To the Editor:
They say SW has everything…that is not true. I’m in Marion Oaks and we have nothing. It’s 30 minutes to Home Depot. It’s still miles on miles to Lowe’s. Marion Oaks has no way to sustain itself outside of travel to Ocala or Belleview. In many ways, we are our own city but don’t have that designation. We have no government buildings. We have no post office. We have a single Winn-Dixie, a Walgreens, a couple dollar stores, and some random, far less helpful businesses.
Everything we need requires a “drive to town,” and this is car-dependent area. We don’t even have public transit. Days have to be planned out to maximize what can get done. Ocala is a minimum of an hour…30-plus minutes there and 30-plus minutes back. Activities take a huge chunk of the day to complete.
We pay our taxes. Our median income is higher than better-known places in Florida that are designated cities, who have access to government buildings, commerce to support themselves, food to feed themselves, hospitals, and are far more self-sustainable. We are not.
Without a car, you have nothing here. There’s no gas in a 3-mile drive from many places in Marion Oaks. The process of just getting gas is 30 minutes to 1 hour long. 49th Avenue has been made into a highway of sorts, but was always a residential road for the landlocked residents off that road (stupid decision).
The backup on 49th can be 5 miles long on a 2-lane road, which by the way has no cell service at all. Just getting home from Ocala can be a 1-, 2-, or even 3-hour event, many times in a normal day as 75, 200, 49th, and 484 all struggle to withstand the tens of thousands of residents here who are just fighting to get home.
Yes, the growth is lopsided, but is so through consistent poor planning from the powers that be and for all of Marion County. Ocala is given all the love for developments, but even those seem to be just more car washes and hotels lately. The commission is clearly crooked, in my opinion.
Marion Oaks is clear cutting everything for more homes, daily, but we don’t have a way to manage the needs of the current residents. The clear cutting, and not replanting, is also making it hotter. We’ve had exponential growth in the last 4 years, and in those last 4 years, the weather has been almost unlivable. There is no shade. A wooded lot with trees is clear cut with zero trees put back up, and then a house is built…that poor planning is going to make this area an even more unrelenting urban heat island.
They think in terms of the money now, and not the cost later. If people can’t stand 115-degree heat, no rain, no clouds, and no shade, that money will run out when they leave as the weather grows further from being conducive to human tolerance and existence.
We need more ways to live our lives comfortably, and the powers that be are their own worst enemies as well as ours. They decide who gets what they want and need, and they’ve voted the residents of this massive county off the island time and time again.
Janine Rodriguez
Marion Oaks resident