LAKELAND, Fla. — Under the shade of giant oaks, Blair Updike and her 11 and 13-year-old daughters enjoyed Polk County’s Circle B Bar Reserve on a pleasant November morning.
The beloved park attracts visitors and photographers from all over because of its picturesque landscapes and bountiful wildlife.
Updike’s 13-year-old, however, was interested in something else: mud left behind after flooding from Hurricane Ian.
“Oh, no. She’s in the mud,” Updike sighed as her barefoot daughter sunk ankle-deep. “Oh my gosh. Don’t get that on your pants! We’ve got to go to breakfast after this.”
To Updike, despite the mud, Circle B is special. It’s now a place she and other visitors sometimes take for granted.
But it might now exist if not for voters in 1994.
Back then, they approved a 20-year property tax hike that allowed Polk County’s Environmental Lands program to preserve Circle B land and almost a dozen other natural areas, including Lakeland Highland Scrub, Crooked Lake Prairie, Peace River Hammock, Marshall Hampton Reserve, and Gator Creek Reserve.
Now, voters like Updike will get a chance to pass the next iteration of the same tax. If approved by voters, a referendum on Tuesday’s ballot would allow the county to levy the tax for another 20 years and collect up to $75 million to preserve additional lands through either acquisition or conservation easements.
“What is one person going to do? This is the best way we can actually make something happen and preserve land. By yourself, you’re just a complainer,” she said. “Be a voter.”
The 0.2 mil ad valorem tax would cost a homeowner about $3.58 a month for a home valued at $215,000, which is roughly the median value in Polk County.
But Updike said the cost of not doing something is far greater. Less preservation could mean more development, more traffic, more urbanization, and less wildlife.
Travis Thompson, a Polk County fishing and hunting guide who’s also a member of a group of local conservationists supporting the referendum, agrees with Updike’s assessment.
“Our response is, we can’t afford to not do this," he said. "If we don’t do this today, these lands will be written as other things. The pressures of development in our state — and I’m not saying that I’m anti-development — but the pressures of development in our state that these lands will become houses.
He added that Florida is growing rapidly.
"Development is pressing on us every day, and this allows us to work in conjunction with as the county grows to make sure we have green spaces," he continued.
But not everyone is completely on-board, including JC Martin, the chairman of the Polk County Republican Party.
“We should be thinking bigger but smarter,” he said.
Martin would like to see a more comprehensive plan for the county’s lands before another tax is passed, so he’s asking people to vote "no," but with a distinction.
“It’s a neutral no,” he clarified.
As Martin explained, that means he isn’t actively campaigning against the referendum that others, like Updike, are actively campaigning for.
Updike hopes her daughters can show their kids an even bigger collection of places like Circle B one day. The reauthorization of the tax could allow the county to preserve lands in all corners of the vast county, including the Lake Wales Ridge, Upper Kissimmee Basin, Green Swamp, and Peace River.
Standing in the shade of the ancient oaks with her daughters by her side, Updike admired Circle B's beauty as a red-shouldered hawk cried out in the distance.
“It’s nice to have something left that’s still wild in Florida,” she said.
To Updike, the lands Polk County offers are valuable to recreation, but they're also worth preserving to bolster Florida's Wildlife Corridor.
The corridor, which protects wildlife by linking together a chain of natural areas that spans the state, has been supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other leaders in a bipartisan manner.
“They say, ‘So Polk goes, so goes the rest of Florida.’ And so we need to really hold up our end of the deal for the governor," Updike said.
