A proposed amendment to a Florida Senate bill giving developers near-automatic rights to develop in Seminole and Orange County’s rural boundary could apply outside of Central Florida as well. Record requests reveal a developer behind years of efforts to repeal development limits wants the county commission to support it.

The developer, Chris Dorworth, has been messaging Seminole County commissioners and asking them to support the amendment, according to records obtained by Oviedo Community News. Dorworth unsuccessfully sued the county in 2018 for the right to build higher-density residential projects beyond Seminole County’s rural boundary.

“Let me put it this way: The action of this amendment has Dorworth’s fingerprints all over it,” said Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine. “If he didn’t do it, he certainly supported it strongly.”

Senate Bill 208 would limit local government restrictions on growth by limiting development fees, among other things. Local governments could no longer charge a percentage of construction value to cover costs associated with different-sized projects, instead being limited to charging a flat fee. Last week, Sen. Jonathan Martin – who represents Lee County and the Fort Myers area – filed a late amendment to the bill that could alter the eastern Seminole and Orange County landscape. 

It declares that rural boundaries, like those enacted by voters in Orange and Seminole counties, are legally a “taking” of a property owner’s right to develop. It also sets up an automatic method where property owners can apply to get paid by the county for the difference in value for their land if it were developed to the highest density of immediate neighbors, or 75% of the density of properties up to a mile away. 

County officials have argued that could lead to a scenario where rural boundaries are eroded mile-by-mile inward. 

“A rural boundary designation that restricts the use and development of private property below the density and intensity available to adjacent properties, and that requires a supermajority or heightened voting threshold for modification or removal, constitutes a permanent deprivation of the property owner’s reasonable, investment-backed expectations,” the amendment reads. “Property owners affected by such designations are bearing permanently a disproportionate share of a burden imposed for the good of the general public.”

The amendment was ultimately withdrawn, but backers say it is expected to come up when the full Florida Senate votes on the bill later this session, possibly as soon as this Friday. The bill is on the Senate’s calendar for a floor vote on Friday, March 6. 

The final day of the 2026 Legislative Session is March 13. 

The ‘very powerful’ amendment could impact outside Seminole, Orange counties

A closer reading of the complicated bill shows it could also impact Miami-Dade and Sarasota counties. 

The amendment defines a rural boundary as one like in Orange and Seminole counties, which were passed into law after a vote by residents. But it also includes any rural designation adopted by “charter amendment, county ordinance, or comprehensive plan amendment.” 

It also specifically targets any rural designation that restricts density, intensity and type of development and “requires a supermajority vote of the governing body of the county, or any heightened voting threshold beyond a simple majority, to remove land from the designation, to increase the density or intensity of use within the designated area, or to approve a comprehensive plan amendment affecting property within the designated area.”

That means it could also apply to Sarasota County on the West Coast, and potentially Miami-Dade County as well. 

“It’s very interesting and very powerful,” said Paul Boudreaux, a professor at Stetson University’s Law School who teaches courses on land use law. 

Boudreaux said typically legislators can’t just interpret a state’s constitution. The state is looking to undo federal and state case law stemming from a landmark Supreme Court case involving plans to develop at Grand Central Station in New York City. Florida lawmakers passed a law giving property owners rights above and beyond that federal case in 1995, known as the Bert Harris Act. 

Boudreaux said it’s reasonable to read the most recent amendment as applying to comprehensive plans across the state that require more than a majority vote to change them. 

Usually amendments to bills are minor changes in law, but, as Boudreaux said, “This amendment is more significant than the bill it would amend.” 

Oviedo Community News contacted every member of Seminole County’s elected representatives in the Florida House and Senate. Florida Senator Jason Brodeur put his support behind the amendment last week, but he voiced his support for the rural boundary at the same time.

“I’m worried that the Attorney General’s opinion regarding the new super majority requirement constitutes a taking, which could result in the entire line being removed,” Brodeur wrote in a text message to Oviedo Community News, referring to the rural boundary line. “I’m trying to save the line, even if that means providing a mechanism for the aggrieved.”

Brodeur, the second-in-command in the Florida Senate, is up for re-election in November. He currently does not have an opponent filed to run against him. 

“The line is politically popular but constitutional rights are more important,” Brodeur wrote. “I’m seeking more guidance.”

State Rep. David Smith, who represents Winter Springs and cannot run for reelection in the Florida House, voted against House Bill 399, the house’s closest companion to Senate Bill 208. State Rep. Rachel Plakon also voted against HB 399, but did not respond to requests for comment. 

Smith said he’s been a strong supporter of the rural boundary while in office. 

“I’m aggressively working to have the House reject the Senate amendment language that would nullify our rural boundary and create other major problems for other areas of our state,” Smith wrote. “The recent … letter to legislative leaders outlines the flawed legal basis of the Attorney General’s opinion on the matter and makes clear the potential catastrophic negative impacts to Seminole County. Additionally, I’m educating House leadership and fellow members on the significance of the rural boundary to Seminole County constituents.”

Representatives Doug Bankson and Susan Plasencia did not respond to a request for comment. Both Bankson and Plasencia voted against the House version, which did not include the controversial amendment.

Developer Chris Dorworth responds to controversy

Chris Dorworth, a former state representative, has tried to develop two properties beyond Seminole County’s rural boundary and could possibly benefit from changes to state law. 

In 2018, he tried to develop Hi Oaks ranch into a 670-acre project called the River Cross Development.

And Dorworth made two separate attempts to build on the former Pappy’s Patch in Oviedo. He first talked to the county about the development in 2021, and in 2024 he sent a letter to the county asking for 67 acres to be removed from the rural boundary.

Dorworth told county leaders that his company, Strawberry Lane LLC, wanted to build what it called Valhalla Harvest Market, with plans for a 45-acre residential subdivision including 81 homes and a 22-acre “agri-tourism” area. His proposal called for a working farm, butterfly garden and event center. 

But Dorworth has never actually submitted an application to remove the 67-acre property from the rural boundary. Oviedo Community News called and texted Dorworth for comment. 

“Everyone’s insistence on dragging me into this is getting annoying,” Dorworth responded to Oviedo Community News by text message. “There is an attorney general’s letter saying this is a taking, a violation of property owner’s constitutional rights. The fact that you don’t care about that tells me this is a sham that I want nothing to do with it.”

Dorworth did not respond to further requests for comment, except to threaten a lawsuit. 

“If you write about me please be 100% correct about what you write or litigation against you and your publication is a certainty,” Dorworth continued. 

Dorworth has messaged multiple county commissioners recently, according to records obtained by Oviedo Community News. 

Amy Lockhart, one of those commissioners, received the following from Dorworth: “Your county attorney issued a memo that is flagrantly and obviously wrong.” 

Lockhart responded, referencing meetings she had with Dorworth after he told county officials he wanted to develop the former Pappy’s Patch into an agritourism hub with housing in 2024. 

“Chris, if this is all about Pappy’s Patch, why don’t you just submit an application and go through the process?” Lockhart asked. 

“Amy, that’s a ridiculous response,” Dorworth wrote back. “It’s your job to look out for those people’s property rights.” 

In a followup email, Dorworth included a screenshot of an exhibit from a lawsuit with quotes from commissioners in support of the rural boundary. 

“It is unbelievable to me that Seminole County is using taxpayer money to lobby against taxpayers being fairly compensated for their land being stolen by Seminole County,” Dorworth wrote. “It is an abomination and the lowest thing I’ve ever seen done in county government. The very moment you learned your constituents were being constitutionally deprived you should have stood up for them.”

The developer has also recently text messaged County Commissioner Jay Zembower, according to messages obtained through a public records request. 

“Finally some common sense language to bring relief to your constituent landowners in district two,” Dorworth wrote. 

“Certainly will be interesting how the legislature deals with future land use, zoning and comp plan law,” Zembower replied.  

Dorworth said that it’s basically impossible to have land removed from the rural boundary. Voters in 2004 first codified the rural boundary in the County Charter, the equivalent of a local constitution. 

The boundary makes it so that the rural designation would continue even if a property were to be annexed into a city, a common move by developers. The boundary has survived three lawsuits already. 

“Any effort to withdraw land from the rural boundary is totally futile,” Dorworth wrote to Zembower. “You’re all on the record saying as much. I personally tried. Couldn’t get anything out of anyone. The answer is just no.”

