By Bryce Abshier – Contact Bryce@VoiceofSouthMarion.com
At a recent Belleview City Commission workshop, the focus was on five key areas for “strategic planning”: Parks and Recreation, Economic Development, Traffic/Transportation, City Perception/Image, and Annexation. The workshop aimed to determine how these initiatives should be prioritized.
Belleview Mayor Christine Dobkowski expressed her concerns about what she called a public misunderstanding of how the government works. “What I’ve seen in the city, and in the county, and in Ocala and probably outside of Marion County is just a, like a prolific misunderstanding and misinterpretation by citizens as to how government works,” Dobkowski stated. “What government’s role is in things like growth, and what government’s role is in business development and how governments make decisions and how things are approved.” She further noted, “The more that I see on social media, in the local newspapers, everywhere, so much of the information just honestly is incorrect.”
Mayor Dobkowski suggested that improving city perception should be a top priority for the coming year. She floated the idea of herself putting on a citizens’ workshop to explain how city governance operates, stating, “to help people understand better how the city works and how governments work.”
On the topic of city perception, the discussion also turned to “Belleview’s Word of Mouth,” a popular Facebook group with 30,000 members, which some on the commission criticized as “negative,” “nasty,” and “garbage”.
“I unjoined it,” Dobkowski said. She emphasized, “Anything that we can do to enhance that (city) perception and maybe start to educate some of these people who are so unhappy… it may be a way for them to realize that some of the positive changes that they’d like to see, that they can be a part of that.”
As a result of the workshop, the following priority order for strategic planning focus areas was established:
1. City Perception/Image, 2. Economic Development, 3. Annexation, 4. Parks and Recreation, 5. Traffic/Transportation
It was noted that Traffic/Transportation ranked last due to the city’s extremely limited influence over Belleview’s major traffic corridors. For example, the recently added Highway 441 medians, crosswalks, and other “planned improvements” were projects of Florida Department of Transportation.
