By Keily Alfonzo, Interning Correspondent for The Apopka Voice
Apopka is facing critical issues, including water shortages, infrastructure challenges, and the impact of rising utility bills. Its residents also struggle with having public comments moved to the end of the City Council meetings and having the live feed turned off.
Many of them feel as if they are being silenced.
To make their voices heard, residents of Apopka attended a Town Hall meeting hosted by Apopka City Commissioner Nick Nesta to share their concerns over some aspects of the City.
On Thursday, September 12th, Nesta organized an "informal and more intimate" meeting to listen to the residents' concerns and try to come up with some solutions, whether immediate or requiring more time and effort.
"There are many issues that are affecting Apopka right now, and it stems from a lack of planning," Nesta said. "I know we're working on that in the background, but it's not working quickly enough. We need to keep rowing all in the same direction."
The meeting started with the most recent issue facing the residents of Apopka: public comments being turned off from the City Council meetings' livestream. Michael Duran, a resident of Clermont and father of Apopka firefighter Austin Duran, who died in a workplace accident, said that if the City turned off public comments two years ago, he wouldn't have been able to fight for needed reforms in the AFD.
"My main concern is the fire department; a lot of things have been exposed, and there is a lot to say about their poor management," Duran said.
Nesta addressed Duran's comment, saying that his advocacy created a huge change, and it was because of his ability to speak and be heard that the AFD is going through some positive changes now.
"Hopefully, we'll be able to ratify those changes and move forward," Nesta said.
Nesta also referred to infrastructure as one of the most pressing issues the City ignored for many years.
"I mean, infrastructure, meaning our roads and our utilities. We have water lines that have asbestos and that are corroding. We have roads that are crumbling, and we're building thousands of homes on these roads that are incapable of supporting them," Nesta said. "They're supposed to be back country roads, like old country roads that were just made for agriculture, and now they're used heavily with all of our semi-trucks, all of our dump trucks, our trash trucks, and school buses."
Abbie McKimmie, an Apopka resident, said that residents need to advocate for truth and accountability. He also suggested ways for the City to progress in its infrastructure challenges.
"I've come to one conclusion, and that is that the critical infrastructure of this city is lagging between three and five years behind where it needs to be just to keep our heads above water; that's not progress," McKimmie said.
He also suggested that the City needs a temporary moratorium on development.
"A moratorium will only stop things for six months, maybe a year, if you're lucky. It will only prevent certain kinds of development," McKimmie said. "We're now at the stage where the population will double within five years, and at that point, we don't have any leeway or balance on that critical infrastructure, so we need to prevent things from moving forward at the rate they are."
Nesta explained that he had advocated for an emergency moratorium for some time but would not create a permanent solution.
"I don't think there's one fix to any of this," Nesta said. "These are very convoluted problems, but it is a step in the right direction."
Another issue that has resonated with the residents for some time now is water.
"Agricultural is a huge industry and obviously a huge user of water sources," said Marsha Summersill, an attorney for The Orlando Law Group and a State House District 39 candidate. "If we are increasing our population, increasing the building, increasing commercial, we are failing to ensure that best management practices are in place."
Nesta explained that the City is taking action to find a solution to this problem by allocating funds to build additional wells.
"There are a couple of million dollars allocated to dig deeper wells, additional wells, things like that, to get access to more water, which isn't my preference, but we need to balance our increase in the need for what we are actually providing," Nesta said. "I need you to keep coming and speaking. We need to hear it. We're never going to get it perfect, but we need to be able to always get better."
