Vote This Tuesday!
by Geri Throne / March 6, 2022
With Election Day two days away, 16 percent of Winter Park voters have voted by mail or cast early ballots in the municipal election.
That’s a higher percentage than the four other Orange County cities holding elections this week, but not by much. It amounts to 3,627 votes out of Winter Park’s 22,635 registered voters. More than 19,000 voters still need to be heard from on Tuesday.
Two commission seats and six city charter amendments are on the Winter Park ballot.
For Seat 4, incumbent Todd Weaver faces political newcomer Elijah Noel. In the Seat 3 race, entrepreneur Anjali Vaya faces attorney Kris Crusada.
The six charter amendments deal with certain development decisions. The first five would require a supermajority of 4-1 votes to approve: 1) the sale of city-owned property; 2) the rezoning of parks and public lands; 3) rezoning of lakefront property to higher densities and intensities; 4) rezonings or comprehensive plan changes that would increase existing residential density and intensity by more than 25 percent, and 5) the development of wetlands. The sixth amendment would require an additional public hearing and reading of an ordinance if a substantive change is made during the adoption process.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on March 8. Voters must go to their assigned polling place with photo and signature identification. If you requested a mail-in ballot and did not use it, bring the mail-in ballot to the polls with you.
The Q&A at Ward Chapel with Noel video on the Voice Facebook page now is an eye opener.
Debates, or Candidate Forums as they are sometimes called, have evolved to hearing the candidates recite a series of memorized or even read word for word aloud mini-speeches of rehearsed talking points that inform residents little because that’s the way the candidates and event hosts like it.
But it’s hard for a candidate to hide what they really are in an event such as that at Ward Chapel.
Here we see an unprepared candidate, clearly not ready for prime time, who is propped up by developer dollars, slick advertising, and fake YouTube views.
I hope that next year The Voice will host an event like this with a similar format, and avoid the kind of canned questions and canned responses that occurred at this year’s Candidate Forum at the Library.