Congratulations to newly elected Commissioners Peter Weldon and Carolyn Cooper, and sincere thanks to candidates McMacken and Macejewski for their willingness to serve their city.
Yesterday was a long one. Sign wavers were in place at sunup as the polls opened at 7:00 a.m., and were still there well after sundown as the polls closed at 7:00 p.m.
Winter Park boasted a record turnout. Registered voters numbered 20,114, and by the end of the day, 11,349 ballots had been cast, according to preliminary results from the Orange County Supervisor of Elections website. This, in spite of the fact that at one point, Orange County ran out of ballots. But in the end, the votes were cast and the count was in by 10:00 p.m.
According to the unofficial results on the City website, Cooper won handily with 5,702 votes to Macejewski’s 4,827. The race between McMacken and Weldon was closer, with Weldon leading McMacken by 118 votes, 5,193 to 5,075.
The Library/Events Center bond issue passed on a decisive 5,412 to 5,199 Yes vote.
The only question remaining now is what to do with hundreds of blog and Face Book posts – a question that can easily wait until tomorrow.
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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.
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5 Comments
Will
on March 16, 2016 at 7:08 pm
If the Library vote count is “decisive”. I am reading the wrong website. Goodbye.
The library bond won by 213 votes. That’s hardly decisive. And considering the vote was held on “Election Zoo” day, better known as the Presidential Preference Primary, it’s entirely likely that many of those voting were short on details about the proposed project due to vague wording on the ballot.
To give you an idea of just how indecisive Winter Park voters were, had only 114 “Yes” votes changed to “No” votes, the bond would have been defeated.
The “No Library” activists can, if they so choose, reverse the approval with a citizen ballot initiative, according to the minimum petition signature requirements as outlined in the City Charter, and order a special election for repeal of the bond. Repeal would likely pass given that library supporters had stacked the deck in their favor by scheduling the vote in conjunction with the Presidential Primary flood of uninformed voters on the library matter. And the fact that many voters were unaware that the bond would mean a tax increase and moving the library from its current location to the other side of town.
Sad to hear that our wonderful Tom McMacken will no longer be our commissioner. I think Mr. Weldon has very big shoes to fill. He did not impress me during his campaign but I suppose his decisions in office will make clear what sort of politician he is.
As to the library vote, I could not be happier! What a wonderful project for our City. And to the fact that it was held during a Presidential Preference Primary in which record numbers of voters turned out to cast their ballots for several Republican candidates, well I would think that might have actually hurt the library’s numbers as more anti-tax advocates would have been out. It would be foolish to waste energy trying to reverse this decision. I hope the project moves forward rapidly for I cannot wait to use the new library!
The Winter Park Voice, a trusted online news outlet that covers our City Hall, endeavors to engage, inform and connect citizens on all sides of issues affecting the quality of life in Winter Park.
If the Library vote count is “decisive”. I am reading the wrong website. Goodbye.
I agree!
The library bond won by 213 votes. That’s hardly decisive. And considering the vote was held on “Election Zoo” day, better known as the Presidential Preference Primary, it’s entirely likely that many of those voting were short on details about the proposed project due to vague wording on the ballot.
To give you an idea of just how indecisive Winter Park voters were, had only 114 “Yes” votes changed to “No” votes, the bond would have been defeated.
The “No Library” activists can, if they so choose, reverse the approval with a citizen ballot initiative, according to the minimum petition signature requirements as outlined in the City Charter, and order a special election for repeal of the bond. Repeal would likely pass given that library supporters had stacked the deck in their favor by scheduling the vote in conjunction with the Presidential Primary flood of uninformed voters on the library matter. And the fact that many voters were unaware that the bond would mean a tax increase and moving the library from its current location to the other side of town.
Excellent idea, where do I sign?
Sad to hear that our wonderful Tom McMacken will no longer be our commissioner. I think Mr. Weldon has very big shoes to fill. He did not impress me during his campaign but I suppose his decisions in office will make clear what sort of politician he is.
As to the library vote, I could not be happier! What a wonderful project for our City. And to the fact that it was held during a Presidential Preference Primary in which record numbers of voters turned out to cast their ballots for several Republican candidates, well I would think that might have actually hurt the library’s numbers as more anti-tax advocates would have been out. It would be foolish to waste energy trying to reverse this decision. I hope the project moves forward rapidly for I cannot wait to use the new library!