Polk County News | Photos | Breaking News

Lake Wales Commission Unanimously Backs County In CSX Debate

Posted May 16, 2007 by Billy Townsend

Updated May 16, 2007 at 04:35 PM

The Lake Wales City Commission Tuesday night unanimously added to the growing political pressure for a full-scale regional review of the entire 1,250-acre CSX rail hub and distribution center proposal.

I wasn’t able to attend the meeting, but City Manager Tony Otte confirmed the vote for me in a phone message. I’m not sure if there was much discussion.

This leads nicely into a discussion I had earlier this week with Jon Peck, a spokesman with the state’s Department of Community Affairs. After telling me that the DCA secretary Thomas Pelham would not comment, he chastised me a bit for - as he saw it - reporting that DCA has discretion in the matter. He says it does not. If CSX says the project is less than 320 acres and there’s no CSX ownership of the remainder of the property, DCA has no capability to force a DRI, Peck says.

And what if CSX is wrong about the size of the property? What if recent land purchases have pushed the first phase over the 320-acre threshold, as some have suggested? If I understand Peck correctly, a challenge to the assertions CSX makes in its clearance letter requests will have to come from some government or other plaintiff. DCA isn’t going to check out CSX’s facts or how it interprets those facts. The obvious government to do that would be Winter Haven, but the city seems bent on avoiding a DRI for the first phase. Somebody is going to have to file some kind of formal challenge if they want to get a DRI, as I understand it.

If there are any land use lawyers out there, I’d welcome an explanation of how that might happen.

I also asked Peck one of my unanswered David Greene questions. Does the CSX hub have regional impacts?

His response was that it doesn’t have regional impacts that DCA can do anything about under the law. He then added: “I know that’s not exactly an answer to your question.” I didn’t get a yes or no answer out of County Manager Mike Herr either, when I asked him that question several weeks ago. And of course, I’ve gotten no answer at all from Winter Manager David Greene.