{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "The Orlando Report",
  "home_page_url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city",
  "feed_url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/feed.json",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/how-this-newsroom-works",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/how-this-newsroom-works",
      "title": "What readers can expect from OrlandoFirst.City",
      "summary": "A simple public promise: show the source, name the limit, correct mistakes, and leave the verdict with the reader.",
      "content_text": "## Show the source\r\n\r\nA public claim should come with a path back to the public record. When a story relies on a statute, budget, meeting record, agency page, or campaign statement, OrlandoFirst.City links the source where it matters and keeps the source list with the story.\r\n\r\nThe link is there for more than decoration. It lets a reader see the language in context, notice what else the record contains, and decide whether the story described it fairly. Our broader [method](/method) remains available for anyone who wants a fuller explanation.\r\n\r\n## Name the limit\r\n\r\nRecords answer particular questions. A member profile may establish that someone held an office without proving what that person delivered there. A campaign page may establish what was promised without showing that the promise became policy. A budget may show an appropriation without showing the result.\r\n\r\nWe will say when a source is narrow, when evidence is incomplete, and when a conclusion remains an inference. Accuracy includes making room for what the public record does not establish.\r\n\r\n## Correct the record\r\n\r\nMistakes should not disappear quietly. When a material fact changes because our reporting was wrong, the correction belongs where readers can find it, with enough information to understand what changed.\r\n\r\nThe public [corrections page](/about/corrections) is the permanent place for those notices and for contacting us about a possible error. A useful correction protects the record; it does not defend the mistake.\r\n\r\n## Leave the verdict with the reader\r\n\r\nOrlandoFirst.City will make factual judgments about what a source supports. It may identify a legal limit, a missing cost, a contradiction, or a consequence that deserves attention. It will not tell readers how to vote.\r\n\r\nThe point is to make public choices easier to understand without pretending that reporting owns the final decision. We show our work, state the limits, and leave that decision where it belongs—with the reader.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:35:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/843-measures-zero-first-named-chapter-laws",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/843-measures-zero-first-named-chapter-laws",
      "title": "Reading Anna Eskamani's Florida House record",
      "summary": "Official House pages separate first-named sponsorship from co-sponsorship and report each measure's latest action. The catalogue is useful, but it is not a verdict on running Orlando.",
      "content_text": "## What the catalogue can show\r\n\r\nThe Florida House [member profile](https://www.flhouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/details.aspx?LegislativeTermId=91&MemberId=4746) says Anna Eskamani was elected to the House in 2018 and subsequently reelected. It identifies her current district and committee assignments. That is a clear public record of service.\r\n\r\nThe House's [2026 sponsored-bills page](https://www.flhouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/sponsoredbills.aspx?MemberId=4746&SessionId=113) adds a more specific view. It separates entries where Eskamani is the “First Named Sponsor (by rule)” from those where she is a “Co Sponsor (by rule),” then lists each measure's subject and latest event.\r\n\r\n## Sponsorship is not one thing\r\n\r\nThose categories matter because a name can appear on legislation in different ways. The House page tells the reader which sponsorship category applies and what the official page recorded as the bill's last action. It does not say that every first-named sponsor wrote every line alone, or that every co-sponsor played the same role.\r\n\r\nThe last-event column also needs to be read literally. A bill may die in committee, be laid on the table in favor of another measure, reach a later calendar, or point to a companion that passed. Those are different procedural outcomes, and none should be silently converted into another.\r\n\r\n## The record and its limits\r\n\r\nThe cited sponsored-bills page is a current-session catalogue. The member profile establishes legislative service since 2018, but it does not publish one combined total for every first-named and co-sponsored entry across that full period. These official pages therefore support a careful account of the entries they display, not an unsourced all-session score.\r\n\r\nA bill index also records legislative activity, not every negotiation, constituent service, coalition, amendment, or effect that may sit around it. It is strongest when used for the facts it actually publishes: category, subject, session, and last event.