Sarasota is 100 years old this year. The Library is holding several public events in honor of the Centennial, including this one about the next 100 years.
The Future of Sarasota
Futurist David Houle will give a presentation on the future of Sarasota County over the next 100 years. He won a Speaker of the Year award from Vistage International, the leading organization of CEOs in the world. This virtual program will be hosted in Zoom.
This should be a lively program - far livelier than the dreary meetings our elected officials and various boards - like the Planning Commission - manage to come up with whenever they face the public's failure to understand why its concerns never seem to be dignified with honest, detailed discussions.
Why is Sarasota facing a preemption of its residents' right to think comprehensively, with vision, about the future? Can we be sustainable, innovative, environmentally sound, and pace ourselves? Can we begin to acknowledge the Rights of Nature? Can we remember that Sarasota let the state in envisioning the future?
Why are we allowing people we elect to give away vast amounts of open land to gated community developers who have nothing new to offer, nothing that bodes well for schools, community, or the environment. Just more of same, a path leading to a kind of unsustainable lifestyle for anything except those who wish to escape community altogether?
There's a brien narrative of how the state built a fairly sensible model of comprehensive planning, then blew it to smithereens that every Floridian should read. It traces the arc of responsible state comprehensive planning in Florida - its birth, evolution, and eventual destruction at the hands of Rick Scott in 2011.
Does the public have any right to meaningful development in Sarasota? Meaningful, that is, culturally, environmentally, socially, aesthetically and economically?
While Covid19 might have put a hold on building large housing developments like "Skye Ranch" in Sarasota County, it hasn't slowed the progress of the state legislature.
A bill on its way to Governor Ron DeSantis's desk would hamper the ability of local governments to create their own comprehensive plans, annex land, and initiate other land use actions.
Sierra Club Florida says: SB 410 is a bill that will further weaken Florida’s already crippled growth management laws that attempt to provide for the intelligent use of the state’s lands. SB 410 passed both the Florida House and Senate and will go to Gov. DeSantis to become law UNLESS he vetoes it.
Eliminate the applicability of county-wide land use regulations to cities in the county, if the city has adopted its own comp plan.
Require new “property rights” element to be included in all comprehensive plans.
Require automatic approval of utility application to use right-of-way if 14-day deadline is not met (regardless of impact on community)
1000 Friends of Florida, the Herald Tribune, Sierra, and many other organizations are asking Governor DeSantis to veto this bill - which would in part, they say, clear the way for high-density development in designated rural areas. More on this here.
>>Please call Gov. DeSantis at 850-488-7146 and urge him to veto SB 410.<<
Here's a model letter with the Governor's email address:
SB 410 would curtail the authority of most county governments to manage growth within their borders, making residents more vulnerable to negative impacts to their environment, quality of life, property values and tax bills. The amended bill would allow county controls to be superseded by municipalities. It could clear the way for high-density development in designated rural areas.
SB 410 would curtail the authority of most county governments to manage growth within their borders, making residents more vulnerable to negative impacts to their environment, quality of life, property values and tax bills.
The amended bill would allow county controls to be superseded by municipalities.
This bill could clear the way for high-density development in designated rural zoning areas.
Urban sprawl does not belong in rural lands. Deforestation destroys critical habitats, open space and quality of life. The creation of Impervious surface causes storm water run off pollution in water resources and increases the heat island effect.
Overdevelopment is in fact the #1 cause of climate change and sealevel rise in Florida.
Florida's citizens pay three times for over-development, through loss of our natural heritage and environment, the cost of infrastructure and then again to clean up the mess developers leave behind.
Please protect our state and citizens by veto of SB 410.
Lakewood Ranch is big developer territory, and SRQ Magazine was on the spot when Sarasota County Administrator Jonathan Lewis came to update business folk there the other day.
And if SRQ Magazine is to be believed, growth here is all -- or mostly -- wonderful. SRQ's Olivia Liang put it this way:
This sold-out event demonstrated the unified efforts of the SRQ region and revolved around a refreshingly simple concept: growth.
