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Planners to discuss storm shelter needs

Today's county workshop will cover a proposal to require mobile home park developers to build hurricane shelters for park residents.

By CATHERINE E. SHOICHET
Published December 1, 2005

The county's population is growing faster than its hurricane shelter capacity, according to county and regional planners.

With that in mind, county staff members are recommending that the county require developers of new mobile home parks to build hurricane shelters for their residents.

They also suggest the creation of a hurricane mitigation fund and a new impact fee to pay for upgrades of public shelters.

These policies would be part of the county's comprehensive plan. The Planning and Development Review Board is slated to discuss the proposed amendments at a workshop at 9 a.m. today in Room 166 of the Lecanto Government Building, 3600 W Sovereign Path, Lecanto.

The County Commission will have the final say, with a workshop in January, a hearing in February and final adoption in July.

The proposed mobile home park policy would require developers to build hurricane shelters with enough capacity to house at least 70 percent of the park's residents or pay a fee to a shelter mitigation fund. The rule would not apply to existing mobile home parks.

"Even though mobile homes have improved their construction over the years, the experts still recommend that mobile homes be evacuated during hurricane force winds," assistant director of Community Development Kevin Smith said. And population data indicates that the amount of shelter space is not keeping up with population growth, he said.

According to the 2000 Census, 38,716 Citrus residents live in mobile homes.

Smith said all of the proposed hurricane preparedness amendments stem from research by the Withlacoochee Regional Planning Council. Bruce Day, the council's planning director, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

An official from the Florida Manufactured Housing Association said other areas of the state have unsuccessfully tried to impose shelter requirements for mobile home parks.

A proposed shelter at a 500-unit mobile home development in Melbourne fell through after construction estimates came in at $20-million, said Frank Williams, the association's executive director.

"It just makes no sense," he said. "It's just not economical to try to do that. It's not feasible."

Sheriff's Capt. Joe Eckstein, the county's emergency management director, said Wednesday that he was not aware of the proposed comprehensive plan amendments.

But he said improving the county's shelters is a top priority for emergency management and county officials.

As the 2005 hurricane season was winding down several weeks ago, Eckstein said he met with Sheriff Jeff Dawsy, County Commission Chairman Gary Bartell and school superintendent Sandra "Sam" Himmel. The group agreed to form a committee to examine the county's shelter situation.

"After every hurricane season, we will look at everybody else's disasters and what happened to them. We want to make sure the same things don't happen here," Eckstein said. "That's why shelters are a major issue all of the sudden. ... It's something we need to look at."

He said he was not worried about the county's shelter capacity.

"Our primary concern right now is that we don't have proper generators at our shelters," he said.

There is a generator at the Lecanto school complex, he said, but that site is not a Red Cross approved shelter. And the generator at Forest Ridge Elementary School cannot power the entire building.

Eckstein said Citrus County's shelters, which consist mostly of schools and churches, can house 16,823 people.

To determine how many residents would come to shelters during a major hurricane, Eckstein said the committee will seek data from Florida counties that faced Category 3 and 4 storms. And he said they will try to come up with a system to fund improvements in the county's shelters.

The comprehensive plan is evaluated and revised every seven years, Smith said, and this year's proposed amendments come in the wake of an evaluation completed by county planners last year.

Proposed amendments this year address other issues including affordable housing, water quality protection and open space provisions in subdivisions.

--Staff writer Eddy Ramirez and Times researcher Angie Holan contributed to this report. Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at cshoichet@sptimes.com or 860-7309.

[Last modified December 1, 2005, 01:07:16]