Affordable housing, transportation and making Orlando a future-ready city are all areas Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer says he still wants to improve on if he is re-elected for a fifth term.
Elections for the next mayor of Orlando will be held on Nov. 5 and Dyer is running against Orlando Commissioner Sam Ings and Navy veteran Aretha Simons.
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Dyer says he’s more energized about running for election now than when he first ran in 2003. So what is his vision for a “future ready” Orlando and how does he plan to get there?
- Affordable housing: Raise government worker salary to $15 an hour, change regulation to speed up building time, set up more affordable housing communities, take down old structures and rebuild better ones.
"We've incentivized 14 different projects that are either 100% affordable or some portion affordable and they're spread throughout the city. But, we can't do it alone. We're 300,000 of the roughly 3 million people here so we need the other governments to step up as well," Dyer said.
- Transportation: Dyer plans to increase the number of busses Lynx has and the frequency of their stops, expand the SunRail system, implement a pilot scooter program for downtown and prepare for Virgin Trains making a stop at the Orlando International Airport in the coming years and then to Tampa.
"We need to have a focus on mass transit because we're behind that curve and we've been, through our history a one person one car type of society in central Florida. We've got to make it easier for people to use mass transportation," he said.
- Being "future-ready": Embrace new technology such as 5G, become more sustainable through solar energy, 100% renewable energy for municipal buildings by 2030, zero waste by 2040, 100% renewable energy citywide by 2050.
"On the 5G I think we have to be one of the cities that's future-ready in that regard because I believe there will be cities that are left behind if they don't facilitate 5G and that's what's going to take a while to get into place," he said.
"I get up excited every single day. This is such a dynamic time in the history of our city and I tell other mayors that a lot of cities' history is already made and they're like a big battleship that you can't turn," Dyer said. "But we're making our history now. We're becoming what we're really going to be so it's an exciting time to be part of it."
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