Conservation Plan? Maybe?

Today is the BOCC meeting. Pirates Cove is back on the agenda for a vote to sign the accepted contract. This will require that the county receive approximately $300k in private donations to secure this deal. We will see what Commissioner Kinnard says about this, but pretty certain he feels he has the money lined up to make this happen.

I would be curious to see who is involved. I think I know based on a records request of emails, but will wait and see if that is correct before putting the names out.

One thing that may be contentious.... LKQ expansion. This application was denied by the PDC 5-1 back in June. The hearing took about an hour and a half.

Without getting too into the details... the main issue the PDC raised was expanding heavy industrial into low density residential areas. There seemed to be some on the board favorable to the expansion on some of the parcels, but not all of them. As it was presented, there was no enough support for it, so it was recommended by the PDC to deny the application.

We will see if they made any changes, but as the PDC said... once it goes industrial, it never goes back.

I had a conversation with someone the other day about this. It was mentioned this would be a good business to go into the Industrial Park in Holder. Not sure how the county would approach that, perhaps a land swap and other incentives, but it may be worth exploring. Keep in mind the parkway exit is RIGHT next to this. Nothing says "Welcome to the Nature Coast" like exiting at a salvage yard. Getting that moved would certainly help that perception.

I do not see how the BOCC supports this after the PDC ruling, but who knows with this board. Would not surprise me one bit to see a 3-2 approval or a 5-0 denial.

The main thing I wanted to discuss this morning is Commissioner Davis' idea for the Greenprinting. If you remember, she is looking for the board to hire North Florida Land Trust to create what amounts to a conservation blueprint for the county. This will come at a cost of $43,000 and includes two phases. After the 1st phase, the contract can be cancelled before the 2nd phase begins, so if the BOCC doesn't like what they get from the first phase, no need to move to the 2nd.

Now, before we blast the idea of hiring yet another consultant, this would come at little to no public dollars. How? Donations.

Here is a statement that Commissioner Davis sent me when I asked about it:

Forever Nature Coast: a “greenprint” for Citrus County to provide a plan for key land preservation… working farms, wildlife corridor connections, recharge/resiliency areas, and passive recreation.

Seeking stakeholder donations to make it easier for the BOCC to say yes. We’re up to $37k pledged, so past the first half hurdle of the two-part process. 6k left to go for the second half.

Stakeholders who have pledged support:
Crystal Tractor & Harley
Dix Developments
M&B Dairy
Quality 1st Roofing
Crystal River Quarries
John Thomas
Stephen Tamposi
Dixie & Robyn Hollins
Dan & Dianne Williams
KC Nayfield
Fenco Farms
Ferris Farms
Dr. Desai
Duke Energy
WREC
Metro Development
Gerry Mulligan

By my count…
One big retailer
One quarry
One restaurant group
One hotel group
One construction company
Two conservation minded retirees
Two electric companies
Three developers
Five farms

Some of these folks can be counted in more than one category but I just picked one for each.

Ok, so it appears that she has raised $37,000 towards the $43,000 needed for this complete project. She has told me she is confident she can raise the additional funds before the 2nd phase of the contract is to begin. At the very least, the 1st phase is covered by donations, no public dollars are necessary. If she us unable to raise the rest, she is proposing that the county would pay the $6,000 shortage from the Duke Special Projects Fund. This is tax money that Duke pays every year that is earmarked for special projects with one time fees, such as this or the consultant we hired a few weeks back for the Comp Plan.

Now, what does this mean for the sales tax? Nothing really. That is still a separate deal.

In the documents for Scope of Services, NFLT mentions that this will allow them to bring in The Trust for Public Land to do a market research study for Conservation and Public Improvements (Roads). This would be a statistically sound study to determine if there is support for a sales tax in this community and if so, to what extent and specifically for what purposes.

I am told that this would be potentially paid for via grants that NFLT/TPL have access to and would not be taxpayer funded.

Now to be clear, even if NFLT/TPL does NOT do the market research, the County will still get the conservation blueprint. The two are not tied together in that regard.

Commissioner Davis said "for certain, a local land trust can be set up to accept donations. Any potential tax revenue would be completely up to citizens."

The idea here is that the community still decides, we just bring in the experts to gather those voices and opinions following statistically sound methods/processes.

Now, there has been a lot of chatter recently on the sales tax and the board not making a decision the last meeting. So much so, that the steering committee chair wrote a letter to the commissioners recommending a course of action.

I thought the original idea was for the steering committee to provide the data and stay out of the process. They were not going to make a recommendation. What changed?

Pressure. I have heard that some of the politically connected in the community are starting to make it known that they are unhappy with the commissioners for delaying the decision on the sale tax so they gather more information. We saw a couple of articles from the Chronicle... the letter from steering committee chair... and others starting to make comments publicly. I am told behind the scenes, the noise is a lot louder.

Do not be surprised if you see a reversal this week and the commissioners come out with some type of direction on this. I do not think all 5 are on board with this, but we will see.

One question that I will ask... and if anyone has a good answer for it, you can change my mind on all of this.

