Countywide vote needed on PUD ordinance
This PUD (Planned Unit Development) ordinance before our Franklin County board of commissioners is larger than a few hearings, a few workshops, and the possibility of only three commissioners voting yes to pass it. It needs to be addressed by as many citizens as possible.
This will only be fair to all who are afforded a chance to cast a vote one way or the other. No PUDs or Yes to PUDs?
There should be a countywide vote. I personally asked Commissioner Ricky Jones, in a recent local meeting if the BOCC would consider a special vote. His reply was, “No.” The cost, he stated, would be $ 25,000 of taxpayer money to hold that special vote. That amount sounds small for the impact these PUDs could cost the local citizens of Franklin County. Maybe what the BOCC and their workshop meetings should be about is will they allow the Franklin County citizens to vote on PUDs, and are the citizens willing to approve the cost for this special vote?
The details and impacts of these PUD ordinances are almost overwhelming to the common man on our streets. We, as citizens, need to speak to one another and find how we each will be affected. A few workshops and scattered/delayed commissioner meetings on this subject isn’t the answer in my opinion, and the opinion of many I have spoken with.
Look at other areas along the Panhandle coastline and how developments have changed their areas for the worse, and how those in that area now live. Do we want to be the next vacation area, high-end resort, or focus on remaining a group of small fishing towns where locals can still live a life they have enjoyed to this point in their lives?
There are issues facing our county, that is no doubt. But opening a door to major vacation or resort developers isn’t going to help those struggling or just getting by in our communities. It will, in my opinion, cause more hardship or worse, push those people out.
Places like Alligator Point, Eastpoint, Lanark Village, Carrabelle, St. George Island, and even Apalachicola, will change as money moves in making way to bring in more visitors and vacationers.
Please call your county commissioners and demand the Franklin County voters make this very important decision.
Russell A Turner
Fulltime Eastpoint resident
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.