Remarks at the 1999 Annual Awards Banquet

Thank you for the kind introduction. It’s a pleasure to be here tonight with people who care so much about our neighborhoods and community. I want to thank you personally for your involvement and for being here tonight.Soon after I took office last year, I went to a Florida A&M University event, where I stopped to talk with the two campus police officers directing traffic there. After a moment, one of them looked at me and said, "Oh yeah, I remember. You’re the neighborhood guy."

As I was driving home, I thought to myself – "the neighborhood guy" – I like that.

And so I speak to you tonight as the neighborhood guy – someone who wants to improve our community and economy by following principles of smart growth, high-value-added economic development, and a better quality of life – with strong, vital neighborhoods at the core.

Let me begin by asking you to imagine that aliens have been closely observing the growth of Tallahassee and Leon County for the past four decades. Reporting back to their home planet, they described what they saw and what they believed to be our principles of growth management, based on their observations. Here are those principles.

First, the population of our community is far too small. Our highest priority is to accelerate population growth. All growth is good. Someday, if we do it right, we can be as big as Atlanta. (In fact, I’ve often thought that "Tallahassee" is a Native American word for "Someday-we’ll-be-as-big-as-Atlanta.")

The second principle these aliens discerned is that population growth and growing big are so important that we must subsidize it.

The aliens could see that growth has not paid for itself. The cost of everything from police and fire protection to sewers and roads has exceeded the tax revenues generated by growth. After all, if growth pays for itself, why have our taxes increased so much?

The principle is that we have nothing to learn from communities around the nation which have successfully managed growth. We will instead copy policies of urban sprawl which have failed repeatedly for the past half-century. Or we just let inertia guide us.

The fourth principle derived by the aliens is that we must grab short-term economic gains and ignore our shared long-term economic interests. Protecting our lakes, open spaces, and air quality are luxuries we cannot afford. Urban design that lowers future costs is something only for socialist places like Sweden. And people who believe that our quality of life is our economic future are extremists or tree-huggers.

Fifth, there are too many locally-owned businesses, and not enough absentee owners or local franchisees of national chain businesses. We can’t wait for another Wal-Mart. As the aliens could see, storefront by storefront, Tallahassee has become more faceless and ordinary by the week. In fact, they could see that we’ve welcomed it.

Sixth, there are too many trees in Tallahassee and Leon County and not enough pavement. There is too much clean air and water, too many healthy lakes, and not enough parking lots, roads, and other sources of pollution. We think it’s a good thing to consume open spaces needed for stormwater treatment, flood control, aquifer protection, and good air quality.

Seventh, there are too many old, historic buildings which lend distinction to our community and not enough new, ugly ones. We want to transform Tallahassee and Leon County into Anywhere USA. Ours is the most historic community in Florida, along with Pensacola and St. Augustine, yet the aliens witnessed the systematic destruction of 90 percent of anything built before World War II. We now have to drive to Thomasville to see a city with any significant architectural heritage left.

Eighth, there are not enough single-occupancy vehicles in our city – and too many pedestrians, bicyclists, and bus riders. They should just get out of the way of cars. That’s why we ignore people as we widen roads and "improve" intersections that make it even more hazardous to do anything but drive. Our transportation policy is this: 50 miles an hour or bust!

The ninth principle observed by these aliens is that the purpose of our downtown neighborhoods and commercial core is to facilitate speeding motorists passing through. The aliens could see that we have no downtown. We have instead a centrally-located, drive-through office park. Why else would we seriously entertain street widening projects and new roads designed for motorists to commute to work from homes 15 miles away in 30 minutes?

The tenth and final principle is there are too many people willing to defend their neighborhoods from destructive development – and not enough people willing to sacrifice their quality of life for the economic interests of campaign contributors to local elections.

The aliens can see that we regard the people who create even more urban sprawl as being public-spirited, while the people who oppose more sprawl are being selfish. That’s why we should just ignore these neighborhood people.

Well, obviously, I’ve exaggerated – but not much. These 10 principles are nowhere in writing in the many volumes of our growth management documents. But the evidence that they are being practiced is all around us. It doesn’t take an alien to understand that.

The plain fact is that Tallahassee and Leon County are getting less attractive, less distinctive, and more dysfunctional every day. Our community is not growing; it is metastasizing.

And it begs the question, Why is it that a community that is the best-educated, one of the most affluent and sophisticated in Florida – and the nation – pursues growth policies that are so dumb?

That question may simply be unanswerable. But we certainly can begin to change these policies. Based on years of civic involvement and study – and six months as a county commissioner – I’ve learned a few realities, which I’ll describe briefly.

First and foremost, it is critically important that we get control of transportation planning

The plain fact is that both city and county commissioners – and the public – don’t control transportation planning. And because we don’t, we don’t really manage growth.

When we as the Metropolitan Planing Organization – the MPO – approved the 2000-to-2004 five-year Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP, we had no opportunity to change it. We basically rubber-stamped it.

We were told by our state and local transportation professionals that it was too late to change anything – the plans were too far along. Despite its inconsistency with our comprehensive plan, with federal and state policy statements, and with numerous transportation studies, we approved the five year T-I-P.

Much of what happens here is decided in Florida DOT’s district 3 office in Chipley. Some decisions are made by local technical staffs. Other decisions are made by US DOT staffs in Atlanta and Washington, DC. We local elected officials are about the last to know about the plan – and by then the plans are too far along to change them.