The Nine Muses: Mantegna
Doubtless inspired by the Muses of Insatiable Development, SRQ's Ms. Liang then launched into an operatic Paeon to growth:
Tourism continues to grow, with Nathan Benderson Park bringing in a net $47 million for sports tourism in the past year. And between the rebranding of the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature in downtown Bradenton to the institution of roundabouts to regulate the flow of school traffic on Honore, the expansion of the Legacy Trail for resident-use and the construction of the new Atlanta Braves Spring Training Stadium that was widely funded by the private sector and will be owned by Sarasota County, the region shows no signs of slowing.
However, Liang did need to report a little water issue, seeing as Administrator Lewis inconveniently brought it up:
But one looming presence seemed to unite the two counties more than any other: water quality. With red tide and blue and green algae blooms affecting the “economic lifeblood of the state,” according to Lewis, both counties agree that the improvement of water quality “needs to happen on a statewide basis.” But at the same time, “we can’t wait on everybody else,” added Lewis, referencing the June Sarasota County Water Quality Summit with 700 attendees, demonstrating the active and current conversation surrounding a proposed $150 million wastewater treatment plan that would improve drinking, fishing and swimming water, in combination with a $5 million septic-to-sewer program.
Fish killed by disastrous Red Tide in 2018
Apart from that one teenie-weenie problem, God's in his heaven and all's good in Sarasota and Manatee, according to SRQ:
In its most recent Citizen Survey, Sarasota County reported that 97% of the surveyed described their overall quality of life as excellent (45%) or good (52%), which is up from previous years.
But how sure are we that our quality-of-life satisfaction will continue? Not very, it seems.
Some area developers
That "Citizen Opinion Survey," presented to the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners some months ago, happened to make it clear that the public is openly dissatisfied with the nature, direction and management of the local economy, in two ways:
First, we 're worried about the utter lack of economic diversity -- our workers do construction -- there's little in the way of manufacturing, or hi-tech businesses. (The Board's notion of a clean upscale business to promote is James Gabbert's Waste Transfer Facility (WTF), now rising to glare at the Celery Fields and the highway).
Absence of diverse economic drivers is a key flaw of Sarasota Manatee area
Second: Over the past 5 years, the single greatest concern expressed by the people contacted by this survey is GROWTH - the very theme that SRQ celebrates as the glory of Sarasota/Manatee:
Growth - major issue for residents of Sarasota County
GROWTH is by far the single greatest threat to our quality of life, according to this survey - at 24% in 2018, it dwarfs CRIME -- the runner up at 10%, TRAFFIC (5%), and JOBS (4%).
Indeed, add together the concern ratios for CRIME, TRAFFIC and JOBS (you get 19%) and it's still less than the portion of residents who've cited GROWTH as the primary issue for the past five years.
From 2010 to 2018, the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) of the University of Florida says Sarasota County’s population climbed 10%, putting the county in the highest growth category in the state.The
As of April 1, 2018, BEBR estimated Sarasota County’s population at 417,442. By 2040, BEBR’s projections show, the county could have as many as 600,800 residents. The Sarasota News Leader
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During the past five years while growth has been the biggest worry on residents' minds, our elected officials have:
1. Ignored county data that documented a long-term, significant rise of nitrogen in our bays and waterways:
2. Neglected Sarasota's aging, leaking, spilling wastewater plant and pipes;
The Tischler Report, commissioned by Sarasota County in 1999, was supposed to prove that growth paid for itself. Its findings proved the opposite -- we pay for growth. Local leaders quickly buried the report.
Citing concerns about changing development policies for eastern Sarasota County, Planning Commission recommends County Commission stop initiative to reduce density near Fruitville/Verna roads intersection
Old Miakka residents propose changes to Sarasota 2050 Future Land Use Maps
A graphic shows the Old Miakka Planning Area, outlined in blue. Image courtesy Sarasota County
In 2006, residents of the Old Miakka community in the eastern part of Sarasota County completed a two-year process of engagement with Sarasota County staff to craft a document called the Old Miakka Neighborhood Plan.
The introduction to that plan explained, “Old Miakka is not only an area of rich history but one of rural character and integrity. Of all things material, great and small, the residents’ love of the land and pastoral admiration is what they hold closest to their hearts.”
The introduction added, “As development continues to grow east of Sarasota County’s Urban Service Boundary, the neighborhood has begun to feel growing pains, generating significant concern about the community’s future.”
