Chris Messina's Priorities for Orange County, Florida
We Must Diversify Our Economy
Currently greater Orlando/Orange County ranks last out of the top 50 metro areas in the US in average net income (Census Bureau and other studies). Yet we have a tremendous opportunity to attract high-paying, tech-based employers. My team is already leveraging my high tech business experience, regional industrial consortium background, and Harvard Business School CEO network to identify those firms.
As background, Orange County started as a center of the global citrus industry. Shortly afterwards, defense technology was added. Then Disney World arrived, opening its doors in 1971. Universal, SeaWorld and FunSpot followed, ushering in the current Theme Park era. Now, while continuing to build on our agricultural past and entertainment present, we must look to future industries for the next wave of our growth.
Space technology (“SpaceTech”) is particularly promising for Orange County, given our multiple, untapped core competencies. Onshoring of high tech manufacturing, a significant current Federal government initiative, is another great area of opportunity for Orange County. In particular, we are attractive to businesses currently making products in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. With visionary leadership, Orange County citizens will enter a new and more prosperous era.
We Must Keep Our Children Safe
Our children are threatened from every direction. They are our future; we must protect them – in the womb, in the home, in our schools, and on our streets. My administration is focused on first, removing environmental toxins especially harming pregnant women and children. We’ve already successfully fought against drinking water fluoridation (a proven cognitive inhibitor) and mandatory covid vaccination. Now we are working to delineate the environmental risks posed by weather modification experiments using metal cloud seeding.
Our schools need to be safe zones. One of the best ways to do that is to give our teens a vision for their own lives. I’ve volunteered for the past several years as a volunteer football coach at an Orange County High School. While one of my main responsibilities is academics, my overall goal is to help the young men that I serve discover, and work towards, their unique God-given purpose.
We will work with Orange County’s local mayors, school leadership and faith leaders to help develop purpose-driven values to every young person in our county. Initiatives in this regard are already underway.
In addition, we will work closely with local, state and federal law enforcement, including the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the Orlando Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to attack the scourge of human trafficking in our County. My administration will particularly focus on eliminating child sex trafficking.
We Must Eliminate Waste and Bureaucracy
Orange County political leadership historically has seen increasing taxes as the answer to pressing problems such as transportation and housing. We disagree. That is why my team fought Orange County tax increases through successful initiatives such as “Ax the Tax”. We think eliminating waste and unnecessary bureaucracy will free up the necessary funds. No more “sweetheart”, no bid deals such as a recent one where a politically-connected individual was paid nearly $10,000 per head to teach senior citizens how to use a computer!
My team has identified capital-intensive areas of County spending, such as our payments to the Lynx system which can be restructured. In preparation for this initiative we are assembling a team, including forensic accountants. Our team also includes government efficiency experts. Every dollar not wasted is one that is available to modernize our transportation network, seed affordable housing initiatives, and broaden our industrial base.