Commissioner Jason Bearden said there’s a lot of talk about “smart growth” among commissioners in Manatee County, but in his opinion, building a high school off Lorraine Road before finishing the recently defunded widening project on Lorraine Road is “dumb growth.”
“We cannot continue to just approve things blindly without a plan because our job is to develop infrastructure around these projects,” Bearden said to his fellow commissioners during the Nov. 4 commission meeting. “When those kids have a head-on collision because we’re not having this discussion, then that’s on you.”
The construction of a high school on the southwest corner of Rangeland Parkway and Post Boulevard was already approved by a prior commission and the Manatee County School Board, so approving the site plan was placed on the meeting’s agenda under “presentations upon request.”…