Orange County moves closer to redistricting and expanding its Commission

Orange County is edging closer to redrawing its district boundaries and expanding from six Commissioners to eight.

A redistricting^[1] advisory committee that met throughout the year is scheduled to present the final two proposed district boundary maps to the Orange County Commission.

As it stands now, the Orange County Commission is scheduled to vote on the final map at an Oct. 14 meeting.

The County Commission ultimately has final say which map is selected. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings^[2] said he is hopeful the Commission won’t significantly redo the proposed boundaries suggested by the committee.

“I’m optimistic that our board won’t go back and try to second guess a lot of the work and recommendations that have been made,” Demings said at one of the final redistricting advisory committee meetings this Summer.

Both new Commissioners would be elected in 2026.

The biggest difference in the two proposed maps lies in Winter Park, an Orlando suburban city of about 36,000 residents that draws in tourists to its Park Avenue shops, restaurants and entertainment.

Map 1A^[3] proposes a new District 7 that would put Winter Park with the cities of Eatonville and Maitland, along with the Pine Hills and Fairview Shores neighborhoods in unincorporated Orange County.

But Map 7B^[4] would omit Winter Park from the new District 7, instead shifting the Orlando suburban city to where it resides now, in District 5 — an area covering Orange County’s rural east and the University of Central Florida that’s represented now by Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad^[5].

Winter Park officials are lobbying for Map 1A, saying they have more in common with the urban areas and are also handling Maitland’s fire and police calls.

Both Winter Park and Maitland governments sent letters in support of sharing the same district representation to the county.

Semrad, meanwhile, said she supported a version related to Map 7B.

At a public meeting last month, her legislative aide said she wanted the unincorporated areas to be spread evenly among Commissioners areas to balance out the workload since those places have more service demands and infrastructure needs than the cities. She did not return a request for comment for this story.

Another neighborhood that could also get impacted by the county’s decision is Orlando’s popular College Park neighborhood just north of downtown. College Park could either get redistricted to the new District 7 in the Map 7B version or remain in District 5 in Map 1A.

Both of the proposed new maps call for the neighborhoods of Hunter’s Creek and Williamsburg near SeaWorld Orlando — east of Interstate 4 — and other areas to get redistricted from the current District 1 into the new District 8. District 8 would also represent the growing Lake Nona area, which is in District 4 now represented by Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero^[6].

Under the two redistricting plans emerging from 28 suggested maps in the redistricting process, none of the current Commissioners would get displaced from their current districts.

Maps 1A and 7B aim at keeping each of the eight districts around 180,000 people compared to the 240,000 population currently for the six districts, according to Scott Skraban, Orange County Deputy Director of Planning, Environmental, and Development Services who has been involved in the redistricting process.

The redistricting comes after voters approved a charter amendment in November 2024 to expand the Commission with two more seats. The county Mayor also serves on the Commission as an at-large vote.

For months, the county has been holding meetings in each of the current six districts and received more than 300 responses from the public. 

Orange County District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson^[7] added she thought both plans made sense when she spoke to the advisory committee this Summer.

“I think the lines are not wild and gerrymandered-looking,” Wilson said at a recent advisory meeting. “There’s a compactness to it and quite frankly the representation should be as consistent as it can be after adding two new Commissioners.”

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