She says it loud and she says it proud:

“Second Annual King’s Bay Heron Hop Decorate Your Land Yacht Golf Cart Poker Run.”

Susan Quenelle, program director with Friends of Citrus and the Nature Coast grief center and thrift shop, said about the phrase, “Everybody loves it when I let it roll off my tongue.”

And she’s happy to let it roll.

She wants everyone to know about the April 23 fundraiser for the nonprofit Homosassa-based grief center, which provides grief services to anyone who has experienced a loss. The organization is solely dependent on donations to its thrift shop, fundraisers, and grants, Quenelle said.

Herry the Heron is the group’s mascot and the fundraiser is named for him.

Quenelle said about 100 people entered last year’s event, and she expects more this year.

Part of the fun of the golf cart poker run will be the Best Decorated Golf Cart contest. The carts – or land yachts – are to be trimmed out in a nautical theme.

Quenelle said last year, some participants decked themselves out as Vikings in a Viking ship.

“People get really creative,” she said. “They use netting, crab pots, fish.”

Crystal River Mayor Joe Meek and Citrus County Judge Charles Helm will judge the decorated carts based on creativity and use of the nautical theme, Quenelle said.

All vehicles, including bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and cars, are welcome to participate, according to Quenelle.

She said last year, some bicyclists honored the nautical theme by carrying little swimming noodles.

The event is confined to the King’s Bay area, Quenelle said, which is golf-cart friendly. Participants don’t need to cross Highway 19 or Fort Island Trail. People from outside the King’s Bay area can trailer in their golf carts.

The event starts with check-in and registration at 10:30 a.m. at the open lot at North Islamirada Way and West Fort Island Trail in Crystal River.

Before the participants take off at 11:30 a.m., there will be a blessing of the golf carts.

Then, participants will drive to stops at the Plantation Tiki Bar, Waterfront Social Grill &Tiki Bar, Lollygaggers Sports Pub & Grill, the Crab Plant, and Norton’s Riverside Sports Bar & Grill.

At each stop, participants will draw a poker card and have the chance to buy raffle and 50/50 tickets. Raffle items will include gift baskets and gift certificates.

The last golf cart must check into Norton’s by 4:30 p.m. Quenelle said there should be enough time for participants to have lunch or a drink at some of the sites before the final check-in.

At the final stop at Norton’s, the winner of the poker hand and of the best-decorated golf cart contest will be announced.

There will be a silent auction of gift baskets.

Quenelle said some of the auction items include a two-night stay at the Plantation on Crystal River, overnight stays at campgrounds, dinner at area restaurants, and wine and champagne.

Friends of Citrus and the Nature Coast could use more sponsors to donate between $150-$500, she said.

The entry fee is $20 per cart, with an additional $10 per passenger who wants an extra poker hand.

Registration is online at www.friendsofcitrus.org or by calling 352-249-1470.

Once the April 23 event is history, Quenelle and her group will focus on the Second Annual Old Homosassa Heron Hop Halloween Golf Cart Poker Run.

She said last year, the Homosassa Halloween event drew a bigger turnout than the spring event in King’s Bay in Crystal River.

“People really go all out for that one,” she said of the Halloween event. “Homosassa is quite the golf-cart community.”

Now, she said, “We’re hoping Crystal River will step up and we can have some friendly competition.”

The state’s newest specialty plate was not intentionally designed to depict Citrus County but it could be a scene right out of King’s Bay.

The plate, now available at the Citrus County Tax Collector’s Office, will benefit the nonprofit Florida State Parks Foundation and embodies the kind of nature-based lifestyle people associate with Citrus.

It features a tranquil scene of a kayaker plying through calm blue waters. On either side are native shrubbery and trees. A turtle looks on and a bird flies overhead. The sun is reflected in the water.

“Explore Our State Parks” is printed on the bottom.

The only thing missing is a manatee. Instead, the scene features an alligator, the state reptile.

The plate embodies the Florida State Parks Foundation mission to preserve, protect, sustain and grow Florida State Parks.

This is the first specialty plate from the 2021 Legislative Session to meet all design, development, manufacturing, and presale requirements established to begin the distribution process.

Florida offers 142 different specialty license plates for various organizations in support of the causes they represent, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

The money raised goes directly to the organization.

