Letters to the Editor

Paw park fees the right move

Mayor and city commissioners and citizens of Winter Park,

Thank you for taking the responsibility to manage the city’s financial affairs. This marks a high water mark and a bold step to put the city of Winter Park in a more manageable financial position with the citizens’ park property (Fleet Peeples Park). Far too long we have been bullied by outsiders who were encouraged by politically motivated operatives espousing friendship but acting as an occupational force. Real friends do not attempt to privatize public property for singular special purposes.

The city of Winter Park has not treated this park any differently than the soccer fields, baseball fields, tennis courts, lake boat access, the golf course and civic center — all charge fees; pay to play. I think with future years of revenue shortfall, the city will need to continue looking for more revenue on a pay-to-play basis.

Now the Friends of Fleet Peeples Park can get on with the more important task at hand, now that they are relieved of the fundraising to support our city park. They should now support the city and discontinue their constant attacks on city officials and operating as a political action committee or lobby group. Many areas of our region need and want dog parks. More dog parks supported by fees in Orlando, Maitland, Oviedo, Apopka, College Park and Orange County would not only locate dog parks where dog owners live but reduce the wear and tear on one centrally located dog park.

I would also suggest allowing corporate sponsorship and privately owned dog parks to aid cities and the county to speed up this process. This has been a successful approach in Houston. Most cities and counties are experiencing large revenue shortfalls that will effect basic services or greatly increase their costs. There are billions of dollars in shortfalls from unfunded pension plans nationwide and some shortfall in pension funding here in Winter Park.

We cannot, as some have suggested, borrow more money to close the gap and kick the can down the road.

Now is truly the time for everyone to ask not what my community can do for me, but rather what can I do for my community.

—Herbert Weiss

Winter Park

How about a cat park?

While some Winter Park citizens and leaders have expressed formidable concern over recreational facilities for dogs — to the extent that neighbors and former friends have verbally scratched and bitten each other — cats have been forgotten. They are dispossessed; their basic needs abandoned in favor of their canine brothers and sisters.

To that point I would beg our commissioners to consider — yes — a cat park. Call it Fleet Felines Frolic Sanctuary. Imagine having a place where cats can congregate, learn to swim, acquire herd-instinct patterns, have feline models for fetching objects, warn owners against intruders and learn to ride in the car to the park with heads leaning out windows, ears flapping in the breeze and smiles on their faces in anticipation of fetching a thrown stick from a cool body of water.

Think about it — these are our own cool, unfriendly, judgmental feline folk who badly need the fraternizing, socializing and frolicking. The dogs already know how! Give the poor cats a chance.

So, dear Winter Park commissioners, please give earnest consideration to this proposal. “Give a cat a fish and she will eat for a day. Give her social skills and she will give you pleasure through nine lives.”

—Robert S. Lemon, Jr.

Winter Park

Quit barking!

If only 400 dogs are estimated to use this park within a year, and 7,000 dogs live within the city limits, they should be grateful for their exclusive use of this beautiful beachfront park (Fleet Peeples Park). The commissioners are only being good stewards of our city finances. This completely relieves this group from their fundraising project that they are unable to perform. Their personal attacks on our city officials are not appreciated by the citizens and are very damaging to their cause. Its $6 per month or $10 for a family of dogs. Allowances will be made for the lower income and the disabled.

Be grateful for what you’ve got or it just might revert back to the family picnic time where everyone enjoyed the park and dogs had to be on a leash on the weekends.

Let the general public get a hold of this idea and watch what happens.

—Marti Miller

Winter Park

Not our friends

These Friends of Fleet Peeples Park are not friends of Winter Park, at all. They claim they got the mayor elected and that they are going to control the two new City Commission seats that will be coming available in the spring.

They are a political activist group formed to control this city and the media. Members of their board of directors badger and launch personal attacks on city officials and citizens who speak out against them.

Having this type of “friends” gives the word a whole new meaning.

—David Akins

Winter Park

Vote yes on 5 and 6

Let’s put an end to gerrymandering in Florida this week with our votes. Every 10 years, politicians draw the lines for the voting districts, supposedly to accommodate shifts in the population. But currently with no rules on how voting districts are redrawn, politicians draw the lines to select the voters most likely to vote for their party. This gerrymandering creates “safe seats” so that elections in gerrymandered districts are like wrestling matches, with preordained winners. In 470 Florida elections of incumbents, only three have lost their seats.

Gerrymandering also splits communities apart so the politicians are not accountable to the voters. Winter Park and Maitland are split into five legislative voting districts. It makes no sense for a sliver of Central Florida to be in a district that spans Jacksonville, Palatka and Orlando. With communities so chopped up, no one knows who their representatives are.

Amendments 5 and 6 on the ballot will stop gerrymandering by establishing standards, or rules, on how those lines are drawn. Amendments 5 and 6 will not allow drawing the lines to favor any incumbent or party or to exclude minority representation. The proposed standards are pretty straightforward — keep communities together by using geographic and political boundaries such as rivers and county lines.

Yet politicians are desperate to preserve the lack of accountability that they enjoy with the status quo on how voting districts are drawn. By selecting voters who will vote for their party, incumbents are making a mockery of democracy. Their efforts to block Amendments 5 and 6 are their incumbent protection plan, focused on holding onto their jobs rather than letting voters have a choice in their elected representative. They formed a misnamed group “protect your vote” that is really “protect incumbents’ jobs”.

That is why all of Florida’s leading newspapers have endorsed Amendments 5 and 6. That is why leaders who care about meaningful elections — from both parties — have endorsed 5 and 6.

Now we have a chance to make our votes more meaningful. We can put an end to gerrymandering in Florida by voting yes for Amendments 5 and 6.

—Nancy Rudner Lugo

Maitland