WestSider --- you better hope your project won't be built like the Tuscawilla Beautification project !
Email received from the Winter Springs Westsider ???
" I've heard about something called a village walk. Can you people tell me what the heck that is? Is it going to be like that district in Tuscawilla were they are taxing the citizens up the kazoo? I haven't seen nothing about any plans or nothing like that for a village walk. I didn't see no ads or nothing in the paper. Is this one of their bond deals? Are they going to spring a another big fat tax on us in the west side of the city? I don't know who represents us over here. Can you help me out with some straight answers? I don't think I can get a good answer on it out of the city hall."
Emailer --- You opened a can of worms !
the residents of tuscawilla are still paying for a taxing scheme, and there's only about another 24 years left on that "SCAM" bond !
Emailer: Quite an email. You asked a lot of questions, but maybe you are at a disadvantage for answers unless you have someone in City Hall that can give you straight forward answers. Don't hold your breathe, because experience tells us what you're told, and what is the actual facts is often miles apart. Your guess is as good as ours, but we'll get somebody working on the "Village Walk" project to see if we can help enlighten you with what your city officials are going to try and cram down your throat. That alone is a project in its' self ! They may throw some kind of "special taxing district" on you residents to pay for their scheme.
You will VERY Seldom see any advertisements for bid for anything in the newspapers regarding a project in Winter Springs. They have their own insiders they deal with by keeping the general public out of the loop. If you go to City Hall you might get some answers --- but write down what they say.
As for who represents you --- that's even a bigger question. If you take away the one commissioner who's tied to a land management company, and the other "non-resident" of the majority of the "village walk" area, you really don't have any representation. They have their own interests to vote on from their City dais positions. It is a pathetic situation, as a resident, of the most affected part of that West side area, if you live in it.
The finished product won't be designed until they finish "micro-managing" it from the dais. That's one reason, and even if you go to the Commission meetings, they are so cleverly done that the audience is almost always left wondering what in the world those people on the dais are doing. They have all the paperwork in front of them while the attendees are staring at the chattering faces on the dais.
As for ads of any kind, you are right on your observations, Those are far and few coming from the City Manager's office, or any where else probably due to his instructions. There may have been one a little over a month ago. It in itself was a very sneaky ad. They ran it in the main section of a Thursday's paper which has, of course, had it's own separate section of ads in the Seminole Section of the paper. That way if you were looking for any bids in Seminole County you would go to that particular section of the newspaper. Whereas the City of Winter Springs put their ad in another section as if they were trying to hide the fact there was a bid for a contract out.
As PFGG has told you many times in the past, and in articles within this web site you may almost consider a lot of the Winter Springs activities are on a "non-bid" basis, or strictly an internally controlled function. Most ALL projects are obtained by repetitive contractors without openly soliciting bids to the "general" publics knowledge. That way the taxpayer never knows what the "dais darlings" are doing, or that there is even another project in the mill.
There are two of the most expensive contracts issued from the City Manager's office that was NEVER solicited for an "OPEN BID" ! They were known as the great "TownCenter", and, of course, the infamous rigged vote taxing issue known as the "Tuscawilla Beautification District".
Now you have another highly questionable project, and how they go about paying for it will determine what and how it's going to be called. At first they wanted all the merchants to donate their land, pay for the renovations, pay for the maintenance (a la TLBD), and whatever else they could chisel out of the citizens. The dais darlings need money for their toy --- "Tiny Town" --- and they could reap many thousands by pulling off the "Westside Robbery". Then you would be able to put that on the lists of the "big cons".
Then you have that firm, mentioned so many times on this web site, that has received MILLIONS of dollars of work through the "NO-BID" process. That's the guy who is a Rotary Club buddy of City Manager Ronnie McLemore, and other dais members. That firm that got over a $2.3 million dollar park contract, and was the SOLE contractor in charge of the millions of dollars spent on the TLBD project. He was also the architect for the Khemlani/McLemore/Stammer forts erected in Tuscawilla. Plus was the recipient of a nice contract for the dog park never built. None of those contracts EVER went out for bids!
But, the biggest farce of all was the TLBD, and we've put together a little show case of some of the horrible expenses still being paid for by the Tuscawilla residents. That doesn't include the "spoof" cost of obtaining a dilapidated private road for their developer friends to build an "office complex" right in the middle of the TLBD beautification scam.