A proposal to spur intense development in some of the most rural areas of the state died in the final days of the regular legislative session, due largely to strong opposition from Republican senators who declared that their constituents didn’t want any part of it.
While its critics cheered the idea’s failure, they remain concerned it will be revived next year.
The bill (SB 354) would have established so-called “Blue Ribbon” projects for landowners who control 15,000 or more contiguous acres. That’s comparable in size to the Broward County City of Weston, and would apply only to a select number of landowners in the state.
It would require that 60% of that land be set aside as “reserve areas” and the remainder developed over 50 years into cities and towns regardless of the underlying comprehensive planning and land use allocations.
As initially proposed, there would have been no opportunity for the public to weigh in — language that prompted fierce pushback. The bill was amended to require the local government to conduct two public hearings. The local county commission could deny the project if it determined the plan was “substantially inconsistent” with the existing comprehensive plan.
Advocates hailed the proposal as an innovative way to add affordable housing in a state starved of it, but it was scorned by residents from rural areas who complained it would pave their parts of the state in contempt of established planning by local governments.
Sponsoring the measure in the House (HB 299) was Rep. Lauren Melo, R-Naples. Referring to the state’s severe housing shortage and affordability crisis, she asserted her bill offered an “innovative” approach for “unique properties that demand a unique approach.” And in her introduction to the legislation in its first committee stop last December, she slammed citizens who claim the existing growth management system in the state is working.
“Members, Florida deserves better than knee-jerk obstructionism,” Melo declared.
Her bill ultimately passed through all three of its assigned committees with minimal criticism from her House colleagues, but it never made it to the floor for a vote.
The Senate companion (SB 354), sponsored by Stan McClain, R-Ocala, actually did reach the floor, where it was temporarily postponed when it became apparent it lacked the votes for passage.
The measure could have been killed much earlier in the process by Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, who told her colleagues and the public that initially she was “not inclined” to give it a hearing in the Rules Committee, which she chaired. She changed her mind, she said, after being persuaded by colleagues to give it a shot.
The bill narrowly passed in the Senate Rules Committee on a 12-10 vote, with GOP Sens. Jennifer Bradley of Fleming Island and Corey Simon of Tallahassee both noting their constituents strongly opposed it. Passidomo observed on a couple of occasions that it “wasn’t a bad concept,” but as written lacked detailed information about concurrency, mobility, and other necessary requirements to assure sufficient public facilities and services necessary to support a development.
And Passidomo seconded what many other critics cited about the bill’s definition of what qualified as a “recreation area” — that it would allow utilities to be placed in those conservation areas.
“That makes no sense,” she said. “You want a nuclear power plant or wastewater treatment plant in a conservation area? This bill would allow that.”
Bradley scoffed at the notion that the bill would prove an antidote to overdevelopment.
“Local communities want to be able to plan their way of life,” she said. “They want to control the vision for their communities. They don’t want their communities governed by a hedge fund.”
Financial contributions
Seeking Rents reporter Jason Garcia wrote in January that Ruane Cuniff, a New York investment firm, was behind the proposal. He also reported that entities associated with that group had showered financial contributions upon various state elected officials, including $10,000 each to political committees controlled by Melo and McClain.
The Phoenix reached out to both Melo and McClain’s offices for comment. McClain did not respond and Melo’s office said the representative “could not respond to this inquiry at this time.”
The definition of what would constitute recreation areas in the bill was a trigger for many. It included pickleball or basketball courts and other sports facilities that could prove inimical to the conservation reserves, as well as retention ponds and utility sites. The bill was later amended to explicitly say that the reserve areas could not include golf courses, data centers, or solar farms.
The incoming Senate President, Jim Boyd-R, Bradenton, told the Phoenix earlier this month that he thinks “it’s a good initiative.”
“Obviously, there were some challenges that were illuminated along the way, and there’s some tweaks that [McClain] can make that I think can make it better,” he said following a bill signing ceremony by Gov. DeSantis at Pier 22 in Bradenton.
