A WSLR show that cares about Our Changing Environment

From Tom Matrullo:

Earlier this year I was a guest on a local low-power FM radio show: Our ChangingEnvironment on WSLR. 

Jono Miller

The hosts, Julie Morris and Jono Miller have been scouring the region to find subject matter experts to share their insights and knowledge with the WSLR community. Where else are you going to hear about local seagrasses, sea turtles, and nesting shorebirds, or how Siesta Key and East County are changing? Experts have brought listeners up to speed about local flooding, Sarasota Citizen Action Network, native landscaping, and trends in backyard fruit trees. These one-hour shows are archived and available from WSLR at https://archive.wslr.org/?qtajax=true.  My show aired on April 30th.

Julie Morris

It doesn’t cost much to support truly local radio -- being a LISTENER sponsor works out to ten cents a day. Your membership not only supports Our Changing Environment, but also the other public affairs programming and great music (and the Fogartyville venue). 

In order to become a member, go to WSLR.org, find the DONATE button at the top, choose an amount and fill out your contact information, click on News and Public Affairs, and then, on the drop down menu, choose Our Changing Environment!

(The WSLR Fall membership drive continues through Nov. 19) 

Red Tide: Jono and Julie interview Cris Costello - plus an RtCW update

 If you have an interest in understanding Red Tide, or in how some of the local resources like Mote Marine have interpreted red tide phenomena, you might find this interview with Chris Costello of the Sierra Club eye-opening.

Here's the intro from environmentalists Jono Miller and Julie Morris:

Today's Guest: Cris Costello, Senior Organizing Manager of the Florida Chapter of the Sierra Club. Get ready to learn about the Legislature and fertilizer, offshore fish farms, and remember that time back in 2014 when 3 out of 4 of us voted to buy more wild land? The government still hasn't complied. 

The show airs Tuesday's at 9 am on WSLR. 

Interview with Cris Costello, WSLR, Tues. July 11, 2023

WSLR archive 

How to listen to WSLR online 

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Here's an update on where Petitions to create a Florida Constitutional Amendment for the Right to Clean Water can be obtained and dropped off. 

Questions? Contact Rona Turek.

Jono Miller on Shakett Creek rezoning

For the past thirteen months I have been working as a volunteer to help a local couple rezone a parcel on Shakett Creek. My file folder on this matter is 885 megabytes and there are over 850 individual files in the folder. I got involved because I'm retired, I'm frequently willing to help people out when I can, the outcome will be better for the environment, and I think this case has the potential to address some serious systemic problems with County Planning.

This is all heading towards some resolution at 1:30 on Wednesday September 9th when I make a presentation to the Board of County Commissioners. Although I am very optimistic, ya never know what will happen with the Board and we have to contend with an online petition opposing (501 signatures) and a 7-0 vote against from the Planning Commission. 

If, in addition to the basic cover letter summary stuff (page 1737), you only read two things, I'm recommending an email I sent to the county on March 16th (page 2108) and a Special Report I produced (How Sarasota County Mistook a Wetland for an Upland, an Upland for a Wetland, and Why it Matters) starting on page 1949. 

Here's a link to the Board Packet.

This links to a website created by the owners of the parcel. 

To view/listen on Wednesday click here and scroll down to the 9/9/20 meeting. 

Wish us luck.

Jono

PS By my calculations it will be 50 years to the day that Julie and I arrived (separately) in Sarasota to attend New College. 

Organic rising: A planner's take on land use & planning

Work with Legacy Trail and Celery Fields, not against them

Herald Tribune, 6.7.18
By Daniel Herriges, Guest Columnist

In a May 14 guest column, Argus Foundation Executive Director (and former Sarasota County commissioner) Christine Robinson wrote that industrial businesses near the planned extension of the Legacy Trail could see their future jeopardized by the trail’s completion. Robinson urges that the county act pre-emptively to protect these properties from “mission creep.”

Robinson’s warning is misguided. The question she fails to answer is: What mission?

The mission of the Legacy Trail is, presumably, to create a major new amenity for Sarasota County residents — one which will simultaneously become one of the region’s largest parks and a vital corridor for non-motorized transportation.

The potential benefits are tremendous, as similar endeavors around the country illustrate.

Why not embrace the happy accident that this rail corridor — whose builders certainly never envisioned the Legacy Trail — represents? Once-industrial and derelict waterfronts in Portland, Baltimore, Chicago and more are now parks and tourist attractions.. . . 

Another local happy accident is the Celery Fields. Robinson spent much of her column discussing last summer’s contentious decision not to allow a recycling facility on surplus, county-owned land adjacent to the beloved birding destination. But she draws precisely the wrong lessons from it.

Robinson’s premise that an injustice was done in the Celery Fields case rests on decades-old planning documents which describe the area as future industrial and a “major employment center.”

But to insist that the ideal fate, the highest and best use, for public land abutting the Celery Fields in 2017 was to fulfill its destiny as “industrial” evinces a remarkable lack of imagination. Or perhaps just mistaking land-use planning, which is the means to a variety of ends, for an end in itself.

