mooney moved to Winter Park, where she worked as a personal chef and wrote a regular food column for a south Florida magazine. She took an active interest in Winter Park politics and was there when the Winter Park Voice was founded. She wrote occasional pieces for the Voice, including the Childers bio that this piece replaces.
The Winter Park Voice is one of a large number of “hyper-local” publications that have sprung up across the U.S. in response to the decline of the major daily newspapers and the resulting deficit of local news coverage. The Voice’sbeat is Winter Park City Hall, and its purpose is to help the residents of our city better understand the political forces that shape our daily lives.
-
There is a basic conflict of interest when someone represents both the residents of Winter Park and a group of Florida politicians at the same time.
For that reason alone Winter Park should abstain from membership in Florida League of Cities.
We want our Commissioners to learn about best governing practices from residents, and not through absorbing all kinds of nonsense from corrupt political “colleagues” and “counterparts” around Central Florida and the State and bringing these foolish ideas back home to City Hall.
Great going Carolyn, The Graham’s are proud of your outstanding work!
Hail to our Home Rule Hero. Thanks for all your hard work on behalf of our City.
What an appropriate and well-earned recognition. Congratulations, Carolyn . . . and Winter Park!
Bravo Bravo