Zombie River Cross project finds new life in Legislature
The final weeks of Florida’s annual lawmaking session are perilous times.
Everyone’s tired and ready to wrap it up, so it’s the ideal opportunity to quietly change a bill and hope no one will notice.
Exhibit A is an ironically named “growth management” bill that undermines Seminole County’s longstanding, voter-approved prohibition against intensive development in the county’s rural eastern region. The bill started as a generic statement of private property rights but in early March morphed into a transfer of power from counties to cities.
A potential beneficiary? Politicianturned-developer Chris Dorworth and his plan for a housing and commercial development in the rural protection region, right next to the Econlockhatchee River.
This wildly unpopular zombie project keeps coming back to life and lurching around the halls of government even though the Seminole County Commission made clear it has no interest in sacrificing the rural protection area voters placed in the charter in 2004.
Commissioners said no to the River Cross project in 2018. Then Dorworth filed a federal lawsuit challenging that decision, which the county is fighting. Then he cooked up a land swap to trade the current River Cross parcel for a hunk of publicly owned recreational land that’s outside the rural protection zone.
Now comes the Legislature, which is always happy to entertain new ideas to usurp the will of local governments and voters.
The growth management bill was filed by Keith Perry, a Gainesville Republican. Simply put, it would grant cities and towns the sole power to approve or deny big developments like River Cross if the property is within city boundaries, even if that overrules a county’s charter.
In effect, it would force Seminole
County to surrender its — let’s say it again,
— decision-making authority over development inside the rural protection area. All a property owner has to do is get their land annexed into a city and, voila, the county is out of the picture.
With all due respect to city councils, they’re notorious for getting bamboozled by developers. Sometimes all it takes to get council members swooning is a smoothtalking, well-connected developer with a slick PowerPoint presentation and lots of promises.
County commissions aren’t immune, but in Seminole commissioners would pay a heavy political price if they overturned the voters’ decision to preserve east Seminole as a rural enclave.
If, however, the new bill becomes law and Oviedo annexes the River Cross property, City Council members don’t have to worry about what the rest of Seminole thinks. Their decision on River Cross would be final.
There’s nothing theoretical about this bill. It was approved last week by both the House and the Senate, with the aid of yes votes from Seminole County legislators like Sen. David Simmons and House Reps.
Scott Plakon and David Smith.
Smith later told a Sentinel reporter he didn’t know the bill would gut Seminole’s rural protections. If that’s true, it means Smith wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t looking out for his constituents. Smith now promises to “beat a path” to the governor’s door to demand a veto. Great to hear. We just hope it isn’t too late.
Gov. Ron DeSantis does, in fact, need to veto this bill. It overturns the will of an entire county that, through its home-rule powers, voted to protect a portion of their county from urban development.
More broadly it violates the county’s fundamental right to determine its own future.
Veto this bad bill, governor, and let the people of Seminole County chart their own future.