Here are some notes based on the day's presentations.
Max Forgey, a local planning consultant, set the stage. The point of the day was to educate and lobby for some solutions to the platted lands issues in places like Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres and Port Charlotte. Rep. Matt Caldwell, an appraiser by training and a Lehigh Acre's legislator, has shown a keen interest in the idea. He will take Reconnecting Lee's ideas to Tallahassee, perhaps with a legislative proposal – with a narrow focus on Lehigh. To boil it down, the state and the region have a problem with old platted communities – but do not have funding or planning tools (like eminent domain) to deal with them quickly or efficiently.
Amendment 8 to the Florida constitution “Prohibits the future transfer of private property taken by eminent domain to a person or private entity except with a three-fifths (3/5) vote of the Legislature.” Hard to do.
What's the problem with platted communities? Lack of infrastructure, lack of assembled sites for commercial and industrial uses, lack of places of assembly, and lack of large parks and missed opportunities for natural preserves are good examples. There are others.
Max looked at HB 7207 – the big growth management bill of 2011 - which has a definition of “antiquated subdivisions” which needs tweaking. Simply put, the definition is of little use to places like Cape Coral and Lehigh which were developed with lots of single-family homes (The current definition only covers paper subdivisions which went nowhere.)
Max also introduced the “Arnold Doctrine” (Rep. Keith Arnold) – a how-to list of dealing with old plats. Three parts to the doctrine - 1 - “Communities must have eminent domain powers for economic development, even if this runs contrary to the post-Kelo actions.” (Kelo being the Supreme Court case allowing for eminent domain for private development. Many states like Florida responded by putting restrictions on eminent domain for anything other than a public purpose)
2 - “Make funding available to redevelopment authorities as well as counties and cities.”
3 - “A dedicated source of revenue, (e.g. doc stamp revenues) to acquire land.” – Florida Forever was one option discussed.
The participants saw planners in Cape Coral, Lee County and Port Charlotte talk about their local remedies. Wyatt Daltry described how the Cape is trying to turn their FLU map red with more commercial lands. Matt Noble highlighted Lee County Planning Division's (and Ensite's) work to identify three large mixed use centers in Lehigh (and another in the works in North Fort Myers), Matt Trepal from Charlotte County told the story of Charlotte County's efforts to deal with 200 years worth of single-family lots – including the struggle with Murdock Village.
Mike Ciccarone, a local attorney, challenged the group to think of new ideas to allow de-platting by allowing roads to be vacated, or certain plats to be amortized and fade away like old billboards.
Nancy Payton of the Florida Wildlife Federation had an inspiring story of how a vacant subdivision in Collier County was turned into the Picayune Strand State Forest.
Commissioner Frank Mann provided an excellent and entertaining lunch speech – wishing Reconnecting Lee County luck in their efforts to solve a hard problem.
In the afternoon, Rep. Caldwell, and Rep. Aubuchon spent an hour with the audience discussing the “Legislative Agenda”. Mr. Aubuchon chairs the rules committee, and can be helpful to any legislative effort.
What I (Tony Palermo) heard was openness to very narrow special legislation for Lehigh Acres – a special act, or pilot – allowing for eminent domain to be used to eliminate plats (with a better definition) and redevelop them more intelligently using a non-profit, the government, and the private sector. Now we need more data to make a case, and some language for the legislature to chew on. Reconnecting Lee members expressed an interest in doing the hard work to make this happen in the next couple of months.
Wayne Daltry took his role as the “closer” to rally the troops (many still remained for the whole day) and provoke more discussion.
I see two things happening. 1. Draft legislation with the help of a few members of Reconnecting Lee. 2. I see Platapalooza becoming an annual event (next time in Lehigh, Port Charlotte, Golden Gate Estates….?)