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Vol. 81 No. 31
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13A
O f f e r e x p i r e s 8 / 3 1 / 2 0 1 4
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Winter Garden, Florida
A festive fall in Windermere
Three Sections, 34 Pages
Be our guest
In brief
Enjoy tax-free shopping
As inaugural season draws to close, host families have been crucial to success of W.G. Squeeze baseball team
Florida’s Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday runs from 12:01 a.m. this Friday, Aug. 1, until midnight, Sunday, Aug. 3. See 3A for examples of tax-exempt clothing, school supplies and computer equipment.
By Steven Ryzewski
Meet artists at SoBo reception
The SoBo Art Gallery is hosting a “meet the artists” reception from 5:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 7. The theme for August is “Pick Your Passion,” and the exhibit will feature submissions in all media by Winter Garden Art Association members. The event includes drinks, light snacks and Jared Withrow on piano. SoBo is at 127 S. Boyd St., Winter Garden. The featured artist is Kim Minichiello, whose career has spanned almost 30 years as a designer for Walt Disney World theme parks in Paris, Tokyo, California and Florida. She is a member of seven watercolor societies.
City to host Back to School Giveaway
The city of Winter Garden will host the Annual West Orange County Back to School Give Away from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9, at the Jesse Brock Community Center, 310 N. Dillard St. Backpacks and school supplies will be given to hundreds of needy students in grades K-12. Students must be accompanied by a parent for supplies. Event organizers are seeking donated backpacks, pencils, pens, paper, folders and other school supplies. Sites to drop off donations include The West Orange Times, 720 S. Dillard St., Winter Garden. For more information or to support the event, contact sbrown@cwgdn.com or 407656-4155, Ext. 5438.
Exercise and ‘Livestrong’
The Roper YMCA, 100 Windermere Road, Winter Garden, will host Livestrong Cancer Survivor exercise classes from 1-2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The classes, which will take place for 12 weeks, are complimentary for cancer survivors and their caregivers and are designed to increase endurance, strength and flexibility. To register, contact Dawn Bonic at (407) 6566430 or dbonic@cfymca.org.
INSIDE
Business…3A Opinion…4A Winter Garden…6A Oakland...11A Ocoee...12A Windermere...13A Social…14A Deaths…15A Sports…1-4B Schools…5B.
I WO This week’s winner is
Carl Poston.
See his photo on PAGE 16A
50 Cents
Photo by Steven Ryzewski
George Poelker and Judy Black stand side-by-side with their houseguests for the summer, Winter Garden Squeeze outfielders Zane Ancell, left, and Chase Sarchet.
Ocoee to smooth out street-name chaos By Tony Judnich Looking through a window of his Get Hooked Bait & Tackle shop, Rodney Hillerich pointed at the nearby intersection, where Geneva Street and Story Road run east and west and South Kissimmee Avenue and Maguire Road stretch north and south. “People get confused, and it’s confusing to me,” Hillerich said July 23 about the profusion of street names. Here’s another way of looking at the problem: a driver who turns off of State Road 50 and heads north on Maguire Road will, within the next 1.5 miles, see Maguire turn into Marshall Farms Road, then South Kissimmee Avenue, then Maguire Road Extension, then H.M. Bowness Road. “We’re a tourist state, but I’d hate to be a tourist,” Hillerich said. Fortunately, help is on the way. Acting on an order from Orange County 911 officials, the city of Ocoee plans to erase the Marshall Farms Road, South Kissimmee Avenue, Maguire Road Extension and H.M. Bowness Road street names and replace them with one, continuous “Maguire Road.” In this renamed setup, Maguire will extend from Ocoee’s southern city limits near Gotha and Windermere north to Franklin Street. Also, readdressing 16 commercial/ industrial properties will be required in order for the address numbers to be logically continuous on the Maguire segment north of S.R. 50. No
residential properties are involved in the changes. “Sept. 1 is our target date” to make all of the changes, Ocoee Support Services Director Al Butler said July 23. He said the city planned to send notification letters of the new scenarios to the affected businesses on July 23 or 24. Also, city staff will conduct a public meeting about the changes at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14, at City Hall, 150 N. Lakeview Drive. Once the new street names and numbers are in place, the U.S. Postal Service for at least one year will use a dual-delivery system, which recognizes a mail-delivery location as having two addresses. This arrangement will allow the affected businesses to continue using their current checks, letterheads and other materials. “There were two issues: one was different street names, the other was street numbers,” Butler said in summarizing the upcoming changes. “Both of those impact emergency vehicles (including those from the county) and people trying to find your business. If a place is on fire, they’ll see the smoke. But if someone had a heart attack, you don’t want them driving up and down the road looking for a street address.” And business owners don’t want to have to deal with lost contractors who cannot find them, he said. Ocoee Interim Fire Chief Tim Hoover said his department’s (See Ocoee, 5A)
