The City of Kissimmee Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 to ban all signs at the Civic Center at its March 4 meeting, following chaos at last year’s early voting.
The Board also unanimously passed a renewal of the Freebee ride service in town, which has proven tremendously successful since its implementation in 2023.
In addition, the board heard from City Manager Mike Steigerwald on updates with the Connect Kissimmee road improvement project as well as installing monitoring devices on city-operated vehicles to prevent accidents.
On the sign issue, the board heard from Development Services Director Craig Holland, who said the agenda item would either repeal or alter a policy from 2024 allowing for the public to put signs up at the Civic Center during elections. It followed a chaotic period from last year’s election when supporters of various candidates clashed and damaged city property, city officials said.
Holland said it would encompass signs on car windows and would also bar people from standing and holding signs on the city’s property.
“During election season, it looks like an over-sized flea market,” said Vice Mayor Angela Eady. Commissioner Noel Ortiz agreed, saying last year’s early voting had turned into “a circus.”
Commissioner Janette Martinez had several questions on the scope of the new rules, asking what the punishment would be for violating the ban on signs. Holland and city attorney Olga Sanchez de Fuentes said there would be a citation and a $150 fine. Martinez also asked how candidates would get out the word about their candidacies if signs were banned. She said it seemed like banning all signs would make it harder for people to stay informed on elections.
Mayor Jackie Espinosa said candidates should be out in the community leading up to an election, and said she thought people “understand where they have to vote.”
“So I think that responsibility truly lies on the voter,” she said.
Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Alvarez III asked whether they could simply limit the number of signs. Sanchez de Fuentes said they couldn’t, because that would violate the First Amendment. “Then you’re reading the signs, so you can’t [limit them],” she said, noting a ban was the only option to regulate them.
There were some questions about whether the new rule would ban tents at the Civic Center, as the original proposal only banned tents with political slogans on them. Espinosa said the city should go “all or nothing” on the issue.
“If you have a tent, you have people standing under it, doing what they do,” she said. “It’s all or nothing. When you go to the Supervisor of Elections in the county, they don’t allow anything out there. So my point is, are you just diluting it, or revoking it? That’s the real question. These ordinances have to be black and white. When there’s too much gray, it creates the situations we’ve seen.”
The board ended up including a ban on tents in the final vote. They then voted 4-1 to revoke the signage rules, with Martinez the lone dissident.
Moving onto the Freebee contract, the board heard from a representative from the company, who told them the renewal would go through March 2026 and would cost the city $413,498.
Freebee, a micro-transit, on-demand service which replaced the Lynx bus service in town in 2023, provides last-mile services between SunRail and local downtown businesses and medical services.
The representative from Freebee cited the popularity of the service in Kissimmee, starting with 394 passengers in April 2023 when it started and going up to 2,186 riders as of the most recent report from January this year—a 454% increase.
Kissimmee resident Jordan Rivera said the service was very helpful for him, personally. “People need transportation to get the extra mile home,” he said.
Steigerwald said they weren’t expanding Freebee’s service area right now, but said they might do so in the next six to eight months “It’s a wildly successful program. We really want to expand it to other areas,” he said.
Finally, Steigerwald said the City was almost done installing Samsara monitoring devices on city-run vehicles, which will detect “when the driver is texting and driving, isn’t using a seatbelt or is doing anything that is unsafe when operating a city vehicle.”
He said they were still working on installing them on police vehicles as there are different protocols for those involving letting officers use computer devices while on the job.
The City Commission meets next on Tuesday, March 18 at 6 p.m.
