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Planners Refuse To Expand Service Area

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By MIKE SALINERO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 25, 2007

TAMPA - Hillsborough County planning commissioners resisted pleas from developers and voted Monday night against extending public water and sewer service outside the county's urban service area into rural areas.

The vote by the independent City-County Planning Commission is only a recommendation to the county commission, which makes the final decision. Nonetheless, the vote was a defeat for developers, who say there is not enough developable land within the urban service area to accommodate population growth.

Planning commission staff disagreed. Their analyses show there are 15,500 acres that can be developed in urban areas of the county, enough to handle population projections through 2025.

'This is not the right moment to expand the urban service area,' planning commission chairman Bruce Cury said. 'There will be a time in the future when circumstances will dictate that we expand it.'
Cury went on to say that he does not oppose developers making profits, even 'great profit.' He added, however, that the developers' profits have to be weighed against the welfare of the community at large.

A number of community activists asked the commission to leave the urban service area in place. Barbara Dowling of Keystone said people in that community purposely decided in their community plan not to have water and sewer extended into their neighborhoods.

'We felt we could keep commercial out if we kept water and sewer out,' Dowling said. 'We like our Keystone plan the way it is.'

Terry Flott, a community activist from Seffner, said developers want to move the urban service area so they can develop larger, cheaper chunks of land. Taxpayers end up subsidizing the sprawling development, she said, by extending expensive services such as sewer and water lines far from urban centers.

'That's not planning, that's just accommodating developers,' Flott said.

Developers counter that the remaining developable land within the urban service area is in tracts of 5 acres or less. To make a profit on those smaller tracts, they need higher densities.

Established neighborhoods, though, consistently mobilize to defeat higher density developments when they come before city councils or the county commission.

Planning commissioner Seth Boots, the only member to vote against the recommendation, said there are not enough incentives for high-density development in the urban service area. Boots said without the higher densities, the county will never develop an effective urban transit system.

'We're going to have enough density to create horrible traffic problems ... but not dense enough for transit like light rail,' he said.

The urban service area is one of a number of amendments to the county's comprehensive land-use plan recommended by the planning commission staff. County commissioners must approve or change the amendments by Feb. 19, a deadline set by the state Department of Community Affairs.

County commissioners are pressuring the planning commission to speed up review of other land-use amendments, some submitted by developers, that the planners only received Sept. 1. Robert Hunter, the planning commission's executive director, said he is against the expedited review, calling it 'poor planning.'

'I don't think there's sufficient time for the public to provide sufficient input to those plan amendments,' Hunter said.

Hunter will take that message to county commissioners today at a 9 a.m. land-use meeting on the second floor of the Fred B. Karl County Center, 601 E. Kennedy Blvd.

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at msalinero@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-8303.

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