When asked to name the top three issues facing the residents of Ward 2, Jacquelyn McMiller and Diana Giraldo gave very different answers.
For McMiller, the answer is clear and unequivocal.
“Housing. Housing. Housing.”
In McMiller’s estimation, the first area the city needs to address is the high cost of rent not only in Ward 2, but also throughout the city as a whole.
“Our teachers, our first responders, they’re making $45, $50, $60,000 a year, and that’s on the high end, $60,000,” said McMiller. “You cannot afford to live in Fort Myers on a basic $50,000-a-year income, and that’s sad.”
McMiller proposes subsidies as a partial solution to this dilemma, but readily concedes that subsidies in the form of vouchers are effective only to the extent that affordable housing is available. Increasing the amount of affordable housing will also bring down the cost of rent.
To encourage the construction of affordable housing, McMiller says it’s not enough to merely incentivize developers through tax and related benefits.
“We have to think outside of the box, whether it may be looking at changing some of our zoning, multi-story housing for affordable housing complexes,” said McMiller.
Based on her work with Collaboratory’s 21st Century Housing Program and the League of Women Voters, McMiller thinks that the city must simultaneously engender financial literacy and education in the very people who find themselves in need of affordable housing and rent subsidies.
“You find a lot of these residents don’t really know and understand what it looks like to save,” McMiller observed.
At the same time, the city must create the infrastructure needed to support the new construction she contemplates — not just roads, but green space, swales, retention ponds and conveyances to capture and dispose of sheet flow during rainfall events.
“Ensuring that our infrastructure is not only resilient because of the changes in the environment, but also that it is sustainable,” said McMiller. “We’re hurricane prone. Statistics have shown that low-to-moderate income homeowners and people who live in that low-to-moderate income bracket are the most affected by disasters.”
Diana Giraldo characterizes herself as a “big picture” candidate. She’s made cohesion, connectivity and collaboration the centerpiece of her campaign. In her view, the best way for her constituents to come together as a community is by working together to take advantage of all the projects included in the city’s strategic plans for Ward 2, which is one of the few wards within the city that has room to grow.
“If you look at what the city’s plans are laid out for the next year, the next five and then next 10 years, there is a significant amount of work that is going on in Ward 2,” noted Giraldo.
Giraldo believes that her education, training and experience as an architect, urban planner, consultant and former city employee uniquely qualify her to create the synergy, collaboration and cohesion that are required to convert the city’s strategic plan into reality.
“We have strategic plans for bike paths, for the new parks master plan. You know, we’ve laid out some projects for art. We have infrastructure projects, and often times, I don’t think we look at them like they’re part of one big basket, but as an isolated challenge. So for me being able to use my background in policy by being a former city employee and as a consultant living in the real world and understanding the economics of it, I think is a good leverage for the current City Council. Nobody has the experience that I have.”
Giraldo realizes that getting residents and business owners to look to the future by keeping them informed of upcoming projects will require the help of Ward 2 stakeholders.
“Most of your nonprofit partners that are in the city are in Ward 2 in the Dunbar area,” Giraldo pointed out. “And then when you look at the eastern part of Ward 2, you have HOAs.”
Community meetings are a key component in Giraldo’s plan to achieve cohesion, connectivity and collaboration. By focusing on solution-driven discussions, she expects to achieve greater integration not only of the disparate communities and neighborhoods within Ward 2, but also of Ward 2 within the city itself.
Ward 2 stretches from Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve and includes the Forum and the area around Top Golf.
As of 2020, Ward 2’s population was 14,605 compared with 97,711 in the entire city.
Per the 2020 Census, Ward 2’s population consisted of 47 percent white, 20 percent Black and 27 percent Latino persons.
Johnny Streets currently serves as Ward 2’s representative on the City Council. He is stepping down after 17 years of service.
READ HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON JACQUELYN MCMILLER
Jacquelyn McMiller grew up in Ward 2 and, except for a decade spent in Gateway, she’s lived her entire life in Ward 2 as well.
“Running now gives me the opportunity to focus on the ward I grew up in, and I’m happy to see the progress and development that’s happening, but also advocate for the needs of the citizens of Ward 2, as well.”
While McMiller is not conversant with the Southern Lee County Flood Mitigation Plan that the county commissioned in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, she did acknowledge the need for the city to formulate its own flood mitigation measures, especially in flood-prone Ward 2 “so that Ward 2, downtown Fort Myers and surrounding areas are able to rebound from a disaster such as Ian or even a tropical storm.” [Author’s Note: McMiller made these comments prior to the surge and inland flooding that Fort Myers experienced during hurricanes Helene and Milton.]
Regarding infrastructure, McMiller favors building smart infrastructure that implements and supports the city’s long-term plans for growth and development.
“I don’t believe that we’ve been doing that because, if we had, our infrastructure would not be so incomplete …. You have homes going up, these high-rises, these large developments, and many of them barely have water because of the fact that the infrastructure has not been set up to sustain it.”
McMiller regards rent subsidies and similar measures as “assistance.”
“I don’t believe that anyone really wants to be taken care of,” she said. “They want some assistance, and if you do that, you’re teaching them to fish, instead of just feeding them. You’re teaching them to fish, therefore it’s sustainable. But it’s also where they can take care of themselves in the future.”
