COLUMBIA, 5/2/24 (Beat Byte) -- Lucio Bitoy, IV, an April write-in candidate for the Second Ward Columbia City Council seat has announced his intentions to become a bona fide ballot candidate for an August special election to replace ousted First Ward Councilman Nick Knoth.
"I aim to leverage my understanding and expertise in the systematic study of governance, combined with personal and professional experiences to address the First Ward’s needs and aspirations based on access and equity frameworks," Bitoy writes.
Bitoy's platform might be characterized as "anti-poverty."
"The First Ward faces challenges such as a lack of affordable housing to rent or purchase, persistent poverty, minimal public transportation access, environmental racism and low wages," he explains. "The Columbia City Council should craft tangible policy solutions aimed at interrupting the persistent increases in poverty."
A political science grad from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Bitoy says he interned with the Missouri House of Representatives in 2016, served with AmeriCorps Vista and the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, and was a community relations specialist for Columbia/Boone County health department. He currently works for the Missouri Department of Social Services.
Though his anti-poverty platform has common threads across all political persuasions, his stated approach is hard left.
"I advocate for the exposure, subversion, and dismantling of colonialist power in all its forms," Bitoy writes. "An immediate and complete cessation of all hostilities against Africans in America. An immediate and complete cessation of the Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. I support Columbia becoming an LGBQTIA sanctuary city, advocate for significantly greater citizen control over public land and natural resources, ecological restoration, anti-poverty policy, and the formation of Liberated Spaces in Columbia."
Bitoy's website at this link.
FIRST WARD GETS SECOND CANDIDATE: Lucio Bitoy files for Council
