Mayoral Candidate Profile: Sara Roberts McCarley

Age: 54 
Profession: Non-profit professional and Lakeland City Commissioner
Political affiliation: Republican Party of Florida
Civic involvement: Founder and chairman of the Randy Roberts Foundation, SUN ‘n FUN board member, Bonnet Springs Park Board member, Polk Arts and Cultural Alliance Board Member, former executive director of Polk Vision and many other past and present
Family: Married to Trey, mother to two children

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

The Lakelander
You know the highs and the lows of what it looks like to manage and to lead in a growing city with a diverse group of people who need served. What’s your ‘Why’ of running for mayor?

Sara Roberts McCarley
My why is, ‘Why not me?’ We’re in a bottle political arena right now, and it takes common people to serve. We’re only as good as people who are willing to serve so I applaud anybody who’s willing to serve. For me personally, to serve Lakeland is an honor and a privilege. In 2009, when I was widowed, this community rallied around me. My neighbors rallied around me and took very good care of me and my children. 

For me, it’s a no-brainer in that I like serving other people, I like having a mission. I like being on the altar guild at my church and doing the flowers at Easter, I like being on a PTA or a PTO and serving as president, or also serving as a silent auction chair, you know?

When I look at Lakeland as a city with the growth that it’s experiencing, I want to be in the room to make sure that we’re taking care of everyone…that we’re taking care of our residents, we’re taking care of families, we’re taking care of our neighbors

I want to make sure their garbage is picked up on time. I want to make sure that their water is working and coming into the house and going out of the house when it’s dirty. I want to make sure that when they flip the light switch that the lights come on. Doing that means I give up some time with my family and I visit with a lot of different constituents and a lot of different groups and listen to what they have to say and work really diligently behind the scenes to serve them well.

The Lakelander
What would your husband and/or children say about Sara the mayoral candidate? How would they describe you?

Sara
I think my husband, Trey, and Charlotte and Samuel, my kids, aren’t that impressed, to be really honest. [To them], I'm their wife and mom. I also think they know that in our family dynamic that we serve others in different ways. They love Lakeland, too, and they are very extraordinarily supportive. 

Just to give you some insight to the last maybe 18 months to two years. I was approached to consider thinking about running for mayor after serving as a commissioner, and I went to my family and they were like, ‘Well, let's talk about it.’ We talk about a lot of things around our dinner table—we're really fortunate to be able to do that. Last summer…we had a weekend away and I said, ‘OK, we've got to make a decision if you guys are on board with me running for mayor, I really wanna do it, I really wanna serve the community. I think it's the right time for me professionally and for my family. With everything going on in the community, I'd really like to do this.’ And everyone signed off on it with enthusiasm, so for us, it's something where we give back to others and everyone's on board with it.

The Lakelander: The City has more than 2,800 employees. Why should people trust that you have the experience as well as the intangible skills that are incumbent whenever you’re working with a large diverse group of staff members, really ultimately pointing towards what’s best for Lakelanders? Why do you believe that you’re the person who can really take on that challenge?

Sara
I work hard to be accessible to people. A lot of people have my cell number and text me and they’ll say, ‘I’m sorry to bother you.’ And what I always say is, this is my job. I need to know what’s happening. I can’t work in a vacuum. None of us on the commission can. I think it’s important for people to understand that the mayor is one of seven votes. So although the title is bigger, in theory it’s still one of seven votes, and I really like that. 

I like being part of a collaborative group. I like facilitating, I think I have a strong background in facilitating through nonprofit management, through strategic planning for nonprofits as a consultant, through Polk Vision—all of my experiences in those worlds really helped me be a good facilitator. I actually think that that’s part of the role of the mayor, is to facilitate not only the meetings that we have but to facilitate the dialogue between our constituents and between the staff. 

For me it’s really using my skillset and my giftings of facilitation, accessibility and thoughtfulness, and listening to both sides, because the truth always lies in the middle. I think it’s really important to be a catalyst and a collaborator in the middle that can say, ‘Well, so this is going on in your neighborhood and this is going on at the city of Lakeland, and we have processes at the city of Lakeland and in public service that private sector doesn’t have.’ We have rules and [regulations] that are different, and you can’t just say we’re going to let you do X,Y,Z. We actually have state statute and law that dictates how we do business, so we have to marry those things together. 

The Lakelander
Earlier this year, I was at a community breakfast at Dream Center of Lakeland, and the city manager was talking about what’s to come in the city. He specifically said that in the near future Lakelanders and the city commission and city staff are going to have to either create a larger tax base or consider cuts to existing services to balance the budget. What steps would you take if elected mayor to ensure Lakeland is operating at a balanced budget while also offering the types and levels of service that the residents deserve?

Sara
That’s a great question. I think that every elected body, whether it’s local, state, or federal, their only job is to balance the budget. Our only job is to take what comes in from a tax base or from a state or from wherever and put that up against the services that we provide.

The state legislature has done a good job of that the last several years. They’ve balanced their budget. Congress hasn’t, Congress hasn’t balanced a budget since President Clinton was in office. And it’s because you have to make a hard decision and you have to say, we’re gonna cut’ X.’ That’s hard to do when you’re trying to be elected every two years when you’re a United States congressman. You run out of time…you’ve got to play by the rules and both parties, right?

Here, as mayor, I think we need to have a really honest conversation of what those services are and what they look like. Currently, our property taxes, and this is everywhere in most municipalities, they barely touch public safety. We get other money through ad valorem that comes to the Property Appraisers, we get state funding for different things...we are on a pretty lean budget. We also have to be really honest about how the city is working in each and every department. So where you look at Public Works—which that’s roads, sidewalks, tree trimming, all the things that really impact everyday life—it’s really about the hardscape, you know, managing that and then water and wastewater, the infrastructure under the ground, whether it’s broadband or the water system or cable or anything like that.

