Your Participation is Needed
Yesterday was a fun day.
If you missed it, I was invited to participate as a stakeholder for the Comprehensive Plan update. This was the 3rd Task in the process. Task 4 kicks off Monday at 530 with a community workshop.
For everyone who says they never get asked to participate in these things. Here is your chance. I have also asked that these be recorded to allow people to watch if they cannot make it.
Eric Landon emailed me this morning that they will record the first portion of the meeting on Monday and it will play on the Youtube channel. They will cut off the video as they move to the interactive/breakout portion of the workshop as that will be difficult to capture.
Here is the website if you want to follow along. This website will be updated with new information, new input opportunities and so on. There is a survey on the website for you to take. There is a community board if you wish to make a comment. There will be activities on it that you can participate in.
At the end of this, I do not want to hear complaints that you were not involved. You have that chance and this, as well as the 3+ workshops they will do, are the way for you to do that. Now, we will have to see how they implement that input.
I will share everything that comes up with this. I asked Chris from Inspire to email me the invites and things for the workshops so I do not miss them. I also suggested they give more than a weeks notice for the next few and try to avoid nights where other civic meetings are taking place (CR City Council meeting is also Monday).
Back to the meeting.
I honestly had no idea what to expect. The email invite just said it would be a stakeholder discussion. I did not know if that would be them showing slides and talking about the Comp Plan or if it would be a discussion format.
I was given a list of meetings to sign up for. There were 4 blocks of times I could have picked from and it showed who was going in each block. One of the blocks was filled already with mostly the Builders Alliance, but the other 3 blocks were open.
I browsed the list to see who would be in each meeting. I chose the 3rd block. These are the people that were in my group:
- Rob Batsel
- Avis Craig
- Jenette Collins
- James Dicks
- Mike Facemyer
- Paul Gibbs
- Dixie Hollins
- Bob Sharra
- Kathy Turner
The reason I picked this slot is that this group represents a wide range of thoughts. It is also full of people far smarter than I am. Avis has forgotten more about land use and zoning than I have ever known. I love to be in rooms like this. That is not to say the other rooms did not have smart people or anything like that. This one represented a mix. There are 3 PDC members. There are people who worked on the first comp plan for this county or other similar things elsewhere. There was a builder and an attorney who represents builders. All very smart people. That is why I chose that block.
Plus, I got to say hi to my friend Rob Batsel, who you can read about here. Always nice to see him, not sure the feeling is mutual.
But in all seriousness, I have great respect for everyone. Even if we agree or disagree on something... even if I point out flaws in something or some policy issue... it is not me being malicious or anything like that. I think they also respect that.
So what happened?
I will preface this by stating this is from the meeting I attended. I know people who were in each of the other meetings and will reaching out to see how their discussions went. I have heard each has been a bit different and the conversations were different. It is good that Inspire get different things to look at.
The meeting started off with a bit of an introduction and projected timeline. Chris pointed out that our comp plan is pretty expansive, unusually so. We have 17 chapters. He said that perhaps this process will help consolidate some things and make it easier to digest, but they are not going into this looking to change those 17 areas of focus.
He did mention that no changes to the LDC are planned at this time. This project is for the comp plan only. Any changes to the LDC would come after this project and done separately.
Next he went into slides showing the projected growth numbers. He said they have been working with the Metro Forecasting group to get their data. They are one of our consultants to help track and forecast growth. Their final project is due sometime in January.
The growth numbers they showed on the slide were between 181k and 195k people in this county by 2030 and between 209k and 260k by 2050. That would be roughly 100k more people than we have today if it comes near the high end of this range.
Ouch.
Here are the slides we were shown if you want to take a look.
And that was it for their presentation. It lasted all of 15-20 mins.
Chris then opened it up to the group and over the next hour was a roundtable type discussion. Each person talked about things they felt that needed to be addressed.
For sake of protecting the open discussion nature of this process, I am not going to name specifically who said what at the meeting, with one exception you will see. I will highlight what was discussed, but I do not want to point to specific individuals for statements they made candidly at the meeting.
Obviously, infrastructure was a major concern, but not necessarily the way you would think. Chris/Inspire understood the challenges of the roads and the backlog of those projects. He also understood decisions past boards had made that caused us to get here. So those aspects were not really discussed in depth.
The infrastructure issues mentioned were largely no options for alternative routes. Think 491 for instance. How do you bypass 491 if you do not want to travel that road? Ottawa maybe? Croft? I guess it depends on where you are. But point is, not a lot of options. When something happens, like the gas leak a few months ago, those roads can be shut down and make it very difficult to get around.
Does that mean the county needs to build more roads? No not necessarily. It can mean that new development projects need to propose roads that can help alleviate those issues.
But certainly worthy for a comprehensive plan discussion.
