BS Ranch Case May Be Wakeup Call For Polk

I watched a good portion of Thursday’s code enforcement hearing on BS Ranch & Farm with great interest.

The special magistrate properly deferred a decision until he has time to go over his notes from the daylong hearing and to receive brief summaries from Assistant County Attorney Randy Mink and from Julie Ball, the lawyer representing BS Ranch.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Polk County’s review process, in a way, created this mess.

The fact that the company began operations to do something that had caused problems in other parts of Polk County without securing proper county zoning permits or state environmental permits should have given someone in Bartow pause.

But nooooo!

County staffers shepherded the project through the process with fanboy enthusiasm and deference.

Then after the final public hearing and assurances by county staff that they have an operational green light, the plant cranked up and soon county officials were fielding complaints from area residents and business owners about offensive odors that the business operators had assured county officials would never happen and the county staffers believed them so much they didn’t put any fallback conditions in the permit. Company officials denied responsilibity.

Now Polk County is trying to shut down BS Ranch over the odor problems, arguing the company hasn’t completed its required permit review and is violating its permit and has never been in full compliance for years while its permit worked its way through the system.

BS Ranch’s lawyer asked an interesting question during the code enforcement hearing.

If the lack of a completed permit was the problem, why didn’t Polk County tell the company to shut down long before this?

John Bohde, Polk’s development director, said they were trying to work with them, but the County Commission finally had had enough of both the odor complaints and BS Ranch consultants’ argumentative responses to the complaints.

That attitude continued during Thursday’s hearing when BS Ranch’s lawyer and engineer unbelievably argued they didn’t believe the company was required to complete the technical staff review of its permit that typically follows public hearing votes for approval.

This has been a standard requirement for years, but BS Ranch’s bs response was that that requirement was not specifically listed in some case documents so it didn’t apply.

Pending the outcome of the code special magistrate’s review and pending legal proceedings, let me add a couple of suggestions.

Later this year the County Commission will be working with staff on the biennial review of the county’s land development code.

In the past this has been a forum for the development community to present its grievances about how their experience with development review isn’t perfect.

Maybe this could be a golden opportunity to close loopholes that create more fiascoes like BS Ranch.

Many years ago Robert Reich wrote an essay titled How Nitpicking Regulations Get That Way.

He concluded that regulations often begin as general and non-threatening, but become complicated because people try to game the system to evade the original regulation’s intent.

I still have a copy. It would be instructional for any county official to read and consider.

Posted in Group Conservation Issues.