Why care about the Suncoast Parkway 2?
Should we assume that the pro-build interests of Florida will represent our concerns when they push the construction of the Suncoast Parkway 2 through Citrus County?
If this tollroad were built, will Turnpike Enterprises return to repair the secondary impacts, intended or unintended, caused by the tollroad to the land and the people of this County?
As residents, we have direct stakes. We should care enough to be informed of the facts because in the end it will be we who live here who will pay for the unplanned and "unforeseen" damages from this tollway. We will pay with our tax dollars, our higher cost of living, and our degraded quality of life.
The best things about living here can be jeopardized: the relatively low cost of living, the peacefulness, the abundance of natural preserves and contiguous green spaces, the clean air and pristine water.
We have here in Citrus County a special oasis -- the comfort of modern life nestled within a bounty of nature, a life away from the rat race yet within easy distance of resources available only in larger cities. This balance gives us the best of both worlds.
But what we have here is rapidly disappearing everywhere else in the world by short-sighted growth planning. And what we have here can be irreversibly changed into something we don't want, by people we don't know, using justifications that may or may not be valid, using data that may or may not be manipulated.
Thomas Jefferson had said, "We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate."
We must become the majority who participates, to wrest control away from powerful minority special interests that profit from the construction of this tollway at the expense of all the rest of us. We must care enough, for ourselves and our family, to take the extra time to understand the real truth about this road, and to make the extra effort to ensure that our quality of life will not be stolen under our noses.
If the tollroad is built, it will be permanent part of our lives. The damages it will bring will be a permanent part of our lives.
The least we owe to ourselves and our family is to fully understand what those impacts really are, and to find out if indeed we are being hood-winked by false claims.
These are the questions that each of us who live here must demand answers to.
What is at stake is not only our taxes (which will be higher), our environment (which will be damaged), our water supply (which may be polluted), this issue is also about the type of county planning which should occur to manage growth for Citrus County without sacrificing its greatest assets.
So, we should care, and we should act, because how this highway can change Citrus County will have a direct impact on our quality of life and our cost of living. And this impact will extend into our life far beyond the 400 ft swath of ground on which it lies.
