In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Ed's note: Devious developers must be stopped from molesting Orlando's historic preservation board. Watch ORLANDO CITY COUNCIL ON LIVE STREAMING VIDEO at 2 PM, June 22, 2026
State warns Orlando it could lose millions if proposal to loosen Downtown Historic District rules is approved
A cyclist goes past the old railroad station at 78 West Church Street in downtown Orlando, on Monday, June 15, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
The state contends Orlando’s proposal to loosen Downtown Historic District rules runs afoul of state laws and threatens the loss of millions in funding if it is approved.
In an email to city commissioners on Friday, obtained by the Orlando Sentinel on Saturday, the state Division of Historic Resources said that if the city passes this ordinance without giving the state 30 days notice, it could lose a certification that enables the city to receive money from the state’s historic grant-funding source.
“A failure to submit the proposed ordinance change and allow for 30 days of review could result in the City of Orlando being placed into ‘Bad Standing’,” the letter says. “This would make Orlando ineligible for grant funding match waivers from our office.”
Commissioners are set to make a final vote at Monday’s city council meeting after its first reading on June 8 was approved in a 6-1 vote despite many who spoke out against it.
The plan would allow redevelopment proposals in the district to bypass the city’s citizen Historic Preservation Board over a three-year period. The board is typically required to sign off on all changes to the exterior of a building within the district for compatibility with its historic era.
Orlando has been a Certified Local Government (CLG) since February of 1989. The program, administered by the National Park Service and the Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources, requires cities with the designation to protect historic properties, abide by historic preservation laws and maintain a historic preservation board.
Throughout the years Orlando has received millions in grant funding via their accreditation for properties including: Kerouac House, St. Luke’s Cathedral Church, Black Bottom House of Prayer, Maxey-Crooms House, Plaza Live, The William Wells house and Leu House.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a text message to the Orlando Sentinel, that the city is aware of the need to notify the state but it is not changing the ordinance. Instead, he said the city will be amending the ordinance to take effect in 30 days, rather than taking effect immediately, to give the state time for review.
“A moratorium allows us to evaluate if a change to the ordinance is needed,” Dyer said in the text.
But Commissioner Patty Sheehan, who cast the sole dissenting vote for the proposal during the June 8 meeting, said the city stands to lose over $2.5 million in grants if it’s approved and argues the loss in funds from the state is a compelling reason to defer the decision.
She argues that the ordinance paints all redevelopment with too broad of a brush and said the city needs more control of what buildings are demolished.
“I want to see redevelopment in Downtown Orlando as much as everyone but I do not think throwing our historic preservation, putting our historic reservation funding and our relationship with the state in a bad space is the way to accomplish that,” Sheehan said. “We have torn down buildings before…and each of those projects came forward on an individual basis.”
The proposed ordinance is so “distressing” she is preparing to give a lengthy presentation to her fellow commissioners at Monday’s meeting, she said.
“It’s unprecedented for a city commissioner to give a presentation like this but I feel like the other side has to be told,” Sheehan said. “It’s a tremendous weight on me personally. I feel like the entire history of our town, of 100-year-old buildings, are on my shoulders.”
Watch ORLANDO CITY COUNCIL ON LIVE STREAMING VIDEO at 2 PM, June 22, 2026
Postcard shows Aviles Street in St. Augustine; undated. (Via State Library of Florida)
Our democratic republic has survived (more or less) for 250 years. Despite the best efforts of the existing regime, we still (mostly) cherish the rule of law, free speech (pretty much), and the right to vote.
So, two cheers for us as the nation hurls itself into a frenzy of self-congratulation, parades, parties, patriotic spectacles, and pious — often historically dubious — invocations of American Exceptionalism.
Florida will be right there with everybody else, wrapping ourselves in the flag so tightly oxygen may struggle to reach our brains.
But perhaps you are wondering what was going on in Florida back in 1776.
What valiant battles did we fight? Did the Forces of Freedom take on the Redcoats and teach them a lesson? Were the Founding Fathers proud of us?
Actually, Florida in 1776 was a British colony and remained a British colony, loyal to the British Crown throughout the War of Independence.
Ron DeSantis unveiling a statue of Benjamin Franklin in Franklin County.
Ron DeSantis unveiling a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Jefferson County.
Ron DeSantis unveiling a statue of James Monroe in Monroe County.
Ron DeSantis unveiling a statue of Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton County
Ron DeSantis unveiling a statue of George Washington in Tallahassee.
Statue of George Washington unveiled at the Florida Capitol on Feb. 20, 2025. (Photo by Jackie Llanos/Florida Phoenix)
Tough luck, Chipley.
But let’s talk history.
Wars galore
In the mid-18th century, the British found themselves fighting more wars than you can shake a stick at, including the Carnatic Wars against the French for control of India, the Jacobite Uprising to replace a Hanoverian king with a French-backed Stuart one, a European campaign to stop the Spanish (and the French) from eating up Portugal, and the biggest and most important one, the French and Indian War.
