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In Episode 38 of the Hustle & Heat Podcast, we sit down with Elaine Allen-Emrich, candidate for North Port City Commission District 4.
Elaine joins the podcast to discuss her background, decades of involvement in the North Port community, her experience covering local government, and what led her to run for City Commission.
We dive into the issues facing a rapidly growing North Port, the role of local government, infrastructure, development, accountability, community involvement, and Elaine’s perspective on the future of the city.
Whether you’re a longtime North Port resident or new to the area, this episode offers an opportunity to hear directly from a candidate seeking to represent the community.
Hustle & Heat Podcast
Episode 38 | Elaine Allen-Emrich
Transcript from the YouTube captions, with names and places corrected. It may contain errors.
0:00 What’s up, guys? And welcome back to another episode of Hustle and Heat Podcast. Today is episode 38. We’ve been doing this for a long 38 weeks, and my
0:08 name is George, your host. And without further ado, I’d like to welcome a uh running commissioner for uh District 4,
0:16 Miss Elaine Emrich. Elaine, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for coming on.
0:20 Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and why you do it.
0:24 My name is Elaine Allen-Emrich and I have lived in North Port since 1989
0:31 and a couple things that I have that are that I do that are really passionate is I’m a member of the Kiwanis Club in
0:40 North Port and I have been for more than three decades. I’m the president of Holly’s Hope, which is
0:48 suicide prevention and anti-bullying and I’m on the board for Friends of the
0:54 Library here in North Port. So, I do a lot of volunteering in between running for office and I had a full-time job uh up until four months ago.
1:06 No more full-time job. No, running for office. I had to quit. That’s a full-time job and a half, huh?
1:12 Yeah, I had to quit my job to run for office.
1:14 All right. Tell us a little bit about your history and what you used to do. It says here you used to be like a reporter or something.
1:20 Yep. I I spent 39 years as a newspaper reporter covering city, um, county,
1:28 school board, airport authority, metropolitan planning organization, all local. it. I started out in North Port
1:38 and then I’ve reported in Englewood, Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda, and Sarasota.
1:45 And I’ve covered everything from the, you know, the govern the government to the Denise Amber Lee trial, Gabby
1:54 Petito, um, other murders that have happened in the city, and then lots and lots of good
2:01 things that have happened over the years. Um, what has been the highlight of that part of your career?
2:10 It what’s what’s wild is I really could write a book about like crime in North Port and that’s not a bad thing.
2:18 It’s like when be when you cover something like the Denise Amber Lee trial. It’s a three-w weekek trial and
2:26 you really get the nuts and bolts of what the police department has to do, the behind the scenes. Um, we had a little girl named Coral Rose Fulwood.
2:36 She was six years old. She was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. And, um, I watched the police department prepare
2:43 for that. And it was back in the day, too. So, like there was stacks and stacks of paperwork that I got to read
2:52 through to prepare for that case um, for it to go to trial. So, I would say
3:01 preparing for court and stuff like that was so intense.
3:06 But on the dayto-day, uh what was interesting about that is you start off your day with um something that you’re
3:15 going to write about and then you have to go get the one side of the story, then you have to go get the other side of the story. You have to meet
3:23 strangers. You have to make sure all your information is correct. And by 5 6:00 it all has to be packaged together
3:32 and ready to go to press. And so every day I would meet strangers and then I
3:39 would tell their stories and then the next day do it again with a totally different topic. So, you really could be
3:48 dealing with something like um a murder one day and you you work on that for several days and then all of a sudden
3:55 you’re like, “Oh, you know, it’s time for the parade. I’ll go take care of that uh trial you were talking about
4:02 earlier.” Um what was it? Um that was Coral Rose Fullwood or Denise Amber Lee.
4:08 No, the Denise one. What was that? I’m not familiar with that case. So, what happened was there was a man named Michael King and he showed up at uh this
4:18 woman’s house in the estates area and he had a gun and this woman was still
4:24 breastfeeding um her young son and her other son was a toddler and he he
4:32 pointed a gun at her and so she put her two children together in the play pen and he took her from her house and he took her to his house and he raped her.
