An Ordinance By The Pasco County Board Of County Commissioners Amending The Pasco County Land Development Code, Ordinance No. 89-21 As Amended; Providing For Amendments To Section 406.1, Signs; Section 601, Traditional Neighborhood Development; Section 1200 Nonconformities, Creating Section 1203.4, Nonconforming Signs; Amending Appendix A, Definitions; Providing For Additional Amendments As Necessary For Internal Consistency; Providing For Applicability, Repealer, Severability, Inclusion Into The Land Development Code, Modification And An Effective Date.

59:46Uh P sixty seven uh was published in Tampa Times on May twenty-second, twenty twenty-two.

59:52All right, B67 is PDD 220397. This is the adoption for this item. This item was presented to the horizontal roundtable interested parties meeting on April 18th, 2022. It was provided availability for comments. We did not receive comments from the horizontal round table or interested parties meeting. This went to a local planning agency who found it consistent with the comprehensive plan. Recommended approval to the Board of County Commission Commissioners. And this was also presented a full presentation at first reading to the Board of County Commissioners on June 7, 2022.

1:00:23An ordinance by the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners amending the Pasco County Land Development Code. Ordinance number 8921 as amended, providing for amendments to Section 406.1 signs, Section 601, traditional neighborhood development, Section 1200 nonconformities, creating Section 1203.4 nonconforming. signs, amending appendix A definitions, providing for additional amendments as necessary for internal consistency, providing for applicability repealer, severability, inclusion into the land development code, modification, and an effective date. So we're asking

1:00:53today that you please accept public comment and adopt by roll call vote.

1:00:58All right. Um Denise, the changes that we talked

1:01:01about. Every single line was taken care of. Otherwise I would not be here today

1:01:05in front of you telling you this. Thank you. You're very welcome. Does anyone have any questions for Denise? No, sir. Commissioner Oakley.

1:01:14Yes, sir. On section C three, sign structural requirements.

1:01:24Can you please tell me the section? Because I I think I may have just printed out the strike through underline because that's kind of how I function. Can you tell me the subsection, please?

1:01:33Uh citing requirements, then digital subject.

1:01:35Page 30. Okay.

1:01:36Page 30, yeah.

1:01:37All right.

1:01:39Um

1:01:40Hmm. It's not my

1:01:41page 30.

1:01:42This is regarding digital signs for office commercial and industrial. This is the and this is a new section. Yes,

1:01:47sir. So my my concern with the sign ones has always been like on US nineteen, people like poll signs 'cause they can see 'em, they elevate them up, they can see 'em on both sides of the road. Um Yeah. I think so this lake cannot be permitted on a monument sign that's been granted a height increase through an alternative standard.

1:02:06Yes, sir.

1:02:07So around the rest of the county, you know, less than a s you know, six lane highway.

1:02:15If you've got a sign that's already up and you've already got it elevated, I don't know.

1:02:20Yeah,

1:02:20so um why would we want them to have the to have the speech?

1:02:23Because they have given up other signs in order to have that sign. So this is more this is m this actually allows more speech on that sign. So there have been signs that for example I could think of two different places where that there might be an elevated roadway and the the uh Planning Commission or the DRC, depending on what happened, through the alternative standard process, they were granted a 20-foot sign. Well, the maximum height of monument signs is 11 feet. So this kind of goes with the

1:02:53concept that the board did not want to have digital signs on signs that are, you know, non-confirmative. forming or signs that were granted a a type of exception. So that's where that came from.

1:03:07Full agreement.

1:03:11gives a different direction, you know, um we're here to do what the board has asks us to do.

1:03:17I mean if I've if I've got someone who's got a ten foot sign You know, other than a busy highway I think they're fine. Right, I don't have any problem with that but if you're on US nineteen. You've got extra height. I I don't think it should be a total of the square footage of the sign itself because if you take the length of it's twenty feet high And it's eight feet wide, that would give them a lot more space to work with, right? I don't wanna give them all that space, but again if they just took more height so people could see it.

1:03:48I would think there's a a better square footage way to put it in there where you can actually allow 'em to have a decent size sign, but still elevate it up. And whether it'd be already it's already elevated up anyway. I'm not gonna s flash for more than fifteen seconds anyway.

1:04:06I'll tell you the one sign I'm thinking of right now is Santa Toyota. They went sky high? Right, they got the standard sign.

1:04:12Yeah, they got an eighteen foot sign.

1:04:13Right. Now they just ha use their top part. They don't use the middle part for that. I don't see a problem with them using where it says Santo Yoranao to put it in that same footage which you've already approved. for sign to actually fit in that space.

1:04:27So are you stating that the digital area cannot go above eleven feet? Is that what you're stating? So No,

1:04:34I'm saying well at at Santa Yota they're they're at eighteen height, eighteen foot high. So in the top Four feet, five feet, they've got the sign there already. So the difference of having an LED sign there or um this in there. I I don't see what the difference would be.

