Board reports on hearing location and consent agenda

1:16:05I'm bothered a little bit by the

1:16:10Past case that we just heard being heard on this side and I had originally planned to Pull this and voluntarily ask the applicant to continue it until the people on the west side didn't have to travel to Dade City to hear this and I hope that in the future we can try to avoid these things. The other thing that I've noticed this is my third meeting here And that is that the consent agenda Has changed a lot since

1:16:41I last occupied this seat. And I'm frankly shocked. that I see large-scale comprehensive plan amendments, 3,000 acre projects, 800 home subdivisions, 1600 home subdivisions, all slide through on the consent agenda. In my mind the consent agenda is for Mrs. Jones's five foot variants for her shid, not for us just to rubber stamp a thousand homes here, a thousand homes there. And

1:17:11I'd like to see to make sure that that's a good idea. That needs to change 'cause I'm just gonna stand us up here and pull 'em off and we're gonna hear 'em. Thank

1:17:20you. Okay, anybody else?

1:17:24Just a quick question with David, is there anything in the code that does require for the them to be heard on the Easter wedge side?

1:17:31No, i it's not a code requirement. It it's it's it has been Tammy has stated it correctly. Well The old, old historic policy I'll call it the John Gallagher policy, um maybe when Mr. Moody was last year, was that Anything on the east side of the county had to be heard on the east side. Anything on the west side of the county had to be heard on the west side. There was no deviation from that. The more current county administrator relaxed that policy and said what the policy is basically

1:18:01what Tammy said, which is that if there was no opposition to the item, that it could be heard on either side of the county. Now the the difficult issue is today's application was difficult because Tammy Saint she didn't think there was any opposition And then discovered there was opposition. Um Not sure how that's occurring when the notices are going out. you know, quite a bit in advance and there's po are there neighborhood meetings on these some of these too? And

1:18:31was our neighborhood meeting on this last one?

1:18:34So uh Brad Tipp in Planning Development. Uh the to go into a little bit about what you were saying uh as to the reason why that change was made, it was due to the volume of submittals um and delays uh and and the projects were not wanting to wait an entire month until something is heard. back on a particular side of the county and a and a directive was essentially given to us to do the first available hearing after we're ready to go. uh unless there is some form of opposition there and that was done to try and and improve the processing time due to

1:19:04the volume of of stuff that's happening in the county right now. Uh to answer your question, I'm not sure uh Tammy can can possibly speak to that.

1:19:10Tammy, I yeah, I guess I'd like to know why we're g

1:19:13generally we we I if we hear about opposition within a short time of notice, we may be able to do something, but if we don't know about it, if if we hear about it a few days before or a week before, uh then we're not able to reasonably change that. Uh we can bring it up, we can pull

1:19:32it

1:19:32out.

1:19:32I guess my question is I thought that was the whole point of the neighborhood meeting.

1:19:36When they're required. For projects they're actually required.

1:19:38So this one was not required to do a neighborhood meeting?

1:19:40I do not believe it

1:19:40was,

1:19:41Tammy, can you confirm?

1:19:44So when a neighborhood meeting is not required per the land development code.

1:19:51So you're telling me that you're not going to be able to So st a notice goes goes out,

1:19:58and And we're just finding out two two days before that there's opposition? Is that what's happening?

1:20:03Uh my understanding and Patty can correct me if I'm mistaken. The first time we heard that there was opposition was yesterday when uh Miss Patty received phone calls.

1:20:18So I I don't know that I have a good solution to that. I mean We could change the code to require notice earlier, we could you know, go back to the old rule where everything is on either side of the county, you know, no matter what, but there's

1:20:34We also had the virtual option uh which changed that a little bit because people could attend virtually and not make the drive. That's a good point. Um that was one of the the key things we're trying to uh you know.

1:20:45Because if somebody was in New Port Richey and really wanted to speak on this item, they could do it from the comfort of their home.

