Louis Panico and former mayor Mike Ignasiak join Edgewater mayoral race
EDGEWATER — Two longtime Edgewater residents have thrown their hats into the city’s mayoral race.
Louis Panico, 36, a local small business owner, and former Edgewater mayor Michael Ignasiak, 73, joined 18-year-old Diezel Depew in the running.
Panico grew up in Edgewater. His family moved from New Jersey when he was 2 years old to lead a quiet, beach town life.
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“I was very fortunate growing up here,” Panico said in an interview. “A few decades ago, we’d leave our keys in the ignition, cash in the cup holder, windows down. In that sense, I did really get the best of being a kid here.”
He attended New Smyrna Beach High School and graduated in 2004. He earned an Associate of Arts degree at Daytona State College, but then decided to start his own kitchen installation company in 2006.
He sold the company five years ago to another Edgewater resident and went into real estate. A year later, he purchased a building on Mango Tree Drive, leased it to a friend, Steven Yates, who owns a flooring company (Coastal Flooring Distributors, LLC) and today helps him with the operations.
“It’s always so much more than just one layer in a small town,” he said. “Business mixes with friends and now friends almost become family as life goes on.”
Panico said that his decision to run for mayor is connected to a sentiment that “the older I get, the more the desire to be part of the community and to help and to serve has become more pronounced.”
He said that one of his strong points is his knowledge of infrastructure since now, with his experience with the flooring company, he understands many of its “nuances,” which “maybe the average political person wouldn’t.”
“The thought of ‘Let’s put another traffic light because we need one more.’ That’s a great idea but (new) traffic lights takes five to 10 years with FDOT approval,” he said. “So for someone to say ‘I’m going to have a traffic light put in,’ is absurd.”
Panico said that instead of prioritizing one specific issue, if he is elected, he will focus on listening to what the community wants and has been hoping for.
“Running for this office is not like the president. In the way Edgewater is set up, our job as the mayor or community servant is to follow and enforce whatever has been put on the books for our city to date, to listen to the community and try to bring these things forward to the City Council meetings,” Panico said.
“If anything, (I will) try to listen, to represent the people, keep the ship on course,” he added.
Yates, Panico’s business partner, joined the New Smyrna Beach Planning and Zoning board in 2020, which gave him a chance to share with Panico stories about the public service life.
“Just listening to these stories is very encouraging,” Panico said.
Panico mentioned how neighboring cities New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater were “one and the same” a few decades ago.
“It is probably a mission that we need to start having our own resources and differentiating ourselves,” Panico said.
He said his mother, an Edgewater resident, participates in the New Smyrna Beach farmer’s market “because we don’t have one currently.”
“I don’t want to create redundancies or have things that are not going to be utilized,” he said. “But the more we grow, and the population grows, the more it becomes plausible that we could have our own ‘everything’ here.”
He said that being as active as possible in the role of mayor “is probably going to give the community the best result from our term here.”
“I look forward to getting some more experience, so that maybe a second term can be more advantageous to the community,” Panico said.
“I will just try to do my best as I always do.”
Former mayor, Mike Ignasiak joins the race
While Panico is new to the political scene of Edgewater, voters will also see a familiar face return to the race this year.
Former Edgewater Mayor Michael Ignasiak lost the 2018 election to current Mayor Michael Thomas.
From 2018: Ignasiak out in Edgewater as voters hand mayor's chair to Mike Thomas
Ignasiak first came to the City Council in 2010. He served as the vice mayor for three years and as mayor for four years.
Originally from New York, Ignasiak moved from Hollywood, Florida, to Edgewater in 2000. He is a former police chief in both cities as well as in Bunnell in Flagler County.
He said that his decision to come back to the city’s political scene was “unexpected.” He said residents approached him after Depew’s announcement concerned about the lack of candidates in the race. Thomas is not running for re-election.
“This was not something I was out looking for,” Igansiak said in an interview. “I got approached by people I know asking me if I would come back and consider running for mayor again, because like all the things that we did during that time period, we were very successful.”
He is also confident that his experience in the politics and knowledge of the city will help bring voters to his side.
“This City Council is going to turn over 60% of its council (seats) next election, including the key person, which is the mayor,” Ignasiak said. “And the mayor should be one of its most experienced politicians that knows not only the system of the city, but also knows the politics at the same time.”
He mentioned that managing the city’s growth will be one of the most important challenges to the next mayor.
“Our biggest emphasis is controlling our growth and the potential negative impacts that we see coming,” Ignasiak said.
He said that he saw Hollywood, the town he grew up in, go from a “sleepy little town” to a major “metropolitan area.”
“I know what’s coming,” he added. “I’ve seen it happen. I know the mistakes to be made and the mistakes to avoid. And that’s why we need somebody who has got their hands on the throttle and make sure that growth doesn’t go too fast or too slow and that we get the right mix. And I think I’m the person for the job.”
Ignasiak said he has three priorities, which “made me successful both as a councilmember and as a mayor,” that he will focus on if elected in November.
His first priority will be to “listen to the people who put me in office.”
“What do you want done? What do you want to see and what do you not want to see?” he said. “That’s the driving force behind politics.”
The second priority will be to be to “listen to my councilmembers”
“They are also elected officials,” he said. “They are hearing things from the people that elected them. They are being told what they want to see. You need to listen to the rest of the councilmembers to get their input because they are also part of the community.”
The third priority will be “the business community.”
“That’s the economic engine of Edgewater,” he said. “Our residential numbers are growing. I want to listen to what the business community says, what could we do to help businesses grow, get more profitable, and what could we do that is hindering you or overregulating.”
Even though Ignasiak is confident that this approach could help him become the mayor once again and, if elected, he said that something he would do differently this time around would be to “speak less and listen more.”
“A lot of time, councils will talk issues to death,” he said. “What happens is that a lot of it becomes unproductive time. You need to rein some of that in, and that was a learning process I went through when I became mayor.”
“I love Edgewater, I raised my family here, I want to see Edgewater grow and prosper and that’s what got me back into politics,” he added.
The three candidates will now face off in the primary election on Aug. 23.
If no candidate reaches more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates will head on to the general election on Nov. 8.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: New Edgewater mayoral candidates: Panico, former mayor Ignasiak join
