You Must Pre-Register for Virtual Commission Meeting Tomorrow at 5:00
Registration is Open Now
by Anne Mooney / March 29, 2020
The virtual dais at the Live Virtual Commission meeting at 5:00 pm tomorrow night, Monday, March 30, will once again feature five live Commissioners. Newly elected Commissioners Marty Sullivan and Sheila DeCiccio will now be sitting in Seats #1 and #2 respectively.
Our gratitude for their service goes to former Commissioners Greg Seidel and Sarah Sprinkel, who can now watch from the comfort of their homes.
Registration for the Meeting is Open Now
Go to https://cityofwinterpark.org/government/live-video-broadcasts and click on “Live Virtual Meeting” in the yellow banner. That will take you to the registration page.
Public Comment Will Be Taken
As this is a regular meeting of the Commission, public comment will be taken during the meeting. There are three ways for citizens to comment – by email, by submitting a comment form or by phone.
Email — You may comment in advance of the meeting by emailing mayorandcommissioners@cityofwinterpark.org. Emailed comments will become part of the record but will not be read aloud.
Public Comment Form — If you would like for your comments to be read during the meeting, submit the Public Comment Form found at <cityofwinterpark.org/public-comment> The form will be accessible at 5:00 Monday as the meeting begins.
Phone – If you are unable to submit online comments, the City will activate the public comment phone line at 5:00 pm Monday – 407-599-3410. Calls will be answered by City staff, and your verbal comments will be entered into the online system on your behalf. Phoned-in comments will be read during the meeting as part of the official record.
All comments will be monitored in accordance with City standards of decorum.
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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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Anne, How can you possibly support this travesty? This argues against everything you have advocated for over the last five years…are you and this venue nothing but a tool of the One Wonter Parker’s?
NO recordings of recent City Commission meetings and work sessions have been posted to the City’s website.
Residents have been completely shut out of local government.
Why isn’t the Voice reporting this?
Thank you to Anne Mooney and The WP Voice for providing this information to residents.
In this way the Voice is able to be a source which amplifies the information at the City website.
The pandemic is not going to go away quickly.
There are two choices:
1. We close down city government
2. We adapt using the technology we all use everyday anyway. (Phones, tablets, computers.)
I would not be surprised to find that more citizens are engaging in the commission meetings via
virtual meetings and comment forms than was ever the case when people had to be physically
present. Over 60 comments were waiting to be read when the floor opened for public
comment. That is a WOW moment.
We can come to a grinding halt or we can keep living our lives to the best of our abilities, while
safeguarding the public health and government in the Sunshine.
I applaud the City staff and the commission. We may be stuck inside but we need not be stuck
in neutral for weeks on end.
We can continue to learn and to thrive. Change , as a constant force, is a given.
Correction to my last post. I believe there were 38 public comments waiting when the meeting was opened up for public comment. More arrived as the comment period went on, but I believe there were 38 comments already logged in as the comment period on the rescission was begun.
I haven’t gone back and listened but I think 38 is the right number, not 60.
This is a really high number- even for a meeting that is conducted under the usual circumsatnces.