After Ocala-News.com published a letter to the editor sharing an opinion about development in Marion County, several other local residents took the time to share their opinions in letters to the editor. Here are a few:
“I moved here from a big city about 23 years ago. Ocala was so beautiful. You could drive down one road, see some houses, a farm with cows and a farm with horses. Now, all I see is houses going up. The animals don’t know where to go. The trees are lost forever. Traffic is horrible. There is absolutely nothing to do if you have kids that like things other than shopping, eating out, or going to a car wash. Schools are overcrowded. I think there’s three new neighborhoods they’ve been building where they dig and break the waterline, so we’ve had so many boil water notices for about a year now. Stop building Ocala.” – Suzanne Martin, Ocala
“I am a third generation resident of Marion County and it’s a shame that the Marion County Board of County Commissioners is so gung-ho for profits that they would continue to allow the literal conquest of our green lands. Money seems to rule their thinking in allowing the overbuilding of the rural areas. I know of what I speak. Northeast Ocala, just north of the city limits, has too many new developments of huge apartment complexes. There’s another being developed also on NE 35th Street that will probably have several more hundred apartments. When will this permitting stop? When there is no more land left to build on or when we look like a suburb of Orlando and no one can afford to live here any more? – Errol Reed III, Ocala…