- April 15, 2024
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Winter Garden commissioners met in a different format Thursday, April 9, as they conducted the first commission meeting via remote electronic attendance since the county stay-at-home order began.
Commissioners and attendees gathered online in a webinar format to discuss the March municipal election results and various business items.
Among those items was city staff’s recommendation to approve the final plat for the Garden West development, located at 707 W. Plant St. City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said the project has been going on for a while, and the plat approval allows the developer to sell the lots.
The Garden West subdivision consists of approximately 3.07 acres just north of Plant Street, east of Brayton Street and south of Bay Street. The applicant is developing the property with 11 single-family lots.
According to city documents, plans for the subdivision include park and stormwater areas. Directly north of the subdivision is the West Orange Trail. Commissioners unanimously approved the final plat.
City leaders also discussed and unanimously approved a change order with Engineered Sprayed Solutions LLC, for sanitary sewer manhole and stormwater structure lining services.
On Feb. 27, commissioners authorized approval of a $650,000 purchase order with an initial work release to rehabilitate two fiberglass manholes on Ninth Street at the cost of about $33,000 per manhole. Since then, staff issued the second work release for the remaining balance of that purchase order. They also recommended adding nearly $600,000 in funding to rehabilitate all manholes on State Road 50.
“If you remember quite some time back, we started having some issues on (State Road) 50, where the road was starting to sink,” Bollhoefer said. “We found out what the problem was — there was a problem with the manholes. We initially budgeted $650,000 to do approximately 25 of these. We did two of them on Ninth Street, we checked and they worked very well. We’d like to recommend adding an additional $592,000 to the budget, which includes a contingency, to go ahead and do all 48 manholes on (State Road) 50 and get them done.”
Bollhoefer added that by getting all of the manholes fixed at once, the city was able to get the price down from about $30,000 per manhole to about $24,000.
“All of them will need to have this done,” Bollhoefer said. “This will be a good fix, and we’re confident this will hold up long term.”
In addition to regular business, Bollhoefer brought the idea of a food delivery program for residents in need to the table. The city would budget $40,000 for the program, Bollhoefer said, and will partner with Healthy West Orange to deliver food and paper products to residents who need them most. Commissioners unanimously approved this.
“We would partner with Healthy West Orange ... and what we would do is look for families, mainly seniors and stay-at-home people within the east Winter Garden community who can’t go out and get food our toilet paper,” Bollhoefer said. “We’re not sure exactly what the cost is. We’re guessing it’s going to be between $8,000 and $10,000 every two weeks. That’s approximately $40 for the food bags, plus ... adding the paper towels and toilet paper. We’ll also be working with local charitable groups in the neighborhood and the churches to identify people in need of this.”
