Interview: Carol Ann Felts

Carol Ann Felts is an 8th-generation Floridian who is one of two write-in candidates running for the Manatee County Commission District 5 race. Unlike most write-in candidates, however, she didn't file to close off an open primary and is actually hoping to give voters an alternative to an otherwise unopposed incumbent, Vanessa Baugh.

The musical chairs shuffle that resulted in our current District Five commissioner running unopposed, the former county administrator running for the at large position instead of that district, along with a candidate from yet another district also joining the at large race, plus the voting being open to only one party in that race, was an exasperating example of how our local politics has been headed for years, open only to a specific echelon and farther away from the representation of the average Manatee county citizen.

And the average Manatee county citizen, in the year 2020, with the Covid crisis, our schools and small businesses shut down, cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars nor donate thousands of dollars to any campaign. We can be proud, however, that the laws of the land do allow the right, freedom and opportunity to do what one can, and I felt an obligation and a determination to give a voice to the people, and encourage more participation in our government.

My "competition“ is not the current commissioner or other opponent. The challenge is the apathy and lack of information or knowledge of how our local government works, or doesn’t work. Our county commissioners are the first line of representation for most people, yet so few even know what district they live in or who their commissioner is.

This stands for people who have been in office or at high levels of the county staff for years, making decisions that affect us in our own backyards, and yet interact so little with all their constituents or sincerely encourage others to be involved.

My campaign has been mainly a job of providing citizens the information and records of our county’s activities and giving them the opportunity to educate themselves to determine if their best interests are being represented by the current board or potential candidates. If this results in one person voting that never did before, one person choosing to become a more proactive citizen, we have a win, no matter the end result.

I am a rare and endangered eighth-generation native Floridian. In that perspective alone, I bring a history, a culture, and a personal sense of place to the board that few can claim. I have been actively involved in preserving the attributes of Manatee County in the environment, agriculture, tourism and the building industry, and vocal before the board in my opposition to issues I feel are a liability to our quality of life here. I am retired from an accounting career and have owned my own real estate since I was 23 years old. I also live on the cusp of the encroachment of development past the urban boundary, where the decisions of the board as a whole have the greatest effect on an area that needs greater representation now more than we ever had in the past, for all of Manatee County.

Growth is inevitable, and I am a realist in the need to prepare and plan for that growth. We cannot continue to approve new development without requiring stipulations for an adequate contribution from those developers, not to political campaigns, but to the necessary infrastructure to support these new communities. We must have provisions for affordable housing and define affordable housing in accordance to our community’s average wage. We need to make a genuine effort to find more sustainable industries than phosphate and new construction, to repair, maintain and seek out innovations in our power, water and sewage systems, to support and produce American-made goods and services, especially protecting our farmlands.

Our latest fiasco of the county spending 32 million dollars for land that is overpriced, unnecessary and an apparent attempt by our outgoing commissioners or those whose preferred candidates were usurped by the voters, to burden its citizens with an untimely purchase will set the tone for many challenges after November. We can no longer operate along the status quo if we expect to manage growth and maintain our fragile environment. Regardless of what we know will be a tumultuous national election, our local representatives must focus on what we can do in our own back yards to unify us, and represent the people who want to bring our county and our country into prosperity and peace again for all our citizens.