Newly appointed Leon County Commission Chair, Rick Minor, hopes to address hunger in the community. He wants to use data from Feeding Florida to identify the county's top 15 food-insecure areas and connect those residents with resources.
"That might be a zoning change with the upcoming comp amendments we make. In the case of StarMetro, perhaps it's realigning the StarMetro routes so that people who live in an apartment complex have easier access to a grocery store down the road. It might be creating some type of incentive to bring a grocery store to an area that might be a food desert," Minor says.
Minor wants to set up meetings so that people living in food deserts can talk with city and county officials, as well as non-profits like Second Harvest of the Big Bend and Feeding Florida. He plans to bring the potential project up to the commission in January but stresses the community needs to be involved for the partnership to work.
"This is not something where the government or non-profits decide to do something to a neighborhood. This is very much having a conversation with the people who live there, asking them what their issues are and them working with them to find solutions," Minor says.
