Bdar, I am not sure you understood my post. I'll try taking just a sentence or two from each of your paragraphs and try again.
“I am also aware that those of us south of the bay pay most of the North County Fire District too. “
Yes, that is the case. However, if we incorporate we will still be paying county taxes and the county will still probably use some of those taxes to fund north county fire services. I don't have a problem with that. We are after all part of the county and the fact is the north does not generate enough taxes by itself to fund the services they need. I would not want to be the one to tell the north, sorry, but you can't have fire protection unless you do what south walton did and create a special district and fund it with a special tax. Let the county do that, and in fact I believe they are moving in that direction.
“Or maybe it is time that we try something different. Something that allows us to have a say in our own destiny. Something that might give us a say in how our tax dollars are spent. Something that might shine a light on and restrict the taxation and redistribution that goes on.“
There is a philosophical and political issue here and I think it is at the heart of the incorporation idea, and it relates to your complaint about north county fire services. How much of the county taxes collected in south walton should be spent in south walton, and how much should go to fund services in the north which would, without south walton tax dollars, be underfunded? I am still waiting for an incorporation proponent to spell out for me in concrete legal terms how incorporation would change the current allocation?
I personally have no issue with my south walton tax dollars being spent for WCSO, the County Clerk, the Tax Appraiser, Supervisor of Elections, Health Dept., etc. And although they are not county entities, I have no issues with the infrastructures provided by Regional Utilities and Chelco. They have kept up. I'm leaving the schools out of this, that is a whole other issue. So really, it seems to me it comes down mostly to the Planning Dept and Code Enforcement and traffic matters and issues with the TDC.
“No one wants to build their dream home just to find that the neighbor got a variance to build a hog farm or a concrete plant next door. “
I don't see another concrete plant in south walton, nor a hog farm. The land has simply become too valuable. North Walton ought to maybe think a bit about that though.
I think you have an overly optimistic faith in a new city's ability to institute modern planning and zoning. I was here when the Trust process took place and the Comp Plan was adopted. The whole idea was extremely idealistic, and the flawed result was the result of, among other things, political dealings and vested interests involving themselves in the process with other agendas. It became even more flawed as attempts to 'fix it' were contaminated by the same old politics. I was also a part of the first neighborhood plan, the Inlet Beach plan, in which residents used a tool that still exists in the current plan to create a neighborhood overlay with different standards. It was a good first attempt but it has its flaws too, and was subject to the same problems of competing agendas for a future vision. I am not saying it cannot be done, but I certainly do not think it will be cheap or easy or quick. It will be messy and contentious, all the more so because there is much less left to develop and land values are so high. You cannot just brush off the vested interests and assume everyone will be on the same page and have the same vision.
In the very first post in this thread, Lake View Too said:
“I was talking with a guy who moved here from Park City, Utah. What he said they did and what we should do is, to paraphrase, implement"planning overlays". I don't pretend to understand the concept completely, or how to implement them, either. They are basically a set of zoning ordinances specifically tailored to different needs in different areas.
Also, both Grayton Beach and Point Washington, (I think) have implemented "neighborhood plans". Again, I don't even play a planning department engineer on TV, but these seem like better remedies than trying to incorporate a quarter of a county. “
Traffic:
“Nor is there a need to hire an expensive engineering consultant to provide a solution to increase the capacity of 30A through Seagrove.The apparent finding of the state when labeling it as constrained road, would indicate that no such remedy exists”
I don't believe there are no remedies. I have never proposed buying right of ways or building bridges or any of those very expensive things. In other posts here and on fb I have pointed out that one of the main traffic problems has been created by the 30a and 395 intersection and that two solutions were on the table years ago but have gone nowhere. I have also complained repeatedly that the county has allowed private property owners adjacent to 30a to obstruct the ROW with all sorts of immovable objects. Just the other day I saw two new date palms planted in what I am pretty sure is ROW. If you are worried about fire safety a good first start would be for the county to take back all of the 30a ROW and remove all objects that currently can impede an emergency vehicle. Please explain to me how a city would acquire the jurisdiction to make these or other possible solutions a reality? I suggested a traffic engineer and a plan to take to the county because I believe that is what we need to do. I'm not willing to throw up my hands and say “no such remedy exists.”
Of course the density has greatly contributed to traffic, and that again goes back to planning and zoning. If you expect planning and zoningto be a help here, it would have to lower density on the remaining undeveloped parcels, and as I have said, I think that will be messy and lengthy.
As far as Code Enforcement and the TDC, someone needs to tell me how a city could fix those things. Spell out for me how a city would acquire jurisdiction and what it could legally do to make changes in those entities.