Fences? Parramore Don't Need No Stinking Fences!

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Category: Politics

Published: Wednesday, 09 July 2014 04:27

Written by Doug Head

by Doug Head
Recently someone wrote about the "fence" planned for Parramore. One phrase struck me in particular and I raise it here: ""Why would you allocate $75,000.00 towards a fence that's only going to divide the community"....

Now that I have seen the plans, I am more than ever convinced that this is a BAD plan – which had well advanced under the approval of Commissioner Lynum office – but it needs to be stopped.

Parramore, as we know it, is a loose name for all for the area where the City of Orlando required Black

people to live in Orlando in 1942. At the height of WWII, Orlando decided that we needed an official "ghetto" for blacks and they put it into a city zoning ordinance. No Black people were allowed to live outside of an area bounded by Hughey, and OBT (Kentucky Avenue in those days), and the railroad tracks and Gore. That was the law. It was not sustainable, but it was the law.

Later, in the 1960's, SR 408 divided the neighborhood, with no regard for the residents. Still later the same city "planners" started calling the part north of Central "Callahan" and the part south of Central "Parramore/Holden".

This sort of division allowed different standards, plans and advances to be developed in different parts of the area. Fragmentation – rather than unity – has occurred.
The new proposed "fence" is really a sort of expensive and elaborate brick "gateway" labeled "Parramore" and it is planned for the intersection of Church and Westmoreland.

It could be pretty, but I oppose it because it again divides "Parramore" just as much as the 408. Parramore goes two or three blocks WEST of Westmoreland and – today – there are more folks actually living in their own homes west of the line than east (where the Amway and the Soccer plans are pushing people out). Houses got demolished east of Westmoreland for retention ponds, and there is no reason to put up a "gateway" and call the area to the EAST of Westmoreland "Parramore" while the area to the West of Westmoreland is NOT.

To me, it looks like the "fence" or "gateway" will just signal to attendees at soccer games that they should not go west of that line. So, I believe that Commissioner Hill should pull the planned $75K from the plan which she is expected to contribute from her discretionary funds and call for placing any Parramore"Gateways" at the edge of Parramore, not in the middle.

I hope a lot of people will tell her the same thing. Parramore is ONE. It is the same area where, 70 years ago, the City of Orlando told Black people that they could live there, but nowhere else.

The OCPS Board voted to transfer over 2 million dollars away from Jones High School during school year 2013-2014. Save Jones High by denying the half penny tax. Over the last 10 years, OCPS Board has effectively transferred over 30 million dollars away from District 5 schools. Save our community, deny the half penny tax.