DEEP ROOTS

Commissioner Boyd says the best is yet to come.

Scott Boyd’s Orange County roots are as deep as those of the citrus trees he tended as a youngster. Boyd, 45, is now the county commissioner for District 1, which encompasses Horizon West. And he’s seen plenty of changes in the sprawling district, where his family has grown citrus for six generations.

“I remember on freeze nights, running around lighting smudge pots,” says Boyd, who was first elected in 2008 and is now serving his second four-year term on the Board of County Commissioners. “I’d start out wearing a coat, but in a few hours I’d be down to shorts because of all the running around the heat from the pots.”

Boyd’s family includes some of Southwest Orange County’s pioneers, including Luther F. Tilden, a farmer from New York who settled on the south side of Lake Apopka in 1887 and began one of the region’s first farming and packing operations. The community of Tildenville carries the family name.

He’s also related to Judge James G. Speer, who came to Central Florida from South Carolina in 1854 and was largely responsible for Orlando becoming the Orange County seat. According to some local historians, Speer may have actually named the city for a character in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “I took the oath of office on Judge Speer’s old bible,” Boyd recalls.

Clearly, Boyd has an emotional investment in the district he represents. He grew up near Oakland and attended Tildenville Elementary School, Lakeview Junior High (now Lake-view Middle School) and West Orange High School.

The family company, McKinnon Corporation, still owns about 100,000 acres of agricultural property in Orange, Lake, Hendry and Collier counties. And it’s still headquartered in Winter Garden, operating out of the same Cracker-style frame house where it began in the 1880s.

When Boyd started working at the company, it was run by his step-grandfather, the late Dan McKinnon, and his father, Maury Boyd. “They believed in starting you at the bottom rung,” Boyd recalls with a chuckle. “I was hoeing, mowing, servicing equipment — you name it.”

He attended Valenica Community College (now Valencia College) and Florida State University, where he graduated in 1993 with a B.A. in criminology. But instead of pursuing a career in law enforcement, he returned to Winter Garden to work in the family business, eventually becoming vice president.

Boyd admits that his home “felt like it was a long way away” from Orlando when he was young. He regularly rode his bike to the Pine Hills Dairy Queen, and remembers when Sand Lake Road and S.R. 535, now major thoroughfares, were two-lane roads.

Southwest Orange County doesn’t feel nearly as remote these days. In fact, Boyd’s district, which also includes Dr. Phillips, Gotha, Hunter’s Creek, Lake Buena Vista, Metro-West, Ocoee, Oakland, Windermere and Williamsburg, is at the epicenter of a development boom that will only accelerate as Horizon West picks up speed. 

He welcomes the growth, in part because many homeowners found themselves living in depreciating, half-finished subdivisions when the economy collapsed and building came to a screeching halt.

Now he’s focused on creating amenities for all those newcomers, such as the proposed 200-acre-plus Orange County Sports Complex at the northeast edge of Horizon West, and the district’s trail system, which he hopes eventually joins Horizon West with the already-popular West Orange Trail.

Boyd, who’s unrelated to the Scott Boyd developing Hamlin in Horizon West, ran for county commission after being appointed to a two-year stint on the Orange County Building Codes Board of Adjustments and Appeals. “I found out that on these volunteer boards, you can really make a difference,” he says.

He left the McKinnon Corporation after he was elected. Today he works as public relations director for Clermont-based Vista Clinical Diagnostics. He’s also a licensed real-estate broker.

Maury Boyd, a cancer survivor, is still president of the McKinnon Corporation, and has in recent years become something of a legend in the citrus industry for his method of treating groves for huanglongbing, more commonly known as HLB or “citrus greening.” 

HLB is the most serious disease a citrus tree can contract, and threatened the industry statewide until the “Boyd method” of combining aggressive doses of insecticides and nutrition sprays seemed to reverse the effects of the disease. 

The younger Boyd, a single father of two young boys — Riley, 12, and Mason, 9 — is making a difference in his own way.  

He serves as secretary/treasurer of MetroPlan Orlando and vice chairman of the West Orange/South Lake Transportation and Economic Development Task Force. He’s also been named vice chairman of the newly formed Central Florida Expressway Authority Board. 

“West Orange is a great part of the county,” says Boyd, a Republican who’s reluctant to speculate about his political future beyond his stint as a commissioner. “It’s a great place to live and raise a family. You’ve got the theme parks, but you’ve also got beautiful lakes, rolling hills and terrific towns and cities.”