Breaking the rules?

Dog lovers and beer drinkers may have to hold off on festivities in Winter Park, at least until the city can pass clearer ordinances saying it’s OK to have dogs in certain parks and drink alcohol at some events.

At an Oct. 11 meeting, three Winter Park city commissioners railed against the idea of granting waivers that went against city ordinances such as those banning dogs from certain parks and drinking on public streets. The commissioners grappled over the idea of how to say yes to some events, and say no to others.

Currently the city manager or the Commission have been tasked with deciding whether to bend the city’s rules to allow certain event exceptions to the city’s alcohol, noise and dog ordinances.

The issue came up because of a September Commission meeting in which the commissioners argued about whether to grant an exception to a group organizing a dog agility competition in Cady Way Park. Normally the park does not allow dog events at all, but the Commission voted to allow it.

That included a yes vote by Commissioner Carolyn Cooper, who was called out at the Oct. 11 meeting by Commissioner Beth Dillaha.

“I had said at the last meeting that the dog agility course does not conform with our ordinance, and you felt compelled to still vote for approval,” Dillaha said to Cooper.

Granting exceptions without hard criteria for them is a bad idea, according to City Attorney Larry Brown.

“The Florida Legislature can’t pass a law and then meet next week and say ‘we’re not going to apply this law to Mayor Bradley,’” Brown said. “They can’t say this law applies to everyone in the state, but then ex post facto say this law doesn’t apply to [Commissioner Phil Anderson] because he’s a nice guy.

“If you say that we’ll grant a waiver anytime we like … you can do that, but eventually a group is going to come along asking for the same benefit,” Brown continued. “That’s why you need criteria.”

“It’s just too vague and too discretionary,” Commissioner Beth Dillaha said. “This seems to be the type of thing that causes more and more problems in the city.”

Commissioner Tom McMacken went so far as to suggest the city had routinely broken its own rules in allowing any exceptions at all.

“Where I was going with this one … was that the very act of granting a variance was a violation,” he said. “If we have ordinances that we routinely grant variances for, I’d rather just amend that ordinance. By granting that waiver on alcohol, we were actually in violation of our own ordinance.”

But when commissioners suggested ways to revise the ordinances to allow for some variances, they were split on the execution.

“What we’re saying is … we’ll have an ordinance that says you don’t have to abide by the ordinance,” Dillaha said. “Why have an ordinance?”

McMacken’s suggestion of splitting up individual ordinances to allow specific activities gained the most traction, but the Commission was still divided to the point of not being able to decide on how to handle the issue.

Dillaha suggested allowing a maximum number of exceptions per year, suggesting possibly a maximum of four dog event exceptions per year. Once that amount of exceptions is granted, other dog event organizers would be forced to hold their events elsewhere.

“You can’t grant exemptions to the law; you either rewrite the ordinance, repeal it or amend it,” Dillaha said.

While the potential changes in ordinances weren’t approved, they may return to the agenda at Monday’s meeting.