Longtime Indian Trail Improvement District Supervisor Michelle Damone faces a strong challenge from community activist Betty Argue in a Nov. 8 runoff election for Seat 4 on the ITID board.
Argue tallied 41.90 percent (2,004 votes) to Damone’s 38.26 percent (1,830 votes) in the Aug. 30 primary election. Keith Jordano received 19.84 percent (949 votes) and was eliminated.
Argue said that the prevailing issues are infrastructure, drainage, canals, roads, maintenance, accountability and fiscal responsibility.
“I would like to see re-centering of the focus of Indian Trail on our canals, drainage and roads, because our infrastructure is really important,” she said. “That’s what we pay Indian Trail for. Indian Trail, obviously, is responsible for roads, drainage and parks, but our infrastructure was ignored for a long time, and as a result, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
She said development, especially the Minto West/Westlake project, has been a major concern of hers because she feels that it is an example of overdevelopment.
“It is way more in terms of what surrounds it,” Argue said. “The amount of commercial non-residential that has been approved… with a college and hotel in the center of our rural residential, equestrian community. It doesn’t fit. That has always been a concern of mine. It’s an argument that we’ve made. There were really no concessions made. The other big concern was taking Indian Trail roads and turning them into major thoroughfares, in particular 60th Street and Persimmon Blvd. That’s something that I strongly object to.”
Although those roads are on the county’s thoroughfare map, she feels that doesn’t give the county the right to allow widening for cut-through traffic.
“Indian Trail needs to protect not only Indian Trail, but also the residents,” she said. “People bought on some of those roads not thinking that they were ever going to have a highway in front of their house. Already Persimmon has a lot of traffic… Once Minto opens up, once GL Homes opens up, once Iota Carol is built, you’re back to having the same problems, and there will be no relief besides plowing down houses to make bigger roads.”
Argue stressed that The Acreage is a rural, equestrian community and that the surrounding development is eroding that lifestyle.
“You’re now going to have people with different ideas, in the sense of where they live and what they expect, moving into our community,” she said. “They have to drive through our community to get to these new developments, and we’re entirely different. The expectations, the lifestyles, everything is entirely different, and that is going to be a big problem when we have to find a way to protect our area, protect our residents and protect our lifestyles.”
Argue said that the county’s comprehensive plan was supposed to protect The Acreage from overdevelopment, but the county approved amendments that favor developers.
“Those protections were eroded, and that has just been the basis of our arguments, that people moved out here thinking that this was protected by the comprehensive plan,” she said.
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