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Former Orlando Mayor Bill Frederick reflects on infrastructure, public safety and building the city
Summary
In a podcast interview with Commissioner Robert Stewart, former Orlando Mayor Bill Frederick recounts his rise from a public defender to a 12-year mayoralty, describing wastewater solutions, public-safety priorities and the political fight to build the downtown arena that helped attract the Orlando Magic.
Former Orlando Mayor Bill Frederick told Orlando City Commissioner Robert Stewart that the city’s transformation in the 1980s and 1990s rested on addressing immediate infrastructure and public-safety challenges.
“My background was in law; I grew up in Winter Haven,” Frederick said, recounting an early legal career that led to an appointment as a public defender. He described the limits of the early public-defender system and the bare funding his nine-county circuit began with: “the total funding for the entire ninth circuit… was $15,500,” he said, crediting county cooperation that followed after he demonstrated long-term cost savings.
Frederick said that Orlando’s rapid growth after Disney’s arrival…
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