Jerry Fay wasn’t too keen on the proposal. While Fay’s wife, Karen, was all for it, the longtime Windermere resident was, in his own words, “cool to the idea.” It might have taken some convincing, but Jerry and Karen Fay did eventually choose to become a host family for the Winter Garden Squeeze this summer. The Squeeze are a first-year franchise in the Florida Collegiate Summer League — a league for college baseball players around the country which is set to conclude its 11th season this week. They play their home games at West Orange High School. Since late May, the Fays have been providing a home for Brady Domangue, a pitcher from Louisiana State University, as a host family — (See Squeeze, 5A)
Law school leads to love
The Florida Bar honored husband and wife for 50 years of service By Shari Roach
Attorneys Joel and Winifred Sharp, of Windermere, were honored by The Florida Bar at a recognition luncheon in June, along with 201 other practitioners, for 50 years of dedication to the practice of law — although the Sharps don’t feel like it’s been that long. They will be married 54 years in August. In 1959, the two aspiring lawyers met at Stanford Law School after Winifred transferred there from the University of Virginia. She was working in the library when Joel’s roommate, Steve, came in and introduced himself. “I was in the library all by myself,” Winifred said. “I didn’t know anybody, and this young man came up and talked to me, and then shortly thereafter, [Joel] appeared.” “My roommate [came home] and said, ‘I just met your wife, you’ve got to go meet her,’” Joel said. “So I went up and asked her down for tea and coffee, and we managed to get along, for 53 years now.” Joel and Winifred were born in neighboring states just miles apart – she is from New Castle, Pa., and he is from Salem, Ohio – and they were in prep school at the same time in Andover, Mass. Joel attended the allmale Phillips Academy, and Winifred went to Abbot Academy for girls; the schools have since merged into one. But, the couple said they never met each other back then. “We actually sang in ‘The Pirates
of Penzance’ together and didn’t even know each other,” Joel said. The couple married Aug. 6, 1960. He graduated and was getting ready to go into the military for six months; Winifred still had a year left of school. After she graduated, the two moved to Washington, D.C., where Joel worked for the Atomic Energy Commission and Winifred got a job at the major law firm Covington & Burling. During that time, women were largely not regarded as valued practitioners, so they told Winifred she could never be partner but could work there as an associate. Although she was met with numerous oppositions, Winifred saw no reason why she couldn’t have a successful career in law and be “every bit as successful” as her male colleagues. The Sharps then moved to New York City so Joel could earn his master’s degree in tax from New York University. The two got their big break when Winifred’s father called and asked them to work for his firm in Orlando, which became Johnson, Motsinger, Trismen & Sharp when they were brought on as partners. They studied for The Florida Bar, passed and were admitted at the same time – June 12, 1964. “We studied for the Bar, which was hard because we were both out of law school for a year and a half or two years, so we really had to study hard,” Winifred said.
(See Lawyers, 5A)
Winter Garden keeps millage rate at 4.25 By Peter M. Gordon
Commissioners voted July 24 to maintain Winter Garden’s millage rate for the 2014-15 fiscal year at 4.2500. This makes the fifth year in a row the city has kept this rate. City staff projects Winter Garden property values in Fiscal Year 2014-15 to increase 10.72 percent over the current year. According to City Manager Mike Bollhoefer’s memo to the commission, gross taxable value for all property this fiscal year is projected at $2,199,295,739. That’s a total year-over-year increase in value of $212,923,038. “We had the top property increase last year in Orange County. It speaks well for how things are going in the city,” Bollhoefer said. The city’s millage rate of 4.2500 is the third lowest in Orange County. Winter Garden staff projects FY 2013-14 ad valorem tax revenue at $8,150, 503. The expected increase in property value combined with the 4.2500 millage rate should raise $8,973,127 in FY 2014-15. Commissioner Bobby Olszewski said: “We are not increasing any millage rate in the city of Winter Garden. Any tax increase would be due to the Orange County property appraiser.” The millage rate is the rate at which property taxes are levied. One mill equals one thousandth of a dollar. Multiplying a property’s taxable value by the number of mills levied equals the tax for that (See Millage, 15A)
Good-bye, Shady Hill
Photo by Tony Judnich
On July 28, workers from Pro Demolition, of Orlando, began knocking down the former Shady Hill Garden Apartments, 426 Plant St., Winter Garden. The demolition should take less than 10 days, said Jim Coschignano, project manager for C.W. Hayes Construction Co., of Oviedo. The construction firm is the general contractor for the Plant Street Market, which will replace the apartment complex. The market is expected to open by mid-March.