Dorworth also questioned Seminole County’s attorney, who wrote a response to the attorney general letter that sparked the possible law. 

“And jay (sic) what you do with this stuff is wrong,” Dorworth wrote. “Might be right for your neighborhood because you don’t like the traffic but it is straight wrong to do that to your constituents. Asking the government for permission to do things on your land is communal decision making, not property rights based decision making. And a forever ban…. man that’s just cold to do to your own people.”

Dorworth also texted Commissioner Bob Dallari, who represents Oviedo, saying simply he hoped Dallari would support the amendment. 

“Hi Bob, hope you’re well,” Dorworth wrote. “The language the Senate came up with is very good. Hope you support it.”

Dallari did not respond.

How we got here

State Senator Jonathan Martin asked the Florida attorney general’s office to weigh in on the constitutionality of rural boundaries last year. 

In November, the attorney general’s office said the rural boundaries with a supermajority requirement to get out of the rural area could be a constitutional problem. 

“The blanket property restrictions on rural land owners in Seminole and Orange counties could very well constitute a regulatory taking under the federal and Florida constitutions,” the opinion reads. “Seminole and Orange counties’ charter amendments likely constitute an ‘inordinate burden’ and therefore violate the [Bert Harris Act].”

You can read the attorney general’s opinion here.

Seminole and Orange counties have also drafted a memo for lawmakers in response to the opinion. 

“Seminole County has never and does not currently prohibit development within the Rural Boundary,” Seminole County’s response letter reads, which you can download here. “The future land use designations and zoning districts within Seminole County’s Rural Boundary allow for development within this area and have been in place since 1991 and 1992. Properties within the Rural Boundary can be developed under their current future land use and zoning designations without a vote of the County Commissioners.”

One commissioner who didn’t hear from Dorworth was Lee Constantine, who previously served in the Florida House and the Florida Senate. 

“I would fall on my sword to fight this,” Constantine said. “Because that’s what the people of Seminole County want.”  

Constantine said there could be political consequences for the amendment and how lawmakers vote. 

“I’ve been in politics a long time,” Constantine said. “To me this is a disastrous move. Politically, it’s a disastrous move. But (Brodeur) is doing it for his buddy. And those of his like.”

If the Florida Senate votes for the bill with the amendment, the Florida House would have to approve a similar version in conference. Ultimately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would also have to approve the final version before it became law. 

Want to weigh in to your elected leaders? Find Seminole County elected leaders’ contact information here. Local state-level elected leaders mentioned in this article are below: 

Sen. Jason Brodeur, Senate District 10

Rep. Rachel Plakon, House District 36

Rep. David Smith, House District 38

Have a news tip or opinion to share with OCN? Do that here.

Abe Aboraya is a Report for America corps member. 

The post Bill to gut Seminole County rural boundary could apply outside of Central Florida appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

The caravan of executions started with a U.S. Army veteran in March.

It continued in May with a former Army Ranger who served in the Gulf War, then an Air Force veteran in July, a former National Guard member in August, and a Navy veteran in October.

On Thursday, a former Marine, and next week, yet another Army veteran are scheduled to die in what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called the “most veteran-friendly state in the nation.”

He’s the one who signed all seven of their death warrants. The governor wielding the executioner’s pen is a Navy veteran himself.

“They are coming so hard and so fast that it’s hard to keep track,” said William Kissinger, a Vietnam veteran who spent over four decades behind bars in Louisiana and now advocates on behalf of veterans on death row. “It’s heartbreaking.”

It’s also historic. Florida is on pace to more than double its record of eight executions in a year since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty nearly a half century ago. The number of military veterans on the list is startling.

While veterans represent an estimated 12% of Florida’s 256 death row inmates, they account for nearly 40% of the 18 death warrants that the governor has signed this year.

MORE COVERAGE: A List of the Veterans Florida Executed in 2025

DeSantis, a former JAG officer who served as a legal adviser to SEAL Team One in Iraq, has ignored the pleas of some veteran advocates and refused to address the disproportionate ratio of former service members he is sending to the Florida State Prison’s execution chamber.

“I don’t think he [DeSantis] is targeting vets specifically,” said Art Cody, a retired Navy captain and director of the Center for Veteran Criminal Advocacy. “He is just not taking [their military backgrounds] into consideration.”

But should he?

Should Military Service Matter?

While death penalty opponents and tough-on-crime hard-liners clash over the moral arguments and political motivations of DeSantis’ historic urgency, another debate is suddenly raging: Should an inmate’s military service matter when a judge, jury, or governor decides who deserves the ultimate punishment for society’s most heinous crimes?

The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on that question 16 years ago in a case out of—none other than—Florida. The justices overturned the death sentence of Gregory Porter, a decorated Korean War veteran convicted of killing his former girlfriend and her boyfriend, because his attorney had presented no evidence about the combat that left him “a traumatized, changed man.”

“Our Nation has a long tra­di­tion of accord­ing lenien­cy to vet­er­ans in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for those who fought on the front lines,” the court stated in a 2009 opinion. “Moreover, the relevance of Porter’s extensive combat experience is not only that he served honorably under extreme hardship and gruesome conditions, but also that the jury might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and emotional toll that combat took on Porter.”

What makes the recent surge in veteran executions stand out, veterans advocates say, is how they contrast with the historic declines in death sentences nationally and the rising understanding of the traumatic impact of military service.

A new report released this week by the Death Penalty Information Center tallied more than 800 veterans sentenced to death in the U.S. since 1972.

About one-fifth of those veterans served in a major conflict, with the largest group—106 veterans—from the Vietnam War. About 40% of those Vietnam veterans had a known diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and many had been exposed to Agent Orange, the report found.

Jeffrey Hutchinson, the Gulf War veteran executed in Florida this May, traveled what the report called the ​“bat­tle­field-to-prison” pipeline. The former Army Ranger’s appeals for mercy included his diagnoses for PTSD, trau­mat­ic brain injury, and neu­ro­tox­in expo­sure.

“In many cases in Florida, the juries that sentenced these veterans to death never understood how seriously they were harmed by their experience in the military and what effect those injuries had on their ability to conform their behavior to the law,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research center that focuses on how the death penalty is implemented. “Gov. DeSantis is in a position to recognize that and do something about it. But he, instead, has been scheduling them for execution and letting them be executed at his sole discretion.”

Yet, victims’ advocates argue that Hutchinson’s horrific crimes speak for themselves: He was convicted for the murder of his girlfriend and her three children, after busting down the front door of their north Florida home on Sept. 11, 1998, and finding them in the master bedroom. He shot mom Renee Flaherty and her kids, seven-year-old Amanda and four-year-old Logan, all in the head. Then he turned the gun on nine-year-old Geoffrey.

“The terror suffered in that moment is incomprehensible to this court,” the trial judge said.

More than 26 years later, Florida carried out Hutchinson’s execution.

Justice for Victims’ Families

Until this month, DeSantis said little about why he has so dramatically accelerated the pace of executions in the Sunshine State. Before this year, Florida had executed nine people—including two veterans—since the Republican became governor in 2019. Six of those were in 2023, critics note, as DeSantis launched an unsuccessful campaign for the White House.

The governor said during an appearance in Jacksonville earlier this month that he’s trying to do his part for victims’ families who deserve to see justice served.

“We have lengthy reviews and appeals that I think should be shorter,” DeSantis said, according to WUSF. “I still have a responsibility to look at these cases and to be sure that the person’s guilty. And if I honestly thought somebody wasn’t, I would not pull the trigger on it.”

But the governor has failed to address why so many of those inmates this year are veterans.

“By the time I’m writing about one, he has already signed another death warrant,” said Kissinger, a former airman first class and Vietnam War veteran who has led appeals to the governor on behalf of Florida’s veterans on death row. Three years after returning from the war, Kissinger killed a man during a drug robbery  and was locked up in Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he eventually became an inmate counselor on death row.

Kissinger was among 161 veterans who signed a letter calling on DeSantis to stop signing death warrants for veterans, including former National Guard member Kayle Bates, convicted for the 1982 murder of an office manager in Lynn Haven near Panama City.

A week before Bates’ execution in August, many of those petitioners gathered in Tallahassee, urging DeSantis to reconsider, arguing that executing veterans affected by war and denied mental health care was “not justice.”

They called the executions a “final abandonment.”

When asked for last words, Bates, who had been deployed during the deadly 1980 Miami race riots, said nothing. He had maintained his innocence for more than 43 years.

