I am urging anyone who hasn’t yet voted to cast your ballot for Ed Bielarski.

He will vote to rescind the elimination of single family zoning.

He has the financial knowledge of a CPA and has intimate knowledge of the workings of GRU, both huge assets that the other candidates don’t have.

He is not responsible for our high GRU bills; he is responsible for them not being higher than they are by negotiating our way out of a contract where the other side held all of the cards because of the horrible decision making by our incompetent city commissioners who came up with the bad idea and pushed it through against all logic and due diligence.

It seems like it would be hard to score a trifecta of being in the top one or two in the entire state for highest taxes, highest utility rates and widest disparities between rich and poor, but our local government led by the preferred candidates of the Alachua County Democratic Party (ACDP) have managed to do it year after year, and yet the ACDP sees fit to attack Ed in the ugliest and most deceptive way through their GOP style campaign flyers. If you don’t have a positive list of accomplishments to stand on you have to sling mud.

Ed is hard working and dedicated to learning about the concerns of the people as exhibited by his months spent knocking on some 10,000 doors and answering every question (and attack) put to him on Facebook and Nextdoor.

He is not beholden to either party or to any network of local power brokers or to any local group of ‘toe the line’ thought police. His obligation is only where it should be, to us, the voters, his soon to be constituents.  

I only wish that Gary Gordon and he could both be on the commission together, but they can’t this time around.