Originally Published: Monday, September 28, 2009

 

Proposed state amendment would require voters to ratify plan changes.

 

BARTOW | Polk County planners are accelerating the periodic update of the county's growth plan to avoid potential delays if voters approve the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment in November 2010.

 

The Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment is a proposed state constitutional amendment that would require voters to ratify all local growth plan changes approved by city and county commissions.

The update, known as the Evaluation and Appraisal Report, is intended to come up with new provisions of the growth plan to guide growth to 2030. It covers issues ranging from the timing and location of growth, open space preservation, water resources and transportation.

The result of the review will be a series of growth plan amendments. The expedited process also will cover any other growth amendments that are proposed in the meantime.

Under the schedule, the second round of growth amendments, which normally aren't adopted until December, will be adopted in August instead, Tom Deardorff, the county's growth management director, told county and planning commissioners who met in a joint meeting Monday.

"This is going to be a challenge,'' he said.

Deardorff said the purpose of the change is to allow the County Commission to approve the EAR amendments before the December 2010 deadline set by state planning rules

He said county planners will post draft copies of some policies upon which the amendments will be based beginning in early October to get comments .

Draft copies of the amendments themselves will be available by early next year, Deardorff said.

Two emerging issues generated some discussion at Monday's meeting. One was new development standards to promote transit. The other was what Polk's role should be in wetlands protection.

County Commissioner Ed Smith said he's not sure people are ready to walk and take other alternative transportation methods.

"It will take a tremendous re-education of the public,'' he said.

Commissioner Bob English said Polk needs to take the long view.

"We're going to have to grow into this,'' he said

He said that in more urban, traffic-choked areas, these alternatives are more popular.

Commissioner Jean Reed said she thought the planning should increase the use of rivers and creeks to boost tourism and outdoor recreation.

One of the strategies to encourage transit is to steer denser development into urban areas rather than in rural areas.

Planner Tom Wodrich said rural land has value for ecology and recreation and shouldn't simply be regarded as land that is "lying waiting to be developed.''

But Planning Commissioner Ellis Hunt Jr. urged his colleagues to maintain "agriculture friendly" policies to avoid restricting future development in rural areas.

Commissioner Randy Wilkinson said early attempts to implement a program to transfer development rights from rural areas to urban areas ran into opposition from rural landowners and from the development community.

"We've got to stop talking about these things and do them," he said.

Deardorff said county planners are working on a new policy on wetlands protection, explaining the current policies are internally inconsistent.

Additionally, he said he wants a policy that will "user friendly" and will not increase the cost of development.

But Planning Commissioner John Langford disagreed.

"I would hope not to make it (destroying wetlands) cheaper or easier for any developer," he said, arguing that wetlands are valuable and should be protected.

He said he'd like to see any wetlands mitigation that occurs be done in Polk County.

But County Commissioner Sam Johnson said he wanted to make sure people didn't automatically assume a patch of wetlands was important to the local hydrology without looking at the science first.

Deardorff said Polk County needs to make sure it doesn't duplicate what other government agencies do and defines what goals the plan is attempting to achieve.

He said a draft copy of the proposed wetlands policy will be completed by the next joint meeting on Feb. 15.

[ Tom Palmer can be reached at tom.palmer@theledger.com or 863-802-7535. ]