4:44 And then he took her on that was on that side of town. Then he took her on this side of town and he borrowed a shovel, a
4:51 gas can, and a flashlight from his uh cousin. And while he was doing that, she
4:59 she was tied to a bed post in the back of this Camaro. and uh she she was able
5:05 to dial 911 on his phone and she said, “I want to go home to my babies and she
5:12 gave the address and the 911 operator was repeating like, um, what’s going on?” And the other 911 operator
5:22 realized, “We think we’ve got a kidnapping going on.” And so, um, he
5:28 realized that she had dialed 911 and the last word you hear him say is, “Now I
5:35 have to kill you.” And so he takes her down US 41 and they get to the light at Cornelius
5:42 right here, Cornelius and Cranberry. And um, he’s in his Camaro and she’s in the
5:50 back banging her hand against the window of the car. And there’s another woman, uh, Jane
5:58 Kowalski. And Jane calls 911. And Jane is like, “Listen, there’s a child banging on the window that this child is
6:07 in distress.” And we are like driving really slow. We’re holding up traffic.
6:14 Something is not right. So she says, “What do you want me to do? It’s a It’s
6:21 a Camaro. It’s darker color. And so they said, “Well, meet us at Toys R Us in
6:29 Port Charlotte.” Because she said, “Oh my goodness, he made a left turn and do you want me to follow, but I would have
6:37 to go down and around.” And they said, “No, no, you meet us. We’ll take care of it.” So he makes a left turn back into
6:47 North Port. See, when when she made the call, it started out in North Port, but
6:53 because of the way the phone uh ping, um it ended up going to Charlotte County
7:00 911 dispatch. And so even though there was a missing woman in North Port and even though she was the daughter of a
7:09 sergeant down in Charlotte, um the wires got kind of crossed. So he makes a left
7:17 turn and he disappears. She goes to the Toys R Us and I kind of joke because she’s what still sitting there. Toys R
7:25 Us is long gone from Charlotte. They never showed up to talk to her. So she waits all this time and she goes down to her sister’s house and like Cape Coral.
7:36 Well, then on the news she sees there’s a missing woman.
7:40 And she’s like, “Well, I must have seen that it was a woman then. Why doesn’t anybody want to talk to me?” So, she
7:48 calls North Port and she says, “Hey, I did see that car that you guys are
7:55 describing made a lefthand turn and it went down Toledo Blade.” Well, there was a massive manhunt looking for this uh
8:04 mother of two. And sure enough, what happened was he shot and killed her. He
8:12 buried her off of Toledo Blade. And then he got onto the interstate. Well, when he got on the interstate, there was a
8:20 state trooper, Eddie Pope, who was sitting there, you know, because they effectively had shut down the city. So
8:28 he follows him onto the interstate, pulls him over, and Michael King gets
8:35 out of the vehicle, but first, and they’re like, “What?” And he’s his his pants are all wet, and he has a shovel
8:44 and a gas can and a flashlight. And um he they’re like, “Where’s the girl?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know what
8:52 you’re talking about.” And so they grab him and they take him back through North Port looking for her. And um I um I
9:01 was in a the very first Citizens Law Enforcement Academy. Um and they pulled
9:08 myself, a commissioner, and Josh uh Taylor out because we were all like media and they said, “Hey, we have a
9:16 missing mother.” And so we left the academy and we went I started looking for her. And so it was interesting
9:25 because all of the um all of the reporters were over at Michael King’s house, but I went a different way and
9:34 sure enough we had seen uh Kevin Sullivan, the officer who had him. And um they were looking for this woman
9:43 Denise. And sure enough, um, Michael King walked by me, and it was the first time in my career I couldn’t pull my
9:51 camera up fast enough. The evilness of this man as he had walked by. He told
9:58 the police that a helicopter pilot shot her and he gave all these ridiculous answers. And the next uh that was a
10:07 Thursday night, they looked for her all day Friday and on Saturday they found her in a shallow grave off a Toledo Blade.
10:16 Yeah. And this now and this this part is um this part is what I what I care about
10:23 because that I always knew there would be new construction over in that area and I was always like somebody’s going
10:31 to find that gun and only people who knew about Denise Amber Lee and the police
10:37 are going to know about that gun. So I saw Eddie Pope about four months ago and I said, “Ed, what happened to that gun?
