Comp Plan Workshop #2

In case you missed it. The 2nd public workshop for the comp plan update is coming in a couple of weeks. Here is the flyer.

It will take place February 3rd at 530pm at the Lecanto Government Building. It is important that you are there to share your opinion. You may feel you already know where this is headed and they will not listen to you, but it is important that you let them know your opinion.

You can also submit opinions through the website.

Speaking of the website. It has now been updated with the summaries of the first public workshop and the stakeholder meetings.

Here is the Stakeholder Summary

Here is the summary of the first public workshop

A few observations.

I thought it was interesting that the stakeholder meetings and the public workshop were different. I expected some differences, but not quite what we saw. In the stakeholder meetings, of which I attended, it was a roundtable type discussion. We could provide input and have a discussion. These were great discussions for sure.

When we got to the public workshop portion, there really was not a discussion. Yes, people had discussions with the Inspire staff as they were participating, but there really was not an overall discussion. There were questions to answer and feedback to give, but as you will see in the summaries, that feedback was all over the place and in many cases, not related to the topic asked about.

Not sure how they take all that data and put it into something that is usable and able to be applied towards the comp plan revamp/rewrite.

Take this for instance.

When asked to give thoughts about economic development, people had very few positives (top of chart). They had a lot of things they would change (bottom).

But how does "more local mom and pop businesses" get included into the Comp Plan? Sure, the county can prioritize more small businesses and make it easier for them to open here by removing red tape, but that already exists in the Comp Plan.

Do we need an update for that?

Two people said they wanted to see increased warehouse businesses... but recent talk about a data center doesn't seem to agree with that. Data Center would be similar to warehouse space... and certainly into the tech business as others had suggested... but there will be a lot of pushback for that.

But this does show the need to perhaps revamp the Comp Plan.

Here is the job creation Element.

Notice this entire section states the county will work in partnership with the Economic Development Council (EDC) to help facilitate these things.

Where is the EDC today? Well it doesn't exist. It was a non-profit created in 1998.

Here is the mission statement.

Here is the sunbiz registration.

Of interesting note... Commissioner Rebecca Bays' husband was the President of the EDC.

It disbanded in 2016 for some reason.

There was talk of starting a new EDC in 2022, but I do not see where that went anywhere and to date, no EDC.

So the Comp plan absolutely needs an update to address that and perhaps revisit our economic goals, although I do not think they have changed much. I think people still want those things. The question is how does the county address them?

One interesting thing that correlates to this... The stakeholder summary included this statement:

"Small Businesses & Entrepreneurial Spirit. Stakeholders pointed out one of the positives is the small businesses that make up the community."

I would agree with this statement... but we have seen a push towards national chains in recent development projects. Does that not hurt the small business and entrepreneurial spirit? Granted, a lot of small businesses are not retail or restaurant related, but many of them are.

How do we balance for the desire to keep the small businesses yet continue to grow, which attracts large corporate investment?

One thing I think we will see throughout this process is the communities overwhelming desire to tap the brakes going against the stakeholder's opinions that we need to move towards "new" development standards of higher densities, taller buildings and more mixed use in the areas that are designed for that type of growth.

Going to be an interesting process to watch this play out. I hope that you will participate.