Awhile back, the Lake County Commissioners voted 5 to 0 to send a 350+ page Comprehensive Plan to the State of Florida's Dept. of Community Affairs for review before being approved. This was the plan pushed by Commissioners Elaine Renick and Linda Stewart, who are both up for re-election (and I am one of four people running to replace Stewart). Both of these Commissioners are listed as Republicans, but the plan was a great way to significantly increase local government regulations. As Commissioner Jennifer Hill stated during one of the meetings "How did we get to this... I remember when the plan was just to provide
guidelines, not legal requirements" (that quote may not be exact, but the flavor is).
I had not covered the Comp Plan much because it seemed to be a done deal after bitter infighting at the Commission over the supposed stacking of the Committee that wrote the plan. However, my earlier research showed that about a YEAR ago, the County Staff hired a consultant (when will anyone at the Staff learn to do their own studies??) to calculate the cost of implementing the plan. The result was an estimate that NINE more people would have to be hired just to implement all the new regulations. And, that estimate was developed by the consultant WITHOUT talking to any of the responsible department heads, which means there was no staff agreement on the numbers. Thus, I assume the ACTUAL number of people needed will be TWICE that, or 18+ positions.
My other concern was that the 350+ pages of regulations would result not only in hiring more staff just to monitor compliance, but many of the statements said the County shall implement various actions. What happens when you have regulations like that is the attorneys who support liberals who pass these laws then file lawsuits when the local government cannot keep up with all the rules. It becomes an attorney employment act for life. That is what happened a LOT in California when I lived there. One example is the California Coastal Commission which HALTED any construction within 1 or more miles of the Pacific Coast for more than 20 years, and any plans were tied up in lawsuits.
Apparently, according to the blog Right Side of the Lake, the Florida Agency reviewing the plan kicked the Lake County Comp Plan back with a long list of objections. A major trend they reports was that many requirements were VAGUE, which means more liberal lawsuits just to define the terms. I hope to spend time to analyze the objections in the next week.
The article below also says that DCA objected to many VAGUE requirements in the Comp Plan, which seems to be a problem with the Lake County's attorney office. Just earlier this week, the Board was confronted with having to pay an unexpected $600,000 or more in architect fees when the County Project Manager didn't bring spending change orders to the Board for Approval (another article to come from me soon). As I said in the public input, no one talked about how the County Attorney issued the contract with such weak wording for how change orders were to be processed that it is my opinion much of the problem was caused by poor contract writing by the County Staff, and the Architect's attorneys also didn't object to extremely vague instructions on how to submit change orders. I will post more on this, but thirty years ago, many corporate attorneys stopped writing in vague terms so that attorneys could decide the matters in court. Instead, they started referring to attached appendixes that described much more precise, BUSINESSLIKE WAYS of handling change orders and other requirements. Apparently the County attorneys are still using old school contract terminology, and the Comp Plan issues seem to be another example.
Favorite Quote:
"There were 44 objections and negative comments made by the DCA, which included at least 16 statements like, “The Policy does not provide meaningful and predictable standards” or “vague” standards. Sixteen of the objections and comments were classed with unacceptable or vague standards. Basically, the DCA determined a huge part of the plan was written in such a way that required interpretations rather than consistency with the law. In our view, it was written this way for a purpose - to crush growth."
vj
Read their article HERE, or a copy below (since their archive is unorganized and it is hard to find stuff). You have to sort through their various biases, but the info is the best available now.
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April 8, 2010
“ On April 2, 2010, the
Department of Community Affairs (“DCA”) transmitted to the Lake County
Board of County Commissioners a report of Objections,
Recommendations and Comments for the county’s proposed Horizon 2030
Comprehensive Plan, basically ripping the county’s plan to pieces (click here to view report). There were 44 objections and negative comments made
by the DCA, which included at least 16 statements like, “The Policy does
not provide meaningful and predictable standards” or “vague” standards. Sixteen of the objections and comments were classed
with unacceptable or vague standards. Basically,
the DCA determined a huge part of the plan was written in such a way
that required interpretations rather than consistency with the law. In our view, it was written this way for a purpose -
to crush growth. (Italics and red color added by VJ). The DCA report points
out some very serious flaws and deficiencies, which appear to be a
product of an over zealous Local Planning Agency (“LPA”) comprised of
no-growth and environmental extremists who were more focused on shutting
down the county rather than following the law. This
plan is a total disaster and trying to patchwork corrections to a
fatally flawed document is a futile exercise - it will destroy Here are some key flaws
the DCA pointed out in ·
Objection 2 says ·
Objection 3 said a complete five-year and long-term
analysis of demand on roadway capacity was not completed.
