Letter sent March 19 from attorney Dan Lobeck to the Board, offering salient reasons why the Master Plan for Hi Hat Ranch, which will be addressed Tuesday March 22, fails to be sufficient in many ways. The text has been redacted to put the focus on Mr. Lobeck's last point, regarding road sufficiency and traffic:
Hi Hat Ranch
Honorable County Commissioners:
I and my firm represent Saddle Creek Owners Association, Inc., which operates the Saddle Creek Subdivision directly adjoining the proposed Hi-Hat Ranch Village development (and sharing a border about a mile long), which is before you for public hearing this Tuesday, March 23 .
We greatly appreciate the outreach, communications and cooperation of Jim Turner in the review and preparation of the proposed Master Development Plan. In particular, we appreciate the relocation of the proposed Regional Sports Complex away from Saddle Creek, to a more suitable location north and east of the original site near Saddle Creek.
<A section relating to future high school, sporting areas, and another section on ground water have been elided>
Transportation
Access to Saddle Creek is from Clark Road. We are alarmed that the Transportation Conditions in the Master Development Order fail to address the need to maintain adequate capacity on Clark Road to handle the huge increase in traffic from the proposed Hi-Hat development, and to make the developer pay for needed road improvements for that purpose, as a Condition in the Master Development Order and as required by the Sarasota 2050 policies of the Sarasota County Comprehensive Plan. The same problem exists as to impacts of the development on many other east County roads.
Proposed Transportation Condition 11.B.7 provides that each rezoning in the development shall evaluate the need for widening or building only four road segments: two segments of Bee Ridge Road, North/South Roadway B, and Fruitville Road between that roadway and Lorraine Road. That is despite the fact that the Traffic Study has identified sixteen road segments which will need improvements to handle the traffic from the Hi-Hat Ranch development, including the need to widen Clark Road from two lanes to four in the vicinity of Saddle Creek and elsewhere.
Further, Transportation Condition 11.A.6 provides that no Development Orders throughout the development shall be approved if certain biennial monitoring of traffic impacts show a roadway becoming congested below the adopted level of service unless “funding commitments” are made sufficient to resolve the deficiency (with the developer paying its proportional share for the new capacity and the taxpayers paying the rest) or – now get ready for this, because it is actually in there -- if the Development Order includes “other traffic mitigating measures” including “the promotion of telecommuting, ride sharing or transit” acceptable to Sarasota County and “that are intended to eliminate the impact from Hi Hat Ranch development on the deficiently operating facility(ies).”
That final loophole is astonishing. If the developer commits to promote ridesharing and telecommuting (perhaps with flyers given to purchasers), and “intends” -- intends -- that to be enough to take care of the traffic, and if County staff signs off on that, the developer is good to go gridlocking County roads in reality. (“Whoops, sorry about that, but we really, really intended our promotion of ridesharing to keep the roads drivable.”)
Policy VOS 2.9 of the Sarasota County Comprehensive Plan (in the Sarasota 2050 provisions) requires that each Village development “shall provide adequate infrastructure that meets or exceeds the level of service standard adopted by the County and be Fiscally Neutral or Fiscally Beneficial.”
Instead, the Conditions now before you are woefully inadequate to comply with that requirement. And the County has not even done a study showing who is going to pay for all the road improvements that will be needed and are in part planned east of I-75 that the County Commission is in the course of approving.
Ben Franklin and others said that a failure to plan is a plan to fail.
More planning is needed in and for this Master Development Order, for the protection of the people of Saddle Creek and very many more, before it deserves to be approved.
Thank you very much for your considerations.
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
The Traffic from Skye Ranch with only a small % of residents occupying new homes,is already impacting Clark and Lorraine Road. Aprox 3400 homes planned. 2+ cars per household. Infrastructure not ready.
ReplyDelete