Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Safety Harbor doesn't want bus depot

By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published January 15, 2007

SAFETY HARBOR - City commissioners are expected to vote Tuesday on a resolution to oppose a large proposed school bus terminal at McMullen-Booth Road and State Road 580.

"It's sending a message ... like writing a formal letter," interim Mayor Andy Steingold said. "We're not taking them on - we're just begging their indulgence on this issue."

Whether a tiny city's fist in the air will have any effect on Clearwater and the Pinellas County School District's plan to construct a 300-vehicle bus barn on the property is yet to be determined.

But if that doesn't work, maybe 1,010 signatures on a petition will do the trick.

Briar Creek resident Sharon Philyaw, 63, helped form a group that circulated the petition in communities that surround the property: Country Villas, Kendale and Rainbow Farms N, and the Bay's End, Amber Glades and Briar Creek mobile home parks.

"We'll have 2,000 by next week," she said last week.

Residents oppose the plan for reasons including possible increased traffic, loss of wildlife habitat, fuel fumes, noise and lights.

"Who speaks for the students of yesteryear?" Philyaw said. "Would you want this in your back yard?"

The proposal calls for Clearwater to turn over to the school district more than 20 acres of a 120-acre tract that the city owns just north of SR 580, on the east side of McMullen-Booth Road. It would become the home base for maintaining, repairing and parking school buses.

In return, the city would get about 20 acres that the school district owns near Lake Chautauqua Park, at the south end of Landmark Drive, off Enterprise Drive.

The school district has terminals in the southern and middle parts of the county. Officials said the lack of a north county terminal costs money for gas and increases wear and tear on the buses.

* * *

A few weeks ago, Philyaw's husband, Andrew, had had enough. In a bold, possibly illegal move, the retiree took a machete and cut a short path into the wilderness near the proposed site, where bobcats, coyotes, gopher tortoises and rabbits live.

Winding through palms and over a downed tree, the trail ends at a wide, grassy service road. Everything seems silent except for the noise of a burbling brook. The road leads to a steep ravine with a drop of at least 30 feet. Down below, Briar Creek gurgles along past massive ferns and other vegetation.

Sharon Philyaw said she has been guiding some important folks down the footpath lately, including Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard and Pinellas County Commission Chairman Ronnie Duncan.

Also scheduled to take a look are several School Board members and representatives of the Sierra Club.

Clearwater city engineer Mike Quillen said the School Board completed an environmental study of the area, "and it came back clean; there is no groundwater pollution."

Now, the school district is looking at how the buses would access the terminal.

"The School Board is looking to put another stoplight south of the future Briar Creek one," Quillen said. "And they may have to build a new frontage road north of Countryside High (on the east side of the road)."

Clearwater's Assistant City Manager Garry Brumback said he expects the School Board to submit a preliminary design plan sometime this week, and then he'll "talk to the people at Briar Creek."

"Before we take anything to the council, we'll talk to them about it," he said of Briar Creek residents. "I'm hoping they'll understand. I'm hoping they'll be understanding. Obviously, we'd like to do this amicably."

Tony Rivas, director of facilities for the school district, said, "We're still not 100 percent" set on the project, and "there are a lot of what-ifs."

"I think everything is falling into place," he said. "The indicators are good to try and make it happen. I know there's going to be some opposition from the communities which surround it. I've been here for 15 years, and I don't think we've ever had some location without opposition."

He said he's heard every argument a person could come up with against a terminal.

"When it comes to buses, nobody wants a bus," Rivas said. "You can't hide a bus. It's big, it's yellow, it's out there."

But he pointed out that the Briar Creek neighborhood sits next to Clearwater's Northeast Water Pollution Control Facility.

"Which would you rather smell?" Rivas said.

Sharon Philyaw prefers the water treatment plant. Besides, she said, that gets really stinky only about once a month.

Her research shows that 30 percent of Briar Creek park's residents have some kind of breathing problem, such as asthma.

She thinks fuel fumes would aggravate their conditions.

"We're not some crotchety, old group that is saying we don't want anything back here but trees," Sharon Philyaw said. "We know it's going to be developed, but we want something more environmentally friendly."

Eileen Schulte can be reached at (727) 445-4153 or schulte@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 14, 2007, 21:43:26]