1:20:54Yeah.

1:20:57Yeah, one one other thing that was I Just remembered is because of the way the the July hearing it would have caused a uh exponential delay. um with hearings have we really Because of the way the deadlines and timings of the hearings occur.

1:21:13Brad, how are comp plan amendments noticed?

1:21:21Uh this is Terry Pitos with the Planning Development Department. Companion amendments are noticed in the newspaper per state statute requirements at this time. But we have identified uh an update that needs to be made to the to our land development code to align the notification requirements with uh and make them similar to uh MPUD notification requirements. And how

1:21:45How far a perimeter around the MPUD is the notification requirement?

1:21:53So the notification requirement is the if the land use is res one or lower, so in other words AG, AGR, or Res One, the notification requirement is 1,000 feet. If it's res three or higher, so res three, res six, res nine, so on and so forth, then the notification requirement is 500 feet.

1:22:14Why is the notification requirement less if the development's more intense?

1:22:20Well so the the It so if you look at if you look at the logic, it's because the AG, AGR, those are larger pieces of property. So you'll pick up more people if you do the thousand feet. So typically those properties, AG, AGR are 10 acres, five acres, 20 acres, 40 acres. That's why the notice for AG, AGR, for example, or Res One is a thousand feet.

1:22:45The other thing I would add to that's why staff requires the posting of signs, because signs are supposed to leave the notice to anybody who lives beyond those radiuses. And usually they require the signs to be on a major thoroughfare so that anybody driving by the property would see the sign and know there's an action occurring.

1:23:04Uh the only question I have about the signs is one, when it rains, they tend to smear. Number two is some of the signs uh In my area, they tend to be hidden in the bushes. and talk about my area, which is the Wesley Chapel area. I like to, you know, we're we're speaking kind of an east-west situation here. If I consider the West Sea Chapel area and part of Land O' Lakes area too, like Some folks in the audience are here. It's easier for us to drive over here to this side of the county. You know, it's

1:23:34a forty minute drive. as opposed to going to the west side of the county, which is probably about an hour and ten, fifteen minutes. So it used to be a forty minute drive. But this year somehow it's turned out to be much longer. So I I would say not only look at the The distance but look at the driving time too. I I I can understand how the folks They live in the Spring Hill area, took them a considerable amount of time to get here. Uh So that's the you know, we

1:24:05could talk about east and west but there is a large section of the county that's in the center, so I I would not only consider

1:24:12But I think that was Brad raised a very good point though, which is that we changed our rules so that anybody can attend by WebEx now.

1:24:19That's true. And I I have no problem with that. If we live on Venus and

1:24:22Well, uh I'm not sure about that. Do they have internet there? Any place that has access to internet could attend our meetings now.

1:24:29I'm not sure how the oxygen is on Venus, but I I think that the uh

1:24:32Elon's working on that too.

1:24:35Hey, hey, don't be messing with my friend. Uh Yeah, WebEx is is the way to go. I know in my community, uh I was against the Zoom process but uh It works. The only problem is sometimes not everybody has access to it. So uh I I I but it's the future. Definitely the future I think. But I mean when the when our board

1:24:55agreed to make the board meetings and the bonding commission meeting hearings semi virtual, yeah. That was one of the reasons. We have people that work during this time, they can't get off work to attend, they live, you know, forty miles away.

1:25:09Nobody's forced to physically attend our meetings any more. I understand and I agree with you one hundred percent. You can pull up an iPhone and pull up the the meetings too, you know. So uh accessibility i is fantastic. Sometimes though It it's nice to s to come to the meeting and see the interaction the that uh

1:25:28the verb not the the ver the not only the verbals, but sometimes the body language. But that's no sense for my part. I'm going.

1:25:38All right. Any other comments? Uh I think w uh you wanted to bring up something, didn't you, Brad, before we

1:25:43Oh I was just gonna respond to that that we were talking about.