\r\n\r\n## What remains a different question\r\n\r\nEskamani's [campaign platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) presents her legislative advocacy as part of the case for mayor. The official House pages can help readers understand that legislative record. They do not measure how a person would administer city departments, carry out an Orlando budget, or manage responsibilities that never appear in a bill catalogue.\r\n\r\nThose questions require municipal records and specific plans of their own. Legislative service may inform the picture, but neither praise nor criticism can make the House index answer a question it was not built to answer.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:30:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/zoning-parking-density-need-council",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/zoning-parking-density-need-council",
      "title": "What zoning change looks like on an Orlando block",
      "summary": "Orlando already allows several housing types under district-specific rules. Changing those rules means public hearings, Council votes, and choices about what growth keeps or erases.",
      "content_text": "## One Orlando block can hold several eras\r\n\r\nAcross Orlando, the built city can change house by house: a low bungalow, a renovated historic home, and a much larger new house sharing the same stretch of street. Elsewhere, older apartments, duplexes, and single-family homes meet under rules written in different moments.\r\n\r\nThat mixture is more than an architectural argument. It shapes who can find a home, what can be built on an existing lot, and whether growth adds room without treating the people and memory already there as disposable.\r\n\r\n## The tools City Hall actually has\r\n\r\nThe campaign's [housing platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) proposes density bonuses, more duplexes, triplexes, and multifamily homes in some areas now limited to single-family use, and a new look at minimum parking requirements. Those are proposed changes. Orlando's current [Residential Development Standards Guide](https://www.orlando.gov/Our-Government/Departments-Offices/Economic-Development/City-Planning/Residential-Development-Standards-Guide) shows the baseline they would meet.\r\n\r\nThe guide says accessory dwelling units are allowed on most single-family lots. Duplexes and tandem houses are not allowed in R-1 districts; townhomes and multiplexes are not allowed in R-1 or R-2A. Parking, trees, sidewalks, stormwater, and overlays—including historic and Traditional City overlays—also shape what fits on a site. The city is explicit that the guide is a reference and the City Code controls if the two conflict.\r\n\r\nFlorida's [home-rule statute](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/166.021) gives a municipality's legislative body broad local authority unless another law prohibits or preempts the action. Using that authority still means changing public rules, not announcing a design preference from one office.\r\n\r\n## Four votes and a public argument\r\n\r\nOrlando's [Municipal Planning Board](https://www.orlando.gov/Our-Government/Records-and-Documents/Citizen-Advisory-Boards/Municipal-Planning-Board) is an advisory board to City Council. It holds public hearings on rezonings and other listed land-use matters, then sends recommendations that remain subject to Council review and approval.\r\n\r\nFlorida's [municipal ordinance-adoption law](https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0100-0199%2F0166%2FSections%2F0166.041.html) generally requires two separate readings of a proposed ordinance, either by title or in full, with public notice before adoption. The notice must advise that interested parties may appear and be heard. The same statute says a majority of a municipal governing body's members constitutes a quorum and an affirmative vote of a majority of the quorum present is ordinarily necessary to enact an ordinance.\r\n\r\nThe number in this heading still needs Orlando context. The city's [charter](https://library.municode.com/fl/orlando/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TITICH_CH2AD_S1-1REQUCAOFMAMMCO) creates a seven-member Council: the mayor and six district commissioners. Orlando's [Council procedures](https://library.municode.com/fl/orlando/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TITIICICO_CH2AD_ARTVIIIRUPRCO_S2.36RESPME) say a majority of elected members constitutes a quorum at a regular or special meeting. Four is a majority when all seven are present and voting. Fewer members present can change that ordinary arithmetic while a quorum remains. Any different threshold has to be identified in—and cited to—the law that creates it.\r\n\r\n## Change without erasure\r\n\r\nMore homes can be good, difficult, and necessary. So can repairing an older home or adapting a familiar building for a new life. The choice is not between freezing every bungalow in time and applauding every demolition.\r\n\r\nOrlando can make room for new neighbors while asking what a code change preserves, who bears its costs, and which pieces of a place still serve the people who live there. Neglect should not be romanticized, and growth should not become an excuse to erase a community's memory. Change has to proceed with both care and accountability.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:25:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/housing-promises-orlando-already-funds",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/housing-promises-orlando-already-funds",