That’s why I talk a lot in campaign speeches as well as just in my daily life about infrastructure. It’s not sexy…[but] we’ve gotta figure out how to manage the increased construction costs on those things and the reality of the market in which we live and measure that against, how do we balance the budget on that? Is a millage rate a great idea? I don’t think so. I think there’s a way we can tighten things up, but we have to communicate to our constituents what it’s going to be in place of…if we have to cut somewhere, we have to have those hard community conversations with our community. We can have a real serious conversation of, if you want to keep taxes low and you want to pay for growth, how are we going to do that? 

The Lakelander
With your experience, do you believe that there's a sufficient level of transparency currently within our city government? What, if anything, would you change about how the city engages with its constituents….and is there easy and open access to the important information that they need?

Sara
Absolutely. I think transparency is critical. I have worked really hard since I came in as a city commissioner, specifically with regard to our strategic planning and budget process. So when you talk about budget transparency, I've quietly led the effort on tweaking how that happens over my last six and a half years as city commissioner, where I went to our deputy city manager at the time and said, ‘This is not a strategic plan, this is not budgeting and transparency.’ [I] worked hand in hand with him, he's now our city manager, in fixing that process. So that's a behind-the-scenes item that I'm trying to do and have accomplished because I think this year we've had a better transparent budget process than ever before, and I think we've done that together as a commission and with our staff.

I do think that anchor institutions in our community need to be transparent. I think people's trust has been fragmented and frayed over the last, probably since the 1960s, where we have been told one thing and then something else happens. So for me, serving on the city commission these last six and a half years, and if I get the chance to serve further, that's another thing I'm gonna push on—we need to do what we say we're gonna do. We have to have trust. and here's the thing, as a politician—I'll say that in air quotes—the onus is on us, whomever it is, if we don’t know something to say we don’t know and that we will come back to you with an answer and we will work with you to figure out the answer.

We have to have trust mutually. We have to have trust on the political side with our constituents. I have to trust that my constituents are telling me all the pieces of the puzzle. I have to trust that my staff is telling me all the pieces of the puzzle. Because if I don't know all the pieces of the puzzle, I can't help, and my whole goal in life is to help.

The Lakelander
What do you see, if anything, as a potential threat to the quality and way of life of Lakelanders over the next five to 10 years? What would you suggest that the city does or what leaders should explore to kind of preempt something that you see coming?

Sara
Apathy is the number one issue facing any community in the United States of America right now. If you want to sit on your phone in your own echo chamber and get fired up listening to the people who agree with you and not go out into your community and serve someone else, that is to the detriment of a society. We can have discourse and we can serve one another. It’s more important to get our hands dirty together and serve other people than it is to sit behind a screen and pontificate and post about how mad I am about X, Y, and Z. 

The city commission is only as good as our constituencies. If you want to be involved, we have boards and committees that you can serve on at the City of Lakeland that we would love to have new faces and people who are willing to volunteer for a finite amount of time. We don’t need career politicians. I have absolutely no interest in doing this the rest of my life. I feel like God has tasked me to serve where I am right now to use my gifts, and it’s finite, right? 

But after that’s finished, I cannot be apathetic about my community. After I finish serving, I still better be going and doing stuff because it’s only as good as what our neighbors do for one another, and we’re only as good as the people that we’re serving. So if we’re serving people who are apathetic that is going to make it really, really hard. And I think that’s the most dangerous place we can be in as a community. 

Now, do I think Lakelanders are apathetic? I don’t see it at all right now, but it can easily go awry if we’re not engaged. If we’re not engaged citizens, if we’re not civically engaged with the anchor institutions of our community, we’re gonna have problems.

I want to continue to have accessibility. I want to go and talk to young students, college students, civic groups, church groups, Boy Scout groups…to talk about how you get involved in civics. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing either, there are pockets of service that are available to you. 

The Lakeland
How do you give the young generation, our next workforce, hope that they can stay planted here in Lakeland and thrive?

Sara
That's a great question. When I graduated from Florida Southern College many years ago, we were in the middle of a recession, and I have an advertising undergrad degree, and the first thing that gets cut during a recession is advertising and public relations. This is hence how I ended up in nonprofit.

I struggle with the same thing. I have a 22-year-old right now finishing up grad school in another city, and [the challenge] is not exclusive to Lakeland. The housing markets everywhere right now are unattainable. The job markets are unique right now in that there are lots of opportunities, but you still have to find a pathway in. I think one of the benefits of being in Lakeland is that we're still a very accessible community. You don't have to be invited to participate in Lakeland. You can go find your passion and pursue it. Lakeland is growing, but it still has a small town feel in that you can find inroads through your personal activities, the things you want to volunteer in.

I always encourage people to volunteer. If you're passionate about something—say you're an athlete and you have a 9 to 5 job—go volunteer at the YMCA or volunteer at a sports activity because you used to play soccer and you want to coach little kid's soccer. That helps you not only be a part of the community, it helps you network a little bit in making inroads in the connections that can help you with your job pursuits. And there might be jobs out there that you don't even know exist yet that you'd be perfect for.

Now, tying that though, to the economic viability of being a grownup that's a whole ‘nother nut to crack. I think we do offer in Lakeland a lot of diverse affordability options. The commission, since I've been on [it], we have worked diligently to provide more affordable housing probably than any commission prior to us and probably more than most in the state. We've worked really hard…making sure there are places for people to live, and we don't want the brain drain. We want our college students to stay here and build a life and we want to encourage that.

Learn more about Sara and follow her campaign:
saraforlakeland.com 

INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK:
sara4lakeland

CONTACT HER:
sararrmccarley@gmail.com