Sun 'N Lake Candidates Want More Center Activity

SEBRING - Recreational opportunities and planning and creating a third popularly elected seat for the Sun 'n Lake Improvement District's Board of Supervisors dominate the platforms of the four candidates running for two seats in the coming elections.

The two seats being contested are the district's two popularly-elected ones. The supervisors elected to these seats serve 4-year terms. The three other supervisors on the board are elected in a landowners election, where voters have one vote for each property they own rather than having strictly one vote.
The election takes place Feb. 19, and the winners take office Feb. 22.

As some of the candidates also emphasized plans for the expanding "gray water" system, rising assessments and new development, all four of them shared one focus: the community center needed more activities.

"I don't want to call it the golf clubhouse because it's really just a community clubhouse," said Richard Hulbert, a retired automotive engineer who wanted to both promote the center and bring more youth events to the community center. He is up against Diana Johnson for the open Seat 4. Joely Polokoff-Collard, the current Seat 4 supervisor, is not seeking re-election.

Johnson, a retired AutoNation executive assistant, said the board was already working on that and she hoped for that work to continue. She was already designing campaign flyers by press time.
John Clark, an 11-year incumbent for Seat 5, also felt more needed to be done with the community center for "the whole spectrum of people." He suggested appointing a new director for the community center if the budget allowed for it.

"If you watch the school buses go through here, they're all loaded up," Clark said. "We have to have planned activities.... If we don't, they may find something to do that they may not like."

And David Halbig, who's challenging Clark, happened to agree that it needed more to offer for "non-golfers."

Other Issues

Halbig said he wanted to try to ""stabilize" the assessment for Sun n' Lake, which he said increased by 14 percent this year. He also thought the supervisors should pay attention to the reclaimed water lines being built, saying this would be one of the board's biggest issue.

Clark, meanwhile, said that was already planned out, and he was looking toward keeping that and the other projects going on within a $9 million budget.

Hulbert wanted to get the improvement district's wetlands maps updated, suspecting some landowners may be trying to sell land that the Southwest Florida Water Management District protected earlier.

Johnson wanted the board itself to become more "transparent," saying it needed more oversight. She suggested regular audits on the budget should be performed.