Neighbors pitch Florida bill to protect the rural character of North Venice.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: December 18, 2024
Host: Nancy Edmondson is the offspring of one of Sarasota County’s long-standing farming families. Last year, the county bought her family’s Nokomis homestead, and 32 acres of agricultural land surrounding it, for historic preservation. But she wants more done to protect rural Sarasota. She is now the director of a group called North Venice Farms Association. Our news team reports.
Johannes Werner: On Monday, a group called the North Venice Farms Association presented area state legislators with a ready-made bill that tries to protect the rural character of an area northeast of Venice. The 1,200 acres nestled between I 75 and Myakka River are about to be surrounded by suburban sprawl, and they are a prime target for development themselves. The North Venice area includes 244 acres of small farms, 786 acres of single family-zoned land – including 264 single-family homes – and 173 acres of county parks and preserves. The idea is to preserve existing land use patterns. Here’s how Linda Masella pitched the Venice Heritage Conservation District Act on behalf of the group to the legislators.
Masella, talking to McFarland and fellow legislators during the annual Sarasota legislative meeting on Monday. Photo: Werner
Linda Masella: This initiative’s goal is to uphold and ensure the continuity of our community’s long-standing agricultural heritage and ecological integrity. Why is this conservation district so vital? It’s the only region in Venice where you’ll find the harmony of equestrian activities, livestock raising, and small farming operations coexisting with family homesteads. These lands provide critical nesting and migratory environments for wildlife, offering compatible habitats that simply don’t exist anywhere else. Without such a bill, we may lose forever this irreplaceable mosaic of rural life, a way of life that once lost to development, can never be replaced. Multiple recent proposals have highlighted the urgent need to better protect our existing landscape, our established infrastructure, and the environmental character we’ve worked so hard to preserve. These challenges motivated us to pursue a local bill as a thoughtful, long-term solution.
The North Venice Farms Association area. Courtesy NVFA
JW: She argued that the bill comes at no cost to the state. Rather, it would relieve the state and county of future financial burdens triggered by new development.
LM: This conservation district would provide a clear, legally sound framework that helps protect county resources and allows officials to focus infrastructure investments where they make the most sense for the taxpayers.
JW: Masella brought up flooding from Hurricane Debby this year, and how this experience highlights the need to minimize new construction in the flood plain.
LM: The establishment of this district would ensure preservation of existing land-use patterns, with particular emphasis on maintaining lower densities in flood-prone areas. This approach is critical for flood mitigation and natural water management.
JW: This would not set a precedent. Sarasota County created similar conservation districts for Casey Key and Manasota Key, she said.
Representatives James Buchanan and Danny Nix and Senator Joe Gruters listened politely, nodded and smiled. Chair Fiona McFarland expressed her sympathy, but argued there would be too much state preemption if the legislature were to pick up the issue now, before Sarasota County has discussed it.
North Venice. Photo courtesy NVFA
Fiona McFarland: You truly are a grassroots citizen, neighbor-led effort … You know, we serve at the state level, obviously, and there’s a healthy tension between home rule and preemption. I’ve discussed this with some of your members before, and though it’s true, we, we’ve all voted in support of a bill that does [take] local authority away, we do it only when it’s critically necessary. And I think for this issue, we’re not yet convinced that it’s critically necessary. And I understand from several of .. the other association members that you’ve started talks with the county, and I think we want to see those conversations to ensue before we consider running this as a local bill. I really appreciate you presenting this. You’ve written a bill. The bill is out there now. There’s something for us all to react to, and I know that we will have discussions going forward.
JW: We were unable to reach Masella or Edmondson for clarifications before deadline.
Could these conservation districts be a pattern for other rural areas in Sarasota County? Becky Ayech, a community activist in Old Miakka – a rural area in the northern portion of Sarasota County threatened by suburban development – is skeptical. She says that elements of the 2050 Plan, which became part of the county’s comprehensive plan two decades ago, have made it possible to increase density for new development in that area.
Becky Ayech: You know, everything sounds really good, and you know the expression the devil is in the details. So for example, if this overlay would continue to allow hamlets and the “Village Transitional Zone”, it does nothing for us. It would do nothing for us, because those have been identified as overlays that landowners can petition for in the big picture. That’s what I thought the comprehensive land use plan did, and that’s what I thought the future land use map did, and up until 2050, that is what they did. So if it said rural on the map, you were rural, and if it said semi-rural, you were semi-rural. So that is not a new thing.
Johannes Werner: For Old Miakka, preserving existing land-use patterns is not possible anymore.
BA: So while I wish that it would work in Old Miakka – again – as long as they have that Hamlet overlay, and they have that village overlay, and they have that village transitional zone overlay, I don’t see how it could protect us, because the county, even though those overlays have to go through the rezone process, they’re there, and unless we can eradicate them, then an overlay saying, ‘Let’s protect what is existing there’ could potentially mean that we would then be protecting the village transitional zone, the village zone and the hamlet zone. So if we could write it in such a way that those would not be protected and not be a given, then it could work for us. But if those have to be included, then, no, it isn’t going to work for us, because the ship has left the dock.
This has been Johannes Werner reporting for WSLR News.
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