Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Structure of board in question

The Local Planning Agency is made up of staffers who write the proposals that come before the group.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published July 23, 2006

Neighborhood and environmental activists spent last week sparring with Pinellas County officials over a proposal that would remove limits on the number of residential units that can be built in the county's floodplains.

The idea originated in the county's planning department and was later considered by the county's Local Planning Agency, which decided to recommend that the Pinellas County Commission wait for more information before considering the proposal to eliminate the cap of five units per acre on residential construction in the 100-year floodplain.

"We need to kind of slow down," said Brian Smith, planning director for Pinellas County. "We're asking for them to do nothing Tuesday so we can work out some policies."

A commission deferral would please environmental and neighborhood activists who think it is insane to allow greater numbers of housing units in such high-risk areas. But the brouhaha has called attention to the county's LPA, a state-mandated group that has gone mostly unnoticed since its creation in the mid 1980s.

The form of the county's LPA, although legal, has raised questions about the bias of its recommendations and the likelihood that the group is violating the state's open meetings laws. Attorneys for the St. Petersburg Times have questioned the way that the agency splits its meetings into two sessions, rather than making decisions during the public hearing that was advertised to the public.

Questions also have been raised about the makeup of the LPA because most members are county staff members who write the proposed amendments that come before the group.

Part of the problem with having staff members vote on something they came up with is that it gets no dispassionate third eye looking at it until it reaches commissioners, said David Healey, executive director of the Pinellas Planning Council, a group comprising representatives from the county's 24 cities, the School Board and the County Commission that deals with land-use issues.

"Its only exposure until it gets to the County Commission is at the staff level," Healey said. "The term that comes to mind is incestuous, or redundant at least."

The LPA is responsible for overseeing changes to the county's comprehensive growth management plan, as required by a state law passed in the mid 1980s. Such groups, whether they be for cities or counties, look at government staff proposals concerning an entity's comprehensive plan, evaluate them and recommend that their respective governing bodies pass or reject the staff's suggested changes.

Pinellas County decided that its planning agency should comprise its planning department, Smith said.

That means that members of the planning department first come up with suggestions about proposed amendments to the county's comprehensive plan. Staffers then develop the formal amendment and send it to the LPA, where county planning department staff members and others, sitting as the planning agency, listen to public comment and then decide whether to recommend acceptance or denial of the amendment - which they created. They have been doing it this way for more than two decades, Smith said.

"The planning department as the agency develops the plan and recommends on it, with me signing the action," Smith said. "It's not like a board or something like that. It's like an agency doing it. ...We're the ones who are supposed to be doing it. ... I'm explaining something that's done throughout the whole state."

But the rest of the state doesn't necessarily conduct business the way Pinellas does.

"It's different," Healey said. "I don't know of any other municipality, certainly in Pinellas, that does it that way."

Other governing bodies have appointed themselves as the LPA. Still, others, like Pinellas Park and Seminole and Citrus County, use citizen boards, appointed by the elected officials to serve as the LPA and pass on their thoughts and advice to the elected officials who make the final decision.

For Seminole City Manager Frank Edmunds, hearing the comments and ideas of those who live and work in the community is a vital part of the system.

"I think it's absolutely essential," Edmunds said. "Staff does a great job in addressing our local planning issues, but (citizen review) certainly provides a different perspective that would not normally come from staff."

Kevin Smith, interim director of the community development division in Citrus County, also appreciates citizen oversight. In Citrus, the commission-appointed planning and development board acts as the LPA.

The board includes people from various backgrounds with wide-ranging experience, including builders and environmentalists.

"That type of experience is helpful," Smith said. "Just generally speaking, their input is useful. They can provide a perspective the professionals sometimes miss. I think it's a plus."

There's another advantage to a board made up of citizens or elected officials: It reduces the likelihood of Sunshine Law violations.

State law generally prohibits those serving on boards or commissions from communicating outside publicly announced meetings about items that may come before them. But when the staff comprises the commission or board, then it would be hard to sit down and discuss possible changes that the board will eventually hear without violating the law.

Staff members cannot put on a "staff hat" to avoid the Sunshine Law, said Pat Gleason, an expert in public records and the Sunshine Law in the Florida Attorney General's Office. If board members and staff members are the same people, then all discussions about items that may come before them at their meetings should likely be done in public, Gleason said.

And it's not just those discussions.

Pinellas' LPA advertises its meetings as they are legally required to do. The advertisements tell citizens to be at the County Commission chambers, 315 Court St., Clearwater, at 9 a.m. And that happens. But rather than deliberate immediately after hearing from the public, the group announces that it will be meeting later that same day the planning department's headquarters, 600 Cleveland St., Clearwater. If folks want to come back and listen, officials say, they can.

The question then becomes the amount of notice given for the second meeting. Gleason said state law requires "reasonable notice." There's no bright line to define "reasonable," but it includes enough time for people to be able to attend the meeting. Less than eight hours' notice can make it tough for people who were at the morning hearing to arrange their schedules. And announcing it at the first meeting gives no notice to others who might want to attend but had no way of knowing there would be a second meeting.

Smith said the county decided last week (after receiving a letter from Times attorneys the week before) to note on the county calendar that a second meeting will be held.

The calendar is on the county's Web site at www.pinellascounty.org.

[Last modified July 22, 2006, 20:27:44]