Manatee County mulls Comprehensive Plan changes

Manatee County Planner Margaret Tusing slid two sheets of paper across a table inside the Innovation Room at the county’s Administration Building.

Both had drawings of residential developments of the same acreage with roughly the same number of homes and almost identical site plans.

The major difference?

One went before the Manatee County Commission for approval as a planned development, while the other was approved administratively through a straight rezoning request.

For a planned development, a public hearing and Manatee County Commission approval are required for rezoning the land and for the project’s site plan. For a rezoning request, there is a public hearing and commission approval, but a site plan is reviewed and approved by county staff only.

Tusing and fellow planner Lisa Barrett say the comprehensive plan is somewhat like looking at Manatee County from an airplane. It’s meant to guide how the county will develop. It sets policy, such as encouraging clustered development and workforce housing, preserving open space or other planning concepts. Developed in 1989, it establishes future land uses for any given property so landowners and the public know “future intent” for the property.

The Land Development Code is supposed to be the manual by which county staff executes its policies, prescribing buffer requirements, height restrictions and other measures to ensure developments are compatible with neighboring properties and meets other regulatory and design standards.

If the intent has been approved publicly, is another public approval needed to make sure the new landowners are following code requirements?

Manatee County commissioners will consider the question Aug. 23 along with changes to the comprehensive plan meant to lessen reliance on the planned development approval process.

“Our comprehensive plan has become too much about land-use regulation instead of being broad,” Barrett said.

 She said changes coming forward are meant to simplify processes.

For example, when developers submitted plans for the RaceTrac gas station at the southwest corner of Lena Road and State Road 64, they applied to rezone the land from agriculture to mixed-use, the property’s future land-use category. Then they had to go through the planned development process, submitting a preliminary site plan before going through a public hearing process for approval.

Under the proposed changes, the project would have qualified for a straight rezoning. The gas station was an allowed use for the site under its zoning category and could have been approved administratively without an extra public hearing. Currently, however, there is no option for a straight rezoning in the mixed-use category.

 “Right now, our comp plan steers you to planned development,” Tusing said.

Manatee County Building and Development Services Director John Barnott said having too many planned developments creates challenges.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of them,” he said of planned developments. “What we’re trying to do is establish a predictable process. It’s not to give the farm away, as some people think.”

“There’s a conception that planned development is better than standard zoning,” said Tusing. “At the end of the day, (the outcome) is the same.”

Some residents don’t feel it is the same.

Tara resident Cathy Woolley said developers of a hotel within Tara’s boundaries, at the southwest corner of Interstate 75 and State Road 70, wanted to have a building height higher than allowed by Tara’s development approvals. She and three other residents voiced their concerns against it  during the May 3 public hearing for the project.

“You really need to be sure the bigger changes are heard by our elected officials,” Woolley said.

Woolley said no one involved in the administrative process is there to protect the homeowners like commissioners.

Fellow Tara resident John Leone agreed.

“If you get into the administrative portion of it, rather than public hearings, people don’t know what’s going on in their backyard until whatever’s going on breaks ground,” he said.