“For rural communities, maybe not all of them, but some rural communities, that could be a grand slam for them. I know the area that was proposed for this particular project. They were very excited about it in that area. If you do something statewide, there’s other attendant factors you have to address, and we will, but I believe it will come back and, hopefully, it will be a better product next year.”
Residents from St. John’s and Clay County in Northeast Florida trekked to Tallahassee to complain the lands being groomed for Blue Ribbon projects were in their communities, but that they wanted no part of it.
Affordable housing component
Regarding housing, the bill said a maximum residential density of 12 units per gross acre would be “permitted” within the development area, with at least 20% of any housing built on the project designated as affordable “missing middle” housing for people eligible for the Florida Hometown Hero Program.
But would anyone want to live there?
“I could get behind that if any of this land was where people that need housing actually are going to live,” said Clay County Commissioner Betsy Condon.
“I have kids in their 20s and they don’t want to live in the middle of a timber forest, whether it’s an apartment or not. They want to be close to things that they want to go do. This is a utopian concept where you live, work, and play together. I have trouble buying that there would be people who would want to go where you’re 30 minutes from any grocery store, and now are the businesses going to go there? Are you going to have enough going on in the area where businesses are going to want to locate there?”
Beth Alvi of Audubon Florida agreed, saying the bill lacked “the specificity that is required for something this large and with this many giveaways. And what you say could be protected today could be moved, could be reduced, could be reconfigured tomorrow in the way that the bill is written.”
St. Petersburg Democratic Rep. Lindsay Cross, an environmentalist scientist, voted for the bill during one of its committee stops. But she says she only did so because she wanted to be able to add amendments before it went to the House floor, such as adding teeth to the definition of conservation areas.
“I would have liked to have seen the areas of public benefit decoupled from the conservation areas, because I don’t think stormwater retention or utilities — that’s not true conservation. So, I don’t think that should have been included in that 60%.”
Additionally, Blue Ribbon projects would not be required to demonstrate need based on projected population growth or any other basis. That was a problem, Cross insists.
“That was very troubling to me, because you know that this could be something that just pops up in the middle of nowhere and there’s going to have to be a lot of new infrastructure, whether its roads or water, electricity, to support that community. And often that does fall on existing taxpayers and residents and businesses for that infrastructure investment.”
Broader question
During the Rules Committee’s final meeting, Passidomo said that although she didn’t believe the proposal was ready for primetime, the way the state regulates land use needs to be reviewed. She noted that over the past decade, the Legislature has been pressured to push preemption bills to appease developers because of accusations that local governments have rejected, slow walked, or thrown up roadblocks to economic development.
“Our state desperately needs to shift away from piecemeal changes to local and state development laws,” Passidomo said.
Julianne Thomas, senior environmental planning specialist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, argued for recognition that ever since Rick Scott became governor in 2011, the planning process “has significantly changed and has significantly been more pro-development.” It’s more the exception than the rule that county commissions are denying or slow walking development projects, she said, noting how the state planning process is actually controlled the Florida Department of Commerce.
In Scott’s first year in office, the Department of Community Affairs, the state agency that typically would have evaluated “Blue Ribbon”-type projects was eliminated, giving the power to local governments to approve or deny such projects.
“I think that having an agency that had oversight over these big DRIs (Development of Regional Impact) and sector plans and other things to look for consistency and all of that is no longer there,” Alvi said. It makes one question the point of Florida Chapter 163, specifically Part II, the Community Planning Act, which governs local comprehensive planning, land development regulations, and growth policy, she said.
“I think there’s value in sitting down and evaluating what’s in [Chapter] 163 and seeing how does it fit in with Florida’s current growth and how things have been changing and how we can best fix that so that we continue in a sustainable way,” she said.
If the bill does come back in a future legislative session, Thomas said, state lawmakers need to understand the implications of allowing such developments to be green-lit outside the comprehensive planning process.
“I think before we make such a dramatic change in approving things top down instead of bottom up, there needs to be some discussion and understanding of why we’re doing that. What’s the ultimate purpose and goals for doing that, and not just think that by changing the rules a little bit we’re going to suddenly solve the affordable housing crisis, because it’s simply not that simple.”
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