ORLANDO, Fla. – For the first time in decades, thousands of people in the city of Orlando will have a new person representing them at City Hall.
Five people are running to replace District 3 Commissioner Robert Stuart, who is retiring after 20 years in office.
District 3 includes neighborhoods like Baldwin Park, Audubon Park, Rosemont and College Park.
News 6 anchor Lisa Bell sat down one-on-one with each of the candidates in the non-partisan race: Samuel Chambers, Roger Chapin, Chris Durant, Kimberly Kiss and Mira Tanna to ask each of them the same five questions and dig deeper on certain topics as needed.
Election Day is Nov. 4, with early voting from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2.
To find your polling place, head to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections website.
Here’s the conversation with candidate Kimberly Kiss.
KISS: I’m Kimberley Kiss. My number one jobs are wife and mom, but I’m also a probate, estate planning and trust lawyer.
BELL: All right, tell us a little bit about your background?
KISS: Sure, so I grew up in Orlando. I went to Howard (Middle School), I went to Boone (High School), Valencia, Rollins (College). I’ve been here for most of my life, with the exception of going to law school, and I’ve practiced estate planning and probate for at least the past 10 years. And in doing that, I have talked to a number of families and this is about what their concerns are, what their books say, what they want for their children. And so I’ve had and developed a really good sense of what’s important to our families in the area.
KISS: One thing I like to talk about growing up here was I was raised by a single mom. We did live in affordable housing for a time. She saved money and bought a townhome, which was a great housing option for a mom. And she took the bus to work at the airport. I took the city bus to my first job at Chick-fil-A over in the Colonial Plaza. We all love that one. And I say that because I know growing up here that the city services, the bus, the afterschool programs, the community center were a big part of my life. And now being able to raise my own family here, also in the city limits, I just, I feel like I have so much to give back and so much to be thankful for and want to make sure that our families here now have the safe opportunities.
BELL: So why did you decide to run for District 3?
KISS: Community, which we’ve been talking about. And sometimes I say that people go, ‘wait, what?’ I said, yeah, the normal things, infrastructure, safety, transportation, affordability. Those are absolutely a part of my campaign. And there’s coalitions of people working on that that I will be a part if I’m commissioner. But what I saw was a real need to really strengthen our community ties and our families to our small businesses, our small business to make sure they are providing what our residents need. So, we really created these corridors of support for our residents and really strengthened the connection of our families. And that’s any family, every age and stage of life for families, whether you have cats, dogs or kids, but to make sure that everyone felt like they were included and supported in our neighborhood.
BELL: So, what do you think is the biggest issue facing District three and the city of Orlando right now?
KISS: City of Orlando as a whole, we know some of the biggest issues are homelessness. And that’s not just an Orlando issue. That is a regional issue. Transportation is also going to be a huge regional issue and there are regional coalitions that are working on that. What I see, and the role that I’d like to play as commissioner, is really engaging the community. So if Orlando says, ‘hey, I wanna solve the homeless problem or the transportation problem,’ it’s not gonna be able to do that on its own. We really need to engage residents and inspire them to be involved and I think that comes from just making really strong connections.
BELL: Do you feel like that’s not happening right now?
KISS: I don’t want to say that it’s not happening. I think everyone who’s devoted their life to public service has done a great job. I just think moving forward, we know these things are going to be on the table. So, taking over as district three commissioner, I know that overseeing the Edgewater Drive Improvement, Virginia and Corinne, all the things that are on the table are going to happen when we really have people engaged and that’s through strengthening communication channels and reaching out to people.
BELL: People in this campaign have talked a lot about transportation issues and an affordable cost of living. As someone who has relied on LINX and public transportation in the past, what do you think could be done to improve what’s being offered right now?
KISS: So, there is a coalition of people doing this and I feel very thankful that I’ve been included in some of the conversations already and I hope to continue to be, even if I don’t win the race. Because what is going to happen is revisiting things, you know, if you look at LINX and you say, ‘maybe this isn’t meeting all of our needs. How do we reconfigure this?’ And that may be pulling it in from the edges of the communities and saying, what are our main points? How is the best way to use our resources? And I think at this point in time, we have the technology, especially we know with AI, to really evaluate these things and reconfigure them. So, I think that’s going to be step one. And for transportation, I think we’re all gonna say, getting a train to the airport would be so helpful for all of us. But I think those things are already coming together. We see community buy-in from our big businesses. We see our local governments taking place in that conversation. And it’s just going to be about having the right leaders who can engage the residents so that if things come up for a vote again, or need more support, that the groundwork will be laid there for things to pass and to happen.
KISS: It’s no secret, my husband is an affordable housing developer, and that was an inspiration for me to want to do this because I’ve seen behind the scenes how things work and it’s complicated. The financial process, all of the pieces I have to pull together, is a perfectly done machine in order for it to work, and so knowing that, knowing sometimes the resistance that can come from the community, I really wanted to be someone who could engage more people in the conversation in hopes of getting us all on the same team of building it.
