Pasco County meeting record

Every appearance1 of 1 are in a recording

TranscriptWhat was said at each appearance is below it. Machine transcription, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 99% of 112 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.

1Apr 4, 2023
Board of County CommissionersR41Regular businessApproved
Approved minutes
Approved to change the start date to July 1st if everything came back appropriate to change it.
Open this item →
35m
MarianoChair
Mike, are we ready for our R41 Pasco 2050? Yes, sir. Okay.
OakleyVice Chair
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Hey
MarianoChair
Terry.
OakleyVice Chair
Pull that mic to
OakleyVice Chair
you, Terry. Pull that mic. The mic in front of you. It's not picking up your voice too much.
OakleyVice Chair
Can you hear me now? Good morning. Can we
OakleyVice Chair
turn now?
OakleyVice Chair
Uh Nicarius Pitos, Planning and Development Department. Um I'd like to uh introduce this morning the our project uh manager for the comprehensive plan update, Ms. Valerie Brookins. She's working on the comprehensive plan update. Uh our comprehensive plan, as you know, is uh out to the year twenty twenty five and we've been working for the last Two years on the update. The comprehensive plan is a long-range plan that establishes a framework and the polic goals, objectives, and policies that guide decision
making for things like future land use, transportation walkability, housing, natural resources, hazard mitigation, public services and facilities, economic development, and so on and so forth. This is a multi-year effort, and uh Ms. Brookins will introduce the consultants and uh outline the year three goals for this update. With that I'll turn it over to Ms. Brookens.
Valerie Brookins
Thank you, Terry. Yeah, Valerie Brookens. I am a principal planner in long-range planning and managing this project. Um so one of the real basis of a comp plan is it wants it it should be community driven. So that is one of the major aspects of this. And this year we'll focus on creating a unified vision. We're building off from Information we've already learned and heard, but we're gonna dive in a little deeper, and so there will be a variety of different activities
where people can get involved, and I will let our consultant share a little more. But I'd like to introduce you to Chris Dougherty, he's project manager and working on this project with Inspire. And Pat is also in the audience as part. project trees here. Thank you.
Chris Dougherty
Excellent. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Thank you for having us this morning. Today we're going to give you a brief update on where we're at with year three, and as Valerie and Terry mentioned, how folks can get involved during uh the visioning process for the comprehensive plan. So our agenda,
you know the project manager from uh the county, of course, and and Terry working closely with them. Um I do have Pat Taieski with me, and we'll go through that quickly on the on the slide presentation. We'll talk about why it's important, why we need to update the plan. give you an idea of what the schedule will look like throughout the course of this year. How we're going to engage the public, so um how folks can be involved, how the commission can be involved. And
then how this aligns with the strategic planning effort that's going on as well.
Madam Clerk
Pardon me, before you continue, can you state your name for the record?
Chris Dougherty
Sure. Chris Daugherty with Inspire Placemaking Collective out of Orlando. And I am a principal planner but the uh project manager for this project. And as we mentioned, um we are working closely with the long range planning team here at the county, particularly Valerie Valerie, Jeff, Terry, Um Pat Taieski with my team is a also a principal planner. She is uh working closely with me on um the day-to-day
and then um uh Eric. uh Nick. You'll see these folks as we begin to um go into the public engagement portion, so you'll start to see a lot more faces from our team. Um So what is your comprehensive plan? Again, it's it's the long-range plan that helps you and guides you in making uh decisions, whether it be from a uh future land use standpoint. It
also helps guide landowners and property owners to help them understand what they can do with their property. If you see the picture there to the left, that comprehensive plan uh cover Shows that the the basis of this plan was established in October of 2000. So there has been some updates. Uh we did update in 2006. That was part of the evaluation and appraisal process. So since then, we really haven't
done any real significant changes to the comprehensive plan, no real visioning. So essentially the basis of your plan today is rooted in 2000. And we know since then we've had significant growth. In fact, Pasco County being one of the fastest growing counties here in the state. So a lot of things have changed. Since two thousand. So We need to update the plan one to make sure we're addressing the community's
desires. That's what that's where the visioning comes into place. 'Cause right now, again, we are uh working off of a twenty year old plan uh that isn't reflective of uh the desires of the community today. We need to look at the data and analysis. Again, that hasn't been updated, so we need to look at the trends, the capacities. Let's re-evaluate your level of service standards. So as we were we talked about water this
morning, what are those level of service? How many gallons per day are we planning for for each residential unit and so forth and so forth? So we'll be looking at that in terms of the existing population and what we're projecting out into the future. And of course there are requirements based on statute that we need to address as well.