10:46 why did you guys not find the murder uh weapon? And he said, Elaine, check this out. He said, when when I pulled over
10:54 Michael King, his window, passenger window was down this big. He said he tossed that gun out the window, but we
11:04 didn’t realize it at the time. It was like 1:00 in the morning. And so he said the next day I went back out to the
11:11 interstate and I combed it. He goes, “Do you know there was a crew, like a a a crew of people that were out there
11:19 cleaning the interstate? Somebody grabbed that gun? Didn’t know that it was a murder weapon.” And I was like, “What? I’m going to I’m going to write
11:28 that book.” [laughter] So, he didn’t know the lady. He just wanted to kill somebody. He so the so
11:36 during the trial there was this um little woman um she was about 52
11:42 and she had like vibrant red hair and she said that she went out to like the mailbox to get her mail and there was
11:51 this creepy guy in a green Camaro that was driving really slow past her house and it freaked her out because they were
12:00 out in the estates and it was very quiet and people didn’t just creep by their house. So, she ran in her house and
12:07 locked the door. So, she had guilt thinking that she was maybe the target.
12:14 But yeah, Michael was looking to take somebody. They think that he he knew the area because he grew up here. And there
12:23 um there was one during the trial, there was another really ridiculous thing that had happened. Um, Michael had taken this
12:32 woman out on an ATV ride and they get out in the middle of uh we like the middle of nowhere like Yorkshire and
12:41 he stops and he looks at this woman in the face and he said, “I’m going to kill you.” And she like starts laughing.
12:49 She’s like, “No, you’re not. We’re going to smoke a joint.” And she pulls the joint out of her pocket and she makes him smoke and she’s like, “Come on. Come
12:57 on. Take me back. take me back. So he takes her back and like she said, I never went out with him again, but like
13:05 his eyes got really crazy when he told her he was going to kill her.
13:09 So is he in prison now? He’s fully No, no, Michael King is now dead. They executed him uh a couple months ago just
13:17 after just after I quit. Um they uh his execution they waited so long to 10 years to execute him.
13:28 That’s a story right there. I’ve never heard that one. Thank you for sharing it. You’re welcome.
13:32 Um when did you realize North Port wasn’t just where you live but a community you wanted to fight for?
13:39 I I came to North Port in ‘ 89. I was like 19 years old and we didn’t have from where?
13:49 Fro from Jersey. Okay.
13:51 So I didn’t have when I when I moved here there was no Walmart, there was no McDonald’s, there was no high school, no
14:00 middle school, no hospital. And I there was Manatee Community College. And I had
14:08 come here in July and no I came here I’m sorry I came here in January but in July
14:15 I wanted to be able to go to college here. I had enough money for uh to to enroll in college but I didn’t have
14:24 enough money for books. And somebody suggested well listen just ask the Early Bird Kiwanis club. They had already
14:32 given out their scholarships, but if you just ask, maybe they’ll say yes to you.
14:38 And so I wrote a letter to them and then I appeared before their club at the VFW and I explained I’m I’m very new to
14:47 North Port, young. I was younger than everybody in that room. And I said, I just I need like $250$500
14:56 for books. if you guys can just help me and believe in me, I I will somehow give back to you. And sure enough, they gave
15:05 me the book money that I needed to to keep me going. And then I had the opportunity to join Kiwanis not too long
15:13 after that. And so that’s when I started giving back. Um, as a Kiwanian, we had
15:20 realized that kids at Glenallen Elementary School were going to school with sneakers that were either much
15:28 bigger because they were wearing dad’s sneakers or much smaller because they had outgrown them and their parents couldn’t afford to buy them new ones.
15:37 And so, um, in partnership with the city of North Port, we started the children’s community clothing closet. And I had had
15:46 a little baby, my daughter Cheyenne, and um somebody had come to the clothing closet with a newborn and she didn’t
15:54 have any diapers. And I was like, “Well, shoot, we don’t have any here, but I’ll give you my daughter’s diapers because it was just somebody who was more poor
16:03 than I was.” And so we had run that children’s closet for 30 years.
