Words of Wisdom from Brad Rogers

And the survey says... protect our farmlands

Saying that 2021 was a good year for Ocala/Marion County just doesn’t quite do the year justice. After all, the Census Bureau declared us the 10th fastest-growing metro area in the country. U.S. News & World Report, in its annual lists of Best Places to Live, declared our community the 4th safest place, the 6th best place to retire and 16th best small metro in which to live and work. Even U-Haul couldn’t ignore booming Ocala, placing it in its Top 25 Cities for Growth in both 2019 (No. 3) and 2020 (No. 6). Not bad. As all this is happening, houses and warehouses are going up at a frenzied pace as an estimated 150 new residents move into Ocala/Marion County every week, and the population pushes 380,000. If it sounds like a chamber of commerce kind of year, well, it was. Yes, even the Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership notched a high ranking when it was named the No. 1 chamber of commerce in the U.S. by the folks who run such organizations. Indeed, success breeds success. So, where do we go from here? To get some idea, the CEP, in conjunction with the recent Horse Farms Forever Conservation Summit, commissioned a survey to find out what local residents think about all the growth. What the survey, conducted by the market research firm The Matrix Group, found was the 1,200-plus survey respondents love living in the Horse Capital of the World and are worried that all this growth will slowly encroach on and destroy, as Horse Farms Forever calls it, “the open spaces and beautiful places” that make Ocala/Marion County unique. In fact, among the issues presented to survey participants, preservation of land and natural resources, was their top concern. That was followed, in order, by transportation and traffic, population growth, housing availability and affordability, economic development, employment opportunities, and homelessness, drug abuse and crime.

This is hardly a new discussion. For more than a generation there has been fretting that Ocala’s urban sprawl would someday overtake our signature horse farms. And, of course, everyone loves the picturesque beauty of our horse farms, not to mention the equine industry’s $2 billion-a-year (and growing) local economic impact.

So, The Matrix Group asked survey takers if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Marion County’s Farmland Preservation Area is home to some of the richest soils and pristine fresh water aquifers in the world. It is crucial that we maintain this area and its resources to ensure that our legacy as the Horse Capital of the World will remain for future generations.”

Well, 90.2 percent said they agreed. I suspect they also support Mom and apple pie. But for local policymakers like those on the County Commission and the Ocala City Council, the overwhelming strength of that response should give them pause the next time they consider moving the Urban Service Boundary into horse country or chip off a piece of the Farmland Preservation Area for a favored developer’s project.

BY BRAD ROGERS

We are blessed here in Ocala/Marion County to have a booming economy, a beautiful place to live, new residents moving in every day, a diversified economy and, of course, spectacular horse farms. We seemingly have it all.

But having it all means managing it all. Luckily, we have loads of space to keep growing without building roads or distribution centers where horse pastures exist today.

As the CEP’s head honcho Kevin Sheilley told the Conservation Summit crowd:

“We can literally have it all. We can maintain amazing farmland areas. We can maintain a beautiful natural forest. We can have a strong urban core. We can grow our population. We can have industrial corridors. And all those can exist together, and, quite frankly, they can exist fairly well.”

To paraphrase the great football coach Vince Lombardi, getting to the top is the easy part. Staying there is the hard part. We’re riding high and seemingly we have it all. Staying on top will require protecting it all, starting with what makes Ocala/Marion County world-famous.

This is hardly a new discussion. For more than a generation there has been fretting that Ocala’s urban sprawl would someday overtake our signature horse farms.