Candidates promise to check sprawl, stick to long-term plans and make developers pitch in for roads and schools.
By DAN DeWITT
Published October 10, 2004
Jeff Stabins expected recycling to be the big issue in this year's County Commission races.
That was before he started campaigning.
"I knocked on a lot of doors this summer - Republican doors," said Stabins, the Republican candidate in District 1.
"Nearly everyone I talked to was concerned about how fast we were growing and whether we're heading in the right direction."
All of the other County Commission candidates - regardless of party affiliation - seem to have picked up the same message from voters.
In a striking shift from past elections, where candidates tended to talk around the specifics of controlling growth, all of the entrants in this year's races have firmly pledged to rein it in.
They are responding not only to voters, they said. Several candidates who moved here from more urban areas shared the feeling that the ills of mismanaged growth - traffic congestion, overwhelmed water systems and crowded schools - are following them up the Suncoast Parkway.
They talk of requiring developers to contribute more to the county's infrastructure. Some favor meetings to share ideas about development issues and more long-range planning. They express grave concerns about plans to develop a 2,800-acre ranch in the Spring Lake area.
Most of all, they all promise to adhere strictly to the county's comprehensive plan, often referred to as a blueprint for future growth.
The comment of Janey Baldwin, the District 5 Republican candidate, is typical: "I'm mainly interested in the comprehensive plan and the fact that we haven't followed it."
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Some candidates are pandering to the antigrowth sentiment they see among voters, developers say - a sentiment obvious in the well-organized fights staged against recent building projects and obvious in a 2002 survey of residents that listed unchecked development as the top concern.
The candidates "are just saying out loud what the public wants to hear," said Gary Schraut, a Brooksville real estate broker and developer.
Longtime advocates of smart growth, on the other hand, say growth management is finally getting the attention it warrants.
"I think it's great that it's being talked about as an important issue, if not the most important issue," said Gene Kelly, who led a recent citizen advisory group that addressed long-range planning.
But both sides agree that most of the candidates need to do more homework.
For example, despite the claims of Baldwin and others, only a tiny percentage of recent development required an amendment to the comprehensive plan, Schraut said.
"If I say 5 percent of it is in variance of the comp plan, that's probably high," he said.
That's probably true, said Jerry Greif, the county's chief planner. The county has approved only one land use change to the plan this year, and that was to allow residential development on 100 acres previously designated for industry - not agriculture.
Greif said, though, that the commission can bend the plan for developers without formally amending it.
The plan allows zones of residential development to be extended a quarter-mile beyond the boundaries drawn on the future land use map; the comp plan also allows commercial development to spread outside designated commercial nodes if the new shops and restaurants are served by frontage roads.
Both of these rules - or "loopholes," according to the plan's critics - can be eliminated when the commission updates the plan, probably next year.
But generous interpretations of the plan have been rare lately, Schraut said, and, more commonly, the commission has denied residential development on land where the plan clearly allows it. One such decision, on a 200-acre parcel on Centralia Road in northwest Hernando, was overturned by a circuit judge last week - a decision that should remind incoming commissioners that they can manage growth, but they can't stop it, Schraut said.
"What I see are people with a no-growth agenda hiding behind a smart-growth philosophy," he said.
Kelly worries that the commission will only respond to the public's main concern about growth management - that too many newcomers are crowding onto too little land.
But dense development is the only feasible, long-term solution to sprawl, Kelly said. It consumes less land than traditional subdivisions. And when apartments or condominiums are placed near - or among - commercial and industrial uses, residents can walk to stores, restaurants or even to work.
"It's just kind of accepted that high density is bad, and therefore good growth management is maintaining low density. But low density leads to traffic congestion," as well as other problems, Kelly said.
District 1
Learning more about such issues, Stabins said, is exactly why he is proposing a summit on growth management. He advocates inviting everyone with a stake in the issue. Any related topic would be open to discussion.
"Impact fees would be on the table," he said. "Infrastructure requirements, I would assume, would be on the table. Donation of (developers') land would be on the table. So would anything and everything within Florida law to help us grow better and smarter."
Stabins' voting record during his six years in the state House of Representatives suggests he is an unlikely advocate of growth management. In 1993, for example, the state League of Conservation voters said he supported environmental issues 38 percent of the time, the second lowest percentage of any lawmaker from the Tampa Bay area.
Few of those votes, Stabins says now, were directly related to growth management, which he considered primarily a local matter. And, he said, he has become more aware of the issue as the need for growth management in Hernando has become more urgent.