      "title": "Orlando's housing work is already underway",
      "summary": "The city already supports repair, prevention, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive housing. Expansion starts with naming what grows, by how much, and with what money.",
      "content_text": "## Orlando is not starting from zero\r\n\r\nHousing policy is easy to flatten into one promise. In practice, it can mean replacing a failing roof, preserving an apartment, helping a household avoid homelessness, or pairing a home with long-term support.\r\n\r\nOrlando's [Consolidated Plan page](https://www.orlando.gov/Building-Development/City-Projects/2026-2030-Consolidated-Plan) shows that this work is already underway. The city uses federal CDBG, ESG, HOME, and HOPWA funds for housing and community-development needs. Its current [homelessness page](https://www.orlando.gov/Our-Government/Mayor-City-Council/Buddy-Dyer/Mayors-Key-Priorities/Caring-for-Those-Experiencing-Homelessness) also describes permanent supportive housing, diversion and rental assistance, rapid rehousing, emergency shelters, and street outreach within a regional system.\r\n\r\nThe campaign's [housing platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) proposes expanding several of those approaches and adding others. That is a case for changing the scale and reach of an existing system, not creating one from an empty page.\r\n\r\n## The programs already doing the work\r\n\r\nThe city's own examples make that baseline tangible. Orlando says Consolidated Plan funding helped build 116 apartments at Fairlawn Village, including 20 permanent-supportive-housing units. It also funded new roofs for 17 single-family homes and repairs at four multifamily properties that preserved 640 affordable apartments.\r\n\r\nFor Program Years 2021 through 2023, the same page reports assistance for 515 households through homelessness-prevention services and 92 households through rapid rehousing. Those figures describe different forms of help, not one interchangeable housing program.\r\n\r\n## Where expansion becomes difficult\r\n\r\nThe platform calls for rental assistance, legal representation in eviction cases, home-repair grants, more Housing First services, and additional shelter space. Each proposal meets a different point in the housing crisis. Each also comes with its own eligibility rules, funding source, timeline, and implementing partners.\r\n\r\nThat distinction matters. Repairing an occupied home is different from financing a new apartment, and neither is the same job as providing rental help or permanent supportive housing. “Expand housing” becomes real only after the proposal identifies which part of that system will grow and what public work the growth requires.\r\n\r\n## The numbers the proposal still needs\r\n\r\nOn the cited campaign page, the housing proposals do not include targets for additional households served, homes repaired, apartments produced, or shelter spaces opened. They also do not state annual program costs or name the revenue that would cover them.\r\n\r\nThose missing figures are not a demand for false precision. They are the beginning of a useful comparison with the work Orlando already funds: how much more help is being promised, where it would land, and whether the change is a modest expansion or a new commitment at a different scale.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:20:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/hotel-tax-money-who-controls-it",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/hotel-tax-money-who-controls-it",
      "title": "Who decides how Orange County's hotel tax is used",
      "summary": "Orange County levies the 6% tax, while Florida law limits the purposes the revenue may serve.",
