Candidate Profile 2024: George Kruse For Manatee County Commission

MANATEE COUNTY, FL — Incumbent George Kruse is running for the Manatee County Commission District 7 at-large seat. He faces three opponents in the race.

Patch sent a questionnaire to all District 7 candidates.

Find Kruse’s responses below:

Name:

George Kruse

Age:

48

Occupation:

Current County Commissioner, District 7 At-Large

Political Party Affiliation:

Republican

Why are you running for office?

I ran in 2020 to utilize my background and skillsets to make Manatee County a better
place. I believe I’ve honored the pledges I made at that time but there is still more to do
and see to completion. We currently have a board that isn’t focused on the best
interests of the community. I decided to run for re-election to complete what I’ve started
and hopefully stabilize our local government for the good of the public.

What do you think are the top three issues the county is currently facing?

• Managing growth and the affordability issues of our housing
• Right-sizing government control and giving back a voice to the public
• Managing our infrastructure shortfalls if the rest of the Board won’t collect the revenues from impact fees necessary to provide for much need improvements

Expanding on the three issue:

We’re continuing to see incredible growth in Manatee County. Strides have been made
to increase housing for all income levels but we need to continue to encourage this
before we price our core workforce out of the community. We need to do this while
keeping an eye on how we’re growing. Better incentives to encourage in-fill
development which protects our rural areas, our environmentally sensitive areas, and
our unique communities from encroaching development is critical to the future.

Our local government has been growing. It seems to be continuously consolidating
power and involvement in areas which should be left to other offices, nonprofits or the
public. In doing so, it’s taking away the voice of the very public the board is presumably
elected to represent. A future board needs to bring the government back to the people
and divest from unnecessary control. This includes leaving municipalities to their own
governance and focusing on unincorporated Manatee County. We also need to stay in
our lane and avoid non-local issues. The first step is to get more board members
engaged with the public and the community to do what’s right for all citizens of our
county, not just what’s politically beneficial. We also need to bring back expanded
opportunities for public comment, involvement and broaden our use of advisory boards.

Anyone living in Manatee County knows we’re behind in our infrastructure. Looking
ahead, the cost and timing of catching up is almost impossible. We need to continue
improving our roadways, but we need to also be focusing on alternatives to bridge the gap we can’t close. Redirecting development toward employment centers and services,
continuing to focus on free, expanded transit and expediting multi-modal options like the
Greenway trail system, will ease the burden on our roadways. Further incentivizing
affordable, workforce housing will lessen the traffic coming from out of the county to
deliver our workers. As I’ve said before, there are two ways to “fix”infrastructure. One is
to build more. The other is to use less. It’s cheaper, faster and more environmentally-
beneficial to do the latter.

Learn more about Kruse at his campaign website and on his Facebook page.