Want to avoid urban sprawl? Use tax dollars to buy land

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Dear Editor:

Regarding your recent lead headline, “Future of Palm Coast? Look West,” might I suggest that when it comes to the future of Palm Coast — unless action is taken — it’s “Look South,” as in South Florida, or southwest, as in Greater Orlando.

If you’re a fan of bulldozing greenery, draining wetlands, condo towers, concrete, and ever-longer waits in traffic congestion, then you have much to look forward to.

But if you’re a fan of tree cover and green space, the blue ocean rather than an ocean of orange traffic cones, quality of life over quantity of people, you have plenty to worry about.

Growth is inevitable and necessary. But it doesn’t have to be sprawling, out of control growth that creates ugly landscapes.

It’s hard to be heard over the clang of developers’ donations into the collection buckets of our elected officials, but some of those same City Council members and county commissioners should tap some of that money to charter a bus to South Florida or Orlando to see what happens when developers — whose goal is to develop profits in the short term and not to build livable, sensible communities for the long-term — drive the decision-making.

Get ready, Palm Coast and Flagler County, for six-lanes-wide (or wider) east-west roads that are all generic, banal carbon copy landscapes of fast food joints, CVSs, gas stations and Publix shopping plazas. What road are you on? It doesn’t matter, they’re all the same.

Each week the Palm Coast Observer runs updates on the latest subdivision and developments being built. Three-hundred homes here, 400 townhomes there, 500 apartments where once 500 trees stood. Keep in mind each time you see such reports in the Observer those home units typically represent 1.5 cars each. Think about that the next time you find yourself backed up in the increasingly long line of cars attempting to cross the Hammock Dunes bridge or when you watch a traffic light on Palm Coast Parkway cycle through two times before you can finally move ahead. A spot at the beach or in a park? Best if you get there the night before.

The great (and sad) irony, of course, is that so many people are moving here (and across Florida) because they see a better quality of life, yet the very act of seeking out that better life contributes to destroying it.

Just to the west of Flagler County lies Alachua County, where voters have approved a small increase in their property taxes in order to buy green space before it is gone. It has been a tremendous success.

No one likes a new tax, of course, and politicians can’t get away from the suggestion fast enough (which is going to be a problem, given how much traffic they will have to sit in). But the other choice is to be taxed by a much poorer quality of life.

All the current and planned development is a bit like a puzzle in which individual developers all hold one piece and can’t see (and don’t care about) the final picture they are creating. But we can and do, and the future of Palm Coast is to the south and southwest.

There’s still time to avoid it.

Frank J. Diekmann

Palm Coast