Lyons on the curious case of Sarasota's accommodation - for a dump at the Celery Fields

Please read Tom Lyons' Herald Tribune column on the curious, accommodative stance of Sarasota County toward the proposed, highly unwise idea to put a Waste Demolition plant next to a serene Preserve and Internationally touristed Bird Sanctuary, our all-round beautiful Celery Fields.

Among other things, Lyons notes:

County staff also quietly proposed changing county rules that would have barred the plant because the site was much too small, and did so as if the change was just some non-controversial tweak.

Staff essentially just passed along a designer-proposal created by land use agent Bo Medred. Medred pretended his proposal -- allowing unenclosed waste processing within 500 feet of homes -- would be useful and noninvasive, and the county - both the Planning Commission and the Board - bought it hook, line, and sinker.

See the Citizens' Timeline narrative here

especially this bit:

In October, 2016, Bo Medred asked the County to change its law and standards to accommodate Mr. Gabbert's desire to put a Waste Processing Plant at Apex Rd. and E. Palmer Blvd., next to the Celery Fields.

• Oct 20, 2016 - Bo Medred proposes new standards to reduce the number of acres required for unenclosed Waste Processing from 35 acres to 15 acres. Ordinance No. 2016-082, approving Zoning Ordinance Amendment No. 119. 
• Jack Bispham, chair of the Planning Commission, recused himself from the proceeding. Bispham is the brother-in- law of Mr. Gabbert.
• No information or testimony from an expert on Waste Processing was cited or offered by county staff or a commissioner.

Bo Medred's proposed amendment to the County's law and standards begins with Donna Thompson of County Real Estate at about 2:08 hrs. (That single segment can also be viewed here.)

Planning Commission Hearing Oct 20, 2016 on Ord. 2016-084, Amend.119

• During the PC hearing (at 2:32), Bo Medred displayed this photo of a dump in Buffalo NY to illustrate his argument as to why this 15-acre model is perfectly suitable for residential areas of Sarasota County. People's homes visible behind the piles of waste: 

Medred displayed this photo of a Waste Processing Facility on 15 acres in Buffalo NY
to the Planning Commission.

If nothing else, see the exchange around 2:33 between Planning Commissioner Laura Benson and Bo Medred:

Benson: (referencing the Buffalo illustration):  Those pictures were big dirty things.

Bo Medred: That's a . . . that's a . . . that's an opinion. 

See also the exchange with Commissioner Jack Hawkins concerning the noise levels of concrete and asphalt crushing operations that begins about 2 hrs. and 39 minutes. No staff or Commissioner put into evidence any documents about the potential problems and issues with siting a waste processing facility. No accredited expert was invited to testify as to siting, pollution, noise, or other impacts upon residences.

Planning Board ACTION:

Oct. 20, 2016 - The Planning Commission APPROVED the amendment by a vote of 6-0 (Bispham recused hmself) as a Special Exception use to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, as Bo Medred recommended.  VIDEO

With the blessing of the Planning Commission, Bo Medred moved on, taking the proposed amendment to the Sarasota Board of County Commissions in December.

On Dec. 14, the Board approved a text amendment allowing unenclosed waste processing facilities near residences via Consent Agenda -- i.e., it wasn't even discussed.

Lyons: Still in favor of checks on builders

Reposted from the Herald Tribune:

By Tom Lyons

Published: Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 6:24 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 6:24 p.m.

A local public relations man who used to be a newspaper reporter just set many misguided people straight, he thinks.

I’m among the misguided, and despite Rod Thomson’s best efforts, I remain that way.

Most people on this wrong path with me ought not be blamed, I’m sure. As Thomson explained in a recent Herald-Tribune guest column, people have been grossly misled by “a loud minority that is given an outsized megaphone for ill-formed views” who rail “irrationally against developers, a word often said with the dripping disdain normally reserved for Islamic terrorists beheading humanitarian workers.”

Thomson may or may not realize this is an incredibly grotesque exaggeration. But he is stridently convinced that the populace has been unfairly tricked into believing developers are evil.

“But,” he wrote, “practically everything you think you know about the evil of developers is demonstrably wrong.”

His demonstration fails to wow.

The psychic power he used to read your befuddled mind found nothing thoughtful or rational or nuanced or knowledgeable in there. He saw that you have only the most simple-minded, cartoonish notions about developers and that, as a result, certain important realities have never occurred to you.

Brace yourself for his big revelation: If not for developers, we wouldn’t have all the buildings we use.

“Do you like your house? Thank a developer,” he wrote. He repeated that dramatic admonishment for workplaces and for retail shops.

He didn’t say so, but I must add: Why not hug all the bankers, too, as even the worst and most fraudulent of banks — heck, especially those — played a huge role in financing many of those wonderful buildings.

If this amazing news about developers being the ones who build our buildings has rocked your world, no doubt it also cured your hate-mongering ways. Congratulations! Now you must hate only the real evildoers: Those who believe in green space and concurrence and land preservation and such. Those people, no doubt, want everyone to be unemployed and living in a straw hut, much as you did until you got Thomson’s message.

Now you surely realize that you were shamefully ungrateful to question or object to anything a developer wants in the way of development rights or deregulation or tax breaks or whatever. If so, Thomson has done his job.

But maybe you are still wavering. Are you unclear about how far your new understanding of the benevolence of developers — who so generously provide you with shelter and sustenance — should now take you in the direction of approving every proposal they make to local government?

That might be because Thomson slipped up a bit, aside from the part where he assumed you were totally clueless.

“There’s more,” he wrote. “Most roads to your homes were originally built by developers, as were the stormwater drainage systems, water and sewer utilities and sidewalks.”

Well, yes. And why is that? In many cases — as Thomson certainly did not say — it was because regulations that many developers adamantly groused about forced them to do that stuff. They were required to build homes that resist hurricane winds, don’t flood every year or so, don’t dump sewage straight into the nearest estuary or wetland, and aren’t creating traffic logjams because of inadequate roads serving massive numbers of residential or commercial drivers.

Some still gripe about it, and some manage to escape some of the rules. Many try. But some have figured out that most of the rules make things better.

Of course it is a simpleton’s view to assume anything a developer wants must be bad, or that anytime one gets something he asks for, it is the result of buying off local politicians. But it is equally simple-minded, and more dangerously naive, to imagine that enforcing carefully crafted regulations is destructive or that without the rules, developers can all be trusted to do right.

Please.

Even a 10-minute study of Florida’s real estate development history makes it clear why most rational Floridians — not the morons Thomson imagines — are wary of developers who gripe about being handcuffed. I can barely imagine what Florida would look like if we took the cuffs off.

As is, there are still a few unspoiled areas and intact wetlands and some wildlife corridors in between the massive and growing developments that have transformed Florida in the past half century or so.

Developers get paid in cash. It is the environmentalists who work so hard to curb them who deserve our gratitude. I just wish they would win more often.