He was the fourth veteran executed in Florida this year. But his lethal injection became a tipping point for scores of veterans and death penalty opponents who say serious questions remained about his case.

When The War Horse reached out to DeSantis’ office with questions about Bates and whether the governor takes into account an inmate’s military service, a spokesperson replied with the same two sentences shared with other media: “Kayle Bates was executed after receiving the death penalty for murder, sexual battery, kidnapping, and robbery. His sentence had nothing to do with his status as a veteran.”

The Case of Kayle Bates

In 1982, Bates was an active member of the National Guard when he was charged in the brutal murder of Janet Renee White. Prosecutors say he abducted White from her office, stole her diamond ring, attempted to rape her, and stabbed her to death.

The trial of Bates, who was Black, opened with a prayer from the victim’s minister, who asked for the judge and the all-white jury to have “wisdom.” With no mention of Bates’ military background, he was sentenced to death within an hour of deliberations.

But the Florida Supreme Court threw out his original death penalty and ordered the trial court to reconsider his sentence. This time, attorney Tom Dunn, an Army veteran, represented Bates with one aim: to persuade the jury that Bates was not the “worst of the worst,” and that life in prison, not death, was appropriate.

Dunn presented Bates’ military service and lack of criminal history, and put forth 18 character witnesses, including fellow National Guard members.

They testified about how Bates’ deployment to the Miami riots, two years before his arrest, had affected him. Bates was among thousands of National Guard members sent into Miami after an all-white jury acquitted four white police officers in the beating of Arthur McDuffie, a Black Marine Corps veteran, left in a coma after a traffic stop in December 1979. For three days, Black neighborhoods in and around Miami burned. Vehicles were set on fire, people were dragged and beaten, and businesses were looted. At least 18 people were killed and hundreds injured.

One fellow Guard member described how Bates was afraid and nervous during patrols, according to court records, and another testified about the gruesome violence, especially against Black residents. No one came out of that experience unaffected, the Guard member testified.

Bates’ wife described him as distant and plagued by nightmares, and she said he often woke up screaming and not recognizing where he was. A forensic neuropsychologist testified that the trauma Bates endured could have influenced his later behavior.

But Bates’ attorney Dunn also focused on another argument: As an alternative to a death sentence, he said, the jury should be able to recommend life in prison without the possibility of parole, a new option under Florida law. At Bates’ original trial, the only alternative to death was 25 years to life. By 1995, Bates had already served nearly 13 years on death row, so Dunn worried jurors would feel forced to impose the death penalty so Bates couldn’t be eligible for parole in another 12 years.

When the jury asked the court after nearly three hours of deliberation if it could sentence Bates to life in prison without parole, the judge said no.

Ultimately, the jury voted nine to three to sentence Bates to death again. In a U.S. federal court, the lack of a unanimous decision would lead to a hung jury and no death sentence. That is not the case in Florida.

A dissenting Florida Supreme Court judge later criticized the ruling, calling the court’s refusal to accept Bates’ waiver “unnecessarily harsh” and inconsistent with past rulings.

A 42-Year Path to Execution

In 2024, almost three decades after his resentencing and a year before his execution, Bates’ legal team uncovered information suggesting a potentially fundamental problem with his original conviction: The jury may have included a relative of the victim. They asked the Florida Supreme Court to allow them to interview the juror.

If true, such a discovery could have led to a retrial. Florida law, like that of most other states as well as the federal system, explicitly bars jurors related to a victim by blood or marriage. The court, however, rejected the request as being too late, records show.

So on July 18, 2025, almost 42 years after Bates’ conviction, Gov. DeSantis signed a letter addressed to the warden of the Florida State Prison in Raiford about 140 miles away.

The death warrant was brief, outlining Bates’ court rulings, and concluded with a note saying that the governor’s office did not find executive clemency “appropriate” for him. It did not provide any further explanation for the decision.

Janet White’s husband, Randy, had been waiting for this resolution for four decades. He said he attended every hearing and every trial to “let Renee know that justice has finally been served for her,” he told USA Today. He attended the execution, but not out of revenge, he said. He had actually made peace and forgiven Bates years ago as a way to move forward.

“You’ve got to find a shorter route than 43 years,” he told the USA Today. “There’s got to be a better system that will see all these appeals through quicker.”

Honoring Those Who Served

On D-Day, just over two months before Bates was executed, DeSantis signed three separate bills “strengthening Florida’s support systems for veterans and their families,” according to a news release.

One was toward long-term care access for veterans and their spouses; another aimed to expand the state’s suicide prevention program specifically for veterans; and the last one proposed a crackdown on those trying to exploit veterans seeking their benefits.

“On D-Day and every day, Florida honors those who served our country in uniform,” the governor said in his announcement. “Florida remains the most veteran-friendly state in the nation.”

It is also one of the seven states in the U.S. where a dedicated clemency board listens to pleas to commute sentences and is required to make recommendations to the governor. But unlike in the other states, Florida’s four-member board is headed by the governor himself. The state has not granted clemency to a death row prisoner since 1983.

That appears to also be the case in the two executions scheduled for this month—both of whom are veterans: Bryan Jennings, a Marine Corps veteran, has been on death row for more than four decades for the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in 1979; Richard Randolph, an  Army veteran, was convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of his former manager.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Jennings’ final legal appeal, clearing the way for Thursday’s execution.

“Florida’s practice transforms clemency from a constitutional safeguard into a secret administrative ritual,” Jennings’ lawyers wrote.

For Kissinger, who has become a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform in Florida, the quest to be heard has become an endless battle. As the dizzying pace of executions keeps growing, he has repeatedly requested a meeting with the governor to discuss veterans on death row.

He knows it’s a long shot.

“I keep waiting on emails,” he said. “I keep waiting on some sort of acknowledgement.”

---

This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

The post Florida’s Governor Is a Veteran. So Are Seven Inmates He’ll Send to the Execution Chamber This Year</br> <span class=’secondary-title’>Veterans represent nearly 40% of the record number of death warrants Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed in 2025. Should their military service matter?</span> appeared first on The War Horse.

Following revelations earlier this month that Oviedo’s water fluoridation system had been down for the majority of the last year without notice to the City Council or the public, the Public Works Department is making changes to internal protocols.

Oviedo residents voted for the city’s water to be fluoridated in 1974, though the system wasn’t activated until 1995. After operating for decades, city records and staff statements suggest the system began to break down sometime between December 2023 and January 2024, though the City Council was only alerted to the issue this February, more than a year later.

The subsequent pausing of the water fluoridation “dosing” program wasn’t brought to the city manager or City Council’s attention because, as staff put it, it wasn’t an urgent matter of public health or safety. Public Works Director Bobby Wyatt said he was “aware they weren’t dosing” at the “beginning of January” 2025, and “that’s where I got involved.”

Oviedo Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said in an email to Wyatt that not being informed put the City Council “into a bad spot from lack of info,” and “citizens should be aware we aren’t dosing the water.”

Oviedo’s Public Works Department was recognized during the March 3 City Council meeting for its work, with a Flood Awareness Week proclamation. Director Bobby Wyatt is in the middle (Photo via City of Oviedo’s Facebook)

In a Feb. 27 email response to Teuchert, Wyatt wrote:

“I just learned the ‘rest of the story’ this past Tuesday. The City Manager was informed immediately and as quickly as I could prepare the information it was provided to Council. In hindsight I should have dug deeper when the issue was first presented to me, but I understood it as a recent occurrence. I have already discussed with staff the types of information I need to know in order to keep Council informed. There is no excusing the situation as it presents bad optics. However, there is no malicious intent. Staff was doing their job as they always do, but the details I need to know weren’t shared; not to hide it but because from the operation/maintenance perspective it wasn’t thought to share it with me.”

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said “the communication breakdown” was “exceptionally not OK.”

When to notify

Wyatt said that “critical” issues are brought to his attention “if it’s an urgency, and we address it right away.

“Normally what happens is staff will come tell me to my face, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem, we need to address this,’ and we act on it right away,” he said. “They never brought it to my attention as … an urgent need to replace.”

When asked whether something that was voted for and is a long-standing public policy is paused for extended periods of time should be communicated to the public and City Council, Wyatt said “Yes.”

“I think anything other than fluoride would’ve been brought to my attention as an emergency issue as far as service and delivery to residents, and would’ve been addressed immediately,” he said.

