Guest Op/Ed: Public Outcry is Our Best Weapon

I am fifteen years old and live in Manatee County. More than anything else, I enjoy exploring our local environment, our land, and our waters. I love to watch ospreys dive for fish and spoonbills squabble in mangrove swamps.

Sometimes, when I talk with long-time residents of our area, they tell me that I should have seen it 50 years ago. Back then, they say, there were bountiful fish, few toxic algal blooms, expansive wetlands, and an overall healthier landscape. Why were things better back then? Because there had been less destruction of our natural resources, particularly our wetlands which filter runoff and limit the pollution that enters the bay.

Things have changed significantly since. Reckless and greedy developers have torn out many of our wildlands, resulting in loss of biodiversity, increased storm damage, and polluted waters. Already, our seagrass has declined considerably, our mangroves have all but disappeared, and red tide tortures our communities for unprecedented lengths of time.

In recent years, Manatee County’s suffering has increased significantly. Developers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on slandering smart-growth politicians and promoting their own candidates, entirely replacing our Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). Every one of Manatee’s current commissioners was elected with the support of developers and their PACs. The developers’ goal is to have the new board deregulate development and strip the county of building restrictions.

The BOCC has set about repaying the kingmaking development industry, determined to refill their campaign coffers before the next election cycle. They have opened the floodgates to environmental destruction, giving their donors anything they request, no matter the damage to our community’s future.

In March, the BOCC approved an exception to let a developer destroy 2,300 acres of land. This caused public outrage but was approved regardless. Unsurprisingly, the developer, Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, Inc, had poured thousands of dollars into the chain of PACs which pays for commissioners’ campaigns.

The commission’s current effort to help out developers is even more disturbing: it is not the approval of a single development, but a systemic change that threatens to reverse decades of progress and open the door to unregulated destruction of Manatee’s remaining natural lands. This new plan threatens the very future of Manatee County’s residents.

************************

Manatee County’s Land Development Code (LDC) and Comprehensive Plan are responsible for laying out regulations and procedures for land use. The job of the LDC and Comp Plan is to plan land use, protecting communities and resources for the future. This April, the county commission will vote on changes to the LDC and Comp Plan that were requested by the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association (BIA).

Emails reveal that BIA president (and incoming "interim" Manatee County Administrator) Jon Mast, multiple county employees, Commissioner Ballard’s husband, David Ballard, and then-county administrator Scott Hopes met in January to discuss changes the BIA wanted to the LDC. The meeting and changes were kept secret. Before the redlined (proposed) LDC was leaked, the county intended to present them as if staff–not the very industry which would benefit from them–had initiated the changes.

The changes the BIA is demanding were made by Scott Rudacille, a local land use attorney and son-in-law of former commissioner Carol Whitmore. Rudacille is deeply connected to local builders and has often represented politically-connected developer Carlos Beruff. Beruff has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of county commissioners, while also funding numerous PACs.

County staff complied with the BIA’s request to remove wording that prohibits environmental destruction, gutting section 706.6 of the LDC and policy 3.3.1.3 of the Comp Plan, removing the county’s requirements for wetland mitigation. This means developers would be allowed to destroy wetlands without being required to improve wetlands elsewhere. Currently, developers are required to restore or enhance five acres for every one acre of wetlands they destroy. The changes would mean that, unless specified by the state, developers could destroy any wetland without repercussions.

Staff also removed the county’s requirements for wetland buffers of up to fifty feet, stripping protections down to the state’s bare minimum of a 25-foot average. Larger, more functional wetland buffers would no longer be required between developments and Outstanding Florida Waters or Aquatic Preserves. Studies show this would lead to increased water pollution while degrading Manatee County residents’ quality of life.

The buffers currently required by the LDC are already inadequate to safeguard natural resources and avert declining water quality. The maximum buffer requirement is 50 feet whereas buffers need to be at least 100 feet to be fully functional. The state's minimum of a 25-foot average is useless, as it does next to nothing in terms of safeguarding vital resources.

************************

The BOCC has a massive conflict of interest in this matter, one that seems strong enough to make this Faustian board disregard public opinion without a second thought. Commissioner Rahn is the former president of the BIA. Commissioner Baugh’s husband is a BIA executive. Commissioner Ballard’s husband worked for BIA until his information was recently removed from their website when he was arrested for the second time in two months.

Floridians United for a Sustainable Economy PAC, which has received funding from the BIA, has donated to the campaigns of all of the commissioners. The BIA’s members include developers Pat Neal and Carlos Beruff, who have both poured tens of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of our current BOCC.The commission is even trying to install BIA President, Jon Mast, as interim county administrator, a move initiated by Commissioner Rahn.

This spring, as red tide and gumbo algae make life miserable for local communities, starving manatees and poisoned sea turtles wash up on beaches, and miserable traffic, air pollution, and no-swim orders harm the economy, we are experiencing the effects of bad governance in the past. Now developers are asking us to turn bad governance into no governance and allow them to trade our future for profit.

In ten years, what will life be like in Manatee County? How much worse will our lives be as seagrass dies, fisheries collapse, our tourism industry fades away, manatee and dolphin populations go extinct, and severe red tide blooms become a year-round phenomenon?

What will we tell the next generation? How about this? "You should have seen it in 2020. Back then, we didn’t have red tide in the winter. We had sea turtles and manatees. You just had to go out on the bay and you’d see dolphins. And if you went fishing, the catch was safe to eat."

It sounds like Rachel Carson’s dystopian essay, A Fable for Tomorrow, in which she imagined the demise of both nature and humanity at the hands of pesticide corporations. That threat has so far been averted, in no small part due to Carson herself, but the threat of overdevelopment now takes its place. The only thing that made a difference, the only thing that stopped the slow poisoning of the Earth by DDT, was public outcry. Public outcry. That is how we make a difference in this world.

I recently asked former 22-year Manatee County commissioner and Bradenton Times publisher Joe McClash, what could possibly convince the BOCC not to cater to the BIA’s demands. McClash, a smart-growth proponent who lost his seat on the commission after a large-scale, developer-funded smear campaign, answered without hesitation. "The public needs to get out and tell the commission that this isn’t supported by science, that it isn’t supported by the community.“

Our nature, our waters, and our communities cannot withstand this abuse. Without the LDC’s regulations, our natural resources and economy will collapse. Will you tolerate our quality of life being sold to developers? Contact the commissioners and tell them that you won’t put up with this destruction. Sign Suncoast Waterkeeper’s petition against the LDC changes. Attend the first commission hearing on the LDC and Comp Plan changes, which may be held on May 11. Do not let the commission sell our future.