The road that brought me back to Indiantown.

I grew up in Puerto Rico, in a town small enough that the people running it weren’t strangers. Decisions were made by people who lived in the community. When our mayor decided to put lights on the courts and run youth tournaments, you could see the choice land in real time — kids had somewhere to be, families had somewhere to spend a Saturday. That’s where I learned what a small town can do when its leaders are visible, accountable, and willing to invest in the people who already live there.

In 2001, I needed mentorship for a small-business idea and I drove to the Stuart Chamber of Commerce. We need to expand our local chamber to support local development and small businesses. Our local business leaders need empowerment to drive growth without leaving people behind, or allowing large corporations to extract our wealth.

I didn’t set out to run — I just wanted to be involved. A neighbor told me about a Saturday comprehensive plan workshop and I had questions. Then I went to a Planning and Zoning meeting. Then a council meeting. Then an annexation hearing. The more I attended, the more I realized that most decisions in this village were being made in rooms residents technically had access to — but didn’t have time to find, packets they didn’t have time to read, and language they weren’t given a translation of.

What you see when you start attending: the same problems get re-introduced every two or three years, because nobody between administrations is keeping the answers from being lost. Consultants rotate in on temporary grants. New councilmembers start from scratch. The same issues come up at meeting after meeting because there’s no good record of what residents already said and what was already decided. I keep coming back to a phrase: we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to write things down, look at the data we already have, and stop wasting our neighbors’ time.

Indiantown has been overlooked for a long time. Amtrak still serves West Palm and Okeechobee, but they demolished our station years ago. SR 710 cut through what was left of our downtown. None of that was an accident — it was the cumulative effect of decades of being treated as a place that didn’t quite count.

I know what it’s like to leave. I had my first child while living in Trailer Park, and like a lot of young families in this part of the state, I relocated for the schools, hospitals, and work. First to West Palm Beach, then to Port Saint Lucie. Both gave us things Indiantown couldn’t, and I’m grateful for them.

But they also grew in ways that drove me away. Subdivisions that outpaced their schools, roads widened before sidewalks, and hollowed-out downtowns. Quiet streets turned into busy intersections. Our infrastructure failing to serve our kids and seniors. Growth can be positive, but we need a plan to ensure our culture isn’t swallowed by parking lots, traffic, and strip malls.

I came back because I want Indiantown to have what I had to leave for, without the mistakes I watched those communities make on the way up.

We’re an incorporated village now, and a wave of investment is finally arriving — thousands of planned homes, a new high school, shopping centers, and hopefully much more. The question is whether that growth happens to us or with us. I want to protect the hardworking people in our community, protect our farms, and invite positive growth so Indiantown can be a place for everyone.

This seat decides a lot — what gets built, what gets paid for, what gets protected, and what gets quietly given away. The next four years will set a direction that takes a generation to undo.

I want to make the positive choices this community deserves. I will show up for everyone in this community and invite you to hold me accountable.