"Times do change, and this is now in the best interest of the county," Stabins said.
His Democratic opponent, D.W. "Bill" Fagan, doesn't necessarily think a summit is necessary, though he is not opposed to wide-ranging discussions of the impact of growth. He is, however, directly in line with one of Stabins' other views - that the comprehensive plan should be followed strictly.
"We have a comp plan; let's follow it," Fagan said.
Also, like Stabins, Fagan would require developers to contribute the maximum legal amount to bolster the county's infrastructure; state law limits impact fees to the cost of servicing a new development.
"I'm looking at the guys who are putting in 999-home subdivisions. They are the ones making the money. They are the ones who should pay the higher impact fees," Fagan said.
District 3
Diane Rowden, the Democratic incumbent in District 3, said she doesn't need a summit to educate herself on the issue of growth management.
"I've been preaching this for several years. ... I think I've led the way, and people are jumping on the bandwagon."
Rowden helped push the idea of a stricter landscaping ordinance and the big-box ordinance that required architectural features to be added to large, free-standing stores.
The results can be seen, she said, by comparing the new Wal-Mart Supercenter on U.S. 19, with walkways and trees in the parking lot, to the older Wal-Mart on State Road 50 - a stark, rectangular building in an expansive, shadeless parking lot.
She said she insisted that the company contribute money toward the turn lanes and other road improvements near the new location.
Rowden said she has also shown a willingness to block bad development. One example, she said, was Schraut's proposal to build townhouses and stores on State Road 50 several miles east of Brooksville.
"That would have been an excellent example of leapfrog development," Rowden said.
One threat to sound growth management in the county, she said, is Brooksville's aggressive approach to annexing land for development. She advocates trying to integrate the city and county plans so development standards - such as those governing frontage roads - are integrated.
But Mark Cattell, her Republican opponent, said Rowden's confrontational manner with city leaders has undermined cooperation.
Working with city leaders requires "civil language and civil tactics and not treating them as adversaries," Cattell said.
Otherwise, he said, he is just as worried by runaway growth as Rowden is.
He said he cannot be sure he would vote against a plan to build on the 2,800-acre Two Rivers Ranch because no plan has yet been submitted to the county; but he did sign the petition opposing it.
"I was the only candidate to sign the petition," he said. "I'm very concerned about preserving Hernando's natural areas."
Steve Ashmore, a no-party candidate in District 3, said when he moved to Hernando County from Safety Harbor, "I came here specifically for the small-town type atmosphere. . . . My basic thing is to stick closer to the comprehensive plan."
But Ashmore, a mortgage broker, said he also realizes the economic benefit of residential development.
"In my business," he said, "we like to see things get built."
District 5
Chris Kingsley, the Democratic nominee opposing Baldwin in District 5, is a former county commissioner who was defeated two years ago partly, he said, because he tried to make the right decisions on growth management.
He angered homeowners because he recognized the need in the county for rental units and pockets of dense development. He suffered the backlash from builders and developers because he backed the landscape ordinance and the big-box ordinance.
"The things I was sort of maligned for are the things that people now are saying are right," Kingsley said.
His previous defeat will not scare him from taking a firm stand on growth management if he is elected in November, he said. He said he would adhere to the comprehensive plan and oppose dense development in rural parts of the county.
He does not think it is necessary, as Baldwin says, to start working on a strategic plan for growth because the process began two years ago, with a series of workshops.
"Doesn't she know we were already working on a strategic plan for growth?" he asked.
Baldwin, the Republican candidate, said that effort has stalled.
The comp plan, which is rewritten every seven years and is intended to accommodate growth for 20 years, does not look far enough into the future, she said.
"We have a transportation plan to anticipate our needs 25 years from now. Why can't we have the same for growth, one that is enforced by law? The comp plan depends on the whim of the commission on the day they meet," Baldwin said.
Actually, county staffers said, any amendment needs the approval of the state.
Baldwin also said she is concerned about the development plans for Two Rivers.
"We need to look at it, study it, and study it some more," she said.
Richard Power, a write-in candidate in District 5, feels pretty much the same way, he said.
"If land has been agricultural for years and years and years, and now they want to develop it, I don't think I'm going to be on their side," Power said.
This is the first in a series of stories on issues in the Nov. 2 races for the Hernando County Commission. This story focuses on growth management. In future stories, the Times will talk to the candidates about county spending priorities and county ordinances.
THE CANDIDATES
Here are the matchups in the three races for the Hernando County Commission on Nov. 2:
