Before the last Mount Dora City Council meeting in April, Mayor Crissy Stile put out a Facebook post letting folks know that she wouldn’t be seeking re-election as the city’s mayor.
In the post, Stile said she made some “really hard decisions” in 2021 when she decided to seek the city’s top spot as mayor. But once she made it through that time she’d been “nothing but happy and it’s only gotten better.”
She also said that this was another “really tough decision.”
“I know it is the right one for me,” she said in an email. “I have decided not to run again.”
Stile previously served on Mount Dora’s city council from 2018 to 2020 as the at-large councilmember. She continues to own a bookstore on the corner of Donnelly and Fourth Street, as well.
When contacted for comment, Stile said in an email that she would continue to support Mount Dora 100%.
Why isn’t she seeking re-election as mayor?
“I took a lot of time to weigh the amount of things in my life I gave up in order to devote myself 100% to being the best mayor I could be,” she said in the email. “I have decided not to run in order to give myself time to bring back those things I gave up.”
Annually, council members are paid $6,608 and the mayor is paid $11,472, according to Mount Dora City Clerk Jeanann Hand. Their duties include attending meetings and workshops, along with two regular council meetings each month.
Stile said being mayor hasn’t been hard at all.
“It is very time consuming and sometimes stressful,” she wrote in the email. “I don’t do anything halfway, so in order to do it right I spend a ton of time making myself available and working to keep Mount Dora the very special place that it is and will continue to be.”
According to Hand, former Mount Dora Councilman James Homich plans to run for mayor and Marc Crail is running for re-election in District 4.
