Golf, pickleball proposed at Florida state parks
A new initiative may bring new developments to state parks in Florida.
Fox – 13 News
The shocking Florida Department of Environmental Protection proposal to plop elaborate developments — including golf courses, 350-room hotels, and pickleball courts — on nine state parks is evidence of a tone-deaf administration stacked with interlopers, either ignorant of recent history or too stubborn to learn from it. The ill-conceived idea, which began spreading among environmental groups and then detailed by Florida newspapers last week, prompted fierce and rare bipartisan backlash, almost as if the state’s antibodies were reacting to foreign bacteria.
Gov. Ron DeSantis aped a rookie mistake from his predecessor, now-U.S. Sen Rick Scott, whose own repeated dalliances with building unwanted amenities on top of Florida’s pristine parks met similar swift pushback and, blessedly, went nowhere. At least Scott committed this sin early in his governorship. DeSantis, nearing the end of his own, seems to be regressing, becoming less relatable and more detached, as if he went up to Iowa for his since-aborted presidential campaign and never really came back.
How else to explain this? Scott’s plan seemed animated by his background as a ruthless healthcare executive: commoditize Florida’s natural beauty. There was at least a kind of cold logic to it. What is DeSantis’ motivation? His DEP officials peddled some strange ambition to make golf “more accessible” for Floridians. Huh? Meanwhile, a mysterious foundation incorporated in Delaware, with no apparent footprint in Florida, has taken responsibility for at least part of the proposal — a desire to build three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County. Their explanation? Something about honoring God and Tuskegee Airmen. Huh?
But there was no greater evidence of maladministration than the way in which DEP tried to cram this down everyone’s throat: Public feedback for this proposal to dramatically alter nine state parks, brazenly branded the “Great Outdoors Initiative,” was to be solicited in meetings originally scheduled for this week, in the early afternoon, all happening simultaneously — so presumably someone objecting to changes at more than one park would be out of luck. And of course remember, this plan became public knowledge last week only because of alarmed parks advocates and the media, that dreaded institution, so this timeline represented a lightning-fast turnaround for an agency like DEP, which can take geologic eras to make decisions when it suits its leaders.
At least part of this proposal, the Jonathan Dickinson piece, has been cancelled, according to DEP, but DeSantis’ administration — not known for its moderation and temperance in public communication — has been oddly quiet while Republicans from U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz to his allies in the Florida cabinet have pilloried his plan.
Floridians’ love of their parks is a conservative value in the truest sense — preserving Florida’s natural grace, a thing that works just exactly as it is, no change necessary or wanted. All DeSantis needed to do was … nothing. Just leave the parks alone, save for routine maintenance and care, and take credit for their continued prosperity.
Instead, the DeSantis administration set itself to permanently altering this beloved part of Florida life. It’s the kind of decision only someone who knows nothing about the place would make.
DeSantis, surrounded by dour right-wing edgelords, some of whom are indeed new Florida transplants with peculiar histories, has shown a penchant for attacking the institutions that have served Florida well for decades and has repeatedly displayed contempt for the will of his constituents. At last, he is paying a price for this.
Like parks, DeSantis could have simply let the high-performing University of Florida essentially run itself. Instead, his appointees on the board of trustees used the veil of secrecy to help them jam an unqualified, money-grubbing Nebraska senator into the president’s office, a decision with a high cost we are only beginning to learn about. What did that interloper do once he took control at UF? He hired more outsiders and paid them lavishly, in some cases not even requiring them to move to Florida, then he paid an outside consulting firm millions of dollars, though for what work remains a bit unclear.
UF, until recently a source of bipartisan pride, is now under scrutiny by leading Florida Republicans and Democrats.
When voters rejected a DeSantis-backed candidate for their local school board — as they did in races across Florida last week — he could have just let sleeping dogs lie. Instead, he appointed one of those electoral losers to the state board of education, the will of voters be damned, doubling down on a culture-war posture that even right-leaning Florida seems exhausted with. Public education is of course another pillar of Florida civic life DeSantis wants to change: As if politics were not already an incessant, inescapable part of our lives, separating us from our neighbors, DeSantis wants non-partisan school boards to become explicitly partisan — because why not inject a little national psychosis into neighborhood elections?
Florida needs that about as much as it needs a giant new hotel in Anastasia Park.
Nate Monroe is a Florida columnist for the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU. Email him at nmonroe@gannett.com.
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Publish date : 2024-08-27 08:23:00
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