Crowd: no bypass, no sprawl

Residents opposed to growth in South Hillsborough pack a transportation meeting.

By MIKE BRASSFIELD, Times Staff Writer
Published October 24, 2007

RUSKIN - The population of south Hillsborough County is expected to more than double in the next two decades, and to quadruple by 2050. All those newcomers will need roads to drive on, county officials say.

But many of the people already living there don't want a population boom. They made that clear at a community meeting Tuesday night to discuss the new South County Transportation Plan.

They don't want a six-lane bypass highway, they don't want a bunch of new roads and bridges, and they definitely don't want 400,000 new neighbors.

They vowed to fight tooth and nail against the plan, which recommends upgrades to south Hillsborough's road network over the next four decades.

"This whole plan needs to be thrown out," said Ruskin activist Mariella Smith. "Instead of asking how many people are coming, and saying we have to ruin our neighborhoods and give up our farmland and parks to shovel these people in, we need to ask: How many people do we want?"

That got a huge round of applause from a standing-room-only crowd of 130 who packed a county building in Ruskin.

Peter Aluotto, the county's director of planning and growth management, responded that putting a population cap on Hillsborough County isn't realistic or constitutional. The government can't force farmers to keep farming if they choose to sell their land for subdivisions.

"Everybody in this country has a right to live someplace," he said. "These roads we're planning are for your children and grandchildren."

Because the South County Transportation Plan is being heavily criticized, officials have tabled it for now. They will revise the plan after hearing from the public at two more meetings - one tonight at Riverview High School, and one in two weeks in Lithia.

No matter what, some neighborhood residents will be fighting to keep these proposed new roads out of Hillsborough's comprehensive plan, a blueprint for how the county will grow.

That fight now has been delayed until at least mid 2008, the earliest county commissioners could consider a revised plan.

* * *

Much of the criticism of the plan has focused on a potential bypass or beltway that could be built to divert cars off I-75.

On a map of the South County Transportation Plan, the bypass is a wide swath, its exact location still undetermined. From the Hillsborough-Manatee line, it loops east of Brandon and Riverview, heading northeast through rural Wimauma and Lithia toward Plant City.

It follows the southern spur of a longer four-county beltway that was proposed and then dropped last year by the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

County officials say they wouldn't build a new highway, and that it's on the map to recognize that the state or a toll road agency might build it someday.

The road's critics call it "the Swath of Death" and say it would fuel sprawl and threaten the property rights of those in its path.

County officials are well aware that it and other roads in the plan are unpopular. But they argue all of this is necessary to keep up with expected growth.

* * *

Tuesday night, numerous people were upset about how the long-range transportation plan would disrupt their neighborhoods, in the form of widened or extended roads. They also said several routes would go through environmentally sensitive land.

"It makes no sense to destroy a community that has been here for decades to help the people who haven't even moved here," said Bob Minthorn, who objected to a proposed bridge over the Alafia River at 78th Street in Gibsonton.

He said a bridge would destroy a rare salt marsh, and that widening the street would destroy homes and funnel traffic past an elementary school.

The plan maps out 245 miles of new or expanded roads, two new bridges, and three new interchanges along I-75.

Ned Baier, county transportation planning manager, said many of the recommendations are intended to improve east-west movement through the area, because it already has major north-south roads in I-75 and U.S. 41.

Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@sptimes.com or 813 226-3435.

FAST FACTS

If you go

Public meetings on proposed South County Transportation Plan

Riverview: 6:30-8:30 tonight, Riverview High School cafeteria, 1311 Boyette Road

Lithia: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Nov. 5, Pinecrest Elementary School, 7950 Lithia-Pinecrest Road

[Last modified October 24, 2007, 00:37:05]