The Political Whore

Kelly Cornelius is a civic activist with the R-Land group in rural eastern Hillsborough County, fighting against sprawl.

Well, the holidays are over, and I am finally making time to go through my public records requests, which include more than 2,000 pages of e-mails from Hillsborough County’s Public Works Dept over the last two years regarding its Lithia Pinecrest Widening/Not Widening Project. When I first started going through them, it seemed kinda creepy to read other people’s e-mails, but fighting sprawl is dirty bidness so I got over it rather quickly. It is making for some very interesting reading, very interesting indeedy.

Lithia Pinecrest road today; planners are discussing six-laning it

Recall: Residents, NIMBYS, concerned citizens and activists had a hairy when we were told in November that Lithia Pinecrest Road in eastern Hillsborough could be six-laned all the way to CR 39. Strange because last year they told us our rural section would not be widened. At the most recent workshop the “federal dollars defense” was born. We were told at that November workshop that although our section MIGHT NOT really be widened, they had to study it for the six lanes in order to get federal dollars.

We screamed, the county commission had a meeting, and the six-lane excuse didn’t really wash, so the “logical termini defense” was played, and it was anything but logical. I am nowhere near done reading all of the e-mails about this bureaucratic mess, but this is what I have learned so far. (And oh, they fully expected our backlash, according to one e-mail.)

Lake Hutto and Storms Both Still Wreaking Havoc on Lithia

So far I have learned that this project was started and then expedited at the request of the Brandon Chamber and former Commissioner Ronda ‘I hate gays and the Dewey Decimal System’ Storms. It also seemed to be sparked by the Lake Hutto subdivision approval. So, while Storms is now off harassing libraries everywhere from her office in the Florida Senate and Lake Hutto was long ago approved without a shred of common sense used………BOTH are still having lingering negative effects on our community!

Define Logical

Interesting that, according to the e-mails, the project initially ended at Fishhawk Blvd. not CR 39 (now that would be logical). For some reason someone in Public Works named Scott Passemore decided along with Tom Mueller to extend it to CR 39. Several of the other folks in Public Works questioned their decision to extend it to CR 39 especially considering the added cost. Passmore seemed adamant in an e-mail back in 2005 that it was going to CR 39 and states “if we find the costs to be prohibitive, we can delete the segment between Fishhawk and 39.” Strange that he added this extension from Fishhawk to 39 to it after the cost for the study was already established. Hmmm.

When questioned about it by his colleagues via e-mail, the logical termini defense was born. The planners said they had to use 39 as the road-widening’s terminal point because it was more logical according to federal standards. OK, but what about the six-lane federal dollars defense told to residents and reporters at the last workshop? Anybody? What about the inconsistencies with the Comp Plan, which evidently also has to be followed to gain federal dollars? Anybody? Fishhawk to 39 (segment D) is outside of our Urban Service Boundary (which is supposed to limit intensive development) so not a lot of growth is planned …..ahem, officially planned out there. Rural areas are typically one home per five acres unless they were established before our Comprehensive Plan was created back in the ’80s. Add that low projected growth to the fact that the segment is NOT in the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) to be widened (which they are now saying that the count has to follow to get those ever elusive federal dollars) and you have a segment that is anything but logical!

Here is another disturbing discovery, according to one e-mail from public works, showing the need for six lanes in a preliminary design and engineering study that gives officials the right to take the land via eminent domain for six lanes, even if the county only wants or “plans” to build four lanes. How about that? So what we need to do is scrutinize exactly how they arrived at the need for six lanes. We are working through some of those numbers from the studies now and intend to meet with staff with our questions. I know you are shocked that we are not just taking their word regarding their “studies” and the numbers used and those future numbers generated by the study. Interestingly enough, George Neimann of U-CAN was going through some of the studies and noticed they adjusted the numbers for several DRIs (Developments of Regional Impact; Nimby translation: big ass subdivisions) one of them was Summerfield Crossings……….ummmmm boys, that DRI is on 301 and Big Bend Rd in RIVERVIEW which is NOWHERE near Lithia Pinecrest. NOWHERE! See for yourself here is the map of where that is in relation to Lithia Pinecrest Rd and if you have ever tried to negotiate this………it just about qualifies for You Can’t Get There From Here status. Why did they include this big DRI? Nimby theory.……..to artificially inflate their numbers! I mapquested the route from The Summerfield Golf Club which seemed pretty centrally located in the DRI to two of the closest points on Lithia Pinecrest. The first being Fishhawk Blvd and Lithia Pinecrest Rd (14.39 miles) and CR 39 and Lithia Pinecrest Rd (19.02 miles!) 1. Common sense tells you (or another traffic study wasting more of our CIT money of course would tell you) that the masses travel to and from Tampa to work NOT east towards Lithia Pinecrest from Summerfield. 2. Why would you use the high density numbers of a DRI sooooo far away from the road in question? At best this seems like incompetence …….at worst? That remains to be seen. In hindsight, boys, probably not a good idea to hire the same firm (HDR) now responsible for the design on the cracking reservoir, huh? Tampa Bay Water is currently suing HDR. The more we look into this the more questions we have.

Welcome NIMBYS!

