Enclaves caught in annexation march
Some Orange neighborhoods happy with being ‘left out’
In the Killarney neighborhood of Orange County, the Winter Park city line stops abruptly a few feet from Fairbanks Avenue.
Killarney is one of many unincorporated “islands” in Central Florida created as cities annex more county land, creating conflict for neighbors and governments and causing confusion over services.
Dozens of the awkward enclaves find themselves left behind, with the county often having to provide services and law enforcement, sometimes to areas miles inside cities.
In the quiet neighborhood bordering the south shore of Lake Killarney just east of Interstate 4, there’s division bejoining tween newer and established residents about whether to become a part of Winter Park.
For some, it’s a matter of protection from crime.
“It’s a bit illogical to rely on the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which has such a large coverage area,” said Killarney resident Zach Stovall, who supports annexation. “It can take some time for sheriff ’s deputies to arrive when officers from Winter Park are almost always seconds away.”
Neighbor Amy Zeek recalled, “Several years ago I saw a man sitting in a car in the middle of the night staring into my house. I called 911. They showed up 45 minutes later. This is pretty typical. It’s like we are forgotten.”
But a majority of residents voted in a referendum against Winter Park in the early 2000s.
“Services are not any better, we have the same ones in the county,’’ said Killarney resident Ed Ricks. “And if there are any that we don’t know about, we can live without them. … Law enforcement is not any better [and] may even be a little better with the county sheriff’s department over the city police.”
A Sheriff’s Office spokesman said the department ensures daily patrols in areas like Killarney by including them as part of larger blocks of overlapping patrol areas. The office also promotes neighborhood watch programs. The office recently sent an investigative team to Killarney in response to thefts, which led to two peo-
ple being arrested and charged with stealing packages.
South of Orlando, the Tangelo Park neighborhood also rejected a referendum to annex into Orlando, “even though the city is on three sides of the neighborhood,” said Kyle Shephard, Orlando assistant city attorney. “It made sense from an urban delivery perspective, but the law lets Tangelo Park have a say in it.”
The difficulty of bringing neighborhoods into cities — even total enclaves — is baked into the annexation system in Florida, he said.
“Every state does annexation differently,” Shephard said. “Some states encourage annexation in areas already developed around urban areas and discourage annexing rural, undeveloped areas. Ours, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, is the opposite.”
So while a referendum is required to annex populated areas of more than 10 acres, a single owner of a large, unpopulated tract of land can easily get land annexed.
That means that while long-established Orange County communities just south of downtown Orlando remain unincorporated, the city of Orlando has over the decades poured out to the east and west and then south, like a keg tapped at both ends.
The law was eventually changed to allow counties and cities to more easily annex enclaves of up to 110 acres, instead of just 10, with Florida statutes stating “it is the policy of the state to eliminate enclaves.”
But even then, city limits still can resemble Swiss cheese, like those of Ocoee and Apopka, or stretch down a road by a thin strand, like one part of Casselberry.
One drawback to annexation, Orange County Commissioner Jennifer Thompson said, is that developers in rapidly growing areas like Narcoossee Road in south Orange — where one side is Orlando, the other unincorporated — will simply turn to the city for annexation rather than go through the more difficult county development process.
Area residents, she said, are often blindsided by sudden land use changes in newly annexed land nearby.
“The city doesn’t necessarily have community meetings,” she said. “They just kind of get left out in the cold.”
Orlando spokeswoman Cassandra Lafser said that “typically, [annexation] from start to finish this is about an eight- to 10-month process. Throughout the process, the city encourages the property owners to host community meetings with neighboring residents and businesses.”
The county still has to deal with the consequences, even after annexation.
New developments put “a huge burden on all the county road networks that feed into it,” Thompson said. “Having to deal with two jurisdictions is a really frustrating phenomenon.”
Bob Thollander, vice president of development for The Bainbridge Companies, said one of its recent developments on Narcoossee Road ended up getting annexed into the city of Orlando “because the city wanted us in there.”
“There were a lot of significant benefits for our residents in terms of public services compared to the county,” he said. “It just seemed to be a benefit to all sides.”
Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond, who has studied annexation issues, recommends more interlocal agreements, a tool more counties and cities are using. Lake County and Clermont, for example, recently opened the first jointly operated fire station in the county.
Already, service and utility boundaries are often scattered. The Killarney neighborhood, for example, gets Winter Park water but not sewer service.
“Sewers, I want sewers,” said Killarney resident Kathy Bowman, who is in favor of annexation to Winter Park and is optimistic it may yet happen.
“We’re getting a lot of new young people in the neighborhood,” she said. “I find the resistance is mostly just the older people.”
But nonetheless, the resistance remains.
“I have lived in my house since 1985,” said Killarney resident Jade Malek. “I have been and still am happy with the status quo.”