Lifelong East County resident enters Manatee County Commission race

Although he is running for Manatee County’s District 6 at-large commission seat, Ed Ference said he’s never been a politician. 

Ference was a public servant for 30 years in Manatee County’s Utilities Department, and if elected, he said he will continue to consider himself to be a public servant. 

Ference said he noticed a change in the county’s governance following the 2020 election. He said commissioners were serving special interests over the people. He would go home and talk to his wife of 34 years, Jennifer Ference, about his concerns, but he wouldn’t speak to anyone else. 

While he wanted to speak up, county employees have to stay neutral. They can’t attend commission meetings and speak at the podium as citizens. So one week following his 30-year anniversary with the county, when he was fully vested in the Florida Retirement System, Ference filed to run for office.

Employees can’t run for office, bu he’s no longer employed by Manatee County. Ference said those 30 years turned him into a “unicorn” in the candidate pool. Not many commissioners were born and raised in Manatee County and then started at the county “from boots on the ground and worked their way up to top management.”

Ference started as a meter reader and retired as the division manager for underground wastewater collections. 

“I understand Manatee County government,” he said. “I know what works and what doesn’t work. I know how to fix it. I know the people whose hearts are in it, doing the right thing and saving money, and I know the people who don’t care and are there thinking it’s just county money.”

Ference has worked with Manatee County’s budget. He said he can understand it better than most, and he saw a lot of wasteful spending in his time in the Utilities Department, whether it was the county paying for a contractor’s mistake, paying more than originally agreed on a lump sum price, or paying for line items that should be paid for by developers.

“There’s not enough oversight review by people who know what they’re looking at,” Ference said. “I think (the county) is too lenient. We need to hold these contractors more (accountable) to their timelines and standards.” 

Ference also knows Manatee County from growing up in the area. He was born at Manatee Memorial Hospital and still attends Mill Creek Baptist Church, the same church he attended as a child. 

Photo by Lesley Dwyer

He also lives next door to his childhood home on Upper Manatee River Road. His father sliced off a 2-acre parcel for him after his mother died of cancer and the rest of the property was sold. Ference and his wife built their house in the mid-1990s. The couple went on to raise two children in the home, 23-year-old Travis Ference and 26-year-old Jimmy Ference. 

He’s been around so long that Ference can point to any development in East County and tell you what it used to be. 

When someone complained to him about a lack of trees at the new Hidden Harbor Park across from Fort Hamer Park, Ference told them that land used to be a tomato farm, and tomato farms don’t have trees.

If that park existed when Ference was a kid, he would’ve swam or taken his boat across the river to get to it because the bridge wasn’t built yet. 

Ference grew up surrounded by dairy farms and cattle ranches. He misses having deer run through his backyard, but he keeps 14 chickens, two dogs and a cat. He’s adjusted to the growth around him. 

“If someone owns a piece of land, they have a right to develop it if they meet the comprehensive plan requirements," Ference said. “But as far as rezoning with high densities, that’s what we need to stop doing. Let’s get back to some of these places like Pomello Ranches (in Myakka City) where they’re building five or 10 acres per home.”

At that rate, Ference said the infrastructure could catch up. But as for a moratorium on construction, he called the notion unrealistic. The only legal way to enact a moratorium would be to prove, for example, that there wasn’t enough water capacity to handle additional growth. The county’s infrastructure isn’t failing to that extent. 

He said a building moratorium would tie up the county in lawsuits, which is another example of wasteful spending. His strategy, if elected, is to vote against high-density rezones because that’s a legally defensible action. 

Ference also doesn’t want to hurt the residents of Manatee County, and a moratorium would put more than developers out of work. Roofers, framers and anyone else working in the construction industry would suffer.

"I want to serve the people," he said.