Jeremy Shugarts is a member of Surf City’s Town Council with two years left in his term. But he’s running for mayor this year, partly, he says, because the Mayor controls the agenda.
Shugarts agrees with Surf City’s current strategy of keeping zoning ordinances strict on the beach while letting commercial development blossom on the mainland. But, he says, local government isn’t listening as well as it should to constituents. One way to solve that: create more citizen advisory committees – in addition to the existing six.
And if there’s one major project he could tackle as Mayor:
"I’ve been talking about something called a multi-use path. It’s super important to me, and this multi-use path – my vision for this is to create connectivity with Surf City – health and wellness… You’re going to have all the developments connected. People can ride their bike, they can walk, they can take a golf cart to the beach. And that’s something that I’d love to see. And there are some possibilities to do that without raising taxes. There’s the Greenway Project, the Mountains to the Sea trails – there’s a lot of different aspects we can do that with."
What about those six felony charges over election law violations? He says he has faith in the judicial system – which will show, he says, that he simply failed to update his driver license, and received no personal benefit.
He also denies the rumors that he owes back child support.
