- April 28, 2024
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Port Orange retired nurse, Lee Barreiro, announced his candidacy to run for the city council seat in District 1 on Feb. 15.
“I’m very concerned about the health of our city," Barreiro said. "It’s a precarious thing."
Barreiro said he's an advocate for making sure the city “sticks to the plan” that is in place for development.
“That’s my pitch," he said. "I want to keep them on the straight and narrow, make sure they stick to the plan.”
Barreiro wants to keep the city on the plan for stormwater management, improvements, and future developments. He especially wants to make sure what goes into the city's waterways is “a lot better than what is going into them now." Barreiro was born in Tampa, Florida and moved to the Daytona area in 1993. He and his wife, Annie, have lived in Port Orange since 2005.
“We need to get into mass transit and things like that, that not only brings business into the community but it certainly relieves a lot of the problem we have,” Barreiro said. “Dunlawton is one example of poor planning. We tend to build then, oh, we need an infrastructure. Well no, it is backwards. Do the infrastructure first.”
He believes his varied background is what makes him a unique candidate for the District 1 seat, as he began as an engineer before going into nursing. He was also a chemist and worked for a phosphate manufacturing company when he received training as an environmental engineer, where he was responsible for the air and water quality, drainage and environmental health within the plant.
His wife, Annie, got him "hooked" on the medical field when he volunteered at a veterans care center where she was a recreational therapist. Barreiro got a nursing degree in 2000 and a masters in nursing in leadership management. That lead him to education, and he has taught nursing the University of Central Florida, Daytona State College and Bethune-Cookman University. On Tuesdays, Barreiro also volunteers at the Jesus Clinic, a nonprofit medical clinic.
