- November 17, 2024
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Bill Lewis was appointed to the City Council in 2008 to fill the District 4 seat of Alan Peterson, who had been elected to the County Commission. Lewis then ran unopposed the following year. Now he’s running against competitor Steven Nobile in his first competitive City Council election. (Lewis and Nobile both beat out competitors Woody Douge and Norman Weiskopf in the primary, but Nobile came out ahead of Lewis, with about 36.5% of the vote to Lewis’ 28.6%.)
Lewis said he began his career in the medical research field with a bachelor’s in chemistry, spent eight years in the industry, then went back to school at Pace University and got a master’s in finance.
He has served on numerous committees, including the extension program at Marineland, the ITT resort and the Flagler County committee that developed the 2010-2013 comprehensive plan. He chaired the board of directors of the Advanced Technology Center in Daytona Beach, was a member of the Leadership Council Board of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, and was chairman of the endowment fund of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
He has one daughter and one son. Lewis missed about two months of City Council meetings due to illness, and returned to the council Sept. 9, 2014.
Business and economics
Lewis listed economic progress and the creation of beautiful city as some of his top priorities as a city councilman.
“We have to continue the progress that we’ve been making over the past four, five years,” he said. He called the Business Assistance Center one of the city’s successes, along with the city’s ability draw in large competitions and the attendant bed taxes and visitors’ spending money.
“We increased bed taxes to a phenomenal level, and we kept attracting many many types of sports teams,” he said.
He dismissed first-time competitors’ promises of bringing jobs into the city. Candidates, he said, “will say they’re going to create jobs for Palm Coast. Government cannot create jobs unless they’re government jobs. Jobs are created by private business.”
But although politicians and government can’t “create jobs,” they can, he said, help create conditions that would entice businesses, something he says Palm Coast has done.
“We’ve tried for five years to attract businesses,” he said. “The main question is, ‘Can you meet my needs?’” To help do that, he said, the city works in concert with the county’s economic development office.
Culture and recreation
“The city needs two things: It needs its culture on display, and it needs a soul,” Lewis said.
Lewis has argued for increased arts spending during previous council meetings, and said he’d supported the initiative to get the Arts Foundation a lease for land in Town Center.
Supporting the arts on City Council, he said, is “not easy, because residents don’t want to give up tax money for arts and culture.”
That same reluctance on the part of residents to spend tax money also led to major resident opposition to the “soul” Lewis said the city needs: a permanent City Hall.
“Most city halls are very, very old, and they have a history,” he said. “We don’t have that. We have a shopping center and a Community Center that needs a lot of repair. I think it’s important that this city, that they have a City Hall that they can be proud of.”
Leadership, weaknesses and strengths
Lewis said he couldn’t provide examples of individual City Council issues he’s taken a leadership role in.
“It’s kind of hard to pick any one thing because so many things come at you on City Council; it’s a combination of research and review,” he said. “When you’re on City Council, you’re a decision maker. ... You’re always a leader on City Council.”
He wouldn’t list current weaknesses — “I don’t think there are too many weaknesses at this point,” he said — but he said he has “grown in terms of politics,” in part by beginning to “appreciate and respect the residents of my city as part of the equation. …I learned to listen; that’s important.”
As to advantages over challenger Steven Nobile, Lewis said, “I bring a very broad background to my job. I’m not one-dimensional. … I’ve been active in the community,” he said. “I understand the growth of the city, I understand the time spent trying to reach the dreams of a lot of the people who are here and may not be later, and try to give them a sense of pleasure and quality of life while they’re here. I have, in
terms of Palm Coast, 14 years of working with the city, knowing the people, their needs, their pain, their suffering. A new person doesn’t have that. He has to acquire it. He doesn’t have it yet.”
This story has been corrected to accurately reflect Bill Lewis' former involvement with the Halifax Chamber of Commerce. He was a member of its Leadership Council Board.
Previous press coverage of Bill Lewis:
Click here to view previous Palm Coast Observer stories about Bill Lewis, here to view FlaglerLive stories and here to view Daytona Beach News-Journal stories.
