ICG Studio 67’s County Conversations

Senator McClain discusses his background as a builder and longtime local official, and outlines his legislative focus on rewriting parts of Chapter 163 to address land-use conflicts, infrastructure costs, and housing affordability across Florida.

He emphasizes private property rights, concerns about transportation concurrency, impact fees, urban growth boundaries, and administrative approvals, and calls for statewide clarity and stakeholder consensus to better plan for future growth.

Dennis Smith, FSU’s Planner in Residence, shares his journey from emergency management to academia and explains how he teaches graduate planners while running the Barnaby Lab, a low-cost university consulting team.

The episode highlights student-led capstone projects and lab work on comprehensive plan updates, broadband planning for rural counties, accessory dwelling unit frameworks for housing, and data center impact studies, and explains how local governments can engage FSU for planning support.

Explore the diversity of leadership in the Florida Legislature with Rep. Holcomb in this engaging conversation with FAC's own Christopher Mathews.

From serving as a Navy veteran and county commissioner to representing his district in the Florida House, Rep. Holcomb reflects on his journey in public service, why he's returning to county government, and the lessons he's learned along the way. He discusses the differences between local and state leadership, legislative wins in law enforcement and public policy, the influence of family and military service, and offers practical advice for aspiring public servants: gain real-world experience, work hard, build meaningful relationships, and never stop learning from mentors and service.

Tune in for an insightful conversation on leadership, public service, and making an impact in your community.

Explore the diversity of leadership in the Florida Legislature with Rep. Holcomb in this engaging conversation with FAC's own Christopher Mathews.

From serving as a Navy veteran and county commissioner to representing his district in the Florida House, Rep. Holcomb reflects on his journey in public service, why he's returning to county government, and the lessons he's learned along the way. He discusses the differences between local and state leadership, legislative wins in law enforcement and public policy, the influence of family and military service, and offers practical advice for aspiring public servants: gain real-world experience, work hard, build meaningful relationships, and never stop learning from mentors and service.

Tune in for an insightful conversation on leadership, public service, and making an impact in your community.

In this episode we explore the mission of 1,000 Friends of Florida: defending and promoting growth management so communities can guide development without harming the environment or quality of life.

Research begins at the University of Florida, but its impact is felt in every community. Through a unique partnership with Florida’s 67 counties, the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF-IFAS) delivers research-based solutions that matter. In this podcast, we share the stories of innovation, people, and collaboration shaping agriculture, natural resources, health, and community resilience across the state.

When Hurricane Andrew impacted Florida in 1992, it exposed deficiencies in our country’s disaster response processes.  Since that time, counties have endeavored to strengthen their response and recovery capabilities, especially in the area of logistics and debris management. Given the scale of disasters in Florida, response and recovery cannot be executed without partners, including those in the private sector.  To understand how private vendors are integrated into county emergency management, in this podcast were are joined by Ashbritt CEO Brittany Perkins Castillo, who discusses a broad range of topics that highlight Ashbritt’s commitment to counties before and after disasters strike.

Although solar energy generation has been around for some time, only recently have we seen this technology really take off. From residential roof-top solar to utility-scale solar centers, investment in this technology is significant and only growing. This emerging trend was recently highlighted by Florida Trend magazine, which detailed where many of these investments are being made in the state and their associated costs. In this podcast, we speak with Florida Power and Light – a FAC corporate partner – regarding its growing footprint in the solar arena in Florida.

On average, eight people are killed and 49 are seriously injured on Florida’s roads every day. In most of those serious and fatal crashes, driver behavior is a contributing factor.  Target Zero is a statewide initiative to reduce the number of transportation-related injuries and deaths across Florida to zero. By using data-driven strategies, Target Zero promotes multi-faceted behavior changes through messaging campaigns and driver education.   A national speaker and advocate for traffic safety, Melissa Wandall talks with us about her work in this area and how counties can play an important role with Target Zero)  (Please note this podcast was originally presented as a webinar on County Connections. Accordingly, there are references to a previous webinar that should not detract from the content of the conversation.  The videos to those webinars can be view Studio 67 webpage: https://flicg.org/uf-webinar-resources/ )