Oakland teeing up revised golf cart ordinance for driving to/from Winter Garden

Oakland Town Manager Steve Koontz knows the day is fast approaching when residential roads will connect his town with Winter Garden and when residents will drive there by golf cart.

The town is evaluating its current golf cart ordinance and the traffic that will be created between the two municipalities, Koontz said during his monthly “Coffee with the Town Manager,” held at the Healthy West Orange Arts and Heritage Center.

Oakland’s current ordinance is “not very good,” Koontz later told VoxPopuli. He has a draft version of a new golf cart ordinance modeled on Winter Garden’s.

“Where I’m at right now is making sure we’ve got reasonable age limits and a way to enforce it,” Koontz said. “My preference is [age] 16 for licensed drivers and 18 if unlicensed, but I’ve got to make sure it meets all the legal tests of being able to do that.”

In Winter Garden, golf cart drivers must be at least 16 with a driver’s license (18 without one). Golf carts must meet the minimum standards under Florida statutes. The city also requires golf carts to have headlights, brake lights, windshield, turn signals and reflective tape on sides to operate golf carts between sunset and sunrise. The city provides a map of the extensive downtown areas where golf carts can be driven. It also recently provided seven spaces specifically for golf carts in its new Boyd Street parking lot.

Koontz plans to bring the proposed ordinance to the town commission early next year. He wants it in place before three residential roads that lead into the Oakland Park subdivision — Winters Landing Drive and two connectors off Star Road — are completed in May or June.

“Once you get into Oakland Park, you can get all the way to downtown Winter Garden,” he said. “I want to make sure we're ready for that because we're going to see a lot more golf cart traffic.”