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[RC] Let it be known...polls - oddfarm

I just read the posts on the "opinion poll" and to please vote or post your opinion. Let me say this, about that.
 
I live in Seminole, Florida which is in the St. Pete/Clearwater/Largo area. 8 miles from my house is Pinellas Park which is where I grew up with horses. While I was president of our small horseman's association we "guestimated" roughly 800 horses in both Pinellas Park and Seminole. We are the most densely populated county in central Florida both in people and horses.
 
In our area, many years ago there were plenty of places to ride. Now, our association has to lease property from the county to ride on. Not a bad deal, but we shouldn't have to lease it. Our county passed a "Pennies for Pinellas" fundraiser for recreational trails about 10 years ago and very few horse people showed up at any of the meetings. I didn't have horses then or else I would have been there as well. Anyway, we got about 40 miles of trails, but horses are not allowed. All of the planning meetings that our county has never includes equestrians therefore, we don't exist. While I was president of our local club, I begged people to get involved for the sake of riding trails or else our horse property would disappear and so would any trails we had left. They didn't. We now have probably half the horses we did then with another major barn closing soon.
 
Our county loves the taxes we pay for our little 1/4-1/2 acre farms and all the other money we spend for our horses. But they will never acknowledge that we are a horse community, entitled to some recreational trails, because they don't have to.
 
So even if it is just a "count me in" it is better than being invisible. We don't have the huge forests in our county and progress was bound to happen, but if more horse people had said, "me too, ME TOO!", we could have kept more green space to ride on and barns to board at.
 
Lord knows horse people have strong opinions, and trying to keep open spaces available for recreation is not the time to keep them to yourselves!
 
Lisa Salas, The Odd FArm.