Sustainable Growth
There are a lot of grassroots anti-growth campaigns on Facebook pages. While I agree with most of the sentiment, they rarely give practical “legal” ways to effectively control growth. The methods being pushed on these pages won’t hold up in court, would cost local governments large sums to defend, and would result in a further windfall to big developers.
There are ways to get the development frenzy under control and to catch up on the infrastructure backlog and my upcoming series of posts and videos will explain. However, with this being said, our State Legislators and Officials must fix the State laws that got us here - and not adopt new laws this session that make our growth and traffic problems even worse! We all need to be asking them where they stand and what they are doing to fix these laws and the conditions these laws have created (e.g. transportation concurrency).
Our State has drastically changed the State Growth Management Act of 1985 to favor development interests and most recently they’ve taken away local decision making (e.g. the Live Local Act and SB 180). In future posts I will provide a timeline of when these changes happened and how these changes, combined with a huge influx of new residents flocking to Florida (for our sunshine, no income taxes, “Red” state policies, and lower property taxes than their home state) led to a massive infrastructure backlog in FL and Lake County which we all experience daily at congested intersections and on our roads.
As far as traffic goes, one of the most egregious changes happened in 2005 and 2011 when the State took away the authority of counties to deny development permits and rezonings based on deficient road infrastructure and conditions (the authority to require infrastructure needs “first” before granting development approval is called transportation concurrency; current State law makes it unlawful for a county to deny a rezoning or development permit on the basis of road congestion or conditions). A county can require a developer to add turn lanes at the entrance to a subdivision or commercial building but they cannot require that developer to fix the rest of the problems in the vicinity of the project as a condition to approving the project. Also, the State more recently capped transportation impact fees and the process of how and when they can be increased - Lake County is currently charging the maximum amount it can charge.
The map below shows all of the conservation lands in unincorporated County (the large expanses of green areas in North, NE and South Lake are conservation lands mainly comprised of the Ocala National Forest, the Wekiva Protection Area and the Green Swamp). Municipal boundaries are shown in grey and unincorporated lands currently designated as “Rural” are light brown and “Rural Transition” are bright yellow. In future posts and videos I will give recommendations on the most realistic and effective ways to protect these Rural areas from overdevelopment, which rests largely in the hands of municipalities who can forever change these Rural Lands to urban areas if they approve annexations in these locations.
You would have to look at each city’s land use map to see city land use designations within the grey areas. The colors shown on the unincorporated land map outside of the grey areas which are not in conservation areas or “Rural” are already designated for various types of commercial, industrial or residential uses (e.g. dark purple shows “Urban Low”). If these rights were taken away from landowners, it would essentially bankrupt our county because of the lawsuits that would follow.
If a politician or candidate tells you they can stop development in these areas they are either lying to you or not knowledgeable about things they should know. If they tell you they can stop all future development in these areas by arbitrarily denying all rezonings in these locations, they are either lying, not knowledgeable about things they should understand, and/or they are willing to make shortsighted decisions for popularity sake that will actually worsen conditions (I will explain in future posts and videos, and give examples). This is why focusing on unincorporated Rural designated lands and reaching agreements with cities to stop annexing these lands is key to preserving an essential part of Lake County’s character.
I am dedicated to doing with is best for our entire County (both municipal and unincorporated residents) by:
1. Working to reach agreements with cities (but municipal residents will need to make their voices heard and ask their City Officials to support these agreements); and 2. By exposing the State laws that need to be changed to their original intent and vigorously advocating for these changes.
But beware several bills have been filed this Legislative session that further erode growth management and will make the infrastructure backlog worse - this has to stop! We have to stop this from happening and anyone at the State level who supports these laws needs to be held accountable.