(The Urban Service Boundary, county planning staff has explained, generally is the line of demarcation for development, with the areas west of the line having become urban and the land east of it considered to be rural.)
“This plan,” the introduction continued, “lays out a methodology that seeks to preserve the rural character the community holds so dear.”
The County Commission voted to accept the Old Miakka plan in 2006, four years after the original version of the county’s 2050 Plan was approved. The 2050 regulations specify how growth should occur east of the Urban Service Boundary.
Sarasota 2050 has three primary tenets, the county’s planning staff points out: open space, to create a balance between the community and the environment; New Urbanism, which focuses on the construction of neighborhoods with commercial centers to serve residents’ daily needs, thereby reducing the need for vehicle use; and fiscal neutrality, meaning new developments pay for themselves.
A county staff graphic points out concerns about the amendment’s impacts on the Sarasota County 2050 Plan. Image courtesy Sarasota County
The approximately 6,000 acres in the northwest corner of Fruitville Road and Verna Road — an area close to Old Miakka — primarily was designated Village/Open Space under the 2050 Plan, with the option for those lands to be developed as Hamlets, as designated on the Future Land Use Map Series that accompanied the 2050 Plan regulations.
On June 20, a leader of a group called the Miakka Community Club told the Sarasota County Planning Commission that, after the 2006 County Commission vote on the Old Miakka Neighborhood Plan, “We went home thinking we had superseded [the Sarasota 2050 plan Future Land Use Map designations]” at the eastern end of Fruitville Road.
“We did not know that [the Old Miakka Plan] had to be adopted [for that to happen],” Becky Ayech testified.
Then, she continued, in 2015, construction began on the first Hamlet on Fruitville Road. “It wasn’t the 50 to 150 homes surrounded by agriculture,” as the Old Miakka Plan had envisioned, Ayech pointed out. Instead, it was 400 homes on about 400 acres, “and 600 acres of stormwater mosquito-breeding land that went with [the development].”
County planning staff since has referred to Hamlets as “urban sprawl,” Ayech told the Planning Commission.
With the growth taking place out east — and more development coming — Ayech and many of her neighbors in Old Miakka decided in March to submit to the county Planning and Development Services Department staff an application for the processing of a publicly initiated Comprehensive Plan amendment. Their goal is to accomplish what their 2006 neighborhood plan failed to do. The application seeks changes in the designation of the 6,000 acres near Old Miakka to Rural Heritage/Estates, which would have a much lower housing density. The amendment affects Maps 8-1 and 8-3 in the 2050 Plan chapter of the county’s Comprehensive Plan.
The application says the new designation would not cover Lake Park Estates and SMR Properties.
A county graphic shows the area — circled in purple — that would be designated Rural Heritage/Estates. Image courtesy Sarasota County
Yet, as one of the opponents of the proposal made clear to the Planning Commission on June 20, such changes in the 2050 Plan’s Future Land Use Maps at this point would threaten projects that have been years in the making.
More importantly, attorney Matt Brockway of Icard Merrill in Sarasota told the planning commissioners, the change likely would lead to lawsuits citing the state’s Bert Harris Act and other areas of Florida law related to the government’s “taking” of private property.
Speaking for four client companies that together own approximately 2,267 acres designated Village/Open Space and Hamlet under the aegis of the 2050 Plan, Brockway said, “We are vehemently opposed to the proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment, 2019-C.”
Matt Brockway. Photo from the Icard Merrill website
His clients, Brockway said, are Indian Creek Development LLC, BDR Investments LLC, John Cannon Homes Eastmoor LLC and Myakka Ranch Holdings LLC.
After a public hearing that lasted close to two hours, the Planning Commission members voted unanimously to recommend that the County Commission deny the request of the applicants for the processing of the proposed amendment.
“This application is really nothing more than an attempt to go backwards under 2050, which the county spent millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on, doing studies, paying consultants,” Planning Commissioner Colin Pember pointed out.
“2050 is not perfect,” Pember added, “[but] it’s more acceptable than this proposal …”
It will be up to the County Commission to decide whether to direct staff to proceed with processing the proposed Old Miakka amendment. County Planner Bill Spaeth said he estimated that the work would take up to 100 hours of staff time.
