Published On: Wed, Aug 15th, 2018

Meet Your Boca Raton Mayoral Candidates: Scott Singer

By: Michael Demyan

Scott Singer will be running against Al Zucaro and Bernard Korn for the role of Boca Raton’s mayor in the upcoming election on Aug. 28.

After Mayor Susan Haynie was arrested in April, she was suspended by Gov. Rick Scott, leaving Singer to take over as mayor in her absence since May 7. He will be leaving his seat on the Boca Raton City Council in order to run for mayor, which is a seat he had occupied since he was elected in 2014. He was recently re-elected to seat A just last year.

Singer has earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. In addition to his current role as mayor, he also serves on multiple boards and committees, including the Sober Homes Task Force and the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency.

Singer believes that traffic is an issue in the city that needs to be looked at and he cited his recent accomplishments regarding the issue as reasons for why he should be elected to the position.

“I put forth five proposals already, some of which have been implemented already to better move people throughout the city,” he said. “And traffic and development have long been concerns. You can go back to the archives of the Boca Raton news from 50 years ago and they’re talking about those issues when we were a city of 5,000 people.”

Singer also added that he is currently working on a plan for a dedicated access ramp that travels westbound from Florida Atlantic University to I-95.

Maintaining balanced development in Boca Raton is another item he wants to focus on. Singer said that he has been a strong voice against overdevelopment since he was elected to the city council in 2014, opposing a plan to add 2,000 residential units and only approving projects he feels were consistent with the city’s goals and code.

Singer added that public and school safety are very important to him and was proud to say that Boca Raton was the first city to dedicate police officers to every school the day after the Parkland shooting in February. Recently, a long-term agreement was reached with the school district for them to fund the police officers.

“I was committed to having police officers in every school even when the taxpayers were funding it and now we don’t have to be, but we had commitment on day one to have police officers there, not only visibly, but behind the scenes,” he said.

Singer noted that he is Boca Raton’s lone representative on the Advisory Boundary Committee and made sure that when school boundary discussions start again, Boca will have a municipal advocate there. If he was to lose the race for mayor, the city government would no longer have an active official on the committee.

“If I lose my seat as mayor, Boca loses its seat and its voice on that board,” he said.

Singer said he believes that partnership with residents is key and along with that comes transparency, which has been put into question by many residents since Haynie’s arrest earlier this year. He thinks that one person’s actions should not tarnish the entirety of city government and he makes sure that all of the city council’s dealings are “in sunshine.”

“We don’t have behind the scenes conversations in stark contrast to one of my opponents in this race who has bragged on his own blog in the last month that he’s had three closed door meetings with developers and negotiating a settlement without the residents having a seat at the table on Midtown,” he said. “I fought hard for residents to be involved in that process with multiple public outreach sessions and a full discussion of planning of what was best for the residents.”

Right now, Singer feels that along with someone who has experience as mayor, the city needs someone with experience in Boca’s city council as well.

“Not only do I have the experience of being mayor these last few months and leading the city through a turbulent time, I have the experience of being on the city council,” he said. “I’m the most senior level there and we’re going to need that now.”

Residents will have the opportunity to hear from Singer and his two opponents at the Boca Raton Tribune Candidate Forum on August 24 at the Boca Raton Community Center. For more information on the candidate forum, please click here.

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