Mr. Bartell,

I am a resident in District 2. As you may know, I am also the webmaster for the site http://truthaboutsuncoast2.com. Contrary to what all my posts and related work have indicated, I am not an anti-road anywhere fanatic. I believe we must have roads. However, we need well-thought out, effective roads that actually solve the problem, and not those that only seem good on paper only to create worse problems later on.

Has congestion been solved further south with the introduction of tollroads and expressways? or did the problem actually get worse because the roads actually attract more growth than would normally occur into the area. Having lived in Naples, I can attest to the rapid increase which occurred quite immediately after the completion of the section of I-75 between Naples and Miami.

Will expressways open up a low-cost, low-taxed area to such big name developers that the smaller local contractors will find it difficult to compete? Will they end up having to sell their business and go work for the big guys?

Although there will more construction jobs, will there also be more people coming into Citrus to service those jobs, so that the unemployment rate of Citrus actually will not change at all?

Elsewhere, did rapid growth give the people the quality of life they wanted, or are they mostly looking for points further away, like Citrus now, to get away from what their communities have become?

If our sink is clogged, and the plumber tells us we need a new sink because that will clearly solve all our clogging problems (and yes! even for the rest of the house!), we should question that. Perhaps the real answer lies elsewhere apart from this shiny new sink. Perhaps a $5.99 plunger from Publix would do the real job.

This road is not the magic bullet to solve Citrus' transportation ills. It should be closely examined whether or not the Suncoast 2 will actually make things worse. Ultimately, the problem is not Growth but RAPID GROWTH. The question is: can the problems of Rapid Growth in Citrus be solved by building a tollroad through the county? or will it actually become worse as it fuels even more the speed of Rapid Growth?

The pressure to increase taxes will only be higher the more rapid the growth occurs. Tollroads and expressways can pour gas on the fire of growth. This is richly document in many studies throughout the years by reputable institutions. I have cited a few of them on my web site under "Sprawl".

We need not be afraid that Citrus will not grow -- our county certainly will do that. We should be afraid that the rate of growth is so fast that we cannot reasonably manage it to continue to provide our people with quality of life, good public services, and a reasonable tax structure.

I hope you will continue to demand real answers to the important questions, and not be settled with standard sound bites that may sound impressive but have no real meat behind it.

Thank you for your time,

Warmest regards,

Hanh Vu
Homosassa