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Wiregrass Development An Insult To Regional Planning, Cooperation

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 3, 2007

The Wiregrass Ranch development of regional impact in Wesley Chapel is a textbook example why the Legislature needs to revamp Florida's regional planning laws.

In approving the project, which will have more than 13,000 homes and in excess of 4 million square feet of commercial and office space, Pasco County commissioners required the developer to agree to pay more than $500 million to widen and extend several roads - all in their county.

Commissioners selfishly ignored the enormous impact Wiregrass will have about a mile south on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in New Tampa and essentially laughed at Hillsborough County's request for $28 million to help widen this major north-south road. The decision was an affront to regional planning and cooperation.

Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council officials say Bruce B. Downs should be widened from four lanes to 10 from County Line Road to Pebble Creek Boulevard to accommodate Wiregrass traffic, which Hillsborough officials say will consume 80 percent of that segment. But the board is only advisory, and communities are free to ignore its recommendations without repercussions, as Pasco did in this case.

This is why regional planning councils need regulatory teeth, the legal ability to force communities to address the impacts that developments they approve have on other counties. Indeed, Wiregrass is a development of regional impact (DRI), but you wouldn't know it judging from Pasco's list of priorities.

The Legislature should give regional planning councils the authority to manage land planning from a regional perspective, either with direct authority or at least the ability to appeal a local government's development decisions. Absent that, a case could be made that they shouldn't exist at all, since their existence only misleads the public into thinking regional planning actually occurs.

In addition, Hillsborough officials don't have the statutory ability to appeal Pasco's development order authorizing Wiregrass, which also doesn't make sense. So, in an attempt to get the money needed to help widen Bruce B. Downs, they exercised what right they had: They asked the state's land planning and growth management agency, the Department of Community Affairs, to appeal for them.

They - and taxpayers - were let down on that level, too, when the state declined, saying Pasco was acting within the law, and the state had no authority to appeal on those grounds. The state did file an appeal on other road issues, but an agreement has been reached.

The fact remains, Hillsborough's or any other county's taxpayers should not have to bear the expense of infrastructure improvements necessitated by a DRI in a neighboring county. This won't be accomplished unless regional planning councils have the authority to order - and enforce - conditions that benefit the region or the DCA has the authority to step in when a developer or county refuses to help pay for road improvements in an adjoining county when approving major developments.
Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean perfectly sums up the blatant disregard for regional planning that Wiregrass illustrates: 'Why do we have a DRI process if it is not for the protection of one county that will be affected by development?' she told Tribune reporter Julia Ferrante. 'Why do we have a regional planning council to look at the regional implications of a project?'

These are great questions. State officials and the Legislature should provide some answers - and changes.

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