Mayra Uribe.
By Reggie Connell, Managing Editor
In Summary:
After nearly seven years on the Orange County Commission, Mayra Uribe believes she is ready to lead Orange County as its next mayor. She says rising housing costs, traffic congestion, workforce challenges, and government inefficiencies require a more hands-on approach to leadership, while emphasizing collaboration with cities such as Apopka. Uribe also highlighted her proposed Goldenrod Village homelessness initiative and her commitment to modernizing county government through technology and streamlined processes.
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Orange County Commissioner Mayra Uribe remembers a time when buying a first home in your 20s wasn't unusual. She also remembers working in U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson's Orlando office, helping Floridians navigate federal agencies, and learning a lesson that has shaped nearly every public office she's held since.
Related: Moore, Buchheit named to Orange County Tourism Tax Task Force.
"Take care of your constituents first," she recalled of Nelson's advice, a philosophy she says still guides her approach to public service today.
Now, after nearly seven years on the Orange County Commission, Uribe believes she's ready for a different role — one that she says will allow her to move beyond casting votes and into setting the county's priorities.
For more details on Mayra Uribe's campaign, visit her website.
"I've had a voice over the years," Uribe said. "I've been able to challenge things, but I'm not the one who sets the agenda. I'm not the one who sets the budget. The only real way we're going to intentionally do something is if I step up and run for the job that allows me to do that."
For Uribe, the mayor's race is less about managing county government than reshaping it.
She thinks Orange County has reached a point where incremental changes are no longer enough as housing costs rise, traffic worsens, and many young professionals question whether they can build careers or families in Central Florida.
Growing up with Orange County
Uribe describes herself as both a lifelong resident and a product of Orange County's growth.
The daughter of immigrants from Colombia and Argentina, she said her parents moved to Orlando in 1972 after Martin Marietta recruited her father, a civil engineer, to Central Florida. She grew up in Pine Castle, attended local schools and has spent nearly her entire life in Orange County.
Her career has included work in the federal government, private business and local government, experiences she believes have prepared her to oversee one of Florida's largest counties. She says those experiences have also shown her how government can either solve problems or create them.
Before running for office, Uribe said her perspective on government came from the outside. As a resident trying to solve problems in her own community, she often left meetings frustrated by the answers she received—or didn't receive.
"What actually even got me started in this and when I ran in 2018 was not seeing what I wanted to see in my own community," she said. "It wasn't until getting elected to realize, no, you actually do have a voice, and you have the ability to make good policy and help and create and fight for things."
Uribe says that realization sparked a different kind of preparation, one she believes has equipped her to become mayor.
"I've spent seven years doing my homework," she said. "Learning that budget, reading every line of how money goes, how money is spent, what every department does, what we can do better. I'm ready."
Four challenges, one future
When Uribe talks about Orange County's future, she often talks about her daughter, who recently returned from visiting a college friend who graduated from UCF and moved to New York to begin her career. The conversations they've had about housing and opportunity, Uribe said, have shaped the way she thinks about the county's biggest challenges.
'My generation may never own a home,' Uribe recalled her daughter telling her. 'I don't think Orange County has anything to offer me professionally in my career.'
For Uribe, those words crystallize what she sees as four interconnected issues facing the county: affordable housing, transportation, quality jobs and environmental protection. She believes Orange County doesn't simply need more jobs; it needs careers that allow graduates of institutions like UCF to build their futures without leaving Central Florida.
"We have an incredible university, incredible talent and great kids here," Uribe said. "But they don't think that this town has anything to offer."
That's why, she said, economic development must become more intentional. Along with addressing housing costs and transportation, Uribe believes the county should recruit higher-paying employers while fostering entrepreneurship so young professionals can see a future for themselves in Orange County rather than elsewhere.
Rethinking growth
According to Uribe, Orange County's housing challenge isn't simply a matter of building more homes—it's fixing a development process she believes encourages builders to construct larger, more expensive houses instead of starter homes.
"The fact that it takes two to three years to build anything is insanity because of our internal process that takes so long to streamline," she said.