This is a common malady: an overly prescriptive, “SimCity” approach to planning. In 1938, the American Institute of Planners stated as the purpose of the discipline “determination of the comprehensive arrangement of land uses and land occupancy and the regulation thereof.” In other words, “We’re gonna tell you what goes where.”

Most modern-day planners don’t view that as an ideal. Instead, we recognize the value of happy accidents. Nearly all great places arise organically, because someone did something on their land that made others want to be near. That has happened with the Celery Fields. And it is happening in the Packinghouse District, a cluster of very successful, distinctive local businesses just across I-75 from the Celery Fields.

Robinson is correct that industry, a source of living-wage jobs not tied to tourism, is important to our economic health. The County Commission could direct staff to study barriers to industrial development: Are we losing these jobs for lack of suitable land? If so, we should tackle this problem head-on. Modern manufacturing is often quiet and non-polluting, and potentially compatible in many locations from which it is currently excluded.

The role of land-use planning is to promote the public interest, not to insulate incumbent land owners and businesses from change. 

Daniel Herriges is an urban planner and a regular contributor to Strong Towns, a nonprofit organization which supports a model of development that allows cities to become financially strong and resilient. He lives in Sarasota.

-- Further Reading -- 

Robinson: Industrial and commercial properties need protection from Legacy Trail mission creep

Jono Miller: Miller: Argus concerns over Legacy Trail not based on facts

Bob Clark: Irony in Argus executive warning of ‘mission creep’ 

Going Stupid

Anyone who has spent half a day in S. Florida knows that the folks over there blew it. Growth created hell, and it extends even to public lands. Here's an advisory from a public parks site near Avvventura:

* ALERT: PARK CAPACITY 

Once the park reaches capacity no one will be allowed to enter until space becomes available. If you have rented a pavilion, hosting an event or have been invited to an event please plan accordingly because you will not be allowed to re-enter until space is available. 

This is, simply put, stupid growth. For years, Sarasota County has tried to rein in cupidity and stupidity -- to allow for a slower, more organic, thoughtful pace of development.

Dan Lobeck's analyses of the new Comp Plan heading for State review convincingly show that smart growth is over:

Neighborhoods, Mobility under Attack

Nature at Risk

And Jono Miller notes a change that could make hunting in parks not the exception, but the norm:

On Friday the tenth of June 2016, the County Commission may consider amending PARKS Policy 1.1.5 to allow recreational hunting in areas voters were promised would not experience consumptive uses or activities that were not ecologically benign.

Jono's complete post is here.

What's behind all this?  

Start with Cathy Antunes on the dark money propelling these changes. 

And listen to Cathy's new show Friday at 2 pm on SRQ.

Is this the year Sarasota County officially goes Stupid?

Amendment 1 has our support, but where are our elected officials?

via the Herald-Tribune

Jono Miller:

" . . . the ballot measure passed four to one in Sarasota County. For sticklers, it garnered 78.09 percent of the vote, a seldom-reached plurality. That was great news for Sarasota, which has two highly ranked Florida Forever sites awaiting funding, and another just on the other side of the county line in Manatee County.. . . 

"When my ancestor, Hugh Archer Corley, served on the Florida Cabinet, only half of Florida was owned by private interests. Today private ownership in the state has increased to nearly three-quarters -- most of it sold at very low prices to fuel Florida's economy. Amendment 1 enables us to buy back land that we now realize should have been retained as a public asset." Read more...

Jono Miller, March 9, CONA

Acquisition of conservation lands 

guest speaker  -  Jono Miller


Update: Jessica Salmond at the Observer wrote about Jono Miller's talk at Cona here.

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On March 9 at CONA, speaker Jono Miller reviews the history of conservation land protection efforts in Sarasota County. He will discuss some of the county's impressive successes as well as current challenges faced in keeping Sarasota wild. 

Jono Miller has been working both as a volunteer and professionally for more than 35 years to protect Sarasota's natural areas. He has chaired six different county-created advisory boards related to local wild lands and has provided leadership in several local land acquisition referenda.
    

The meeting will be held at the Sarasota Garden Club on March 9, at 7 pm. A social gathering precedes the meeting at 6:30 pm. 

http://www.conasarasota.org/

     

Sarasota County to consider Private Shooting Range in Public Pinelands Reserve

via Andy Mele: (snipped in places):

Next Tuesday there is a Sarasota County Commission meeting to discuss re-zoning 44 acres of conservation lands in the Pinelands Reserve so that a private shooting range, blasting lead shot and PAH-laden so-called clay pigeons across the countryside, can be established. If this goes forward uncontested, the way will be clear for the rezoning, reclassification, recertification, re-what-have-you of any conservation lands in the county. The County is nominally the applicant, a feeble stab at establishing a public benefit component to this flagrant privatization of public land. I urge you all, and anyone else you can bring, to join me at this meeting to speak our piece.

