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 set of 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 Samuel Chambers.
CHAMBERS: I was born and raised here in Orlando. Actually, I was born in District 3 ,where I’m running, when it was still called the Florida Hospital. I know before that it was called the Florida Sanitarium. I come from a middle-class family of my mom and dad, both worked in grocery stores. Went to St. Charles, Edgewater High School, later went on to go to Valencia, FSU, where I got a bachelor’s and master’s in political science. Once I moved back here to Orlando, during COVID, I began being very active in the community. I served in a state legislative office as an intern. I engage regularly with different community groups such as neighborhood associations, whether that’s Rosemont, College Park, Lake Formosa, you name it. Also, I ran for the Soil and Water Conservation Board in 2022 and was elected to that position, so now I currently serve as Chairman of the Board. So that’s just a little bit about me.
BELL: Why did you decide to run for District 3?
CHAMBERS: Why I decided to run for District 3 was, I understood that Commissioner Stuart, he had the intent to retire, he said that during his last campaign, and I was kind of looking around to see who I’d want to support to fill his position. And being engaged in the community, I frankly didn’t see anyone who regularly participated in the community as to the extent that I felt I had. And so that’s why I decided to run.
BELL: So what do you think is the biggest issue facing District 3 and the City of Orlando?
CHAMBERS: Well, you go to each neighborhood and they have various different issues, such as you go to Rosemont, development is a big issue, protecting green space. You go to College Park, it’s about the Edgewater Redevelopment Plan, same thing within Audubon Park with Corrine, making sure neighborhoods are walkable and bikeable. But I think the largest issue we see in Orlando, that I hear from voters, is affordability. So, I think the ways we address affordability is one, investing in our affordable housing trust fund. According to city code, there is a trust fund, but no amount of money is required to actually go towards it. So, I would like to make that a hard re-occurring amount. I also believe, when you do a better job through what’s called inclusionary zoning, we have what’s called the problem of the missing middle, where seemingly the only housing options are apartments for rent, or houses that can go up to a million dollars, and there’s not really affordable options in the middle. So making sure we properly zone neighborhoods to include things like ADUs, townhomes, quadplexes, things like that.
BELL: What’s an ADU?
CHAMBERS: An ADU is, I believe it stands for auxiliary dwelling unit. So it’s like an in-law suite.
BELL: What would you work to change on day one?
CHAMBERS: On day one, well, the city council, I try to remind people that we have what’s called a strong mayor system in Orlando. A strong mayor system is essentially where the mayor is in charge of running the city, mostly, and the commissioners, who are on the board, there’s six commissioners, help to approve the mayor’s agenda. So, when it comes to things, in my neighborhood that I would be looking to put forth to the city council would be things like making our neighborhoods walkable and bike by cyclists. I’ve been hit by a car living here in District 3, actually twice.
BELL: Tell me about that?
CHAMBERS: So, one time was when I was a child. I was actually on the sidewalk, I was on the sidewalk and a car jumped the curb and hit me while I was riding my bike. The second time, I was going to school at Edgewater High School. I actually remember the day, Dec.7, 2016. It was at the intersection of Par and Formosa. If you go to that intersection, you’ll see that there is no bike lane in that area. So I was riding in the road or sidewalk, I don’t remember, but I was going straight, another car was turning and turned into me while I was in the intersection.
BELL: So, what would you do, because that is a big problem facing really a lot of communities across Central Florida, pedestrian safety, bicyclist safety. How do you make it safer?
CHAMBERS: So, one stance as I say about my beliefs is I believe in protecting green space. So, the only concrete I like to see is for sidewalks, bike paths and protected bike lanes. So, when we have a street redevelopment like what’s going on Corrine Drive or Edgewater Drive, Edgewater specifically, there are bike lanes down Edgewater Drive. Through most of it, they suddenly disappear between Princeton and Smith, but for the most part, there are bike lanes, but the current plans would remove them. And I’ve heard significant concerns from the cyclist community about that. So just making sure that we have someone on the city council that when these plans are going forward to be an advocate of saying, ‘no, let’s make sure we have a protected bike lane, right? Let’s make we have the mixed-use path.’ And when we do have a mixed-use path, right, make sure, you know, there’s not utility poles or business signs or chairs in the way to make sure it’s easy for cyclists to go at a decent speed.
BELL: What is your vision for the city, say 15 years from now, in the year 2040?
CHAMBERS: My vision for the city in the year 2040, I would say, making it a green city, making it so that we are the city has a plan to have zero waste by 2040, also has a goal to be net zero carbon emissions by 2050. So, I would like to not only meet those goals but try to meet them early. I think also it’s important that we address our affordability issue, like I mentioned earlier, because for so many people, that’s their biggest issue. And we can’t have a growing city if people don’t feel that they can afford to live here.