This issue was on the agenda at the MPO meeting last week and Pam Clouston, President of R-LAND, George Neimann, a director of UCAN and I attended and put some of our concerns on the record. Also in attendance was a group in opposition to the widening of one of the urban sections of the road, as this would destroy their homes. Being a true NIMBY, I just couldn’t resist siding with them no matter how congested their section is. While I am worried about my backyard, they are worried about their front yards. Some have lived there for more than 30 years, so if anyone has a say in this it is these residents. They even came armed with signs. It is good to see more citizens getting involved in the future of their community. Same reason I did……… the county planned a road over my house and it pissed me off- WELCOME NIMBYS!

Some Splaining With Spin

Mr. Gordon of Public Works gave a presentation on the project to the MPO and I have to say he really didn’t handle Tampa City Councilwoman Linda Saul Sena’s questions regarding this study very well. She said it didn’t make any sense (referring to his federal dollars defense) and he replied that a lot of things about the federal government don’t make sense, like tax laws………….She said WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT TAXES HERE! Oh boy, she doesn’t take any crap, and Gordon came off as quite rude to her. (Transcript here.) He glossed over the snow job they attempted to give citizens at the workshops and stated there would now be more public workshops before the public hearing on the issue. How about that? I wonder how many lanes will be offered up at the next workshop? He assured the MPO that the recommendation has to be in line with the MPO plan to get the federal dollars.

After the meeting several county staff contact us and want to schedule a meeting with us to “explain” this to us, even some of the very characters I have tossed under the bus in my posts. My NIMBY motto is that we will take help from the willing and the unwilling alike so we are happy to meet with county staff on this, in fact, I can’t wait to hear what they come up with regarding that Summerfield Crossing DRI discovery. That was not brought up at the last MPO meeting. Should be interesting watching that spin.

NIMBYS, Pit Bulls and Your Tax Dollars at Work Waste

At some point hopefully the county staff will realize that good concerned citizens can be just as scary as bad county commissioners. I suspect that many of the county employees have been bullied by a bad board for so long and now that the tide is changing they are not sure which side of the board to cater to. Commissioners come and go, but taxpayers are their real bosses. In Hillsborough they seem to have forgotten this. Time to start working for the people and catering to our needs, don’t you think?

What is the difference between a pit bull and a NIMBY? Pit bulls have much better temperaments! (Notice the Levy County officials and staff members in this article that were indicted right along with commissioners in recently on bribery charges regarding development. Levy County Nimbys have all the luck, huh?)

6 Lanes Mysteriously Show Up On New Map…………… By Mistake

Bottom line with this Widening/Not Widening Project is that if it isn’t in the MPO Long Range Transportaton Plan (LRTP ) the county can’t get the federal dollars. Recall that plan calls for four lanes in the urban areas and two lanes in the rural area. Here is the catch: They just starting the process of updating the LRTP which is done on a regional level. It looks like the forces behind this study thought that the plan just might be changed due to the outcome of the study. In the study’s Newsletter I find a statement about the MPO’s 2025 Highway Needs Assessment (which does not include Segment D at all and at best shows four lanes from SR 60 to Bloomingdale Ave.) It reads “The Assessment may by updated as a result of the study.” How do they know? The regional update JUST started and according to them their local “study” is still underway (things are starting to come together a bit now aren’t they?)

Sooooooo, even though the MPO is NOT recommending any changes to the plan regarding Lithia Pinecrest road, many of us still attended a recent meeting regarding updating the plan to put our opposition on the record last month. A consultant named Hugh Pascoe later gives a presentation to the Regional MPO committee consisting of eight counties and guess what shows up on his presentation? The six-laning of Lithia Pinecrest ALL the way from SR 60 to CR39! Hmmmmmm. When he was called out about it by the Executive Director of our MPO, Ray Chiaramonte during the presentation, Pascoe claimed it was a mistake and he would remove it.

We citizens in the audience didn’t buy the “mistake” defense and wondered where he would get that info to put it in his presentation in the first place especially since the “study” is still in progress. We ask him and he says a consultant from Renassiance Planning. He says he will remove it right away and send us an updated copy. I later requested the original copy along with the name of the individual at Renaissance Planning that he claimed gave him the information. I am still waiting and that meeting was on 12/12/08 and I requested the info on 12/15/08. For those who paint the picture of us (and there are several of you) as crazy conspiracy theorists – explain how those six lanes got on an official presentation for a map update? The forces behind many of these sprawl projects  we fight are often invisible. We battle the likes of the staff or a few commissioners on the front lines but we know there is often more to these battles, the details of which we sometimes never find out.

Once something gets drawn on a map, mistake or not, it is extremely difficult to erase. We spent the last year fighting the bypass on many levels and our goal this time is to to extinguish this bad idea very quickly because sadly, we have other battles to fight. The assault on the rural area has already begun this year with the first round of Comp Plan amendments. Good Luck with that, Mr. Dibbs. You are down a commissioner and citizens are up one.

What can you do?

If you don’t like the county pissing away your tax dollars to promote sprawl then let them know here.

If you want to give comments about the project to the MPO (most of them seem very receptive to citizen’s concerns) then you can contact them at MPO @Plancom.org (thank them for being the best shot we have at good transportation projects!)

Steve Gordillo, Project manager from HDR can be reached at 813-282-2348 or by email at steve.gordillo@hdrinc.com (Remember to ask him where exactly the 2.5 million was spent.)

The County has not announced the dates of the new workshops they are now saying they will have but you can check the website for the study and as always……….stay tuned.

Since they are still taking comments we are keeping our R-LAND letter of opposition available to anyone interested in using it. You can access it here.

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