Who Is Commissioner Kevin Cannon?

Here’s a quick primer on Kevin Cannon. His career has been marked by pro-development voting record and running afoul environmental standards.

Campaigning vs Governing

Despite running on an anti-development platform, Mr. Cannon has chosen to govern differently than he campaigned. Pictured below is a list of all of the projects approved while he is on the commission between 2014 and 2018. The city also maintains a list of current development projects at this link.

Orlando Sentinel: Cannon’s tactics “beneath contempt”

He ran against Lee Constantine for State Senator. Lee Constantine has one of the strongest pro-environment records of any elected official in Seminole County. The Orlando Sentinel called Mr. Cannon a “Trojan Horse for Trial Lawyers” engaged in shady campaign tactics using dark money, misleading attacks and took advantage of a system which allowed for sham candidates to deceive voters. Ultimately it failed, as Cannon lost by a landslide.

Blaming Past Leaders for Current Problems

Mr. Cannon likes to blame past leadership for the City of Winter Springs problems. It’s a difficult position, however, given the fact that he has been elected as a Commissioner for 8 years (first elected in 2014).

During his time as commissioner these past 8 years, he has voted for nearly every development project which has come before the commission. The city has continued to grow, special exemptions have been granted and Kevin Cannon has not fulfilled his campaign rhetoric to try and get the growth under control.

Downplaying Water Issues

As our water issues have surfaced, Mr. Cannon has repeated downplayed, minimized the issues, claimed the residents complaining about the water problems were engaging in misinformation campaigns.

When the fish kill incident occurred, Mr. Cannon denied it happened, blamed the residents and praised Veolia (the Flint, Michigan water company running our Winter Springs water system). Here are his exact words on January 11, 2021:

“I would like to thank you (Veolia) and your team. This was the New Year’s Eve weekend. I would hope people who are so quick to judge and scream and blame would appreciate the fact that it happened over a holiday weekend. I’m just disgusted in what I’ve seen in some of the Facebook posts. It’s disgusting because they’ve portrayed it as though we’ve been dumping raw sewage out into a pond and that didn’t happen.”

Kevin Cannon to Veolia, January 11, 2021

Of course that did happen. Raw sewage was dumped into the ponds. The DEP stepped in and investigated, finding 24 violations and eventually issued a historic consent order against the city.

Questionable Use of Testimony for Political Gain

Things started getting worse. As outlined in the following video, Kevin Cannon was caught in a coverup of our water issues, in which he made misleading statements to the public based on staged testimony. The following video outlines the DEP’s scathing investigation report, and Mr. Cannon’s misleading election year tactics.

Consumptive Use Permit (CUP) Violations

As our city began to experience water shortages, we realized the city was drawing more water than we were permitted to use, largely due to the development projects Cannon had voted to approve since he came onto the city council in 2014. We learned the city had failed to follow through on previous leadership plans to add reclaimed water lines to new developments, which would have helped to avoid the recent water shortages. The following video outlines our findings.