Tavares, Florida - Sept. 5, 2011 - Tomorrow, at Tuesday's 9am Lake County Board meeting (see agenda and addendum HERE), the Board will discuss a revised map for district boundaries, but there are a number of issues that residents need to understand, and I really believe the discussion should be tabled another week because staff removed a map from Jimmy Conner from the website, so the public can't evaluate proposed changes.
Here is a link to the 9am meeting agenda AND redistricting addendum page for Sept 6. Click to see other agenda items you might want to know about, LIKE the Budget approval. Last week, the Lake County Board of Commissioners reviewed and discussed five proposed district boundary maps since they must draw new County Commissioner district boundaries with fairly equal population every 10 years (or more often). They argued over selecting Jimmy Conner's proposed map and revising one from Sean Parks. Kinda like verbal kangaroo combat.
The current district boundary map is HERE, so you can compare it to the new proposed maps below (they were not linked on the SAME page). You will need to print it to compare the current districts to the revisions in the maps below. The Board did NOT provide the current map with the new maps, so ti was hard for the public to know what had changed.
The final decision was 3 to 2 for option map 2, which had been submitted by Commissioner Jimmy Conner and was designed to keep changes of existing community relationships with Commissioners to a minimum.
Or they could have redrawn everything and many cities would have new Commissioners representing them.
During public input last week, there were numerous residents of the large retirement communities south of Leesburg who voiced support for Conner and his map, because they did not want to be lumped into a south county district (i.e. with Mascotte, Groveland and clear down to four corners which are not high income areas).
But, Leslie Campione asked for postponement of selecting the final map until she had a chance to modify the option 2 map with other boundary changes. I was never clear on the reason why.
The new map from Campione's revisions was posted Friday on the County website HERE, but the "option 2" map from Jimmy was REMOVED from the website even though it had the 3-2 vote. There is some political hanky panky going on... TIP: The map that shows on the webpage is very vague and not easy to understand, but if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can click on "download maps" and download a much more detailed version which you can print. HOWEVER, the "Current" map tab has a download link which only downloads the revised C map, and NOT the current map. Got that? Well, this is just to let the staff know they need to be more precised when posting links.
Fortunately, I have a printed option 2 map, and could compare all three maps (current, option 2 from Jimmy Conner, and Campione'Parks new version. However, there is NO online version of Conner's Option 2 map - it was removed from the County website. This reason alone of lack of transparency is a reason to postpone the map decision to a future meeting.
So, lets call them maps A, B2 & C.
A is the current map, B2 is Conner's option 2 map, and C is Campione's revised map that is now the only proposal on the website.
Here are some issues I see and some rumors:
- Since only Campione's new map is on the District website, and Conner's is not, I think they should postpone the discussion on the maps to a future meeting, especially when today was a holiday and no staff were available to post Conner's map.
- The current map really only gives one District to South County and Clermont, and Minneola. Either new map will provide verticle districts that split Clermont away from Groveland and Mascotte, and do provide TWO districts to South County.
- Sean Parks has been pushing for two South County dedicated districts, and Campione's map C, a revision of his earlier map, does do that, basically providing two districts South of HWY 27 except for some of the retirement communities that complained (and they have a Leesburg address).But, it disrupts Conner's district much more than his proposed map.
- Map C takes away some clout from Tavares because they would have to share the new District with Leesburg.
- Rumor -Leesburg resident Timothy I. Sullivan, a well known Leesburg resident, is rumored to be running for Hill's district because she is not running again. He apparently lives in Leesburg on Park Dr. In map version B2, and he would be in Hill's "new" district, but not in Conner's district. However, the new map C extends Conner's District into Leesburg and Sullivan would be running against him in the same new district. It is my observation a number of people in Leesburg who would like to control County government, push through waivers of impact fees, and do not like Conner because he has been a strong force in reducing budgets for big building projects, or there are other reasons. Thus, it seems they may want Sullivan to run against Conner, which should upset many Conner supporters (who are not usually from Leesburg). Of course, I may be completely wrong, but the Leesburg "leaders" seem bent on controlling county politics. They funded both Campione and Parks, and if they get one more Commissioner, it will be easier to push through changes they want. Retirees who moved to Lake County may not like their spending or tax plans. (I love speculation...).
- The new Map C takes Howie in the Hills and the Mission Inn area, and puts them in the new lower income South County District with Groveland and Mascotte. I wonder how the Mission Inn residents will like that?
- The restructured map C seems like a gerrymandered map to put even the low income area of Leesburg and other County low income areas all in one District running from Leesburg down to four corners. That might be interesting and the result, since there is no current Commissioner in that District, could open up elections to hispanic candidates or others from Mascotte or Groveland. OR, it was redesigned to let someone from Howie to run? I have no idea, so watch who announces for candidacy once the final map is selected.
So, what is my recommendation:
- The map discussion should be postponed until BOTH Conner and Campione's maps are on the website and Campione explains the logic for her revisions to Park's map. Making a final decision at tomorrow's LONG Board meeting with or without public input will appear to be a ploy since Conner's map magically was removed from the website for comparison, and you have to hunt in another place to find the current district map that CAN be downloaded and printed.
- I have not seen any sound reasons for map C, so I am assuming there are political objectives I don't know, and thus I believe voters should tell their commissioners to stick with Conner's "option 2" map. I support Conner's statement that his map disrupts existing poltical relationships less than other proposals. South County still gets two districts that drop into their area vs the current one District.
- Residents of Howie-in-the-Hills and Mission Inn will learn the lesson of not following Lake County Board meetings when they might end up in a District with four corners, Mascotte and Groveland.
vj