It was a hydra-headed monster in which the British and the French, along with Native American allies on both sides, duked it out over who controlled trade, who controlled the Ohio River, and who owned those vast lands north of the St. Lawrence River.
Finally, in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the British got Canada. The French settled for a couple of Caribbean islands, while their ally Spain got Havana, Cuba, back from the British, who had captured it. The Spanish, who had colonized Florida 250 years before, ceded our swampy territory to Britain.
(Still with me? I won’t judge if you run off and pour yourself a stiff drink).
To resume: Here’s British West Florida, with Pensacola as its capital, and British East Florida, with St. Augustine as its capital. The population (not counting Native people) was around 20,000 souls, 65% of whom were black.
A lot of white people made a lot of money as merchants, planters, slave traders, and smugglers traversing the Atlantic to West Indies and back again.
Richard Oswald, a Scot who owned thousands of acres of old Timucua land along the Tomoka River, grew indigo, rice, sugar cane, and cotton — or rather, his enslaved people did.
Loyalist haven
In 1774, the First Continental Congress urged Florida to send delegates who could help draft petitions to George III and fume over the various injustices visited on the colonies, including quartering soldiers in private property, blocking Boston Harbor, and the Crown’s demand that American colonists stop grabbing Native American land west of the Appalachians.
Unimpressed, Florida declined the invitation.
News of the Declaration of Independence two years later didn’t reach St. Augustine for more than a month. When they heard, mightily pissed off residents hanged effigies of John Hancock and Samuel Adams in the town plaza.
The Florida colonists weren’t looking to become part of some raggedy new country to the north; they were doing fine, thank you very much.
George Washington, on the other hand, really wanted to capture Florida. It had forts, ports, and connections to Britain’s strategic Caribbean possessions.
In late summer 1776, 2,500 Continental Army soldiers marched south from Savannah to take St. Augustine. It didn’t work; there weren’t enough supplies. Half the men deserted.
Washington tried again the next year, but the American troops were vanquished at the Battle of Thomas Creek. Same thing in 1778 when rebel forces tried to cross the St. Mary’s River and swoop down into what is now Nassau County.
Florida remained stubbornly British, becoming a haven for fleeing Loyalists.
Scholars estimate about 20% of the white population of the 13 colonies wanted to remain part of the British Empire, 50% wanted independence, and the rest just tried to keep their heads down until one side or the other won the war.
Florida traded
The point is, history is more complicated than we’d like, certainly more complicated and more uncomfortable than the Trump White House and the DeSantis administration would prefer.
Trump famously complained the Museum of African American History and Culture focused too much on “how bad slavery was,” while Ron DeSantis insists enslaved people acquired skills they could apply “for their personal benefit.”
But history, like science, doesn’t care what those two or any of the rest of us think.
Florida wasn’t British for that long — just 20 years. The Spanish got it back in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
The Spanish gave the British the Bahamas in return. You can decide for yourself who ended up with better beaches.
Historical aside: Don’t confuse that treaty with the 1763 Treaty of Paris or the 1784 Treaty of Paris of any the 30 other Treaties of Paris, from 1229, ending the Albigensian Crusade, to 1951, establishing the European Coal and Steel Community.
The main thing about the 1783 treaty was that it established the United States as an independent nation.
Thought experiment: What would have happened if Florida, like Canada, had remained part of Britain, first as a dominion, then eventually becoming an independent nation and member of the Commonwealth?
Upside: We might be praised for our politeness, speak French as well as English, and have universal healthcare.
Downside: Poutine. Dumping cheese curds on fries and smothering the whole thing in beef and chicken gravy is a crime against gastronomy.
But that’s not, of course, how the geopolitical cookie crumbled.
Once again, Spain had to figure out what to do with Florida.
Headache
They’d owned the place for the better part of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries and never made money off it. The Spanish weren’t big on plantations; they were more into extractive industries.
Their Latin American colonies provided them with a lot of gold, silver, emeralds, and other blingy stuff.
Florida? Mosquitoes, alligators, and trees.
To boost the population as a defense against the Americans to the north, the French to the west and the British in the Caribbean, King Charles IV started giving land away for free.
My first Florida ancestor, a Frenchman named François Brouard, moved to Spanish East Florida in 1799.
Ol’ François had fought for the Americans in the War of Independence and Anglicized his name to Francis Broward, but he soon abandoned his new country to get his hands on a big chunk of property.
An exemplary Floridian.
But for Spain, Florida was a headache.
Andrew Jackson, soldier, slave trader, plantation owner, and all-around jerk had taken to violating their territory, burning Seminole villages, and hunting down enslaved people who’d escaped from the Carolinas and Georgia to relative freedom in Florida.
In 1819, the exhausted Spanish gave up and ceded Florida to the United States.
The bellicose and deeply racist Jackson became Florida’s first territorial governor.
And here we are: A state run by frightened white folks who want to play down anything critical instead of dealing with our sometimes uplifting, sometimes embarrassing, often maddening history.
