Protecting Pinellas' treasured places

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published July 2, 2007

The most immediate threat to Pinellas County's Brooker Creek Preserve was averted when the school district offered up a vacant school site in northeast Pinellas for construction of youth ballfields. If not for that offer, a county plan to let a private group build a youth sports complex inside the 8, 300-acre nature preserve might have gone forward. Yet Brooker Creek Preserve, and indeed all of Pinellas' regional parks and environmental lands, remain at risk. It becomes clearer every day that only a county charter amendment can adequately protect these valuable lands.

The permanent protection residents want would not be provided through a new ordinance drafted by county officials. Promoted as a means of giving residents more power to determine the future of parks and environmental lands, it instead seems designed to protect the County Commission's flexibility to use or dispose of such land as it sees fit.

True, the proposed ordinance requires a countywide referendum before the commission can sell, transfer, or lease for more than 10 years any regional park or environmental property. But there are six large exceptions to the referendum requirement that are creating unease among supporters of open space in Florida's most densely populated county.

Without asking voters, the county could hand over land to other parties for improvement or expansion of existing roads in parks and preserves. Or exchange those lands for "reasonably equivalent" lands if commissioners thought it in the public's best interest. Or give the land to another government entity for a public purpose.

Also, any park or environmental property that was originally purchased by county utility money - close to half of Brooker Creek Preserve, to name just one example - could be used for utility projects such as wells, water lines or water storage tanks. Other parks or preserves, no matter how they were purchased, could be sold or given up for utility projects if county commissioners found the projects "consistent" with the management plan for the land. So the protection would be only as good as the intentions of a County Commission that already has demonstrated it cannot be trusted to do the right thing in protecting Brooker Creek.

Commissioners have agreed to add to the draft ordinance a referendum requirement that would kick in if the county tried to change or repeal the ordinance in the future. But since the ordinance has so many exceptions, local environmentalists are now pushing for a county charter amendment that would provide more solid protection for places such as Shell Key, Brooker Creek, Weedon Island, Boca Ciega Park, Sand Key Park and Fort De Soto Park.

Charter amendment advocates are prepared to use the difficult citizen petition process to get an amendment on the ballot, since the easier route - a ballot question initiated by the County Commission - has been blocked. Only Commissioners Calvin Harris and Ken Welch have supported a charter referendum. Other commissioners should join them. These lands belong to the people of Pinellas, and the voters should control their future.

[Last modified July 1, 2007, 21:44:18]