Sumter County Commission meetings are being moved exclusively to The Villages and will no longer be held in Bushnell.
The commissioners will hold their twice-monthly regular meetings at the new Everglades Recreation Center on Marsh Bend Trail, in the rapidly growing section of The Villages south of State Road 44.
The commission meetings for years have been split between Florida’s Friendliest Hometown and the county seat. Commissioners met in the parlor room at Colony Cottage Recreation Center on the second Tuesday of the month and in the Historic Courthouse in Bushnell on the fourth Tuesday of the month.
Sumter County officials have explained that this move is being made for the sake of “consistency.”
Do you think having the meetings at The Everglades Recreation Center will be appropriately accessible to all residents of Sumter County? Share your thoughts in a Letter to the Editor at this link: https://www.villages-news.com/submit-letters-editor/
While some residents at the southern end of the county may interpret this as another example of commissioners bowing to the will of The Villages, the meetings at the Everglades Recreation Center could be a headache for the vast majority of Villagers living in Sumter County.
The commission meetings will no longer be golf-cart accessible for the foreseeable future. The timetable is unclear with regard to the promised golf cart bridges that would connect the rest of The Villages to Fenney, Marsh Bend, DeSoto and Linden. Even when those bridges are completed, golf cart travel from the far north of the Sumter County portion of The Villages would be unthinkable for those residents, many of whom are older.