The city said that if the system was overdosing rather than underdosing, it would have risen to the level of a “health safety issue” and be communicated to the public.

“I can’t speak to the 1970s [when it was voted for by Oviedo residents] and fluoride as a health issue, but when I have raw sewage on the ground or a water main that’s broken and I can’t provide service, that’s on a much higher level of emergency than if I’m able to add fluoride, which is an additive to the water system,” he said.

Not communicating the issue had left elected officials uneasy.

“It is a significant issue of public trust,” Sladek said. “Even though perhaps nobody’s life was in danger, it’s an incredible breach of public trust for people to, for [the majority of] 15 months, think the water’s being fluoridated and not have that to be the case.

“If one can forget something that is as politically a hot-button an issue as fluoride, there could be other things. … I don’t know what else might be forgotten.”

Wyatt said that when he first learned the system was not dosing, he “understood it to be that it was a recent issue.”

Following Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s Nov. 22 guidance about fluoridation, groups speaking about fluoride at the Jan. 6 Oviedo Council meeting, the Feb. 4 announcement and Feb. 13 filing of the 2025 Florida Farm Bill that could prohibit fluoride statewide, and multiple inquiries by OCN, Wyatt sent the City Council email updates about the system being paused on Feb. 6 and Feb. 26. In the first email, the timing of the issue was unclear, but Sladek said it read as if it was very recent while, in the second email, more details revealed that it was down intermittently in 2024, and paused since September.

Oviedo resident Agnieszka Francis spoke at the Jan. 6 Oviedo City Council meeting about her concerns regarding water fluoridation.

It was revealed during the March 3 meeting that the system had in fact been paused for all but about three months over the previous year.

“It was on all of the politicians’ radar, and so items like that, I’m familiar with and sensitive to, and had I known about it [earlier] it would’ve been shared,” Wyatt said.

Currently, the future of the fluoridation system is in a holding pattern, as the City Council said they do not want to make a decision on fixing it until after the Florida Legislature decides on the Farm Bill. The legislative session ends May 2.

Teuchert said there will be continued discussion on the timeline “discrepancies,” but agrees with the communication protocol changes.

“We are only as good as the information we have to make decisions with,” she said. “We definitely need to find an answer and make sure this doesn’t happen again, and why it happened in the first place.”

Through interviews and public records requests that included analysis of more than 900 emails, OCN put together a timeline of the fluoridation communications and long-term issues with the system.

Communication confusion

At the March 3 City Council meeting, Assistant Public Works Director/City Engineer Alexis Stewart and Utilities Manager Steve Santiago told the Council the system had actually only been functioning as expected for three months since at least the beginning of 2024. Prior to their presentation, Wyatt told the Council he had only recently learned of the extent of the issues with the system and told the Council he was copied on an email that made reference to issues with the system’s analyzers, “and I honestly don’t remember it.”

Sladek said that is not an acceptable answer for her.

”It’s not OK to forget at the end of the day,” she said. “It’s not OK to not recall it. It is his job to recall. … The director is the communication key between all the people who are doers and the people who have to set the policy and make sure that the budget is available for the doing to happen. So that’s a critical failure to forget that you have a failed system and just forgot to tell anybody about that.

”I don’t doubt that he really forgot, but it doesn’t make it OK to forget to do a critical component of one’s job,” she said.

The email in question was a response to a Nov. 25 inquiry by an Orlando Sentinel reporter. When OCN initially asked the city for the document Wyatt mentioned, the email provided did not include any discussion of the fluoride dosing analyzers.

A schematic of how the Oviedo’s fluoride system works (diagram via City of Oviedo)

However, through public records requests, OCN obtained the chain of emails that led to those answers being sent back to the Sentinel. In them, the reporter asked the city multiple questions, including, “Has that amount remained consistent, or has Oviedo changed the amount of fluoride?”

On Nov. 26, Wyatt personally directed a staff member over email to “please provide answers to the questions below and then send back only to me and Alexis [Stewart] to review.”

The answer the staff member sent back to Wyatt — with Stewart and two other staff members included on the email — about whether the amount of fluoride had remained consistent, was: “no, due to analyzer and equipment failures.”

Following this, Stewart sent the responses to Oviedo Public Information Officer Lisa McDonald, but the answer to the question regarding the amount of fluoride was different. It had been rewritten to say, simply, “Changed.”

Stewart said she shortened and reworded the answer to more directly respond to the exact question. Wyatt said, “the honest answer is, I forgot about it. And at the time, there was no warning flags about it needing to be replaced right away when I saw it.”

Still “a problem” 

He said he apologized to the Council during the March 3 meeting because there was an email and he “did not remember” it.

“It was an item related to the Council they wanted to discuss, and I honestly did not remember the email,” he said. “That’s the honest, simplest answer. I’m very responsible for my department.”

City Manager Bryan Cobb said department directors “should be informed” on communications that go out to the public or the press, and are expected to have final approval after working with the public information officer on the messaging.

While Deputy Mayor Tuechert said, “I can’t answer to someone’s memory” and Wyatt is “not an absent public works director,” she does say there was a timeline discrepancy and a breakdown in communication.

“It does appear that there was communication about this before we were told about it … that email alludes to that. They knew there was an issue with it as far as when we had discussions in council,” she said. “It is a problem.”

A known issue 

The November 2024 email chain is not the first time staff has discussed issues internally with the Oviedo fluoride system. In fact, the problems with the system seemingly date back years.

The West Mitchell Hammock Water Treatment facility fluoridation analyzer system, part of Oviedo’s fluoride system (Photo via City of Oviedo)

Emails dating back to 2020 and more recently, throughout 2024, show that the West Mitchell Hammock Water Treatment Plant and Public Works staff had long known about the analyzers not functioning properly. There are numerous compliance reports sent to the Florida Department of Health (DOH) that state “equipment malfunction” as the reason fluoride levels are lower than the expected 0.7 mg/L, beginning in November 2023, and emails from at least 2022 mention the analyzer issues.

The emails to the DOH, referencing Hach, a water quality monitoring company, say “the water plant is still working with Hach company to solve the reliability of the online analyzer. The system cannot safely inject fluoride without a reliable online analyzer.”

Greg McCue, compliance and project administrator for Oviedo’s utilities, wrote in a Feb. 28 email that “even during start up [more than 15 years ago] the Hach fluoride analyzers were problematic.”

Through 2024, staff was working on potential fixes, even receiving quotes for potential improvements, but they were never implemented.

The analyzers were being serviced regularly and, according to Wyatt, not mentioned as an urgent need, while another component, the skid, a self-contained fluoride pump system, was brought up in meetings.

Wyatt said non-urgent items that are in need of replacement are programmed into the department’s yearly capital improvement plan.

“All of the equipment has to work together, and the skids were aging infrastructure that needed to be replaced. The analyzers had failures, and they have a semi-annual service contract, and they were continually being serviced,” Stewart said. “They would fall out of service, and then it was a consistent maintenance issue where the skids are operational. They’re on the CIP to [be] replace[d], because they’re aging.

“Each component can be replaced at different times.”

A Feb. 26, 2024 email from McCue shows staff was working on price quotes for both the analyzers and skid system so he could “have this information so if DOH starts inquiring of when our [fluoride] injection system will be up and running again.”

Wyatt said that the optimal time it would have been communicated to him was “if there was a determination that the analyzers were having repeated issues and we were having problems with the maintenance service and how quickly they were getting repaired, at some point they should have brought it up and, just, we replace the whole system.”

Despite the communication confusion, Wyatt said he has full faith in his staff.

“These guys were doing their job, and we’ve now addressed things that I might need to know about and that’s been taken care of,” he said. “You will find no better, competent, capable staff anywhere than the staff we have. They do so much with so little.”

The post Oviedo changes protocols after long fluoride system shutdowns appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

A $10 donation and a group of seven determined people helped keep the building people call ‘Geneva’s heart’ beating until its 100th birthday. What started as one of the first school buildings in Seminole County, The Rural Heritage Center has become a community hub, hosting everything from weddings and yoga classes to plays and birthday parties.

This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the schoolhouse, which at the time housed a library and three classrooms that served 80 students in 12 grades.

Located on Main Street in the center of the 2,900-population town of Geneva, the Center is tucked between the thick trees that line the two-laned road, which hosts important community activities, such as the 4th of July Parade and Festival.

