The Sarasota County Commission has adopted Sarasota 2050, an amendment which will eliminate important controls on growth in the Sarasota County Comprehensive Plan.

While developers and pro-growth groups applaud Sarasota 2050, public interest organizations are lined up against it.

Sarasota 2050 is being challenged in an appeal to an Administrative Law Judge as violating Florida law. The challenge is being pursued by ManaSota-88 through the services of Dan Lobeck (who is also GEO president) and his law firm as its attorneys.

There is a good chance of a successful challenge, in part because Sarasota 2050 continues to have most of the same legal flaws initially found by state and regional agencies.

If the legal challenge does not succeed, GEO will continue to press for tightening of growth controls by the County Commission through amendments to Sarasota 2050 and through implementing regulations.

Sarasota 2050 would gut growth controls east, west, north and south, not just in the long term but also immediately.

While most of the focus has been intense urban "Villages" in east County, this scheme would also repeal the timing of urban growth and intensify growth and traffic west and south of I-75.

They call it Sarasota 2050 so it sounds like it won’t happen for a long time. The fact is, however, that Sarasota 2050 would open up Sarasota County to intense development in both rural and urban areas immediately as well as for years to come.

Sarasota 2050 would erase the I-75 barrier to eastern urban growth and open up the rural lands to over 100,000 more residents than allowed today. Remarkably, this scheme would allow the overwhelming majority of that additional development almost from day one, not 50 years from now. This would replace the current plan to allow only ten years of urban growth at a time, based on official state population projections.

Perhaps even worse, Sarasota 2050 would allow more intense commercial development and densities in the existing urban area, along US41, Bee Ridge, Clark and elsewhere. It would also allow developers to overcrowd our roads by weakening "concurrency" controls on new growth.

Sarasota 2050 allows immediate approval and construction of the following numbers of dwelling units ("du")

Schroeder-Manatee Village: ½ of 4,805 acres = 2,402.5 acres x 6 du/acre = 14,415 du

Hi-Hat Village: ½ of 6,000 acres = 3,000 acres x 6 du/acre = 18,000 du

South Area Village: ½ of 1,600 acres = 800 acres x 6 du/acre = 4,800 du

Then, as soon as a new I-75 Interchange is approved at Central Sarasota Parkway, the balance of the South Area Village may be constructed, as follows: ½ of 4,400 acres = 2,200 acres x 6 du/acre = 13,200 du’s, for a total of 50,415 dwelling units!

Added to the 50,415 Village units are 4,000 units in the Sarasota 2050 "Settlement" in the Englewood area, without any timing limit. That takes us up to 54,415 units, approvable virtually from day one.

54,415 units are equivalent to nine Palmer Ranches, the huge 6,000 unit Development of Regional Impact in Sarasota County! It also equals approximately 27 Southgates or 109 Bird Keys!

Using the County’s estimate of 2.15 persons per household, 54,415 dwelling units equals 116,992 persons. That is 230% of the entire population of the City of Sarasota (at 50,961 persons)!

The early opening of capacity for 54,415 new dwelling units, added to the County’s estimated present capacity for 34,785 dwelling units in the existing urban area, totals 89,203 dwelling units. That exceeds by 16,603, or over 30%, the number of dwelling units needed to meet population demand in 2050, according to official state estimates as previously extended by the County!

Further, the opening of capacity for an additional 54,415 dwelling units is just for the first 15 years of each Village. Then, additional 19,617 units of Village development may be approved (14,145 units at Hi-Hat and 5,472 units in the South County Area).

Added to all of this is the capacity of the remaining Future Urban Area, into which the Urban Service Area may be expanded, according to the County in as early as 2003. Even at only 2 dwelling units per acre, as calculated by the County, these approximately 15,000 acres produce an additional capacity of 30,000 dwelling units.

The total of new dwelling units allowed under Sarasota 2050 then are as follows:

Again, compare this to the projected 2050 demand of only 72,600 units. Compare this also to official state projection of housing demand of 26,353 units by 2015, 35,506 by 20020 and 52,422 by 2030. At 2.15 persons per dwelling unit, this opens the door to 298,457 additional residents in Sarasota County, almost doubling our present population of about 326,000, just as fast as developers can cram them into our County. Under Sarasota 2050 here will no longer be any significant limit whatsoever on this incredible increase in population, traffic, water demand, sewage, garbage and other impacts of growth out of control.

Further, these figures do not even include the large increase in high-density residential development allowed by Sarasota 2050 in the Urban Service Area. The scheme also allows areas now limited mostly to office parks and moderate density housing to develop instead as Mixed Use Centers, with intense commercial development and up to 25 units per acre or more. It also allows those uses all along US41 and Bee Ridge and Clark Roads.

