Our growth plan is stuck in time

Anyone driving on State Road 44 in Lecanto is familiar with the two-story white house atop a ridge just west of Crystal Oaks. 

It has sat stately on 38 acres since 1987, roughly the same time I moved to Citrus County.

Property is property, and all things are equal. Life changes overnight, as we’re seeing. I’m clinging to little pieces of normalcy.

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I always glance at the house when driving by. It’s a sight of serenity.

So, imagine my shock the other day to see a for-sale sign draped along the fence. Great. Another beautiful locale up for grabs in the development-of-the-month crowd.

The homeowner is a longtime Citrus County Realtor with a good name. I wish him nothing but success in selling his land.

But, geez, it’s hard to see.

I had a Cattle Dog chat Wednesday morning with someone who told of the enormous pressure to sell that developers place on longtime family owners of large Citrus County tracts. Letters in the mail, or strangers showing up unannounced, business cards in hand, offering large sums of money for the family estate.

It’s a sticky wicket. Families want to hold onto their homesteads, yet if that land isn’t bringing the income to afford it, what choices do they have? Build-A-House Inc. starts making sense.

Meanwhile the rest of us freak out every time someone wants to rezone a patch of dirt to bring more people or fast-food joints.

How do we to balance it?

That’s where we turn to the Comprehensive Plan, or at least we should be.

The best way to win an argument with the government is to know the rules better than they do. Commissioners are smart, but I doubt they’ve read the entire Comprehensive Plan. They would have noticed the multiple out-of-date references that I picked up during a quick peek.

All growth is driven by the comp plan. Not just zoning but elements such as housing, parks, solid waste, conservation, aviation, and the manatee protection plan. We have a ports district in the comp plan. Betcha didn’t know that.

(Here's the comp plan link, in case you didn't catch it the first time. It's broken into 17 chapters. It's fairly easy to understand. You'll pick it up right away. And take a look at the generalized future land-use map, what we used to call a zoning map when I was a child reporter. Get to know this stuff.)

The plan is updated every five years, but I can’t recall the last time it had a serious overhaul. The assumptions it makes go only to 2030, so we’re six years away from the plan itself becoming obsolete.

In many places, it already is. Some examples:

— A housing goal is to Increase the supply of affordable housing for very-low, low, and moderate-income households. Are we there? You tell me.

— The plan says no new mobile home parks in the coastal high-hazard areas. However, RV parks are considered “commercial,” like a Circle K. The plan allows RV projects west of U.S. 19 when logic says that’s crazy.

When this plan was written, no one saw the explosion of RV communities. See what I mean by obsolete?

— One more, from the solid waste element: “The County shall ensure that, by the year 2010, every residential unit and nonresidential establishment shall be serviced by a County operated or franchised solid waste collector.”

Not only did we not do that by 2010, but we didn’t do it when universal trash service came up again in 2021. Yet, it’s still a part of our growth blueprint.

The County Commission’s recent spate of zoning decisions, and the discussions preceding votes, suggest commissioners seem just as lost on the comp plan as the rest of us.

Commissioners last week voted 5-0 for a project I’ve covered extensively. During their discussion, three commissioners had strong reservations about the project, process, details, and whether this was a good fit for Citrus County. Yet, all three voted yes.

Citrus County can have a reputation of being generally anti-growth or pro-growth. Either stance plays well for some people. But if it’s ambivalent on growth and each commission vote is a toss-up because we don’t have a consistent vision, that pleases no one.

I'm not necessarily being critical of county commissioners, who are trying to figure it out on the fly. And they realize the plan is behind the times. County Administrator Steve Howard is a wizard with stuff like this. No one's dropping the ball.

The comp plan is older than Google. We can’t search our way with an outdated map.

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