The Key To Creating Livable Communities – it’s not about traffic planning and latest design trends — education is the key to creating livable communities.

‘You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,’ said Jack Osterholt, now a private consultant. ‘You can make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

Martin hears how to escape pitfalls of county sprawl
A former Broward administrator pinpoints mistakes made there.

By Eve Modzelewski
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/m1a_mcbroward_0709.html

‘You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,’ said Jack Osterholt, now a private consultant. ‘You can make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

Jack Osterholt’s advice on how not to become Broward:
• Worry less about roads and more about schools.
• Find solutions for the whole county, avoiding a piecemeal approach.
• Avoid septic tanks, which can create environmental problems

STUART — How did Broward County become what some consider the poster child for sprawl?

Government leaders planned it that way, a former Broward County administrator explained Thursday.

"We really believed our economic future was tied to development," Jack Osterholt told a group of Martin County residents.

Decades ago, developers bought land for virtually nothing and — eager to rake in property tax revenue — officials approved subdivisions with homes closely arranged on small lots, said Osterholt, Broward administrator from 1991 to 1997.

"Nobody had really run the numbers, done the math," he said.

Broward eventually had too many developments and not enough revenue to provide services.

It has grown from about 610,000 residents in 1970 to about 1.6 million today, Osterholt said.

Hoping to learn from Broward’s mistakes, a committee run by the nonprofit Friends of Martin County asked Osterholt to speak during its meeting at the Blake Library in Stuart.

The Multi-Stakeholder Consensus Committee, which is open to the public, is examining ways to preserve rural land and foster good planning in Martin County.

"We always say we don’t want to be ‘Browardized,’ but I’m not sure we know what that means," Mary Dawson, a former Martin County commissioner who formed Friends of Martin County, said in introducing Osterholt.

In hindsight, it’s easy to criticize the all-out development philosophy, said Osterholt, who was executive director of the South Florida Regional Planning Council from 1986 to 1991. He is now a private consultant.

But the approach was more accepted in past decades, he explained.

"You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube," Osterholt said. "You can make sure it doesn’t happen again."

Osterholt said the future of a community rides on two things: jobs and education. But he pointed out that many communities are more concerned with traffic planning than schools.

"The number of cars in a lane has nothing to do with your quality of life, other than the time that you’re in the car," he said.

Creating "livable communities" that conform to the latest design trends won’t matter if your education system is failing, he said.

As one of the committee members pointed out, most of Broward’s damage was done before 1985, when the state’s Growth Management Act was passed, requiring governments to create detailed guidelines for development.

That act will protect Martin County to a degree, but not completely, Dawson said.

"We’re doomed to a different future if we don’t take action," she said. "It’s not Broward, but it’s not what we want."

The committee, formed in November, so far has been collecting information.

It plans to decide at its next meeting whether it should continue to exist — and if so, whether it should offer to serve the county commission, Dawson said.