City of Leesburg, FL loses special magistrate hearing over residential development

The City of Leesburg, FL Commissioners lost a special magistrate's hearing regarding a developer litigation over Sunnyside Lake Landholding and planned construction of a 159-residence subdivision. Reading this article may give members an insight into how bad it can get when elected officials actually stand up to a developer proposal.

 

Notice one of the contentious issues is the effect of the proposed development on local traffic where the traffic study said in my opinion "no problem here..." but City Commissioners believed the opposite.

"Mayor Jimmy Burry also felt the roads were not adequate despite the traffic studies presented by the developer...". 

 

Residents need to hold Florida House & Senate members accountable until reform legislation is passed.  Legislation is needed to require that affected cities or counties hire the Traffic Impact Study (TIS) engineers, not the developers.  

 

Here is a link to the Leesburg-news.com article. 

 

https://www.leesburg-news.com/2024/03/30/leesburg-commissioners-sidestep-costly-lawsuit-over-disputed-development/?

 

And here is a link to the Sunnyside traffic impact study (TIS). Become familiar with them because in my opinion, they are biased toward the developers because the DEVELOPER, not the city, hires them for an "objective" study.  Note: This TIS was published in Oct. 2019 or five years ago.  A more current one may exist. 

 

https://cms6.revize.com/revize/leesburg/Traffic%20Impact%20Study%20-%20Sunnyside%20Landing.pdf

 

Vance Jochim

[email protected] 

 

===