16:10 We were out of an old social services building in the city and um the city wanted that one back. So, they put us in
16:19 another one which was condemned and had rats in it and no running water. And then we were able to get a um a portable
16:28 unit and we loaded everything into the portable unit right next door. And we
16:36 were really excited. We had brand new sneakers and socks and underwear and we were gonna open up like October 1st,
16:44 2024 and we were so excited. And September 28th, 2024, Hurricane Ian uh tornado
16:53 ripped the roof off of our brand new portable unit and rained inside and ruined all of our socks and underwear
17:01 and clothing and school uniforms. And so, um, we’re still working on getting a
17:09 new building, but the club has been giving, uh, clothing and and underwear and socks to kids in North Port for 30 plus years.
17:21 All 11 schools.
17:22 That’s a good story right there. Um, you’ve watched the city transform. What has North Port gained through growth and what has it lost?
17:30 So through growth, I I you you could probably answer this one. People will
17:36 often say, “Well, why don’t we have a Trader Joe’s or why don’t we have like
17:44 um more restaurants?” And I call it the butts and seats theory. that if you are not busy as a restaurant owner at 2
17:53 o’clock in the afternoon to be able to pay your weight staff that it’s probably not going to be um feasible for you to
18:02 be in North Port as let’s say like a really big restaurant.
18:08 So the more people that come here, the more variety you’re going to get, the more types of stores you’re going to
18:17 get. So, a person will say, “But they have them in Venice.” Yes. Because the median age in Venice is older and
18:24 there’s people with more disposable income. In North Port, half of the people in North Port leave and they go to work
18:33 and then they come back at 5:00 and they can come eat dinner here with you at 6
18:39 and 7 o’clock, but at two o’clock in the afternoon, they’re working. And so North Port is so different than Port
18:48 Charlotte and Venice and Sarasota. We are very, very unique. And so what we’ve
18:55 gained over the years, we’ve just hit, while you were gone, we just hit the 100,000 mark of people who live in
19:03 North Port now. It was in the paper a couple days ago. And so what you’ve lost
19:10 though is that hometown feel in some ways. You can listen, you can still go
19:16 out to parts of North Port where it’s nice and quiet. There’s there’s little traffic and you’ll still feel that
19:24 hometown feel. But um I I get into arguments with people all the time.
19:29 People are like, “We’ve lost all all.” See, I’m a I’m a real person. You tell me the word all and I’m going to say all of them. We’ve lost all of our trees.
19:39 Well, we haven’t lost all of our trees.
19:41 What about all of Yorkshire? that you there are hundreds of millions of trees in the Yorkshire area, but I live um
19:50 over here in the Highland Ridge area and uh we didn’t have a tree ordinance when
19:58 when my house was being built in the 80s, but people knew to keep them. I had four oak trees. One of them fell on my
20:07 house during Hurricane Ian, but we without a tree ordinance have trees over
20:14 there. It’s beautiful. North Port’s a Tree City USA um recipient for like 26 years in a row
20:23 now. We’re going to keep that designation. One of the things the city has done is they’ve created a uh
20:30 environmental division. So when Walmart went to build, they had to clear a big
20:39 chunk of trees. Well, at the time they had to pay $17,000 in tree mitigation. So that will go into
20:48 a fund and that will be used for replacement trees. So, the good news with that is now you’ll have trees that
20:55 are planted at different times instead of like all of them being a hundred years old or, you know, 50 years old.
21:04 So, we we’ve lost some of the hometown feel, but you know, we’ve gained um some incredible people who live here and Oh, yeah.
21:13 I like it. Yeah. And business owners, the chambers. Some people don’t like it, though.
21:17 Well, no. There’s some people in the city do not like growth. Well, I here’s the way I do look at it. There are people like myself,
21:25 I’ve lived here since 1989. I knew what I was getting into. When I, you know, when I moved here, I went to the chamber
21:33 and I, one of the first arguments I got into was the former former chamber director. She had said, “One day
21:41 North Port will be like California.” And I couldn’t envision that whatsoever. And I’m like, “No, it’s not.” And my boss
21:50 was like, “Well, don’t be disrespectful.” But I was like, “We’re not gonna beat California. That’s just impossible.”
21:57 But what the real message was is North Port won’t always have 22,000 people. It won’t always have 55,000.
22:06 North Port is going to build out at approximately 175,000 people. You think we’re going to get to 175?
22:13 I think we will because of the Yorkshire area. There’s How long until 175?
22:20 Oh, I think it’s going to take many years because you don’t Give me a number.
22:24 You want a number? I would say in about about 20 years we’ll be built out. Okay.
22:32 Um, what decision is North Port making today that people 20 years ago, uh, 20 years from now could look back
22:40 and ask why didn’t they fix that when they had the chance?
22:44 that your question is exactly what’s happening right now with um Price Boulevard. Oh, I know.
22:52 But but do you know this? In 1999, I wrote a story about um Perry Eisenaut.
22:59 He was the road and drainage um supervisor. He was uh the head of public works. Perry wanted to buy vacant lots
23:08 along Price Boulevard for $8,000. He especially wanted them along where the bridges kind of connect so that the city
23:18 would have rights of way. And then he wanted corner lots because um when you when you fourlane you need extra space.
23:26 And so it was $56 is how much we paid per household,
23:34 right? And Perry was saying,”Listen, if you will let me buy these lots and if you will let me create a transfer
23:44 station, I will boost it up to $75 per household. But I will take that extra money and I will put it in buying the
23:52 lots and creating a transfer station.” The reason we need a transfer station is because our guys, this was um years ago,
24:01 they’re lugging the garbage into the the regular garbage um trucks and then we’re taking them to Nokomis and at the
24:09 time probably I would say the Cranberry San Mateo was probably the furthest they were going. Um, but then they have to go from San Mateo out to Laurel-Nokomis.
24:21 And because their routes at the time probably had about 800 inside the trucks, you could only fit enough for
24:29 400 um, houses before you’d have to go dump and come back to your route. So, he was like, you know, I’m sending people
24:36 out of town and if we did a transfer station, they could stay in town. I could get them back out to their roots
24:43 faster. I could be more efficient. So, the commissioners that meeting, that budget hearing, said, “No, we’re not
24:52 going to let you buy any lots, and no, we’re not going to let you build a transfer station.” And they rolled back the rate from $56 to $52.
25:03 And then that plan sat on the shelf for many, many years. Then I wrote about it
25:10 again in 2012. Hey, how about a transfer station? How about widening Price
25:16 Boulevard? Well, houses began to um get built on Price Boulevard. So then when
25:24 the city needed rights of way, now you have a $300,000 house there, not an $8,000 lot. So in
25:33 you have to offer fair market value for to to take some of that land. So because
25:41 the city didn’t they they we call it kicking the can down the road because
25:47 the commissioners every year would not plan for this growth or not pay for the
25:57 growth. We’re now paying $89 million for something that would have cost 27
26:05 million. So here’s my thought. What what are we doing today that 20 years from
26:12 now we are the only city in the state of Florida that doesn’t allow the
26:20 government to borrow when it needs something. So let me give you a quick example. The
26:28 city said we need $15 million if there is an
26:36 emergency. And here’s what would be an emergency. You know how we had Hurricane Helene and then two weeks later we had Hurricane Milton?
26:46 The city of North Port would have had enough money for Helene, but the city would not have had enough money for
26:53 Milton. So what that means is there was no debris removal contracts for any new
27:01 problems that happened in the second hurricane. we wouldn’t be able to contract with anybody because we
27:08 wouldn’t have that emergency borrowing power. So, how can we borrow?
27:13 You have to go to the taxpayers and you have to ask them permission.
27:17 So, you don’t want to change. So, what people don’t understand is like it’s like if you wanted to buy a house, a
27:25 car, a boat, a pool, you would have to have all of the money in hand every time
27:32 before you could ever buy it. That’s the way North Port operates. People keep saying, “I want to doge North Port.”
27:40 Great. Do it. Our credit is perfect. We don’t borrow. How do we have bad credit?
27:45 That’s what they’re looking for. fraud, waste, and abuse. They’re looking to see if we have a lesbian and gay parade.
