Dog fees, salary raises repealed

A controversial pay raise and dog park fee were both struck down by the Winter Park City Commission on Monday night after being on the books for only a few months.

Both of the issues came down to 3-2 votes, with newly elected Commissioner Steven Leary leading the way in the repeal and Commissioner Sarah Sprinkel and Mayor Ken Bradley voting along with him.

Both of the decisions came after more than an hour of discussion on whether repealing them would be worth it. The measures require a second vote on April 11 to make it official.

Commissioner Tom McMacken argued that since all other special-use parks in the city charge fees, the dog park should as well.

“We charge $29 per hour for a kid to play on these fields,” McMacken said of the city’s sports fields. “We do that and have always done that. What we’re talking about is exempting a group of people from a fee we charge the rest of our citizens to use a single-use facility.”

Leary countered that children’s playgrounds are single-use facilities and do not charge fees.

“We don’t have fees at Phelps Park where my children play on the playground, and I consider that a single-use park.”

McMacken said that repealing the dog park fees at Fleet Peeples Park would make the park the only facility in the city designed for a specific group that didn’t have a fee structure in place, then accusing Leary of pandering to voters who voted for him at the expense of all residents in the city.

Leary had won with more than 3,200 votes, leaving 26,000 residents in the city whom he also was elected to represent, McMacken said, analogizing that situation to the specific group who would be allowed to use the park for free if the fees were removed.

“Our responsibility does not end with the 3,200 people who voted for you,” McMacken said. “Anyone can walk into a playground. Not everyone can walk right into the middle of a dog park without a dog. That’s like walking into the middle of a lacrosse game.

“This is about looking people in the face and saying ‘I’m gonna charge you this because we’re charging other people too.’”

Resident Sally Flynn agreed.

“If I go to the tennis courts with a racket in hand, I pay the fee,” she said. “If I go to the golf course with a club in hand, I pay a fee…if you rescind the dog fee you are now treating one group of people and one park differently. You can lower the fee and some of the commissioners could save face in this, but you can’t remove the fee.”

Commission’s raise also falls

A pay raise that would have given the Commission its first bump in pay since 1952 also was rescinded. The raise, which was set to go into effect in April, would have raised the Commission’s salary from $2,400 per year to $12,400 per year, at a total cost of $50,000 extra per year.

Cooper took the lead in defending the raise, saying that nearby cities paid on average eight times as much as Winter Park’s salary.

“The average salaries for those cities was $19,000,” Cooper said. “I felt comfortable that we were…doing what the citizens thought needed to be done. The only mistake that was made was the timing.”

Cooper railed against detractors of the raise, but agreed the timing could be better, suggesting it could be kept in place, but deferred to the next commission to avoid conflicts of interest.

“They were saying we were increasing our salaries by 500 percent, making it seem like we were doing something horrible,” she said. “I can [afford to serve on the Commission] because I am married to a man who makes it so I can afford to be here. But this part-time job can take your entire lives to be here.”

Leary agreed that the compensation was low and that the timing was bad, but still wanted to repeal the pay raise.

“We keep getting lost on ‘Is the compensation appropriate?’” Leary said. “It probably is. It’s bad timing. That’s what it is. The number wasn’t important. The scale of the increase, 500 percent, is huge. I don’t know when a 500 increase is ever justified.”

Cooper immediately questioned Leary about an appropriate raise.

“What do you think is reasonable then?” she asked. “I don’t think it’s fair to put it to another Commission again.”

“We may do it again in a year,” Leary said.

“I think that sounds very political,” Cooper responded.

Bradley said the Commission appeared out of touch to vote for a salary increase while freezing the salaries of city staff.

Cooper said that it wasn’t fair to make the pay so prohibitively low that many residents couldn’t afford to run for office.

“I’m speaking about the fact that just because [the current commissioners] can afford to do it, and other commissioners can do it, somehow makes it alright,” she said. “We have to pay babysitters…quite frankly that costs more than $188 a month.

“I think we are creating government of the elite, and I think it is wrong. If the waitress in here from Linda’s Diner wants to run for office, she should be able to afford a babysitter to be here.”