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Decisions on growth should be consistent

The Hernando County Commission's vote last week to deny a proposed shopping center near the main entrance to the Glen Lakes subdivision north of Weeki Wachee was not a sound growth management decision. It demonstrates an inconsistent approach to a key component of the comprehensive plan that is intended to limit direct access to major roads, in this case U.S. 19.

The commissioners rejected the recommendation of their planners and traffic engineers, who advised that access to the retail center be from a frontage road that would run parallel to U.S. 19 and connect to Glen Lakes Boulevard.

Frontage roads make busy highways safer by controlling the flow of traffic. Examples of bad planning, in which virtually every business has an entrance onto a major artery, are evident on U.S. 19 in Pasco and Pinellas counties, where traffic is congested and signals have been placed too close together.

As Hernando County has grown, it has incorporated frontage roads into its development agreements. However, the commission's will to follow its staff's recommendations, and implement them routinely, has been uneven. At times, the board is inflexible with developers, but other times it waives the rules to placate complaining residents.

Such inconsistent rulings invite lawsuits, and the county has defended or negotiated its share. Decisions such as this one increase that possibility.

But the long-term threat is to motorists who will endure added risks to their safety and convenience because the commission was more interested in political expediency than uniformity.

Parochial opposition from residential pockets should not be dismissed. Commissioners have every obligation to weigh those concerns. But the commissioners should not deal with frontage road issues in a piecemeal fashion. Either they are committed to the concept of good traffic planning they have adopted, or they are not. It is unfair to developers for the commissioners to be arbitrary in their rulings, and it is unfair to residents, who cannot rely on their elected representatives' willingness to apply that policy equably.

[Last modified December 16, 2006, 20:40:07]