That said, McMiller supports analyzing existing assistance programs to ascertain how effective they really are so that improvements can be made.
McMiller advocates for better communication and a stronger working relationship between city and county officials.
“If we can’t work together as a government entity, how can we expect the people to work with us? City Council. County Commission. There’s no communication and no working together. That’s the barrier we have to cross and bring together.”
However, McMiller failed to offer any concrete proposals or measures to overcome existing communication barriers.
McMiller advocates for bringing more culture into the area for “young minds” and tourists.
“We don’t want to lose the culture here and we want to invite people to share it.”
McMiller thinks that musical performances, concerts and festivals are the best way to showcase African-American and Hispanic culture. “They’ve invested a lot downtown, so there’s so many things you can have downtown with regards to Latino, jazz, African-American. Bring it all downtown so we can share in understanding those particular different cultures that we live in.”
McMiller stated that she’d love to have some of those events take place in Ward 2, but cited a current lack of facilities except for an event center recently built by Boyd’s Funeral Services.
“I think that many of those events could happen there. While that’s a start, we need to look at more things here in this ward. It’s a huge ward. It doesn’t make sense that we don’t take advantage of it.”
To keep her constituents informed about city affairs and the initiatives she proposes and supports, McMiller plans to create a Facebook page. “I haven’t seen that with any of the City Council or County Commission.”
Of course, she recognizes that many elderly people in Ward 2 either don’t have internet access or, even if they do, aren’t conversant with social media platforms. To overcome these deficiencies, she intends to elicit help in getting the word out to her constituents from “schools, churches, recreational centers, and even daycares … everywhere that the people living in the community would attend.”
McMiller credits current Ward 2 Council member Johnny Streets as a mentor.
Although her 2020 campaign proved unsuccessful, she was the first Black woman to run for mayor.
After graduating from high school, McMiller attended nursing trade school, then college. She graduated with a degree in legal studies and court reporting, then worked in Collier County as a court reporter for nearly 20 years.
After retiring, McMiller worked with the Department of Children and Families as a trainer and facilitator.
READ HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON DIANA GIRALDO
While some of the issues facing Ward 2 include chronic housing shortages and toxic landfill remediation (where the city dumped sludge that included arsenic and other pollutants), Giraldo’s campaign literature lists the following as her priorities:
- Infrastructure, like water, roads and housing projects addressing the needs of our residents
- Local businesses and economic growth
- Protect the environment while supporting sensible growth
- Support first responders for the continuous improvement of public safety
- Fiscal transparency and accountability of city operations
- Inspire vision for the city’s future
Giraldo lists among her qualifications eight years of experience as a city employee; more than 25 years of relevant experience in community development; being a successful minority woman-owned business owner; having gotten over 20 miles of missing sidewalks and trails built; participation on the Lee County Recovery Task Force, Housing Branch; and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee chairperson.
Giraldo is keenly aware that Ward 2 consists of disparate neighborhoods and communities – Dunbar in the west and the Forum and a multitude of gated communities in the east.
“We kind of have two different worlds, and I think the challenge [that evolved out of redistricting] is creating a vision for integration, rather than separation,” said Giraldo. Only in this way, Giraldo postulated, can the city provide all the elements that enhance the quality of life of all Ward 2’s residents.
A key element in Giraldo’s approach is letting people know what’s coming down the pike, but she acknowledges that the efficacy of meetings depends on getting people to attend them.
“How do we frame that a little bit? By making meetings an event, and not like a doom-and-gloom meeting about the projects,” she answered. “If you want people to trust you, you can’t just have a meeting and expect that trust.”
In Giraldo’s estimation, it’s important to lay the predicate for an orientation toward creative problem-solving. She expects to do this in a variety of ways, including having community leaders and stakeholders alert the community about current and future projects. In this regard, she also expects the city to play a more effective role.
“The city is working on updating their database so they create newsletters and they can be customized for the people in the community,” Giraldo said.
Another area in which the city could stand to improve, said Giraldo, is in formulating policy to implement and carry out its strategic plans, rather than the other way around.
“You have to look at vision, and then create policy for that,” Giraldo said, “especially midtown, especially the MLK redevelopment, the 41 redevelopment and everything that’s going to happen in the eastern part of Fort Myers.”
It is important in this respect, said Giraldo, to include developers and people that come to our community in the equation. “It’s not just building. It’s about quality of life.”
Giraldo also acknowledges the need for more affordable housing not only in Ward 2, but also throughout both the city and across all of Lee County.
“We have slated projects that are affordable housing, but not just affordable, it’s mixed income. You have to have all levels of income so you can elevate each other,” Giraldo observed. “Making sure those developments are in proximity, so that people who are living in those communities have access to basic services so they can improve their lives and thrive, and maybe even move on to home ownership are the things we have to work on. The city has taken a first step with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, but there are a lot of mechanisms and ideas that are already moving in our communities, so working together with the city will be instrumental.”
Giraldo was born in Colombia. An only child, she enjoyed soccer, theater, music, singing, dancing and painting growing up.
She was raised in subsidized housing, where the lack of open spaces, trees and sidewalks inspired her to pursue a career in architecture and urban planning. Today, she’s involved with the Affordable Housing Coalition and estimates that 70 percent of her consulting work involves affordable housing.
Giraldo has a master’s degree in management.