You hear it around here all the time: “Growth ought to pay for itself.”
I agree. But Amendment 3 does the opposite of that. It makes it certain that growth won’t pay for itself, and it hands the bill to those of us already living here.
Voting yes for Amendment 3 is the wrong vote. It doesn’t slow growth by a single rooftop. It only makes sure the rest of us pay the costs of growth through longer emergency response times, more traffic congestion, worse roads, slower recovery after storms and a county with less say in what happens to it.
That is a poor trade-off, and Polk County would feel it more than most.
Read the full Guest Column by Merle Bishop, Retired Planning and Growth Management Director for Polk County, on The Lakeland Ledger