Will Hillsborough officials side with special interests and force residents from their homes or will they protect one of Brandon’s oldest neighborhoods?

If you live or drive in Hillsborough County then no doubt you have seen examples of the thoughtless sprawl our elected officials have carelessly approved over the years. Too many rooftops and often times not enough road capacity. I have seen the process in action myself many times and at almost every land use battle for sprawl that I have attended, Commissioners have highly paid consultants or county staff on your payroll telling them it is okay to approve all those rooftops. The staff often gives them justification to say yes regarding roads even though my dog (who doesn't drive yet) could tell them why it was a bad idea. By the way, each rooftop they approve puts us in the hole $11,000 in roads, parks and emergency services because they do not charge developers enough impact fees to cover it.

Now, all of a sudden, officials seem worried about traffic and they even want you to help pay for their past sins via a 14% sales tax increase without offering to change their past ways of promoting developer welfare. For some local residents in Brandon it is even worse than that, as the county could decide to take some of their property to widen Lithia Pinecrest Rd. Transportation officials would call that eminent domain, I would call that stealing.

Ironically, some of the very same Commissioners that seem to be  all for this road widening on section B of Lithia Pinecrest will fight for what they call property owner rights when their developer or land use attorney buddies are asking for re-zonings that would create sprawl. They often approve subdivisions against current plans, against the community's wishes and against all common sense citing property owner rights. Strangely enough they seem to have forgotten all about those same property owner rights when their friends at the Brandon Chamber asked to widen Lithia Pinecrest. This article shows Commissioner Al 'I ride the bus but won't support the mass transit referendum' Higginbotham urging the Brandon Chamber members to get out in front of this (since there has been opposition from the start on several sections of the proposed widening).

This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.