What's in your comprehensive plan today? I'm not gonna list them all. Uh We have a number of chapters that uh the comprehensive plan touches on. uh most of which are required. The underlined chapters or elements are required by statute. The other elements are optional elements, so we don't have to include those in the plan. uh particularly public schools, administration, economic development, connected city. Uh those
are items that We don't have to do, but the county felt those were important issues, so we included those uh on top of the uh requirements. Now as we go through this process, the visioning process, we're gonna look at each one of these elements and understand what it is that the community wants to to show in each one of those elements and start to come up with ideas as Thoughts for what Pasco County should look like in the future. And
again, this is going to be coming through that visioning process. So as I mentioned, year three is going to focus on visioning. So this is the public engagement portion of the planning process. Very important process here. The next year, so year four, we'll be drafting the plan. We have to go through a lengthy data analysis portion, updating all the data, updating again the projections, the capacities for
different facilities. And then year five, we'll be looking at adopting and sharing the plan with the rest of the county.
The schedule for year three, we've already kicked this off. We've been working with uh county staff and uh collecting a lot of data. We've coordinated with different uh departments. We had a coordination day where we met with multiple department representatives to discuss what was what they're seeing, what's going on in the county today, and what they've experienced here recently. And then of course today we're we're presenting
here the the update of year three. We'll move quickly into stakeholder engagement. We've already started a little little bit of that already, but you'll be part of that stakeholder group. We'll be meeting with you individually to discuss your vision for the county. And then we'll be uh moving into public workshops. And so the public workshops are really, really important because we're going to be out in different parts of the county. We have six workshops total that we're scheduled
to do. Um and then the focus groups, another very important part of this process, will start to learn more about specific issues. like housing affordability, for example, that's one of the issues we found uh during the coordination the County Coordination Day was a a particularly uh a high priority for this board. uh we'll bring in a group of experts on the housing affordability issue and we're gonna discuss that topic.
So that's what we're we're going to do shortly after, in between those workshops. We'll come back, we'll have a commission workshop, and then we'll establish the vision. This is all looking like we're going to finish up in the September-October time frame.
So how can we get involved? We have a number of uh activities that we're we're scheduled to do. So as I mentioned we have the six workshops. We're interviewing folks throughout the process. We'll have those focus groups, a number of those focus groups again identifying those specific topic areas and then events. This is another cool way to meet folks where they're at. So we've already uh we're already here for employees Appreciation
day. We're going to show up at these different pop-up events throughout the course of the year just to inform folks on the process and how they can be involved. We also have a project website and I'll get into that in just a moment. This just gives you an idea of some of the topics that were discussed during the County Coordination Day. Again, housing really big shown in that work cloud. That was one of the the biggest topics that we discussed. Transportation
building community placemaking, these were a lot of those kinds of topic areas that were brought up. Okay, so the uh Pasco 2050 Comprehensive Plan. website this is the website that was created in year one same URL same website with new content so that has been updated to reflect the new schedule We have a uh new survey out for folks to participate in. And
we also have some forums that we will engage folks so if if they can't make out to a workshop or if they're looking to participate in multiple ways, this is a great way to to provide feedback, provide input on the process. And then of course we have the schedule. This is great because folks can come here, they can register, we'll go ahead and send out alerts when uh events have been scheduled and they can plan their their their calendar accordingly
if they can show up for our public workshops or to uh any other uh events that we're participating in.
So as part of the conference of plan, you know, we are engaging in multiple planning processes. So we have a Parks and Rec Master Plan, we have the strategic plan that's going on. All of these end up somehow, some way getting um addressed in the either the comprehensive plan or the strategic plan. So we are aligned with Dr. Bellis. We are working with his staff in again
trying to make sure we are addressing all of the strategic plan issues and vice versa.
