Thank you, Leon County Commissioner Brian Welch, for your April 2 opinion column (“In Leon County, we grow responsibly”). It was well-written, informative, and timely.
Measured and well-planned growth is an enormously complex issue and goes way beyond what I can sensibly speak to. However, I find that in general, I harbor an anti-growth attitude. When I question what gives rise to this attitude, the answer is that our growth lacks a consideration of secondary consequences.
The secondary consequences of immediate concern to me are the precipitous decline in the insect population and the degradation of our night sky. I am tremendously frustrated by these problems because they result largely from poor public policy, not growth, per se.
I expect developers and city planners to be out in front of these types of issues, but they are not. These issues seem to get no attention from the local policy sphere, and we are all living in a more impoverished environment because of it. Allow me to illustrate using my own neighborhood.
Ginkgos line both sides of both Buck Run Circle and Rogers Lane.
I have been a resident of the beautiful and desirable Ox Bottom Manor for over 20 years. The most recently developed part of the neighborhood has streets lined with ginkgo trees. Ginkgos are beautiful trees, but they are not native to Tallahassee and do little to nothing to support native insect populations. Native insects are pollinators for our plants and flowers and critical to the food chain.
Now consider all the non-native flora substitutions that take place at every development, and you should see that we have a significant, self-inflicted wound.
It does not seem difficult, controversial, or costly to insist, as a matter of public policy, that development hold to a minimum set of requirements for native flora. And public policy has a trickle-down effect of educating and encouraging residents to change their behavior too. I encourage interested readers, and especially city planners, to pick up a book like “Nature’s Best Hope” by Douglas W. Tallamy.
Various colored light bombs show the way on Thornberg Drive.
Ox Bottom Manor is a well-lit neighborhood. But if you drive through it when the sun is down, you will notice the light comes from unshielded streetlights, known as “light bombs.”
The light is scattered in all directions, including directly into your eyes. This is not only wasteful, it pollutes the night sky, and creates a harsh and uninviting scene. It can also be argued that it is not optimal for security or ambulation.
You will also notice that the color of the light from these light bombs is not uniform. They vary from harsh white to yellow, exacerbating the incongruity of the lights with the night. It is well-known that all this light has a deleterious impact on nocturnal fauna, which we should minimize by using a correlated color temperature of 2700K or less.
Again, it doesn’t seem controversial to require all development to comply with guidelines promulgated by DarkSky International. Can the city planners please investigate?
Here’s hoping my neighbors see this and replace their 5000K light bombs with shielded fixtures using 2700K bulbs.
Doug Wussler
Doug Wussler has lived in Ox Bottom Manor since 2001 and retired last August after a 29-year career in the information technology field.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Be aware: Local growth management policies have blind spots | Opinion
