The county faces sprawl problems, some say, because of loopholes in the comprehensive plan that allow exemptions for development.
By WILL VAN SANT
Published May 4, 2003
BROOKSVILLE - A critical aim of the county's comprehensive plan is to direct development into so-called commercial "nodes." Two years ago, county planner Jim King wanted to see how well the plan was working, so he asked a colleague to generate a map of the county with a dot representing each commercial location.
What came back was troubling, King said. While there was apparent clustering of commercial at designated nodes - the county has 25 of them - the map showed dots scattered across the county.
"The visual impact," King said of the map, "calls into question how successful we have been in directing commercial development."
Whether the scattering of commercial represents judicious locating of businesses that have boosted quality of life or creeping sprawl is likely a matter of opinion. What's certain is that those dots (and a similar map made today would show more of them) have altered the county's sense of place, changing how it looks and feels when you drive down the road.
The continued proliferation of businesses outside commercial nodes, King said, can be linked to loose language in the comprehensive plan, which county commissioners can create exemptions to without penalty.
So what are the results should things continue as they have? You need only look, King said, to Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, whose comprehensive plans have a similar "anything goes" approach.
"What is it that will make us different?" he asked. "If you are serious about being different, you have to be different."
Just as parents debate what matters most in raising children, rigid discipline or a relaxed, responsive approach, planners hoping to create healthy growth must weigh the merits of strict guidelines vs. flexibility.
Last overhauled in 1996, Hernando's comprehensive plan has satisfied some - particularly the flexibility advocates - but, in certain areas, those who prefer specificity say it has failed. Shortcomings are clearly seen, they say, in rules used to locate commercial development.
Read the section of the comprehensive plan dealing with the four kinds of commercial nodes and you find ambiguous size restrictions and little detail about what kinds of development fit in each.
"The thing that causes the problem is that the boundaries are not defined," said King, who is working on a state-mandated review of the comprehensive plan. "We really don't have enough guidance. It puts you in a position where development decisions are not as fair, predictable and cost effective as they perhaps could be."
Only the smallest of the four kinds of nodes, neighborhood commercial, has a concrete size limitation, 5 acres. Step up to community commercial nodes and the plan states sizes "will generally range from 40-60 acres." Larger general commercial nodes "will generally range from 50-100 acres." Regional nodes, the biggest, have only a size minimum, 80 acres.
Soon after this section of the comprehensive plan is another that looks like a strict limitation. It states that development can only extend out from a commercial node when a supporting frontage road is built. Consider the section from another angle, King said, and it actually amounts to a built-in method to skirt the already flexible size restrictions. Summed up: If you build the road, you can extend the node.
Take a glance at the results of an unexceptional recent Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, April 14, and you find the nodes themselves do not serve as prohibitions to building commercial elsewhere, and that exemptions to the comprehensive plan proceed with little public outcry.
That day, the commission, backed by the planning department's own recommendation, voted to amend the comprehensive plan to allow the rezoning of a parcel at the northeast corner of Powell Road and California Street from rural to commercial. Against planning department advice, the commission also voted to rezone a property on County Line Road, west of Springtime Street, from agricultural/residential to commercial. The parcel is not in a commercial node.
In early January, the County Commission unanimously approved a rezoning petition for land north of the Barclay Avenue/Elgin Boulevard intersection from rural to commercial. The approval created a community commercial node that exceeds by 5 acres the upper limit "generally" suggested and came despite a critical planning staff report that said the proposal lacked detail on how it would promote "coordination and integration into the surrounding community."
Charles Lee, a senior vice president of Florida Audubon who sat on a 30-member commission created by Gov. Jeb Bush to review the state's growth management laws, which mandate comprehensive planning at the local level, said flexibility is often built in to serve development interests.
"It's the universal and practiced method of dissembling on these issues," Lee said. "Typically, the plans and the regulations are written in a way that one can use weasel words that allow you to justify any decisions under them later."
According to Lee, local planners are often subject to pressure, both spoken and unspoken, not to take too strong a stand against development interests for broader community needs. They quickly learn their limits, he said, and then begin to rationalize their behavior, proclaiming the virtues of flexibility, for example.
"You find very few officials willing to do anything rather than slide down the slippery slope," Lee said. "The days of appropriate relations between commissioners, developer lobbyists and staff personnel are gone."
Growth and Development director Larry Jennings said planning recommendations are based on the expertise and views of staff, as well input from the public and developers. But it is elected officials, he pointed out, who make final land use decisions.
While controversial projects tend to generate public participation, Jennings said that on a day-to-day basis, his staff deals mostly with developers.
"You don't normally hear from anybody else," Jennings said.
Both Jennings and King say the local developers' lobby was actively involved in the 1996 comprehensive plan overhaul. And, according to King, if residents find too many developer-friendly loopholes in the present plan, it is their fault for not speaking up and becoming part of the process.
"They need to be involved," King said. "They need to be informed, and they have to constructively represent their interests. It's like voting. If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about who is elected."
Joe Mason, a Brooksville attorney whose land-use expertise has served many a developer, was involved in crafting the 1996 comprehensive plan. Those who crave more specificity in the plan, he said, limit the ability of all parties involved to craft a dynamic approach to growth.
"You absolutely have to have enough flexibility in a document that you establish as a guide that if you have to take a detour as circumstances arise, you have the ability to do that," Mason said. "No project is the same. There is no such thing as one size fits all."
Mason characterized specificity advocates as absolutists whose rigid rule adherence was akin to that of religious fundamentalists. They fail, he said, to see how their approach has always spawned strife.
"They have not considered the conflict across the spectra of issues with which mankind has had to deal," Mason said.
Buddy Selph, owner of Tommie Dawson Realty, has been deeply involved in the acquisition of land for commercial development. He, like Mason, said the comprehensive plan must be flexible enough to respond to change or it will fail as a blueprint for growth.
In Selph's view, market-based changes are often most significant, and they demand response. It should largely be the marketplace, not a comprehensive plan, that determines what goes where, he said.
According to Selph, that is the way development works anyway, and it's simply unrealistic to make rigid plans in the present that are meant to guide future growth.
"It's like building a house you plan to live in 10 years from now," he said.
County Commissioner Diane Rowden thinks that's just what the comprehensive plan should be: a design for the county's future. And given the malleability of the current plan and commissioners who too often bow to development interests, the future is bleak.
"That flexibility is what is killing us," she said. "How far do you keep going?"
Rowden said the debate over how strictly the comprehensive plan should attempt to limit growth is important, as is public input on the issue. But ultimately, she said, it is elected officials, their vision or lack of it, that will carry the day.
"Decisions should not be based on getting re-elected but on doing what is right for the people and for the county," Rowden said. "And unfortunately that is not always done."
- Will Van Sant covers Hernando County government and can be reached at 754-6127. Send e-mail to vansant@sptimes.com
