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Heed lesson of Wal-Mart: know plans for the land

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published January 23, 2005

When did our commission lose the power to say no?

- Christopher Still, Tarpon Springs artist and Wal-Mart opponent

This past Tuesday evening in Tarpon Springs, as many as 400 people gathered for a showdown before the City Commission about allowing a Wal-Mart supercenter on the east side of U.S. 19, on the south side of the Anclote River.

Wal-Mart won.

The meeting took 12 hours and 25 minutes. The commission's final 3-2 approval did not occur until 6:45 a.m. Wednesday. With all the experts and staff members and lawyers getting to talk first, it was almost midnight before the public was allowed to be heard.

The site plan approved by the City Commission features a store of 204,000 square feet. The 74-acre site (including 33 acres of wetlands) will have 1,000 parking spaces, a drive-up pharmacy, a tire and lube center, a garden center and a bus station. There will be a large retention pond at one corner. There will be a new stoplight on U.S. 19.

Now, from this point, it would be easy to launch into a sermon about the Lost Soul of Florida . . .

About the Wal-Mart-ization of America . . .

About how our government is supposed to be a servant that obeys the will of the people, and all that.

But there is a tough underlying reality here, and it relates to the question that Christopher Still had intended only rhetorically: "When did our commission lose the power to say no?"

There is an answer.

The Tarpon Springs City Commission lost part of that power to say no years ago, long before anybody ever dreamed of a Wal-Mart on the site. That's when Tarpon Springs adopted the same kind of "comprehensive plan" that all cities and counties in Florida must adopt.

Your city or county has its own "comprehensive plan," too. It is a big map that says: Here is where people in this community will live. Here is where we will let business develop. Here is where industry will be contained.

In other words: Here is the kind of city that we are going to have.

There's a second answer, too.

Tarpon Springs lost most of the rest of its power to say no when it zoned the site for general business purposes.

Once the zoning is in place, a property owner who meets the rules gets to build. An owner, after all, is entitled to the fair use of his land.

The government does not get to pick and choose among owners. It cannot say, "We like Wendy's, but not McDonald's." The government cannot say that a well-liked man can build his house, but that an unpopular man cannot.

Neither can the city go back and change the rules after the fact, saying, "We said commercial use, but we didn't mean your kind of commercial use."

In the Tarpon Springs case, some of the opponents hired lawyers to find legitimate legal grounds: traffic loads, zoning issues, issues concerning previous plans for the site. They made a valiant effort, but in the end they got only two "no" votes.

On the other hand, many of the residents who showed up Tuesday were there simply to say: "This is not the kind of city we want. This is not the right use for this land." But those were precisely the decisions made years ago. A long-done deal.

The moral of this story is that it is not too late for YOU as a member of your own community to have a say. The use of the land all around you has been designated in your local government's comprehensive plans and zoning maps; if you don't like it, there still might be time to change it. But most people don't pay attention until that "public hearing" sign goes up on the site - and by then it can be too late.

Through your City Hall or county courthouse, through your neighborhood or civic association, through the Internet, through any way that you can, exercise your role as a citizen to inform yourself about your own community's plans. We all have busy lives, and sometimes the subject seems boring and technical. But in the end, all that bureaucratic stuff turns out to matter after all, as it did in Tarpon Springs.

[Last modified January 23, 2005, 00:13:14]