27:53 They’re seeing if we have um an office that only caters to um people of foreign descent. That, you know, all the things
28:01 that DOGE was looking for through the state of Florida, we’re not doing. So, it’s funny when people get really,
28:09 really mad about that. It’s about how you know the borrowing is in other places or how things are out of control
28:17 in other places. If you don’t have the ability to borrow and you have to pay for everything upfront, then you are
28:24 fiscally responsible. Yeah, you probably have too many employees, but you can fix that through a study and then weed out
28:32 what you don’t need. But the fact that we don’t have the ability to borrow means the let me give you the the
28:41 transfer station $17 million with growth we would have paid we would
28:49 have paid $15 this year right to borrow for that transfer station. Next year
28:56 when 4,000 more people come that the 15 would have dropped to $13 because more
29:03 people are paying for that transfer station. Within seven years we would have been paying $10 a year to borrow
29:12 for that transfer station and then it would have been done within 10 years and it wouldn’t have been. Right now they’re
29:20 proposing 120 onetime fee and people are losing their mind because there’s no trust. Well, you’re you’re going to
29:27 charge me it again. No, because once they have the money in hand, they can build the transfer station and then
29:34 it’ll keep the employees in town. It’ll save the wear and tear. Do you know a garbage truck cost $850,000?
29:45 So when there is a crash on the interstate on their way to the dumps, it’s a stop go stop go stop go on a brake system.
29:55 It’s it’s sitting there for 4 hours to dump a load to only go back out to um
30:02 San Mateo. You know, it’s a long day for them. That doesn’t have to be. We can make them way more efficient. The city
30:11 needed to tell their story a little bit better. The city needed to tell us, “Hey guys, $10 a year.” I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t
30:19 think any way a city will tell a story, people in this city is going to listen.
30:24 Just looking at the Facebook comments and how hateful people are with no mind thought process behind it.
30:31 I feel like we live in a city where people are just mad at the world and they don’t know why.
30:35 But the problem is it means you pay double.
30:38 Seriously, if there’s another hurricane, think about this. They asked for $15 million, right? Yeah.
30:45 The federal government will give you 100% back if you get the debris picked up within 60 days and then it keeps
30:54 going down to like 75%. Here’s the thing, okay, let’s say FEMA didn’t give the city money back and it still
31:02 borrowed 15 million, right? You still have insurance for a brand new hurricane. So, even though let’s say
31:10 those those debris removal contracts were $4 million and we had that money because we were legally able to borrow it, the four million would have gotten
31:19 paid back through insurance. It wouldn’t have cost us money. But it will it will
31:25 now because we don’t have those contracts in place because we don’t have the power to go get them because we can’t borrow.
31:34 I know. All right. I got two last questions for you. All right.
31:37 All right. Question number one. After years of questioning elected officials, why did you decide you wanted to become one? What happened that made you say,
31:44 “I’m running.” For me, when I would investigate
31:52 something in government, and I could always tell if staff didn’t want to do something, I could tell if
31:59 the commissioners were edgy about something that would really impact the people. And I I had solutions. I had answers.
32:08 When the city was doing the ULDC code, I was angry. I was angry that they were using um
32:16 they were using court filings from t uh from t Texas instead of Fort Myers and
32:25 instead of Punta Gorda. We could have taken the sign ordinance from Sarasota County, put it in our ULDC and tailored
32:33 it for our people. And yet I did public comment. I’m screaming from the rooftops. They were saying that signs
32:41 are unconstitutional. It’s not true. And I was just like, you know what? You know what? If you can’t if you can’t have a
32:51 voice that way, if they’re not going to listen, then you run for office and you make that change. I’ve been advocating for people since 1989.
33:01 So I I’m ready. Do you think that’s what makes you different and that’s why people should vote for you?