Because the new plate is evocative of Citrus County, it may appeal to locals, said John Pricher, director of the Citrus County Visitors Bureau.

Also, Pricher said it will remind out-of-towners that they haven’t gone kayaking for a long time or experienced the beauty of nature, manatees and other such activities. Their research could direct them to Citrus County.

So in effect, it serves as an inexpensive marketing tool, Pricher said.

In fact, Pricher said he might consider buying one.

“Maybe I can be a billboard driving around,” he joked.

Here are the top 10 selling specialty plates in Florida (including number sold) according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles:

Endless Summer: 110,139

Helping Sea Turtles Survive: 98,123

University of Florida: 93,791

Florida State University: 70,621

Miami Heat: 60,363

Protect Wild Dolphins: 53,760

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 52,472

Save the Manatee: 49,919

Marine Corps: 49,408

Save Our Seas: 42,936

Michael D. Bates is a staff writer with the Citrus County Chronicle and can be reached at mbates@chronicleonline.com

A controversy that’s been brewing for several months will come to a head Tuesday when county commissioners and members of the Sugarmill Woods Oak Village Homeowners Association (HOA) square off about a slice of median along U.S. 98.

The county has forcefully told the HOA board it needs to honor its contractual agreement with the county by maintaining the mile or so median in front of their community or face possible legal action. The HOA president, David Quinn, has remained silent about it and has routinely issued a “no comment” to the Chronicle when asked.

The only public comment Quinn made about the matter was in October when he told commissioners at their meeting he did not see why Oak Village should pay because the plants in the median look terrible and most of the newly planted growth is dead.

County Commission Chairman Ron Kitchen Jr. said one option that probably will fly with his colleagues Tuesday is removing the scrub and dead stuff and re-sod, bringing it back to its original condition.

At the very least, the Oak Village HOA should pay for that, Kitchen said.

The saga began in 2019, when the Oak Village HOA asked the county for help applying for a $395,000 FDOT landscaping grant from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) wherein the state would pay 100 percent to install the landscaping. The county did so and the grant was secured.

To protect its investment, FDOT wanted an annual maintenance agreement in place whereby the HOA would take over median maintenance after the first year.

But a new HOA board took over and thought twice about the $37,000-a-year maintenance cost to tack on to the 3,200-plus homeowners who were already paying $135 annual dues.

Meanwhile, the median strip has been taken over by weeds and unkempt shrubs – a far cry from the beautification project originally intended.

Kitchen said staff will provide other options Tuesday so he’ll wait to see how it plays out. But the lesson learned from this, he said, is that the county needs to be wary of public-private partnerships of this kind in the future.

“We had good intentions, FDOT had good intentions,” he said.

The BOCC meeting is at 1 p.m. Tuesday, at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave., Inverness.

Michael D. Bates is a staff writer with the Citrus County Chronicle and can be reached at mbates@chronicleonline.com

Has the thought crossed your mind that this rainy season has been unusually wet? If so, you are not wrong. Some areas have already received an entire season's worth of rain.

Rivers and retention ponds have been high, many pools had to be drained and plenty of yards have become muddy.

What You Need To Know

Our rainy season got off to an aggressive start. An onshore wind pattern established itself, leading to days of continuous showers and thunderstorms coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. Rainfall totals added up quickly in early June.

The rain was very welcome at the start of the month, especially coming out of May when only 0.16 inches of rain fell in Tampa.

June through September is the wettest time of year for Tampa. This is when Tampa Bay receives most of its annual rainfall, mainly from thunderstorms and tropical cyclones. The start of the rainy season is obvious in most years.

Much of Tampa Bay received anywhere from 10 to 15 inches of rain in June. Tampa measured 12.60 inches in June, which is especially wet compared to the average of 7.37 inches.

By the time July rolled around, eyes were on Tropical Storm Elsa. It was moving up Florida's west coast, throwing lots of rain in our direction. Some areas received impressive numbers from Elsa, especially the Nature Coast and parts of Manatee County, where up to eight inches of rain fell.

July was another soaker, especially for the Nature Coast. Inverness received more than twice its usual rainfall last month with 18.14 inches. This is impressive, especially compared to the monthly average rainfall of 7.80 inches.