But the Center was very close to being demolished not too many years ago.

In 2008, when the Seminole County School Board decided it was time to let go of the building, it was set to be demolished and turned into a school bus parking lot.

Longtime Geneva resident Mary Jo Martin was one of the original board members of the nonprofit Rural Heritage Center who objected to this plan. Members of the board put together a PowerPoint presentation detailing the vision they had for the building to convince the school board to sell them the property.

“The community said that building is still good,” Martin said.

Since the school board had already planned on demolishing the building, they willingly handed it over to the Rural Heritage Center for just $10.

“And the rest is history,” Martin said.

Martin and a team of longtime Geneva residents banded together to bring the building back to life. Throughout the process, the board members relied heavily on help from other community members who donated their time and skills to redo the floors, build furniture and donate money.

While the purchase of the building itself cost less than a meal, the restoration and upkeep cost the Rural Heritage Center thousands.

“We’ve put a lot of money and sweat equity into the building to restore it to a good condition,” Heritage Center finance director Richard Creedon said.

Creedon said the board put $50,000 into the restoration of the building and continues to contribute about $20,000 per year to keep up operations.

Bob Hughes, owner of the Ole General Store in Geneva, donated the wood, and Geneva resident Tracey Stebbins laid the floors. The tables in the center were built by a woodworking class hosted at the center.

Martin said the Rural Heritage Center was built up by the community for the community. The center’s original seven board members decided the building would serve as a place for groups to rent for events.

One day the center is a square dancing saloon where boot taps on wood floors echo through the halls and the next it serves as a theater where over 200 folks can view old movies in the auditorium. From churches gathering on long red pews to soap-making classes on the front porch and homeschooling meetings in front of wide chalkboards, the center has seen it all.

Now retired from the board, Martin teaches a mountain dulcimer class at the center, bringing people together through Appalachian folk music.

“They’re unemployed or retired people who have always loved music but never knew how to play anything and so they learned how to play dulcimer,” Martin said. “And we have such a good time.”

A bit of history

Behind the red brick walls and white pillars that frame the white double doors, designed by architect Elton Moughton, lives a space that brings Geneva’s spaced-out houses built on large acres of land of together.

What is now known as the Rural Heritage Center started as Geneva Elementary School. The original name is preserved in time, still displayed on the front porch of the building above its wide double doors.

Although it was small, the building had everything it needed to provide education for its 80 students. With three classrooms, a library and a partnering school that shared its cafeteria, Geneva’s old schoolhouse made do.

From its humble beginning, the building’s purpose grew.

In 1988, after Geneva Elementary school moved next door to First Street, the building served as a water management office, a sheriff’s office and a resource center while still under the school board’s ownership.

Answering today’s needs

While the building has served many different roles throughout time, it has held onto its original structure and purpose to serve the community.

During the Great Depression, while the Heritage Center was still known as the Geneva School House, a program teaching home economics to women and agriculture to men was designed to help meet the needs of families.

Eighty-one years later, the center took the initiative to help the community recover from devastation again after Hurricane Ian left the city flooded and without power.

Facility Use Coordinator Trish Deer recalled the center’s 2022 recovery effort.

“We just decided we’re opening,” Deer said. “We don’t care what happens, we are opening, and that was a huge blessing to the community.”

In partnership with FEMA, Seminole County and the American Red Cross, the center provided cleaning supplies, baby diapers and food for residents in need for nearly a month after the storm.

As the Rural Heritage Center continues to grow, Creedon requests that the community continues to support its initiative by offering donations.

The board plans to use the money to remove termites from the building, build a new roof and repair the air conditioning, which Creedon says will cost approximately $85,000.

“If you want to donate, the money is going to go actually to what you want it to be donated for and it’s not going to just go into any kind of pet project,” Creedon said.

Now, the meeting rooms that once served as classrooms are named after local lakes and are open to anyone in the community who needs to rent a space for an event.

“We’re ready if you’re ready to have an event,” Deer said. “No matter how small or how big, we’re there to help you.”

Annual memberships cost $25 and lifetime memberships cost $200.

When Martin reflects on the progress the Center has made over time, she said the success of the Rural Heritage Center was unexpected but it somehow “just worked.”

“I never thought it would continue but it does,” Martin said. “And the people who are the board members now are still doing the same thing we were doing, and trying to keep it up and keep it healthy…It’s still alive and serving the community of the rural area.”

Community members can look forward to the center’s Trunk or Treat event at 5:45 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 31, which will give kids in the community the opportunity to dress up and celebrate Halloween. Learn more.

The post A century of connections: Geneva’s Rural Heritage Center celebrates its 100th year appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

While most areas in Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs fared well through Hurricane Milton as it tore through the area as a Category 1 storm, Seminole County Emergency Management officials said that Gee Creek, Howell Creek and the Little Econlockhatchee River experienced major flooding and cautioned that the St. Johns River, which those water bodies feed into, is expected to rise higher and higher over the next few days and possibly rise into the major flood stage. And Hurricane Milton damage is continuing to be assessed in the wake of the storm.

Seminole County spokesperson Andy Wontor said that folks in low-lying areas should monitor water levels. Seminole County said a sandbag location will open in Geneva at 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 11 so that folks can protect their homes from rising water. The county has has not released a location yet. Check here for updates.

Milton poured 13 inches of rain on the area, which is less than the levels experienced in 2022 after Hurricane Ian, which dumped 15 inches of rain in a single night, in part because Milton moved faster through the area than Ian. The storm had wind gusts more than 89 miles per hour creating “pretty significant damage across the county,” Wontor said.

More than 900 people sought refuge in emergency shelters, a number that increased through the night because of trees crashing into homes and because of flooding, Wontor said. Seminole County experienced no deaths or serious injuries and received 368 9-1-1 calls, which is 150% above the typical average. The only “significant call” the department got was from a person who needed to be rescued after they were pinned in bed by a tree that went through their window.

Power outages

Wontor said there are 115 traffic signals that are out across the county and that drivers should treat those as four way stops.

As of Thursday there were around 50,000 customers without power in the county.

Roadways 

More than 100 roads are currently blocked to some level, so county officials cautioned for people to only drive when necessary, to drive with care when necessary and to turn around if flooding is encountered to prevent drowning.

Wontor said that S.R. 46 could close as water continues to rise and that the county has pre-positioned vehicles in vulnerable areas to help those folks if needed.

Here is a list of road closures:

For Seminole County road closure updates please visit www.fl511.com or call 511.

Schools

Seminole County Public Schools plan to open on Tuesday, Oct. 15. 

Debris and trash collection

Seminole County has not made an announcement concerning debris collection yet. 

Resources

Reporting damage

Wontor urges anyone who experienced damage to fill out a damage assessment form at prepareseminole.org, saying that knowing the level of damage could get the Federal Emergency Management Agency to offer assistance faster.

Disaster distress hotline 

24/7/365 crisis counseling and support to people experiencing emotional distress related to natural or human-caused disasters

Call or text: 800-985-5990

Emergency food pantry 

Second Harvest Food Bank 

Phone: 407-295-1066

Visit online: Second Harvest Food Bank 

Federal aid

See if you qualify for emergency funding from FEMA. Apply for assistance here or call 1-800-621-3362. 

Find gas 

Check Gas Buddy for live updates on fuel and power availability. 

Internet access

Spectrum opened Wifi access points across Florida. Find connections here. 

The post Hurricane Milton damage? Here’s where to find help locally appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

Election Day is fast approaching, and there are a number of local races of consequence for Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs voters. To best inform our readers, Oviedo Community News took a deep look at candidates’ financial reports to reveal where the money they have raised was generated.

Candidates’ financial reports

Seminole County Supervisor of Elections 

Candidate: Amy Pennock

Total contributions (dollars): $112,261

Total in-kind contributions: $25,768 

Total expenditures: $95,223

Analysis: Pennock has received 227 contributions totaling $67,261. She received 158 contributions from Seminole County addresses totaling $46,536, 47 from the rest of Florida totaling $15,183, five from out of state — Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and two from Kansas — totaling $1,267 and 17 from protected voters totaling $4,275.956. She also loaned her campaign $45,000.

