Biography

Buddy Dyer is the 32nd Mayor of the City of Orlando. He has been Mayor since 2003 when he was elected in a special election to complete the last year of an existing term.

In 2004, the citizens of Orlando re-elected him to his first, full four-year term. In January 2008, Orlando residents overwhelmingly re-elected him for a second full term.

Upon taking office, Mayor Dyer outlined a bold vision for reshaping Orlando into the “Next Great American City” that included:

• Reinventing Downtown Orlando as the social, economic and cultural hub for all of Central Florida.

• Diversifying the City’s economy to bring new high quality, high wage jobs to Orlando’s residents.

• Creating more transportation options and encouraging smart growth throughout the region.

• Restoring the Parramore Heritage neighborhood to its original vibrancy

• Enhancing residential amenities such as parks and community centers.

• Placing neighborhood safety as the City’s top priority by bolstering police and fire protection.

To help fuel his ambitious agenda, Mayor Dyer set to work on sparking a new spirit of partnership and cooperation throughout Central Florida. This commitment to collaboration between governments, the business and civic communities and residents has resulted in a remarkable number of accomplishments in a very short period of time. During his tenure in office Mayor Dyer has:

• Invested virtually every new tax dollar into public safety, which resulted in the addition of 50 new police officers on the street and 45 new fire personnel along with the construction of two new police substations and six new fire stations, including a state-of-the-art fire headquarters.

• Engineered one of the most remarkable resurgences of a downtown anywhere in the country with $3 billion dollars worth of development either underway or planned for Downtown Orlando.

• Secured the creation of world class “Community Venues” for Downtown Orlando: The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the Amway Center which will be home to the Orlando Magic and a refurbished Citrus Bowl stadium. This effort also included The Blueprint,” a program to ensure residents would benefit from the construction of the Venues.

• Developed an unprecedented public/private partnership to create the “Medical City at Lake Nona.” The Sanford Burnham Institute and UCF Medical School will serve as anchors of this biomedical and health sciences cluster, along with the Nemours children’s health care campus, the VA Hospital and the University of Florida Lake Nona Research and Academic Center. The “Medical City” will create more than 20-thousand jobs in the years ahead.

• Created a shared vision for rail transit that resulted in the impending creation of two major rail transit projects; the SunRail commuter rail system and America’s first high speed rail line which will run from Orlando to Tampa.

• Opened the downtown campuses of the Florida A&M College of Law, UCF’s School of Film and Digital Media and championed getting a medical school for UCF in east Orlando.

• Recruited House of Moves, the world’s largest motion capture service bureau, to co-locate an east coast operation at Downtown Orlando’s UCF Center for Emerging Media. This digital media cluster is the first step in building a larger “Creative Village” that will serve as a home for high tech companies for decades to come.

• Committed Orlando to becoming one of the most sustainable cities in America by creating “Green Works Orlando,” the City’s first comprehensive plan to protect its natural resources, encourage environmentally-friendly lifestyles and business practices.

• Initiated “Pathways for Parramore” to bring new homes on line, transform Church Street into a major east/west thoroughfare and expand the “Parramore Kidz Zone” to provide after school activities, access to health care and social services to children and families.

• Invested resources to ensure neighborhood improvement projects including: Parramore Heritage Park and Pond, Dover Shores Community Center, Dubsdread sewer improvements, Lake Eola Park renovation and Primrose Building improvements.

• Partnered with governments across Central Florida and the non-profit community to create a regional approach to ending homelessness. This unique strategy resulted in a record amount of federal funding awarded to advance the shared mission of ending homelessness.

• Launched a pre-kindergarten initiative and doubled the number of high quality pre-kindergarten classrooms in the City.

• Created “Strengthen Orlando,” a local effort to generate jobs and help residents and businesses “weather the storm” during tough economic times.

• Solved a $23 million budget shortfall his first thirty days in office and continued to pass balanced budgets each year thereafter, with a commitment to spending every tax dollar wisely while maintaining an open and transparent budget process

A successful attorney in private practice, Mayor Dyer was first elected to public office in 1992. He served Orlando in the Florida Senate for ten years, being reelected twice. During that time, his colleagues, recognizing his outstanding leadership skills, elected him as their Senate Democratic Leader, a position he held for three years.

Prior to his public service, Mayor Dyer worked as an environmental engineer and practiced law. He earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Brown University and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Florida College of Law, where he was Editor-In-Chief of the University of Florida Law Review and a member of Florida Blue Key. He graduated with honors and received the highest score on the Florida Bar Exam that year.

Mayor Dyer was born in Orlando and raised in nearby Kissimmee. He and his wife Karen, an attorney, have two sons, Trey and Drew.