New Lorraine Rd. extension violates Sarasota's Comp Plan

Analysis of Future Thoroughfare Plan for Pubic Hearing of 5.20.20
Agenda Item #30

From Dan Lobeck to the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners

(Emphasis has been added in a few places below - otherwise this is the complete email without changes or omissions).

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I have now fully reviewed this Comprehensive Plan amendment and all agenda materials, for the County Commission's public hearing on Wednesday.

I see that it is an amendment to the Future Thoroughfare Plan and related maps and not yet (as I had initially thought) an amendment to the Capital Improvement Element (which would be the next step, after this amendment).

The issue of funding remains critical.

With capital facility revenues now plummeting and remaining uncertain for the future, and huge unfunded needs for transportation improvements to serve the people here today, how can County Commissioners justify adding massive new road construction to its plans east of the Interstate and on and south of Clark Road, admittedly (as the staff report states) "to open up new areas for development" and to "serve future developments"?

Objective 1.1 of the Transportation Chapter of the County's Comprehensive Plan requires that the road system in the County's Thoroughfare Plan be "financially feasible."  Yet the County has done absolutely no review at all of the potential cost of these very expensive new road improvements or where the County may get the funds to pay for them.  That clearly violates the requirement of financial feasibility.

And already the County Commission has granted approvals of Sarasota 2050 developments in the area of these new roads without requiring the developers to pay for them, in violation of the "fiscal neutrality" requirements of the Comprehensive Plan for Sarasota 2050 developments.  Contrary to the Comprehensive Plan, the Commission's approved "methodology" for fiscal neutrality makes it optional whether the County requires a developer to pay for new or expanded roads to serve that development, beyond normal impact fees, and that has not been done as new Sarasota 2050 developments in this area south of Clark Road have been approved.

The County's requirements for a Comprehensive Plan amendment explicitly require "a narrative describing the justification for" the amendment, "including how the Goals, Objectives, and Policies of the" County's Comprehensive Plan "are met or furthered."  The County purports to comply with this requirement merely by listing applicable Comprehensive Plan Goals, Objectives and Policies, but omitting any narrative or other commentary, and no justification of how they are met or furthered.

Because they are not.

In addition to the violation of the financial feasibility requirement of the Comprehensive Plan, this amendment violates Policy 1.1.4 of the Transportation Chapter, which requires that transportation planning consider the impacts on land use planning and "Land use strategies and development patterns that reduce vehicle miles traveled will be encouraged."  This creation of miles of new and expanded roadway "to open up new areas" for urban sprawl east of the Interstate is the exact opposite of that Comprehensive Plan requirement.

Another Comprehensive Plan requirement that the County identifies as applicable to this amendment but for which it provides no conclusion of compliance, is Goal 1 of the Transportation Chapter.  It not only requires a transportation system that "recognizes present demands" (not developer desires) but also that the system "respects the integrity of environmentally sensitive areas and wildlife habitat."

Again, this amendment would grossly violate that requirement by rerouting Lorraine Road away from hugging the east side of the Interstate as it travels south toward Venice, to instead create a new, wide crossing of protected Greenway on its way to opening up new areas for urban sprawl, and then piercing miles into preservation lands to join up with a new extension of Knight's Trail in that preserve, then on south to Venice, all east of the Interstate.

Amazingly, the staff report concludes, without any stated evidence, that this Greenway crossing "largely avoids or minimizes impacts to protected native habitats" despite the fact that the crossing is entirely absent in the present Plan and that the Greenway by definition consists of environmentally sensitive lands which should be protected from disturbance by a new four-lane arterial road.  Adding insult to injury, the staff report dismisses that intrusion by observing that this major new road "generally follows existing historical trails," as if such trails are in any way equivalent to the impacts of a four-lane arterial road serving new developments made possible by that road.

In addition to the controversial rerouting of Lorraine Road, the amendment would widen Clark Road from two lanes to six from I-75 east to Ibis Road and then to four lanes east to Lorraine Road and then back to two lanes headed east.  This expensive road widening is added to serve new development but is largely on the backs of the taxpaying public.

The amendment would also add an extension of Dove Avenue from Clark Road to Lorraine Road (initially at two lanes) to open up that area for new development.

It would also, again without any data and analysis or idea where the funding will come from, add a full Interchange at I-75 and Clark Road, to help serve new development to the east.  Although this is characterized as a mere correction of a "scrivener's error" created when that Interchange was deleted in the 2016 update of the Comprehensive Plan, that is false.  That deletion was obvious and known in that update, as I clearly recall, in part to reflect that it would no longer be needed due to the removal of a Sarasota 2050 Town Center east of I-75 at that location, partly due to environmental constraints.  One just does not remove an  Interstate Interchange from maps and plans without realizing that one is doing that.  Because of the requirement for data and analysis in state law, this part of the amendment is legally not ready for adoption.

Megadeveloper Pat Neal

Indeed, due to the lack of any analysis of financial feasibility or any competent considerations of environmental impacts, as well as the very bad policy of facilitating even more urban sprawl than is accommodated today, as well as the bad form of considering and approving a controversial policy change during a pandemic when public gatherings and attention are limited, this Comprehensive Plan amendment should be denied or at least delayed.

If it is instead approved, it will be just another entry into the mounting evidence that Commissioners sit more to advance the fortunes of certain development interests, such as that of Mr. Neal, than to protect the public who Commissioners should - in a better world - be elected to serve.

Dan Lobeck, Esq.
Florida Bar Board Certified in
Condominium and Planned Development Law
Law Offices of Lobeck & Hanson, P.A.
2033 Main Street, Suite 403
Sarasota, FL  34237
Telephone:   (941) 955-5622
Facsimile:    (941) 951-1469
www.lobeckhanson.com