Candidate: Paul T. Anderson

We are a lot like many others in this town. We've lived in Florida for 32 years with 22 of them right here in Flagler County. My in-laws have lived here for more than thirty. We were married here, our son was baptized, schooled and brought up here. Both my in-laws retired from and my wife currently works within the Flagler County School District. We've seen many changes in Flagler County and especially Palm Coast, some good and unfortunately some bad. We've witnessed three building booms and with them came tremendous growth in public education, law enforcement and fire protection services. We've built a small business and watched as new business arrived, as well as seen many staples of business go. We are Flagler County!

I'm no stranger to Flagler politics and those special interests who seek to make Flagler County home and those who are just out to make a buck. We've become a magnet to many out of town developers looking to take advantage of our relatively inexpensive land and our builder/ developer friendly local political environment. But as many have warned, if you make residential construction your main business, you must suffer the consequences. For every dollar we receive in residential revenue, we pay out approximately $1.85 to $2.05 for services for those new residential properties. Without designating an industrial and commercial core within our community, our elected officials have placed the majority of the tax burden on we, the residents. Flagler County is going to grow but so far that growth has been mismanaged.

Our infrastructure has been withering under this growth as well, without our elected officials taking care to care. We luckily have dodged a hurricane decimating our community this past year but our roads aren't going to benefit from the good weather. If we're going to continue to avoid the Commission voting on a sales tax increase in order to pay for repair of our roadway systems, we're going to need a couple more votes on that Board to keep that from happening. The fiscal health of Flagler County needs to be a priority so that we don't have to rely on luck to get us through.

So if you think that a focus on our community, an actual plan for our infrastructure and fiscal responsibility sounds like a good start for our future, then I'm your candidate. I look forward to earning your vote throughout this election cycle. Thanks for listening.