And now the most important part of the presentation, uh, the Q ⁇ A session. So we are available to answer any of your questions.
Bradford
Commission Wheatman. Thank you.
Chris Dougherty
What's your name again? Chris Darty. And you're with Insight? Inspire. Inspire, Plays Making Collective.
OakleyVice Chair
Thank thank you for this.
Weightman
I guess when you're looking at When you're workshopping and polling people or trying to reach folks. It's important, I think it's important, and I'm assuming you do this already, but I figure I'd go on the record that we ask our county employees, county employees, sheriffs employees, our partners in our municipalities, these are folks. Who are kind of, you know, they're in the business of serving people and seeing what's going on day to day at a ground level, you know, in the trenches. I think their feedback
is really important too, along with with the public's, but they're those are the the folks who do the job of of serving the needs of our community. And if we're not capturing their thoughts and they're living it every day and trying to implement what councils and commissions try to do, I think it's important that we we truly capture what their thoughts are and what they're thinking. Um maybe we put them in in a different bucket because they may have a different level of understanding. I think their their thoughts are worthwhile uh
in capturing as many of those folks who who serve the public as we can. And then the next piece of it on slide
Go back up here slide You're talking about definitions the plan update like the the future future land use future This, that, and the other, like we always kinda have this this conversation with what does future mean? What does future land use mean? Like what's this the this crystal ball? It's really subjective, right? So I don't know if it's possible but to really put parameters around what what is what's
the future really mean. So I know that's kind of a a redundant statement, but it's really open ended. And until I think we define what we view our future as, um, it just leaves us open to not necessarily making
the best decision that we possibly could. So those are just my thoughts on those two two pieces.
MarianoChair
Mr. Stormman.
Starkey
Um I my question too revolves around a little bit around this two questions. The stakeholder groups. Um so I was part of the year, uh when we did that before. Uh will we be submitting names for the Some of these stakeholder groups?
In the community?
I
Valerie Brookins
can speak to that. Yeah, you're more than welcome to give any names. Um we're either doing, you know, individuals or groups. We are going to some of our Advisory boards. We did also go last year to to several of them, but we'll be going back to a few that indicated they wanted a little more involvement, such as like the tourism group. We'll be going to the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. So there's some established already,
but we more than welcome names groups. groups, you know, people whether it's going to their meeting and giving information or um doing interviews with them. So
Starkey
Yeah, I think last time um We They set up appointments with some of our community leaders and I I want to do that again. Um then my next question is um we've started having a discussion on the form-based code and um I don't know where we are with having that workshop, hopefully it's soon, but how would that fit into this? Thank you. Sure. And Terry's standing up too.
Chris Dougherty
Everybody wants to answer this question. Okay, so uh of course this is the the comprehensive plan, so this is that first layer that we're looking at. This is the the long-term vision. Uh for base code will help you implement your vision. So from a from a land development code standpoint.
Starkey
Well um I don't want to wait years. When I saw the timeline, I got a little anxiety because we're developing so fast what's gonna be left for us to improve upon. So um is it possible to make any changes more quickly?
OakleyVice Chair
Um I can speak to that a little bit. I I think it is possible to make some adjustments to the current planning paradigm and structure that we have in place. Um
We are currently planning some workshop trainings coming up in May and this summer to touch upon initially a perform-based code and then dive into what options there are available to us because in Not to go too down into the details here, but form-based code is good for specific geographies, but we also need a solution for that can be applied countywide. So there's a couple of different ways and strategies that we can do that. Um one of
them, of course, is is uh place typologies that can also address Commissioner Weightman's concern with regard to what is future. and future land use. Um but that all I think needs to be uh the first steps of that have to happen in the visioning session to really understand what the what the vision for the county is going to be so that we can tailor the future recommendations uh for any code updates and any comprehensive plan updates that we
want to do. So I think I think we're on we're on track. We're We're doing the right thing first, which is to identify what that vision is gonna be, and then we can start making adjustments on the different uh gauges and levers that we have available to us until we can get to the uh final product for Pasco twenty fifty plan.
