Orange County commissioners will decide Tuesday on which version of a new county map to adopt, following a months-long redistricting process that kicked off earlier this year. Voters activated the process in November by electing to add two more commission districts, bringing the county’s current six districts up to eight.
Many different map versions were proposed throughout the process. The county’s redistricting committee whittled them all down to the final two options now before commissioners: Map 1A and Map 7B. Between the two options, one key difference is the future location of the city of Winter Park.
Right now Winter Park is in Orange County’s District 5, which runs along the county’s northern border with Seminole County and bumps up against Brevard County to the east.
Map 7B would keep Winter Park there, in District 5. A city resolution signed by Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio argues doing so would group the city “with rural east Orange County whose issues and priorities are often dissimilar to those of Winter Park.”
Instead, the Winter Park resolution makes the case for Map 1A, which would group Winter Park with “other urban communities with similar issues and priorities such as Maitland, Eatonville, College Park and Pine Hills.”
Lifelong Pine Hills resident Seth “Seven” Charlestin prefers Map 7B. His concern is that Winter Park’s issues and priorities are different from those of his own community.
“It's night and day, when you talk about Pine Hills and Winter Park,” said Charlestin, founder and executive director of the mutual aid group Las Semillas, also known as Seeds of Pine Hills.
Census data show that, in both communities, homeowners make up the majority of residents, compared to renters. But that’s where the similarities end. Winter Park’s per capita income is close to $79,000, about double the average for the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metropolitan area. Meanwhile, the average per capita income in Pine Hills is just under $24,000.
In Pine Hills, Black residents are the majority, while Winter Park is predominantly white, according to Census data. And while usage rates are low countywide, people in Pine Hills depend more heavily on public transit: 5% of residents there use it to commute to work, compared to fewer than 1% in Winter Park.
Unlike Winter Park, Pine Hills is not a city but an unincorporated area, without a mayor or council of elected officials. Charlestin said he worries that Winter Park’s needs and interests could wind up outshining those of Pine Hills, should the two areas be grouped together within one commission district.
“The main goal of Orange County government is supposed to be representation for those unincorporated areas that would otherwise not have representation,” Charlestin said. “Map 1(A) would be antithetical to those goals.”
Winter Park’s population is just shy of 30,000. Meanwhile, Pine Hills is quickly approaching 80,000 residents, according to Census data. The area’s growth puts even higher stakes on the pending county map decision, Charlestin said.
“There's going to be growth,” he said. “There's going to be things happening in our community, and community members need to be able to steer that direction, of … how we're going to develop.”
For residents of Pine Hills and other unincorporated parts of Orange County, Map 7B provides the best shot at that kind of effective representation, Charlestin said.
Advocacy group Save Orange County, which aims to protect rural land, is also pushing for Map 7B. Meanwhile, Maitland leaders say they prefer Map 1A.
County commissioners will decide which of the two maps to adopt at the end of Tuesday’s board meeting, according to the meeting agenda. The final redistricting plan must be adopted by Nov. 1.
