Orlando Sentinel Endorsement:
By Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board | [email protected]
PUBLISHED: March 1, 2026 at 5:30 AM EST
This year’s ballot for Apopka is big: Eight charter amendment questions, along with 10 candidates spread across the mayor’s race and three City Council seats. But when the polls close March 10, one of two things will be the truth: The city will face big changes, or the equivalent of no changes at all.
Change is warranted, because Apopka is teetering on the brink of dysfunction. The city seems barely able to keep up with its own growth, despite record property-tax revenues that fuel an annual budget of nearly $236 million. Gone are the days when everyone shopped at the same grocery store and pharmacy, when city business was often handled on a handshake. The citrus groves are mostly gone (though Apopka still has a large juice bottling plant) and the plant nurseries that dominated Apopka’s business life have also been eclipsed by the city’s new economic driver, rampant construction of new homes.
This is now the second-largest city in Orange County with a population approaching 67,000 people — and according to the Apopka Chief, an estimated 15,000 more homes are in various stages of permitting and development. The bigger it gets, the less cohesive city life seems to be, with much of the city platted out in suburban anonymity surrounding pockets of extreme poverty and a downtown trying to regain its identity. One factor unites most Apopka residents, however: Most parts of the city suffer from a deficit of critical infrastructure. Roads are overburdened. During rainy seasons, floodwaters cover some of the city’s main intersections, and at least twice a day, Main Street through the city’s downtown district becomes a sluggish bottleneck. The city has been forced to increase water rates to cover the cost of keeping up with repairs, some of which should have been made a generation ago. Meanwhile, City Hall’s atmosphere has suffered from ongoing turmoil.
That leaves city voters with big questions: Is the city too dysfunctional to function? Is it time to wipe the slate clean and start again?
From our viewpoint, the answer is a partial yes. Yesterday we endorsed a set of charter amendments that should spark much-needed modernization of the city’s government structure, putting the day-to-day operations of the city under the purview of an experienced and professional city manager. But to fully insulate the business of government from the whims of politics, the city’s elected leadership needs a shakeup. And that starts at the top.
Mayor
As he approaches the end of his second term, Mayor Bryan Nelson has clearly become accustomed to holding the reins of power. Sometimes the results are positive: Elected officials outside of Apopka tell us they enjoy working with Nelson, whose prior experience in the state House of Representatives and Orange County Commission prepared him to take over the mayor’s role. As a strong mayor, he has the ability to make decisions without the need to consult other City Council members. But that autonomy has led to some unpleasant surprises — such as the day almost a year ago, when council members learned that Nelson had summarily fired the city administrator Jacob Smith after just eight months on the job. Many suspect that Smith was jettisoned because he was simply too frank about the city’s building budget crisis, including a pointed analysis, attributed to Smith and published on a website critical of city government, that pointed to the need to raise taxes to keep up with expected expenses and repair past shortfalls.
As we studied the charter amendments, we realized something: A majority of them might have been inspired by things Nelson did — like his unilateral decision to move public comment to the end of council meetings and to exclude those comments from the official video record.
In a city as diverse as Apopka, city government can’t be a one-man show — which is why we are endorsing Christine Moore as Nelson’s replacement. During her terms on the Orange County School Board and County Commission, Moore has often been a compulsive consensus-seeker. Whether or not voters approve a transition to a council-manager form of government, they need someone at the top who will at least consult the city’s other duly elected officials before making major, startling decisions.
Moore has another key strength: As the county commissioner for District 2, which includes Apopka, she’s developed a comprehensive mental inventory of the city’s infrastructure needs — including which streets in which neighborhoods need better lighting. But she’s not mired in details. In fact, her platform is based on her conviction that the city needs to ease off the gas in its rampant growth, giving leaders time to develop a guiding vision that dictates where future growth is best suited. That would be a slight shift from Moore’s performance on the County Commission, where she sometimes voted to approve development despite outspoken opposition. But she clearly understands Apopka’s No. 1 challenge.