Our predictions in 2019 did not work out very well. We would have been almost perfect, if we had chosen the opposite of our predictions. For our 2020 predictions we are going to make some wild predictions and some that are more likely to come true.
This will be the year that the county government finally makes the decision of the new government center they will build at the airport. This will have negative consequences for downtown Brooksville as many of the government offices and people that depend on them transition to the airport overtime.
Our wild prediction of 2020 is that the airport will be renamed to remove Tampa from the name. As long as the Hernando County airport called “Brooksville Tampa-Bay Regional Airport” has “Tampa” in the name, it is not allowed to offer passenger service. We are predicting that the airport will be renamed to remove “Tampa,” so in the future the airport can provide passenger service.
For the third year in a row we are predicting that new development is going to cause a Costco to move to the area. This is highly unlikely, but we really enjoy Costco and would love one to be much closer than Tampa. There is only one warehouse club in the county — Sam’s Club, so you would expect as we continue to grow that a second warehouse club will move nearby.
Last year we made the prediction that the superintendent, the city manager and the county administrator will retain their jobs through 2019- that prediction didn’t work out last year, as the county administrator was fired in January. Over this year with a new county administrator and a new superintendent, we expect all three of these titular heads of government to retain their jobs through 2020.
This year the building permits seem to have leveled off. For several years, they had been increasing but this last year, it looks like the building permits would be similar to what they were last year. Although there are several large housing developments in the pipeline, creating a large housing development takes a large amount of work. It looks like none of these large developments will come to fruition in 2020, so we don’t expect there to be a building boom in Hernando county during 2020.
Hernando County has seen relatively mild weather these past few years. Many plants and animals have been able to survive in the area that are not traditionally found here. The Hernando Sun is predicting that 2020 will not be a harsh winter and these tropical plants and animals will continue to live here. The large amount of standing water in the county is helping to temper the winter weather.
This year we don’t have a prediction that we can influence. Last year the only prediction that ended up correct was the New Year’s Eve Tangerine Drop returning to Brooksville. This would not have happened without a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of the Hernando Sun. This year we only have five predictions as opposed to last year when we made six. There are only two predictions that are a real stretch, the other three are fifty-fifty. We expect to do better than one correct prediction this year.