On Sept. 11, the County Commission tentatively is scheduled to address the issues regarding the proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment, county Media Relations Officer Drew Winchester told The Sarasota News Leader.
An ancillary issue
During the board discussion after the June 20 hearing, Planning Commissioner Laura Benson cited another concern, which arose from the staff presentation that night.
Planner Spaeth had explained that Section 94-87 of the County Code allows the submission to the county of a publicly initiated Comprehensive Plan amendment with a minimum of 20 signatures of registered voters. In fact, Spaeth said, the Old Miakka application had 60 petition signatures, and staff had verified that 47 of the signers are registered voters.
In making the motion to recommend that the County Commission deny the request for the processing of the proposed amendment, Benson stressed of Ayech and the other signers of the petitions, “They are not owners of the property [that would be affected].”
Becky Ayech addresses the Planning Commission on June 20. News Leader photo
She expressed astonishment that as few as 20 people could initiate such an amendment. “This opens up a Pandora’s box of more requests from anybody with 20 friends who want to start a process. I think that’s a very bad precedent to set.”
(See the related story in this issue.)
In her testimony, Ayech pointed out that her group had been willing to pay a $5,000 fee they thought was required under county planning guidelines to submit the application. Then staff apprised her of the process outlined in the County Code, she noted. “We were not trying to take [taxpayers’] money.”
Spaeth also explained that county staff — including department leaders — and the County Commission itself propose Comprehensive Plan amendments that are handled under the guidelines of the publicly initiated process.
However, staff must have formal direction from the County Commission to begin analyzing any proposed amendment, he said.
The process itself
At the outset of the Planning Commission public hearing, Spaeth told the board, “I do want to make it clear what this is about. … This is not about the actual amendment.”
According to the process outlined in the County Code, he continued, the Planning Commission that night was being asked only whether or not to recommend that the County Commission allow staff to process the proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment.
The Rural Heritage/Estate designation the Miakka group is seeking for the property, Spaeth said, supports very low housing density or agricultural or equestrian uses.
(Under the county’s 2050 Plan regulations, maximum density for a Hamlet is one dwelling unit per gross acre. The maximum density for a Village is five dwelling units per acre, though that rises to six if the additional units are to be marketed as affordable housing. For Rural Heritage/Estate, the density can range from one dwelling unit per 5 acres to one unit per 160 acres.)
As Chair Kevin Cooper prepared to call on people who had signed up to address the board, he noted that he had enough cards for close to four hours of testimony. The commissioners could shorten the speaking time from 5 minutes to 3, he said, but “I’m not a fan of that.”
By count of The Sarasota News Leader, 35 people ended up making comments on the record. By the News Leader’s count, again, only four people urged the Planning Commission not to recommend that the proposed amendment go any further in the process that had begun. Among them was Rod Krebs, one of the owners of the property at the heart of the discussion.
Rod Krebs makes his remarks to the Planning Commission. News Leader photo
He is a partner in Indian Creek Development and BDR Investments, Krebs told the commissioners. Together, he continued, those companies have owned 1,938 acres of the 6,000, and the property has been designated for Hamlets since 2004.
“I’ve been a developer/homebuilder in Sarasota County for 48 years,” Krebs said. “The 2050 Plan is on track to utilize all of the designated Village land at less than 1.3 dwelling units per acre,” he stressed.
And thanks to an initiative on which he is working with county staff, Krebs continued, his Hamlet property will be “the last development option in North Sarasota County that will guarantee the elimination of septic tanks and wells.”
If the proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment were to win County Commission approval, Krebs said, it would guarantee “the proliferation of septic tanks and wells” during a time when the county and the state are dedicating “hundreds of millions of dollars to water quality improvement and septic-to-sewer plans.”
Many other speakers urged the commissioners just to allow the proposed amendment to go through the process outlined in the County Code. “Let the public have some input,” Howard Hickok said.
Some talked of their enjoyment of the rural area; others bemoaned the increasing amount of traffic.
Retired Deputy Charlie Rowe, who lives right on Fruitville Road, told the commissioners he had lived in the eastern part of the county for more than 30 years. He spent the morning of June 20 in his carport, he continued, counting cars. “I was amazed,” he said, having recorded 700 vehicles an hour driving by his house. “If we increase [the number of homes] that much more,” he added, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to handle it.”
