Letter opposing DR HORTON RE-ZONE 23-30 at the Celery Fields

To: The Sarasota County Planning Commission

From: Tom Matrullo

Date: 11.13.2024


Planning Board Commissioners:


I oppose the Smith Farm Rezone and ask that the Planning Commission recommend that the Board of County Commissioners deny RZ 23-30. 


The Celery Fields cost taxpayers upwards of $50 million over decades, and it’s now a major Sarasota County amenity that draws residents, schools, teams, and tourists (130,000 of them last year) as well as a multitude of bird species that visit, or rest on their ways to other climes. 


As amenities go, the Celery Fields has been a smashing triple success - as a wildlife preserve, human recreation area, and stormwater management facility. A new, 170-home neighborhood adjacent to this peaceful preserve is a completely incompatible option for three reasons: the amenity itself needs further development, its wildlife will suffer greatly from noise pollution and traffic, and third, the Farm is a low-lying floodplain. 


1.  The Celery Fields has never been given the attention and support a significant public amenity warrants to sustain its growth and appeal. 


  1. It lacks parking near the most popular and prime birding area, which happens to be directly across narrow Raymond Road from the Smith property. Birders resort to parking on the shoulder of the road.

  2. Note the yellow arrow below pointing to the birdwalk and birding area - it’s about 155 feet from the wetlands to the Smith property:




  1. Schools and visiting groups could more fully explore and learn from the Celery Fields if there were facilities where they could rest and have a class in shade, eat their bag lunches, or use a bathroom. 

  2. Audubon has great ideas for creating different habitats that would attract bird species we do not find there now. The Smith property could provide the much needed space for parking, food, education, and diverse bird habitations.


2. If the Smith Farm is given over to 170 homes, the development impacts will be immediate, destructive and ongoing. 


  1. Consider the nuisance impacts of trucking tons of fill to this low-lying area.

  2. Two or more years of home construction would take place yards from the principal bird nesting area -- where birders congregate each morning at the birdwalk on Raymond Road. Whatever DR Horton promises, it cannot pretend it will dig, fill, pave, pour and build in silence. 



3. The Smith Farm lies in an AE flood zone. The Comprehensive Plan discourages increasing densities in a 100-year floodplain.


a. Below, the blue area is the 100-year floodplain. The gray is the 500-year floodplain.



  1. The area’s soil is known as “Venice clay,” which acts like an impervious barrier, preventing water from discharging into the deeper aquifer -- it will run off.



  1. The groundsoils of Smith Farm need to be checked for chemicals -- the surrounding lands have arsenic, toxaphene and other chemicals.

  2. The county is mandated to update its watershed models -- it currently uses outmoded data from 1992. As our recent storms showed, the criteria and data for stormwater controls need to be brought into the 21st century before approving any new densities. 

  3. From the recent hurricanes we have learned that the County cannot reliably assert that new construction in a floodplain like the Smith Farm will not result in serious harm.


The Public is the proud owner of this brilliant public amenity, and it is us -- we the people of Sarasota and its wildlife -- who stand to be profoundly harmed by the construction of an incompatible cluster of private houses that would add light, noise, pool parties, traffic and flooding potential, all of which threaten the value and future opportunity for of our beloved amenity to thrive.


Please include this email in the official record of the Nov. 21, 2024 public hearing on RZ 23-30.


Respectfully,


Tom Matrullo

SCAN: SarasotaCitizenActionNetwork@gmail.com

Citizens for Sarasota

Fresh Start

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