Forever Nature Coast

At Tuesday's BOCC meeting, we will hear a presentation by Commissioner Davis to hire a company to do "Greenprinting" for Citrus County.

She wrote a rather lengthy agenda item, so I will share that with you

What exactly is Greenprinting you ask?

It is basically an environmental/conservation blueprint/plan that helps guide communities on growth, particularly involving waterways, greenways, parks, etc.

If approved, the idea here is that this company, North Florida Land Trust, will create a document that can be used by the BOCC to help guide growth with conservation in mind. We hear all the time that we are "losing the nature coast" with all the development approvals. This process will provide a tool for the county to use in making those decisions.

How is it different than the comp plan? Chapter 3 covers Conservation, so why do we need this new greenprinting?

While the Comp plan does address conservation, its not quite detailed. This greenprinting effort will create a detailed document that will work as an extension of the comp plan. To my understanding, it will not be a "binding" document like the comp plan, although we all know BOCC can "ignore" the Comp plan if desired, but it can be used by the county to guide growth.

I do not see this as a bad thing. I think many of us want to see more conservation efforts here in Citrus to protect what we have here in this county. Yes, it is true that just over half of the county can "never" be built upon, but that requires the state to keep and maintain those lands and not sell to developers. We saw a few months ago how close the state came to allowing a developer to develop some of the conservation area (State Forest) into a golf course.

Simply put.. we cannot necessarily trust the state to protect the conservation lands in Citrus. We need to do a better job of doing that ourselves. This document will help us create a plan to do that. I do not see that as a bad thing.

Now, the major question to all of this... "Why are we hiring ANOTHER consultant"?

I am as harsh as anyone on the county for hiring consultants left and right. This is a bit different. Could someone on staff produce this document? Could AI help do it? Sure.. that is possible.

So why not do that and not use tax dollars?

This is where it's a bit different. From my understanding of this plan, Commissioner Davis has said that she has at least half of the funds raised for Phase 1 ($21,000) and hopes to have it all raised by Tuesday. The contract has an out after Phase 1, so if the county decides it doesn't want to continue, the contract can be terminated. Assuming she gets all the donations, ZERO tax dollars are expended for this first phase.

Phase 1 includes workshops and discussions with staff to determine conservation values. I assume this includes diving into the Comp plan and incorporating that into the discussion. All of those discussions will result in a report/summary in how Phase 2 should go.

Phase 2 consists of up to three public workshops around the county to get a representative sample of county citizens. This will allow citizen input into what this greenprinting ends up looking like. The final blueprint and manual will be provided to the county.

Phase 2 costs $22,000.

So all total, this project costs $43,000. According to Commissioner Davis, she has private donations to cover half of the first phase, with the goal of getting all of the first phase covered by Tuesday. She is going to be asking for up to $22,000 from the county to put towards Phase 2. I assume if there are donors for Phase 1, there could be donors for Phase 2... but if not, $22,000 towards this. The money will come from the Duke special projects fund, which is money Duke pays in taxes each year that is set aside for projects with one time costs, such as this.

Something worth pointing out.... There is mention of NFLT working with Trust for Public Lands (TPL) to do a formal feasibility study for the sales tax referendum. This would be the market research element we heard about at the previous meeting. I am looking forward to hearing more about that and the plan to get more public input on the sales tax. Not sure if we hear about that Tuesday or at a later date, but since it was mentioned in the Scope of Services, I figured I would point it out.

We will see what the donations look like for this, but even if they don't cover all of it, I don't see why the county wouldn't do the $22k for this. This is money that would not go to resurfacing or roads because at some point, Duke will shut down in Citrus and the money goes away. The BOCC doesn't want to tie annual needs to these funds and chooses to treat them as one time uses.

Citizens complain all the time about losing the Nature Coast, this gives us an opportunity to build a plan on how we can protect it. Seems like a good use of money to me.