>>This week on NewsNight a detailed look at efforts to develop a permanent memorial on the site of the former Pulse nightclub with a facilitator and a member of the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee.

Plus, Florida voters are set to decide whether school board elections should become partizan.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort.

Welcome to NewsNigh where we take a deep dive into the storie and issues that matter to central Florida and how they shap our community.

First tonight, the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee is beginning its work.

The panel of 18 members, including survivors and community stakeholders, is now hosting public meetings to draw up plans for the creation of a permanent memorial on the Pulse site.

The city of Orlando recently acquired the land for $2 million following the dissolution of the OnePulse Foundation.

NewsNight's Krystel Knowles spoke with one of the committee's members about his aspiration for the memorial.

>>Pulse is a place that meant a lot to me.

>>For Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee member Terrance Hunter, thinking about the tragedy that happened eight years ago still hurts.

>>I regularly visited Puls and today I am friend with people who are close to work, close to victims of the Pulse tragedy.

And so I also spend a lot of time thinking about what new friends I would have had the tragedy not happened.

>>Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee facilitator Dr. Larry Schooler says survivors, their relatives and community members are still trying to move past the false hope offered by the OnePulse Foundation.

>>There are so many feelings of distrust and concern based on the experience folk had with the prior effort.

And so it's not jus that we're at ground zero and it's been a long time.

It's you know, we were a ground zero and supposedly something was happening and folks either didn't feel part of it or didn't feel like their their promises were kept to them.

So, you know, there's a lot of work to do to lay, I think, an important foundation of trust and respect for people to be able to really see their input manifest in the work that's happening at the committee.

And then eventually what takes place at the memorial itself.

>>The Pulse Memorial Advisor Committee will meet twice a mont until the end of this year with the aim of drawing u concrete plans for a permanent memorial to be completed before the 10th anniversary of the shooting.

Since this process is ope to everyone, committee members anticipate plenty of feedback and understand that tensions might rise as the vision for the permanent memorial begins to come together.

>>We fully anticipate some friction, some tension amongst not just committee members, but between members of the committee and other families and survivors.

And it really wouldn't be a legitimate process if you didn't have that, because, you know, this is such a this is such an important project to so many people, literally hundreds of peopl across the United States, that, you know, there's a lot riding on what gets decided here.

I think, you know, we're obviously talking about something that's designed to be permanent.

And the families have been waiting now more than eight years since the incident for something like this to move forward.

>>Hunter envisions the memorial as a tribute to how the city beautiful united after the tragedy.

He admits the committee's timeline is ambitious but achievable, and he's optimistic that the city will have the vision by December.

>>I do believe the meeting was successful.

I know that there are varying opinions about that, but I believe the meeting was successful because each committee member got a different understanding of our role in the process and what our role will b in the process moving forward.

Ways that we can engage with our community, both those who are represented on the committee and those who are not represented on the committee, ways that we can use our personal skill sets, as well as learning about how other communities have navigated their versions of tragedies like this.

>>All right.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Karla Ray, anchor and investigative reporter at WFTV Channel 9.

Thanks so much for coming in, Karla.

Always a pleasure to see you.

Eric Orvieto write for the Oviedo Community News.

Good to see you.

Thanks for coming back on the show Eric.

And Beth Kassab, editor of the Winter Park Voice.

Good to see you, Beth.

Thanks, all of you, for coming in today.

Karla let me start with you because WFTV has been covering the work of this committee extensively.

We heard from one o the committee members just now.

What are you guys hearing so far from members about that vision?

>>Well, I think in many ways, this committe is an opportunity to right the wrongs, so to speak of the OnePulse Foundation and what we have seen ove the last six or seven years.

You know, in some ways, the committee here really focused on addressing community concerns about the past and how to move forward in a way that makes sense for everyone by ensuring that the memorial really reflects the voices of survivors and families and first responders and is respectful.

Some of the concern that people had prior to this, when it was the OnePulse Foundation in charge was they didn' want it to be like a sideshow.

They wanted it to be respectful.

