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Winter Garden will petition the Orange County Mid-Decennial Redistricting Advisory Committee to be consolidated with Ocoee, Oakland and Windermere under a single commissioner.
City attorney Kurt Ardaman raised the issue toward the end of the city commission meeting Thursday “ because of so many common interests between the cities, the common boundaries we have, at least with respect to our planning areas and the political boundaries ... agreements that support each other's planning issues, transportation issues, utility issues, and the like.”
The decision to have Ardaman and City Manager Jon Williams draft a letter to the advisory committee was made by voice consensus.
The advisory committee is tasked with redrawing the county’s six districts into eight following a November ballot measure in which voters approved adding two more seats to the Board of County Commissioners. Those commissioners will be elected in 2026.
West Orange residents were well ahead of the city commission with this idea. During the redistricting advisory committee’s seventh meeting, held Wednesday, the evening before the city commission meeting, at the West Orange Recreation Center in Winter Garden, the idea of splitting off Horizon West from the older communities of Winter Garden, Ocoee, Windermere and Oakland (two towns celebrating centennials this year) gained traction.
Zach Waxler of Winter Garden told the advisory committee that he favored dividing District 1 into a southwest district for the newer villages of Horizon West while grouping the older communities of Winter Garden, Ocoee, Oakland and Windermere into a separate district to the north.
“These communities have been here for over a century,” he said. “Their needs and challenges are fundamentally different from the rapidly developing southwest, and when they're grouped with the fast growing areas like Horizon West, their priorities risk being overlooked. We've already seen the tensions between municipalities and the county. These cities deserve a commissioner who can focus on their unique needs, just as Horizon West deserves its own voice and vision. This isn't about just redrawing lines on a map. It's about drawing a fairer future. Let's make sure every part of our county gets the representation it needs and deserves.”
David Buckles, president of Foundation Academy, added that “as much as we love Horizon West,” he too, supported a line that “clearly keeps Winter Garden, Windermere, Oakland, Tildenville separate” but without splitting up Winter Garden.
“I wouldn't think that this committee would do something like that, but we just also would like to make sure that doesn't happen,” he said.
