Sarasota News Leader

03/21/2014

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Byrne hears chatter about Sarasota 2050 in the checkout line at the grocery story, peo- ple speculating that "the developers have gotten to the commissioners." At the meet- ing Tuesday, Byrne made an observation: "I'm noticing all these people that represent the developers are sitting very close to the county planners," she says, "and they're all much too friendly." "You have to go back to what the intent was," Byrne told the board. "The intent wasn't to make it easy to develop. It was to make it beautiful." Chairman Charles Hines said a stormwater pond "doesn't really have a lot of value," com- pared to a natural lake. "How do we protect against that, that stormwater ponds don't become called lakes?" Hines asked. "There really aren't any naturally occurring lakes in the 2050 properties," County Long Range Planning Manager Allen Parsons answered. The lakes under discussion are all stormwater ponds. Patterson said her fear is that allowing storm- water ponds to count as open space could lead to a "Swiss cheese" effect, while the original intent of the open space rules was to pre- serve swaths of undeveloped land between neighborhoods. Patterson is the only com- missioner who originally voted for 2050 still on the board, and she's been the leading skep- tic of the county's reevaluation of the plan. In addition to her concern over the open space rules, Patterson spoke about being uneasy with loosening the regulations for how close the commercial portions of new development can be placed to roads. In previous action, the commission changed 2050 rules that orig- inally required commercial properties to be located in the interior of a neighborhood. Hines also questioned that change, saying he'd "hate" to see eastern roadways one day resemble U.S. 41's long stretch of strip malls. Wade Matthews, the conservation chairman of the Sarasota Audubon Society, praised Hines and Patterson for asking "good ques- tions." He said that crafting 2050 was a contentious process in which neither devel- opers nor environmentalists got exactly what they wanted. That is now being undone, he argued. "Unrestrained growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." "The comprehensive plan is a living, breath- ing document," Vice Chairwoman Christine Robinson asserted after moving to approve the package of changes. She said the alter- ations will "allow for what the intent was to happen." Despite her reservations, Patterson came around to support the motion, saying that as the process moves along, she may not be OK with further changes. "We're nibbling away at it," Patterson noted early in the meeting. "And I'm not sure we'll have, at the end, anything remotely resem- bling what was intended." % The Sarasota News Leader No-Nonsense Reporting Sarasota News Leader March 21, 2014 Page 48

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