Can We Save Brevard In Time?
Grass Roots Effort to Manage Growth Takes Off in Brevard

By Michael Myjak, Chairman, Save Brevard

(Myjak is a Sr. Scientist with Alion Science and Technology. He is also the Secretary for the Partnership for a Sustainable Future, Inc., and a member of the Brevard Building Construction Advisory Committee.)

Take a good look the next time you're driving around Brevard. Its happening so slowly that I almost missed it... at first. Now I am certain of it -- Joni Mitchell was right -- they are paving over paradise! Now we are losing things far more precious than just the whimsical memories of our youth. We are losing classroom space, driving space, sensitive environmental space and even affordable housing space. Here's why.

The reason is Over-Development: building and growing faster than local governments can keep pace. When over-development occurs, it's usually our infrastructure -- those services we all depend upon -- that suffers neglect, begins to erode and eventually crumbles. This lowers our social net-worth. It's this erosion of our social capital, of our very Quality of Life, that was never intended by the early settlers of Florida, or Brevard, or even the families who move here now to escape their Òconcrete jungles.Ó And yet it's happening right here, right now -- right before our very eyes and without a workable plan for "growth management" to stop it.

So ask yourself, should we really allow our schools to reach 135% of capacity before we begin planning a new school? Common sense would suggest that we shouldn't have one child in three sharing a desk, a book, or even a pencil, while the school district takes another 5 years to build that new school.

Roads and traffic congestion are another example. Wickham Road is over 90% of vehicular capacity. In fact, the Brevard County Commission recently voted to continue a temporary moratorium on letting new permits on Wickham until it can figure out what to do.
The only alternative now is to raise taxes to pay for widening this growth-induced expense. But Wickham isn't the only road in trouble. Road improvements in Brevard are over $417M in the red. Today, it's estimated that when a road is added to the county's MPO maintenance list will take an average of 10-15 years before it receives improvement.

Need more proof? Since 2000, the Water Management District has listed much of Brevard County within its Priority Water Resource Caution Area. This designation means that our water resources are so limited, that unless new water resources are identified and put into production, we will likely see water shortages within the next 5-15 years.

Unfortunately, these obvious, objective indicators --overcrowded schools, overloaded roads, and documented concerns about our future drinking water supplies -- are just foreshadowing the beginning É of our loss of Quality of Life in Brevard. Brevard is no longer a small county. We can't afford 1850s thinking today. There are over a half million residents here and we are growing at the rate of one new resident every 27 minutes. It's imperative that we start thinking about and planning for our future, or it will overrun us.

Concerned citizens throughout the county have formed a grass-roots coalition called Save Brevard and they have developed a rational and common sense approach to growth management. Save Brevard is proposing two new amendments to the Brevard County Charter, which, if approved by you, will help manage growth in Brevard.

First, Save Brevard proposes to temporarily suspend the number of new construction building permits whenever our Quality of Life suffers. When development causes our critical infrastructure to exceed 100 percent capacity, then development can always opt to pay its fair share, or wait until such capacity exists. This is what we call "paying your own way."

Second, Save Brevard advocates giving citizens affected by voluntarily annexation the right to vote. This effectively closes a loophole that promotes urban sprawl, allowing unscrupulous developers to use voluntary annexation as a re-zoning tool. This amendment gives Brevard residents a stronger voice before local governments and in our future.

To include both amendments on the November ballot, Save Brevard needs ~15,000 petitions signed by Brevard registered voters by 30 June 2006. To succeed, Save Brevard needs volunteers to carry petitions to the public, to friends and family, to neighbors and co-workers. This is where we need your help. We can always use a monitory donation. But now we need you and your time to help Save Brevard!

The petitions and full text of both amendments can be found at http://www.savebrevard.us. We meet on the first Tuesday of every month at the Cocoa Library, on Forrest Avenue at 6pm. We welcome you to join our cause. All over-development needs to succeed in Brevard is for people of good conscience to remain silent. In another 10 years, the Brevard you know and love will be gone. We can either plan for the Brevard that we want, or learn to accept the Brevard that we get. (For additional information, send mail to info@SaveBrevard.us)