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C.C. “Doc” Dockery, the Lakeland business man who convinced Florida voters to enshrine high speed rail into the Florida constitution in 2000 and then watched as Jeb Bush convinced them to de-shrine it in 2004, has weighed in strongly on the CSX rail hub project.
Dockery, who is married to state Sen. Paula Dockery, has sent a letter to Polk County Manager Mike Herr asking that the county direct a consultant it is hiring to broadly review the project’s proposed impacts.
Here are the key elements of the letter:
“Specifically, I feel that it is absolutely essential that you attempt to determine how the CSX complex, when built out, will affect: schools; law enforcement; emergency medical response teams; fire fighting units; and emergency room facilities at our area hospitals which routinely treat many at no cost to them for non-emergencies. Those costs are passed on to others.
One published report said that CSX would bring in 8,000 new employees to the area. Where will these employees come from? The Florida Chamber of Commerce, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Florida agriculture community, homebuilders, road builders, and manufacturers all claim that we need a guest worker program and ask that the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens who are here be allowed to remain and eventually become citizens. All of this they urge because they claim that we do not have enough Americans to do the jobs.
Now, it seems that some county officials and the Chambers of Commerce are touting the CSX complex as necessary to create additional jobs; for whom?
If 8,000 new jobs are created, as one newspaper report claimed, how many more policemen, sheriff’s deputies, emergency medical teams, fire fighters and hospital workers in emergency rooms will we need to hire to take care of these workers and their families? How many teachers will we need to hire to teach the children of these workers? How many classrooms will we need to house them?
And ultimately, how much will all of this cost tax payers? What new taxes or increases in present taxes will be imposed?
If the predictions are true that the construction of this complex will dump another 1,200 to 1,500 trucks daily on our roads, how long will it be before someone will be demanding that we embark on an expensive road building program to take care of the new truck traffic?
How many more hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day will be needed to be drawn from our already scarce water resources? An article in Wednesday’s Ledger talks about a future deficit of 106 million gallons per day.
The citizens of Polk County and the municipalities of Polk County need these answers before the project is approved.”
Dockery goes on to ask that the county consider triggering the development of regional impact process for the project’s first phase, which is the 318-acre rail hub and intermodal center that will make the remaining 900 acres of warehouses and offices that make up the second phase possible.
The state has allowed CSX to avoid that process, which typically takes years, on the first phase of the project, which falls just under the 320-acre acreage threshold.
Also, Dockery said his wife had no idea he was sending the letter.
The 8000 jobs are a fantasy of CSX public relations. The real numbers are 200 or possibly 1800 as described in the blog below
http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/news/C450/P36/
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Posted by Dee Dee Chiavuzzi, Track side, Winter Haven on 04/22 at 06:39 PM
Wally is correct. The #‘s look more like 200 with 1800 coming along with the rest of the business park. The other 6000 are support jobs like real estate, insurance, and convience store workers who service the employees.