Battle brews over population projections
By Joel Engelhardt, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 14, 2003
Developers and growth opponents, whose strident debates shaped Palm Beach County more than a decade ago, are at it again — this time to decide how many people should be crammed into Palm Beach County.
At issue: Is raging growth inevitable or should the county plan to slow
the pace? At risk, both sides say, is the county’s very future.
County officials are challenging growth projections produced by the University of Florida. Such disputes aren’t unusual, but governments usually complain that the projections are too low. Palm Beach County is arguing the projections are too high.
UF predicts Palm Beach County’s population will hit 1.85million in 2030, up from 1.2 million now. The county says the population is more likely to be 1.6 million.
That’s 250,000 people with no place to go.
Developers don’t like to hear that. If the county doesn’t plan for those people, road-building and other county services will lag and when builders try to build, they’ll be told they can’t.
“Why in the world would you want to estimate your population and err on the low side?” asked John Corbett, a lawyer for the Palm Beach County League of Cities, which is fighting the proposal to lower the projection. “You’re setting yourself up to fail.”
But county planners don’t want to plan for growth if it means opening more farmland to development Doing so, they say, is a self-fulfilling prophecy: If the county anticipates more growth, it has to prepare for it — by building more roads, for example. And if the county prepares for it, the growth will come.
“I don’t think we’re restricting development,” said County Commission Chairwoman Karen Marcus, who has championed the approach. “We’re reflecting what we think our county can handle.”
Palm Beach County has never been torn like this before. Since the growth boom began in the 1970s, the county has been a blank canvas for every development brush stroke.
By the late 1980s, developers and growth opponents clashed over rules that would link development to services: No roads meant no development. Developers have learned to live with the arrangement, which has been criticized for paving the way to suburbia through an aggressive road-building program.
Now, many of the huge farms of the past have been replaced by huge subdivisions and county rules limit development on the few remaining tracts - such as three citrus groves west of Royal Palm Beach — big enough to capture the attention of assembly-line home builders.
So county planners balked when they received the most recent projections from UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Growth would continue unabated, UF said, basing its numbers on the fast pace of the last three decades.
But the county can’t possibly continue to grow at that pace, local planners say. There’s not enough vacant, developable land. The only way the county could accommodate that kind of growth, planners said last year, was if all the newcomers settled near Lake Okeechobee, lifting the population of the Glades farming region from 35,000 to 350,000.
County planners now say that isn’t likely to happen.
But state law says the county must find some place to put all those people — unless the county comes up with a population growth model of its own.
And that’s just what the county did.
Important things assumed
Thinking 30 years out, the county focused on land supply. It plugged in data from all 37 municipalities, added some of the same trends UF predicted, and produced a model that can be updated every year — as the county and cities approve more development.
The result: 250,000 fewer people by 2030.
It assumes, however, that thousands of newcomers don’t double up with families already here. And that builders don’t convert large numbers of shopping centers or golf courses into crowded apartment complexes.
And that elected officials don’t change the rules that limit development in rural areas, such as the citrus groves.
And, of course, that the muck that dominates most of western Palm Beach County remains, well, muck.
If any of those things happen, the model will change to reflect it, county planners say. That’s a better approach than just assuming the boom times of the last 30 years will continue unabated, they argue.
“It says that Palm Beach County cares about doing very specific, realistic population projections,” said Richard (3rosso, director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Center in Fort Lauderdale. “It shows a lot of independence from the development community. It’s a breath of fresh air.”
But it can be dangerous, opponents insist.
“You can’t keep people from moving into this county,” League of Cities lawyer Trela White said. “You can’t use the growth management act for a moratorium.”
Even before the county submitted the model to the state for review in
late May, it had its detractors.
The owners of two large citrus groves — Callery Judge Groves and Mecca Farms — hired Miami demographer John McHenry, who criticized the county’s model for relying on outdated methods. The grove owners have lobbied for years to convert their land to subdivisions but county commissioners have refused.
In an interview, McHenry labeled the county’s projections “wishfulthinking” and said they would shortchange planning in the long run.
“You won’t be prepared for the schools, for the roads, for the pollution, for the crime. There are serious consequences to under projecting,” McHenry said.
The county paraded the plan before the League of Cities, whose municipal members warned that the approach would block redevelopment of cities. They found errors in county figures and agreed to submit corrections.
Still the league remains wary. It sent a letter opposing the county’s approach to the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which must decide by the end of July whether the county model is appropriate.
Although the league and McHenry criticized the county’s approach, DCA’s regional planning administrator, Ken Metcalf, called it a “recognized population projection methodology.” The question DCABattle must answer, he said, is whether it’s used appropriately.
How many per household?
Among other League concerns: the county figure for people per household —2.42 — is too low. If planners projected a number closer to Miami-Dade County’s current level of 2.84, the county could account for another 200,000 people.
Additionally, the League says the county approach doesn’t include seasonal residents. County officials point out, however, that UFs model doesn’t count seasonal residents either.
The league also says rules approved by cities for building schools rely on UFs projections — not the county’s alternative. Mixing the two projections would not be allowed under state law, the League said.
The League’s letter generated spin offs from business and builder organizations, including the influential Economic Council of Palm Beach County, which fought the traffic standards in the 1980s.
That brought a rejoinder from 1000 Friends of Florida, an environmental group that favors the county’s approach.
The old battle lines have been drawn.
joel_engelhardt~pbpost.com