How can you have a correct Comprehensive Plan when you have no
idea about long-term traffic demand? ·
The open space requirements in the Wekiva Study Area (“WSA”) was amended to 10 or more lots with
35% of the net building area being designated into open space. The DCA says the amendment is not based on adequate
data and analysis. In other words, this amendment
is based on a “fuzzy feeling” in an effort to restrict growth. ·
Objection 7 deals with the confusion of having a policy
with maximum residential use up to 100% and maximum non-residential
shall be up to 100%. The calculation for mixed
use is so vague that it makes no sense to the DCA. ·
Objection 8 talks about the requirement for conditional use
permits for the industrial land use category with a phrase that says,
“Adverse impact on water quality or sensitive environments.” They ask the same question essentially, “What does
this mean in regards to industrial land use?” ·
The “per parcel” standard has inadequate standards, such as
locational standards or floor area ratios in Objection 10 in regards to
commercial uses on 5,000 square or less parcels. It
appears this amendment conflicts itself and makes little sense. ·
In Objection 17, the Capital Improvement Element does not
identify roads, sanitary sewer, solid waste, drainage, potable water and
public school facilities that are needed to meet adopted level of
service standards for a long-term timeframe, 2030. Without
this, how can you even have a plan? ·
Objection 27 says the county did not show all existing
transportation features on an existing transportation map or map series. In other words, where was the plan’s starting point
and how can you calculate anything with this? This
confirms they just made up the numbers. ·
Objection 28 notates a huge basic element that was missed -
the long-term transportation map show conditions in 2025 and not 2030,
the entire timeline of the plan. Once again,
decisions were made without proper data and this is a clear indication
of the poor job county staff did in putting this plan together. ·
In Objection 33, the DCA points out that the plan does not
identify water and sewer service areas for the county and does not
describe the proportional capacity of potable water and sewer that are
allocated to serve Lake County. In short, they
completely missed one of the biggest issues – serving the county’s water
needs in the future. Instead of worrying about
landscape ordinances and such, maybe the LPA should have focused a
little more time on the big issues and guidelines. Once
again, where was the county staff? ·
One of the largest misses is notated in Objection 36 – the
plan does not include an affordable housing assessment. The
LPA and county staff do not set forth a detailed plan as to how These are just a
sampling of some of the larger objections, but weaved into these 44
objections and comments is a picture of a Comprehensive Plan that
ignores basic growth management principles, the laws of Florida, and is
totally slanted for the extreme environmental movement. There
is so much wrong with this plan that it should be placed on the ash
heap of failure and burned for the humongous waste of time it took to
develop it. This happens when you put an
environmental lobbyist like Keith Schue in charge of writing the plan. Once again, where was county staff? The Lake County Board of
County Commissioners, especially Linda Stewart and Elaine Renick,
should be held accountable for stacking the LPA with extreme
environmentalists like Keith Schue, Rob Kelly, Peggy Bellflower, Vicki
Zaneis, Nadine Foley, Terry Godts, and The other major problem
is where was The citizens of Ladies and Gentlemen, we
kid you not - those who opposed this plan were relegated to silence and
obscurity in an effort to cram this plan down the citizens’ throat. Some Don’t be fooled by those
who are trying to cover up this in the political litter box - this plan
is a disaster because these huge mistakes are weaved throughout the
plan. This is also just the beginning of the
review process, and just like Obama’s health care bill the more this
plan is reviewed the worse it will look. Today,
you need to contact your Lake County Commissioners and ask them to start
over and get people like Dr. Charles Mojock and Greg Beliveau to head
the efforts for rewriting this plan. Years of
time have been lost, tens of thousands of dollars have been wasted, and
the business reputation of Citizens for Better
Government, L.L.C. knows this is a boring, difficult issue, but this one
will affect
Disaster!
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