Kafi Benz - Planning

Planning

Interest in regional and local planning led Benz to participate in community planning projects, as well as the designs for the campuses of both New College and the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. She became a director of a large and active neighborhood association and assumed a leadership role in the community and many organizations related to community issues.

She was appointed as a local government official to represent Sarasota County while serving on the federally mandated Sarasota-Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization Citizen Advisory Committee, where she has served for many years, including as its chair, a member of its executive committee, and its delegate to the regional committee of the chairs of all local MPOs within western central Florida, encompassing eight counties, the Chairs Coordinating Committee.

The establishment of MPOs throughout the nation as an aspect of local government in the United States was mandated by congressional legislation. Depending upon the area, the governance of an MPO may be planning for a single community, county-wide, multiple or bi-county-wide, or regional. The area of an MPO may cross other established jurisdictional lines of government. By federal law, any urbanized area with a population exceeding 50,000 is required to form an MPO to guide transportation planning in the metropolitan area. MPOs are funded by the federal government in conjunction with additional funds contributed by the state and local governments of the regions in which they are formed. The need for larger regional transportation planning co-operation has driven the establishment of additional agencies within the MPO structure, such as the Chairs Coordinating Committee, with much larger focus to draw the officials from the MPO organizations in many regions into the national effort to integrate transportation planning more effectively.

After studying the work of the road engineering expert, Michael Wallwork, in the late 1980s she initiated the examination of a new design for road intersections, the modern roundabout, by the MPO and both county and city governments and has continued to advocate its application for the elimination of unnecessary deaths and serious injuries at conventional intersections, improving the environmental and beautification aspects of community designs, and while counter intuitively, improving congestion issues by carrying larger volumes of traffic than the conventional designs.

Decades later, the federal highway standards now support the use of true modern roundabouts and some states have begun requiring road planners to defend any proposal lacking this innovative intersection design. Insurance companies now advocate it as well, to reduce fatalities and injuries, and to prevent extensive damage to automobiles at intersection crashes.