Nearly $20 million was earmarked Tuesday by the Inverness City Council for three utility projects that will vastly expand services and convert much of the city’s septic use to municipal sewer treatment to protect the environment and spur development.

City council members approved a proposal that will extend sewer services along State Road 44 westward and will remove 46 septic tanks offline and replace that with municipal sewer service and included 224,345 square feet of commercial buildings.

The approval will allow city staff to provide for a public meeting next month to assess what each lot/property should pay. But many will not have to pay anything.

That’s because the total cost of the project is $3,973,544. The city received a Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant of $3,388,400 for springs restoration, which includes taking septic tanks offline.

Under the plan, the city would contribute $280,000 as its share to the project.

City Manager Eric Williams told his city council bosses that the city’s share of the cost can be used to give utility customers as much as $7,000 each in utility credits to close their septic tanks and hook up to the city’s future sewer line.

Property owners of vacant properties, without septic tanks, would not get the up to the $7,000.

City Public Works Director Cory Dilmore said that given the grant covers most of the cost, in addition to the city’s contribution from its utilities fund, it’s a good deal for businesses and other developed property owners.

Williams said the project not only provides sewer services “but also sets the stage for smart growth.”

The project can also be used as a “blueprint” for expanding the utility service, Williams said. And once the main utility lines are put in, Williams said it is easier to continue to expand water and sewer services into side streets.

About one mile of dirt road will also be paved under the program.

Council president Cabot McBride said property owners will benefit from the project because property values will increase from the utility services.

“Everyone is going to benefit from this,” he said, commending city staff for pursuing utility grants.

McBride said the city would not attempt such a project using only tax revenues, but depends on grants for the size project.

Dilmore said he hopes to be breaking ground on the project by mid 2023.

Similarly, the city council approved hiring Kimley-Horn and Associates to oversee the grant for phase one of a septic to sewer project for South Inverness Highlands. The North Carolina-based company, with offices also in Florida, will do the assessment services work, design and permitting services, bid and construction oversight.

The project has five phases and the FDEP grant for all five phases is $11,148,750.

The council voted unanimously to award Kimley-Horn $276,300 for the work.

The full five phases will involve 752 parcels and the decommission of 539 septic tanks. Phase one involves 114 parcels and 69 septic tanks.

Dilmore described the combined five phases as “massive.”

Most of the lots are for residential homes and few have been developed. Most are owned by a Miami-based developer.

Along with removing the 69 septic tanks, Williams said the utility lines will also mean that septic tanks won’t have to be added in the future.

The project will involve 7,250 feet of gravity sewer lines, 3,800 feet of force main lines, and two associated lift stations.

Similarly, the council also voted unanimously to hire Kimley-Horn to oversee the U.S. 41 North sewer extension project.

The city received a $3,264,800 FDEP grant to pay for the project that will include 7,500 feet of gravity sewer and 7,000 feet of forcemain lines and two lift stations.

The project includes 116 parcels and 67 septic tanks, of which 33 are commercial and 34 are residential.

The city will pay Kimley-Horn $296,600 for its work.

Councilman Gene Davis commended the city staff in their success in pursuing and getting utility grants.

Councilwoman Jacquie Hepfer agreed.

“It’s wonderful to see things coming together,” she said.

It was the kind of phone call Inverness City Manager Eric Williams was hoping he wouldn’t get.

Nearly a year ago Williams and his staff applied for two federal grants to pave the dirt roads that crisscross Inverness Acres and Inverness Village and provide utilities. The roads are so deteriorated that school buses, emergency vehicles, and mail delivery vehicles will not drive down many of them.

The city council in June 2021 agreed with Williams to apply for the grants totaling $32 million and hired North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn and Associates as its consultants.

Williams told the Chronicle that the consultants contacted him late Thursday to say that Inverness was not selected.

It was a letdown for Williams after submitting detailed applications asking for help and a share of the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation fund.

Williams told the Chronicle there were 247 applicants and only 17 awards. He said a letter from the grant program would likely be forthcoming.

“We’re going to keep looking at options,” Williams said. “We’re going back to the drawing board.”

The county spent $30,000 to pay for the consultants and apply for the grants for the two areas north and south of State Road 44.

The deterioration of the roads were so severe last year that the council approved spending several thousand dollars for emergency repairs.

