ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County’s Charter Review Commission is set to decide whether an effort to protect rural parts of Orange County will be on the November ballot.
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The Charter Review Commission will soon vote on a Rural Boundary Amendment. If the board advances the amendment, voters would ultimately decide whether or not to establish a rural boundary.
The boundary covers large areas of unincorporated East and West Orange County. If approved, the county’s governing charter amendment would make it more difficult to build on rural land.
It would require county commissioners to support any future changes to density within the rural boundary with a ‘super majority’, as opposed to the ‘simple majority’ currently in place.
Read: East Orange County residents celebrate after commissioners ‘preserve’ rural land
“They’re beating us by one vote. We’re losing by one vote. And that super majority tilts the tides in favor of the people as opposed to developers,” said Kelly Semrad, Vice Chair of Save Orange County.
Save Orange County has fought large developments in East Orange County for the last decade. Semrad says the rural boundary is needed to stop urban sprawl and honor the wishes of a community that wants to avoid mass development.
“Once you build luxury homes out in the rural service area, we lose this land for forever. So essentially, we grow bigger and bigger, but we can’t support it. And we can’t financially afford it,” said Semrad.
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Over 100 residents are expected to address the Charter Review Commission Monday Night.
Ahead of Monday’s Charter Review Commission vote, lobbyist and attorneys for developers also weighed in and circulated various memos against the change.
Attorney and lobbyist Jared Willis wrote a memo arguing that the rural boundary amendment violates current and future state law.
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“The legislature realized that a citizen led charter review committee doesn’t have all of the pieces in place that they need to adequately make this decision,” said Willis, “It’s a group of well-meaning citizens, but at the end of the day, they don’t have the expertise to kind of look at these large-scale changes.”
Willis believes the amendment would violate a comprehensive planning process outlined in Florida’s Community Planning Act, which requires due process for landowners.
The Charter Review Commission meeting is scheduled for 6:00 pm Monday night.
Channel 9 will have updates on that vote.
Meanwhile, commissioner Emily Bonilla has requested to discuss the amendment during Tuesday’s regular Board of County Commissioner’s meeting.
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