Workshop #2

Last night I had a conversation with someone. They mentioned to me that they enjoy reading what I write but they do not always agree with it.

That is a good thing. I do not expect everyone to always agree with me. In fact, that would be bad. Differing opinions are great and lead to growth. I want to create discussion. That does not happen if everyone agrees all the time.

One of my political heroes is George Washington. Not because he was the leader of the American Revolution or that he was the first president. It was the fact that he valued people of different opinions.

He had Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in his cabinet. Both men were largely on the opposite end of the political spectrum. It would be the equivalent today of a Trump and Obama cabinet. Crazy to think about, but he valued those opinions and wanted to hear from both men.

The goal here is to bring awareness to issues and create discussion. Agree or disagree, I value the opinions. Just be respectful to one another is all I ask.

Last night I attended the 2nd comp plan workshop. The first one had 60 people in attendance. This one had about a dozen. They did say that they have received over 900 survey submissions. So that is good. But I was hoping for more in person participation.

I get it... Many believe that it is useless to attend as they do not trust that their opinions are worth anything here and that the decisions have been made. I spoke with staff and they are aware of opinions and repeatedly say that they are listening and taking them into consideration.

At the very least, continue to participate in the surveys and website activity HERE

Tonight's meeting started with a slideshow to update the group on the previous responses. Here are the slides that were shared. I am told these will be available on the website in a few days.

A few takeaways...

• As expected... The participants are largely in the 65 and older range. They are generally the most active in things like this.
• Preservation, water and rural area protection are the leading concerns.
• Of things not preservation related, infrastructure is the area of the next largest concern along with affordable housing options.

Last night included more interactive events.

1) Vision Priorities. This showed a chart of 12 things identified from previous workshops as priorities of the county. Each person was given 5 green stickers with instructions to place them in the boxes based on their priority. They could place them anywhere they wanted... including multiple stickers in one box if that was higher priority for them.

As you can see... preservation and roadways dominated.

2) Economic Development and Land Use map. For this one, people could go to the map of Citrus County and take a sticker that represents agriculture, commercial, industrial, institutional or vertical mixed use and place it on the map where they thought that zoning should be placed.

3) Conservation Priority. This one showed the map of Citrus and the various conservation zoning. Each person got one sticker to place on the chart to the left. This indicated their priority for conservation. I was told this also included expansion of those areas. For instance, if someone wanted to see more passive recreation, then since we have so little of that, this would look at expanding those areas.

Hint.... expand passive recreation and that also protects the land from development... (this is what I voted for).

4) Vision Banner. This allowed people to write what they think Citrus will look like by 2050.

5) Funding Priority. This included 6 areas of focus. Each person was given 4 tokens to represent money. They had a jar at each sheet and people were instructed to place those tokens into the jars to represent their priority for spending. They could place them individually or use as many as they wanted into any jars they wanted. If they felt road resurfacing was the only funding priority, they could put

I didn't count the tokens but I am pretty sure that road resurfacing and conservation were the most important use of funds according to those in attendance.

6) Community Wall Idea. This was similar to the one last time. Basically people could add different ideas they had for the team to take a look at.

Once the full results from last night update, I will share those with you all here.

Remember... tonight is the 2nd North Florida Land Trust workshop with the last one scheduled for tomorrow evening.