The subdivisions and their dirt roads have been a dilemma for the city for years.

The problem is the plats for the two subdivisions were accepted by the county half a century ago. Later, the county presented the plats to Inverness. The subdivisions are inside the city limits.

But part of the city’s plat acceptance was that the city would not be responsible for the subdivisions’ roads.

The vast majority of the combined 2,051 lots are still owned by Miami-based Inverness Properties Corporation, which has made no moves to pave the roads.

While the city is not obligated to pave the roads, Williams said there are problems leaving them as they exist.

“Though the city specifically did not accept (the roads in the plat), we are faced with conditions today that are an obstacle to smart growth, economic development, and readiness for certain disasters such as a hurricane,” Williams wrote his council bosses in 2021.

Also in city business, Williams set aside $350,000 for construction and permitting costs for the proposed Wallace Brooks Park beach.

Williams told the Chronicle he could not be more specific about costs, given that Inverness staff and consultants were in the middle of design and permitting. The size and layout of the beach were also still being determined.

Originally wanting to build the beach at Liberty Park, city staff earlier this year found in their files a 60-year-old, long forgotten record of a public dedication by Florida officials of submerged lands of Lake Henderson to the city at Wallace Brooks Park and for the city to develop. That record led the city now to build the park at Wallace Brooks given that the city owns a strip of land along the water’s edge and into the lake.

But Williams told the Chronicle Friday the city still needed to get permits from both the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A Citrus County Rotary Club and its partners are putting mental illness in the spotlight on a local stage to help grow resources for struggling high school students.

Leaders, staff and members with the Rotary Club of Downtown Inverness and the Wil-Power Foundation public charity teamed up to produce David Auburn’s 2000 play “Proof” at the Valerie Theatre in Inverness.

Proceeds will go toward implementing mental-health components for volunteering Hope Ambassadors Club students to offer their fellow pupils.

Show dates for “Proof” are Sept. 30, Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 at the Valerie Theatre, 207 Courthouse Square, Inverness. Friday and Saturday showings will be at 7 p.m. while the Sunday matinee starts at 2 p.m.

Tickets are on sale for $15 at the Valerie Theatre’s website, valerietheatre.org. For more information, call Rotary Club President Cami Plaisted at 352-527-2291.

“Proof” ran on Broadway in the early 2000s, winning a Pulitzer Prize and a few Tony Awards.

It’s a modern-day story set in Chicago about two sisters, Catherine and Claire, dealing with the recent loss of their father, Robert, an esteemed mathematician who suffered from a mental illness in his latter years.

Throughout the play, Robert’s eldest daughter, Catherine, grows concerned with how much of her father’s instability she may have inherited.

Plaisted, who’s co-directing the upcoming production, introduced Rotarians to their club’s fundraising endeavor and partners during a Sept. 1 meeting at Cattle Dog Coffee Roasters in Inverness.

“It takes actors to come together – a cast, a crew, a production team, and a lot of people – to take a story and bring it to life on stage,” Plaisted said, thanking those involved. “We’re excited to partner with each of you ... to bring this mental-health program to the forefront.”

Lisa Holt, a Wil-Power Foundation wellness instructor with a collegiate background in theater, has been directing “Proof” alongside Plaisted, providing the cast and crew during rehearsals with feedback from the perspective of mental health.

“Catherine and her father both have mental-health challenges so it brings awareness, and somewhat normalizes the fact that this is a real issue people are facing,” said Holt, who’s mastering in counseling psychology. “Because it’s a real thing that, historically, people don’t talk about so we’re putting it on stage, and saying this is something, this is real, and let’s look at it; let’s show people are dealing with this, and how can we do our part.”

As their respective characters of Catherine and Robert, Madison Schires and Barry Denham acted out a scene to Rotarians, who responded with applause and excitement of what’s to come.

Denham, who’s no stranger to entertaining theatergoers, said he was delighted to get Plaisted’s invite back in March to be in “Proof.”

“It’s not my first role as a father so this part becomes so easy for me,” the dad of four daughters said, recalling his time on a Spring Hill stage as Maurice, Belle’s father in “Beauty and the Beast.”

Denham said the first thing he thought of after getting the acting offer was his son, who took his own life four years ago.

