Rural residents vigilant as growth looms east of Econ
Residents in the eastern outskirts of Seminole and Orange counties breathed a sigh of relief recently after a controversial bill died in the Legislature that could have paved the way for thousands of new homes in a rural area near the environmentally sensitive Econlockhatchee River.
But opponents of the measure didn’t celebrate long. They said they must remain vigilant, fearing that boundaries established years ago that protect their rural communities from high-density developments eventually will be removed and a flood of new houses will invade their quiet region filled wild pastures, pine savanna and horse farms.
“We have to be constantly on the watch of what they [developers and state legislators] are doing,” said Deborah Shafer, a Chuluota resident for more than two decades. “And it’s not just here, but I think it’s across the entire state that we’re losing our agricultural lands — our rural areas — to development.”
This week, she was among dozens of residents on hand as Seminole commissioners reaffirmed their commitment to the county’s voter-approved rural-protection boundary established in 2004.
The same day, Orange County Commissioner Emily Bonilla sought to take a page from Seminole by proposing a referendum to ask voters to establish a strict rural boundary along the Econ to guard against highdensity growth on the east side.
“It’s already been vetted for over 14 years,” she said, referring to the Seminole boundary that designates most land east of the Econ, Oviedo and Lake Jesup — roughly a third of Seminole’s eastern side — as rural. Densities are limited to between one home per 3 acres and one home per 10 acres.
The apprehension among residents in the rural areas was sparked after an 11th-hour measure was approved by the Florida House in March that would have done away with many of the rural protections on land within three miles of a state university, including the University of Central Florida.
The bill, however, died after the Senate didn’t schedule a vote on it. Residents said the proposed legislation would have stripped away many of the protections put in place by local governments guarding against high-density developments in their area.
“That got people really nervous,” said Jay Zembower, who has lived on his wooded 6 acres in east Seminole since the early 1990s. “The rural areas have historically been the areas, or the better grounds, targeted for [large-scale residential] developments.”
Other residents said it would have blatantly stripped away land-development regulations set up by local governments at the behest of their residents.
“We thought we only had to worry about local politicians, but now we realize that we have to worry about politicians at the state level taking away local control,” said Richard Creedon, an east Seminole resident for 20 years. “If that bill passed, what would be the point of having land use and zoning codes adopted at the local levels? We’d be at the whims of the state politicians. The real issue is local control of local governments. Otherwise, the state can come in and dictate exactly how we can do everything.”
According to several sources, the bill was pushed by former state Rep. Chris Dorworth, now a real-estate developer from Lake Mary, who has a contract to purchase about 688 acres of pastureland within Seminole’s rural protection zone and bordered by the Econ River, County Road 419, the Orange County line and Riverwoods Trail.
In Orange, Bonilla’s proposal came after east Orange residents’ own battles with developers regarding the Lake Pickett North and South developments, just south of the Seminole border.
The North project, also known as Sustany, was voted down by the County Commission in 2016 after Bonilla’s upset victory — spurred in part by her opposition to the projects. But the South project, also known as The Grow, was revived last month when the state Cabinet overturned an administrative judge’s ruling that Orange violated its own growth rules in approving it.
Bonilla’s plan to get the rural boundary amendment on the ballot this year was opposed by Mayor Teresa Jacobs and other commissioners, who objected to language requiring a unanimous vote by the commission to remove property from rural protections if they were to win voter approval.
In Seminole, a majority — or three — commissioners would have to approve removing a property from within the rural boundary. If a nearby city, such as Oviedo or Winter Springs, annexes a property from within the rural boundary, any land-use changes would still have to be approved by a majority of commissioners.
Bonilla said she changed the language to require a unanimous vote because Orange commissioners are elected via district, while Seminole’s are elected countywide.
Jacobs also worried about the short time frame to get a referendum on the ballot this year. Bonilla, however, said she waited until the end of the legislative session so the state wouldn’t try to interfere.
Orange Commissioner Pete Clarke proposed that, instead, the county could create a “sector plan” for long-term planning, like it did with Horizon West in the western part of the county. Bonilla was skeptical if that could work, however.
“A referendum would allow us to do it ourselves rather than leave it up to a third party,” she said. In the end, she said, “It depends on who’s elected to the next Board of County Commissioners.”
Seminole commissioners, meanwhile, stood firm in defense of the county’s rural boundary.
“I believe in upholding the rural boundary line and the rural area,” Commissioner Bob Dallari said. “There’s plenty of land in the urban areas that is vacant.”
Allowing high-density developments in rural areas, he said, would end up costing taxpayers money in extending utility lines, widening roads, building fire stations, constructing new schools and hiring more law enforcement.
“Someone will have to pay for all of that,” he said.