How we got North Florida Land Trust

Happy Wednesday... Yesterday I teased that I was going to talk about what took place behind the scenes with the North Florida Land Trust... so here we go.

First, I want to preface this by saying that what we got with the North Florida Land Trust green-print is great for this county. It can help us navigate conservation better than we have been

Second, I do think we need to look at the sales tax and bring it up for a county wide vote... This year was just the worst time to do it.

Now, the reason I am going into detail on this is two fold.

1) I was called out publicly by County Commissioner Holly Davis at the last meeting for asking questions about her Denver trip (her speaking engagement is today ironically) and about her use of staff to create the presentation she is using today. She said a few things to try to make me look bad.

2) I was called out by the Chronicle for writing about things and not doing research to them before I wrote about them. Apparently, they felt that I needed to do a better job of getting the records before I brought things to light.

So today is the day we set the record straight. The reason I did not include more records and all of that is because I already knew the answers. I did not need them.

How did I know the answers? Because I worked with Davis on getting the green-print here. I was very involved with her and helping her navigate the process, get it passed at the board and so on.

What you do not know is that the green-printing idea came about because of a desire to slow the sales tax discussion.

Let me explain.

There are several articles where I talk about the Sales Tax idea and the various meetings.

Well, at the end of the process, the steering committee presented its data to the BOCC for discussion. The goal at the time was to implement whatever the steering committee recommended and use that to frame the sales tax initiative. That was the purpose of the steering committee.. Host public meetings, gather feedback, make a recommendation to the board.

Sounds great in theory. However, the problem that I saw with this is that they did not use statistically valid methods for collecting this data. I have a marketing degree and know generally how to do market research type stuff to gather data. Afterall, polling is essentially market research.

One problem for instance... they asked people who attended to do a survey. They got 130 or so responses.

Then they posted the survey online to get more responses... but they did not exclude the people who attended in person from doing an online survey. So people could have done it twice. No bueno.

Having noticed some issues, I ran my own survey and got some different results than what the chamber had received. I made a point that perhaps we need to do more research before choosing how to proceed. At the time, it appeared as though the commissioners were trying to rush it through so that the Chamber or whoever could start making the process more public.

I felt that we needed to tap the brakes a bit, so I reached out to Davis to chat with her about all of this and the need for more market research. Keep in mind she is a marketing person as well and understands the process.

I explained that we needed more data and we needed to find a way to be able to get that without just telling the board... "stop, we need more data". That would never work.

So the North Florida Land Trust idea was created. Davis had connections to them somehow, I do not recall, but she reached out to get some information because she had heard they help with referendum language and all of that.

She made some calls and came back to me with the idea of bringing them on board to do a green-print study which would morph into full market research for a sales tax.

She then asked for help in how to navigate it. On October 8, 2025 around 8:20pm, I helped her come up with how to get it done on the timeline we were facing. I recommended that she find a piggyback option which would bypass the RFP process. That is time consuming and we did not have much time to get all of this done before the March deadline to decide the sales tax language.

I was not sure if a free study required a RFP process or not.

Here is a text I sent her. This is technically a public record, so not sharing anything that is confidential or anything.

Later, on October 21st, NFLT is contracted with the county and piggybacked off Highlands county to avoid the RFP process.

The idea for donations for this also came from me. Originally, Davis wanted to use the Duke Special Projects fund to pay for it. It was going to be $43k, so her thought was that there was more than enough money in that account to do this... and this is a special project that would qualify.

I talked her down off that idea because she needed the board to go along with this if it were to slow down the sales tax train. She needed at least Janet Barek and Diana Finegan. Both of them would be a "no" if tax dollars were used.... but I assumed that they would be on board if it came at no cost to tax payers.

Why would they deny doing this green-print if it came at zero cost? I could not see that happening, so I challenged Davis to get private donations to make this happen... and she did.

Now it comes at zero tax dollars and she can bring it to the board and get it approved... and it happened.

Then we go through that process and the board ultimately decides to table the sales tax referendum partially due to the data collected from the green-print and Trust For Public Lands survey.

Now, why did I want to see the sales tax derailed and ultimately go away?

Well...

1) I found out that Josh Wooten suggested names for people to be on the steering committee. Each commissioner had a chance to name 3 people to the committee. Davis told me the three she picked were given to her by Josh Wooten.

This appears to me that the steering committee was getting stacked with specific people that are close to chamber leadership. Chamber leadership (Wooten) wanted the sales tax to go through. Seems that is he picks the people (or some of them) then they would share similar feelings, which gets away from the purpose of the steering committee.

2) This is the worst year in the world for this. I have stated several times that we did not know at the time what Tallahassee was going to do with property taxes. The assumption was there would be some type of reform. We now have Amendment 3.

3) Blaise Ingoglia came to town and told us that we wasted $39m... and now we want to ask for more money from citizens? We can debate his methodology in finding that number, but despite that, he identified waste, even if not as high as he claimed... and now people vote to add more money?

If we moved forward with the sales tax and put it on the ballot, we would have people be voting to significantly reduce property taxes and then turn around and vote in a sales tax? Makes no sense. We get one shot to do this and if it fails, it dies for a few/several years. Cant mess it up.

Now, this can come back in 2028, once we see the impact of the property tax reform (if it passes), and then use it to address shortcomings. People may be more inclined to vote for a sales tax increase when they see that the road budget without it may only be a few million due to a slash in revenues.

The sales tax can help offset that and boost the budget with tourists contributing. Seems like a good way to get it to pass.

On top of all of this, we get a green-print out of it.

The problem now is that Davis is too eager to make her mark with all of this. To date, nothing has come of the NFLT green-print except for the sales tax being tabled. We have no land trust... we havent dont anything to really identify priority areas for conservation... we have done NOTHING.

Which explains why she tried to strongarm Batsel into agreeing for his client to donate funds to a future land trust. She is too eager to see this come to life and is becoming wreckless with it. Which is also why she became so defensive last week at the meeting, despite me not even saying her name.

And that brings us to the Denver trip. She was invited to participate by NFLT. This was meant to be in her personal capacity. She has expressed to me previously her desire to potentially get a job with them in the future when shes done being a commissioner. This is a good feather in the cap type thing and resume builder.... "I spoke at a national conference"... I get it.. I do it too in my industry. Nothing wrong with any of that.

The problem is the eagerness and that led her to using staff resources for this... and then claiming it was always a county project, not a personal one... and that she told the board what she was doing and no one objected (they didnt know she was using staff time). Sure, she is paying out of pocket and NFLT has said she is not being paid by them, but she is still representing herself as a commissioner and has stated publicly she is going on behalf of the county. Those things need to be discussed with her colleagues.

Despite all that.... she did get it done. She got the NFLT study completed. That will help Citrus County moving forward, depending on how it is used.

Which creates a new problem... what are we doing with it?

So my suggestion... bring it back for a meaningful discussion. We have this green-print, now make a plan for how we implement it and what exactly that means for this county.