In a contentious meeting Tuesday night featuring finger-pointing and personal attacks, the Eatonville Town Council said it wanted last-minute changes to the contract to sell the town\u2019s historic Hungerford property \u2014 though exactly what those changes would be were not specified.<\/p>\n
The Orange County School Board, which owns the property, will vote Jan. 13 on whether to approve a drafted contract to sell it to Dr. Phillips Charities to develop the land. Prior to the vote, the school board and Dr. Phillips Charities will have a workshop meeting on Jan. 6 where the Eatonville Town Council will give their suggestions on possible amendments to the contract.<\/p>\n
In Tuesday\u2019s meeting, some council members charged that Mayor Angie Gardner, who was deeply involved in discussions with the school district and charity, kept them in the dark about the deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you did to this community is downright despicable,\u201d said council member Tarus Mack, Gardner\u2019s sharpest critic. \u201c\u2026You sat up there and essentially sold the town out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vice Mayor Theodore Washington also criticized Gardner, agreeing with Mack that she had made a \u201cbackdoor deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hungerford property, located just east of Interstate 4, is an important piece of history for a town founded by freed slaves. The site was once home to the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, a private boarding school for Black students when segregation-era white school districts would not educate them.<\/p>\n
The school board purchased it seven decades ago \u2014 for under market value and under controversial circumstances \u2014 and ran it as a public school. The school was closed in 2009 and the buildings were demolished in 2020, leaving mostly vacant land surrounded by chain-link fencing.<\/p>\n
A majority of the council was concerned Tuesday about the lack of taxable developments in the current contract, believing it could be damaging to the town\u2019s tax base in the long term.<\/p>\n
Council member Wanda Randolph said the Hungerford property is the town\u2019s best chance of maintaining financial stability in the future given that it\u2019s the town\u2019s largest and most valuable parcel of land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot afford to give up so much that we have one entity to come here and put developments here that is not going to generate revenue for the town of Eatonville,\u201d Randolph said. \u201cOr else we will be out of business. All the history and the legacy that we always talk about, it\u2019ll be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the meeting, Gardner defended the deal in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy acknowledgment of the agreement between OCPS and Dr. Phillips Charities is my way of moving this town forward,\u201d she said. \u201cOtherwise, we can be victim to more developments that we may not be able to stop next time.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Gardner also said she is supportive of the council giving feedback to OCPS and Dr. Phillips Charities on how to improve the contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a contentious meeting Tuesday night featuring finger-pointing and personal attacks, the Eatonville Town Council said it wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,4773,113,28,114,266,115,1335,139,141,140,480,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-101167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eatonville","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-orange-county","16":"tag-orlando","17":"tag-orlando-headlines","18":"tag-orlando-news","19":"tag-real-estate","20":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}