Mayor George “Bud” Scholl is the Third Mayor of Sunny Isles Beach

Friday, January 30, 2015

By Mayor George “Bud” Scholl

In the winter Islander, Cultural and Community Services Director, Susan Simpson wrote an article entitled “History in the Making.” It was about the first retirement of a Mayor in the 17-year history of Sunny Isles Beach. When I read that article, I had no idea that our residents would elect me as the third Mayor of our City to fill the vacancy left by Mayor Edelcup’s retirement. I am both honored and humbled to have earned the trust of my neighbors to serve as their Mayor.

Given the relatively small footprint of our City geographically, and the opportunity I have had to meet many of our residents, I now consider everyone within our City my neighbor! Our City is unique in this aspect and it is one of the main reasons we all truly feel like ‘islanders’. As my wife Dione and I raised our three children on Atlantic Isle, we watched our City emerge from a sleepy (and often neglected) part of Miami-Dade County into a vibrant, multicultural, internationally renowned destination.

Since the early days of our City, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the myriad of meetings and workshops where decisions were made that influenced the growth and character of what we know today as Sunny Isles Beach. Throughout this process, many people from our community came together to work with our elected officials and staff to create a vision for our City. I can hardly believe that in a few short years our city will be 20 years old. In working to fulfill that vision, a lot has been accomplished such as, creating our parks, rebuilding our iconic pier and establishing our community school. But we still have a lot to do to keep our City moving forward and, as your new Mayor, I am very excited to be a part of that forward progress.