Another aspect of infrastructure discussed was the industrial zones. Holder for instance has an industrial park, but the two roads that would be used are two lanes. How does that make sense and what industry will want to move there if trucking and whatnot would be difficult? That makes job creation more difficult as well.
Water and sewer. Also mentioned as infrastructure issues to be looked at throughout this process. There were several concerns about water availability and resource management.
I did mention to Chris/Inspire that the slides show 35% or so lands designated as conservation lands.. but that is mostly state controlled lands and that the comp plan update needs to address conservation lands that the county has control of as we cannot rely on the state to protect those lands for us. He agreed.
Housing affordability was mentioned. There were concerns with all these new homes costing $400k+ that people simply cannot afford them here, due in part to lack of well paying jobs as well.
James Dicks did mention he had two projects recently denied by the PDC that would have brought apartments here, but the communities rallied against them. Valid point. Can't get more affordable housing like apartments if people are going to rally against them because they don't want them in their neighborhoods or around where they live.
There was mention of commissioners being too in the weeds with decisions. Their role is policy making, not policy implementation. That is the job of staff. But far too often, commissioners make a policy decision and then input themselves into the implementation.
I have countless emails of commissioners getting into the weeds with staff... "Did you send this contract out?"... "Where are we on this and why isn't this being done"... "We need to change this or this"... and so on.
Look.. they hired a county administrator. It is his job to make sure the policy the board sets is being done. If they have to mettle in it or if they feel he is not doing a good job, they need to bring someone else in to do it. Otherwise, stay out of it.
And honestly, he needs to tell them that. It is time to stand up to them and not let them take over behind the scenes. This certainly happens more with some than with others, but I am grouping them all together for this conversation.
Set the policy and stay out of it. Period.
Good point.
And when it comes to development projects, they should not be in the weeds of those either. That is why we have a comp plan and LDC. Decisions should be based on those things and not necessarily what the commissioners want to see.
Which is why we are in this process.
There were two prevailing themes in our group that kept coming up.
1) Education
2) Vision
Education First.
It was mentioned that there could be a better job done on educating the public on zoning, the comp plan and so on. People have rights to do certain things on their property, but many times, neighbors do not necessarily know what those things are.
There are also things called vested rights, DRIs and so on that have been decided long ago that we are just now seeing come up.
For instance. Tuscany Ranch. They were allowed to build 5000+ homes whether the BOCC approved the project or not. Many people did not understand that because all they have known for decades is for that to be empty space. So when someone proposed 5000+ homes, they never realized that was a potential possibility.
Also, take the new Home Depot on 44 in Inverness for instance. All those trees that were clear cut. The homes that have never seen 44 will now have not only 44 in view, but a massive commercial building in their back yard.
People do not realize that the parcel was zoned for that from day one. It was always planned to be commercial. Yes, they have made some changes over the years to various things, but it was meant for commercial. The trees were planted for Ag exemption and were always meant to be cut down.
So more education around that type of stuff would help the community as a whole.
Next Vision.
This was a pretty big topic of conversation. One person bluntly asked...
"What is the vision of this comp plan"
And challenged Chris/Inspire to outline that vision as part of this process. Make the vision of the county the central focus of all of this. Tie it into the strategic plan, but also update that if we need to.
We need a vision before we set off trying to fix things. Lack of vision is what got us to where we are today. The parkway opened the door to Citrus County. We knew it was coming but we never had enough vision to plan for that to come. Let's not make that mistake again.
Brilliant point.
That sparked something in me and I chimed in with this.
This county has an identity crisis at the moment. We do not know what we want to be and we need our citizens to figure that out. This process is how we can do that.
We need to figure out if we want to continue to be the "rural" area with pristine waterways, nature and so on... or do we want to move to a "modern" version where it is community/urban centers with mixed use... more commercial growth... and so on... which is what most of these new development proposals are doing.
Each side has its merits and people who support it.
The answer to rural vs urban center is probably a mix of both. Is there a way to grow but do so in a way to keeps our rural charm? Is there a way to grow but in a way that protects our resources? There is a balance somewhere.
Developers are not the bad guys. They are like any business owner. They are looking to expand their business and profits. I do the same with my photography business. The difference is that you do not see what I do vs what a developer does as I do not clear the lots next to your home for my business... so we label them as a bad guy.
Remember this as well. Most of the donors in this county for non-profits, youth leagues, etc are those developers or the people connected to them (contractors, roofers, etc). Without development, many of those businesses may not exist. Those donations would then not be made. Most of them have good intentions and want to see Citrus be great. I heard that yesterday.
But that doesn't mean we give them full reign to build anywhere and everywhere. We need a plan. We need a vision.
What do we want this county to be and what is our vision? You can help shape that by participating in this process and I hope that you will.