The following political committees have contributed to Pennock:

• Committee to Protect Florida – $250
• Southern Group – $250
• Team Plasencia – $500
• Friends of David Smith – $1,000
• The Cigna Group Employee PAC – $1,000

Candidate: Deborah Poulalion

Total contributions: $39,559*

Total in-kind contributions: $1,207 

Total expenditures: $27,656

Analysis: Poulalion has received 349 contributions totaling $28,535. She received 287 from Seminole County addresses totaling $19,251, 51 from the rest of Florida totaling $8,863, five from out of state — California, Washington, Colorado and two from New Jersey — totaling $300 and six from protected voters totaling $121. She also loaned her campaign $11,024.

The following committee contributed to Poulalion:

• Brighter Futures for Students – $1,000

*This number is different from what is listed on the SOE website because there is a $14.71 refund from Dollar Tree and a $20 refund from Addition Financial listed in itemized contributions, but they are not actual contributions.

Seminole County Commission

Seminole County Commissioner District 1

Candidate: Bob Dallari 

Total contributions (dollars): $21,150

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $6,636

Analysis: Dallari, who is running unopposed, has received 28 contributions totaling $21,150. He has received 10 from Seminole County addresses totaling $5,850, 16 from the rest of Florida — all from Central Florida — totaling $13,300, one from Texas for $1,000 and one from a protected voter totaling $1,000.

The following political committee contributed to Dallari:

• Greater Orlando Builders Association (GOBA) PAC – $1,000

Seminole County Commissioner District 3

Candidate: Lee Constantine

Total contributions (dollars): $133,705

Total in-kind contributions: $205 

Total expenditures: $133,705

Analysis: Constantine, who is running unopposed, has received 253 contributions totaling $108,705. He has received 128 from Seminole County addresses totaling $46,900, 109 from the rest of Florida — the majority from Central Florida — totaling $52,680, seven from out of state — Virginia, Missouri, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and two from Texas — totaling $4,775 and nine from protected voters for $4,350. He also loaned his campaign $25,000.

The following political committees have contributed to Constantine: 

• GrayRobinson PA-PAC – $1,000
• Friends of Lee Constantine – $1,000
• Southern Group – $500
• Friends of Paula – $1,000
• The Cigna Group Employee PAC – $1,000
• The Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association (CFHLA) PAC – $1,000
• GOBA – $1,000
• HNTB Holdings Ltd. – $1,000

Seminole County Commissioner District 5

Candidate: Gary Carney

Total contributions (dollars): $11,021*

Total in-kind contributions: $0

Total expenditures: $10,946

Analysis: Carney has received 57 contributions totaling $5,526. He has received nine from Seminole County addresses totaling $960 — six from himself for $810 — 22 from the rest of Florida totaling $2,055, 25 from out of state  — North Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, New Mexico, Texas, New York and Georgia — totaling $2,511. He also loaned his campaign $5,500.

*This number is different from what is listed on the SOE website because there is a $4.55 refund from Square listed in itemized contributions, but it is not an actual contribution.

Candidate: Andria Herr

Total contributions (dollars): $105,589

Total in-kind contributions: $2,000

Total expenditures: $23,915

Analysis: Herr has received 183 contributions totaling $101,814. She has received 104 from Seminole County addresses totaling $49,939, 58 from the rest of Florida totaling $40,000, eight from out of state — California, Illinois, New York, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and two from Texas — totaling $6,175 and 13 from protected voters totaling $5,700. She also loaned her campaign $4,045.

The following political committees have contributed to Herr:

• HNTB Holdings Ltd. – $1,000
• Citizens for Fiscal Leadership – $500
• GOBA PAC – $1,000
• Floridians for Housing – $1,000
• Florida Apartment Association – $1,000
• Southern Group – $1,000
• Freedom and Liberty Fund – $1,000
• Citizens for Solutions – $1,000
• CFHLA Political Committee – $1,000**
• Central FL Hotel & Lodging – $1,000**
• The Cigna Group Employee PAC – $1,000
• Realtors PAC – $1,000
• Free Florida PC – $500

**CFHLA Political Committee and Central FL Hotel & Lodging were both listed as PACs with the same address, in two separate contributions with the same filing date of July 29. OCN has reached out multiple times over phone and email to the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections office for clarification, but has yet to receive a response. 

Seminole County School Board District 3

Candidate: Stephanie Arguello

Total contributions (dollars): $26,654

Total in-kind contributions: $5,907

Total expenditures: $22,734

Analysis: Arguello has received 230 contributions totaling $26,654. She has received 113 contributions from Seminole County addresses totaling $11,326, 95 from the rest of Florida totaling $13,684, 14 from out of state — Washington, D.C., Colorado, California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Illinois, Georgia New York and two from Texas — totaling $954 and eight from protected voters totaling $690.

The following political committees have contributed to Arguello:

• Ruth’s List Florida, Inc. – $500
• Democracy Engine LLC – $19

Candidate: Abby Sanchez

Total contributions (dollars): $110,166

Total in-kind contributions: $0

Total expenditures: $38,577

Analysis: Sanchez has received 127 contributions totaling $35,166. She has received 74 contributions from Seminole County addresses totaling $15,267, 37 from the rest of Florida totaling $13,970, five from out of state — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Colorado and two from Maryland — totaling $3,250 and 11 from protected voters totaling $2,679. She also loaned her campaign $75,000.

The following political committee has contributed to Sanchez:

• Seminole Public Education PAC – $1,000

Oviedo City Council

Oviedo City Council Group II

Candidate: Keith Britton

Total contributions (dollars): $2,300

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $862

Analysis: Britton, who’s running unopposed, received three contributions from Oviedo addresses totaling $1,300, while also loaning his campaign $1,000.

Oviedo City Council Group III

Candidate: Darrell Lopez

Total contributions (dollars): $11,600

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $10,442

Analysis: Lopez has received seven contributions from Oviedo addresses totaling $3,650 — $200 from himself — two from Seminole County addresses totaling $700 and two from other Florida counties totaling $1,250. 

The following political committee has contributed to Lopez:

• Southern Group – $250

Candidate: Alan Ott

Total contributions (dollars): $22,740*

Total in-kind contributions: $123 

Total expenditures: $3,161

Analysis: Ott received three contributions from Oviedo addresses totaling $2,120 — $2,000 of which was from himself — while also receiving $350 total from four separate contributions from Seminole County addresses, $250 from an out-of-state donor in Tennessee and $20 from a protected voter. He also loaned his campaign $20,000.

*This number is different from what is listed on the SOE website because there is a $770.45 refund from Home Depot listed in itemized contributions, but it is not an actual contribution.

Oviedo City Council Group IV

Candidate: Jeff Boddiford 

Total contributions (dollars): $500

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $452

Analysis: Boddiford, who’s running unopposed, loaned his campaign $500.

Winter Springs City Commission

Winter Springs City Commissioner District 1

Candidate: Matthew Benton

Total contributions (dollars): $7,028

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $1,631

Analysis: Benton received three contributions from Winter Springs addresses totaling $300, and loaned his campaign $6,728.

Candidate: Paul Diaz

Total contributions (dollars): $8,807

Total in-kind contributions: $299 

Total expenditures: $3,498.92

Analysis: Of Diaz’s 22 contributions, 15 were from Winter Springs addresses totaling $4,125.63, with two from other Seminole County cities totaling $300, four from other Florida counties totaling $1,200 and one from a protected voter for $100. He also loaned his campaign $3,081.27

Winter Springs City Commissioner District 3

Candidate: Sarah Baker

Total contributions (dollars): $5,755

Total in-kind contributions: $348 

Total expenditures: $5,144

Analysis: Of Baker’s 22 contributions, 11 were from Winter Springs addresses totaling $2,010 and 11 were from other Seminole County cities totaling $745. She also loaned her campaign $3,000.

Candidate: Karen Meyer

Total contributions (dollars): $6,712

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $3,858

Analysis: All nine of Meyer’s contributions were made from Winter Springs addresses, totaling $2,591. She also loaned her campaign $4,121

Winter Springs City Commissioner District 5

Candidate: Mark Caruso

Total contributions (dollars): $16,840

Total in-kind contributions: $900 

Total expenditures: $5,509

Analysis: Of Caruso’s 13 contributions, six were from Winter Springs addresses totaling $1,220, three were from other Seminole County cities totaling $400, two were from Florida by outside of Seminole County addresses totaling $110, one was a protected voter for $100 and one was from an individual in Massachusetts for $10. Caruso also loaned his campaign $15,000.

