- March 24, 2025
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Commissioner Jason Bearden called the Manatee County Commission’s March 5 work session with staff a “waste of time.”
The session focused on how the county can “catch up” on its infrastructure needs, and namely roads.
Staff members asked a series of questions throughout the presentation, while Bearden just had one question: "Where’s the plan?"
He said staff didn't present anything new.
While commissioners didn't vote on any specific issue, a general plan emerged.
Focus will be placed on functional improvements to roads that have been sitting on the capital improvement plan for years over building new roads in an attempt to constantly increase capacity.
"We've already had conversations about two lanes or four lanes taking Rangeland (Parkway) out to (County Road) 675 because of thousands of new homes going out there," Commission Chair George Kruse said. "All we're doing is chasing new development and trying to make everyone in the new development's life a little better, while we leave everyone else's lives miserable."
Bearden has a different take. He wants staff to proactively be planning around the over 100,000 permitted residences that have yet be be built.
In all, 103,000 residential units are approved for construction in Manatee County. Within that number, about 65,000 haven’t started construction yet. Of the overall amount, about 45,000 will be built in East County.
“It’s like nobody knows what this will cost, but we need to know those numbers in order for us to be able to plan for the future,” Bearden said. “That’s why I’m putting pressure on people to figure out what we have to do to address these issues.”
People complain to the commissioner everywhere he goes about the hours they spend sitting in traffic. He said Manatee County is losing residents because of its congested roadways.
Bearden posted a call to action on Facebook, asking residents to stand with him and put pressure on the board to adopt a common sense approach moving forward, which would be to build more roads before housing.
The post was shared 100 times and received over 200 reactions and comments. To put it in perspective, his post about John Marble Park reopening received three likes.
“People are up in arms about these permits and the traffic,” Bearden said. “It’s hitting a pain point with people, and that’s what everybody is talking about.”
Costs were absent from the presentation, but questions were ever present.
Commission Chair George Kruse said it's the commission's job to guide the plan, and staff needed to know which direction the new board wanted to take on several key issues to move forward accordingly.
The presentation posed three major questions to commissioners.
Commissioners overwhelmingly chose functionality over capacity.
Capacity improvements add lanes to increase a road’s capacity. They’re far more expensive than functional improvements, which include multipurpose paths, bike lanes, wider shoulders, turn lanes and intersection improvements.
“You’re never going to fix things with capacity,” Kruse said. “You make (a road) four lanes, it’ll be just as crowded. It’s going to make flooding a little bit worse and everyone’s quality of life a little worse because it’s going to look a little crummier driving down that road.”
He used Erie Road in Parrish as an example. The 1-mile segment between U.S. 301 and Martha Road is in the design phase of being widened from two lanes to four.
Kruse argued the project will "destroy" a working road and take out 100-year-old oak trees for people to get someplace 30 seconds faster.
Commissioner Carol Felts pushed for functionality in regards to evacuation routes, State Road 64 in particular.
Felts applauded the Department of Transportation’s work on State Road 70, but the design and functionality of State Road 64 concerns her with hurricane season approaching.
“We have a single lane road (in some sections due to construction),” Felts said, “And we don’t really have the functionality of some of those feeder roads into it either.”
Staff members will have to return to the commission with a list of projects, so to help prioritize, they asked commissioners to determine the point of no return on a project, meaning the county advanced too far on a project to turn back. What if the designs are 100% complete and the right-of-way has been acquired? Is it too late to turn away from the project in favor of others?
Kruse said it doesn’t matter. Right-of-way acquisitions can be held for future use. The point of no return is when the project is already under construction.
Erie Road is in a design phase, and 11 out of 16 properties have been acquired. That project could be stalled much easier than Upper Manatee River Road, which started construction in August 2024 and is due to be completed by fall 2027.
The corridor of Upper Manatee River Road that's under construction between State Road 64 and Fort Hamer Road landed on the staff’s list of 18 “county roads with existing or emerging capacity needs.”
The project is being funded with a $140 million line of credit that was approved by the former commission in October 2024. Kruse and Commissioner Amanda Ballard were the only two commissioners opposed.
Staff members identified six sources of revenue: Impact fees, Infrastructure Sales Tax, fuel taxes, Tax Increment Financing, fees and general revenue.
Staff members explained the limiting factors of each source. For example, impact fees and TIF funds are limited by district, while the use of IST funds has to be consistent with the coinciding ordinance and adopted project list.
Commissioner Tal Siddique asked staff members to add grants to the list of funding sources, too.
“I gave Stephanie Garrison a list of potential grant funds that she can go out there and evaluate and see if they make sense,” Siddique said.
In January, Garrison was hired as Director of Government Relations for Manatee County.
While she did a two-month stint in Senator Joe Gruters office as a senior legislative aide just before signing on with the county, Garrison spent 14 years working for Apple. Her final three years were spent in executive management.
In a press release, the county described her duties, in part, as being responsible for the "coordination of community, intergovernmental and legislative issues of interest to Manatee County."
Commissioner Mike Rahn took his time on the floor to pose several pointed questions to staff members.
“We’ve had commissioners sit up here and say we’re not going to approve any more new development until all the roads are done,” Rahn said, “And I don’t think the public understands exactly how roads are funded.”
He proceeded to ask questions, such as, how do the fuel taxes work? They mostly pay for operating expenses, not new construction. How much revenue comes into the county from the IST? The county collects about 64% of the proceeds.
IST is funding about $45 million of capital improvement projects in FY 2025 according to the county's FY 2025-2029 IST program summary.
All of Rahn's questions culminated in one final, all-encompassing question: If development stops and impact fees are not collected, doesn’t the cost land on the back of Manatee County citizens through all these other taxes and fees?
Clarke Davis, deputy director of traffic management, first acknowledged that there are always caveats with any blanket statement, but he did agree that halting development would “eliminate the largest capacity building revenue source” available to the county.
Bearden sees one major problem with how impact fees are collected — the due date. Impact fees are typically collected when a certificate of occupancy is issued.
“Think about that,” Bearden said. “We have 60,000 permits that have no shovel in the ground, and we can’t even collect the impact fees until a CO is issued on that, based on our current rules.”
He used Taylor Ranch as an example because the development will add 4,500 homes east of the Future Development Area Boundary.
While Bearden noted the development was a decent distance down State Road 70 from Lorraine Road, he argued that it will still add capacity to Lorraine Road long before the first CO is issued.
He added that Lorraine Road can't handle additional capacity now, and improvements to increase its capacity have been delayed.
Over $46 million worth of planned improvements for Lorraine Road were placed on a list of deferred projects during the FY 2025 budget process.
“I’m not saying I have all the solutions,” Bearden said. “I’m saying we have issues that we need to address.”