Madam Clerk
Thank you.
OakleyVice Chair
Yeah. So when we're looking at this comprehensive plan, we're looking at the entire county, right? entire county. Because there's a lot of moving parks and a lot of different areas all over the whole county. So We need to make sure we make, because we have a lot of things coming in, a lot of jobs coming in, and a lot of opportunity. So it's best we have those a comprehensive plan mapped out to where when these things come, it's a smooth transition into that type of growth or preservation in certain
areas that we want to make sure it looks the right way. So not just in my district, but all the all five districts. So we want to be able to uh kind of mow what it should be in the future and and be a part of that that vision so that that's what happens in the future.
Valerie Brookins
Correct. And I'd just like to add to that because it's every parcel just like every parcel is zoning, every parcel has a future land use. And so that's why this process and this plan is so important and we gotta look at the data also with the vision but assigning the correct Land use, future land use to areas. Will save a lot of time of the board, the commission, because how many times are you coming in amending future land use? So the goal
is to get it right, to free up staff, to free up your time. We shouldn't be having to amend the comp plan every board hearing. Right.
MarianoChair
Mr. Witman.
Weightman
Thank you, Chair. So I'll put more pressure on you. I see 2050, I'd be eighty-six years old. I'd be overneck. Yeah.
So what's the real timeline on having having something for us for this board or future boards with within the next five to ten years to to truly work off of a truly working document. What being new to the commission, I think even the the the more s the senior commissioners, it's it's a bit frustrating with how slow th this process works. Um not pointing out any fingers or anything, just you know, we're in we live in a world If now and as Americans
we like a decision today and have what we want now and timely, and this this really doesn't fit in that mold, but I think there needs to be a sense of urgency around this document. We're in year three. Um so what what can we expect to see in a timeline on the actual war? Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Dougherty
So The plan is to finish out this year visioning We'll move quickly into data and analysis of producing the backup, the background to the comprehensive plan. And Probably within a year and a half from now you'll start to see goals, objectives, and policies being developed, things that you can opine on and provide us your feedback. So that is the the time frame. Yes,
we would like for it to move faster. I I hear you. Uh we haven't been involved until this year.
Weightman
18 months, you can get a lot done in eight eighteen months. Uh short. Like eighteen months. I expect there to be something more formal in that time frame.
MarianoChair
Commissioner Oakley?
OakleyVice Chair
Yeah. The um the vision I see I have a vision from the northeast, like the Coochie area. Um A vision that looks maybe out for fifty years, but the fact of it is When you start a vision of what you think something's going to look like, just take Connected City. It started six years ago. Look at that today. in six years that's grown an awful lot. So my fifty year vision might be Twenty years instead of instead
of fifty. But I I reach out to look at that because it took for Lacucci itself. to come back as a community and the schools come back with more students and all that and have affordable housing and things of that nature. We want a vision that does it right and that we can look into and then and come out with a very nice community. Eighty some years ago, Lakuchi was the largest communities we had in Pasco County. So that can be back, not one of the largest,
but it can be a very large community. in itself by the re revitalizing of that area. So we have to be careful we make the right decision for our comprehensive plan so our vision comes out. Even though I look at it I call it a fifty year plan. It took sixty four years for Licu to become one of the largest uh communities in our county to going downhill for sixty-four years. to what it is today and we want to rebuild that back. the other way. And
it'll come quicker I think than we We feel that 'cause we're one of the fastest growing counties in the state. And I think that's what sh that vision's gotta come pretty quick or or we'll it'll be past us and we don't want it to get past us.
