Ed Danko sat down to talk about his bid for County Commission. Currently Ed Danko currently holds a seat on the Palm Coast City Council. When asked why the shift from city to county, Danko explained, “Why not? I am finished up my first term with the city, and I’ve accomplished some things. We got a full millage rate rollback last year, which was one of my goals. I have prevented some wasteful spending like that 6% franchise fee they wanted to put on your electric bill. You get so much time in life, and I just turned 70 and I’ve done the city thing and I would like to try something different. It’s kind of my bucket list, I would like to bring what I’ve brought to the city to the county level. I want to get a full millage rollback rate at the county level.”
Danko talked about what issues would be at the top of his list, “Beach renourishment is on the top of my list as one of the big issues in our county. We get alot of income out of that beach, and if that beach isn’t there? We’re in a lot of trouble. I am very serious about protecting our beaches here in Flagler County. We bring in too much income, it’s Florida, people want to go the beach; they want to feel the warm water and sunshine. That is a huge, huge issues for me along with funding our sheriff, our emt’s our fire department, roads, water all those things are big issues. They are must haves not wants. Another big issue for the county is taxes.” Danko continued on, “People have suffered enough, especially under ‘Bidenomics’; we’ve all been hit at the gas pumps, we’ve been hit at the supermarket, home insurance, everything you buy. I don’t want to us burdening our taxpayers with unnecessary expenses again. I will never note for a tax increase, I’d rather drink antifreeze than vote for a tax increase.”
With such a strong stance against tax hikes, we asked Danko how he planned to ease the tax burden if elected to the County Commission. “We need more businesses. Right now in Palm Coast alone, 92% of our taxes are paid by homeowners, only 8% come from business. That is a model that we cannot live with much longer. We need to bring in more businesses. The problem here is people; here a certain group of people, they don’t want any more growth. They want us to stay just little old sweet Palm Coast. But they also don’t want to pay any more taxes, and they want jobs for their kids and grandkids. That’s not going to work, I really wish I could tell people, Okay let’s just stay little old Maybury and everybody lives happily and we can exist on what we have. We can’t roads cost money, everything costs money.”
Danko continued on in his explanation, talking about how in order to draw in businesses, according to Danko, the City has to have certain demographics to draw the businesses here. Danko continued on explaining the need for housing variety for all stages of life in order to draw in the bigger businesses. “Workforce needs a place to live, so we will grow, we will develop, we will expand, because we have to; and if we don’t it’s going to be financial suicide. You know how I finally get them to understand it? It’s pretty amazing, I say I know a place where you can move where nothing ever changes, it’s called Brigadoon, where you wake up every 100 days and sing a song with Gene Kelly and go back to sleep for another hundred years.”
The fact that Danko is currently on the City Council for Palm Coast, and is now running for the County Commission, we asked him about his opinion on the working relationship between the two municipalities. “It’s a relationship that’s better than it was when I first came to the City Council. Because of our past mayor and our past city manager, I think we did not have a great relationship with the county especially, but I think that relationship has now improved and I want to see it continue to improve. The county and the city are kind of tied together and you can’t have one without the other. It’s a very important relationship, no doubt. It annoys me when I see certain people want to annex a beach and make it part of Palm Coast, that makes no sense to me.”
When asked about transparency and how he planned to bring more transparency to the County, if elected he talked about his current practices, such as handing out his personal cell phone number to residents. He also explained that his being out and visiting with people is another way he stays connected.
We also asked him about his qualifications for the county position and Danko answered, “This is Florida; this is the free state of Florida; I support President Trump, his policies are good for America, they’re good for Florida, and they’re good for Flagler. People need to know I’m an America first conservative, Trump supporting Republican and that’s going to be my philosophy. It’s been my philosophy, and that means not wasting our tax dollars on stupid things. That means funding our must haves including our police, our firemen, our emts, all of our first responders. I think by my voting record, people have seen that they know where I’m coming from.”
To read more about Danko’s platform, you can visit his website here.