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Take Hard Look At County Planning

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By STEVE ALLISON

Published: September 22, 2007

Regarding 'County's Attack On Duplication Has Unpleasant Taste Of Duplicity' (Our Opinion, Sept. 5) and 'Proposed Changes To Growth Plan Foresee Subdivisions Everywhere' (Our Opinion, Sept 16)

Enough! I have lived in this community for 19 years. Any of us could make humorous references to things that remain the same here, but none are so annoyingly relevant to me as the ongoing love-fest between the agency known as The Planning Commission, and the editorial board of this newspaper. Your 'Proposed Changes To Growth Plan' followed a recent piece on duplication that should lead a skeptical citizenry to question the relationship between these two entities.

Make no mistake here: I fully respect and in many ways admire the performance and integrity of our Planning Commission staff, from its estimable executive director to the entry level employee. Indeed, our various governmental bodies within this county could learn much from the administration of this agency. But I fundamentally disagree with the organizational framework of planning in this community.

A planning organization wherein the planning director does not directly report to the chief executive officer of a local government, and ultimately the local governing body, has largely been discredited within the planning profession as being both inefficient and ineffective. Too, if you do not recognize the obvious places where duplication can occur in such an organizational framework then you are simply not looking very hard. There is a valid reason that, to my knowledge, nowhere else in the United States is there a model for planning organization like that we have in Hillsborough County.

I submit that long-range planning is far more effective when there is a sense of full ownership of such plans. That ownership occurs when the plans are filtered from within, with the full blessing of the chief administrative official, be it a city manager, county administrator or strong mayor. Efficiency is similarly compromised when there exists a disconnect between the day-to-day administration of planning (i.e. building and zoning) and the long-term planning function.

Your nuanced distinction between the respective roles of county and Planning Commission staffs as regards zoning recommendations in your duplication piece is inane at best; nowhere else does it require two entirely different staffs to formulate a professional zoning recommendation.

State law requires the establishment of an independent planning commission. However, I do not believe it dictates how such an agency is staffed. I truly believe that the promotion of good, results-oriented planning, and the interests of each of the jurisdictions within Hillsborough County would be best served by focusing the entire planning function within their respective local planning agencies. Shifting the venue of the many talented and conscientious planning commission staff members to the jurisdictions they serve would greatly abet various objectives, and would identify and eliminate duplications in service.

As regards your oft-repeated mantra that an 'independent' planning commission agency somehow rises above local politics, I argue that nothing could be further from the truth. When an agency has to fight each year for budget dollars, they are forced to play political games, and this agency is particularly adept. One need look no further than their cozy relationship with your editorial board, or to the alliances they enjoy with select community groups. It is not good planning that forms the bases for these affiliations; it is pure politics, plain and simple. In your duplication editorial you asked for open, honest debate regarding the importance of an independent planning agency; let's bring it on.

Steve Allison lives in Temple Terrace.

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