They wanted it to be a place to come and remember and reflect and and really a sacred place for these survivors and their families.

>>And we hear from the facilitator just now.

He says that this is basically not going to be straightforward process.

Right.

I mean, there were a lot of strong feelings from the family members, from survivors.

>>Right.

Absolutely.

And when you have the city taking over the project that draws all kinds of rules and procedures that you have to have as far as the publi input and hearing those voices, which also makes it very difficult because you can't have a committee of unlimited number of people right, making these decisions.

So we've seen that in public comment.

Some family members who felt like they should have been more included and their opportunity to do that is really through the public comment and feedback period.

>>Sunshine Law is a pretty strict and all of that has to be done in public.

I mean, the city purchased is, as Karla mentioned, that site last year.

I mean, just remind us why the city of Orlando sees it as necessary to to acquire that site and to have this whole committee process in the first place.

>>This is a renewed effort on transparency.

So, yes, the city by law has to follow a certain process because it's a public government.

But I think also the leaders we've heard want to bring an element of inclusivity to this.

For example, the consultan who we just heard from, he's having bringing in a Spanis speaking team.

So a big focus on transparency inclusivity and bringing kind of light to the process where I think prio there was just people felt like a lot of it was shrouded in darkness.

>>Yes, of course, it was such a tragedy for the LGBTQ community, but also for the Spanish speaking community in Central Florida.

I mean, briefly, remind us, Eric, about the OnePulse Foundation and those false promises you know, Karla was talking about there and its decision to dissolve.

>>Yeah, the the organization unceremoniously made the decision to dissolve at the end of 2023 following the inability to build the memorial and museum to honor the victims and survivors.

The nonprofit had insufficient funds availabl at the time of the dissolution, and in January, Florid and OnePulse came to a settlement that would require OnePuls to pay about or to refund about $395,00 in a cultural facilities grant.

>>They're up against a stiff deadline here, right, the committee.

>>Yeah, they have an aggressive deadline.

The problem is going to be this idea of the public feedback and trying to get this right.

I don't think that the city, even though there's a deadline in place, I don't think that anybod is going to rush this process.

You know, it's already been so many years.

They want to make sure that this time it's done correctly and done in a way that is in the sunshine and can kind of ease the minds of those who have felt that OnePulse didn't take it seriously enough.

>>At least one community has sort of moved ahead with its own plans in Osceola County.

And you guys over at WFTV have covered this as well.

It's developing its own Pulse memorial.

We'll put some pictures of it up on the screen for our viewers.

What do we know about that?

>>This is kind of rubbed some people the wrong way, to be honest, because it didn't happen in Osceola County.

But there were a lot of folks who were there at Pulse that night who lived in Osceola County.

And so that's why the county wanted to come forward with this project.

They're using some unspent COVID related funding, federal dollars to build what they're calling a tribute, not a memorial.

And it's really more like an art piece.

It's 49 feet tall.

It'll be a rainbow structure and it'll have all of the names of those who died and some areas where people can leave their respects and notes for those who died.

So it does look very nice.

There' going to be a walkway around it and they're not trying to take anything away from Orlando's project is what they have tried to stress.

>>And those are the concerns that have been voiced.

Well, we'll keep an eye o what's going on on the advisory committee as it moves forward, as I'm sure all of you guys will do.

Meanwhile, we want to hear your thoughts on the news of the week.

Be sure to visit us on social media we're at WUCFTV Facebook and Instagram and you'll find us on X @NewsNightWUCF.

Okay.

Next tonight, should it become harder to develo rural land in central Florida?

That's a question that will go before voters in Orange and Seminole counties in November.

>>Central Florida is growing fast and so, too, is pressure to develop its rural areas.

Orange County commissioner last week decided to let voters choose whether to place tough restrictions on rural development.

A charter amendment will appear on the ballot to establish a rural boundary.

Shown here on the map shaded in green with the intention of limiting urban sprawl.

>>We'r not fooled by promises of parks and education centers.