      "content_text": "## A large number with narrow rules\r\n\r\n[Orange County](https://orangecountyfl.net/EconomicDevelopment/TDTCitizenAdvisoryTaskForce.aspx) describes its Tourist Development Tax as a 6% tax on hotel stays and short-term rentals of less than six months. The county says voters approved it and the county enacted it by ordinance in 1978.\r\n\r\nAnna Eskamani's [platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) calls for state and local reforms that could direct more of the tax toward affordable housing near job centers, public transportation, and climate-resilient infrastructure. That is campaign language, not a current allocation of the money.\r\n\r\n## The county holds the tax\r\n\r\nUnder [Florida law](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/125.0104), a county may levy the tax, the county governing board enacts the plan and ordinance, and the revenue returns to a county tourist-development trust fund. Orange County's task force reviews future unallocated revenue and makes recommendations to the Tourist Development Council and the Board of County Commissioners.\r\n\r\nThat places a City of Orlando mayor in an advocacy role. The city cannot treat the county trust fund as its own budget.\r\n\r\n## What Florida law permits\r\n\r\nThe statute says tourist-tax revenue may be used only for its listed purposes. Those include certain public convention, sports, cultural, tourism-promotion, and natural-resource uses, along with qualifying public facilities meant to increase tourist-related business.\r\n\r\nTransportation can qualify as a public facility only under the statute's tourist-related conditions and county approval requirements. Affordable housing is not among the authorized purposes, and the law expressly prohibits uses it does not authorize.\r\n\r\n## What would have to change\r\n\r\nFor a general affordable-housing use, the Legislature would first have to add legal authority. Orange County would then have to decide whether and how to use its tax under the county process. The campaign's platform recognizes both layers when it describes the work as state-level and local reform.\r\n\r\nThe case still needs specifics: the statutory language sought, the county action proposed, and how any new use would fit alongside the purposes already allowed. Until that case is made, the proposal is an advocacy goal rather than money an Orlando mayor could place in a city budget.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:15:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/ouc-rates-one-vote-of-five",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/ouc-rates-one-vote-of-five",
      "title": "OUC rates are decided by a five-member commission",
      "summary": "The Orlando mayor sits on the utility's governing board, but the Commission as a whole sets rates and operating policy.",
      "content_text": "## The bill Orlando households actually see\r\n\r\nMost OUC customers meet the utility through a monthly bill, not its governing documents. Anna Eskamani's [platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) connects those costs to housing stability and says she would work with OUC on larger renewable-energy investments while pushing to keep residential customers from paying higher rates than large businesses.\r\n\r\nThat is the campaign's stated goal. The public record is clearer about who would decide it.\r\n\r\n## One seat on the commission\r\n\r\n[OUC says](https://www.ouc.com/about/who-we-are/) its five-member Commission sets the utility's rates and operating policies.\r\n\r\nThe [Commission page](https://www.ouc.com/about/ouc-commission/) identifies the Orlando mayor as an ex officio member and lists the mayor alongside four other commissioners. The mayor's office occupies one of the five seats. The Commission makes the rate decision.\r\n\r\n## What changing rates would require\r\n\r\nA change in OUC rates would have to move through the Commission responsible for setting them. OUC's public pages do not spell out a voting threshold or the full procedure for changing rates.\r\n\r\nWhat OUC does show is a public governing process: scheduled Commission meetings, a speaker-request path, and a way to submit comments in advance. The mayor is one member of the body that would consider a proposal; the linked records do not assign the outcome to that office alone.\r\n\r\n## The unanswered case for change\r\n\r\nThe platform does not define how it would compare residential and business customer classes, which customers would be affected, or the bill impact it expects. It also does not say what projects or timetable make up the promised larger renewable investment.\r\n\r\nThose details would turn a broad goal into a proposal the Commission and the public could evaluate. Until then, the campaign has identified a concern and a place to pursue it, but not a finished rate plan.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:10:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/promise-language-vs-delivery-path",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/promise-language-vs-delivery-path",
      "title": "How a mayoral promise becomes public policy",
      "summary": "Some proposals can begin inside City Hall. Others depend on OUC, Orange County, or a change in Florida law.",
