Jetta Point Conservation Transfer Approved; County Says It's Paperwork, a Commissioner Says It's Tied to Selling the Land

The Board of County Commissioners finalized the transfer of a Florida Communities Trust conservation restriction from Jetta Point to Rolling Hills. It passed unanimously — but only after the Winter Springs mayor, half a dozen residents, and a mayoral candidate objected, and the commissioner who represents the Jetta Point area acknowledged the move is bound up with a years-old promise to sell the land.

The decision to lift a state conservation restriction from the publicly owned Jetta Point property in Winter Springs did not pass quietly. On July 28, it drew the mayor of Winter Springs, roughly half a dozen residents, and a candidate for mayor to the podium, followed by nearly an hour of commissioner discussion. In the end, the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners approved it unanimously — as part of the consent agenda, in a single bundled vote of items 3 and 5 through 18, rather than as a separate recorded motion.

The action authorized the chairman to execute an Amended Grant Award Agreement and a Release of Grant Award Agreement between Seminole County and the Florida Communities Trust, transferring the grant restrictions from Jetta Point to Rolling Hills, a former golf course the county has committed to preserving. The item was sponsored out of District 3 (Commissioner Lee Constantine) and District 4 (Commissioner Amy Lockhart); the responsible staff contact was Parks and Recreation Director Rick Durr.

"Just paperwork" — or the first step toward a sale?

The county's legal position was that the vote was narrow and procedural. Deputy County Attorney Neysa Jo Borkert told the board the item "transfers the Florida Communities Trust grant restrictions that are currently on the Jetta Point property to the Rolling Hills property," a transfer "approved back in 2018" and now being closed out. "It doesn't dictate how the Jetta Point property will be used in the future," Borkert said. "The Jetta Point property will remain as it is until the board determines what to do with it next."

But Commissioner Jay Zembower, whose District 2 includes the affected Winter Springs neighborhoods, described the transfer as inseparable from a plan to sell the land. The county, he said, "committed to surplus the Jetta Point property to the taxpayers of this county to help fund the improvements on Rolling Hills." Surplusing is the county's term for declaring land available to sell. "The folks in Rolling Hills relied upon that promise in deciding to tax themselves" through a special assessment, he said, and "the promise was made to the taxpayers of this county — not once, but multiple times — that this property would be surplused."

"We're not here to talk about how this property will be used, but how the easement will be done," Zembower said. "But the two are actually tied together at the end of the day."

Two sets of residents, two opposite promises

Zembower also named the bind at the center of the story: the county has made competing promises to two different groups of residents. Homeowners in Rolling Hills, he said, agreed to tax themselves through a special assessment district (an MSBU) in reliance on the county's commitment to sell Jetta Point and use the proceeds to fund improvements to their park. Residents near Jetta Point want the land preserved.

"We're going to have the people at Rolling Hills on one side of this chambers who are saying, we decided to tax ourselves for a commitment you made to us," Zembower said. "And we're going to have people from my district over here going, yeah, well, that's not our problem."

Commissioners recounted the history at length. Commissioner Bob Dallari said the county planned a park at Jetta Point around 2012 to 2013, dropped it after Winter Springs residents packed the chambers in opposition, and bought Rolling Hills in 2014 for roughly $4 million — "five, five and a half" million including environmental costs. Moving the restriction from one property to another, Dallari said, "was never done before in the state of Florida" and took years of work with state lobbyists before the state agreed in 2018. Vice-Chair Amy Lockhart added the paper trail, citing the state documentation: the Florida Communities Trust grant application dated to 2004, she said, and the county filed its request for the land exchange in 2016.

The flooding is real, and the fix is unfunded

Resident after resident described flooding they say already threatens their homes. George Peno told the board his house took "over $100,000 damage" and "18 inches of water" during Hurricane Ian, and called a hydrological study "the most important thing that needs to happen." James Futch, president of the Howell Creek Reserve Homeowners Association, said his community had spent "over $150,000" maintaining its own drainage, and that a pipe junction under the Cross Seminole Trail had gone untouched "in over 15 years." Lisa Roney of Seneca Boulevard told commissioners it was her understanding the county wished to move the restrictions "in order to be able to sell Jetta Point for development," and asked for "a continuance or a no vote."

Zembower, for his part, cautioned against assuming the county was the source. As a district commissioner, he said, he had investigated flooding allegations in three subdivisions, and "in each and every one of those cases, it was not the unincorporated water from Seminole County" — it was a homeowner issue or a drainage plan overlooked when the subdivision was built. "I'm not saying that's what's happening here," he added.

Public Works Director Tawny Olore confirmed the scale of the problem and the limits of the response. The relevant stormwater project, she said, "ranked number 68 out of 103" in the county's newly adopted master plan, costs "around $2 million," and "is not currently funded." She added that county "roads and stormwater crews" would go to the area "the second week of August" to inspect and clear the ditch along the Cross Seminole Trail.

Board Chairman Andria Herr urged residents not to read the vote as indifference. She said she personally supported the item as "the closing of all of the promises made in the past," while acknowledging that recent flooding on July 5 "was not a catastrophic rain event, and we can't ignore that."

Three paths, and a mayor's race

Into that debate came three different ideas for Jetta Point's future. Jesse Phillips — a candidate for Winter Springs mayor and founder of the Winter Springs Water Quality Initiative — asked the county, in a July 25 letter and in person, to open an Interlocal Agreement so the city could buy and preserve the land for stormwater use, financed over time through Penny Sales Tax revenue. Commissioner Constantine floated a second option: routing the property into Seminole Forever, the county's conservation program, potentially with the city helping fund the purchase. And the county's own standing plan, as commissioners described it, is to surplus — sell — the land to help pay for Rolling Hills.

Mayor Kevin McCann, who is seeking re-election, also spoke at the meeting, making clear he was "speaking as a resident" and "not on behalf of the commission." He said "the vast majority of Winter Springs residents appear to be against this move," and made three requests: protect the property's wetlands, complete a hydrological study and stormwater work "before anything is ever done," and keep the city involved in any negotiations with a future buyer.

The sharper exchange came afterward, online, between the incumbent and his challenger. On Phillips's campaign page, the candidate wrote that an Interlocal Agreement "could allow the City to purchase the property," adding, "If we're serious about protecting this land, we should be bringing solutions to the table." McCann responded in the comments: "Asking the city to spend 8-10 million dollars to buy this land is not a plan. Coming up with the $ $ as we face proposed tax cuts this November would be a plan. Talk is cheap, this land is not." The $8–10 million figure is McCann's estimate.

What happens now

Commissioner Constantine, who made the motion to approve, framed the land's future and the easement transfer as "mutually exclusive" and said he believed the county could "satisfy both sides." Whether it can is the open question. The restriction is moving to Rolling Hills. The county says Jetta Point's fate is a separate decision still to come. The stormwater project that residents say they need remains unfunded and ranked 68th of 103. And the two neighborhoods the county has made promises to still want opposite things.

We'll be there when county crews visit the site the second week of August, and will report what they find. If you live near Jetta Point, Seneca Boulevard, or the Cross Seminole Trail and have seen flooding on your street, email hello@iloveoviedowintersprings.com.

The county says the land's future is still an open question. What should happen to Jetta Point — preservation, a city purchase, or the sale the county has promised to help fund Rolling Hills?

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