A fired-up Citrus County Commissioner Rebecca Bays said today she stands by her decision to vote in favor of what some county residents see as a controversial project to create a "Port Citrus" near Inglis.

The project has drawn fire from some county residents who have said they are concerned the county is moving too fast, and Bays took aim at critics who say that deciding to go forward with the project was the wrong thing to do in bad economic times.

At the commission's Feb. 22 meeting, attorney Fred Busack of the law firm of Pennington, Moore, Wilkinson, Bell and Dunbar that the county had an opportunity to create a port on the Florida Barge Canal at Inglis that could receive goods coming off ships from the Panama Canal. The port would receive goods via a conveyor-based container system to Port Citrus that would allow cargo to reach shore, eliminating the need for the super container ships to port. (Related Story)

Busnak added that thousands of jobs could be created here as an offshoot of that activity.

County commissioners are all on board with the project, as evidenced by their unanimous vote to go ahead with the project.

At today's commission meeting, Bays defended her vote to move forward with that project. Bays said that, for her, it comes down to job creation in Citrus County.

"There has been a great amount of comments have been made about the port of Citrus and how it came about, why it came about," Bays said. "I don't know. It just came about. And I'm going to tell you right now, right here today, (that) anybody, anywhere, anytime that wants to talk to me about a job, I'm all ears."

Bays said she was on her "high horse" because as a commissioner she hears stories of unemployed residents who are struggling to make ends meet and who are looking for relief.

"And you can crucify me, you can vote me out in four years (so) if you don't like it, that's your opportunity to take me out. But in the meantime, I'm going to be working on (creating jobs).

While campaigning for county commissioner, and each day since, she said, people have been asking about jobs. She added that's what she was elected to do - create jobs.

"And I'm on that roll. There's only two things down the middle of a road - yellow lines and road kill. And if you're going to run over me, you're going to have to run off the side of the road to do it, because I ain't going to be in the middle of the road."

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• See: "Citrus County pins economic hopes on barge canal"