During a land use meeting Thursday, the Manatee County Commission voted to transmit a controversial comp plan amendment to the state that would see thousands of homes built east of the FDAB in an agricultural area of the county. The decision would have been inexplicable, even for a board so routinely eager to facilitate growth, were it not for the presence of their good friend and benefactor Carlos Beruff sitting silently in the front row.

Beruff wants to build an enormous development called East River Ranch, right next to Taylor Ranch, which you might remember from the uproar that the proposed mega-development caused because of its location, adjacent to both a race track and drag strip.

When the board passed policy 2.1.2.8, it opened the door to allow development east of the FDAB when the prospective site is coterminous and contiguous to the FDAB or to lands that have been approved pursuant to the policy.

As staff pointed out Thursday, however, the applicant could not demonstrate compliance with policy 2.1.2.8, because Taylor Ranch isn't even approved let alone built out, meaning East River Ranch getting approved would represent the exact sort of "leapfrog" development that the board, developers, and their attorneys assured the public would not occur, back when the policy was passed.

Yet, here we are, essentially being told, well, we all know that one is going to get approved, so let's get the ball rolling on the next one.Before you know it, we will have taken Lakewood Ranch-style development further and further east until the infrastructure collapses under the weight of Big Development's endless thirst for new units.

One by one, members of the public lined up to echo all of the reasons this development should not be approved: its proximity to the race tracks, its incompatibility with surrounding neighborhoods, traffic, its proximity to Lake Manatee and a county water treatment plant, its position within not one but two major watersheds, questions as to whether infrastructure designed to bring water only as far east of the FDAB had the capacity to go so much farther, and the potential impacts of runoff from the many drainage ponds that will be needed on surrounding properties, among others.

When they were finished, Commissioner Jason Bearden told them that he had done some research and it seems that annual growth rates have doubled since the FDAB was decided upon in the '80s and seemed to suggest that the county has a responsibility to build enough houses for as many people as decide to move here. All of that long-term future planning that had been so thoughtfully done to ensure measured and sensible growth patterns is somehow no longer relevant, I suppose. We must build until we burst, as the only alternative, it would seem, would be to actually follow our own policies.

Newsflash: neither the county nor its taxpayers, have any such obligation. In fact, things like the comprehensive land use plan actually serve taxpayers by providing a prescription for what growth will look like over time, so that they may make decisions on matters such as the construction or purchase of an increasingly expensive home with some sort of an idea as to what they are buying into regarding the surrounding community. These are not "growing pains," they are permanent injuries that are being deliberately inflicted so that developers can pad profits at the expense of the existing tax base.

This is the end game, folks. Decisions like these are precisely why people like Beruff and his buddy Pat Neal spent so much money buying themselves a county commission and why even the decidedly pro-growth commissioners of the past had to be replaced by this collection of stooges. The monuments, the library books, and all of the abortion and gun nonsense, as alarming as it can be, are little more than useful distractions that are employed to suck up bandwidth in our collective attention span while a few greedy individuals finish sucking the lifeblood out of this county through moves like this one.

In the end, we were always going to be left with an overdeveloped, under-resourced, gridlocked mess of a community–a rotting husk of what used to be a subtropical paradise. Citizens United vs. the FEC pretty much took care of that. It is just occurring much, much faster than any of us could have imagined and, for that part, you know who to thank–your representatives and their real bosses.

What Can We Do for You Today, Mr. Neal?

FDAB? What FDAB?

County Commission Bows to Beruff ... Again

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of ourweekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. His 4th novel, Burn Black Wall Street Burn, was recently released and is availablehere.