BELL: Is the concern, going back to the affordability thing, that developers are not required to build kind of more affordable homes, that they’re just choosing to build either apartments because they see that’s where the money can be made or million-dollar homes?
CHAMBERS: I don’t think there’s incentives, really. There’s also when you look at the zoning in certain neighborhoods, it says no, you can only build a single-family home and so that if that’s the requirement, then you’re only going to see, you know, like million-dollar houses being built because that’s kind of how much a house goes for nowadays in Orlando.
BELL: Gov. DeSantis has called for property tax reform, as have some other state officials, saying they should either be cut or completely eliminated. Do you agree with that? What’s your response and reaction to that idea?
CHAMBERS: No, I disagree with that sentiment. You know, it sounds great on face value that, oh, we’re gonna cut property taxes, your tax burden to the local government is not gonna be as great. Well, let me tell you, most of city revenue, general revenue, comes from property taxes. So, if we don’t have those property taxes, we can’t have things like a fire department, a police department, public works, things like that. So, If it’s not coming from property taxes, the revenue has to come from two other places. It can either come from the state, so now the city will be beholden to state politicians, not the local constituents, or they’ll have to come a sales tax because in Florida we can’t have a personal income tax. That’s in the Constitution of Florida. So, the significance of having a larger sales tax is, look, working-class families, they live paycheck to paycheck. So, their entire paycheck is being applied to that sales tax because essentially every dollar they’re spending is being taxed essentially. Whereas wealthier individuals, they don’t live paycheck to paycheck, so only a smaller portion of their income is actually being applied to that sales tax. So it’s a regressive form of taxation which will negatively impact working-class communities rather than the wealthier upper classes.
BELL: What about this whole argument that we’re hearing from a lot of state officials that, you know, revenues have increased a lot over the past, say, 10 years, but population hasn’t gone up as much. So what we’re hearing from, like, the state’s DOGE audit team, is that they’re collecting more money than ever before, yet they don’t have as many people to justify all that.
CHAMBERS: Well, I think the DOGE here in Florida, also what the CFO has called FAFO, that’s not me saying that, that is what they literally call it. When they’re looking to try to say, okay, you know, let’s rein in, you know, spending. They’re not looking to, there is little evidence that I’ve seen of misconduct, waste, fraud, and abuse. What they’re looking at is taking away money that makes it so your neighborhoods can be walkable and bikeable. They’re taking away resources to improve the sustainability of your neighborhoods. So, like investing in treescapes, landscapes, or stuff like that, investing in renewable energy. They’re taking away incentives for women and minority-owned businesses because apparently that’s too woke. I don’t see how being a small business owner, how that plays into, you know, woke identity politics, but that’s what they’re looking at cutting, not actually looking towards substantive reductions in waste, fraud, and abuse.
BELL: Is there anything that you would like to share with us that I did not ask you about?
CHAMBERS: About me personally?
BELL: Sure!
CHAMBERS: Yeah, so I am a college professor at Valencia. I teach local politics. I also serve as the chairman on the Orange Soil and Water Conservation Board. That’s actually an elected board that we all vote for here in Orange County, whether you know it or not. I have also repeatedly spoken at City Hall on a number of issues, trying to support smart growth initiatives, try to limit urban sprawl or annexations, or giving tax deductions to big corporations or developers. So I participate at City Hall, I serve as an elected official, I participate in the community in the different neighborhood associations or community groups, like Friends of the Loch Haven Chain of Lakes is another one, and so for all those reasons, I feel like I’m the best choice for District 3.
BELL: What do you do on the Soil and Water Conservation Board? What is that?
CHAMBERS: Yeah, so I get that question a lot. What does the soil and water supervisor do? And the easiest way I can describe it is that’s effectively an elected advisory board. Now people also ask, what’s an advisory board? It’s an unpaid position. So, because of that, not many people want to do it. Our job is to advocate for the environment that can’t, the environment cannot advocate for itself. So, it’s our job to advocate for it. And so, while I’ve been on the board, I’ve proposed and gotten passed a number of resolutions supporting voters to be able to vote on the rural boundary this last election. And when the City of Orlando was trying to undermine it by annexing a large piece of land on the east side of the city, days before that initiative was going to be voted on, I wrote to the city and said, please don’t do this. And then for various reasons, the city eventually decided not to go forward with it. In addition, I was against the bear hunt that the FWC has approved for this year. That was the first thing I did once appointed chairman of the board was pass a resolution against that. Generally, the job is to, like I said, stand up for the environment and to push back on reckless development and it’s a thankless job that not many people want to do, but like my campaign slogan is, it’s showing up for you. I show up for my community and I stood up and said, I’ll do the job.
For more on this race and full conversations with the other four candidates, head to clickorlando.com .