County commissioners have taken a baby step toward addressing the need for more space for our ever-expanding local government offices. On Tuesday, the board voted to begin seeking appraisals on two parcels in downtown Inverness that might one day be the sites of office buildings.
While any action that will bring details and not merely opinions to the table is welcome, there is a tremendous amount of work still to be done.
That much is obvious. What is less clear is whether all the players who need to be involved in these discussions have been invited to participate.
The focus to date has been on the county commissioners and their efforts to find more space for constitutional officers, including the supervisor of elections, the tax collector and the property appraiser. All of these agencies are bursting at the seams, anticipate growing even more and want the county to find them more room.
The judiciary has had its say as well, asking for more space for the expanding court operations. The sheriff, who is going to get a new Emergency Operations Center in Lecanto to run but who still has his headquarters in Inverness, is a more-than-interested observer of the proceedings.
And, of course, the city of Inverness has been fully involved. With office space available at the new City Hall and at the site of the former Inverness Police Department, as well as a burning desire to keep the government operations at home in the county seat, the city will play a major role in the discussions to come.
To those voices, add one more. Call it an 800-pound gorilla in a white lab coat and stethoscope.
While the government ties itself into knots over its growing plans, directors at the Citrus Memorial Health System have quietly gone about making their growth a reality.
The hospital has gobbled up block after block of homes, churches, even the old Citrus High School building in downtown Inverness in recent years and shows no signs of stopping.
Officials at the hospital now are planning a new $57-million tower that will rise where the emergency room parking lot is now. They have many more ambitious ideas for the properties they have acquired.
At some point, sooner rather than later, the growth of the hospital is going to run smack into the government's plans. There is only so much available space in downtown Inverness, after all.
It only makes sense, then, for this major player to have a seat at any table that county, city and even school district officials set up to look at their various needs and available options.
One obvious area of mutual interest is parking spaces, or the lack thereof.
If all of these proposed buildings ever do rise, they will attract hundreds of more people each day to an already parking-challenged downtown. With lot space at a premium, the next direction is up.
For quaint, little Inverness this means that the era of the urban monolith - the parking garage - has arrived.
This is no small feat. Multistory garages are fixtures in large cities, not towns of less than 10,000 souls. They are ugly, even with decorative touches, and incredibly expensive, with some estimates of $14,000 per space.
But they are functional.
The hospital recognizes this, and officials there met last week with Inverness City Manager Frank DiGiovanni to discuss, conceptually, a parking garage.
There are many points to consider, chiefly the possible location. As DiGiovanni noted, unlike a parking lot, once a garage is built it is there for the long haul.
Will it blend in with its surroundings or stick out and detract from the ongoing Inverness revitalization?
Who would use the garage? Hospital employees mainly? Outpatients and visitors? How would they get from the remote lot to the hospital? Shuttle buses?
And would the general public, those not going to the hospital at all, use the facility?
This is where the hospital's plans bump into those of the county. One of the suggestions on the table is for a parking garage to be built alongside the Sheriff's Office on Cooter Pond.
Leaving aside the wisdom of building a garage on choice waterfront property, the larger question is: Does the city need two parking garages, enormously expensive and imposing, just a few blocks from each other?
It only makes sense for the county government and the hospital to see if there is a way they can work together on a garage they could share.
Certainly, the county's staff has its hands full just trying to get any sort of clear direction from the County Commission on how to proceed with the office space questions. And adding more participants, and their egos and differing agendas, to any discussion invites paralysis.
But that is no excuse for not trying.
The future face of Inverness is being crafted right now by numerous entities. They all must be aware of each other's plans, and the opportunities to work together.
It has been said many times, but it bears repeating, that this is the moment in the county's history for inspired leadership.
It also must be restated that any discussion of new government office buildings must include alternatives such as satellite sites around the county that would bring public service to the people, as well as an understanding of the technological advances taking place at offices around the world. The most expensive alternative - bricks and mortar - is being outpaced by technologies that have employees working out of their homes and cars, and not offices.
For now, however, we would settle for having the major players sitting down at the same place at the same time to talk, without rancor, about these major public projects.
It's another baby step, but it would be a start.
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