Winter Park City Commission makes adjustments to mural laws

For many artists, the world around us is a canvas. Brick walls and wooden fences can showcase a masterpiece. Public art is an outlet of free speech – and that’s the exact sentiment Winter Park leaders had in mind with a recent vote.

Winter Park City Commissioners removed language from the books at their Monday, July 9 meeting that restricts the size of murals on the outside of buildings throughout the city.

Before Monday’s meeting, language in the city’s codes outlined that artwork painted on a wall “shall be limited to one single façade only on the first floor on each side directly facing a street and shall not cover more than 45% of the first floor of that wall or signable area.” The City Commission voted to remove that percentage – it was first added to the language back in April when Winter Park updated its sign codes.

Mayor Steve Leary said the percentage was unnecessary and should be removed.

“After driving down Fairbanks and I saw the Hunger Street Tacos building and they have a beautiful mural on the side, I just said to myself ‘If someone doesn’t like the mural, making it 45% instead of 100% isn’t going to make it better,”’ Leary said. “I just started thinking about what that 45% means. Are we trying to really gage or impose taste values through size? It didn’t seem to make any sense to me.”

Residents can spot a handful examples of murals throughout the city, including a display of butterflies on the side of The Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, among others.

While murals are still restricted to the first floor of a building, the city’s current codes also state that “the City Commission may approve larger murals on a case-by-case basis, at a public hearing after notice to adjacent property owners, if such mural art works are exclusively non-commercial in nature and deemed to provide artistic value and benefit to the surrounding area and not just of benefit to the building or business proposing the mural.”

“I don’t want three-story-high murals, I don’t think, unless someone came in for a special exemption,” Leary said.

City Commissioner Peter Weldon said that giving murals – and by extension free speech – more flexibility makes sense.

“My preference always is more speech is better speech,” Weldon said. “I don’t want to be in the judgement business and I don’t think the city should be either. If murals are a form of speech – and they are – and they’re noncommercial, I think the city is actually benefitted by the diversity of those murals. The size of them on a one-story facade is not material and will only be selectively chosen.” 

On the other hand, City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper proposed that murals should potentially be prohibited anywhere within Winter Park’s central business district.

“I don’t want to be in the position to dictate taste, but if you just simply say something doesn’t belong in this area, then you’re not open to saying ‘I like that one, I don’t like that one,’” Cooper said.

Leary reasoned that the City Commission basically already dictates taste, adding that if someone were to come in with a mural bigger than 45% of a facade under the previous language, taste would pretty much be the deciding factor on whether it’s approved.

The City Commission ultimately decided to do away with the percentage by a vote of 4-1, with Cooper dissenting. 

First Look at Fiscal Year 2019 Budget

City Manager Randy Knight also took the opportunity on Monday to present the preliminary $172.5 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The general fund comes out to $57.5 million this year, and the millage rate sits at 4.0923 mills for the 11th straight year.

Highlights from the budget include $16.9 million for capital projects citywide; $3.925 million going toward electric undergrounding; improvements to Dinky Dock Park; a new police standards division to handle administrative, training, and accreditation services; and continued urban forestry funding to plant over 600 trees.

The city is scheduled to take public input and set a tentative millage rate on Monday, July 23. Opportunities for more public input on the budget will take place at the Aug. 13 and Aug. 27 City Commission meetings.

A first reading of the budget is set for Monday, Sept. 10, while a final adoption of the budget is tentatively scheduled for the Monday, Sept. 24 meeting.