What is our piece, exactly? There are two parts:

1. First, and most important, is the precedent this will set if it is allowed to move forward. All the protections afforded to Conservation Lands will have been swept aside, and pieces will be carved out until the county is unrecognizable

....

Voters again and again taxed themselves to conserve natural lands. The purpose of conservation land, (the Pinelands Reserve is listed, page 3-39, LMP) is "for the conservation of Sarasota County’s natural heritage.” (see below, LMP, page 3-15)

....

Pinelands Reserve, Sarasota County

2/ Second, to legally get this ill-considered measure through, the County will have to argue that the gun range is an environmentally benign activity. Here's why that argument falls apart before it even starts:

1. Lead shot. Nationwide, 9,000 gun ranges shoot 100-150 million pounds of lead shot every year. While best management calls for periodic soil scraping, separation of the lead, and then replacement of the soil, many ranges have always left the lead in place, and continue to do so.

There are three sources of lead in humans. Paint, dust & soil, and drinking water. Two of those three are present at a shooting range.

Lead shot oxidizes and becomes water soluble. In that state, it will attach to molecules in storm water, and migrate into both ground water and surface waters used for drinking. Florida's sandy soil is highly conducive to this migration.

2. Clay pigeons. These targets are not clay any more, but are made of some 30% petroleum pitch or coal tar products. They contain such high loads of PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) that UK oil seed farmers have filed injunctions against farmers shooting skeet over oil seed fields. Very high levels of PAH in the oil seed resulted in thousands of tons of the agricultural product being incinerated as hazardous waste, at great expense. Remington. a major manufacturer of targets, claims on the box that they do not biodegrade. Gun magazine blogs say that the best way to get rid of the shattered targets is to crush them with your boots or run over them with your ATV until they are reduced to grit.

A single firing position will contaminate 2-5 acres. Most ranges have several firing positions. The clay target fragments are found in a fan shape 65'-250' from the firing position. Lead shot accumulates in a fan 375'- 600' out.

So far, only wild pigs have been observed eating the targets and gradually becoming sick. That said, EPA risk assessment has been performed for the humans who use or live near these facilities, and the results indicate significant risks to human health.

Please join me at the Board of County Commissioners meeting. Register to speak. If someone steals your thunder, or you change your mind, you are not obligated to speak. But this is a bad one. I hope to see you there.

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Editor's Note: See also Jono Miller's Blog Post about this issue.

The County has a brochure about the Birds of the Pineland Reserve.

Jono Miller: County Painting Itself into a Corner

Ms. Valerie Brookens
Florida Department of Economic Opportunity
107 East Madison Street
Caldwell Building
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-4120

                                                                                                                                                                        19 October 2014

Ms. Brookens et al.

I’m writing to share some concerns regarding proposed changes to Sarasota County’s comprehensive Plan. I stand with Becky Ayech, John Wesley White, Maynard Hiss, Bill Zoller, Cathy Antunes, Dan Lobeck, Ann Kaplan, Mollie Cardamone and others who are questioning the process and outcome of the proposed revisions to Sarasota County’s comprehensive plan. I’ve worked with all the above-mentioned citizens, some for decades, and while we don’t always agree, I can attest to the fact that all of the above care deeply about the future of our county. I’ve attached some brief material related to my qualifications at the end of this document.

To begin with, I don’t object to any interest group prodding the County Commission to initiate major changes to our comprehensive plan. But when the County commits to doing so, it should be following adopted procedures, fully involving the Planning Commission, taking a comprehensive approach, and proceeding in a logical sequence. In my opinion, the County has failed to do so.

My intent is to focus on some procedural or structural issues others may not have focused on, and there are three I find most relevant: Failure to involve the Local Land Development Regulation Commission, Failure to be comprehensive, and Improper phasing of adoption.

 Failure to Appropriately Involve the Local Land Development Regulation Commission

1) Since 2011 an adopted Scoping Process pursuant to Sec. 94-85 has required that staff conduct a two part scoping process wherein “the proposed amendment will be clearly defined and all pertinent issues identified.” The County followed this process when considering changes to the Transfer of Development process in 2013 and it required LPA (Planning Commission) involvement. Commissioner Barbetta mistakenly implied this wasn’t the case.

2) The Board initiated the scoping process in this case when they directed staff to prepare a scoping document and posted that intent on the 2050 webpage (screenshot from County 2050 webpage below). The staff initiated the scoping process as directed and held the required workshops.

3) The next step according to the law and the flow chart used in the TDR process should have involved going to the Planning Commission and providing for public comment. Then, once the Planning Commission weighed in, it should have gone back to the County Commission, which authorizes the scope and processing of the CPA (or not). This makes perfect sense because you would want the LPA involved in determining what should and shouldn’t be considered in an amendment.

4) Instead the County Commission aborted their adopted scoping process. Instead of following the adopted procedure they were partway into, on May 8th 2013 they took a short-cut, aborting the legally-required scoping route they started on, thus depriving the public and Planning Commission of the opportunity specifically laid out in Staff flow charts.