      "content_text": "## A promise is only the beginning\r\n\r\nCampaign platforms are written in the future tense. Public policy still has to move through the government that holds the authority.\r\n\r\nAnna Eskamani's [platform](https://www.annafororlando.com/platform) includes proposals framed as direct city commitments, including a city-backed home-repair grant program. It also uses more collaborative language: work with OUC on renewable investment and customer rates, and advocate for state and local changes to the Tourism Development Tax. Those verbs point to genuinely different paths.\r\n\r\n## Orlando is governed by more than City Hall\r\n\r\nFlorida law gives municipalities broad [home-rule power](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/166.021), but it also preserves constitutional limits and express state or county preemption. Even inside municipal government, the statute speaks to the municipality and its legislative body rather than treating every local power as the mayor's alone.\r\n\r\nOther proposals begin somewhere else. [OUC says](https://www.ouc.com/about/who-we-are/) its five-member Commission sets utility rates and operating policies; its [Commission page](https://www.ouc.com/about/ouc-commission/) identifies the Orlando mayor as an ex officio member. Florida's hotel-tax law places the levy, plan, and trust fund with county government, while [Orange County](https://orangecountyfl.net/EconomicDevelopment/TDTCitizenAdvisoryTaskForce.aspx) sends recommendations for future unallocated revenue to county bodies.\r\n\r\n## Where the path becomes difficult\r\n\r\nThe OUC proposal is not just a statement about what bills should look like. It would need a defined rate or investment proposal to move through the Commission that holds the authority.\r\n\r\nThe TDT language already acknowledges a longer route. The campaign says it would advocate for expanded uses and pursue state-level and local reforms. That matches the structure of [Florida's statute](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/125.0104): the county controls the tax, and revenue may be used only for purposes the law authorizes.\r\n\r\nNone of that proves a proposal will fail. It identifies the institutions whose agreement would make success possible.\r\n\r\n## The questions still waiting for answers\r\n\r\nThe platform establishes direction, but these passages leave important implementation work open. A city-backed program still needs a lawful city action, a funding source, and a public approval path. The OUC promises need a specific proposal that other commissioners can consider. A new TDT use needs the exact statutory change and a route through Orange County's process.\r\n\r\nThose details are not administrative clutter. They are where a campaign commitment becomes something Orlando can actually carry out.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:05:00.000Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/what-orlandos-mayor-actually-runs",
      "url": "https://staging.orlandofirst.city/stories/what-orlandos-mayor-actually-runs",
      "title": "The mayor's place inside Orlando's shared government",
      "summary": "Orlando elects its mayor citywide, but City Council and the limits of state law shape what the office can deliver.",
      "content_text": "## The job behind the title\r\n\r\nOrlando's government page begins with the shape of the institution. The [City Council](https://www.orlando.gov/Our-Government/Mayor-City-Council) is the mayor, elected across the city, and six commissioners elected from districts. All seven serve four-year terms.\r\n\r\nThat gives the mayor a citywide place in Orlando's government. It does not make every public decision a one-person decision. The cited page establishes the council's composition and terms, not a catalog of the mayor's administrative powers. Departments, staffing, budget authority, and labor duties require their own governing records.\r\n\r\n## What moves through City Hall\r\n\r\nFlorida's [municipal home-rule law](https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/166.021) gives cities broad power to conduct municipal government, perform municipal functions, and provide municipal services unless another law expressly prohibits the action. The same section says a municipality's legislative body may act on many subjects that the Legislature could address.\r\n\r\nThat is meaningful local authority. It is also authority granted to the municipality and its governing body. Section 166.021 does not turn every municipal power into a unilateral power of the mayor.\r\n\r\n## Where the mayor needs partners\r\n\r\nThe home-rule statute also names the boundaries. Municipal action can be limited by the state constitution, state law, a county charter, or an express preemption to state or county government. A proposal that reaches one of those boundaries needs more than determination inside City Hall.\r\n\r\nThat does not make an ambitious idea unserious. It makes coalition-building, legislation, and agreement with other public bodies part of the work rather than a footnote after the promise.\r\n\r\n## What the campaign still has to explain\r\n\r\nA mayoral campaign can make a strong case for what Orlando should become. It should also be able to say which step the mayor can begin, which step belongs to City Council, and which step depends on another government changing course.\r\n\r\nThose are different kinds of public work. Describing them plainly makes a proposal more credible without pretending that one office holds every lever in the region.\r\n",
      "date_published": "2026-07-27T12:00:00.000Z"
    }
  ]
}