Historic Preservation Ordinance Update
Second Reading Gets Thumbs UP from Commission
Ordinance Passes on 3-2 Vote
The Commission voted December 14 to approve the Historic Preservation ordinance as presented. To see the full text of the ordinance, click here.
Mayor Steve Leary and Commissioner Sarah Sprinkel maintained their opposition to the ordinance, while Commissioners Greg Seidel, Tom McMacken and Carolyn Cooper voted to approve. After considerable maneuvering on the part of the Commissioners, Tom McMacken summed up what the ordinance will and will not do, stressing that the ordinance does not create districts. “It [establishes] a process that allows people to apply,” said McMacken. “If they meet certain criteria, it goes to the [Historic Preservation] Board, and then it comes to us, and at the end of the day, we are the ultimate arbitrators.”
HP Board Still Working on Incentives
Following the Commission vote, City Planning Director Dori Stone explained that the Historic Preservation Board had requested more time to work on a package of incentives the City would offer to individuals and districts seeking to designate their properties. The Board is expected to report back to the Commission in February 2016.
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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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A very sad day for Winter Park. A very sad day indeed.
Not only did residents lose their property rights, but at the same meeting another City Commission vote also took residents’ free speech rights.
Very sad.
I hear this a lot, but can you clarify…preferably without the cloak of anonymity….exactly what “rights” “the residents” are losing?
Commissioner Tom is rationalizing his illogical vote. The commission voted 3-2 to allow 51% of neighbors to beat up on 49% to form a district. If Commissioner Tom doesn’t understand that he is either playing dumb or realizes this law is a loser that allows a majority in a district to beat up on a minority in a neighborhood and he doesn’t want to go down that path. He almost seems excited to authorize a district that beats up on 49%. Beware of people that want to control you and the politicians that empower them.
Anne Mooney’s bio is longer than the report. A star is born?