BELL: So, when you say he’s an affordable housing developer, give me an example of some of the projects that he has worked on, like what types of projects and where these projects take place?
KISS: Sure! So he does things all over the state of Florida. He just finished up a development that’s in Altamonte Springs, right next to the SunRail. And something I think we’ll continue to see more of and something he’s always looking for, is land that’s near a transportation hub like that. So now, there’s an affordable complex right next to the SunRail so that anyone working there will also have access to that public transportation.
BELL: What would you work on day one if elected?
KISS: Day one is building the round table. And so, part of my campaign for the summer has been knocking on doors and talking to literally thousands of people. It has been such a learning process to listen and I’ve met with the leaders of the neighborhood associations, the Main Streets, and what I really want to do is put together a team of people that I can lean on and that can come to me with other neighborhood things. There’s 50 to 60,000 people that live in the district. It is hard to take on all of those comments or to reach out to all of them individually and so it’s really going to be about creating that pipeline and that team of delegation to make sure that information is getting transferred and that things are getting done.
BELL: What is your vision for the city of Orlando, say, 15 years from now in the year 2040?
KISS: Oh, gosh. You know, I want, so I grew up here. I want my kids to stay here. Right now, we know there’s a little bit of a brain drain happening in Orlando. And a lot of our young professionals are leaving or they’re going away to school and they’re not coming back. And it’s because we don’t have the diverse jobs that they need. We don’t have the housing that they can buy. We don’t have the social, or the road infrastructure that we really need to get to the next level of supporting a whole new generation of families. And so, my hope right now, and I think some of that’s already in place, Orlando’s been putting this into motion for a long time, but it’s to continue to do the work and to do it with experience and to do it with energy. So that, what do we say, 15 years? So in 15 years, my child will be in her mid-20s, I want her to go wherever she wants to go to school, be whoever she wants to be and say, ‘you know what? There’s a great opportunity for me in Orlando and I can be here.’ And if my kids choose to have children and I help raise my grandchildren and stay here, I would be thrilled.
BELL: Let’s talk a little bit more about housing affordability. I mean, obviously, it’s a concern for so many people, especially people with young kids who want to see their kids be able to afford a home here. What do you think needs to be done to bring down the cost of buying a home in Orlando?
KISS: So, there are several things that can be done here and part of it is, again, it’s the community engagement. It’s going to be making sure, not only are we lowering the cost of living, but that we’re also raising wages. So, we want to have jobs where people can make more and that’s through encouraging more businesses to be here, improving our downtown so that companies want to come here and hire. It’s also going to be making sure we have diverse housing options. So not everyone wants a single-family home and that’s not the place that everyone will start. We want to have more townhomes that you can buy, condos that you buy and then of course, the traditional, what we call affordable housing is absolutely a necessity moving forward.
BELL: Gov. DeSantis has called for property tax reform, along with other state officials, saying that property taxes should be cut, if not eliminated entirely, certainly for homesteaded properties. Do you agree with that stance? And how, if it is approved, do you think the city of Orlando should respond to that?
KISS: I would agree, some reform would be needed. I don’t think it would be helpful to fully eliminate property taxes because this is one of the number one ways that we fund our local police and our local fire department and we know that safety is one of the top concerns of residents in Orlando. After knocking on so many doors, I’ve heard that over and over again. We love our police, we love our firefighters. We want to continue to support them and that’s a really great source of funding for that. At the same time, our property taxes have gone up quite a bit and providing relief, providing in, I would say maybe a voucher or a rebate to certain groups, maybe that’s more for teachers and firefighters and some of our public servants that really need a break in that regard. I think there’s also an opportunity to also encourage more rehabilitation rather than new construction in some of our single family developments.
BELL: Is there anything that I did not ask you about that you would like to share with us?
KISS: So one, I’d say a big phrase I’m using in my campaign, is representing our shared values and collaborating on solutions and something that’s really important to me to convey in this race is that I want to represent everyone. I think a lot of times, especially now we’re in social media, we get into silos of I’m this party or I’m that party, or I have kids or I don’t have kids or whatever the defining topic could be, and I think we need to break out of that and say, across the board, whatever your party is, whatever your family status is, there are a couple of things that we all really care about. Are kids getting to school safely? It’s making sure our roads are safe. It’s having good infrastructure and affordability and safety. And across the board, we agree on those things. And as a City Commissioner, that’s what I want to focus on. It’s like being a mom. My kids have a fight, I’m not going to choose sides. It’s not you’re right and you’re wrong. It’s what happened? How can we figure this out? How can we work together? And really bring people together to solve these really big issues, especially moving forward, especially for our kids.
For more on this race and full conversations with the other four candidates, head to clickorlando.com .