Palm Coast Mayoral Candidate Mike Norris has officially won his bid for Palm Coast Mayor. We sat down with him earlier this evening following the results of the election. Here is what he has to say about his win, his plans, and how he plans to work with Both Ty Miller and Ray Stevens, who have won their races as well.
How does it feel to win the seat of Mayor? It feels phenomenal. This city needs help. We have been here 18 years, and we want to do the right thing. We did this on a dime. All these people out here who are celebrating with us are all people I have met along the way or who believed in me. People from our church, people that I just met in passing, and people who resonated with our message and my campaign. My platform hasn’t changed since the beginning, when we wrote up my campaign platform, it hasn’t changed. We have done exactly what we wanted to do, and we didn’t want a negative attack, we just wanted to put out our platform. Once we started producing those videos, everybody was drawn to it and resonated because I was telling the truth, and people wanted to hear the truth. What they have been doing to the city is not the truth, we know that with the $80+ million that is going out west, so we’ve got to hold those guys accountable and make them do right by our city. Our roads, water, and all of our infrastructure have to do right by our city.
Ty Miller has won his race for City Council, how well do you feel you will be able to work with him? I have to be a bit cautious of it; we will see how he votes on certain issues, I think Jeffery did a great job. He’s concerned about the city, and he’s done everything he could. That is just how it panned out. I didn’t take any money from big donors or PACs; I wouldn’t do it, I refused. I had a homebuilder try to give me $1,000 at the end of my campaign, and I refused it because I couldn’t in good conscience take that money because it’s about the city. I don’t need the money; it’s about doing the right thing for the city. I think Jeffery has good intentions, and I think he’ll continue to serve the community. I hope Ty does the right thing.
The Race between Andrew Werner and Ray Stevens was still being counted at the time of the interview, so the question asked was how will you be able to work with Ray Stevens or Andrew Werner, depending on who wins? Whenever people ask me about that because they’re both registered Republicans, I say either one of those. Flip a coin, and I can work with both of them because I think they both have good intentions. Andrew got bogged down with PAC money, while Ray supported his campaign, and I admire that. But we will see. I think Ray has good intent, and Ray has a lot of experience as far as law enforcement and as far as traffic settings and stuff like that. Hopefully, he can help us fix the traffic problems we have. I look forward to working with them.
What issue do you plan on tackling first as the new Mayor? The first thing I am going to see if I can do is to get one of the council members to put forward a motion to move all meetings to nights because the majority of the population are working-class citizens who are working, trying to feed their families and they need to be able to be at the meetings at night. I’ve already talked to the acting city manager and the attorney, and we can work out how the staff is compensated. Right now, I don’t see us having to pay any overtime for all those people making those meetings; they can offset their hours to facilitate them being at all of the meetings.
Do you expect any backlash from the election results? I would hope not. I would hope it’s a wake-up call to the powers that be in this community that we’re not going to take it anymore, and we’re going to try to improve our community if they can’t get on board. Developers and builders are free to move along and go somewhere else.
