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School district agrees to buy property
By BARBARA BEHRENDT and BRIDGET HALL GRUMET INVERNESS -- A last-minute solution worked out by school district, county and Betz Farm development officials has paved the way for the district to buy 150 acres adjacent to the Crystal River High School. The district has agreed to pay $1.2-million for the land and is expected to close on the sale by June 30. The deal has been in doubt in recent days after School Board members learned that the property would remain within the Betz Farm Development of Regional Impact after the sale. The district thus would have to comply with the stringent development rules inside the Betz Farm project. The board was worried that the district would face costly and time-consuming development reviews when they begin to build on the property. In the short term, only roads and ball fields are planned on the land to help ease overcrowding at the high school. At a workshop Tuesday morning, board attorney Richard "Spike" Fitzpatrick told the board that staff has been working through all the complications behind the scenes. Usually those issues are not discussed publicly, but he said he came to the workshop because he had read reports in the Citrus Times that the board members were concerned about the sale. Fitzpatrick assured the board that the problems had been anticipated all along and that there was no need for worry. The key change that solved the problem, however, was suggested to the district just days ago. The change is a promise from the Betz developer to the district that the school system will be allowed to have up to 2,181 vehicle trips per day from the site. Under the original development order, those trips had been assigned to the proposed housing project. The formal written agreement shifting those trips to the district was written just Tuesday morning by county Development Services Director Gary Maidhof. Documents generated by the Betz Farm developer as part of the county review process in March do not speak to assigning any trips to the school district at all. Principal county planner Jenette Collins said the idea to assign those trips to the district came up within the past two weeks and may have been suggested by Fred Goodrow, the planner hired two weeks ago by the school district. Collins had said a week ago that any significant construction on the land by the school district could trigger a substantial deviation to the development order and a series of complex reviews. "Ideally, from the beginning, they (the school board) probably should have done some traffic studies," Collins said. That would have helped them determine how much traffic impact they might generate on the site when they do build. Goodrow just met with school officials Friday to talk about what complications the DRI might pose to the district. School board members, who had considered backing out of the deal, pressed Fitzpatrick on the advantages and disadvantages of being a part of a development. Fitzpatrick said the district is now promised that it can build whatever it needs and generate even 15 percent more than 2,181 trips to the property without prompting a complicated state review. Even building several schools on the site won't generate that much traffic according to the state's formula, Fitzpatrick said. Plus, he noted, the Tamposi family -- the owners of the Betz property -- has already spent $4-million to bring utilities to the site and additional money to build Turkey Oak Drive. He said the only down side to staying in the DRI was that the property might be difficult to sell in the future, but he noted he has never seen the district sell any property larger than an acre in his two decades with the school system. While later there might be other traffic improvement or other development concerns at the site, he assured the board that that would be true with any other school building project. He also spoke to the issue of whether Goodrow should have been the planner hired for the last-minute review. Several board members voiced concern about the selection after they learned that Goodrow had worked for the Tamposi family. Fitzpatrick said Goodrow had knowledge of the development and that was a plus for the school district. He also said that Goodrow's firm, Berryman & Hennigar did more work for the school district than they did for Tamposi. Fitzpatrick added that he himself had worked for the Tamposi family in the past and that planners, developers and engineers frequently worked for various parties in various situations. The County Commission unanimously approved the changes to the Betz Farm DRI on Tuesday evening.
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