FROM: Jesse Phillips (Winter Springs Water Quality Initiative)
As you may know, I’ve been keeping an eye on the legislative session and wanted to give you a heads-up. There’s a bill making its way through Tallahassee that would completely strip us of our right to vote for some of our elected officials—overriding home rule charters like ours.
HJR 1263 is a blatant power grab. If passed, it would let the state dictate how we elect our leaders, cutting residents out of the process entirely.
But you know what’s the most infuriating part?
While his neighbors back home are listening to the sound of hammers pounding away on a public storage unit along Tuskawilla Road—a project that happened because he abdicated our home rule rights—Mayor McCann was in Tallahassee this week sipping cocktails and schmoozing with political elites.
We’ve seen this before—state politicians deciding they know better than local communities. But Winter Springs has been setting itself up for a takeover under McCann’s leadership.
State leaders see him as weak on home rule, and honestly, can you blame them? Just look at his three biggest failures…
MAYOR KEVIN McCANN’S THREE HOME RULE CARDINAL SINS:
🔴 Abdicating Our Rights: Instead of using home rule to manage our water system, McCann let Veolia operate unchecked at $400,000 per month! The result? State violations, rising rates, boil water notices, more price hikes in the future. We had the power under home rule—he just didn’t use it.
🔴 Abdicating Our Responsibilities: Remember when we voted for the Penny Sales Tax to fix our crumbling bridges? McCann’s administration quietly diverted those funds using a state pre-emption loophole (F.S. §212.055(2)(d))—without public discussion. The Florida Auditor General called them out for it, and when a hurricane hit, the bridges failed. They used state law to circumvent home rule and we all suffered.
🔴 Abdicating Our Opportunities: When the Tuskawilla storage facility was proposed, Winter Springs had the chance to annex the land and control what got built there. Instead, McCann did nothing. We ignored home rule, and now we get all the impact, but none of the tax revenue.
And now Tallahassee is looking at cities like ours and saying, “Well, if they won’t govern themselves, we’ll do it for them.”
We have to take back our city before it’s too late. We need a STRONG LEADER who actually believes in home rule instead of selling us out while cozying up to power.
Let’s make sure people know what’s at stake. Talk soon!
We can beat City Hall—and the BAD stuff from Tallahassee.