Incumbent Buddy Fowler has served on the Surf City Town Council since 2004, and has been in public service for most of his life. He’s running again, and he wants to continue to work on current council projects.
Those projects include water and sewer upgrades; improvements to bike paths, sidewalks, and greenway trails; and designating Surf City as an engineered beach.
Fowler says the two biggest issues facing Surf City are beach renourishment, and the management of economic growth.
And he want to see diversity in how the town develops.
“The world was built on mom and pop operations… but I think you have to have a mixture. We need to plan for services for a wide variety, not only the mom and pops or the big box stores, we need more medical services coming in. We need to provide for our citizens so they don't have to travel very far to enjoy the amenities and services of what they need.”
Fowler says there’s only one thing he’d like to do differently if re-elected:
“The last storm we had, took out most of the communications on the east coast. It was pretty bad and we couldn't get information out, couldn't get information in… so we need to… do a little better job in updating our emergency preparedness plan.”