Candidate: Robert Elliott

Total contributions (dollars): $1,650

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $865

Analysis: Of Elliott’s six contributions, four were from Winter Springs addresses totaling $550, one from Longwood for $100 and one from Prudent Management LLC in Wyoming for $1,000. 

Candidate: Brandon Morrisey 

Total contributions (dollars): $2,292

Total in-kind contributions: $0 

Total expenditures: $2,291

Analysis: Morrisey received 10 contributions, with seven from Winter Springs addresses totaling $942, one from Oviedo for $250, one from Jupiter, Fla. for $1,000 and one from a protected voter for $100.

Questions?

If you have questions about this report, find that something is missing or have additional election-related information that you would like to provide the OCN team, contact us.

The post A deep dive into Seminole County candidates’ financial reports appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

Dozens of people were killed across multiple states this week as Hurricane Helene swept across parts of the Southeastern United States, bringing heavy rains and a 15-foot storm surge.

Coastal towns and cities in Florida were devastated when the Category 4 hurricane made landfall, but communities inland bore a similar brunt as the storm carved a path through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

“Turn around, don’t drown,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper urged drivers in a press conference. 

At least 42 people have died from the storm. As of Friday, Florida reported seven deaths. Georgia, meanwhile, reported 15, and South Carolina, 17. In both of the latter states, most of the known fatalities were from falling trees and debris. North Carolina reported two deaths, including a car crash that killed a 4-year-old girl after a road flooded. 

Atlanta received 11.12 inches of rain in 48 hours, breaking its previous record of 9.59 inches in the same time period from 1886, according to Bill Murphey, Georgia’s state climatologist. More than 1 million Georgia residents also lost power in the storm, particularly in southern and eastern parts of the state. 

In western North Carolina, officials sounded alarms and went door-to-door evacuating residents south of the Lake Lure Dam in Rutherford County after the National Weather Service warned that a dam failure was “imminent.” Emergency crews also conducted more than 50 swift water rescues across the region, with one sheriff’s department warning it could not respond to all of the 911 calls due to flooded roads. The North Carolina Department of Transportation warned on social media that “all roads in Western NC should be considered closed” due to flooding from Helene.

In Tennessee, more than 50 people were stranded on the roof of a hospital due to heavy flooding and had to be rescued by helicopter. Residents of Cocke County in Tennessee were also asked to evacuate after reports that a separate dam could fail, although officials later said the dam failure had been a false alarm. In South Carolina, the National Weather Service said the storm was “one of the most significant weather events… in the modern era.”

The hurricane’s widespread flooding was worsened by climate change, scientists told Grist. Hurricane Helene was an unusually large storm with an expansive reach. After forming in the Caribbean, it traveled over extremely warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico that enabled the storm to intensify more quickly than it may have otherwise. In fact, Helene went from a relatively weak tropical storm to a Category 4 in just two days. Warmer air also holds more moisture, supercharging the storm’s water content and leading to more rapid rainfall and intense flooding. 

“When that enhanced moisture comes up and hits terrain like the Appalachian Mountains,” said University of Hawaiʻi meteorology professor Steve Businger, “it results in very, very high rainfall rates, exceptionally high rainfall rates and that unfortunately results in a lot of flash flooding.”

Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the scientific group Climate Central, said research has shown that the Gulf’s current extra-warm ocean temperatures were ​​made up to 500 times more likely with climate change. “One of the things that we’re seeing with these big storms, especially as they seem to become more frequent, is that they’re no longer natural disasters, but that they’re unnatural disasters,” Winkley said. “It’s not just a normal weather system anymore.” 

Hurricanes are naturally occuring, of course, but the conditions that led to Helene’s severity — its rapid intensification and heavy rainfall — were partially driven by warmer ocean and atmospheric temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels. “There is a fingerprint of climate change in that process,” Winkley said. 

“This summer was record warm globally and there was a record amount of water vapor in the global atmosphere,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA. Both factors contributed to what the Southeastern U.S. experienced this week. “This is one of the more significant flood events in the U.S. in recent memory.”  

Initial estimates for the storm’s damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure range between $15 billion and $26 billion, the New York Times reported. Businger said he expects the enormous loss to fuel more conversations about the precarity of the existing property insurance system. “The cost to society is becoming extravagant,” he said.

Scientists noted that the fact that the storm’s winds increased by 55 miles per hour in the 24 hours before it made landfall also made it deadlier.

“It was so strong and moving so fast it just didn’t have time to weaken very much before it made it far inland,” Swain said. Rapid intensification is particularly dangerous, he said, because people often make decisions on how to prepare for storms and whether or not to evacuate based on how bad they appear to be initially. 

“It was one of the faster intensifying storms on record,” Swain said. “This is not a fluke. We should expect to see more rapidly intensifying hurricanes in a warming climate.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After battering coastal towns, Hurricane Helene causes deadly flooding across five states on Sep 27, 2024.

Editor’s note: In partnership with the Florida Trident, Central Florida Public Media (previously 90.7 WMFE), and WGCU Public Media, Oviedo Community News is taking a deep look at what the Florida Wildlife Corridor does and doesn’t mean for our community. Below is CFPM’s second installment in a special, statewide collaboration called: “Preserve or Develop? The Race Against Time to Protect Florida’s Wildlife Corridor.”

Nesting fox squirrels, deer, gopher tortoises and bald eagles are just some examples of the wildlife you might see on any given day at the nearly 700-acre Evans Ranch in Flagler County, just outside the borders of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. 

“We don’t need a zoo; we have our own wildlife habitat out here,” laughs Jane Evans Davis, who co-manages Evans Farms with her brother, Geno Evans.  

The Evanses’ roughly 2,000-acre agricultural operation includes the Flagler County ranch as well as Anastasia Gold Caviar, their aquaculture facility, or fish farm, just over the Volusia County line. On the Flagler side are timberlands and the Evanses’ cow-calf operation. 

Like many family farmers, the Evanses’ interest in agriculture spans generations. They say their father bought the land back in the 1980s, when it was just “a blank slate.” 

“Dad’s love for the outdoors, and love for the property … I think that’s what’s led us down this path,” Geno Evans said.  

Now, the Evanses each hope some of their children, members of the next generation, will want to carry on the family’s farming tradition — and protect this rural land. That’s why they say they decided to protect their Flagler County ranchland with Florida’s first agricultural conservation easement, granted in 2009 through the state’s Rural and Family Lands Protection Program (RFLPP). 

Typically, conservation easements restrict how land can be used. But in Florida, agricultural conservation easements allow land to still be used for farming, and stay in private hands, while providing tax benefits for landowners.   

“It was a decision we were making for the future generations of the family,” Evans said. “We still can do any agricultural venture that we want.” 

“Florida’s Wildlife and Water Corridor” 

Not all land is safe from future development within the 18-million-acre area designated by a 2021 state law as the Florida Wildlife Corridor.  

Eight million acres of Corridor lands are “opportunity areas,” lacking conservation protections — which don’t come from the Corridor Act itself, but rather from a range of different programs, run by state, local, federal and private entities. The Corridor essentially serves as a marketing/outreach campaign, directing attention toward what are scientifically identified as Florida’s most important lands to conserve. 

Much of the unprotected Corridor includes “working lands,” currently used for either ranching or silviculture/timber production, according to Tom Hoctor, director of the Center for Landscape Conservation Planning (CLCP) at University of Florida.  

And by 2070, much of the state’s farmland could be paved over and developed: including more than half of the unprotected Corridor, according to Agriculture 2040/2070, an analysis co-published earlier this year by Hoctor’s team and 1000 Friends of Florida.  

For Hoctor, those findings create a sense of urgency.  

“We have to protect working lands,” Hoctor said. “If we’re gonna protect the Florida Wildlife Corridor, if we’re gonna close all those gaps, working agricultural lands are essential to accomplishing that goal.” 

More broadly, even beyond the Florida Wildlife Corridor’s imagined boundaries, farmland in Florida stands to play a significant role in building climate resilience, according to the 2040/2070 report.  

“Often, depending on how it’s managed, and where it is, it can be very similar to natural ecosystems,” Hoctor said. 

As large, rural landscapes, ranchlands and timberlands like the Evanses’ often double as conservation land, Hoctor says: providing ecosystem services, like wildlife habitat and flood storage from natural wetlands. Wetlands and sandy uplands alike can also help filter and clean water, another reason why Hoctor says it’s so important to protect land in the Corridor. 