1:04:51Well I mean th so s so when we were talking to the board at the at the um

1:04:59At the actual uh board workshop years ago, the board gave us the impression that you didn't want to allow these type of signs on things that were already had already been granted additional allowances. So that's why we wrote that into the sign, but certainly um open to discussion at at the board if if you want that to be modified. And you'll see that this is an exception. We have um very few alternative standards granted out there for um Height. I

1:05:29think I've probably less than ten that I can think of right now. Um so

1:05:35Okay. Does anyone in the

1:05:37Well Madam Chairman Mariano. Get my mic back on.

1:05:41No, okay.

1:05:44Um

1:05:47of this ordinance, you know, my opinion is To kinda clean up the area a little bit. Um So we think about You know obviously nineteen we'll use nineteen since you brought it up as an example. Let's be honest, pretty cluttered, right? I mean you can go up and down nineteen.

1:06:05Not attractive.

1:06:06It's kind of cluttered. I think it's you might have a better chance of attracting more businesses to take up those empty spaces, to take up those dilapidated dilapidated buildings, willing to make investments if it starts looking a little bit better. I mean it's more difficult for people to want to make an investment in an area that in certain areas, it's not everywhere, certain areas of nineteen that aren't very attractive and That's I it's

1:06:36been one of the reasons why it's difficult. The people I've spoken with and I don't know, probably some of the land use attorneys and developers out there, yeah, I see some shaking their heads. It's uh they're not wanting to make the investments along there. So I think anything everything we can do. to assist in making that more attractive. And um And people uh you know, some people are willing to make those investments, you're gonna be better off in five or ten or fifteen years.

1:07:03Well since you opened that door. I wanted to go a little further and say We need to sunset the old nasty signs. Um and this happens in many places. So Uh uh and my ex-husband, he was in the sign industry. So um A sign only has uh

1:07:22That's

1:07:22why you hate

1:07:23signs so much, huh?

1:07:24Huh? That's why you

1:07:24hate

1:07:25signs.

1:07:27I

1:07:27just don't like ugly and I am trying so hard to redevelop nineteen and it's very hard when it's ugly. Um And and what and we've had this monument sign um ordinance for a long time and and we're starting to see some redevelopment. But when you have and you have someone who comes in and they put the nice Lower sign, which is still very big, eleven foot high by twenty two. I mean It's like a school bus the size they could still have. Um But to me it's just not fair.

1:07:59For the to allow the old ones to stay big and high when everything is coming in nice and new. And I I personally think that we should have a sunset. They have X amount of time. to conform and I'm happy to give 'em uh just like we do with the landscaping to give 'em um some incentive money to take out the old signs. We could say when the business changes hands the sign has to come down. Um but we allow the signs to stay up and

1:08:29and that was a That wasn't something I thought we were running into when I helped write this sign ordinance twenty something years ago. So um I I would love to see a sunsetting requirement. or something that encourages the ugly I'm sorry, the old signs to come down. And everyone to be on the same playing field.

1:08:53Madam Chair, uh just to follow up, are we able to, within our ordinance, to use Or um tree fund? Since it's landscaping.

1:09:10But they do have to spend a percent a specific amount of percentage improving the property, which could include painting the building or would it include this replacing the sign? So there still are those exterior upgrades that they can utilize toward

1:09:29Mm-hmm.

1:09:30If I if I may, um if I can direct your attention, it's to page 63 of the strike-through. Uh we have created a new section 1203.4, which does address, it doesn't, it doesn't sunset particularly, but it does address that um permanent non-conforming signs and sign structures shall be removed upon the occurrence of certain things. If you can't have a new permanent sign while a non-conforming youth sign remains on the parcel, so that's going to take care of a lot of that. You can't convert

1:10:00to digital unless on a parcel while there's a non-conforming sign. So those folks who want to convert to digital are going to have to remove their nonconforming sign in order to convert to digital. If more than 50% of the signs, the sign area or sign structure, Yeah. You have to remove the nonconforming sign. And then it specifically talks about what the word alter is. Um and then in your section B, it also says that from time to time the county may make monies available to assist in the removal of nonconforming

1:10:31signs in the form of a grant or a no to no or low interest loan. That's something that you know uh David Engel with the Office of Economic Growth. So that I mean it's it's already kinda like There's a there's a placeholder for that already in the ordinance um to do that type of a thing.

1:10:51Well it's not the same as sunsetting, but it still hopefully helps a little bit. But I've been Hoping that more signs would have come down by now, but Okay. Um does anyone in the public wish to speak to this? Madam Clerk have a little more conversation on that first.

1:11:11Okay.