These things do not mitigate the damage don by this unchecked urban sprawl, nor are they worth higher taxes and insurance rates.

>>I'm a little concerned on the amendment as it does introduce a lot of restriction and infringe on rights of of the citizens of Orange County.

>>The amendment would mean that a proposed higher density development within the rural boundary would require the approval of a majority plus one on the commission to alter the county's comprehensive plan.

Exempted would be areas where Orange County already has into local planning agreements with towns or cities, the Innovation Wa overlay, Horizon West, and two growth centers in the northwest corner of Orange County.

It's worth noting the mayors of several cities in Orange County oppose the charter amendment that'll be on the ballot, including Orlando, Maitland Winter Garden and Ocoee, Karla let me start with you and the kinds of projects that would be restricted if Orange County voters decide to support this amendment.

>>So it was just it would create higher hurdles for developers who want to come i and do these massive, sprawling type of developments, housing developments.

This is something that's been in place in Seminole County, which I know we're going to talk about for many, many years.

And it really has cut down on the amount of development that has been able to occur in that part of Seminole County.

You know, people will look at this and say this is unfair to developers, but on the other hand, there is the environmental impact.

And we've seen in recent storms and things, the more you develop without having proper plans in place, the more flooding issues we have, the more major infrastructure issues that we have.

And so that's what Orange County, I think is trying to do with this potential rural boundaries.

>>Impervious surfaces.

And we've seen that in places like Houston where they've developed in floodplains and and we see the flooding that takes place there.

So what about Seminole County area?

I think the rural boundary actually abuts the proposed rural boundary in Orange County.

How does it work?

>>Yeah, so Seminole County's rural boundary, it separates the urbanized area of the county from the east rural area, which is about 75,000 acres.

And it was firs envisioned in the seventies and added to the communities or to the county's comprehensive plan in the eighties while voters then approved it to be added to the charter in 2004 through a referendum.

And what it does is it helps protect those those natural lands from development in the East rural area.

There's a lot of difficulties of building there on purpose.

And while it currently would only take a 3 to 2 county commission vote to move those boundary lines, it's consistently been upheld over the decades.

>>Interesting.

I mean, there are several cities in Orange County that oppose this.

And there's also there's another amendment that's being considered at the moment to make it harder for municipalities to annex bits of unincorporated Orange County.

What are the concerns from leaders of towns and cities in the county here?

>>Well, so this is all about power and autonomy.

And the cities don't like to be big footed by the state or the county.

And this is this is an area where they have some concerns over being able to grow in the way that they see fit for their jurisdiction.

The controversy comes out of the city of Orlando's play to annex a lot of land out on the edge of the city's boundaries.

But I think it's important to point out that a lot of cities, Winter Park and others, are annexing more internally central to what we already think of as the urban core.

And in some cases that, you know, those annexations can be done for a variety of reasons and in some cases there's really good rationale for those.

And I think the cities are saying, hey, we just want to understand you know, what's happening and and make sure we still have the power to grow in the way we want to grow.

>>Flexibility to plan.

>>Yes, exactly.

However, you know, the county raises some excellent points when they talk about annexations that are reall more along the lines of sprawl.

>>And Stev if I can add one of the things in my reporting that I learned and I heard from many different officials and conservationists is the the theory of building up not out and giving extra incentives to builders to do build more in those urbanized area rather than try to sprawl out.

>>And we're going to see more pressure on cities like Maitland, like Orlando, Winter Park, etc., to build up and not out.

We're already seeing that.

And that causes concerns among residents there about what that increased density will mean for their roads, their parks, their schools, etc..

So these these aren't jus concerns in the outlying areas.

They're there in the urban core as well.

>>I mean, there's no city that faces greater development pressures that the one that you cover in Winter Park.

>>Yeah.

Growth is a huge issue in Winter Park.

And you might say, well, wait a second.

This is a city that's roughly, you know, it's already built out.

Not a lot of land to keep extend-- >>It's part of the urban core.

>>It is.

And however, there are decent stretches of lan that are up for redevelopment.

