Winter Park closes in on major CRA expansion, celebrates wins from Hurricane Milton
The CRA is expected to help fund stormwater projects that became a high priority after Hurricane Ian in 2022.The impacts felt by Hurricane Milton were less severe
Oct. 17, 2024
(Photo caption: Commissioners Craig Russell and Kris Cruzada assist residents with sandbags before Hurricane Milton made landfall last week. Courtesy of the city of Winter Park.)
By Beth Kassab
Winter Park officials on Thursday celebrated relatively few power outages and far more contained flooding that occurred after Hurricane Milton compared with Hurricane Ian two years earlier as they also took steps to finalize a major expansion of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.
The CRA expansion will help pay for a number of projects within its boundaries that cover downtown from Interlachen Boulevard to roughly U.S. 17-92 and — if the new borders get approval from neighboring Orlando and Orange County — Fairbanks Avenue to Interstate 4.
The two-year process to expand the CRA and extend its sunset date from 2027 to 2037 coincided with the time Winter Park also contended with the fallout from Hurricane Ian, which raked through Central Florida on Sept. 29, 2022 caused the worst inland flooding in modern memory. The storm dropped 13 inches of rain, according to the tally from Orlando International Airport.
Milton brought heavy rains, too, but the Winter Park total is estimated in the 5 to 6-inch range, according to Gloria Eby, the city’s director of Natural Resources & Sustainability.
Less rain combined with actions the city vowed to take ahead of the next big storm led to fewer problems overall.
Mayor Sheila DeCiccio commended the city staff for “a truly outstanding job,” noting “everything I have been to — people are in awe of the city of Winter Park.”
City Manager Randy Knight said “a lot of improvements have been made since Ian.”
As a result, there were no reports of flooding inside homes this time and most Winter Park residents had power from the city-owned electric utility throughout the storm. At peak outage, 275 customers were without power, according to the city.
“The electric utility knocked it out of the park,” Knight said, crediting the city’s long-standing efforts to underground all of the city’s power lines, which is about 80% complete.
“It took courage 20 years ago when this commission decided to buy the utility,” he said. “Every commission since then has kept [the undergrounding project] in the budget … and we’re seeing the benefits today.”
Storms like Ian and Milton, though, brought far more rain than wind to the city. And that causes more issues with flooding versus trees downing power lines.
As a result, the commission has focused on studying stormwater projects. In fact, a meeting for commissioners to discuss the results of water basin studies was postponed twice in recent weeks — once for Hurricane Helene and then again for Milton. The meeting is now set to take place next week.
DeCiccio said Thursday that the additional money from the CRA expansion would help, in part, with drainage issues that fall within the agency’s boundaries. Orlando and Orange County are set to take up their ends of the agreement before the end of the month and, if approved, the CRA expansion would mean an additional $57 million in tax revenue that would remain in Winter Park rather than going to the county.
The city took measures to avoid flooding ahead of Milton such as opening lake drains or adjusting weirs to improve water flow where possible.
But more is needed. For example, before Milton landed city workers drained the pond at MLK Park near the library, but some streets still flooded nearby, though no water was reported inside homes this time around.
WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com
Good call Winter Park residents voting to takeover the electric service back in 2004 and following through on the under grounding of power lines. I don’t think we had a power flicker through this last hurricane.
In the balloting, voters decided to approve $50-million in bonds to buy out Progress Energy’s facilities in Winter Park. The vote was 5,384 to 2,413.
Our home flooded and we are in 32789. How can our home be protected in the next storm?
Can you tell me your address? You can comment here or email WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com Are you on a lake or was their street flooding?
@Beth, it was due to the city easement being sloped towards our house. During flash floods, our yard can simply not keep up. I will email you directly.
$57,000,000 in CRA income over the 10 year extension(2027-2037) is a lot of money when the total amount recommended by the basin study ($700,000) is around $5,000,000 to fix Lakes Killarney/Bell/Mendsen. The 10 year extension is likely a “slam dunk”. How can that extension, effective in 2 years, help fund today’s fixes? Is the city going to wait until 2027 to spend the tax revenue?
The CRA can fund 10 year bonds to fix these issues immediately.
CRA’s were formed to clean up “urban blight”. The cruddy areas of cities that residents, businesses and investors avoided. Spending $4-$7 million (out of $57,000,000 available in ’27-’37 extension of CRA) to control street flooding from 10, 20 or 100 year storms seems a little extreme. The basin study report (cost $700,000) mentions structure flooding only a couple of times. Yes, let’s fix those areas that regularly flood into structures. But does ponding in any street located in the entire CRA area require millions of dollars in fixes? And if the issue is pressing today, how is the extension in 2 years going to help? Do we sit and pray for no storms in the next 24 months? Maybe I’m missing something but street flooding is not urban blight.
Sir I live in the CRA and many of our homes flooded during Ian and nothing has changed with storm water etc since. Many homes were very close to flooding during Milton – another inch or two and we would have had a large issue. Jeff Briggs has a photo repository of the flooding that you can request. We also have raw sewage spilling into the roads after every hurricane and sometimes after big afternoon thunderstorms.
As I wrote: “Yes, let’s fix those areas that regularly flood into structures.”
Drainage in the entire Orange Avenue Overlay area would have already been addressed and solved if the mayor and her fellow commissioners had not torpedoed it! What a shame on so many levels!
I do not understand the city reporting no flooded homes. My attached garage and entire lot flooded deeply in Milton. The city still has not begun phase two of a drainage project that is supposed to help with that, and there is no start date.
In addition, in Ian and Milton the city started discharging raw sewage into the floodwater from a street manhole in front of my house, which results in my entire property being contaminated with sewage when it floods.
The street flooding started suddenly in 2013, when max-FAR infill construction finally seemed to overwhelm the city’s street drainage system in my area.
My property has flooded deeply at least five times since then. So far it has lapped at my door threshholds without entering. Such luck won’t hold. It is beyond distressing.