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Avon Park Candidates Discuss Growth

Jesse Osbourne/Highlands Today

Emilio Gonzalez, 7, foreground left, and his father Jesse Gonzalez, foreground right, listened to mayor and city council candidates speak Tuesday evening in downtown Avon Park. The candidates came to informally meet the members of the League of United Latin America Citizens.

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: October 4, 2007

AVON PARK — Growth concerns and how to deal with the city's future were the top issues Avon Park city council candidates were quizzed on during a candidate forum Tuesday.

Although the forum was held by a newly created Hispanic activist group, race issues did not feature prominently during the discussion organized by the League of United Latin American Citizens, which came to Highlands County in response to last year's stalled illegal immigrant ordinance.

Tito Garay, who also serves as LULAC's Council No. 1 Vice President, said after the meeting that he and the audience were looking more into the city's future.

"The main concerns," Garay listed are the town's unity and economic growth.
"I'm hoping they (my kids) will stay here ... I don't want them to move to the big towns," he said.
Three of the four city council candidates and one of the mayoral candidates fielded questions.

Present were council candidates James Rahenkamp and Michael Shirey, along with mayor candidate Ed Dickerson. Paul Miller, who is running for a city council seat, made an appearance later.

Dickerson spoke of opening up the city council meetings to the public while diverting some of the airport funds for city residents.

"When I first started going to the budget meetings ... the first two I went to, the mayor (then Tom Macklin) allowed me to speak. But after the first two meetings I went to I couldn't speak anymore if I was part of the crowd," Dickerson said.

Addressing the growth issue, he emphasized keeping it only to a point where the city could maintain itself.

Rahenkamp, who strongly favored annexations, said the city should "go as far north, south, east and west as we can legally do, to expand Avon Park. ... People need to know that we are business friendly."
He also called for lower taxes and "a frugal budget" with the city's government, using a story about an assembly plant that went from 3,000 to only 100 employees operating robots.
"We can find areas that we can not only economize but become even more efficient," Rahenkamp said. "We need to say 'there is our goal.'"

Shirey, who moved out of Avon Park at one point with his daughter before returning, went into his experiences while deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army, saying he saw the citizens there not having a voice in government and that inspired him to run for office.

"My doors are open to everybody," he said.
Miller went along with the growth theme that came up through the forum.
"There is no reason the downtown area isn't thriving," he said. "We're going to have to fix some things."

Mayor Sharon Schuler, running to hold her seat, made a brief appearance but did not stay for questions. Council contestant Al Hinson and mayoral candidates Gonzalo Lezama and Gordon Marshall did not attend. Lezama, a regular at LULAC's functions, said he had the flu that evening.

Garay, speaking to the mayor and council candidates at the forum, pleaded for them to get the city to expand itself economically while keeping the cost of living down locally.

"If it doesn't grow, then the people that are here are going to pay for it," he said.
Robert Flores, the LULAC Council No. 1 president, said he did not want the city to become another Davie, a city in South Florida with a large low-income population. He blamed that condition on what he saw as the city's anti-growth attitude, and did not want Avon Park to go that same direction.

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