Seminole school board candidate sues to keep a competitor off ballot
One candidate in the upcoming election for the Seminole County School Board has sued another, alleging the competitor does not live in the district in which she is running, as state law requires.
Dana Fernandez filed the lawsuit against Autumn Garick on Friday attacking her “illegal qualification” as a candidate for the District 5 seat on the board.
Garick called the lawsuit “frivolous” and “baseless,” noting that she and her husband are building a house in downtown Sanford — which is in District 5 — and that she is also renting a home in that district because completion of the under-construction house has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Garick and Fernandez are two of the four candidates running for the District 5 seat, which board member Tina Calderone has held since 2010. Calderone is not seeking re-election. The district takes in northwestern Seminole, including Sanford and Heathrow.
Fernandez, a former New York City teacher who recently moved to Florida, claims in the lawsuit that Garick still lives in her home in Oviedo, which is in District 2.
The lawsuit, filed in Seminole County Circuit Court, includes photos of that house with a car parked outside and claims, based on property records, that the lot Garick owns in Sanford is vacant. It also notes that Garick does not own the house she used as her address when she qualified for the ballot.
The lawsuit asks that Garick be declared ineligible to be elected to the District 5 seat, arguing she aimed to “circumvent” election rules. No hearing has been set in the case.
Garick, who owns an educational theater company that regularly performed in county schools and is a longtime school volunteer, said her family’s Oviedo home is for sale with a pending contract.
Construction of the Sanford house is well underway, according to photos she provided, and the family hopes to move there in September, she said. In the meantime, Garick said she is renting another house in Sanford and legally used that address to qualify as a candidate in June for the school board election.
“This is a frivolous lawsuit,” she wrote in an email. “My focus for the next two weeks is to get elected to serve the students, teachers, families and community of Seminole County.”
Two other candidates, Joshua Memminger, a sergeant with the Sanford Police Department, and Agar Quiñones-Aristone, a teacher at a private Christian school in Longwood, are also running for the District 5 seat.
In Seminole, all registered voters, no matter where they live, can vote in the school board elections on Aug. 23.