33:07 I think it’s what it would get me in trouble at work. You know, my job was to report on something. I was helping people find homes if they were homeless
33:15 and I was reporting about them. A lot of times, you know, think about it. A person’s going to come to a reporter as
33:23 their last ditch effort. They are so frustrated and aggravated and and and lost. And then, you know, I would work
33:31 through some of it. I would get on the phone and say, “Uh, why why are you not why are you not giving this man his
33:38 permit for his duplexes? Why are you taking away his rights? And then you’re going to charge the city to drive by the
33:46 their attorney down in Punta Gorda.” They just stopped work on this guy’s um house for no reason. And um I worked it took
33:55 me a year, but they finally led up and gave it uh to him uh the permitting. Um
34:04 I helped here in North Port. This guy insisted it wasn’t his boat. It wasn’t
34:10 on his property. He got charged $16,000 for a boat. And what killed me was the
34:17 code enforcement officer at the time was a retired cop. never ran the VIN number to make sure that that VIN was was
34:25 registered to that man. I wrote about it and wrote about it and sure enough, the city in a commission meeting gave that man a $16,000 refund.
34:35 Wow.
34:37 All right, last question. Your husband, Pete Emrich, currently holds District 4.
34:42 Some voters will naturally ask whether this is continuity of the same political voice. Where do you disagree with Pete on how the city should be run?
34:52 So, I think we come with two totally different skill sets. Pete’s a veteran.
34:59 Pete had a really big focus on veterans.
35:03 He helped bring the circle of honor. If you’ve never been to it, go there. It’s over by city hall. It’s a beautiful
35:11 space for veterans ceremonies. and it was something he really did focus on.
35:16 Worked with the veteran community. He’s really excited that the VA hospital is also going to be right there near city hall. That that was Pete’s focus for me.
35:28 I told you in the beginning, you know, working with children and families who literally they don’t have enough money
35:35 for socks and underwear. They don’t have enough money for increases to their
35:40 taxes. So Pete and I it um we are polar opposites and I people who don’t know us
35:50 wouldn’t know that but you know like when I say polar opposites Pete smokes I
35:57 don’t Pete curses I don’t you know we’re just you got to drop the f on totally different people and and
36:05 seriously the other thing that I think is really unfair is you can say that on Facebook a million times, but in your
36:14 own household, is that really true? Do you and your wife agree? Would you vote the same exact way? Would you even come
36:22 at an issue the same way? Because if the answer is yes, holy cow. But even men and women just think about things
36:30 differently. And there are times when I will go to Pete and I will say, “Look, A, you’re not digging deep enough into
36:37 this. and B, why are you not looking at this component?
36:42 What if he starts doing the same thing to you when you get elected?
36:44 That would be funny. I [laughter] But he has said one too many times, if you don’t like it, you need to run because
36:52 that is the cause that you need to take up. And so I’m like, you know what?
36:57 Don’t don’t offer me a good time. And I do have to say this though, 2027 and 28 are going to be some of the
37:07 most critical times for the city of North Port. No borrowing power. We’re going to lose $8 million through
37:16 property tax reform the first year and 15 million the second year if it passes.
37:21 That’s our police budget, our fire part of our fire budget, emergency management, cyber security. It’s it’s
37:30 really really serious. Um, everybody’s saying, “Oh, they’ll figure it out.” I don’t like that answer at all. You need
37:37 somebody who has years of government experience to figure that out and not somebody who’s brand new because it’s
37:45 overwhelming to learn the job and now all of a sudden you’re talking about cuts and really serious. You might have to freeze different positions for real.
37:56 And um it’s a quality of life that’s going to change in North Port. So on day one, you might get hated.
38:05 Yeah. Right. Yeah.
38:07 A lot of people hate a lot of elected officials. They do.
38:10 You see it all over social media, whether it’s the city manager, uh city commissioners, whatever it is. And I’m, you know, I’m as a reporter, I was used
38:19 to people not trusting me until they talked to me for 10 minutes. And then they were like, you’re I’m not out to get you. What do you need help with?
38:28 Let’s work through this.
38:30 All right. Let’s end this on a positive note. Why should people vote for you?
38:34 People should vote for me because I’m committed. I’m serious. I know the job.
38:40 I There’s two quasi judicial hearings that are going to go on today. I understand what that means and I’m ready to do this on day one.
38:49 Yeah, I am. Any other words for the people watching?
38:53 I thank you very much, North Port, for the support and I thank you for having me and um come out on November 3rd and I’ll see you at the polls.
39:04 All right, Elaine, thank you for uh coming on this uh uh show and we appreciate you and for you guys watching, we appreciate you watching.
39:12 Please like, comment, and subscribe if you like this video. Thank you.
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