After attending several Indivisible and Women's March meetings, I entered an alternate universe in the Odyssey Middle School cafeteria last evening. Orlando City Commissioner Jim Gray had a town hall meeting with residents of communities along Lee Vista, primarily east of Narcoossee Road.
There was no talk of health care, immigration bans, reproductive rights or any of the topics that dominate the Resistance movement. This meeting was about threats to the quality of daily life in the neighborhood because of the volume and speed of residential and commercial development in the area, importantly including Lake Nona. Traffic was the big concern. Someone said he had trouble getting out of his community in the morning because of heavy traffic on the main road. This is important when you are trying to get to work on time. There were also concerns about the capacity of schools to absorb new students. From the back and forth between Gray and the residents, it was clear to me that many people there did not feel Gray had been an effective advocate for their positions.
Electing a Democrat to the City Council for District 1 is a goal of many Lake Nona Democrats. It seems to me that doing so will require focusing on local issues that, for the most part, have not appeared on the LND Facebook page. I got lost trying to follow the discussion of the road developments in the District, including an evacuation route mandated by the State of Florida. It was no surprise that there is a project to widen Narcoossee Road to six lanes from 528 to 417. But as one resident pointed out, that would mean removing the green space in the middle of the road. People didn't move here years ago to live in urban congestion.
Candidates who run against Gray will have a real challenge, not because Gray is so strong but because the issues are so difficult.
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