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A dozen Palm Beach County municipalities will have local elections next month and we're hearing from many of those candidates.
We'll start this morning in Jupiter, where two people are running to challenge Incumbent Council Member and Vice Mayor Malise Sundstrom.
She is a one-time employee of USAID, the federal agency currently being gutted by the Trump administration. Sundstrom was in charge of evaluating government programs to make sure they were effective. She has also worked for the Small Business Administration.
Jupiter will be giving up the services of Palm Beach County Fire Rescue in 2026, in favor of building its own Fire Rescue Department. That's something Sundstrom voted in favor of, despite widespread community opposition. She says many of those who showed up at Council meetings may have been compromised.
"A lot of the residents that came to speak did have very close ties, either family members of county fire union members themselves. And the funding for that political action committee actually came from the county fire union."
The councilwoman says the county wanted to double the tax rate.
Linda McDermott ran against Sundstrom unsuccessfully three years ago and is trying again.
She's a 40-year Jupiter resident who was the manager of the old Jupiter-Tequesta National Bank on Indiantown Road back in the 1980s and is a longtime employee with the City of West Palm Beach in finance.
McDermott is against the new Fire Rescue Department, but she says it's mainly about what she calls a lack of transparency, despite town leaders claiming there were plenty of public meetings.
"There were not 9 public meetings. The public outcry, it was phenomenal. More people than what vote signed surveys to say that we want input, we want to vote. Please take this to a vote before you make a concrete decision. And the decision was already made."
Opponents filed a lawsuit against the town but a judge ruled in the town's favor.
Meanwhile, candidate Willie Puz says that is one of the reasons he is running. Like McDermott, he insists that residents never truly had a voice in the decision to start up the Fire Rescue Department.
"The residents voices should be heard. I want to bring transparency back to the dais and I want to bring fiscal responsibility. I hope, should I be elected, that we get a chance to look at all of those numbers again to make sure that those tax savings that this current Council has promised are gonna be realized."
Puz works for the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County with a focus on legislative affairs.
Today, February 10, marks the deadline to register to vote in the March 11 municipal elections.
Visit VotePalmBeach.gov for more information.