*Third in a series of news stories on the causes of urban sprawl
When people ask what’s causing urban sprawl in South County they need to look no further than House Bill 7207 passed by the Florida State Legislature May 6, 2011. The Bill was signed by Gov. Rick Scott and became the Community Planning Act, which took away many of the regulations developers had been held to before that.
After an unsuccessful attempt to remove developers’ requirements to build infrastructure, including schools, parks and roads, through 2009’s Senate Bill 360, which was later deemed unconstitutional by a Tallahassee Circuit Judge, state legislators reworded the Bill and passed HB 7207, leaving those things up to the individual counties.
The law now affects all counties in Florida.
Readers who would like to read the first two articles in this series, published on Aug. 27, 2015, and Oct. 22, 2015, in The Observer News may visit tinyurl.com/observer-traffic1 and tinyurl.com/observer-traffic2.
Although every Hillsborough County Commissioner was emailed for response following the Oct. 22 story, only Commissioner Stacy White responded.
Commissioner Victor Crist — who was in the State Legislature when HB 7207 was passed — did have his aide call back to say: “It has been six years and Commissioner Crist says he cannot remember anything about any particular piece of legislation.”
Commissioner White, however, said that he has no doubt that this legislation, which is “gutting the concurrency system at the state level, has been a major factor in traffic gridlock and state disrepair of roads.”
He went on to say that he is pleased that Hillsborough County Commissioners voted Oct. 21 to draft a letter to the State legislators asking them to revisit the matter because of the sprawl it is creating.
“I’m a firm believer that the land use practices over approximately three decades that have allowed, even encouraged, dense development far from the urban core of our county, have had a detrimental effect on our traffic infrastructure system,” said White. “Many see new homes as new property tax revenue for the county, but I have been especially assertive that the taxes collected from those homes aren’t enough to pay for the required infrastructure that come with them.”
White stated firmly that this type of urban sprawl doesn’t pay for itself.
Michael Williams, director of transportation, planning and development engineer for Hillsborough County, and Bob Clifford, vice president and area manager of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm that has collected data and helped construct a plan to alleviate the situation, have attended almost 100 meetings around the county in recent months gathering information about what residents feel is needed.
Data proves what is needed.
County plans are in place.
State legislators, however, although taking the burden from developers, have thus far supported developers who continue to build while property values are low and homes are selling for less money than before the “recession” of 2008-09.
“We must change our land use practices first,” White continued in a lengthy email answering all questions asked of him last week. “Next we must continue to make our voices heard by the state legislature on the issue of concurrency.”
“Concurrency” is the word county and state planners use when assigning things developers must do before building new homes and commercial buildings, schools, parks, road improvements and all else.
“We must make tough decisions with regards to revenue sources to address our existing backlog of transportation infrastructure projects,” White concluded.
Meanwhile, county planners say Hillsborough County is the 11th worst in the U.S. for congestion — and 330,000 new residents are projected to move into the county by 2020.
Emails were sent and telephone calls were made to county commissioners and state legislators for three weeks prior to the publication of this story.
White is the only one quoted as there was no other response except for a telephone call from the Crist aide mentioned here, who was asked to “please put the response in an email.” That request was also disregarded.
