By Winston Perry, Homosassa

In response to your Jan. 16 editorial regarding the Hometown Democracy Amendment 4, I find your reasoning that it would “damage Florida” is Pollyana-ish at best and doesn’t address the core development vs. environmental problems that we have in Citrus County and throughout the state.

It is all well and good to say that we elect government representatives (i.e., county commissioners) to make sure that the county comprehensive plan is followed fairly and correctly as it relates to proposed development. But in the real world, it has been proven time and time again that the Citrus County commissioners only consider the particular portions of the comp plan that support their “approval” of a project, and totally disregard all other portions of the comp plan that would require a denial vote. So what are we the voters left to do?

Yes, and as you suggest, we can vote in commissioners “who will do the right thing.” But specifically in Citrus County, it is common knowledge that the pro-development contractor county commission candidates are extremely well-financed by the developers of Citrus Hills, who have very deep pockets, who will and have spent whatever it takes to put and keep their candidates in office. Therefore, in the end, we the voters are only left with the option of hiring an expensive lawyer to sue the county to make sure that the comp plan is followed correctly (a la the Halls River Retreat), thereby forcing the voters to use more public donor dollars to sue an entity that is already paid for by public dollars. That is the real-world scenario, and not the Chronicle’s pie-in-the-sky answer of “well, if you don’t like them, then vote them out.” Therefore, the Hometown Democracy Amendment 4 is the only concerned voters’ remedy to this real-world sorry state of affairs in Florida, and should be wholeheartedly supported and approved by the electorate in November’s election.

Winston Perry, Homosassa