>>Yeah.

>>So, yes, thos those issues are not going away any time soon.

>>Well, Beth alluded to this, Karla, the reason the annexation issue is up for discussion now, that huge Sun Bridge development-- >>Right.

>>Down in Lake Nona.

>>This is from the same developers that developed Lake Nona Tavistock Development.

And the county sees this as the city only doing what's best for the city.

And they the county has argued that they worked with the owners of that land for a long time to come up with plans that would be appropriate for development and and how to develop that in a way that is best for the county and best for the environment as well.

At the end of the day, when that is annexed into the city of Orlando, that becomes a huge taxable value for the city that the county is not going to have access to any more.

So I think that's certainly where the crux of this issue starte was the Sun Bridge development.

>>And on the issue of the rural boundary, there were questions that we saw in the recent Orange County hearing from landowners, those people that live in the areas that would be affected.

Sort of saying that this essentially unfairly affects their ability to do what they wish with the land.

>>Right.

And we have seen that become an issue in Seminole County.

Of course, I'm thinking of the major development that was proposed River Cross, and that has led to long time litigation in Seminole County that finally I think is is over with.

But there are certainly goin to be challenges to this, whatever happens with the rural boundary.

>>Yeah.

Is that a fair point there have been challenges there in Seminole County?

>>Yeah.

There have been a numbe of challenges over the decades.

And like I said, even though it only would take currently a 3 to 2 vote to move the lines, it has been defended.

However, for the in the upcoming election the Seminole County Commission this summer unanimousl voted to add or adopt a resolution to be added to the ballot for it as an amendment to require a four vote supermajority for both moving to the rural boundary lines for any movement or for any or to change any protections to the county's natural lands.

And that has been something that environmentalists and commissioners have been pushing for for a long time, and saying that supermajority is the key to keeping the rural boundary protected in Seminole County.

>>So they're still tweaking those rules even now or something else for voter to chew over in this election.

Meanwhile, WUCF is committed to helping our community navigate the 2024 election by providing important information on how to vote and the races and questions on the ballots in our region.

So we've partnered with public media outlets around the state to put together the 2024 Florida voter guide that features detailed information on every state and federal race, including the candidates an their positions on key issues.

Be sure to check it out at wucf.org/vote.

Okay, our voter guide includes candidates positions on the constitutional amendments on the ballot this year.

One of those amendments would make school board race in Florida officially partisan.

In other words, attaching the word Democrat or Republica to a candidate's name.

So will this idea bring transparency to school boards or just inject more partisanship?

I talked about it with former Republican state Senator Jeff Brandes, who now leads the nonpartisan Florida Policy Project.

>>I think there's pros and cons to it.

I think the pros are that i probably enhances voter turnout and enhances voter engagemen when they come to the ballot.

I think a lot of peopl get down to nonpartisan race and don't know anybody and so may undervote those.

But I also think it tends to nationalize the issues.

Right.

Most school board issues are focused on local issues and it tends to kind of wrap national politics into local issues.

So it's really a tradeoff.

>>What about the argument that it just unnecessarily injects politics into something which shouldn't be political?

>>I thin there's a lot of truth to that.

I think there is a lot of truth to the fact that you'r bringing in nationalized issues and and getting more kind of contention potentially in local school boards and local politics.

On the other hand, I think it actually tells kind of generally where people are on some of the major issues by when they select a party.

And so I think, again, it' that tradeoff of values versus, you know, kind of generally knowing where people are and maybe getting more voter engagement in that discussion versus nationalizing some of those issues.

>>The opposite side, I guess, is that we all know that school boards are partisan now and that this is a transparency issue for voters.

That seems to be a fair point.

Right?

Could it be confusin if there isn't a label attached not only for school board races but for any kind of nonpartisan race?

>>Well, I think that's the key point, right?

I think at the end of the day, many people don't know as they go down the ballot.

I mean, we'd like to believe everybody is totally engaged and knows every candidate knows all the judges.

I just think that's simply not true.

