The Code

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 23rd, 2010 at 7:40 pm

Todd Tracy

By Todd Tracy

Just in case you weren’t able to attend the Com­mu­nity Rede­vel­op­ment Area meet­ing on Thurs­day the 19th, at 1 o’clock at the Orange Street Park, I thought I’d write a quick review of the meet­ing for you.

First, our expected Sep­tem­ber ribbon-cutting cer­e­mony for the new Chero­kee Park with its twin piers, one for fish­ing and the other for boat vis­i­tors to the street, is still lan­guish­ing in the final stages of per­mit­ting. The really frus­trat­ing part of the whole con­vo­luted process is that appar­ently there sim­ply isn’t a rule book that our beloved envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tors have to play by. From my point of view, it appears that, quite lit­er­ally, the gov­ern­ment has the unwrit­ten author­ity to make up obsta­cles as the game pro­gresses. I had hoped that the eco­nomic slow­down would have improved our chances of get­ting Chero­kee Park approved, think­ing that smaller depart­men­tal bud­gets and fewer human antag­o­nists would have resulted in a quick pas­sage. Regret­tably, slower times also mean fewer projects to review and fewer oppor­tu­ni­ties to jus­tify a staffer’s worth.

Englewood’s Chero­kee Park was designed by a local engi­neer­ing team that spe­cial­izes in gov­ern­men­tal projects; every writ­ten con­tin­gency was met; acces­si­bil­ity, ele­va­tions, access, safety, etc. We proudly sub­mit­ted the final draw­ings for approval months ago, yet we’re still get­ting monthly requests for more, appar­ently sub­jec­tive, project infor­ma­tion. Each month our beloved envi­ron­men­tal agen­cies have 30 days to come up with some­thing to delay the project, and they faith­fully do. Again, the prob­lem seems to be that there are sim­ply no clear rules of the game and no account­abil­ity to the tax­pay­ers that fund both sides of the fight. Now, I’m sure that some­where in the devel­op­men­tal stages of these agen­cies there were lots of pub­lic hear­ings, and, cer­tainly, their place in the per­mit­ting food chain is impor­tant, but some­where along the line, com­mon sense and respect for pub­lic dol­lars has been lost.

At the last CRA meet­ing, Matt Oster­houdt and Rachael Her­man from the Nat­ural Resources Depart­ment appeared at the meet­ing to answers Englewood’s ques­tions regard­ing Chair­man John Davison’s pet project, the Eco-Educational tour boat that would ferry envi­ron­men­tal tours around Lemon Bay and to the exist­ing Mid­dle Beach county-owned dock. Not only did the team fail to clar­ify any­thing or pro­duce writ­ten guide­lines for the new endeavor, but they were unable to offer any mean­ing­ful sug­ges­tions for us (tax­pay­ers) to avoid lengthy and expen­sive per­mit­ting issues. We, the lay-people, were encour­aged to ask project ques­tions and then they, the experts, would explain why our ideas wouldn’t work! How’s that for ass back­wards? Both Matt and Rachael were very polite, well spo­ken and they hon­estly wanted to help, but it was painfully clear that they never have per­son­ally suf­fered the eco­nomic and emo­tional pain imposed on us min­ions by their agency’s own process. Sim­ply put, they just didn’t get it. Need­less to say, the Eco-Educational boat is stuck in dry dock for now and its future looks bleak.

Finally, our new pavil­ion, the 10 Har­bor Lane home con­ver­sion, is equally delayed by well-intentioned bureau­crats. There is a 50 per­cent rule that lim­its our abil­ity to gut and con­vert the exist­ing home into a use­ful open pavil­ion. The designs are posted at http://www.OldeEnglewood.com along with a project feed­back link, so please take the time to check the site and give the team your feedback.

This isn’t my first gov­ern­men­tal project rodeo, so the chronic delays haven’t been unex­pected. How­ever, the rest of the com­mu­nity and sev­eral of my fel­low CRA Board mem­bers are get­ting frus­trated with the lack of progress on any num­ber of our out­stand­ing projects. Don­ald Lan­dis, at the last meet­ing, sug­gested request­ing a waiver from some of the per­mit­ting issues, but that solu­tion would make too much sense to be allowed. Just get­ting your request enter­tained would be painfully slow, but Don­ald is absolutely right —  we need to start fight­ing back. How did we ever get to the point where par­tially shaded sea grass is more impor­tant than stim­u­lat­ing a rede­vel­op­ment area? Why can’t we just plant new grass beside the dock? What am I say­ing? Tax dol­lar projects to ben­e­fit tax­pay­ers should be auto­mat­i­cally granted project waivers exempt­ing them from puni­tive decrees cre­atively whipped up out of thin air by state and local employees.

I recall hear­ing (Sara­sota County Com­mis­sioner) Shan­non Staub, years ago at a County Commissioner’s meet­ing, men­tion a “form-based code.” It didn’t really sink in then but I get it now. Writ­ten rules are foun­da­tions that ben­e­fit all of us. Wouldn’t it be great to sim­ply down­load a PDF file that sum­ma­rized the total and com­plete code require­ments for the project at hand? Agen­cies would be stripped of their unlim­ited obstruc­tion­ist pow­ers. Gov­ern­men­tal employ­ees would no longer con­trol the pub­lic through their code inter­pre­ta­tions biased by polit­i­cally or envi­ron­men­tally cor­rect con­vic­tions. Fixed project designs, bud­gets and time­lines would be pos­si­ble again!

The best result of a “form-based code” would be that the pub­lic would finally have the power to approve the whole code and noth­ing but the code.

Todd Tracy is vice chair­man of the Engle­wood Com­mu­nity Rede­vel­op­ment Area Advi­sory Board

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2 responses to “The Code”

1. Stephanie Borchard

   8 / 24 / 2010
   4:15 pm

   Very well stated Todd. Those that are fight­ing on the front lines for this com­mu­nity, please don’t give up. I applaud your efforts. I empathize and share your frus­tra­tion and find myself con­fused with the appar­ent ease that neigh­bor­ing cities seem to have in acquir­ing their beau­ti­fi­ca­tion and pub­lic space improve­ments.
   See you at the next meeting.….…..
2. elaine miller

   8 / 27 / 2010
   2:15 pm

   Todd, your per­spec­tives are keen, your logic clear, your pri­or­i­ties sen­si­ble. Apply­ing these attrib­utes to the mul­ti­ple lay­ers of obscure and murky codes, gee, has that really ever hap­pened here?
   As a design pro­fes­sional, I could take each topic and expan­sively expand on their neg­a­tive impact to the vital­ity and revi­tiliza­tion of our com­mu­nity. I am so often the dog chas­ing its tail, wel­come to the world of try­ing to make it a bet­ter place.
   But not to dwell on neg­a­tivism, I do believe we, as a cohe­sive col­lec­tive, can make a dif­fer­ence. I do believe that if we really are mad as hell and not want­ing to take it any­more, we can effect change. Per­haps we should clearly iden­tify those issues that are thwart­ing our progress, and peti­tion staff as to how to top­ple the road­blocks. I sug­gest that we com­pile a list of those issues that we are strug­gling with, in an orga­nized and cohe­sive man­ner. I vol­un­teer to present this to county staff, to iso­late the depart­ment that is lag­ging on action, and then per­haps Mark would pub­lish on the Engle­wood Edge. Then each one of us can take 15 or 20 min­utes to send emails en masse. It worked for us for the LID/Vault dilemma, and I really do have con­fi­dence in the BCC that they will assist us if they feel our quests have merit.

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