ORLANDO, Fla. — On Thursday, a group made up of mayors and attorneys from various Orange County cities and towns sent a letter to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings expressing their opposition to two proposed ballot measures that would put a rural boundary measure in place.

What You Need To Know

  • A group of mayors and city leaders are pushing back against an effort to get two proposed ballot measures on the November ballot

  • Mayors and city officials from the cities of Orlando, Apopka, Belle Isle, Eatonville, Edgewood, Oakland, Maitland, Winter Garden, Ocoee and the Town of Windermere were among those who signed the letter

  • Next, the Orange County Board of Commissioners is set to decide whether or not to move forward with the measures putting restrictions on development in rural areas

  • They are requesting a meeting with senior county staff ahead of Tuesday’s meeting to see if there’s a way they can work together to address urban development in Orange County

The proposed amendment aims to protect rural land and regulate new commercial and residential development. It will seek to provide the ballot title and ballot summary for the referendum.

For more than a year, Orange County’s Charter Review Commission (CRC) worked on the proposal to make it more difficult to approve urban style project on rural lands.

The matter will receive a public hearing and a vote on Tuesday, July 30 at the Orange County commission chambers.

Meanwhile, officials who signed the letter are calling to meet with senior county staff ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.

The CRC, which is composed of concerned citizens like Eugene Stoccardo, has worked on the proposal to create a developmental boundary between urban and rural parts of Orange County for a long time.

Within their proposed amendment, members came up with a definition of what a rural boundary should be and introduced an annexation clause that could grant the county veto power over cities’ efforts to annex land outside their limits.

Mayors and city officials from the cities of Orlando, Apopka, Belle Isle, Eatonville, Edgewood, Oakland, Maitland, Winter Garden, Ocoee and the Town of Windermere were among those who signed the letter to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings.

In the letter, they openly stated that they object these proposals that may “invade the constitutional and statutory prerogatives of municipal home rule.”

Eugene Stoccardo says the whole purpose is to get fair game for community members.

Stoccardo adds that his objective is to see better and more unified cities and urban areas through this proposal, especially for citizens like him who have grown up and lived in Florida for decades.

He says he has seen firsthand how agricultural lands have been “destroyed” by developmental projects.

“When I first moved here back in the late 70s, my parents moved up and we grew up in Winter Park because this was actually the last area of development going east. There was nothing east of here,” said Stoccardo.

He says he expects to see hundreds of people from the community present at Tuesday’s meeting, demonstrating their support for the proposed amendment.

Finally, he recognizes that development projects in the city are inevitable and will happen no matter what.

“We in the community feel that we have to have something to control our future as citizens who’ve lived here for decades and many people are upset that we have these people coming in, annexing, developing and then going back to where they live in some other part of the country,” Stoccardo said.

Spectrum News reached out to the mayor and other city officials who have signed the letter to Demings, but none were available for comment.

As for Demings himself, he said he would be available to speak on the issue at Tuesday’s commission meeting.