By Christine Moore, Orange County District 2 Commissioner

Many times, people describe leaders as “ineffective” or “effective.” With years of experience on the school board and county commission, I would like to highlight how you can become an “effective” citizen advocate. 

Let’s first discuss getting the correct jurisdiction. If you contact my office with a complaint about your income taxes, child support issues, or labor relations in private businesses, I’m not able to help. However, if you are interested in new street lighting on county roadways, remedying poor trash service, help getting your non-profit in a pipeline for county contributions, filling potholes, trimming trees over sidewalks and roadways, animal or mosquito control issues – my county office can and will help you.  

Contacting the correct jurisdiction is the first step toward “effective” advocacy. 

Now, I must tell you one ineffective means of advocacy – social media posts. While neither city nor county staff have sufficient employees to patrol areas for potholes, reporting deficiencies on social media doesn’t mean they will get heard.  

If notified, counties and cities can remedy decaying signage, downed trees, cracked sidewalks, etc. Thus, I led my “people group” teams to turn in observable deficiencies themselves utilizing the 311 App or city’s See, Click, Fix program. This approach is much more likely to get results.  

Teams that enter the Corridor of the Year contest always have an edge on securing comprehensive maintenance and improvements. Why? One reason is that I’m out there with them on foot observing deficiencies. More importantly, the teams have learned how to effectively report deficiencies, and they are singularly focused on improving one corridor at a time. 

A few days ago, as I was traveling down Old Dixie Road, I observed Pastor Mark Jeter and a resident on the side of the road. I stopped to see what was wrong. Apparently, there had been an accident the night before. A car ran through the entire church property and destroyed half their newly repaired playground. Using the 311 system, I was able to instantly report the downed sign and discuss additional traffic calming ideas for the curves.  

I’m motivated to work for their streetlights and traffic calming devices as the North Apopka group and Dayspring Church have been working hard all of 2025 improving the community.  The church hosted my volunteers and the Apopka football team in the heat of the summer. We did a tremendous amount of work that day on the Old Dixie curves.  

Our work is a fun, team sport. It involves beautification, maintenance and infrastructure improvements. The entire Plymouth community has engaged to improve their section of unincorporated Orange County in Plymouth. They are competing against the Southern Apopka, Lockhart, Pine Hills, and Lee Road teams for Corridor of the Year on Nov. 1. 

The North Apopka team will be out at Dayspring Church at 8 a.m. this Saturday picking up trash, installing a cup art limerick, and removing weeds. 

I hope you become an “effective” advocate for your neighborhood.