St. Johns Commissioners Briefed on Comp Plan Update

St. Johns County commissioners were briefed earlier this month on the status of the comprehensive plan update underway and had some pointed comments about growth and growth projections.

“These are the priorities, the thoughts, the ideas that are going to form that community strategy,” said Chris Dougherty, a consultant with Inspire Placemaking Collective, working with county staff on the update. “It’s really important that we take a step back and listen to the community.”

Residents played an active role in providing input on the comp plan attending five listening sessions, five focus group meetings, six workshops and four open house sessions during the process. More than 1,200 residents responded to a survey on a website dedicated to the comprehensive planning process, offering more than 350 ideas.

The community vision component of the process contains several initiatives, including efforts to conserve and protect natural environment and wildlife habitats, ensuring residents of all income levels have affordable housing options, developing a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly transportation system, protecting agricultural lands by directing growth to areas already served by infrastructure, protecting and growing the county’s water supply system, maintaining and improving roadways, expanding and enhancing parks and recreation, protecting historic resources and improving the public school system.

On the issue of parks and recreation facilities, Commissioner Ann Taylor said there are shortfalls.

“We have a huge shortage of field space,” she said. “The parks we’re building now we needed 10 years ago. We’re already at a huge deficit.”

Commission Chair Krista Joseph said she had concerns about overall growth in the county and its impact on services and quality of life for residents.

“I was put here to protect our county and stop the growth and this is promoting the growth,” she said. “We were all elected to slow the growth.”

Commissioner Clay Murphy echoed Joseph’s concerns, saying he wanted the county to be “really smart” about growth going forward.

“Are we sticking our head in the sand about projected growth?” he asked. “Is there a happy medium to address the need for affordable housing and some of the other challenges we have that is not going to spread into places in this county that it doesn’t need to go?”

Commissioner Sarah Arnold said the county could not ignore the challenges of growth and development.

“Just stopping and sticking our head in the sand is not going to fix the problem that we have,” she said. “I think realistically we do have to look at a development boundary.”

Joseph said the county can’t really predict what future growth will be like and setting a boundary could backfire.

“I feel like what we’re going to be doing is showing people where we’re going to accept growth and they’re going to come in real quick,” she said.