Who is Michael Burton?
A passionate advocate for his community, Michael Burton had a different path to elected office. Michael was born and raised in Affton, right off Heege Rd. At age 15, his first job was a dishwasher at Happy Joes. Michael attended the Affton School District until his Junior year of high school when he was recruited to Christian Brother College for theater arts. Michael grew up performing in the St. Louis area and performed on stages like The Muny, The Fox Theater and was blessed to have also performed in the White House. While attending Lindenwood University Michael was cast in a Broadway show and moved to NYC to pursue his dream.
In 2001, Michael came back to St. Louis and became a teacher where he was nominated for COCA’s wall of fame. Along the way he served in soup kitchens and shelters, feeding and clothing the less fortunate. He has always felt a sense of service for his community.
When Michael found out there was a possibility of a housing development replacing Tower Tee in closed door dealings, he took action. Michael began to mobilize the community, speak to the St. Louis County Council, made yard signs and began knocking on doors. He refused to accept it was a done deal. Michael organized town halls with elected officials and kept up this hard work for 18 months. His efforts paid off and in May of 2019, Tower Tee was saved and is coming back.
Fighting Corruption: In June of 2018, Michael took on then County Executive Steve Stenger who was involved in pay to play politics and filed a lawsuit against Stenger along side six Council members. Michael was the only unelected official to be a part of this lawsuit to allow the people vote on three charter amendments. He won. Michael will continue to take on corruption when he sees it whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat.
Crime Prevention: Michael worked closely with the St. Louis County police department and in 2019, he created the Affton Ring Doorbell Community Program to give residents a discount for home security systems.
Volunteering: Michael is also a frequent volunteer at the Affton Christian Food Pantry and encourages everyone to donate and give back to this community.
Click HERE to begin making calls!
Ready to make calls? Click HERE. Want to know more? Scroll down to see where Michael stands on the issues.
Standing Up for Our Senior Citizens
One of the issues Michael discovered as a community advocate was that the Afton area has a lot of senior residents. Seniors whose property tax is chasing them from their own homes. Michael knows we have to provide property tax relief for our senior neighbors on fixed incomes. In Jefferson City, his highest priority will be keeping our senior neighbors in their homes.
There are policies that have been implemented in other states to help senior citizens on a fixed income afford large property tax increases and keeping them in their homes. The state of Oregon pioneered a policy that allows seniors to defer increases in property taxes keeping them in their homes. We can do this in Missouri. It just takes leadership.
Michael promises to make bringing a program like this to the agenda in Jefferson City.
Helping Small Businesses
We are all living in unprecedented times, the damage the pandemic response has created in our economy and especially for our small businesses, needs a drastic response. Michael knows its small businesses that employ the majority of American workers, and they make up the backbone of our economy. Michael will make it a top priority in Jefferson City to help provide relief to our struggling small businesses to help them weather this storm.
Improving Access to Healthcare
Now more than ever, we need to make sure that we make sure that everyone has access to healthcare. We need to make health insurance more affordable. We need to make sure that those who are unemployed have more options, and we need to make accessing testing and treatment for the COVID-19 virus available to everyone no matter what.
Michael will pursue policies that make sure our seniors and children have access to medical insurance.
Recently, it was discovered that Children who qualify for medicaid were denied healthcare by the State. Michael will make sure that these grievous mistakes in state government will be rectified, and never happen again.
