Ben Marciano was re-elected mayor of Ocala in the special election on Sept. 16.
Former executive director of the DeLuca YMCA and owner of the gym chain Zone Health and Fitness since 2014, Marciano was first sworn in as mayor of Ocala in 2023.
He recently did an interview with WUFT on some of the issues the city of Ocala has been experiencing and his goals after being reelected:
El Dib: Over the last couple of weeks, I have spoken with many residents of Ocala. The issue that was brought up the most was the increase in the homeless population. How would you address this problem?
Marciano: I want to be able to give people a hand up, not a handout.
When I first took office, I identified a couple of organizations that were doing a good job in the community. One of the places, that recently opened to address homelessness is called Dignity House (Wear Gloves Dignity House); I am really proud of that organization.
The second one, it is called Saving Mercy, is going to be a 100-bed facility that will allow the homeless to rebuild their lives and get off the street. That's going to be a great facility, and open in December.
My goal is to first of all, see how these two facilities do, if we're able to address the issue with these facilities. If there's still more of a need, will look at it, but I believe that with these two facilities opening, we're going to be able to really make a major impact and really address our issues in our community.
El Dib: Your campaign was heavily based on health. Do you have any projects in mind in this regard?
Marciano: One of the cool things that we have done is that we do the "Workout with the Mayor," so we have one coming up. We encourage the community to come out and hold them at parks or recreation centers; we get people involved.
One of the things that I am trying to get done is do a workout at an outdoor workout facility at one of our parks by using some non-local tax dollars but partnering with some funding sources in the community. My goal would be to open that up and then have a workout at that outdoor facility.
But the other one is we have a beautiful community center that we opened, called the Mary Sue Rich Center (Mary Sue Rich Community Center at Reed Place), that's actually free to the community; so, I want to continue to build awareness around that, get people working out at that facility, get people active.
We want to try to just continue to keep people thinking of the healthy mindset, you know, not only working out, choosing healthy food options, and really trying to build an awareness of how important it is to live a healthy lifestyle.
El Dib: One of the roles of the mayor in Ocala is supervising the police department, and last year, the crime rate in Ocala dropped by 5%. How did you all manage to do that?
Marciano: I am really proud of it. I first and foremost give credit to our police chief, Chief Balken (Police Chief Mike Balken), who does a great job.
When you have a great leader running the organization, your job is to support them and make sure that they have the resources, not micromanage them. That is what I do with him; now, again in the same respect, if there is ever something they were doing wrong, they would be held accountable.
But, as far as reducing the crime rate, I will tell you, we have great officers, we have a great chief, we have great technology, and because of that, we have been able to really put a major hit on some of the crime in our community.
El Dib: Ocala is also one of the cities that has experienced the most growth in the US in recent years, with many people moving from the north. Why do you think this is happening?
Marciano: When I talk to people, I ask them a couple of things. Number one is that they do find that it is a safe community: people want to live in safe communities.
The housing is affordable. It is still considered affordable in our community; some of our residents locally would say it is not, but it is, compared to other states that they are moving from.
But I also think that the World Equestrian Center, people have visited and seen how beautiful our community is. When they see it, they feel what it is like in our community. I think it just pulls you in.
El Dib: Earlier, we discussed the infrastructure issues occurring in Ocala, which causes a lot of traffic. Do you have any goals to solve this issue?
Marciano: The first one is we have a lot of state roads in our community, so some of our major roadways in our community, in State Road 200, U.S. 441, U.S. 40, those are currently run by the FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation). I want to have a better relationship with them, so as they are doing projects, we are able to communicate to our community what is going on.
So, I want to make sure that I am working with our community as we identify projects. We may do community meetings so that we can really make sure that their voice is being heard on some of these projects.
Second, from the city's standpoint, we do have some improvements that are underway. I want to make sure that we are communicating that to our citizens; I think a lot of it is because our citizens do not know that we do have a plan, and what we are doing as far as those updates, so I will continue to update them