BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
A split vote prevented Bradford County commissioners from deciding the direction of its planning services last week.
Commissioners directed staff to look for alternatives to the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council, and County Manager Scott Kornegay returned with a recommendation to use CHW Professional Consultants, with which the county has an ongoing service contract.
Not everyone on the board supports the switch, and members of the public have raised concerns, too, since the commission was in the process of considering changes to its regulations on mining permits.
Those amendments to the comprehensive plan were drafted by North Central Florida Regional Planning Council and mirror regulations adopted in Alachua and Union counties. Local environmentalists are championing changes that would protect wetlands, but the company Chemours says the changes would effectively eliminate future mining in Bradford County.
Kate Ellison said the threat of selecting a new consultant has already reduced the price of the planning council’s services to $13,000. Commissioner Chris Dougherty questioned the timing of the $10,000 reduction, which came after the board instructed staff to look for other options. He asked if the county had previously been “grossly overcharged.”
Scott Koons, executive director of the planning council, said he looked at the number of applications processed in recent years and noticed a decrease, which is reflected in the new price. Prior to that, Bradford submitted considerably more applications for review than other rural counties the council serves, he said.
Ellison said if the issue is the responsiveness of the planning council staff as some have claimed, then she called for problem solving. Switching to a new contract would result in duplicated time and expense in considering the new mining regulations, she said.
“Is there an underlying motive in this proposed switch? Do the mining regulations in the comp plan need to be changed in order to satisfy multinational business interests at the expense of protecting our county’s land and citizens. Certainly we cannot do this simply to satisfy a mining company’s demand that all of our land be available for destruction,” Ellison said.
Paul Still said there is an inherent conflict of interest in using an engineering firm to draft the county’s land development regulations since developers who must abide by those regulations could be potential clients for the engineering firm.
Similarly, Carol Mosley was concerned about ethics.
“The standard for elected officials is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I hope you will evaluate these decisions while keeping this concern in mind,” she said. “An obvious avoidance would be things like nepotism and favoritism based on personal or business relationships.”
Without naming him, Mosley zeroed in on Dougherty, who has vocally both opposed changing the mining regulations and supported changing planning consultants. Dougherty was also once employed by CHW.
“It just doesn’t feel right even if there is no nefarious intention going on,” she said. “Allowing the kinds of delays that were requested with no timeframe offered by Chemours and Rayonier months ago without providing updates to the public doesn’t feel right. And then I just happened to find out that a commissioner and county manager got a private tour of the facilities in a wetland area from Chemours. I asked Chemours’ attorney to offer the same tour to others of us in the comp plan update process, but have gotten no response. Not even a response from the county to know what area of wetland was toured so I could have an aerial peek.”
Zoning Director Randy Andrews said the cost proposed by the council was in line with its services, but based on a lack of responsiveness, he wanted the county to reach out to other planning consultants.
Craig Brashier, director of planning for CHW, told the board they have 130 employees, most of whom work out their Gainesville office. In addition to planning, their services include landscape architecture, design, engineering, transportation engineering, surveying and construction services.
“I think our continuing services contract that we already have with you has established an excellent professional relationship, and we see this as an opportunity to expand on that relationship,” Brashier said. CHW previously acted as Green Cove Springs’ entire planning staff while searching for the right hires.
“We also are currently working for municipalities and counties like Citrus County and Crescent City to look at some larger scale master planning efforts. Specifically in Citrus County, the Suncoast Parkway is being extended, so we’re creating comp plan policies and land development regulations around their interchange,” he said, adding they could do the same here with the Starke bypass.
Instead of a flat contract price for the year, CHW would be paid per assignment. Fees for service fund the Building and Zoning Department, which makes the planning a pass through cost paid by applicants. Brashier mentioned the county might want to consider raising its fees, which are on the low side.
Dougherty asked if he thought that would deter development, and Brashier said raising an application fee from $1,000 to $2,000 or $3,000 would not impact a multimillion development.
Commission Chair Carolyn Spooner said the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council has served the county for years, and is reducing its cost, which is a set amount for the entire year. Both she and Commissioner Danny Riddick supported staying with the planning council, with Riddick adding that every time an issue required Koons’ presence, he is there.
Kornegay said the cheapest service isn’t always the best, recommending the commission ask CHW to take over planning services. He didn’t believe the change would result in a significant cost increase, and the company is already doing “tremendous” work for the county, some at no cost to the county.
“When we built the access road at the airport last spring, we couldn’t have done it without them. I mean, they were key and critical to that whole process. And that would have been $2.3 million worth of DEO grant money that we would have lost had it not been for the help that we got from CHW. So I am confident that their planning division, planning services, will meet or exceed the service that we’ve already gotten from them in other areas of engineering,” the county manager said.
Commissioner Diane Andrews joined Dougherty in voting for a change, but Spooner and Riddick voted against it. The board must still select a planning consultant, so the decision has been tabled until the full board is present.