OakleyVice Chair
I if I may, Mr. Chairman Mariano. The uh the current comprehensive plan in twenty twenty-five is going to be just about or just over thirty years old when all is said and done for the twenty twenty-five comprehensive plan. Um certainly we are planning for the Pasco for Pasco twenty fifty. We're looking out to twenty fifty. Um and so we're actually looking out at twenty-five years. From basically when this plan takes effect, which is going to be in year 2025. The thing to keep in
mind, however, is that while this is a long-range plan looking out 25 years, we do have a plan to update the document more regularly, not necessarily in in the form of comprehensive plan amendments like um we see generally at every board meeting, but actual updates. The reason why we want to update this more regularly is because we want to make sure that the comprehensive plan is continuously the particularly the land use elements are continuously fine-tuned against the long-range
transportation plan that the MPO does. So the MPO does a long-range transportation plan every five years and then we want to come back two years after After the LRTP is updated to make sure that the comprehensive plan is in line with what the LRP LRTP update was. And then the the inverse happens after that. Once the comprehensive plan is updated, uh two years after the LRTP, the LRTP is going to be prepared or being prepared to be updated again after that. So what you'll get ideally
is a a a planning regime in which the LRTP is being updated and then the comprehensive plan is being updated on top of the LRTP and then the LRTP is being updated on top of the comprehensive plan. And so you're continuously having a an updated version of the document such that If you find in five, ten, fifteen years that the vision is changing a little bit for Pasco County, there's an opportunity to assess make that
assessment. And that'll also fall into place with the state requirements for the uh evaluation uh reports that they require every seven years. All right.
MarianoChair
And if I could give a little perspective being back here as Commissioner Starkey was back in O four, oh six when this was being evaluated and changed. Um The the input I thought was Pretty good. Uh the setup of the way they had the five districts was To me w didn't make a lot of sense. You had kinda like part of four and five were together, part of one and two were together and I think if we're gonna look at those things you should probably isolate the districts a little bit cleaner. e even closer to what um maybe some
of that ULI information that we put out as far as those areas there to tie those in but to kinda like get in it's gonna overlap commissioners but I think it's uh it's good to look at all of it together. I mean that I think the great form of government we have here is you've got five elected county commissioners that look over everything. So every decision we make has got to be what we think is best. And when we think we need to get more involved dependent about expertise or whatever involvement we have for projects. We jump in and we go and we're all we're all good with that. But I think I I don't want to take time a a lot of time I
don't I don't want you to rush it, I'll just say that. And I and I say that for a reason. You haven't mentioned Though Terry just touched on it about the changes we make as we go. Right. What I think you really need to do. in addition to what you've shown right here, is I I would go back to the public hearing we've had Go look it up in Hudson, the rural area. We had a big land use that was coming in here. We're changing the comprehensive plan. It was set back in O six when some of the people that were complaining were sat sat into O six and watched
all that happen and put their input in and all of a sudden we're going in to change it in a big swath. That needs to get looked at. Shady Hills Road, there was a gentleman who was just here from BPAC, I just did appoint him. People from the MPO showed up. But there's an agenda item coming up today for a comprehensive plan adjustment. Three hundred industrial acres on Shady Hills Road. I think it's phenomenal. But the people are scared and they should be, because right now there's just a two-lane road, you got a bunch of schools. Where are the kids going to get to school? Are the trucks going to run them over? F are
the films gonna be able to go outside. So This whole thing about getting it done is you gotta look at a lot of different things. But I think all the public hearing we've had, I mean We got one a golf course on one side, we got another golf course coming up today and a resort coming up that people bought what they thought. A plan. adopted by the comprehensive plan set in and all of a sudden we're looking at changing that because the guy comes in he says, Well I bought a piece of land. You bought a comprehensive plan with entitlements and MPUD. It's a different
game. We need to go look at all these things that we've set up. I mean for I will tell you this from the some of the analysis that I've seen They come in. And it's almost like the developer writes them how this could fit. And I think we need to be be a little bit more objective. We're getting the citizens involved. I want to get him involved early, and frankly I think you're even late listening to it, but I think if you go back to those public hearing To get someone to come to a public hearing meeting is going to be difficult. Unless it directly affected at
that moment, right? But you've got public hearing, you can go back fifteen years, go look at every one of those go through. Find out which ones were controversial when people showed up and protested. Get that information, put that out together before you go out to do these big stakeholder sessions. You've got a ton of information in front of you that will be is real life indicators of what people have said, what they've thought as time's gone on. And that's where I think staff should go and I don't care if we gotta hire a couple of interns to go kind of like isolate one by one to get some of that work done to to expand it out. But there's a
ton of information out there that we have to deal with and frankly There's nothing worse when you get a whole bunch of citizens mad at you for doing something because of what their expectation was, what they bought into, what they invested in. I'd much rather deal with developers saying well you can't get it because, you know, the rules say this. I really want us to really get all the information. Commissioner Starkey.
