ACTION NEEDED - City of Maitland Fertilizer Ordinance Update

As you may recall, the City of Maitland currently operates under the Orange County version of a fertilizer ordinance. While the ordinance includes a summertime rainy season ban on Nitrogen and Phosphorus from June through September, it properly exempts licensed professionals.

Earlier this year, before the pandemic, the City Council had a first reading of a modification to the ordinance which would eliminate the professional exemption and conform the ordinance to the one in Seminole County (even though Maitland is in Orange County). This apparently came out of a recommendation from the City'sLakes Advisory Board.

EREF has continually engaged with the City Council and staff on this matter but has received no substantive response to its detailed arguments and in-person testimony against this ill-advised amendment.

Now the City is proposing to move ahead with the second and final reading before taking a vote on June 8th. EREF has responded to that by asking for a postponement for the following key reasons:

• The amendment would have an effective date of January 1, 2021, applying to the period in June - September, 2021 which is a year away.
• While the public can attend the City Council meeting on June 8th, EREF is unwilling to ask its stakeholders to do so, knowing that many people continue to have legitimate and grave concerns surrounding exposure to COVID-19 in such a public setting.
• Prior to the onset of the current lockdown, many stakeholders were prepared to attend the hearing to let the City Council know IN PERSON their strong objection to the proposed amendment. As we have pointed out in our email to the City, moving forward will be viewed as a rush to judgment, and a strategy to deliberately limit powerful in-person objections. In-person communications are the key purpose of public hearings. Many if not most local governments are deferring such regulatory matters, especially when there is time to reschedule the hearing for when civic normalization has made better progress.

This has been clearly communicated by EREF and its legal counsel to the City, and you can see those communications here:http://www.ereflorida.com/downloads/Please read this information!

To date we have not received any definitive response from the City. Accordingly, we have to act as if they are moving forward with the vote on June 8th at 6:30 PM at City Hall.

ACTION NEEDED:

EREF has set up an email campaign on its website to communicate industry concerns about the amendment to the ordinance and to request a delay in the vote. You can find the campaign here:http://www.ereflorida.com/campaign/

We strongly urge you to participate by using the campaign, which is self-explanatory, especially if you live or work in the City of Maitland. Alternately, you are certainly welcome to contact the City Council in its entirety at this email address:citycouncil@itsmymaitland.com

If EREF receives any further communications from the City, we will update you through this e-newsletter.

Finally, if you do choose to attend the meeting, that is entirely a personal decision.

Thank you!