Gary Price, the former City Council member and vice mayor of Naples who is running to be mayor of the city, has convinced a couple of other citizens to join him in seeking seats on the Council.   

“I’ve been seeking some City Council candidates to be on a slate with me, and it’s not a slate of people that are going to vote the same way,” Price said. “It’s a slate of people that have strong ties to this community for a long time—30 years—and they’ve never been in office. They’ve never even wanted to be in office.”   

Price isn’t revealing the prospective candidates yet, but he said they have recognizable names and are independent thinkers who won’t be voting with him in a block, but rather will represent the interests of the people.   

“But they care so much about this town, and they’ve raised their families here and they can’t stand to watch what’s going on,” Price said. “We’ll be announcing their candidacy and their campaigns, and we’re going to do it together.”   

As of Tuesday morning, no other candidates besides Price had filed to run yet in the 2024 city election, which will be March 19—a date moved later than usual to coincide with the Florida Republican presidential primary, said City Clerk Patricia Rambosk. In addition to the mayoral race, the three Council seats held by Ted Blankenship, Mike McCabe and Paul Perry will be up for reelection then.  

Price formally filed to run Oct. 3 and made a public announcement Oct. 5 at Cambier Park in downtown Naples. He most likely will face Mayor Teresa Heitmann, who has not filed to seek reelection yet, but she said in late September that she intends to do so.    

“There’s a lot at stake in this election, this upcoming election,” Price said.   

Price is a partner and co-founder of Naples-based Fifth Avenue Family Office, which assists high-net-worth families with financial and personal complexities. He started his local public service on the city’s planning board in 2001 and then was elected to Council in 2006 and reelected in 2010 and 2018 after initially being appointed by Council in 2005 to fill an open seat because of a resignation. Price chose not to seek another term on Council in 2022, but his thinking has changed since then after a life-changing event.   

“Unfortunately, we lost our home in Hurricane Ian. We lost everything—I shouldn’t say everything; we were fine—but all of our belongings. We’ve been in that house since 2000—just a little house in the Moorings that was perfect for us. It was gone,” Price said. “And what happened a few weeks after the hurricane, the Council brought up an ordinance to change the lot coverage for residential lots and to reduce how much house you could build on your lot. Our house is 2,400 square feet, so by no means do we think we want to build any mega-mansion. But I started thinking, we’re still recovering not even a month from a hurricane, and they’re coming after my private property rights.”   

Price went down to City Hall and spoke as a private citizen against the proposal and Council initially decided not to go forward with the changes. “We thought that was the end of it but then they brought it back again a couple weeks later,” he said.   

Price made a second trip to speak at a Council meeting, noting that the development changes were not only a bad idea for property rights, but the proposals came at a terrible time when people were recovering from the hurricane. He half-joked during his third trip downtown that he might as well run for mayor if he was spending so much time at City Hall.   

“That’s kind of how it got started. I really didn’t plan on going back,” Price said. “I felt like I’ve done my share and felt good about it, what we’ve done. But after that, after this experience, and then, obviously, just seeing what’s going on I felt some obligation to go back and at least put myself out there and provide a different path for the future, and voters can decide if that’s the path they want. But a lot of people from the community reached out to me and that was sort of how it all started. They’ve been working on me for a couple years.”   

Prices said he is passionate about wanting to make sure people are treated fairly.   

“At the end of the day, I don’t think people could ask for more than that. That’s all they want. They’re not getting that today,” he said. “I’m not sure that the city can sustain another four years of this kind of treatment to the residents. We’re barely hanging on. People are trying to hang on and figure out if maybe there’s a new day where they can be given a fair shake.”   

Of course, that fairness priority extends to city staff, too, Price said.   

“We’ve gotten 20% turnover year over year in the last two years in staff. We’ve lost 200 people out of 500 in the last two years,” Price said. “And the culture is, I call it a culture of fear because people are afraid of what’s going to happen at a Council meeting. They’re afraid to do their jobs.”   

The Council is micromanaging some responsibilities, such as outdoor dining approvals, that the city manager and staff should be doing, said Price, who wants to return the city to the strong-manager, weak-mayor form of government that it is supposed to be.   

“Let them run the city day to day and we can set policy and make policy decisions for the future,” he said. “We haven’t spent any time thinking or dreaming about what we want to look like in five years.”   

That includes changing Council’s current belief that all development is bad, Price said.   

“We’ve got to be really careful about growth. We’ve got to make sure that we preserve the character that we have, but we have to be careful about the message that we send,” he said. “Clearly the message is right now: We don’t want any development or we’re going to make it really hard for you to do a project here. I think that’s a fair statement. We’re going to make it very hard for you to do a project in Naples.”   

That is not the message the city should be sending, said Price. He thinks the right development should be considered an investment from a resident’s perspective.    

“I’m not pro-developer. I’m pro-Naples,” Price said. “So, as a resident of Naples, I want to attract the best investment partners who are going to build great things, whether it’s a single-family home or a condo or a commercial building. That’s what I’m trying to do, I want to attract the best because the part of this conversation that no one’s had yet, and I hope that we can have it someday, is if you start to discourage good investment and good developers, you’re going to be left with less than good. And they’re not going to do the kind of work that I think we’ve been able to see over the last 20 years in terms of quality work and quality development. And, you know, you’re going to get left with the least common denominator.”   

Price said his campaign is not going to be an attack on Council but rather will communicate how the city can benefit from his experience, vision and dream for what the city can be. “My passion for the city has never been greater,” he said. “Our family has committed to it. We raised our family here. I started a business here 20 years ago. So, the community has been great to us, and I still feel that gratitude and obligation to offer my help.”   

Public safety is another major issue that needs some attention, Price said.   

“For me, it’s the top priority,” he said. “And what I’ve learned from talking to the police is that they really need take-home cars. We share cars between shifts, and it’s creating a problem, just with equipment. It’s a morale thing and it’s a safety thing.”   

One of Price’s priorities is to get police officers their own vehicles so that they can have their own gear. Instead of raising taxes to make it happen, he said the Naples Airport lease can be renegotiated to bring in additional revenue.