The Sarasota County Commission has adopted 10 board priorities for fiscal year 2018. All are important and we commend the board for understanding how critical and crucial these issues are to our county.

Among the top five bullet points are housing affordability, small-business retention and adult homelessness.

These issues affect our quality of life, our economy and our future.

While recognizing the problem is a good first step, we have yet to see commission-approved plans for housing affordability and small business retention and expansion. We may have a glimmer of hope for a homelessness plan, but we are all holding our breaths as we had an earlier plan that failed. While we have a long road to go to solve these issues, what is clear is that we must not enact any policy to exacerbate these problems while we figure out what to do.