Editor, The Beacon:
Last week, I read in your paper about the number of houses the city has approved for DeLand. Seven hundred thirty-one sounds like a lot of houses, and what about the people who will live in those houses?
In The Daytona Beach News-Journal this past week, I read that our City Commission has approved the rezoning of our old golf course and its development. I was so very disappointed, but I knew we were too late to change the minds of our mayor and the commission.
We were supposed to feel sorry for the developer and all the work they had put into this project. Not.
But today, I write to say what is really bothering me.
How many of you have tried to get a doctor’s appointment in the past year? Were you told you would have to travel to another town or wait two to three months for that visit with your doctor? Everyone I know has. My husband just drove to Lake Mary to see an ophthalmologist about his eye!
Now we are going to add thousands of people, but where will they go when it’s time for a doctor visit? Our choices are few. Our doctors spend only one or two days in DeLand, then go to their offices in other cities. There are some specialists we don’t have here.
Is the City Commission going to hand this problem over to a developer? Are they thinking about this problem at all? They have told us at the meetings that they have studied the schools, the traffic, the green space, but have they seriously thought about our water, sewage, emergency-room traffic and our doctors?
It’s time to worry, folks, because our chance of seeing a doctor in the future will include a four- or five-month wait!
Jane Donlon
DeLand
