Two-map Option would help Sarasota County Control Growth
The long anticipated Sarasota 2050 Plan, celebrated for its promise to offer a new direction for community planning, is now facing its first significant public challenge. There appear to be two conflicting philosophies on how to continue. One side feels that more information is needed to accurately determine the impacts the plan will have on public facilities such as roads, water, schools and taxes. The other side argues that the 2050 plan should deal with long-range, general planning policies now, and the specifics of traffic, water supply, and education should be dealt with later.
The group arguing for more information cites existing problems and forecasted deficits in the county’s ability to fund roads, water and schools as a reason to constrain the plan to only that amount of development that can be reasonably accommodated in the near future. The other side suggests that the absence of a long-range growth management plan in the past is now forcing the county to build expensive after-the-fact infrastructure. For instance, the county would not now be paying ten times the cost to retrofit areas with central utilities and expensive road right-of-ways had such a plan been in place since the 1960′s.
Both arguments are compelling. Should the resources be driving the plan, or should the plan drive the resources?
Maybe we should not be choosing between the two ideas, but adapting the 2050 Plan in a manner that uses the valid points of both. Rather than having a single map that commits to all of the new growth (over 200,000 new residents) at once, we should have two maps. One would be a future vision map showing all of the roads and villages needed to accommodate new residents through the year 2050. The other map would show only the initial village(s) that the community can afford today, in terms of water, traffic, schools and taxes.
The Sarasota 2050 Plan is a formal Comprehensive Plan amendment. After the Board of County Commissioners passes an amendment to intensify development in the plan, it is forwarded to Tallahassee, where it ultimately becomes law. Because of property rights issues, comprehensive plans are rarely changed to de-intensify land uses.
Only the map that commits to an initial village should be included in this Comprehensive Plan amendment cycle. The 2050 vision map would become a community planning document. We could then be more creative with the vision plan. Since it would not have legal standing, we could be free to add, subtract or move villages as we chose.
The formal Comprehensive Plan amendment would be the first step of the Community Plan. In time, as the initial village became developed and we saw the availability of resources, such as a new water source or schools, we would then amend the formal comprehensive plan accordingly. If corrections need to be made in the way a village is developed, we could make them.
In effect, the systematic revisions to the formal comprehensive plan act as a timing mechanism to implement the long- range community vision plan. To approve village locations on the comprehensive plan map and then rely upon “timing policies” to decide when a village gets built will only add to the likelihood of litigation from developers claiming the time is sooner rather than later. As a County Commissioner, I believe my first legal strategy should be avoiding litigation in the first place.
The two-map option affords the community the greatest flexibility while still preserving a long-range vision. It only commits to what we know we can afford, yet contemplates long-range possibilities. It enables future decisions to be made by future County Commissions and future generations. They will no doubt be more informed and better equipped to specifically plan for their needs then, than we are today.
It would be irresponsible to approve a Comprehensive Plan today, and leave the responsibility and burden of providing for water, roads, schools and funding for later. Now more than ever, we need to take a disciplined and more conservative approach toward community planning that considers both sides of our decision, before we make.