Residents along Kissimmee Park Road, bordered by Lake Toho and Florida’s Turnpike, have that one road to get in and out of their neighborhoods.
With the Turnpike interchange also on that road, it creates a mass of car-manity at drive times, for residents of Kissimmee Park and east along Nolte Road.
That’s enough to raise blood pressures. But, when there have been a number of new developments approved by the Osceola County Commission along that road, that will add more cars to the road and students to local schools, it’s enough to make people gather as a group, and act.
Cliff Clover, a resident, is hell-bent on preventing Kissimmee Park Road from, “becoming another Pleasant Hill Road,” referring to the congestion on that county road where it meets John Young Parkway at drive times.
On Wednesday, he and a group of residents gathered at Jimmy Bear’s BBQ in St. Cloud — many people spoke of the traffic they sat in to get to the 6:30 p.m. meeting — to talk strategy going forward as a unified group.
“Plain and simple, if we don’t come together, nothing will change,” he said. “It’s takes a group of people who want to get things done, and leadership and dedication to get things done. It’s not about traffic, it’s about our kids and safety.
“When we moved out along Kissimmee Park Road two years ago — from The Oaks, off Pleasant Hill Road, which has become completely over developed. We started noticing all these signs started showing up, a mad rush of 8 to 10-acre parcels selling, packing them in where it’s one way in, one way out — like Pleasant Hill. That’s unsafe.”
At the meeting, Clover introduced an officially-formed political action committee (PAC) — the Osceola Action Committee. It’s goals are to raise money, get an attorney involved, mobilize as community and, at election time, bring forth viable candidates who will act more with residents in mind.
“There’s more to come,” Clover said, asking attendees to donating $20.24 in cash to the cause (they could give more via check), and put their names into a box in order to sign up for a future "boot camp" on how to run for local election.
He and other members of the group gathered Wednesday laid the blame mostly at the county level, with the Planning Commission presenting development plans to the County Commission without asking questions about the benchmarks developers are meeting in order to put their plans onto agendas to get approved.
“We’re told ‘It’s out of our hands.’ We started reading the state statutes, and that they could fix it if they wanted to, and that what we’re being told is not how things are,” Clover said. “The neighbors here are knowledgeable and said, ‘Let’s start fixing this as a group.’”
They packed an October County Commission meeting, and spoke for hours as a concerned citizens group about those developments. One of the action calls at Wednesday’s meeting was for residents to come to the next meeting that will have development projects on the agenda, on Dec. 19 at 5:30 p.m.
“I don’t want to be up here,” Clover said from the Jimmy Bears’ stage Wednesday. “If you’re not happy, we need to vote with our wallets. You are the action takers.”
Other elected officials attended the gathering, such as newly-elected state Rep. Paula Stark, who represents the Kissimmee Park Road area, and district 5 County Commissioner Ricky Booth.
“I’m going to take this fight to Tallahassee,” Stark told the gathering.
Booth, who took criticism from some in the group for his place on the Commission, said he’s been pushing for legal efforts to put necessary infrastructure in place before new houses are built.
“These folks want a lot of the same things I do,” he said.
