Sarasota Livin'

Florida Department of Community Affairs last week sent Sarasota County a letter addressing 3 problems with the county's proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan.

Read about it in the Sun Herald

The DCA response came in the form of a letter -- commonly referred to as a Objections, Comments and Recommendations report -- which provided overall praise for the county's proposed Evaluation and Appraisal Report-based amendments to the it's comprehensive plan.

"The county has done an outstanding job transforming the recommendations of the EAR report into goals, objectives and policies to update the plan for the ensuing planning period," wrote Mike McDaniel, DCA's growth management administrator, in a cover letter to the report.

McDaniel also wrote that the county's effort to encourage affordable housing in the different land use areas was impressive.

"This is an excellent ... report," said Anne McClung, the county's director of Planning Services in a statement. "A great deal of work went into both the EAR report and the EAR-based amendments and we can all be proud of the final product."

......

DCA did raise three issues of concern in the report that the county must address: They are:

* Expansion of the urban service boundary along State Road 776. The county rezoned part of a 131-acre site, half of which is outside the reach of water and sewer services.

* The location of the pilot affordable housing overlay district outside of the Urban Service Area -- beyond the reaches of infrastructure -- and in an area where there would be one home per every five acres.

* Coordination with the School Board regarding future schools located in rural areas.

The school district offered a similar objection, referring to a 292-acre site east of Interstate 75 on Palmer Boulevard saying such a development with more than 1,400 people, could pose a burden on the district considering how far the development would be from the nearest schools.

What are they saying ? THOU SHALT HONOR THE URBAN GROWTH BOUNDARY ... Building Affordable Housing is awesome ... just do it inside the UGB...

Funny how the people in Sarasota agree with the state...
Citizens for Sensible Growth wants to place two sensible growth initiatives on the November 2006 ballot.

The first is: Require voter approval before county government expands the county's urban area and spends your tax dollars subsidizing sprawl.

Seems like a very good idea. I have heard many times that developments build outside of the current reach of "urban services" never pay their full cost. This means that the existing residents subsidize the cost of the new developments. I don't think that is what we should be doing -- that is "sprawl" .... build where you already have services and that is "infill"

I agree with Citizens for Sensible Growth and the DCA.