“I’ve got an iron in the fire for this mental-health issue, and I want to make a difference for people,” he said. “He was a great kid, and I miss him everyday.”

Schires – a Lecanto High School alumna whose father is former Inverness Walmart manager and Inverness Rotary Club president, Larry Gamble – said Catherine will be her first role on stage, ever, but she has a great crew to help her along the way.

“It’s pretty intimidating, initially, because I have never done theater before,” said Schires, who’s been a spokeswoman in commercials for area businesses. “I’m definitely not scared of public speaking ... I have a lot of lines, so it’s way, way different than a commercial.”

Schires is also an office manager and personal trainer with the Wil-Power Foundation.

Emily Mintner and Alissa Martin formed the Wil-Power Foundation in 2016 after Mintner’s brother, William Mintner, died in 2015 from a preventable and alcohol-related incident while a freshman at Florida Southern College.

“It obviously changed my life forever, it changed my family’s life,” Mintner told Rotarians about why she and Martin created the foundation. “How do I turn this tragedy into something that could be meaningful, could be good. ... People grieve differently, and that was my path.”

For more on the Wil-Power Foundation, visit wilpowerfoundation.org.

At first, the Wil-Power Foundation focused on educating teenagers and adults, especially athletes, grappling with a transitionary period of their lives, like going to college or dealing with a death.

Now the foundation and its wellness centers in Crystal River and Hernando have expanded to offer courses in personal, mental and physical wellness, management and rehabilitation.

“Not only do we provide a physical aspect of things, but we really have created a vibe at Wil-Power that is inviting, that is welcoming, that allows people to feel safe, and heal not only physically but mentally, emotionally,” Martin said. “We want to bridge the gap for them in life.”

Heads Above Water has been the Wil-Power Foundation’s trademark workshop since 2017 to teach high school seniors about stress management, budgeting, nutrition and support systems as they leave home.

Mintner said surveyed students in the workshop said budgeting was the biggest concern, but COVID-19 shifted the majority survey responses to stress management.

Since then, the Wil-Power Foundation has been transitioning to provide more attention to mental health.

“Because these kids are hurting,” Mintner said. “You can’t see some of these students and just know they’re going through stuff so there is a need here for that peer-to-peer communication – somebody in the school that if I’m having a really hard time I would go talk to.”

Mintner said the Wil-Power Foundation is hoping these peers can be the schools’ Hope Ambassadors, identifying and assisting students at high risk of going into a crisis.

“We need a little proactive, reaching out,” she said.

Kyler Kirby, an assistant principal at Citrus High School, told Rotarians that students surveyed the last school year scored the lowest when it came to showing respect to themselves and others.

“And we’re trying to use Hope Ambassadors as an avenue to help with that,” said Kirby, who was joined by the high school’s Hope Ambassadors Club sponsor, science teacher Amanda McKenna.

Launched in December 2019 as initiative led by Florida’s first lady, Casey DeSantis, Hope Ambassadors created clubs for student volunteers between sixth and 12th grades who mentor their peers to help create a more compassionate school environment.

Citrus High School was one of 25 pilot schools in that started a Hope Ambassadors Club in the 2020-21 school year.

By December 2021, there were 100 campuses across 39 school districts with a Hope Ambassadors Club, including Crystal River and Lecanto high schools, and 100 more are expected to open this school year.

“Hope Ambassadors are making your students better by being able to cope,” Program Director Latanya Peterson told Rotarians. “So that goes from learning how to cope with homework, using those $3,000 phones their parents bought for other things than just TikTok ... all of the things we know that they can do to maximize their true potential and be the best versions of themselves.”

Contact Chronicle reporter Buster Thompson at 352-564-2916, bthompson@chronicleonline.com or visit tinyurl.com/yxn2ahso to see more of his stories.

Local physician and entrepreneur Dr. Paresh Desai stood Wednesday on the two cleared acres near downtown Inverness and grinned as he lamented the work it took to get the ground ready for the city’s only hotel.

“I’ve done more than 10 groundbreakings for hotels, but this has been the most difficult,” he told the Chronicle as about 60 dignitaries came to the event in sweltering heat and humidity. Desai had worked for more than two years acquiring the property for his $7 million hotel project.

