pat bean: no more nature preserves
MariellaCounty administrator Pat Bean has decided we don’t need any more nature preserves.
Oh, did you want to vote on that? Me too. After all, we always have held a vote to decide whether or not to continue our county’s Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program (ELAPP), and the voters have always passed ELAPP by an overwhelming majority.
ELAPP is set to expire in 2011 unless we vote to extend the program again. Citizens have begun raising money to poll county residents to see if they want to put the issue on the ballot this year, or possibly wait until the 2010 election. The Trust for Public Lands has offered to conduct the poll, Tampa Audubon and The Tampa Bay Conservancy have offered to help pay for it, and more offers of help are rolling in.
But even though we have not asked the county to fund the poll, the county administrator is against it. Pat Bean has decided — with no poll and no vote — that we don’t need to continue this wildly popular, successful program.
She says the land-buying program has largely fulfilled its purpose by preserving the most valuable natural areas in the county.
Nonsense! We are nowhere near done protecting this county’s environmentally valuable lands.
I myself have recently nominated large tracts of pristine wildlife habitat, with ecologically sensitive riverine wetlands and tributaries whose protection is critical for healthy rivers and clean water resources. There is plenty of still-pristine land worth protecting, and we also need to protect some less-than-pristine land, in order to make connections between the pristine areas for water flow and wildlife corridors.
Continuing this program’s current budget doesn’t require a tax increase, and the economic climate is opening up a window of opportunity to acquire undeveloped land at bargain prices. Without a local conservation program we would lose the state funding which has so far matched ELAPP to the tune of $75 million.
Publicly, politicians are generally supportive of our hugely popular environmental land-buying program, which is win-win for the environment as well as the landowners who sell their property to the county for fair market value.
So what’s got into Bean? Are her bosses, the county commissioners, eyeing our ELAPP money for their own pet projects? Are they using her, again, to take an unpopular stand for them, so they don’t have to take the heat?
Commissioner Rose Ferlita has assured me that she remains a staunch supporter of ELAPP, and said the county administrator was not speaking for her. Commissioner Mark Sharpe said he’d ask today to agenda this item for public discussion on April 16. So who was Pat Bean speaking for?
Hillsborough county’s Strategic Plan, set on March 7, supports ELAPP with this objective on p.10:
Hillsborough County will pursue the acquisition of environmentally sensitive and significant resources by leveraging ELAPP funding with 40% noncounty funding on an average gross annual basis.
It is not Pat Bean’s place to push an agenda that is contrary to the county’s management strategy, set publicly by our elected officials. Her job is to carry out policy, not set policy. As I’ve said here before,
We don’t elect Pat Bean, and she has no authority to act independently of our elected officials.
I’m asking our county commissioners to support ELAPP, now and into the future, (and I’m thanking Ferlita and Sharpe for their support). Here’s some material that might help you compose your own letter of support: my letter, some bulleted points prepared by the Tampa Bay Conservancy which refute Bean’s position, and some facts & figures on the economic value of ELAPP put together by Wildlife Fellowship, Inc.
I’m also asking our commissioners to rein Bean in. I hope you will, too. The voters should decide whether to continue our land preservation program, not Queen Bean.
Tags: County-Commission, environment
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April 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
If it isn’t Bean going off the rails on her own, I suspect Brian Blair or Kevin White. Both of them hate anything that doesn’t let the bulldozers rumble and the concrete pour, and both of them are corrupt enough and clueless enough to think they can get away with this.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
The ELAPP program was voted on by the TAXPAYERS of Hillsborough County and using the money for anything else would be a clear violation of the public trust. Although it doesn’t appear that the public trust is anything that the County Administrator is too concerned about these days. The County Administrator DOES NOT…. I repeat DOES NOT…. control the County Commissioners or at least I don’t seem to recall reading this in the county charter. I would think that Ms. Bean should be more concerned in addressing some of the recent shameful displays of unethical behavior by several county employees (Elections Supervisor, Building Department inspectors, Fire Marshal, etc.) than using ELAPP as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from all of these goings on. ELAPP will be preserved regardless of Ms. Bean’s lame attempt to wrestle it away from the taxpayers in this county.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
Bean strikes again……..adding to her recent list of accomplishments including misleading our delegation regarding local bill#1 which has turned into HB #723, losing 2+million dollars in affordable housing, and oh yeah don’t forget her investigation on county staff that lied to citizens about a BYPASS (the staff member is caught on DVD and yet she found no wrong-doing!)
