Smart growth conversation to return in September

Ormond Beach Observer
News

Volusia County elected officials are hoping to dive into the smart growth conversation after the summer, once each municipality agrees to participate and all city and county planners discuss the topic among themselves.

This was the consensus reached at the Volusia County Elected Officials Roundtable meeting on Monday, June 10. The government leaders listened to a presentation by Clay Ervin, county director of Growth and Resource Management, on smart growth, as well as local attorney Glenn Storch, who said he looked at growth like a "three-legged stool." Elected officials need to take into consideration what the community, residents and landowners all need, he said.

“Growth is going to occur," Storch said. "It may not be the growth that you like, and it may not be the growth that you’d like to see, and it may not be the growth that incurs better growth that comes after this.”

On lessons learned from the half-cent sales tax:

Ormond Beach Mayor Bill Partington said that, though the sales tax failed, the ballot allowed Ormond to get additional questions answered, referencing the four-year scattered terms and term limit questions on the ballot. Only adding the participation of a primary election in races with two or more candidates passed in the city.

The sales tax vote also allowed all the municipalities and the county to have created a priority list of projects.

“I don’t think anything like that existed at that level before, and so I think that was a tremendously valuable thing," Partington said.

He also said it got the 16 cities and the county working together, which had been lacking before.

Port Orange Mayor Don Burnette walked away from the failed sales tax vote with a different perspective.

He said he believes that the people who voted for it saw the infrastructure needs and that those who voted against it also saw the need, but voted against the elected officials.

They need to take that to heart, Burnette said, and reexamine their actions as leaders. If they don't, it would be "foolish" of them, he added.

“We should all take the time to take a little bit of inventory within ourselves and elected officials," Burnette said. "How are we doing our jobs? Are we doing our jobs right? Are we listening?”

The longer an elected official is in office, the harder it is to have a "heartbeat" in the community, Burnette said. Elected officials need to continue to make that commitment, otherwise it'll be hard to make decisions for the people, he said.

If growth doesn't happen, he said, people could see another recession. To prevent that, government should encourage the "right kind" of investment and redevelopment. Storch spoke about tree preservation, and how it enhances properties and quality of life in the areas affected.

City and county leaders should be encouraging growth that minimizes traffic congestion, as the key to quality of life is traffic, Storch said. Elected officials could also speed up reviews for projects that are favorable as a way to incentivize them, he said.

He added that smart growth is a "nebulous concept."

"It should be an adaptive concept," Storch said. "It should be a concept that moves and changes as we go along.”

County Manager George Recktenwald said he wanted to make sure the elected officials all had a clear focus of what they wanted out of this smart growth discussion, as he has a "bookshelf full of studies" in his office.

In response, County Council Chair Ed Kelley said that everybody is concerned about growth. Having Ervin work with other city planners is a way to start addressing this, and that the process will likely take a couple of months.

He also said leadership on the subject should come from members of the public so that they see transparency.

“Let them be aware of what exactly what we can and cannot do by law," Kelley said. "We need to have everybody on board to understand the constraints that we’re facing.”

The next roundtable meeting will take place in September.