POINCIANA - The mission of the group Community Vision is to survey Osceola County residents for their opinions on quality-of-life issues like health care, transportation, housing and education and to get a sense of where residents want the county to go in the future.
The community group plans to present the results to the Osceola County commissioners in the hope they can use the survey for better planning.
But when two members of Community Vision brought the survey to the Poinciana Area Council, it was clear the county - and its commissioners - may have an image problem.
The council is made up of business owners in Poinciana, and operates under the Kissimmee-Osceola County Chamber of Commerce. As part of its monthly luncheon meeting last week, held at Solivita, council chairman Chris Farrell invited Community Vision to bring its survey to PAC's members.
Because Poinciana is divided between Osceola and Polk counties, the anonymous electronic survey - members were given a keypad with numbers to push in response to the questions being asked - allowed Poinciana residents living on the Polk County side to vote as well.
Even so, neither Osceola County nor its government appeared to be getting high grades at the moment.
When Community Vision representative Blake Urbach walked the members through the survey, one of the questions was how much they trusted the political leadership in Osceola County. A solid majority of 51 percent responded, "Hardly ever," while an additional 37 percent responded, "Some of the time." Only a handful answered either "Just about always" or "Most of the time."
Osceola has been one of the state's - and the nation's - fastest growing counties in recent years. But even among the PAC members, there's a sense that Osceola's population may be very transient.
When PAC members were asked whether they expect to live in Osceola County 10 years from now, 69 percent said no, and 31 percent said yes.
Even worse: When asked how many expected to retire in Osceola County, 85 percent said no.
Overall, the county appeared to get mediocre grades, at best. Asked how they would rate Osceola as a livable county, 52 percent rated it fair, 22 percent said good, 15 percent responded poor, and just 11 percent said it was excellent.
Urbach said Community Vision hopes to develop a clear sense of what residents want, what they feel the community's greatest needs are, and what they want changed.
"The goal is to target 3,000 residents of Osceola County," she said. "The visioning has been going on for nine months now."
She described Community Vision as a "neutral, apolitical committee" with no agenda of its own.
When asked what areas needed improvement the most, education and transportation ranked highest.
"That's pretty consistent with what we've been hearing throughout the county," Urbach said.
PAC members were asked about tradeoffs - whether they would be willing to pay higher taxes to finance certain amenities, including more transportation options.
On that question, 71 percent said yes. An even higher percentage, 84 percent, said they would support higher taxes to finance parks and green space. An additional 62 percent said they'd pay more to fund education improvements.
Other projects did not garner much support, though. The PAC members were evenly split on whether they would pay more taxes to finance arts and cultural centers in Osceola County, while 67 percent said they would not pay more to help revitalize the county's downtown neighborhoods.
Seventy-nine percent said no to higher taxes to supply more affordable housing options, and 93 percent said no to paying more to help lure big-box retailers to the county. Of that last response, Urbach noted, "That has been the standard response."
Osceola County's current amenities and institutions didn't rank highly.
Asked to rate the county's health care system, the largest group, 48 percent, ranked it as fair. An even higher percentage, 52 percent, ranked the county's education system as fair, with just 3 percent ranking it as excellent.
Fifty-nine percent said the county needs to preserve more green space, and the same percentage said Osceola does not have enough jobs available.
On the other hand, despite concerns about a slowdown in the real estate market and whether the soaring cost of homes is making housing unaffordable for county residents, a solid majority of PAC members said Osceola County has enough housing options available - 63 percent, compared to 37 percent who don't.
Asked which they consider the most affordable option for Osceola residents, 82 percent of PAC members said a single-family house, while only 3 percent said either an apartment or a condominium. The remaining 12 percent said none of the above.
"In some other areas, we've seen condos as the option," Urbach said.
PAC members also indicated they remain as auto-dependent as most of the state. Asked how they get to work, 88 percent said by car, while 3 percent said they walk.
Like the rest of Osceola County, Poinciana has been a fast-growing community throughout this decade and has a popular that exceeds 65,000. It also has growing pains, including congested traffic, lack of easily accessible health care institutions, overcrowded schools, a small and cramped post office that the U.S. Postal Service has been slow to replace, and a rising crime rate. That's one reason PAC organized a Poinciana Crime Prevention Night at 6:30 p.m. April 26 at the Poinciana Community Center on Marigold Avenue.
"We're going to have a range of interactive sessions, essentially telling us what the crime trends are in Poinciana, what the police are doing about it, and what the public can do to get involved," Farrell said. "It should be a good session. It's the first time we've done one, so we hope to get a full house."
PAC intends to sponsor other community events in the future, including a Health and Wellness Day in June. |