I asked our Commissioners how much ELAPP land can $200,000+ buy in today’s market
and suggested we re-appropriate Ms. Bean’s salary on something worth spending it on!
Maybe Commissioner Sharpe should hold a workshop to talk about her job description and put her under a microscope publicly like he is doing to the MPO director!
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 am
Bean is out of control. Still. I guess ELAPP funding does not fit into her cheerleading mantra “Hillsborough is the best county in the USA! rah rah”…oh yeah, Pat. Paved over with cracker box subdivisions is how you would like to see it. ok. ok. Throw in a few nature preserves so the grandkids can see FL how it used to be..but according to Queen Bean we’ve got enough now! no need to overdo it on the nature thingy, enough already.
Queen Bean needs to remember that she is not an elected official who influences policy. And shut the heck up. Especially about our precious ELAPP program.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Dear County Commission:
I recently read the March 31 Tampa Tribune article titled “Poll On Land Conservation Program Put On Hold”.
I am a local practicing architect who lives in Temple Terrace and I am flabbergasted at the backwardness of County Administrator Pat Bean’s remarks in the article. She is at best uninformed, at worse she’s a BOCC pawn. Obviously, Ms. Bean is acting on directive from at least some of the County Commission, if not, then she should be forced to resign immediately.
Not continuing with ELAPP, which citizens throughout the county will tell you is one of the smartest programs the county has ever embarked on, is incredibly myopic and goes against the direction of groups like 1000 friends of Florida and others.
ELAPP is needed. I know, as I have been nominating properties for ELAPP acquisition every year for the last six years. I can tell you that it is hard to find undeveloped property to nominate in the county that some developer does not already have their eye on, and since the land development industry (and unfortunately largely not “good” development) is so obscenely powerful in our county, not one of the properties I have nominated as ever made it to acquisition (though some got close). And while it is probably naïve, as Bean suggests, to only consider land for ELAPP that has not seen the hand of man in the last 178 years, there is plenty of land that has beautiful second or third growth forests on it that should well be acquired by ELAPP, and now is the time to do it.
As an architect I don’t feel we should build on every vacant parcel, having open and unaltered greenspace throughout the county adds to our quality of life, the quality of our built environment, and improves the diversity and strength of the natural environment and old Florida landscape that we love—that’s why many of us live here.
I am tired of the rest of the state viewing Hillsborough County has the backwater of the State, please insure that ELAPP is continued and that our county can continue its slow crawl towards a brighter future, and a new millennium.
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Once again I feel so “over-represented” by our un-elected representative.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
In a real estate market like this, the fact that government WANTS to buy land of mine no one else will is a blessing…what is she thinking?
April 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
In an effort to provide a little balance to this topic: Whenever the county buys a piece of land, it falls off the tax rolls forever. This means that the county would be spending money in tight times that would DECREASE revenues. (Especially those pristine wetlands that some call “water front.”)
Not a defense, not a reason. Just saying it could have been written in such a way that the exact same quote portrayed her as “working hard to make every cent count.”
Just my 2¢ (taxable.)
April 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
No wait. We were wrong! I just saw the MPO meeting from 4/01 on Ch. 22 and Pat Bean can do anything she wants! If she wants an agenda entered at the last moment before a meeting, she is free to do that…per her own lips.
Now doesn’t that mean that a nefarious “boss” of hers on the BOCC could have her do dirty work he is prohibited by rules from doing himself? Sure looks like it happened Tuesday, and again, the citizens are the losers. This is absolute power for The Dark Side, all balled up in our own little Bean bag. Nice gig for both her and The Dark Side on BOCC. This needs really close scrutiny. …..Come November’s elections changes must be wrought.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Queen Bean, the lean mean libertine machine!! Now she’s creating her own sovereign rules from her throne, as evidenced by Tuesday’s MPO meeting, and making sweeping judgments for the “good of our county” without consulting..that’s right, the citizens of …THE COUNTY!
Climb down Pat, and shut up. You’ve been at this much too long. Do something with her, BOCC!! It’s an election year!!
April 5th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
“Hillsborough Needs Administrator To Push Hard For ELAPP”
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/apr/05/na-hillsborough-needs-administrator-to-push-hard-f/