Survey Results by Location

"I like being in an area where I don't have to go very far to get to a natural area and some wide-open spaces, and farm stands and some of the other things that go with the countryside." --Service Organization Member

"We talk about preserving more farm ground, we have a problem that way. I think it is open space. I think the state legislature should come out and change the homestead exemption so anyone who has open space would get the homestead exemption taken off approximately 1/3 of their taxes. And I think if we do that, people would keep some of their open space." - -Developer

"Green space is very important, I think it is wonderful. But I don't think it needs to be just silly big open expansives." -Developer

"I love the open spaces in recreation. Sometimes I chuckle inside when someone says to me, 'we don't have enough open space,' and I think we are so blessed with 27 county parks and we have parks in a lot of our areas." -Township Official

"This area affords a tremendous amount of recreation opportunities. I like the parks, I like the beach, I like the fact that I can be two hours to a major urban center, to do whatever I want to do." --Developer

Citizens Speak

"We have a lot of park-like areas, but we don't have a lot of natural areas. And those are going to developers because it's a hell of a lot cheaper to bulldoze trees and put up new structures. There's not enough emphasis by any governmental unit in the community for maintaining natural, un-man-manipulated, open space."

-Alternative Transportation Advocate

"Green space, you can go deer hunting with a shotgun 7 minutes from where we're sitting. We've got green space coming out the ears, we got trees coming out the ears. That's all nice. But if you're making $13,000 a year with a family of three, you can have all the green space you want and it's a meaningless concept. In corporations...never on a corporation's agenda to move to a community where you see the issue of green space on that agenda. Not once. Not ever. They don't give a damn about green space." - -Developer

"We've got to put more value on open space. Not simply for agriculture. Just value for our future generations to have it there. That means we need to focus on revitalizing our community and I think we need to be thinking about doing that in a way so that we have places for kids who are growing up to spend their time and learning about the outdoors." -Alternative Transportation Advocate