CITRUS CRUSADER

By John Labriola - The Inverness City Council last week shamelessly backed off its plan to prohibit future marijuana treatment centers within city limits, leaving the city vulnerable to becoming a magnet for the pot industry, which is now banned from expanding in the rest of Citrus County. In December, residents had urged the council to act shortly after the Citrus County Commission's vote to ban dispensaries in the unincorporated areas, which followed the Crystal River City Council's decision a year earlier to stop allowing them within their city limits.  The county has eight marijuana dispensaries, with a ninth on the way, and that number doesn't even include clinics that just provide marijuana cards. Two of the dispensaries are located in the Inverness city limits, one just outside the city, four in Crystal River and one in Homosassa. The ninth, which submitted its plans just before the county banned additional clinics in unincorporated Citrus County, is looking to locat...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB) shifted slightly to the right last week as county commissioners made their annual appointments to the nine-member board, which has been the focus of many cultural flashpoints over the last several years. About twenty residents, divided between conservatives and LGBT activists, shared their lists of recommended candidates during public comment, many urging the appointment of members aligned with the county's conservative values, and others demanding candidates who advocate for taxpayer support for the promotion of "diverse" lifestyles. Dean Bales of Homosassa asked the board to name candidates with "common sense" and not dishonest leftists who want to give children access to homosexual pornography under the guise of opposing "book bans" and advocating for "free speech" and "intellectual freedom."  "Notice how on a dime they turned on Charlie Kirk and became the bo...

By John Labriola -  Just over three months after the Library Advisory Board (LAB) bowed to a mob of hateful leftists to reject a temporary display of books by the late Charlie Kirk, the Citrus County Commission will sit in its capacity as the Library Governing Body this coming Tuesday to nominate and appoint five members to the nine-member LAB. The meeting will take place at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 10 , at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave., Inverness, FL 34450 . The five county commissioners will be joined by Inverness Councilwoman Crystal Lizanich and Crystal River Councilwoman Gabrielle Satchell, who are part of the seven-member nominating body that appoints LAB members. Over the years, conservative residents have grown tired of the LAB's consistently liberal bent. On numerous occasions, residents have demanded the LAB take action to address leftist politicization of the library system, but the LAB has almost always voted the wrong way, mostly out of fea...

By John Labriola - Inverness may soon follow Citrus County in banning future medical marijuana clinics. After hearing from nearly a dozen residents who urged city leaders to take action following the Citrus County Commission's adoption last week of an  ordinance  to prevent additional marijuana facilities from opening in unincorporated Citrus County, members of the Inverness City Council on Tuesday all agreed to bring back their own ordinance to stop dispensaries from coming to the city. "Let's just limit the dispensaries, any more coming into our town," said Council President Gene Davis.  Last year, the Crystal River City Council voted to ban future marijuana clinics there.  There are a total of eight medical marijuana facilities in Citrus County. Four are located in the city of Crystal River and two in the city of Inverness. Unincorporated Inverness has one, and the other is in Homosassa. Renea Teaster, director of the Anti-Drug Coalition of Citrus County, who vis...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Commission last week advanced a plan by Commissioner Jeff Kinnard to give library staff and the volunteer Library Advisory Board (LAB) guidelines for deciding what book displays to allow in Citrus County libraries. Commissioners unanimously voted to give staff direction to merge Kinnard's draft policy with the library system's existing display policy and bring it back to the board, but to first remove a provision allowing outside groups to apply for displays, which Kinnard agreed to. "I spent a couple of weeks going back over and reimagining where we wanted to go with this library display policy, and what I kept coming back to is I'd like to see this board remain more as a policy board and stay out of these different disputes happening from both ends of the political spectrum in our libraries," Kinnard said. "I think it's appropriate for this board to set a policy to attempt to keep these displays as neutral as possib...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Commission last week unanimously approved an ordinance to prohibit any future marijuana dispensaries from opening in unincorporated Citrus County.  Commissioner Jeff Kinnard, who sponsored the ordinance, said Citrus County's concentration of dispensaries is now higher than Volusia County's. He showed his colleagues a photo he took on a recent trip to Volusia which illustrates the kind of businesses that gravitate to areas with a proliferation of marijuana dispensaries. The photo showed a Stoner’s Pizza Joint right next to a Curaleaf cannabis dispensary on Daytona Beach's main street, “which I’m sure makes the Volusia County Board of County Commissioners just beam with pride about what's happening on their main thoroughfare,” he said. A total of eight marijuana clinics currently exist in Citrus County, two of them in unincorporated Citrus County. Under the ordinance, they can continue operating but won't be able to expand or rel...

By John Labriola - Citrus County commissioners will be discussing new guidelines for library book displays at their upcoming meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 9. The meeting will begin at 1 p.m. and will be held at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave., Inverness, FL 34450 . The draft library display policy comes after weeks of controversy over a proposed display of books written or recommended by Charlie Kirk, which was rejected by the Library Advisory Board (LAB) by a 5-2 vote on Oct. 28 after a mob of angry leftists slandered Kirk and intimidated the LAB by shouting obscenities.  The LAB's decision was panned at a county commission meeting a week later by Commissioner Diana Finegan and members of the public, some of whom attributed the vote to cowardice. They said Kirk, who was assassinated at a Utah university campus on Sept. 10 by an angry leftist, deserves a display.  Commissioner Jeff Kinnard, who is proposing the new display policy, believes the LAB needs speci...