1:11:14So c so so just consider this. Sometimes you really wanna h fight hard to get something and you be put strong rules in to make a change and you don't get a change, you wonder why. If you have a pole sign out there right now, and that that pole sign is fifteen feet in the air, twenty feet in the air. You can see it from both sides. I'm just gonna talk about US nineteen where The s the to me that's where the biggest issue is. The rest of the signed ordin elsewhere works great. But if you can only advertise on one side of the street You're losing fifty percent of your market. You hurt yourself. When

1:11:45I look at like the Hampton and when that came in and they put their monument sign down When the f when this when we first hadn't hadn't adjusted the landscaping ordinance part. But they put this sign in the midst of the bushes you couldn't see. Anything.

1:11:58But Jack, it's a four story building with a big sign that says Hampton Inn on it.

1:12:02I I'm just saying, just that's but that's in they're must spending money on another sign out front that

1:12:06they don't even need the sign. They don't even need the sound. Um okay, I have uh this fun little comment and both these ladies were in the room when it happened. You know who said our road was ugly? Larry Morgan, the owner of Sun Toyota. Did he not? Yes. Say Commissioner US nineteen. Like it really needs help. I mean that he he commented on what our road looked like when it came up for our auto dealers. Meeting in. So I asked him to fix his

1:12:36landscape theme. And it would go a long way.

1:12:42And I really did.

1:12:47Okay,

1:12:48uh so you had ja um Commissioner Mariano, you had mentioned the LED. If they were gonna condense ten of their signs or five of their signs or three of their signs to one LED sign and then they would be able to reduce all of their other signage by having one LED sign that can rotate through. Is that what you were talking about?

1:13:10No, I'm I'm just tumbling the height uh on this but uh I was gonna get to another section later. But as far as if you limit the height to the sign, like right now if you had Sun Toyota, if they wanted to come in and go change They'd have to know Pull this sign down, bring it down to eleven feet. And that may not be worth 'em for 'em to go do that. So If they had more space to use a pie to use it. So be it. And maybe eighteen's too high, but maybe there's a number that works better than Eleven. for

1:13:41for that type of thing. And then you may see some of the signs change. Um I j I just think that as as tough as a signed ordinance was put in place people said, you know what, I'm better off with my pole sign sitting the way it just sits and I'll deal with it. Um I do like the idea of the incentives in here. to go help it help make it happen. But when you look at we we put such hard conditions on the trade out for the uh billboards. That how many buildboats do we really see change on nineteen? Very few.

1:14:10I mean

1:14:13that have come down.

1:14:13Oh yeah. Yeah. But could it have been better if we didn't put so much so much of a restriction on the trade up? So we worked so hard on it to change something that was very negative. But we negotiated so hard that we didn't get as many out as we could have. So maybe we could have had twice as many swap if we didn't quite negotiate so strongly on it.

1:14:31Yeah. One last thing I think we should just take public comment. I I think in this day and age that we're in, I mean I know me when my family travels, um even sometimes in Pasco County. Yeah. know, we have this thing called a phone, and we search the business, and that's how we get it. And it's

1:14:46paying via

1:14:48That's it. Time moves on. For some of these businesses down the road, Science almost might be obsolete.

1:14:54Yeah.

1:14:54Because they don't want to make the the the investment that they can take those monies and spend on obviously beefing up their their their search um capabilities and things like that.

1:15:05Yeah. Public comment? No one's signed up. Is anyone online? No one's online. Okay,

1:15:12I take a motion to approve it. Who moved? You move over, yeah. Second over there. Okay. You you made the motion? He made the second. I

1:15:20made the

1:15:20second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.

1:15:23Roll call, vote.

1:15:24Roll call. Oh, we didn't do that. Okay. Roll call.

1:15:28District one, Commissioner Oakley. Aye. District two, Commissioner Oakley District uh four, Commissioner Fitzpatrick. Aye. District five, Commissioner Mariano. Hi. District three, Chairman Starkey.

1:15:39Aye. Two years in the making.

1:15:41Yes, I was about to say three years. I I'm very grateful. I'm very thankful that this was passed. I will I wanna say thank you so much to Elizabeth Blair and to the many other many others that I think I mentioned at the last board meeting who have been maybe part of this process. It literally takes a village. There was a big village. Um behind this. So thank you so much.

1:16:02And uh Elizabeth, uh Denise, you guys did a phenomenal job working this out.

1:16:07Yeah.

1:16:07Really that was the only question I had on there to just thinking about it and just going through it. So everything you did, Elizabeth, you reached out to all the people, I asked you to, so all the people had concerns over the years putting this together, phenomenal. I think it's gonna be big for the county.

1:16:18You're welcome. And Denise, we're uh uh and a shout out to our late friend Bill Brinton.

1:16:23Oh

1:16:23yeah, figure that out, absolutely.

1:16:28Okay.

1:16:28He read our warehouse clauses. So