Ray Eddington considers himself a man of the people, and in four years as the District 4 Santa Rosa County commissioner, he believes he has proven to be just that.
He takes pride in being the first Santa Rosa County commissioner to receive an Advanced Certification for completing an advanced leadership program sponsored by the Florida Association of Counties.
Eddington, who defeated incumbent Dave Piech to assume the District 4 seat in 2022, is this year facing his own challenge to his incumbency. Voters will choose between him and Dean Light, a retired military officer and Navarre small business owner, in an Aug. 18 Republican primary contest. There are no Democratic or other party candidates, so the primary winner takes the seat outright.
“I have done everything I said I would,” Eddington said in answer to what makes him think he deserves a second term. “I meet with people. My door is always open.”
Eddington said much of his work has been done on a grassroots, constituent service level. He said his efforts alongside the county’s Public Works Department, clearing ditches and repairing roads scarred by tropical storms, have paid off and brought flood relief to homeowners who have suffered following heavy rains for years.
He said he convinced the Florida Department of Transportation to adjust its maintenance schedules from 10 years, to five years, and finally two years on a repaving and pothole-repairing project for State Road 87 through Holley. The project has now been completed within the span of his first term.
“I have people tell me I don’t show up,” he said. “I do.”
Eddington said he’ll travel next month to Washington D.C., to meet with Jimmy Patronis and other federal leaders in an effort to prioritize the need for a collector road. It is hoped the road will relieve some of the incessant traffic on U.S. Highway 98, an accident-prone roadway whose congestion issues, military leaders say, are imperiling the mission at Hurlburt Field east of Navarre.
The Navarre Community Access Road envisioned would take drivers using the connector road across busy State Road 87 north of its intersection with U.S. 98 and past the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge, where traffic tie-ups are a daily event during spring and summer months as visitors vie with locals to access Navarre Beach.
A bridge too far
The Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge is sure to continue to serve as a headache for whoever is elected this year to the District 4 commission seat. Replacing the bridge, or at least moving positively in that direction, could arguably be called the signature goal of Eddington’s first term.
It might also be argued it has proven to be a bridge too far.
Eddington has been a consistent advocate for replacement of the bridge, a 60-year-old two-lane structure dropped in the county’s lap by the Florida Department of Transportation in 2006.
When a new Brooks Bridge currently under construction is opened in Okaloosa County, the Navarre Beach Bridge, which FDOT considers both structurally and functionally obsolete, will be among the last spans on the Intracoastal Waterway under which ships taller than 50 feet cannot pass.
In April 2025, the county conducted a $385,000 study to determine the feasibility of tolling the bridge. The company that conducted the study estimated tolls could bring in somewhere between from $2.7 to $4.2 million.
Eddington had argued for the tolls as the best way to cover the cost of continuing costly repairs on the aging bridge as well as allowing the county to eventually put aside funds needed to leverage state and federal dollars for construction of a new bridge.
But a vocal group of Santa Rosa County residents argued against the tolls and Eddington caved to their demands, requesting his fellow commissioners table a decision on whether to move forward with implementing the toll.
He acknowledges reversing course on his advocacy for re-introducing tolls at the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge, but said he did it because his constituents instructed him to do so.
“The people didn’t want the tolls. The way I looked at it was I figured those maintenance costs have to be paid and if we could do it at a cost of $20 a year for locals with the rest paid by visitors, it would be a good thing,” he said. “Now I have people calling and saying ‘we want the tolls.’ You’ve got to figure out what you want.”
He said his focus now is on pushing the Florida Department of Transportation to conduct a study to figure out what it’s going to do about widening U.S. 98 at its intersection with the Navarre Beach Bridge and SR 87 so that the county can jump into conducting the Project Development and Environmental study that must be done before any work to replace the bridge can move forward.
The county put off conducting the PD&E study in October 2025 when Eddington and fellow Commissioner Colten Wright reported learning that federal transportation officials had requested that FDOT turn over to them a 2021 feasibility study that considered avenues for replacing the bridge.