The property was owned by the Citrus County Hospital Board on behalf of the public but leased to Hospital Corporation of America, the same company that operates Citrus Memorial Hospital and other associated campus properties. Desai had to work with both entities, taking it out of the public domain and the lease.

Desai also demolished unused buildings on the site to make way and that got the Florida Department of Environmental Protection involved, extending the process, he said.

The future hotel on 123 S. Seminole Ave. will have 72 rooms with each including kitchenettes for extended stays. It will be built by DI Construction.

The hotel will not be the city's first. The Crown Hotel downtown, now a retirement home, was also once a hotel.

Desai told the Chronicle that visiting health care professionals staying for four to six weeks want those amenities to allow them to stay that length of time.

“And it will create 30 jobs, it’s good for the city’s tax base and it’s good for the community,” he said.

Desai estimates that it will take a year to 15 months to complete the project.

Josh Wooten, president and CEO of the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce, spoke at the event praising Desai, his investors, and Insight Credit Union in Inverness, which bankrolled most of the project.

“This will benefit the hospital. This will benefit the city of Inverness,” he said.

Despite the difficulties acquiring the land and, “then throw in a pandemic ... but they soldiered on. Lessor people might have shelved the project,” Wooten said.

Along with hosting visitors to the city, the hotel is also meant to provide space to traveling health care workers hired for a few weeks at a time by nearby Citrus Memorial Hospital. The hotel is also expected to be utilized by new doctors enrolled in the hospital’s residency program.

“They can walk to the hospital but so can family members of patients,” said Emily Mintner, Citrus Memorial Hospital’s assistant administrator.

And working to allow the hotel so close to the hospital reflects HCA’s commitment to its residency program, she said.

“It also ... expedites their ability to provide patient service in a moment’s notice,” she told the Chronicle.

Citrus County Hospital Board trustee Allan Bartell said there was no question about trying to tease out the two acres so a hotel could be built close to downtown and the hospital.

“This is a win-win for the community and the hospital. The hospital board is proud to be a part of it,” he told the Chronicle.

“The (residency doctors) will be right there. It will be a five-minute walk to any patient in that hospital,” he said.

Inverness City Manager Eric Williams said that although the city has two small motels, “we don’t have a modern, new hotel. This is something much different.”

“We want to bring in people every weekend, to park their car here and walk to many features (in the downtown),” he said. “We need this.”

The mobile-looking home that has residents in the Inverness Highlands up in arms is a modular home that has much right to exist as their houses, Citrus County officials have concluded.

However, officials admittedly goofed by approving a building permit for the home without first reviewing and approving the home’s foundation.

Commissioner Scott Carnahan, who vowed to find a solution that satisfies all involved, acknowledged Friday the home is a modular, meaning it does not need a special residential zoning classification. Neither can the county place standards on a modular that are stricter than requirements for a site-built house.

Still, Carnahan said the county will ensure the home, which now sits on cement blocks, has a proper foundation.

“The foundation is the problem with this whole thing,” he said. “They’ve got to make it right.”

The county permitted the home in November but didn’t realize until February that it was improperly placed on the lot.

County inspectors at that time agreed to meet a neighbor, who is a building contractor, at the site because the neighbor thought it was a mobile home.

While discovering proof through a state-certified sticker on the electrical panel that it was a modular home, they also saw it had no foundation, according to a report and timeline provided Friday by Growth Management Director Mark Green.

Officials then discovered that, although they told the contractor while reviewing the permit that they needed an engineer’s plans for the foundation, that detail was accidentally dropped and the county issued the permit.

“We should have caught it and we didn’t,” Green said.

While the outside of a mobile home and modular may look similar in appearance, they are entirely separate in the eyes of state law.

A mobile home must meet federal housing standards and is licensed by the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

A modular home is assembled by sections off site and is licensed by the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation to meet the Florida Building Code.

Mobile homes can only be placed in residential districts that allow mobile homes. Modular homes, on the other hand, are treated the same as site-built houses.

Green said the contractor should have known the state building code would not allow a modular to sit atop blocks.

“Just because we messed up, that’s not an out for the contractor,” he said.

According to Green’s report, when the county contacted the Belleview-based contractor, he said he mistakenly placed the home onsite as a mobile.

The county issued a stop-work order after discovering it had no approved foundation plan. County inspectors and the contractor continue to discuss what type of foundation is required.