Starkey
Um I just wanna make a plug for visual preference surveys. I think they're very, very effective and when people sometimes can't articulate what they want or don't even understand some of the planning principles. I think a visual preference survey can really help articulate that very well. Help them articulate it.
Chris Dougherty
Absolutely. That's one of the planning exercises we'll more than likely be using uh during one of the workshops. Absolutely.
MarianoChair
And and and one of the key things you you did mention transportation with the was great as far as like what's the level of service we're looking at. I think it's very critical as we're looking to this whole thing, what's gonna go where and when's it gonna go. And maybe it's maybe it's get even more time sequence about what could go when when things fall into place as far Planned. You're not going to just bring an industrial complex coming in until you know you got the infrastructure get that can support it coming in. If you look at rural Hudson, you saw the areas up there on New York Avenue, etc. We designate it all industrial. But no plan for water
and silver. What do you think happened? I got dirt roads up there, I got stuff that's saying you should have put it here, you didn't put it here. Why did you put it here? You didn't have the infrastructure. So all that's gotta get looked at and gone through. And I think each one of us From what we've learned, et cetera, can can probably help you as far as like some of the issues we've seen along um along the way as well.
Chris Dougherty
Absolutely. And it we do have a standing meeting with the MPO because they're going through their LRTP process, so we're coordinating with them throughout this whole process.
MarianoChair
Okay. Mr. Weaven.
Chris Dougherty
Just
Weightman
one final comment based on
being timely with this document and this plan. This board in October of twenty twenty one
All agree to expedite the timeline and be timely on our response. So even back then the board recognizes a sense of urgency because of how quickly our county is changing, especially now COVID, post-COVID, how many folks are coming in.
Yeah.
MarianoChair
And and I I appreciate your urgency, but I'd rather make sure we get it right. And if it takes more time to get the information again Sitting in public hearing, you saw one good two months ago. You don't want those. And there's a reason for it. So what we need to do is make sure that we can look at all these things and and I think you've got to really incorporate all the MPUDs all over this county. They're everywhere. All the C D Ds that are in place. Just heard from people for Watergrass talking today. All these things need to get looked at and I think I'd rather take a little extra time and be more intense with it, with the information
that's out there right now, to figure out where are the issues and what should we be looking at for down the road.
Any other thoughts? All right. Well we appreciate you taking the challenge. And I hope you're you'll work with us closely because I think it's a super important document that we need to make sure we get it right.
Starkey
Um I I did have one comment. As we finish as we finish an element, can we go ahead and adopt it? Did someone bring that up? Or do we have to wait till every day is there?
Chris Dougherty
So from a consistency process, we we like to finish the Yeah. as a single document. Now we have done incremental documents at a at a time. So if if say future land use is the one that you really want to focus on first, we can adopt that one that would be the the only do uh element that I would recommend that you tackle maybe separately. And that probably is the biggest
issue here. Um so yes, we can split it up. We don't love that, but we can certainly accommodate that.
Starkey
Something to think about, okay?
MarianoChair
Well keep keep this in mind too. When when you're looking at like if you're gonna try to put housing You better know what the transportation is gonna be. If you're gonna be looking at the coastal management, you better know what's going on around there too. So you can have some preliminary things about this is condo set, condo set, condo set, but you've got to have that flexibility to when it all comes together, when you look at everything, you can make some adjustments as well. So it's it's gonna have to be everything, but you can have little bits of as you go along. We've got this as a proposal that you know call it draft whatever as you're starting the intro, like we're looking
like this so it's not set in stone. And that might even help you get a lot of comments at that point when you've got a preliminary thing set up. Absolutely.
Unidentified speakerVoice A
Okay.
MarianoChair
Okay. All right. Well thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

PDD-23-0211

Official title

Every appearance1 of 1 are in a recording