City of Port Saint Lucie Mayor Candidate's (fence, shop)

[J Jewell]

I have been pondering who should I vote for in the Mayor race for the city of Port Saint Lucie.
I have been on the fence as of late. Just like the rest of the citizens in PSL, I was pretty upset when the trim notices were published. And to boot, being an election year, the Mayor's race is a heated one. I have attended a couple of public events and have questioned both candidates about the alleged millage rate increase. Mayor Candidate Greg Oravec was adimate that current Mayor JoAnn Faiella intentions are to raise the millage rate to the maximum rate allowed by law. According to Oravec, Mayor Faiella would pay off the cities bad debt with the rate increase.

I posed the same question to Mayor Faiella. She responded by informing me that as Mayor, she is only one of five votes on the Council. But, to clear the air of rumors, she has never voted to raise the millage rate since she has been Mayor and she was not supporting a millage rate increase now.

So, I decided to attend the City Council workshop that was open to the public on September 5th at the Community Center. In short, the Mayor publicly announced that she would not be supporting a millage rate increase. Councilman Bowen, Councilwoman Bartz and Councilwoman Martin all agreed with the Mayor.

Councilwoman Berger was outraged and pleaded to have some sort of increase!! She was visibly shaken and upset. At the conclusion of her comments, she stated that she was left with no choice but to vote no on millage rate increases. I find this to be a rather interesting situation. Councilwoman Berger is Mayoral Candidate Greg Oravec's campaign manager. Guess I am going to start researching their track records. Does anyone have any positive or negative information concerning their track records? Please, I don't want any mudslinging, just proven and documented facts. Thanks for your help?

[SeetheUSA]

If nothing else, I would vote Oravec just because he hasn't been slinging any mud. The Mayor waited until the day of election and put a full page article in the paper about how horrible Mr Oravec is and was- without giving him any time to rebuttal.

I do not like Faiella mainly because of the mistakes she has made. In my opinion, she is and was very inexperienced. Our city has had to pay dearly for her mistakes. I am willing to give Oravec a chance to see if he can turn this place around.