Uribe said developers have told her it takes roughly the same amount of time to build a modest 1,500- or 1,600-square-foot home as it does a 4,000-square-foot house.
"If it takes me the same amount of time to build a 1,600-square-foot home than it does a 4,000-square-foot home, what do you think I'm going to do?" she recalled developers asking. "Where is the financial gain?"
Rather than expanding development farther east into rural areas, Uribe believes Orange County should concentrate on infill development within existing urban areas while protecting the county's rural boundary and environmentally sensitive lands.
"I believe the further out we go, the harder everything becomes—from services to emergency services, to water, to transportation," she said. "Everything becomes work when you go out."
Instead, she argues the county should "fill in responsibly," balancing the need for additional housing with existing infrastructure and environmental protections.
Making transportation work
Transportation is another area where Uribe believes Orange County has fallen short—not because it lacks options, but because those options rarely work together.
She points to SunRail, Lynx, Brightline and other transit systems as examples of investments that largely operate independently rather than as one coordinated network.
"My goodness, we have a train, we have a bus, we have a Brightline, we have all these things, but none of them connect," Uribe said. "None of them actually are made to get us off the roads."
Uribe believes Orange County should move away from relying primarily on large fixed-route buses and instead expand smaller, point-to-point transit similar to Seminole County's Scout program while creating stronger connections between neighborhood transit and regional rail.
She also wants SunRail operating nights and weekends, arguing that taxpayers are already paying for the service and should receive greater value from it.
"We're already paying for it," she said. "Why not make it work for us? Why not run it nights and weekends? Why not, if you're going to get on it, you know you can go to a Magic game or go to the Dr. Phillips Center, and you can get home after the game?"
For Uribe, the goal is simple: build a transit system people choose because it's convenient, not one they avoid because the connections don't work.
"I can't get on a train and go nowhere," she said. "I have to go somewhere."
A hands-on mayor
If there is one theme that surfaced repeatedly throughout the interview, it was Uribe's belief that Orange County government has grown too comfortable with the status quo.
Whether discussing housing, transportation, or permitting, she argued that county government too often responds to problems by adding bureaucracy or increasing fees instead of rethinking how it operates. She pointed to a recent debate over dramatically increasing boat dock permit fees as an example. Rather than charging residents more, Uribe questioned why county staff was spending hours reviewing incomplete applications in the first place.
"With all this technology, why wouldn't we have a system that says, 'Submit. You know what? All this is missing. Rejected,'" she said. "For you to tell me you spent hours reviewing only to go back and tell them, 'You're missing...' That's dumb."
To Uribe, the issue wasn't simply about one permit fee. It reflected what she sees as a larger culture inside county government.
"Before I start telling people to pay more, how can I improve it?" she said. "They said, 'We're not going to change what we do. We're just going to make you pay more.'"
According to Uribe, that mindset is one reason residents have become frustrated with government.
"This is why Tallahassee preempts us, and this is why people don't trust government," she said. "Because your first response was, 'I'll just raise fees.'"
It's also why Uribe says she would lead differently if elected mayor.
"I'm going to be a hands-on mayor," she said. "I'm not going to be a mayor that's going to let the staff run this county. I'm going to be a mayor that's ready and is going to be a disruptor."
Ultimately, Uribe said, her campaign is driven less by politics than by the place she has always called home. The daughter of immigrants who grew up in Orange County, she says she wants the next generation to see the same opportunities her parents found more than five decades ago.
"I want to fight for this community as I fight for my own family," she said. "If the voters of Orange County entrust me to be their next mayor, I will work every day to not let them down."
Key Points:
- Mayra Uribe says she is running for Orange County mayor to move from influencing policy as a commissioner to setting the county's agenda and priorities.
- She identifies affordable housing, transportation, quality jobs and environmental protection as Orange County's four interconnected challenges.
- Uribe advocates streamlining permitting and development approvals to encourage more workforce and starter housing.
- She supports stronger collaboration between Orange County and municipalities, saying communities like Apopka deserve greater partnership and respect for their local vision.
- Uribe says she would be a "hands-on" mayor focused on improving government efficiency before asking taxpayers to pay higher fees or taxes.
