More residents across Ocala recently submitted letters to share their thoughts on the city’s transportation needs.
“As the city and its surroundings are expanding, growing, and diversifying, you can tell by the amount of new gas stations, urgent care and medical facilities popping everywhere, hotels, and construction being erected throughout the city and county. So yes, the growth is here, and so is the congestion of more people moving in, passing by, and going through the city. Why not make it easier, faster, and efficient to come in and out of our city instead of having the inconvenience of having to travel an hour and a half to do so while spending our money somewhere else. Let’s keep it at home and make our local economy prosperous. We might as well, if we can’t stop the growth. By the way, it will benefit the horse community more than not. I’m in favor of having commercial flights at our local hometown airport. Let wings fly over Ocala now,” says Ocala resident Manny Camps.
“I agree that Ocala is a beautiful place to live, but we lack transportation in the city. Most of the city council members are old and thinking in the past. No matter how much you look at Ocala as a horse country, we need to have infrastructure and transportation that will connect the city to other cities in Marion county. We need big box stores where people can go shopping. The mall we have is outdated and people are tired of driving to Orlando or Tampa to give those places our tax dollars when we can keep it in our city by providing roads and infrastructure,” says Noel Tulley, Ocala resident.
“All this back-and-forth talk about expansion of the airport to commercial air traffic is nothing more than wants, opinions, and hopeful wishes. It has little to do with us. The commercial air flight business is a for-profit one. It is their choice/decision if they want to invest millions of dollars in providing services here. They tried it in the past and pulled out when it didn’t turn a profit. So, just remember that the people who have the money and the private jets are the supporting backbone of our equine industry, which makes us the Horse Capital of the World,” says Ocala resident Ernest Sprague.
“To the Robert guy: if you want Orlando, move back to Orlando. We are far from being anywhere close to a huge city like that, nor do we want to be. I’m sure we will never stop progress, but we can slow it down which means we don’t need a large carrier airport any time soon. Sorry, we will not be your collateral damage for your little inconvenience,” says Tom Pajevic, Ocala resident.
Would you like to share your thoughts with us? Share them in a comment or by writing a Letter to the Editor.