Referencing remarks by opponents of the amendment, Alan Yaruss, who lives on a 5-acre parcel in Bern Creek, told the board, “I’m offended that anybody might think that we’re here as a circus with no clowns.”
A decision to make
Following the public comments, Chair Cooper said that in his years on the commission, he could not recall another example of such a request for a Comprehensive Plan amendment.
Spaeth confirmed that staff had not received another one from residents, as allowed by County Code Section 94-87.
When Cooper asked whether Spaeth felt the Old Miakka group had “done everything it needs to do” to comply with the County Code, Spaeth replied, “In my estimation, yes.”
A graphic shows the area at the heart of the amendment, as depicted on one of the Future Land Use Maps in the 2050 Plan. Image courtesy Sarasota County
Then Planning Commissioner Teresa Mast asked Spaeth whether, during his tenure with the county, any privately initiated Comprehensive Plan amendment ever had been proposed “that would impact another individual’s property and change the designation of that zoning?”
“To my knowledge, no,” he told her.
In response to other questions, Assistant County Attorney Joshua Moye indicated that changing a designation on a county Future Land Use Map indeed might prompt an attempt at legal recourse under provisions of the Bert Harris Act. He had not specifically researched this proposed amendment, Moye added, but, based on the testimony that night, “There would be some concerns on the county side [that litigation might ensue].”
This is a section of the Bert Harris Act in the Florida Statutes. Image courtesy State of Florida
“I think it’s within your judgment call to consider [recommending the County Commission allow the proposed amendment to be processed],” he continued. Nonetheless, Moye said, the planning commissioners could base their decision on whether they believed the amendment would be good or bad.
“To me, the 2050 Plan was extremely well vetted,” Planning Commissioner Andrew Stultz said, reprising comments Brockway of Icard Merrill and some of Stultz’s colleagues on the commission had made earlier.
Cooper noted that the 2050 Plan “was called a good compromise” after it was approved. Yet, the county still had to face litigation over it, he said.
Cooper believed, he continued, that “We should have just incrementally moved the Urban Service Boundary.”
Regardless of his feelings, however, Cooper said he had to consider the County Commission’s policy decisions regarding the 2050 Plan. “Until [the county commissioners] tell us otherwise as advisers, I have to assume that [the existing 2050 Plan] is what they want.”
Since the County Commission will vote on whether to direct staff to process the amendment, Cooper added, “They may say, ‘Hey, this is time to revisit this map.’”
Valerie Preziosi and her husband, Jan Svejkovsky, left their home on Big Pine Key on Friday, along with their two cats. They booked a hotel room in Orlando but then changed course for Waldo, in north-central Florida, when the hotel didn’t answer their calls. Then, as Irma wobbled, Waldo found itself at risk of flooding. Like many evacuees, they had fled from one danger zone to another. So they drove even further north to Macon, Georgia.
Could growth (or too much of it) be a “health, safety, and welfare” issue?
It is sometimes surprising how something like an Irma can trigger unexpected issues. The question of evacuation routes in Sarasota County is one that has bounced around for years (think: River Road), and eventually it has seemed to get a big shrug. In the event of a hurricane’s taking direct aim on Sarasota, can our government assure us that it would be possible to evacuate? If not, what are the implications? That question must be answered…by our government officials. Shall we ask them?
Traffic in the Sarasota metropolitan area jumped 152 percent in February compared with the same month last year, according to traffic and transportation analytics firm INRIX.
Because of traffic delays, the average trip took a Sarasota driver 7.4 percent longer in February than during the same month in 2014, the Kirkland, Washington-based company reports.
Meanwhile, the two-county region's year-round population is back in growth mode. On top of the 702,000 people who lived here in 2010, there will be 81,600 more by 2020, pushing the total close to 800,000, U.S. Census projections suggest.
Last week, the region's main traffic planning group published a report showing that 13 percent of Sarasota County corridors and 18 percent of Manatee's already are heavily congested. Out of possible congestion grades of A, B, C, D, E or F, that means, in general, that an eighth of our corridors get a D or worse grade.
