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Guest column

Comprehensive plan would protect water quality

By CHARLES MIKO
Published December 26, 2005

On Dec. 15, by a majority of four, our Planning and Development Review Board set aside 26 years of precedent in a river community and rejected the recommendations of staff when they granted a variance from our Comprehensive Plan.

They authorized the construction of a home in a highly sensitive environment and with less than half the prescribed setback from the lower Withlacoochee River.

Even more significant is the new precedent they provided for citing by future applicants seeking to circumvent the river safeguards in our Comprehensive Plan.

The four members were not swayed by the fact that since 1979 every new resident of the area had found ways to build a home without departing from setback regulations protecting the river, a designated Outstanding Florida Water.

Neither were they swayed by the information that the applicant was the owner of an adjacent property on which he could build his home without necessity for a variance from the Comprehensive Plan.

To the observer, it was easy to conclude that what was being discussed by the four was the fact that an obstacle, the Comprehensive Plan, was standing in the way of accommodating the applicant. Their solution was to set the plan aside.

It is most interesting to note that only a few hours later, on another issue, one of these four, pressing his point, is quoted as having said, "Do we have a comprehensive plan or don't we?" and later, "We really don't need all these planners because people just do what they want to."

He was forcefully, and this time correctly, advocating compliance with the Comprehensive Plan he had knowingly set aside a few hours earlier.

Do we have an inconsistency here or is it that our rivers are just not important enough to be protected by the Comprehensive Plan?

This is another in the long, long line of decisions which have led to the water quality problems we now face in Citrus County.

Is it county policy to clean up and protect our rivers or is it not? The board member put it succinctly when he asked, "Do we have a comprehensive plan or don't we?"'

Given the emphasis that our Board of County Commissioners has properly placed on protecting and cleaning up our rivers, it seems appropriate to suggest that they should pay closer attention to whether their appointees are acting in compliance with established policy.

Charles Miko has been a resident of Citrus County for more than 25 years and was a member of the Citizen Advisory Committee that helped put together the Citrus County Comprehensive Plan. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do no necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.

[Last modified December 26, 2005, 00:43:13]