The deadline for this is in March. The state legislators will be meeting in January-March. Text for bills is due in November. Final drafts in January.. final bills are voted on in session. We will no know what the state plans to do for things like property taxes until session and votes happen...

Why do we need to decide what should be on the ballot for a sales tax referendum in October/November before we know what the state plans to do?

Someone, please tell me why we need to rush to do this. I am all ears.

Here I will explain why we need more research on the sales tax. A bunch of statistics talk ahead :)

Why do we need market research? I thought this was supposed to be a community initiative led by the Chamber. Why are we now bringing in a consultant to do this?

It is true. The Chamber volunteered to drive the sales tax discussion. They decided to do this by using a steering committee made up, in part, by people appointed by each BOCC member as well as others as desired.

I have heard some names that are included in this, but I do not have a full list, so unless I get that, I will not publish them. I am told they are a mix of business owners, citizens, retirees, renters and those representing government entities. The idea was to have a broad representation and they largely got it.

However, a few problems started to emerge based on conversations that I have had.

1) This is a Chamber led process. I have heard from COUNTLESS people that they do not trust the Chamber. They feel the results will be swayed to favor what the Chamber wants, although they have not formally stated their opinion on the matter. Despite the meetings and survey being open to everyone, many people chose not to participate due to Chamber involvement. Fair or not, that was a perception by many.

2) The process is not statistically sound. While the survey had close to 700 responses, meeting the survey size needed, they do not know who those responses are from. Are they likely 2026 voters? Are they even registered to vote? Where do they live? Are they lower income or higher income individuals? Are they homeowners or renters? Do they live here year round? Are they tourists?

We do not know. Even my survey was not statistically sound. So how can we trust those results to be accurate? We can't. It is just a guess. Do we want this to be a guess and hope for the best?

3) Expanding on #2... Did the survey include snow-birds? Why are we doing a survey for this over the summer when snow birds are here to be part of the process? Why would we not do the survey in November, to hit the likely November 2026 voter? Doing a survey in the summer is ignoring a likely good size voter population. I would be interested in seeing that number. Do snowbirds support higher sales taxes or do they want to come here to escape them? Shouldn't that be considered?

4) The steering committee made a recommendation... 10 year sunset of the sales tax. 70% allocated to road resurfacing, 25% for road expansion (turn lanes, traffic signals, etc) and 5% for parks.

Will that pass? Yes, their survey showed 10 years had the most support, but that was only 20% of the voters. What do the rest of the 80% of voters think about 10 years? On my survey, 10 years fails. So which is accurate? Neither?

And why expansion? Because it was 2nd on the list? Wasn't parks and conservation combined higher than expansion? Most everyone I have spoken with says expansion should be paid by impact fees... is this not a gift to developers, who now get a turn lane or signal for free?

So if all that is true, will 25% for expansion pass?

5) One the commissioners make the decision, what happens next? Does the Chamber jump back in and do education until November? Do we just go to November as is? That is an entire year away... what is the plan?

That goes for the Chamber or anyone else who may get involved.

That is not to say the whole process is flawed. All things considered, the Chamber got the conversation started. It is further along now than ever before. It got 700 responses, more than I can say for the consultant we hired for the comp plan that only got 300 in Pasco, a county with 5x the population as Citrus.

So bravo there. And I think that is the most important aspect of this. They showed that there could be support for this and it is worth pursuing. However, I would caution the board to not take that as "this survey shows it will pass, let's go".

Remember, the Chamber survey lost 3% of voter support with only 189 more people being involved. That shows to me that the Chamber did not hit the proper voter demographic. If they did, then the original results would be consistent, not changing 3% with 189 more participating.

That means the margin of error is greater than the 4% or so it was before. Which means that what looked like solid support before is really not enough support to pass.

That is why it is time to bring in the experts. That does not mean that the citizens are removed from the process. In fact, it is the opposite. It means that the citizens ARE the process.

You see, proper market research will ask the right questions to see where the support is for the sales tax, if it is there. The results will be what the citizens say. There is a reason these companies have a 85%+ success rate in this type of thing. They know what to ask and who to ask it to. They know how to get the input from the 2026 voter.

If there is support for a sales tax, this will tell us. If there isn't, this will also tell us. Will people support more than just roads? Do they want conservation? Is there something missing? How long does it need to be for to get support?

All those things will be answered with proper market research and all those things will come from the citizens. This is not some company coming in here and doing their own thing and submitting that to the board, with no citizen input. This will rely on citizen input.

The commissioners will then be able to look at the report and see exactly what the language needs to be, if the support is there. And if it is not there, then they will know that too.

And the best thing about it.... the citizens made those decisions. The benefit of a statistically sound study/survey process will result in knowing exactly what voters will want. There would be no need to attempt to convince them to support it and then explain all the reasons why they need to be convinced. They would already be convinced., although we also shouldn't let the conversation die.

If the commissioners want any chance of this passing, they need to tap the brakes and let the experts see what the real support is in this county and base the sales tax on what that support is.