Everyone wants to believe they’re good people who have always been good people, especially if they want to celebrate a national milestone and perhaps ignore the unraveling of what had been a society struggling for inclusion, decency, equal justice, and genuine liberty.
While you’re grilling your hot dogs, waving your flags, and hollering “USA! USA!” remember our story is morally messy, tangled, and often contradictory.
We can be proud of our accomplishments; we must also acknowledge that empires decline (ask the Romans, the Spanish, and the British) and nations do not stay on top forever.
Celebrate, but cast a cold eye on our rulers, those who would ignore or deny history, those who would trash our constitutional rights.
Celebrate, but reflect: Is America in 2026 the country you want it to be?
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Editorial: Red flags are flying over Orlando’s hasty historic-preservation rule
Joy Wallace Dickinson
A SunRail train passes Orlando’s historic railroad depot on West Church Street on a recent morning. The canopy next to the station, supported by white posts, was added in 2014, when SunRail service began.
One of the best things about local government is this: If Floridians disagree with something elected leaders plan to do, they can let them know — right to their faces if they want.
And from what we’ve seen, Orlando City Council members are due to get an earful Monday over a proposed ordinance that would sideline the city’s Historic Preservation Board for three years, a move residents fear would clear the way for demolition of some of Downtown Orlando’s most treasured landmarks.
Pedal to the metal
This ordinance was rolled out in a big hurry: City Council members found out about the proposed ordinance when they saw the first draft on June 1. It was scheduled for a first reading June 8, and council members approved it 6-1 despite many who showed up to plead with them not to proceed. The final vote is set for tomorrow’s council meeting.
The proposal would strip authority from the city’s Historic Preservation Board to review plans that would significantly alter or demolish historic structures in downtown Orlando — a restriction that would last at least three years. It’s being presented as part of the overall plan to recreate a downtown that is thriving with shops, offices, housing and entertainment.
But city officials haven’t really connected the dots, or provided the information that would help residents follow along. Questions are mounting: Which landmark buildings are obstructing downtown development? How has the historic board— which has worked with several developers on plans that would alter historic buildings, and which can be overridden by the City Council — become such an obstacle that it should be forced to the sidelines for three years? And why are officials tagging this as a “moratorium” when it looks a lot more like a city-enabled stampede, urging developers to push their plans through before the three-year period runs out?
These are the kinds of questions Orlando residents need answers to, though they also have a partial answer to that last question. We can see only one reason to ram something this big through, in such a hasty fashion. Somebody already has plans. Maybe more than one somebody. And the council is being asked to vote quickly, even though they — and Orlando residents — have no idea what those plans are or which landmarks will be lost forever.
Not so fast
The caution flags are flying, commissioners. It’s time to, at the least, tap the brakes on this one.
And if they need any more convincing, they should look to a letter-bomb that arrived from the state Division of Historic Resources June 11 and was shared with the Sentinel editorial board Saturday. It’s blunt and to the point: If the city passes this ordinance without giving the state 30 days notice, it could immediately lose its certification to receive money from at least one historic grant-funding source — and probably undermine its chances at other funding. This would be a major blow to historic preservation throughout the city, not just downtown.
The state’s email was sent to the city, but some commissioners say it wasn’t shared with them until the state emailed them individually. Via text, Mayor Buddy Dyer said city and state legal teams have talked, and that the ordinance presented Monday would not take effect until 30 days after passage to give the state and city time “to ensure the state has any information they need.”
If that’s the case, why not just put the ordinance on ice for 30 days?
This is not the way Orlando does business. In fact, the City Council deserves a great deal of credit for being responsive to residents when they have concerns about a course of action. That willingness to listen most recently manifested when city residents expressed strong misgivings about the city’s plan for major renovations of Leu Gardens. City staff paid attention — and have significantly scaled back the plan, scrapping a proposed waterfront restaurant and amphitheater. City leaders showed the same caution and sensitivity when planning the memorial to the 49 people killed at Pulse nightclub, creating the design in careful stages and soliciting public comment along the way.
Now city officials are being asked to stomp the gas pedal on an ordinance that could speed the demise of some of downtown’s stateliest buildings — ones that help define its character, such as the old train station on Church Street, the Kress building and the Angebilt Hotel.
At the least, postpone
Without a doubt, many of the 60 downtown buildings that have been designated as historic need work. Some have been vacant for years. Some may be past saving.
But that’s a decision to be made on a one-by-one basis, with the ability to see what the city would be getting if it permitted the demolition. The preservation board is an important part of that process.
Commissioners are being asked to scrap that layer of protection. They are being asked to do it with scanty documentation, including proof that the Historic Preservation Board is causing unnecessary delay. They are being asked to do it without all the information they need to make the right decision, knowing there will be no going back. Once a landmark is destroyed, it’s gone forever.
We don’t see a way this particular proposal can move forward at tomorrow’s meeting. We’re hoping City Council members see things the same way.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Use insight@orlandosentinel.com to contact us.
DIANE ROBERTS