Sarasota County is experiencing record water shortages, increased school crowding and traffic congestion like never before.

In just eleven years, Sarasota County may lose its biggest water source (Manatee County) and environmental and cost constraints limit the feasible expansion of water supplies. The School Board projects a $122 million construction shortfall over the next ten years, almost half its total need. State and County road planners also project hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded road needs and forecast increased congestion even if funds are found to build those roads.

In this context, it is incredible that serious consideration is now being given to weakening restraints on growth in both present urban and rural areas of Sarasota County and tax hikes are being considered instead of enhanced impact fees on new development. GEO, the Growth-restraint and Environmental Organization, believes the time has come for a principled direction for Sarasota County. Our leaders should serve first the interests of the people here today rather than the few who would profit from growth out of control. Here’s our plan to get a grip on growth:

1) Stop Urban Sprawl -- Sarasota County and its cities already have enough urban and “future urban” land to accommodate population projections for the next 50 years. While we favor a plan which provides for clustering and greenways in appropriate locations east of I-75, we will vigorously oppose any scheme to increase overall density and intensity of land use in that area or to loosen current limits on the timing of urban growth. Venice and North Port also should stop sprawling by urban annexation of rural lands. We support the broad-based recommendations of the public interest half of the Multi-Stakeholders Group to “let rural be rural” beyond I-75.

2) Make Growth Pay Its Own Way – The costs of growth should not be placed on the backs of the taxpaying public. Instead, growth must be made to pay its own way. Road impact fees, which are far less than they were ten years ago, are increasingly inadequate, as are park and library impact fees. For over a decade, the County has “studied” but not enacted impact fees for judicial, administrative, and law enforcement facilities. The excuses must end – our politicians should act to make growth pay its own way without further delay.

3) Save Our Schools – What can be more critical than adequate classrooms for our community’s children? Are roads, for which Sarasota County has an impact fee, more important than schools, for which it does not? On April 24, 2001, the Sarasota County School Board heard a report from consultants about school impact fees to address a ten-year $122 million capital deficit. They stated that fourteen other Florida counties levy a school impact fee, from $1200 to $2500 from the builder of each new dwelling, to build and expand schools to keep up with growth. The School Board should finally act, after years of delay and talk of tax hikes, to instead make growth pay its own way for schools. Also, the County Commission and School Board should act now to add schools to concurrency, to require that growth not be allowed to outpace the school facilities needed to serve that growth.

4) Maintain Concurrency – It’s a simple premise: development should not be allowed beyond the capacity of available roads and other infrastructure to safely handle it. We resist all efforts to weaken such concurrency rules, whether by lowering adopted levels of service, averaging concurrency over an area, exempting areas, considering facilities in place although merely planned, or otherwise changing methodologies to allow premature and excessive growth.

5) Serve Public Needs Before Developer Desires – Our local governments should devote their resources to meeting the needs of the people here today rather than upon opening up new areas to development. Accordingly, while public services should be extended where they are needed and desired (such as public water to Osprey), pipes and pavement should not be laid merely to extend urban growth into rural lands. For those reasons, Pine Street should not be extended into the Taylor Ranch and no new freeway should be planned to open up eastern land to urban development.

6) Protect Our Neighborhoods and Environment – The County’s Zoning Code, Land Development Regulations and Comprehensive Plan should be preserved and strengthened, rather than weakened as some now seek, to protect neighborhoods and the natural environment from incompatible land uses.

7) Maintain Safe and Sensible Water Resources – We oppose any efforts to develop water resources to serve unbridled growth at the expense of the environment or other public interests. While doing better to control growth, the pristine Myakka River should not be tapped for drinking water, polluted water should not be pumped and stored underground and we should not be forced to drink treated sewage. We also oppose the premature construction of a desalination plant without first resolving the significant issues of public cost and environmental impacts, such as the disposal of polluting brine and the consequences of an accompanying coastal power plant. New development should be required to limit water use, by “gray water” irrigation lines, cisterns and other means, while we all seek to live within our means.

8) Reform for the Public Interest -- We favor changes in local government processes which advance reform but not those which retreat from it. We therefore oppose proposed changes in the Sarasota County Charter to repeal the public’s right to vote on large increases in County taxes and borrowing. We support the County Charter’s limits on local campaign finances. We support the current Sarasota City system of decisions by an elected Council rather than “boss government” by a single mayor, as some development interests have proposed. We support an amendment to the County Charter require public votes for all large annexations.

We offer this positive agenda for Sarasota County, both for the present population and for the genera tions yet to come. We must do our part to protect and advance the public interest. We cannot afford not to try.