Manatee County FL planning commission just approved two high-density subdivisions which plan on using a narrow dead-end rural road as their entrance. This road currently supports 37 agriculture type houses. The road is lined with 63 oak trees over 100 years old, directly against the road preventing it from being widened or sidewalks put in. There’s no plan on how they’ll preserve these trees or handle the massive traffic increase, Other than trust us. It will be fine. Next meeting is January 8th
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I am always really shocked at planning commissions - they seem to be really meaningfully under-equipped to really handle the job.
(1) They routinely ignore the fact that traffic exists - I havent ever seen any discussion or review of traffic considerations on any projects. The traffic concepts are always a "trust us" -- and they always go horribly but in classic America in the 2020s - horrible is always a relative concept. If people didn't die (or sometimes even if they do) - how horrible is it really? I live in an area with 60k people in 4 square miles that hasnt ever considered that it built the roads 70+ years ago and thats all we have. I imagine they didnt think once about the road or the trees
(2) Trees are heavily ignored broadly by development. It doesn't have to be that way - you could always just tell developers "here are some rules that you can follow if you want to build your xyz development". Those rules could be maintaining the trees by the roadside / having set back requirements that leave more undeveloped greenery around the edges of the development. You could specifically require tree plantings / preservation of mature trees etc. -- but no one cares to do this or seemingly ever thinks of it.
Planning boards / commissions are a handful of often random people from your community who really have little true understanding of what they are doing or what they should be doing.
For all the flack California gets for their "overregulation", CEQA handles trees and traffic (and a lot of other stuff) quite well, and requires that all significant impacts be noted, analyzed, and mitigated (or the best alternative is selected).
So far I have had experience with Long Island NY and North Carolina and I can say in both cases they are meaningfully under-prepared to handle zoning.
(1) On Long Island - developers often abuse laws and regulations and local zoning approval groups within the village structures because it's easy to roll over a board of 5 citizens who don't really understand much. Zoning is often overlooked and not once do people consider traffic or overpopulation. Village of Hempstead has 60k+ people in 4 square miles - it rivals many cities at this point
(2) In NC, for rural areas they have allowed developers to come in and basically ignore all the zoning requirements for rural areas by buying up 4 acres and then just leaving 2 acres undeveloped. So essentially I could cram a cities worth into 1 acre if I had 10 adjacent acres undeveloped. They argue this helps to keep undeveloped lands instead of suburbia, but in reality nothing stops someone from just selling that land later and someone else subdivides it later.
Your NC story sounds spot on. I've driven around a lot of rural areas in NC for work, and there are a ton of 2-4 acre "developments" that look like someone picked up my childhood suburban tract home block and dropped it next to a pig farm.
I bought down there in a rural location because of the restrictions to rural locations in terms of plot sizes etc.
Meanwhile 1 year after I buy - someone buys up all the land behind my house in a large plot and looks to put in 80+ houses in that plot. So behind my single house there will be like 4 houses within the same width.
What bewilders me is why we have to be so stupid about this. I always have to ask the planning boards / municipalities "couldnt we have apporved a project that has 50 houses instead of 80 houses? I don't understand how we went to the rock bottom here without just thinking about this"
Namely the typical requirements for minimum lot size and widths get thrown out IF you acquire land adjacent to a development and just dont develop that. That means that the developer has undeveloped plots next to the overly developed plots because it's easier to / cheaper to crap houses in 30 ft width tracts than to build something more spread out. Meanwhile it's a density now thats higher than my suburban NY area.
I asked them also how they felt the new 160 units worth of cars were going to handle all coming out a single intersection on a two-lane road and got crickets.
Like I said - I just feel like so many of these areas are easily manipulated and under-prepared to deal with developers who are out to make their money. I am all for development - I just think theres another option where we do development not so stupidly.
America in the 2020s is "we can either do this thing the dumbest way possible or we can do nothing".... and im just wondering "but have we ever thought of just telling them to do a little less stupid"
How big is the road easement? The trees are gonna get fucked
Because of the age of the road, there hasn't been a solid answer. But the majority of the trees are directly next to the current road.
Sad
Clearly you need to go to that meeting. Measure the width of the roadway and be prepared to make the best case for not widening it, which presumably depends on vehicles per hour for the maximum hour---that's sometimes less for the over-55 developments if that is what it is. Ten foot lanes are always enough if they have to add a yellow line in the middle, especially if speed limits are slow. Also, do some thinking about which side to expand so they don't cut on both sides.
The tightest part between the trees is 25'. Some of the road is 17'.
8’ wide lanes is pretty much the minimum, and it sounds like there’s enough room without cutting trees.
It’s Florida
OP, time for a counter offensive. You need to send pictures and video of the trees, along with the county’s proposal to destroy it, to every news reporter at every station in town. Get the newspapers, too. It’s easy contact reporters — look for the “About Us” or “Staff” in the menu.