A decision was made by the administrators of the Orange County Public Schools on Wednesday evening to postpone for an undetermined period of time two pep rallies that had been scheduled to take place at Jones and Evans high schools.
Glen Gilzean, the Supervisor of Elections for Orange County, was the one who organized the pep rallies.
He was also the one who was going to announce the $2.1 million in scholarships that would allow the students to attend Valencia College for free provided they studied cybersecurity and registered to vote.
The scholarships became the subject of debate on Friday, when the officials of Orange County became aware of their existence. They were not included in the budget proposal that the office made for the scholarships.
Gilzean stated that the monies that were accumulated after the Presidential Preference Primary and general primary of the previous year came in under budget, and as a constitutional officer, he had the ability to repurpose the cash.
Despite the fact that he decided to change the name of the scholarships on Tuesday and give them the name of Orange County, he was criticized for naming them after himself.
Nevertheless, according to the law of the state, any money that is not being used must be returned to the county so that the commissioners can decide how to spend it.
It is not uncommon for the elections office to bring in between one million and three million dollars annually. This year, the county was anticipating a total of $800,000, but the office did not meet that expectation.
“We have decided not to move forward with the events that were scheduled to take place on Friday,” said Michael Ollendorf, a spokesman for the Orange County Public School in an effort to avoid disappointing our pupils.
Once it has been verified that the monies that have been donated for the scholarship are suitable, we will begin the process of rescheduling the events.
Less than an hour before the news was made, Mayor Jerry Demings sent a statement of his own, in which he discussed the potential of the county filing a lawsuit against its own elections office.
“I am concerned about recent decisions made by the Orange County Supervisor of Elections to spend taxpayer dollars on non-budgetary expenditures,” Demings wrote. “What I am concerned about is that these decisions were made.”
As a consequence of this, I will engage in conversations with the Board of County Commissioners to examine the merits of pursuing legal action in order to recover money that were being spent in an illegal manner.
Nicole Wilson, who is one of the commissioners, has stated that she would be willing to consider such possibility. Attempting to retrieve the money was also praised by a number of other individuals.
Those scholarships were not the only factor. In addition, on the last day of the fiscal year, Gilzean’s office signed a contract with CareerSource to allocate $1.9 million to programs that provide job training.
In addition to providing training for the more than one hundred temporary election workers in order to assist them in locating a permanent source of income, the multi-pronged agreement would also assist in encouraging high school students to consider careers in public service.
On Wednesday, Gilzean’s office also made the announcement that it had engaged a business to conduct an audit of the organization.
This comes as the office is getting ready to take over responsibility to Karen Castor Dentel, who will be taking over as Supervisor of Elections. However, Dentel has voiced some unease with the agreement, which was signed on October 17, prior to the scholarship incident.
“Any audit of the supervisor of elections office must be conducted by an independent third party,” she stated. “This is necessary in order for the public to have faith in Mr. Gilzean’s audit of his office.” It is for this reason that I am requesting that the Orange County Comptroller take the lead in this process.
The request for comment that was made by WFTV on the decision made by the school district and Demings’ comments on Wednesday evening was recognized by the spokesman for Gilzean; however, they did not immediately provide a response.
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