The 12 days of bureaucrats' haze

Hillsborough County's planning and growth management department prides itself as being “the County's full service community development department that conducts planning, zoning, development review, permitting and inspections services.”

And more.

The Jan. 11 edition of the department's e-newsletter includes information about items one might expect in such a department's newsletter.

But one item caught Coffee Talk a little by surprise. Given how much permitting has declined these days, Coffee Talk wasn't too shocked to see the department filling its time writing a planning bureaucrats' version of “The 12 days of Christmas.”

As with the original version, it proceeds through all 12 days before repeating the dozen gifts at the end in reverse order.

It goes like this: “On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, 12 units per acre, 11 traffic studies, 10 parking spaces, 9 time extensions, 8 design exceptions, 7 resubmissions, 6 public hearings, 5 impact fees, 4 plan amendments, 3 zoning changes, 2 site inspections and a building red-tag fee.”