Some County Commissioners and their staff tell us, "Don’t worry. The market will control growth. These people won’t all come at once." That’s not good enough. Our Comprehensive Plan should control growth rather than allowing as much growth as possible. Dropping the reins on growth, as in Sarasota 2050, is outrageously irresponsible.

Since planning began in Sarasota County over 30 years ago, I-75 has stood as a barrier to eastern urban sprawl. It has held firm, with the exception of 600 acres added in 1989 and 200 acres added in 1996. Sarasota 2050 would erase that barrier, opening up the rural lands to intense urban development. Significant agriculture would be relegated to an "Agricultural Reserve" in the far southeastern part of the County.

It is false for proponents of this plan to state that they are required to do this by state law, in order to accommodate projected population. The County itself last year calculated that there is enough capacity in the existing urban area to absorb projected growth to 2017 and enough in the "future urban" area in Englewood to last almost until 2050. No more is needed. Certainly not all this.

What the County has now done is ignore the official state population projections which the law requires us to accommodate. Instead, the County is now projecting growth based on the last ten years’ average of building permits, which has outpaced population growth, in order to try to justify adding more urban land.

Even if the County could justify this huge increase in growth, it cannot justify removing the present limits on the timing of that growth. The present Comprehensive Plan merely requires the County to accommodate at least 133% of the projected population from 1995 to 2005 and in fact provides enough urban land for 200% of that ten years’ growth.

Sarasota 2050 overrides that limit, against the unanimous recommendation of the Planning Commission. It provides enough urban land to accommodate 200% of the County’s inflated growth figures over a twenty year period. Commissioners and consultants have publicly acknowledged that this will immediately allow all of the new urban growth planned east of I-75. Adding to premature growth is that each Village can have its own sewer plant, upon County approval.

While the plan provides that the Commission "may" deny development if the growth rate soars more than 20% in any year (which it surely will), there is nothing to require it.

Commissioners seek to soothe us by stating that "of course that development won’t happen all at once" but it will instead be "controlled by the market. " The fact is that the timing of growth is now controlled by the County and no longer will be if Sarasota 2050 is implemented. The County would, in effect, drop the reins on growth.

Sarasota 2050 supporters state that it will protect the environment. If that is true, then why do the Sierra Club, Sarasota Audubon Society, ManaSota-88, GEO and other environmental organizations dismiss the environmental protections as inadequate and oppose this scheme, as do many other civic organizations?

While maps of Sarasota 2050 show extensive greenways, 86% of it is already in public ownership or protection and much of the rest is already slated for acquisition with existing funds. All told, only 15,000 acres of greenway would be added, an amount environmentalists have described as meager.

The figures which some Commissioners use to describe the acreage being "protected" by Sarasota 2050 include the 50% "open space" required in each Village. However, this land may be used for golf courses and other active recreation facilities, stormwater ponds and other development features which are not "protection". The 50% open space requirement is no greater than the existing open space in the Palmer Ranch.

Also, Sarasota 2050 provides that the destuction of wetlands in a Village or Town Center will be a political decision of the County Commission, as needed to serve the "public purpose" of intense development, rather than a technical decision of staff as at present. New roads are also planned to cross wildlife corridors in numerous locations. Urban development is planned in areas with extensive wetlands and other habitat. Buffers are grossly inadequate and contain vague loopholes. Intense agricultural uses are allowed near environmental lands.

These flaws and others have prompted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to blast Sarasota 2050 as harmful to the environment.

The impacts of Sarasota 2050 are a whopping negative to the environment. That is why environmentalists overwhelmingly oppose it and it is disapproved by the state wildlife agency.

Another falsehood about Sarasota 2050 is the claim that they will be "walkable Villages" with sufficient shopping and jobs to serve residents’ needs.

In fact, however, the rules of Sarasota 2050 are so loose that they could be little more than regular subdivisions and shopping centers. The plan merely requires that a bare majority of the housing in a Village be within a 1/4 mile radius of a "focal point" (even if across a lake or other barrier) or be within an undefined "walking distance" of that "focal point", which the consultants say would be less than five miles. What’s most amazing, though, is that a small park, without any shopping or other amenities, qualifies under this scheme as a "focal point." So much for walk-to-shop.

Also, the plan is so loose that a 3,000 acre (9,000 house) Village could include as little as 50,000 square feet of retail and office development. Even if more shopping is provided, though, Village residents will continue to drive west of the Interstate to malls, beaches, theaters, restaurants and other attractions, overcrowding the roads and those destinations.

