1. Commission Candidates Outline Goals
Forum Reveals Differences Of Three Hopefuls
by Max Zimmerman
Dade City News
Three Dade City Commission candidates fielded questions and posed
solutions Monday night during an hour-long forum at the Woman’s Club.
There were no sharp elbows thrown as Charlene Austin, Nicole Deese
Newlon and Joe Kennard touted their qualifications to occupyCity
Commission Seat 4 — a position held by Bill Dennis until his death last July.
The commission appointed Austin in August to finish the last nine months of
Dennis’s term.
Newlon was also interested in the vacancy at that time as was another
candidate, but commissioners gave the nod to Austin, 72. Dennis spent a
collective 22 years as a city commissioner and also served as mayor from
1984 to 1986.
C.T. Bowen of the Tampa Bay Times moderated Monday’s hour-long event
and topics ranged from economic development to rehabilitating streets to
voter participation.
Austin, a retiree, touted her three years on the Planning Board and time as a
city commissioner as what separates her from Newlon and Kennard. She
noted her first-hand familiarity with ordinances, resolutions and the city
charter as being her strengths.
“There’s always things you want to do in any city, whether it’s repaving
streets, putting in new sidewalks,” Austin said, noting that the work is
ongoing. “But it has to been done on a schedule. You could do it all at once,
if you want to raise taxes high enough,” she said with a chuckle, “but we
don’twant to do that either.”
In her opening statement Austin noted an anti-fracking resolution within the
city limits as a highlight of her time on the commission.
A resident since 2010, Austin has also be involved with a group that hopes
to reopen the now-shuttered Moore-Mickens Education Center, possibly as a
technical school. Gov. Rick Scott(R) vetoed $250,000 from the 2016 budget
that would have gone toward that effort.
Not surprisingly, Newlon and Kennard, both 42, presented themselves as
outsiders who aim to bring a ‘fresh perspective’ to the city. In the half-hour
preceding the event the pair planted themselves near the front doorof the
historic club, greeting attendees as they entered.

2. “Every time it sprinkles, we end up with some dangerous intersections,” and
the city needs to address the most dangerous intersections first, Kennard said
prior to the debate.
He said he hopes the commission will heed an upcoming report from a city-
hired contractortasked to affix a grade to each of the city’s streets. Kennard
said Dade City should fix the worst roads first, noting that there are still five
miles of dirt road within the city limits.
“It’s like the budget of you house; you’d love to put in hardwood floors, but
when you’re trying to decide whether to pay your power bill or your water
bill,” priorities should rule the day.
Kennard has lived in Dade City for 11 years. He is the director of inpatient
cardiology at Florida Hospital Zephyrhills.
Newlon, a 1991 Pasco High Schoolgraduate and attorney in Tampa, also
earned a finance degree at the University of South Florida, and later an
MBA.
Prior to the debate, she said that a program offered by Southwest Florida
Water Management District could have doubled the $400,000 that Scott
approved this month to help solve Dade City’s flooding situation.
She said an official at SWIFTMUD told her that matching grants from the
agency could have made for $800,000 to be available, but that opportunity
has now passed.
“Often times they (SWIFTMUD) will even provide engineers to come out
and assist with the planning of the program. It’s critical becausedowntown
is only one of four significant areas that have flooding issues in the city,” she
said.
All three candidates said plugging the city’s water woes was the most
pressing problem to solve.
“I think we need to talk about our children: we don’teven have sports or
afterschool activities for our children, anything that’s offered sports-wise is
either through the county or the police force,” Newlon said.
She also sees empty storefronts as a big issue, “Thoseneed to be filled.
“If you look at any Best Small Towns list … every one of them has some
cultural aspect — a community theatre, arts, art galleries, things of that
nature and we don’t have any of that. We don’thave a playhouse, a theater
house.”
She said the ‘best’ small towns feature a thicker schedule of concerts, plays
or cultural events that bring the community — as well as visitors — together
with greater frequency.

3. Austin said the feedback so far from the neighborhood revitalization
committees has shown a desire for “some kind of civic center, sports area or
indoor swimming pool.”
In a question as to why, after 18 years, Morningside Drive has not been
completed to the west, Austin said she understood the project to have
completed two phases and was being held up now only by an environmental
issue. She could not say, however, whether the project would be finished
anytime soon.
While all three candidates agreed that having two individuals handling the
functions of finance director and city clerk instead of one person, Newlon
alluded to the 2013 ouster of Jim Class as a bit unseemly. “It was more how
it was done,” she said, with the commission taking action during a workshop
rather than during a regular meeting.
And all three agreed that a mixed-use approachto filling the void left by the
downtown car dealership on Seventh Avenue would be the best approach
going forward.
None of them thought moving municipal election dates to November would
increase voter participation and could possibly lead to less interest because
the ballot is usually top-heavy with state issues and presidential contests.
When asked to look ahead — presumably after 8 years in office — Newlon
said she hoped to see greater economic opportunities for the citizens and
how CRA money are spent to benefit the community as a whole. She said
$40,000 could be squeezed out of commissioners’ salaries to pay for a
recreation director.
Austin wants to keep an eye on how the development begins to fill in East
Pasco (“It’s coming”) and work to manage the growth, and she would like to
see a more direct east-west highway to tap into the Orlando market, and
vise-versa.
Kennard hopes to see the kind of amenities that those living in Wesley
Chapel have “without the traffic, without the noise.” He would like to see
the hulking, near vacant business center be alive with jobs that would give
residents the desire to stay here and the means to buy a home.
The election for Seat 4 of the Dade City Commission is April 12.