Heavy rain brought flooding to this community in Sugarmill Woods yesterday. It will not take much rain to cause flooding in low lying areas today, especially with saturated grounds. pic.twitter.com/wU2fQOVaIm

— Spectrum Bay News 9 Weather (@bn9weather) August 5, 2021

Our soil was saturated by the time August came around. Flooding can occur more often because the water can't drain as easily.

A front stalled north of the area to the start of the month and an onshore wind established over our area for a few days. This led to widespread heavy rain, which added up to an additional 10 to 15 inches of rain over the Nature Coast.

We are still about two months away before the rainy season comes to an end. With how wet it has been so far, it is no surprise that some areas already received an entire season's worth of rain already.

Inverness is one of those towns that has done that. From June 1 through August 16, Inverness received 41.30 inches of rain. The average rainfall over this same span of time is 19.16 inches.

Tampa averages 19.16 inches of rain by this point in the rainy season. So far, Tampa has received 26.42 inches of rain.

Lakeland, on the other hand, has been missing out on many of these rain events. At this point in the rainy season, Lakeland is running slightly behind.

Lakeland receives about 34 inches of rain over the four-month span and the city has measured about 21 inches of rain so far.

August is generally the wettest month of the year for Tampa Bay. September can be a soaker, too, but once October rolls around, our rain chances drop off a cliff and very little rain tends to fall by the time November rolls around.

In fact, November is generally the driest month of the year in Tampa Bay.

Coronavirus cases in Citrus County continued to tumble last week but deaths due to the potentially fatal virus gave up no ground here as fatalities typically trail new cases by a few weeks.

There were 387 new cases of the virus in Citrus County during the week ending Feb. 17, according to the Florida Department of Health. That was a steep drop from 729 the week before and 1,140 from the week ending Feb. 10.

That now puts the county’s cumulative cases at 29,140 since the pandemic took hold here in 2020.

While new cases continued to drop, not so with deaths due to COVID-19.

During the week ending Feb. 17, the latest new data available, there were 18 more deaths because of coronavirus. That was up from 16 deaths during the week ending Feb. 10. That now puts the cumulative death toll in Citrus County at 925, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 44 confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions in Citrus County during the week ending Feb. 16. That was down from 63 the previous week, according to the CDC.

During the week ending Feb. 16, 84 percent of the local hospitals’ ICU beds were occupied. Of those occupied, 15 percent were occupied with COVID-19 patients. That was down from the previous week when 81 percent of ICU beds were utilized and 25 percent of those with COVID-19 patients, according to the CDC.

The number of people in Citrus County getting vaccinated against the virus also continues to decline with only 73 new people eligible to be vaccinated getting a dose. That was down from 97 the previous week and 111 the week prior to that.

In Citrus County the percent of people eligible to be vaccinated and received the vaccines stands at 61 percent. That has not changed for several weeks. The Florida average for vaccinations is 74 percent.

As for Florida, the state saw 42,528 new cases during the week ending Feb. 17, according to the CDC. There were 101 deaths due to the virus.

That was a 59 percent drop in the number of new cases and an 82 percent decline in the number deaths, according to the CDC.

There were 6,152 confirmed, new COVID-19 hospital admissions last week in Florida. In Florida, 80 percent of ICU beds were occupied and of those, 22 percent were COVID-19 patients, according to the CDC.

In total, there have been 5,775,241 cases of the virus in Florida and 68,579 deaths, according to the CDC.

In the United States, there have been a total of 934,659 deaths as of Feb. 21, according to the New York Times, which tracks and analyzes COVID-19 data. There have been 78,434,184 cases in the United States. The country averages more than 89,000 cases per day and nearly 2,100 deaths per day from the virus, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, a recent study in Denmark shows that if someone was infected with the most recent variant of the coronavirus, Omicron, it’s unlikely they will be infected again with its sub-lineage, BA.2. The BA.2 now represents 88 percent of cases in Denmark and is increasing in Great Britain, South Africa and Norway. It is expected to spread globally.

Researchers reported that most reinfections that do occur with the BA.2 have been with the young people and those unvaccinated and only caused mild symptoms.

Fred Hiers is a reporter at the Citrus Chronicle. E-mail him at fred.hiers@chronicleonline.com