As a result, we have a TIP that feeds the automobile and starves the alternatives. That’s contrary to our Comprehensive Plan, which mandates a balanced system that promotes walking, biking, and riding buses. Yet 92 percent of the $330 million we will spend on surface transportation in the next five years under the TIP will be on roads. Five percent will go for our bus system, 2-1/2 percent will go for "enhancements" like bike paths, and 1/2 percent will go for our Transportation Disadvantaged paratransit program.

As a result, this five-year plan is devoted almost entirely to building and widening roads as if the only way people can move around is by a single-occupant vehicle. There will be some new sidewalks and greenways, but that share of the budget is miniscule compared to plain old road building.

Yet when we on the MPO said a few weeks ago that we wanted to change this plan, we were told that we couldn’t – that it could mean that we’d lose federal funds.

Well, I don’t believe that, and I hope that neighborhood associations and others can all get together, draw up our own plan, and begin building a truly balanced transportation system in Leon County.

The second reality is that we cannot build our way out of traffic problems. The only result will be more sprawl, more pollution, and less mobility.

The solutions many people call common sense – just build more roads – is anything but common sense. Consider this: Ford’s newest sports utility vehicle weighs 7,150 pounds. With a 150-pound person at the wheel, it weighs 7,300 pounds. The physics is simple – 98 percent of the energy that this SUV consumes goes into moving the vehicle, not the person – 98 percent!

Yet this is what conventional wisdom regards as the ideal, common sense way to transport people here. Some "common sense"!

Consider this, as well. In the last 10 years, 46 pedestrians have been killed in Leon County – out of 323 total traffic deaths. When you realize how little walking is done here, that’s an extraordinary number. In fact, the most dangerous transportation activity in Leon County is not driving drunk – but walking sober.

Yet we not only are ignoring this pedestrian safety crisis – we’re making it worse. For example, so-called "intersection improvements" basically add turning lanes, larger turning radii, and wider if not impossible distances for pedestrians to cross – increasing vehicle speeds at the most likely place where a car encounters a pedestrian.

Near where I live in Lafayette Park, our current plan to widen Miccosukee Road includes adding extra lanes and wider turning radii right in front of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and a major crossing for school children. It’s designed only to move more cars, faster – without regard for the safety and mobility of literally hundreds of pedestrians who use that intersection every day.

And when we do think about sidewalks and bike paths, we call them, quote, "enhancements" – something nice to have, but not basic, kind of like draperies. Instead, we should regard them as a basic part of transportation just as necessary as roads.

If we want to see where we’re headed with our roads-only plans, we need look no farther than Atlanta. Today it has a metro area now 110 miles across, the longest average daily commute, practically the worst air quality in the nation, and a cutoff of all federal transportation funds until Atlanta comes up with a plan to solve this mess.

The economic damage is already plain to see. Earlier this year, the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers issued its annual report of commercial real estate investment prospects in the nation’s 18 largest metro areas. Three years ago, Atlanta was first. This year, Atlanta is 16th – ahead of only Detroit and St. Louis.

As the report stated, urban sprawl is killing real estate profits and corporate investments in Atlanta and other mostly Sunbelt cities. The best places to invest were San Francisco, Boston and New York because they were real cities with viable downtowns.

We cannot have a healthy city and county without a real downtown. We can make some public investments, but private capital will have to shoulder the load. We have to build places for people to live downtown. And we have to attract more retail and entertainment businesses.

Fortunately, we have plenty of jobs downtown – well over 30,000 within a mile-and-a-half of College and Monroe Streets. But that’s not enough.

Look at the plans for Southwood. The village center, the clustered houses, offices and schools within walking distance – all are designed to create the kind of urban vitality people want and are willing to pay good money for. We should be working to create the same urban vitality in our real downtown

So what do we do first? And what is the appropriate role for local governments?

One thing we can do is create more cultural attractions downtown. I’ve long favored re-building Centennial Field in Cascade Park where it stood until the 1960s. Adult and youth sporting and other events there on weeknights and weekends would be a significant draw for downtown. Building fountains people can soak their feet in and sculptures kids can play on in parks and on lawns of public building can bring families with children to cool off and enjoy themselves downtown.

Helping to build an IMAX theater and Challenger Center at Kleman Plaza, moving our downtown post office to a better location, supporting our new science and art museum, enhancing the county library, creating a small performance space like the Monticello Opera House – these are a few other things.

With some modest, strategic public investments downtown, we could create a critical mass of activity that brings private investments in retail and housing back downtown.

The fourth and final reality I’ll mention is this: The best way we can reach these and other goals is to stop making it so hard to do the right thing and so easy to do the wrong thing.

For all our fine goals of growth management in the comprehensive plan and other policies, our growth management practices make it easy to create more urban sprawl and a more unbalanced transportation system.

It’s far easier to meet stormwater requirements on a large lot far out than on a downtown location. The same with meeting transportation concurrency. The land is cheaper, plus we’ll widen the roads for you – as we’re doing in Bradfordville. We’ll even pay you to sprawl. Sewer and water service construction is free. Tallahassee is the only city in Florida that rebates these costs to a sprawl developer who voluntarily annexes to the city.

But try to build downtown, and regulations and zoning requirements discourage all but the hardiest developer. In fact, many of the things we know we need to redevelop downtown are illegal in our current codes.

What private developers don’t do for sprawl, governments will. We continue to locate schools at the outer fringes like the new Chiles High School and a planned elementary school at Centerville and Roberts Road – so that almost all of the children will need auto or bus transportation – and almost none can walk or ride bikes. Instead of building community schools, we’re building disconnected commuter campuses.

Also, our state government continues to move agencies into the expanding satellite state office complex where there’s no bus service. The only way to get there is drive a car.