Sarasota County’s long range planning initiative is on the threshold of change.
On the surface you’ll notice a name change from Resource Management Areas to Sarasota 2050. But the relevant change will be moving from a series of consultant-based decisions to community decisions.
Up until now, the process has primarily focused on decisions made by the planning consultants who were hired to assist the county in designing a new form of development.
Frustrated with a history of sprawling suburban development that destroyed the environment and crowded roads, the county wanted to offer developers an alternative choice.
The village concept suggested by the consultants would cluster development into smaller, more compact areas, leaving large open spaces as preserves. Villages also could provide a more livable environment for their occupants and a more efficient form of development for government.
The consultants’ responsibility to provide maps, planning expertise and data analysis for the new village form of development is substantially complete. It is now the community’s responsibility to make the village form work in Sarasota.
The first step will be to provide incentives for landowners and developers to make the change a reality.
Most of the undeveloped area in Sarasota now allows for one house to be constructed on either 5 or 10 acres.
The Sarasota 2050 plan will not prohibit property owners from developing their land as they can today. So in order for the village form of development to be more attractive than the status quo, there need to be incentives.
The incentive offered in the 2050 plan is an increase in the number of homes that can be built on a parcel – thus higher profits.
When the number of houses is increased, the demand for community services also will increase. Many of these services have limitations. It is the community’s responsibility to balance the needs and benefits resulting from new village form of development, so as not to create worse conditions than those which would result from the current development scenario.
Water and transportation are two of many examples of community services with limited resources. It is critical for the community to have a means to meet the additional water supply demands – without compromising the environment or raising the rates of existing customers.
The village form of development offers some transportation benefits by mixing residential and commercial uses. That way the need for automobile travel is reduced.
However, there will be many more people, so automobile trips on roads outside of the villages will increase.
Sarasota needs a transportation plan that considers the additional impacts to the safety, convenience and cost to the community as a whole.
Here are the two fundamental questions the community will have to answer. 1) Is the village form of development preferred over the status quo? 2) If it is, then how much incentive can the community offer to make the village form of development a reality?
I believe the answer to the first question is “Yes.”
As to how much incentive to offer, I would suggest the following as a guideline: If the additional incentive development creates demands for community services that exceed the available resources needed to supply the service, or if countywide tax or fee increases are required to make the service available, the incentive is probably too large.