PLACEHOLDER INFORMATION, NEEDS UPDATING

At the council workshops for the comprehensive plan, officials were changing the words “drinking water” to “potable water” — like the two meant the same thing. A Planning and Zoning board member compared water quality to home values, as if Palm City naturally deserved better water than we do.
That was the morning I decided to run. Water shouldn’t depend on what neighborhood you live in.
On a Tuesday, the Planning and Zoning board reviewed an annexation tied to the data center. The council voted on it just two days later. Hundreds of pages, less than 72 hours, and residents trying to read it after a full workday. People stayed for hours just to speak for three minutes — and a lot of them left feeling like the decision had already been made before they walked in.
Residents deserve transparency before votes happen, not after.
When I was in sixth grade in Puerto Rico, the mayor put lights on our courts and started running youth tournaments. That’s how I found volleyball, and where a lot of kids in my neighborhood found a safe place to socialize after school.
Indiantown has the Warriors, the YMCA, and the Boys & Girls Club, and they all matter — but they can’t reach every kid, and not every family qualifies. The Martin County School Board already has years of survey data on what our kids want to play. We don’t need another survey. We need to act on what we already know.

I grew up in Puerto Rico, where I learned what a small town can do when the people running it actually show up. Showing up isn’t speeches. It’s reading the packet before you vote on it, returning the call, and leaving good notes so the next person doesn’t have to start over.
Indiantown has been overlooked for a long time. Amtrak still serves West Palm and Okeechobee but demolished our station years ago. SR 710 cut through what was left of our downtown. We’re an incorporated village now, and a wave of investment is finally coming — thousands of planned homes, a new high school, shopping centers, a data center. We can grow on someone else’s terms, or we can carve out an identity that’s ours. I’m running because we get one chance to do this right.