January / February  2012 Page 2

PRESIDENTS REPORT

Ed Taylor

Things have been fairly quite and usually are during the holiday season. I always try to do is keep you up to date with any issues being discussed and at present that is the restoration of the barge canal project.

When I first started looking into the possibility of completing the canal. I had two goals in mind to reach. Number one goal was to complete the canal and bring businesses and jobs to the area which we desperately need, and of course, in the process Save Rodman Reservoir. Number two goal was to bring Tallahassee's attention as to what is in place waiting for completion, just in case they didn't already know.

Number two goal has already been reached. After I sent the information to Governor Scott and a copy to the DEP Secretary Herschel Vineyard I received an e-mail from Mr. Vinyard which was short and to the point. All it said was "The DEP will contact you on this issue!" and that was it. Well, the DEP has contacted me a few times and the following is what has been stated. The first contact was really by mistake and was not planned. While attending a meeting where the director from DEP in charge of permitting was speaker, he approached me and said he had read the letter and information packet I had sent to the Governor. I was a bit surprised and ask him how he got that information since he was not sent a copy . His answer was that the letter and packet was being passed around to various department heads for their review. The other contacts came by phone calls to me to let me know what was going to happen next, and that is after the holidays they were going to have meetings and discussions on the canal issue and the results were going to be presented to the Governor at his request. I have been told I will be contacted from time to time to discuss the issue. I was also in Jacksonville recently and managed a couple of minutes with Jennifer Carroll, our Lieutenant Governor. She never has been a Rodman supporter but I explained very briefly what we were trying to do with the canal. Her statement back to me was business and jobs is a very high priority in Tallahassee right now.

So, this brings you up to date as to where we stand on the Barge Canal issue. What is going to happen in these meetings and at the conclusion of these meetings? I don't have any earthly idea and will not attempt to guess, but, we have already achieved one goal and can only hope for the second one.