Regional transportation planners project that our roads will soon become even more crowded just with the development on the books today. Sarasota 2050 will greatly add to that traffic congestion problem. Even the consultants who prepared the plan acknowledge that it will significantly increase traffic on roads throughout the County.

In a December 28, 2001 memo, County Transportation staff acknowledge that 77% of the improvements to existing roads needed to accommodate the Village traffic cannot be built because "they are constrained at their current widths." (That is, 36 of 47 new needed lane-miles cannot be built for practical reasons, such as because there is no place to widen the roads).

For that reason, the memo states, "constraints and lower levels of service will be required for some facilities," that is more traffic congestion than now allowed will occur on those roads.

Adding to the traffic congestion will be the plan’s creation of a huge Town Center east of I-75 at Central Sarasota Parkway, with nonresidential development almost as large as Sarasota Square Mall.

Further, Sarasota 2050 would aggravate traffic congestion by allowing more intense and dense development along US 41, Bee Ridge and Clark and in thousands of acres now limited mainly to office parks, and weakened concurrency standards for that development.

As the state and regional planning agencies have observed, Sarasota 2050 lacks the data and analysis needed to identify this traffic congestion and plan for its impacts.

Sarasota 205 also increases the amount of urban densities and commercial growth allowed west and south of I-75. US 41, Bee Ridge Road and Clark Roads would become "corridors" along which higher densities and increased commercial development will be allowed. Also, areas now limited largely to office parks, at University Parkway, Clark Road and elsewhere throughout the County will be opened up to dense apartment and commercial development.

This intensification of urban development will also be supported by a dramatic loosening of "concurrency" rules, which now state that a development will not be allowed unless adequate roads and intersections are in place "concurrent" with (that is, at the same time as) that development.

Under Sarasota 2050, a development will be allowed to overcrowd a road so long as it is served by buses and sidewalks (called a "multimodal level of service") or if roads are adequate on average in a larger area (called an "area-wide level of service") or if roads are adequate on average in a larger area (called an "area-wide level of service").

This insanity was adopted on a 3 to 2 vote, with Commissioners Mills, Mercier and Staub voting in favor.

Citizens are being told that there will be no tax hikes to support all the new development allowed by Sarasota 2050 because the scheme requires that the east County Villages be "fiscally neutral". This promise also does not stand up to scrutiny.

All that Sarasota 2050 requires is that the developer hire a consultant selected by the County to produce a report claiming that the Village will require no less public revenue than it will produce to support its impacts (for roads, sewers and other purposes) and that the County "certify" that with a second report.

The problem with this is that these reports can easily be inaccurate and then the County will be powerless to do anything about it. (An example of such inaccuracy is the sample report produced by the consultants which assumed only one schoolchild for every five homes).

Although Sarasota 2050 had a provision allowing the County to increase taxes on a Village based on annual monitoring of the fiscal neutrality, the Commission struck that clause under pressure from development interests.

Also, it is very possible that the so-called fiscal neutrality provision will be struck down by the courts. That is because state law prohibits the County from charging anything to a large development (a "development of regional impact", which is over 2,000 houses) that it does not charge to other development.

Although Sarasota 2050 says the County may deny future Villages if that happens, does anyone really expect a future Commission to do that, after the Villages have been started? Even if it did, all of the Villages could already be approved before a legal challenge knocks out "fiscal neutrality" for all of them.

Amazingly, Sarasota 2050 would add 100,000 more people east of the Interstate than are allowed today, many thousands more in South County and in the urban area, before Sarasota County has adopted a Water Plan to show where the needed water will come from.

All that Sarasota 2050 requires of a Village developer is that it provide a "list" of "potential" sources of water supply, without any analysis of the feasibility or the environmental or cost impacts of those supposed sources.

Sarasota County has no certain source of water supply after its contracts with Manatee County expire in 2011 and 2013. Although Sarasota 2050 says a development will not be approved unless it has water, that only means at the time of approval, not later on. What happens later, when Manatee County needs to keep its water for its own growth and other existing water sources prove unreliable or insufficient?

Many groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Council of Neighborhood Associations state that Sarasota 2050 should not be adopted until timing is restored and other big changes are made. Few people other than developers and their allies support this irresponsible scheme.

The public needs to remain united in opposition to this irresponsible scheme. We need to support the legal challenges by ManaSota-88 and others. We need to continue to work to tighten up controls through land development regulations and, most important, further amendments to the plan. We need to oppose further Comprehensive Plan amendments which would make things even worse (although that’s hardly possible), including announced efforts next year to move the Urban Service Area boundary to allow even more urban sprawl on top of Sarasota 2050. We need to recrurit and support candidates for County Commission who pledge to restore proper controls on growth.

Public policy should respond to the public will and the public interest. We should let our politicians get away with nothing less.