BRADENTON - When Terri Wonder talks about why she's running for a seat on the Manatee County Commission, she stresses opposition to many of the board's recent decisions on issues like Long Bar Pointe and the proposal for an indigent care tax. On her first campaign for office, the candidate touts her background as a social scientist in the military as having helped expose her to bureaucracy and a focus on "people-centric, not special interest-centric".

While arguing for more efforts at environmental preservation is perhaps her most well-known (issue), Wonder is quick to say that many of the issues she is concerned about go beyond the natural resources protection vs. development fights that have long taken place in the county. She says that other land use decisions that could threaten historic neighborhoods, the preservation of which are another high priority item on her list.

"We have other issues - our neighborhoods being threatened by land use decisions ... land use decisions that are incompatible with surrounding neightborhoods ... and especially land development in our comprehensive plan," she said in a phone interview with TBT.

But she has made environmental preservation a core issue of her campaign, calling it "common sense (economic development)" to balance preservation and land development. (finish this paragraph with intro to Long Bar Pointe)

Saying she decided to run after the BOCC's vote on Long Bar Pointe last year, "To me the majority vote which included a vote by (Whitmore) was just an incredible travesty in decision making, and that was one of the most typical decisions in land use in the history of this county, and the ramifications of it would reverberate all over the county, including eventual impacts to our fishing game and natural resources."

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In Their Words: Manatee County Commission Candidate Terri Wonder