“Clearly something has happened,” Wright said after the meeting. “The feds hadn’t been interested before.”
“They reached out to me and said they are on board with helping us find the money to help us pay for it,” Eddington added. “I was tickled to death.”
Dean Light believes he’s a better choice for District 4
Light said he chose to run against Eddington because he believes he can do a better job advocating at the county level for the people of District 4.
“I just think we need a little bit stronger leadership here in Navarre,” he said. “It’s not that he’s a bad guy or that he has done anything wrong, I just think I can do a better job. I have a relationship with a lot of people and can be a better representative than the sitting commissioner.”
Having lived in the area for 42 years, raised a family, retired from the Air Force after 26 years, worked for a local defense company and built a small business in Navarre, Light said he has true ties to the South Santa Rosa community.
“I can relate to the military and I can relate to local businesses as a small business owner,” he said. “I’m a problem solver, I’ve always been able to build a good team and get things done.”
Light said that the sitting Santa Rosa County Commission has “not done us a favor” by holding off making any decisions on moving forward with the Navarre Beach Causeway Bridge.
“Four years ago when the outgoing commissioner was there we had money set aside for a PD&E study, and we’ve not done anything with it,” he said. “My district needs to take the lead in discussions about the bridge and about Highway 98.”
He said he differs with Eddington about the structure of the bridge. Eddington has been calling for a five-lane crossing with a full lane set aside for emergency vehicle traffic.
“Why five lanes when it empties onto a two-lane road?” Light asked, adding that the bridge envisioned by Eddington could add up to 70% to the overall cost.
He said he likes the idea of the bridge starting at the southern end of State Road 87 and emptying onto county property at the Navarre Beach wastewater treatment plant site, an opinion generally shared by members of the current board.
Light said that as he’s been knocking on doors and meeting people, 80% of the concerns he’s heard expressed have to do with roads and traffic. He said he’d like to advocate for reducing local option sales tax revenue put toward such things as protecting the county’s agricultural lands and conservation and putting more of it toward roads and infrastructure.
“If it’s that big a deal to people, let’s move 80% or something to pay for roads and maybe go back to conservation and other priorities later,” he said.
If the renewal of the existing half-cent Santa Rosa County sales tax is approved in a Nov. 3 referendum, the money will be put toward not only relieving traffic congestion by building and improving roads but also protecting drinking water sources and water quality in county waterways and preserving natural areas, farmland and wildlife habitat from overdevelopment.
It will also be used to enhance public safety by providing up-to-date equipment for fire and Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office services and to improve parks and recreational facilities.
Santa Rosa County Financial Director and Assistant County Administrator Sabrina White said that if the sales tax renewal does pass, a Sales Tax Committee will convene to come up with a recommendation on what percentage of tax revenues will be allocated to each of the listed county priorities. The County Commission will have final say on allocation.
Light said he favors impact fees for development and wants to see traffic concurrency made a priority in master planning for development.
“We have to be able to tell developers ‘this road is at 120% capacity and we can’t build with that,’ ” he said. “The things we can do as a government is try to keep up. The developers may not like it, but we need to tell them that we need to keep up with growth or we’ll have to catch up later. It is better in the long run to spread it out a little bit.”
He said as a commissioner he wants to be available and transparent and will urge his fellow commissioners to do the same.
“I don’t think right now the public has a lot of trust in their county commissioners, we need to do something about that,” he said.
He said he was impressed to see Wright, the commission chair, make an offer to a citizen speaking at the public forum during a recent commission meeting to meet with him following the meeting.
“I think we need to see more of that,” Light said. “People take time out of their day to attend a meeting and then get three minutes to speak and no answer. We need to do what Colten did and say ‘meet with me after the meeting.’ “
Tom McLaughlin is an award-winning journalist covering Northwest Florida since 1998. His stories focus on government accountability, growth and development, environmental issues, Triumph Gulf Coast and offshore drilling.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Eddington, Light square off for Santa Rosa District 4 Commission seat
Reporting by Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