At least it's not true in my household where my mom and my dad call me up and say, who do I vote for?

Because don't know any of these people.

So I thin I think at the end of the day, I think we have to recognize that this constitutional amendment is a tradeoff.

It's a tradeoff between potentially more voter engagement on one hand with the als with a tradeoff of potentially making school board meetings more contentious and more partisan and bringin in potentially national issues instead of just focusing on the local issues of running a school board.

>>Jeff Brandes there a former state senator.

Okay Beth, we've covered this area a long time.

Just take us back a little bit to before 2000 when Florida used to have partisan school board races.

Why did it change and why is there a push to change it back now?

>>Yeah.

So this is a yes.

So voter approved a change back in 2000 to take partisanshi out of school board races.

And now we're seein the reverse happen and there is probably no place in the last 10 to 20 years that's been more polarized and politicized by political parties than our public schools.

Yeah, we're seeing-- >>Huge amount of money going i there as well into those races.

>>Yes, huge amount of money going into the races and a lot of issues that both parties have seized on that are essentially culture war type issues, LGBTQ issues, issues about, quote, indoctrination in education, a lot of scare tactics.

And I think party leaders see this as an opportunity to engage voters, drive turnout.

Some of those things that we've heard.

And it is true and we have a variety of nonpartisan races all over central Florida.

Technically, the county commission-- >>County commissioners is nonpartisan.

>>Technically, a lot of city commission races are nonpartisan.

That does not mean there isn't party involvement and especially whisper campaigns happening within those elections.

So on some level, this would drive that to the forefront and force people to acknowledge it.

But on the other hand, you can see how if you're a schoolteacher, you might have some concerns about parties even more overtly driving some of the politics here.

>>An that politics in the classroom.

I mean, Republicans have made no secret in Florida under under the current governor of their desire to gain greater control of these boards.

Do we know what their priorities are at the moment?

>>You alluded to it that the gov boards that he would lik to see Republican control over.

And we've seen already, you know, efforts to soften vaccine requirements for school children, rewriting policies affecting LGBTQ plus students and the types of, you know, books that can be brought into schools, the types of curriculum that can be brought into schools.

And it's said that the goal for this election cycle for the GOP is to increase control of school boards from 60% of the school board in the state to three quarters of the school boards in the state.

So.

>>Interesting.

>>Really interesting to see them cling on to this.

>>And we've seen the governor roll out new endorsements this time.

It was kind of unusual when he first did it.

This time he's endorsing school board candidates in Brevard, Flagler and Volusia.

I wonder and you kind of alluded to this Beth, about how Florida shapes up compared to other places when it comes to that politicization, I guess, of school boards.

>>So Florida has, for more than 20, 25 years, been a national testing ground for some of these politics.

We saw that with go even going back to the Jeb Bush days-- >>Education was a big issue with Jeb-- >>Education, a big push for what is known as, quote, school choice.

So, yes, Florida has been a leader on this front, testing legislation, testing political campaig tactics in school board races.

And we've seen this governor be even more outspoken when it comes to endorsements in some of these races and even more than we've seen in other places around the country.

>>Eric, I wanted to talk to you about how this is playing out in your area in Seminole County.

There was a debate recently, I think, sponsored by the the League of Women Voters.

Do we get a sense of the issues at play there in Seminole?

>>Yeah the issues at play in Seminole during that packed House debate or forum included cell phones and other electronics in schools allowing teachers and staff to carry firearms on campus.

Book bans and House Bill 931, which allows school boards to adopt voluntary chaplain programs in schools.

>>Yeah, sounds like it was an interesting debate up there in Seminole County.

Well, Florida's primary election will take place on August 20th.

Early voting is already underway in some places.

You'll find much more on the electio as we get closer to November.

On our website, wucf.org/newsnight alon the bottom of your screen.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Karla Ray, WFTV channel 9, Eric Orvieto from the Oviedo Community News, and Beth Kassab from the Winter Park Voice.

Thank you guys, so much for coming in.

>>Thank you.

>>We appreciate your time today.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.