Mayor Todd Watzel has had one of the most uneventful political careers in history.
He rarely makes public appearances. Reporters don't grill him on controversial issues. Campaigning? With only 21 constituents, about a third of them too young to vote, he doesn't need to bother.
Watzel leads the City Council of Bay Lake, one of Walt Disney World's two "company towns" incorporated by the state Legislature in the late 1960s.
Forty-four residents handpicked by Disney live in two tiny gated mobile-home parks tucked away on the sprawling resort. There, they become cogs in the governmental machinery that allows Disney to control its own services such as planning, building codes and firefighting.
"It's an interesting story to tell all your friends and family," said Watzel, a 38-year-old Disney World construction-project manager.
After Walt Disney chose Orlando for his massive development — where he envisioned a futuristic city that never came to be — his company negotiated a most unusual deal with the state to create three Disney governments.
Reedy Creek Improvement District, which includes mostly Disney-owned land, is like a county government and handles most services, such as building codes and fire rescue. The taxing district, with a board that Disney selects, could not, however, take on certain work such as policing, district officials said.
So the state formed two Orange County cities as well. Bay Lake encompasses the four theme parks. Lake Buena Vista includes Downtown Disney and surrounding hotels. Disney stocks the cities with residents: Disney or Reedy Creek workers and retirees, along with their families. The residents provide the votes needed on issues such as approval of bonds for Downtown Disney area improvements.
"The reality is, they're just private cities," said Chad Emerson, author of a book called "Project Future" about Disney World's creation.
Disney declined to be interviewed about the cities and referred questions to Reedy Creek.
Bill Warren, a former Disney government-affairs executive who serves as Reedy Creek's district administrator, called the tenants an "apolitical little group."
"The bulk of what they do is live in the property," said Warren, who is also Bay Lake's unpaid city manager.
Residents purchase their own mobile homes and pay $75 monthly lot rent to Disney.
The perks include short commutes for Disney workers and permission to use a gated lakefront area providing great views of Magic Kingdom fireworks.
"It's really just a nice situation all around," said Morgan Palfreyman, a Disney facility-asset-management employee who lives in Bay Lake with his wife and their seven children. "I have no intent of moving at any time."
The Palfreymans make up 40 percent of Bay Lake's population. Their neighborhood surrounded by pine woods is like their own Tom Sawyer Island: a natural oasis within Walt Disney World. The children like living close to the theme parks but talk just as enthusiastically about the river otters and deer they see. Palfreyman is one of the cities' combined 10 council members.
At their meetings every month, the councils approve matters such as pollution-control board appointments, hours for alcohol sales during special events at the theme parks and law-enforcement contracts to pay Orange County Sheriff's Office to patrol the Disney area.
Democracy might be messy, but Disney's version is as smooth as Cinderella's glass slipper.
"If they didn't vote Disney's way regularly, you can be sure they wouldn't be Disney employees or living on Disney property much longer," said David Koenig, author of several books about Disney.
Disney pointed to the unique nature of its plans for the area when it pushed for its own government in the 1960s. It is not completely immune to outside government — for example, it pays Orange County taxes, like property owners in other cities, and Reedy Creek submits development plans for approval to a state water-management district.
Still, the arrangement has critics, who say it also allows Disney to escape typical regulations such as regional review of its development impacts.
"It was probably not the best idea because it kind of set them apart from everything else," said Cliff Guillet, former executive director of the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council.
The people casting votes in all three governments say they do not simply rubber-stamp what their employer and landlord wants.
"Some months, we're spending quite a few hours going through a bunch of different paperwork that comes across, making sure we understand what we're voting on," Palfreyman said.