“It might as well be called Florida’s [Wildlife and] Water Corridor,” Hoctor said. “It’s just as important to protecting the state’s water resources as it is to protecting panthers or bears or other species.” 

Research published by the UF Water Institute in late 2022 supports that idea, at least in part. Specifically, a fully-connected Corridor would provide many water benefits for wetlands and rivers, according to the report. But it wouldn’t help as much with groundwater recharge for the Floridan Aquifer, a massive underground system of rocks and sediment supplying about 90% of the state’s drinking water. 

Just over a third of Florida’s highest-priority areas for aquifer recharge are located within the Wildlife Corridor, says Joshua Daskin, director of conservation for Archbold Biological Station, which commissioned the UF report.  

“The areas that are best for aquifer recharge are the really high, dry, sandy soils. And those are also the places that we prefer for agriculture — for row crops in particular — and for building our homes and businesses,” Daskin said.  

That’s why there aren’t so many of those areas within the Corridor, Daskin says: because there aren’t as many left to conserve. “A lot of them have already been developed,” he said. 

Still, aquifer recharge areas that are within the Corridor, along with surface watersheds, could benefit from protecting all the Corridor’s “opportunity areas” from development, according to the UF Water Institute study. That includes agricultural lands — with one important caveat. 

“The degree of protection provided to Florida’s watersheds and aquifer recharge areas will be dependent on how the [Florida Wildlife Corridor’s] conserved lands are managed,” the report states.  

For working lands in the Corridor, the report specifically recommends conservation easements that encourage sustainable land and water management practices. 

Farming and water pollution in Florida 

Historically and today, agriculture is critical to Florida’s culture and economy. But as an industry, it’s also a major environmental polluter. Together, livestock waste and fertilizer runoff make agriculture a major source of pollution to Central Florida’s freshwater basins, according to available data from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). 

Excessive nitrogen from fertilizer is the main water quality problem for the Outstanding Florida Springs (OFS) currently classified as impaired, or polluted, by FDEP. Of all 30 designated OFS in Florida, 24 are considered impaired. 

Florida Springs Council (FSC) Executive Director Ryan Smart says it’s critically important to address Florida’s agricultural water pollution. Statewide, agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of nitrate pollution in springs, according to an analysis FSC published in 2021.  

“No matter what we do on the ground, it affects our springs. And whatever happens in our springs, it’s not only the springs and the rivers, but it’s our drinking water,” Smart said.  

Soil and plants will absorb some fertilizer before it seeps into our groundwater supply, but not all of it, Smart said, adding that Florida’s frequent rainstorms also complicate the problem. 

“You get a big rainstorm that comes in after the fertilizer’s been put down, and it just flushes all of that fertilizer straight into the aquifer,” Smart said. “And once it’s in the aquifer, it is very hard to get that pollution out.” 

That’s why Smart says it’s so important to minimize agricultural pollution before it has a chance to contaminate Florida waters. He says that means land conservation must be part of the solution. 

“To protect a spring, you can’t just put a fence around the spring,” Smart said. “The health of our springs is determined by the land use all around them … you have to protect forests, you have to have smart development, you have to have smart agriculture.” 

Florida law requires farmers within impaired water basins to use Best Management Practices, or BMPs, to improve water quality. But Smart says there’s a problem: farmers using BMPs enjoy an automatic “presumption of compliance” with water quality standards, meaning no water testing is regularly conducted to ensure those BMPs are working. 

Staff with Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) do visit farms with checklists to verify farmers are using BMPs. So far this fiscal year, as of mid-April, FDACS made 528 such “implementation verification” visits in Orange, Osceola, Polk, Volusia and Flagler counties, including 15 in Flagler. 

But FDACS says FDEP is statutorily responsible for water quality sampling, and FDEP didn’t answer questions about whether it tests water quality to ensure BMPs are working. 

“We have a presumption of compliance with water quality standards for farmers doing things that actually don’t improve water quality,” Smart said.  

“If you don’t study something, [and] you’re not gonna set the practices to where they’re not environmentally harmful, then it doesn’t make sense to have our environmental rules based on them.” 

Incentivizing sustainable agriculture  

Smart recognizes agriculture serves a purpose in Florida, and doesn’t want to put farmers out of business; he just wants to see agriculture do less damage to the Florida environment he loves. But he says that won’t happen all on its own, without regulatory oversight — and incentives for sustainable farming practices. 

“We need to keep the land in private hands, we just need that land to be sustainable,” Smart said. “We need to be paying farmers for the environmental benefits and services that they are creating when they make these changes.”  

Echoing that sentiment, Hoctor says he wants to see Florida do more to incentivize sustainable agriculture, including by paying farmers for the ecosystem services they provide. He’d also like to see more funding dedicated to Florida’s RFLPP, the program protecting the Evanses’ easement, and the state’s other flagship land protection program, Florida Forever, which buys up land outright for conservation. 

“If you look at the Florida Wildlife Corridor law, it talks about market-based and incentives-based approaches to conserving the Florida Wildlife Corridor,” Hoctor said. “Well, I think funding Florida Forever and Rural And Family Lands is essential to accomplish that goal.” 

Hoctor advocates for $250 million a year, per program, to get the job done. It will require a “multi-decadal commitment” of that kind of funding, he says, to protect Florida’s most valuable ecological lands. 

But it’s worth it, Hoctor says, including to protect agricultural land, which he says is almost always much more “conservation compatible” than land that’s already been developed. 

“There’s almost a one to one relationship,” between agricultural and conservation lands, Hoctor said. 

“Yes, they’re not pristine. Yes, they’re not entirely natural systems. But they’re really important for conservation,” Hoctor said. “And they can continue to be managed for these low intensity uses, and stay really important for conservation.” 

For their part, the Evanses say they prioritize sustainable agricultural practices. Geno Evans takes issue with the narrative that farmers are responsible for Florida’s water pollution, pointing out, there aren’t any residential BMPs that non-farmers have to follow.  

“We [as farmers] kinda live and die by our BMPs,” Evans said. “We manage our pollution, our runoff.” 

The Evanses also say they use sustainable water management practices, thanks to their “100% closed” levee system, complete with lift stations, sand filters and a reservoir that can hold 60 million gallons of water. The system allows the Evanses to drain all their aquaculture tanks on the Volusia County side, where they raise sturgeon for caviar eggs; then, treat the water and recycle it. 

 
“During drought, we’re one of the few farmers that actually can use water to do our fields,” Jane Evans Davis said. And she says the levee system also helps recycle nutrients through the farm, instead of letting them flow into any surface waters. 

“We’re a pretty rare operation,” Evans Davis said. “Most people don’t build this large of a retention area to hold all their water and keep it on their farm.” 

The idea behind Florida’s RFLPP, the program that set up the Evanses’ conservation easement, is to “protect natural resources, not as the primary purpose.”  

Instead, the program is designed to “ensure sustainable agricultural practices and reasonable protection of the environment without interfering with agricultural operations in such a way that could put the continued economic viability of these operations at risk.” 

Nationally, there are about 7 percent fewer farms now than in 2017, based on the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture. But Flagler County, where the Evans Ranch is, lost 23 percent of its farms in the same time period. 

“It’s tragic, how many farmlands are disappearing,” Jane Evans Davis said. “We’re losing so many opportunities every day to protect sensitive lands with agriculture.” 

They worry people don’t understand or appreciate how much of their food supply comes from farms. “If we don’t feed ourselves, who’s gonna feed us?” Evans said. 

The Evanses hope to see more agricultural easements like theirs help farmers keep farming in Florida, versus selling off their land completely. Evans doesn’t like seeing farms outright disappear like that:whether it’s to the state or rich developers, who can almost always pay farmers more, and move sales along more quickly than the state can.  

“I’m in favor of the Wildlife Corridor, for sure,” Evans said. “But I’m not in favor of pushing agriculture out of the way for that … If they displace the agricultural part of it, I think they’re missing the whole point to the conservation.” 

And the Evanses hope their own agricultural conservation easement can help sustain the family’s farming tradition for generations to come. Evans says his kids both enjoy working on the ranch, and Evans Davis’ daughter, a trained fisheries biologist, loves the fish farm. 

“I want to make sure that this farm is healthy, safe and productive for my grandkids, and their grandkids,” Evans Davis said. “You have corporations that care, right? But do they care as much as a family that cares about that property that they want their future generations to live on?”  

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