Maitland invoices Eatonville for $41k

A day after Maitland City Council members penned a letter to the town of Eatonville including a bill for $41,000 worth of public safety services, Eatonville Mayor Anthony Grant said his Town Council unanimously voted not to pay it.

Grant said Maitland shouldn’t expect a cent back in response to the invoice sent to Eatonville for services provided by the city of Maitland during the Riding Big Car Show held in Eatonville last month.

“We didn’t ask for that help,” Grant said. “Why should we pay for it?”

But Maitland public safety leaders said they had no choice but to put their entire police and fire department staffs on the clock for the car show to deal with overflow impacts of the crowds flocking to neighboring Eatonville for the event on Nov. 22.

“This was the first time in my history of my career here that I’ve seen State Road 17-92 from Fairbanks Avenue to Horatio come to a complete standstill on all lanes of traffic to the point where people actually exited their vehicles and were walking around in the road because the road was so congested that traffic had in fact stopped,” said Maitland Police Chief Doug Ball.

Traffic was snarled for hours on the day of the event creating backups throughout both Winter Park and Maitland. Maitland City Manager Jim Williams said dealing with the crowds and traffic cost the city $41,022.77 between police, fire, public works, and communications.

“It was a rough day,” Williams said.

Maitland Mayor Dale McDonald said occurrences like this can’t continue happening.

“This is getting in our pockets deeper than it has any business getting into our pockets,” McDonald said.


“…If we want to go waste $40,000 that’s a different story, but this one wasn’t our call.”

Winter Park also responded to the event with increased policing, but has yet to invoice Eatonville for the bill. At Winter Park’s Dec. 14 City Commission meeting, Winter Park Mayor Steve Leary said he was working with other municipalities to work out a response to the issue. Winter Park property owner Dan Bellows, who owns the Ravaudage development that sits at the corner of Lee Road and U.S. Highway 17-92 where some of the worst traffic backed up during the car show, urged his city to take action.

“It really was an extremely unsafe situation,” Bellows said at the meeting.

Winter Park City Spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said no decision has been made yet to bill Eatonville for the services provided.

This was the first year the annual Riding Big Car Show was held in Eatonville, after annually being held at the Central Florida Fairgrounds coinciding with Florida Classic Weekend at the Citrus Bowl. Grant said this year’s event, which was hosted by Dawgman Entertainment, brought out an estimated 4,000 people to its new venue at Hungerford Elementary.

Grant said the traffic troubles were the result of the Maitland police force closing off multiple local roads that serve as entryways into Eatonville, a claim Chief Doug Ball rebukes. Ball said the only road closed was Wymore Road. The rest of the traffic, Ball said, came from too many people flooding into far too small of a venue.

Ball said even the Eatonville Police Department staff realized the event would be overcapacity if held at Hungerford, and urged the promoter and city to cancel the event as late as days before. But, Ball said, those pleas were ignored.

“It became very obvious that they were completely understaffed for an event of that size,” Ball said.

Grant said he never heard his police department wanted the event canceled.

Maitland Fire Chief Kim Neisler said she attempted to work with Eatonville to come up with an emergency service plan for the event, but was overruled by Grant.

“He put his residents at risk,” Neisler said.

But Grant said he wasn’t involved in planning for the event, as it was organized by a private promoter. He said he hopes his town will host more events of a similar scale in the future, including both a Caribbean and jazz festival in the spring. He said he doesn’t plan on changing his town’s strategy of hosting those events, instead, he said, Maitland needs to rethink its strategy of policing them.

“Maitland created the problem,” Grant said. “They need to rethink their strategy.”

The Maitland City Council is considering reevaluating its emergency services’ interlocal agreement with Eatonville. As the agreement stands now, Maitland provides all fire department services to Eatonville, and also allows Eatonville, at no cost, to share emergency cell tower and radio frequencies. Neisler said the agreement covers “regular” service calls, but not calls for special events.

She said in the future, costs of events like the car show should be addressed in the agreement to avoid similar issues.

“The issue is these big events,” she said. “I don’t have the staff to do it.”

McDonald said the issue boils down to the cities treating each other with neighborly respect.

“We’re being good neighbors,” McDonald said. “We’re expecting those around us to be good neighbors too.”