Allen Cowart
For Cocoa Florida Mayor 2024
I’m proud to be a native of Cocoa, Florida. I was born and grew up here and many generations of my family have called Cocoa home. I also run my own Cocoa-based business. I remember the wonderful place the Cocoa of my childhood represented.
It was not only a fun place to be – it was very safe and filled with fun things to do and great places to experience. I want to enjoy that great Cocoa experience again and share it with my adult children and with their children. However, we have a long journey to travel to get back to there.
Like all of us, I am deeply concerned about our local crime problems and the many issues surrounding homelessness. I have experienced many of these issues first-hand as a former deputy sheriff and today, as a current reserve deputy sheriff. I’ve also served our area previously as both a paid and later as a volunteer fireman. I’ve also been proud to donate time and money to numerous local charities and especially to the children and schools of our community.
While the problems are obvious, I know we must seek solutions by working on the causes, not just the symptoms.
Economic and educational challenges are the source of most of our problems and my objective is to effect meaningful and lasting changes by addressing them. We must uplift the educational experiences our community’s children are experiencing while also increasing the economic opportunities that are available. This will create more jobs and raise the standard of living and property values for all of our citizens.
We need to develop the 524 corridor in advance of the new High Speed Rail Station we’ve been promised and consider creating new tax districts that will quickly attract new businesses and jobs. I see a great opportunity if we can increased our focus on the area bounded by US1, SR 520, Range Road and Michigan Avenue. This is an area that needs immediate help in regard to improving the overall living conditions and improved crime control.
All of our local public schools need more resources and, more importantly, more parental involvement to lift them up from their current struggles as Grade C Status and again become the pride of our community as Grade A Status schools.
To accomplish these goals is a challenge that I welcome. I’ll work hard with local business and educational leaders and engage other local stakeholders such as the Brevard Economic Development Commission, Career Source Brevard, and the Brevard County School Board to help us accomplish these job and education initiatives.
I’ll work hard for our city and with your help, we can return it to the safe, happy community of opportunity I was blessed to enjoy as a child.
I welcome any questions you may have. Above all, please let your voice be heard. That way, as your next mayor, I’ll have the great benefit of knowing as much as possible about the hopes and needs of all the citizens I’m seeking to serve. Welcome to the effort!
Vision, Issues, & Values
I was born and raised right here in Cocoa and have lived here my entire life. When I was a kid, it was a different place. We had our own theatre, great shopping, great schools, great community spirit and this was a wonderful place to live. Over multiple decades, as our world changed, our awesome city fell into economic, social and educational decay.
Now, I want to help us all to remember how it was back when things were better and strive to get Cocoa back to being the best place in the county to live and raise a family.
Our community of almost 20,000 people is far more diverse than when I was growing up. That diversity has created barriers of race, economics and education that must be defeated. It is that diversity that we must embrace and build upon to make this dream a reality.
I’d appreciate the opportunity to share some of my plans and vision for our city with you. If you’d like to learn some more about what I stand for and what I believe we must to do to tackle the difficult issues of helping return Cocoa to being the city we can all say we are proud to call home, please click on the LEARN MORE button below.