Public comment on current and future agenda
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
It is a stretch of the recording that this archive identified as a separate matter — a call to order, a recess, or something taken up that the agenda does not list. There is no official title, no staff recommendation and no disposition, because the county never recorded one. Everything below is inferred.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Jun 18, 2024
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 25m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 92% of 109 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Here and uh let it be known that we have a quorum present. And now is the time for public comment. Citizens are given opportunity to comment on uh any current or future agenda items coming before the board and uh on other business under the board's preview. Today's uh public comment would be handled as follows. First we would take public comment for the all the Those are here in person. Then we would take public comment for those that
are reserved. on WebEx and then currently on Q. Uh we request that when you make uh Address the board. Comments are not directed toward personally toward a commissioner or a team member. but rather directed at the issues. This provides mutual respect Uh between board members and the public. After what after stating your name and address for the clerk, a three minute timer will be activated.
after two minutes a single beep will sound giving you one minute left. When your time is up, two two beeps will sound and you should in your comments. Uh WebEx participants will be disconnected automatically. Madam Clerk, do we have people signed up to speak this morning?
Yes, sir, we do. Um the first one is Charlie Rogers.
Name and address with the clerk.
Yes, uh Charlie Rogers, [address removed]. Good morning, Commissioners and Staff. My name is Charlie Rogers and I serve as the president of San Pebble Point 3 condominium association, comprised of buildings number 10, 11, and 12, located at 4650, 4620, and 4550 Bay Boulevard, Port Ritchie, and Pasco County. Each building is six stories in height with 40 units
per building for a total of 120 unit owners. In addition, I serve as the treasurer for our master association at San Pebble Point, which is comprised of more than 400 owners and almost 1,000 residents. Our buildings are constructed with conventionally reinforced concrete slabs, beams, and columns with masonry exterior walls. Our private units are accessed by exterior elevated walkways, which are finished with a painted texture stucco veneer. After
the failure of the Surfside condominium in South Florida, our state legislature has mandated that all condominiums of three stories or more and 30 years of age must complete a milestone and structural integrity reserve study, SERS report, prior to the end of this year and establish the funding mechanism to address any deficiencies noted in this report. We have engaged Cairns Engineering to assist us with these mandated state requirements. We invited six local contractors
to bid on our exterior building envelope restoration, including but not limited, to reinforce concrete repairs, stucco and masonry restoration, guardwell replacement, walkway and select balcony waterproofing membrane application, sealance application, painting, and other work as well. Yeah. Our preliminary estimates exceed $1.1 million per building, which would require a $30 to $35 special assessment per unit. We have many
retired residents who are living on Social Security and fixed incomes that are very concerned as to how they will be able to pay for these required items. As taxpayers in Pasco County, we are asking you all, as our County Commissioners, to assist us in addressing these concerns. By contacting and supporting our State Legislature to grant us additional time to come in compliance with these mandated regulations. Many of our residents are fearful of losing their homes due to these required mandates by
year's end, which would result in a significant loss of tax revenue to the county and declining values of the properties going forward. We do understand the importance of these new requirements, but are appealing to the State for some assistance in the timing required to adhere and enforce these mandates. We are seeking your assistance and guidance in asking our legislators to give us some additional time to address these issues and prepare for the costly improvements that are being required for us to address. Thank you for your consideration and any assistance you
can provide to us and our residents going forward.
Yeah, thank you for your comments.
May the record show that uh Commissioner Starkey has joined joined us at the DS. Okay.
When you approach the podium, uh start with your name and address for the record. Thank you.
My name is Monica Sepp. My address is [address removed]. Good morning commissioners and guests. A couple of my concerns as well as other residents is we're just wondering why the Sheriff's Department is not enforcing the trespass agreements that were set in place by the County Commissioners on vacant properties. Um I still see some trespassing going on on a few properties around the area, one by Windsor Mills, the post office, and as well as 19 and 52
behind McDonald's where there's been several fires. And one of our other i concerns is it's been fourteen months since April of twenty twenty three. Since the town hall meeting with a couple of the county commissioners, I think it was Mr. Jack Mariano and Mrs. Kathryn Starkey. Um that we were talking about putting up uh tiny tents or tiny homes or and purchasing a property to where some of these um homeless people can be relocated to get them off of private
properties who are owned by other residents here. Um And I haven't I was wondering where that might be standing as I haven't seen any signs of any of that moving forward. Um I would also like to Uh thank everyone and recognize count code enforcement officers who are out working in the areas as diligently as they can to get Pasco County back to the great place it was.
Okay.
Thank you.
Uh Kathy, you wanna meet her in the back there, so Kathy Pearson will meet you all back and give you some information. Okay.
Okay, so the last individual signed up in person is Linda Trimpe.
Yeah.
And again name and address for the record. Thank you.
My name is Linda Trimpey. My address is [address removed]. And we've oh could we have the picture of the m of the map of the neighborhood please instead? Gina, thank you. Our neighborhood is located our neighborhood is located just east of uh the Sun Coast Parkway. Bordered on the north by State Road fifty four, on the south by uh the
county line Pillsburg County Line. You can see the two access roads into our neighborhood. We have just the two from Lutz Lake Fern 1.3 miles into our neighborhood and then continues on for a ways and then Meadowbrook Drive from the north. From State Road fifty four.
Our neighborhood uh started being platted in nineteen in the nineteen seventies by reader development. And they had bought the two uh parcels making up the Sierra Pines portion of Hillsburg County back then and paved it. So our road uh and the access road, the southern access road is fifty-two years old at this point, it's never been repaved. And I completed the petition form to in the old PVAS program back in twenty fifteen. asking our county to um include Sierra Pines
Boulevard, the uh Hillsborough County portion in the PVAS program. Of course that's been suspended now. So I'm here asking the Pasco BCC to included in the new program.
And then I have pictures of the road, if you'll put those up again, Gina. The pictures of the road, uh this is typical of pictures y'all seen, I'm sure, before. Heavy rains, you know, will cause these. Go ahead and show the next one, please. you know, patch upon patch and then um the sides of the roads are you know bad too. Um That's my first point. I have six points total. Um and of course many times throughout the years we've actually had the potholes connect and form a trench
all the way across the road, so it's practically impassable. Um Pasco County Code. Uh that we have shows that a neighborhood of our size, four hundred and fifty-six private parcels, if you'll show that the The the county code requires our road our neighborhood to have two accesses. This is the county code. Realtors have told me
that even though some of their clients liked our neighborhood, they chose not to buy because of the condition of the road.
Um the most important point I think is the condition of the road that affects emergency um services, emergency, you know, medical emergencies. Saint Joseph's Hospital North down in Lutz Lake Fern excuse me, Van Dyke Road is the closest hospital to any place in our neighborhood. We on the south would go south over to Del Mabri and down to Van Dyke. Those on the north would take the Sun Coast down. Yeah.
Um
I I I just wanna say that road is in Hillsborough County.
Correct. Yes, yes it is, Commissioner
Weightman. And I have talked with that commissioner, but um uh Commissioner Yeager, this is now your district. Um I'm happy to fill you in on you know later. Yeah, but I've been trying. Yeah.
We've
this is what we've got to do.
We've talked about it from twenty fifteen. Yeah. You and I, correct. When you're my commissioner. Yeah.
Or have someone met her back there. handle her from the firms.
Thank you. Good
morning. Thank you. Thank you. That's everyone we have signed up?
Um we do have one on WebEx. Do you have one
on WebEx.
Okay, so
uh Okay, let's see if there's anyone. Is anyone left in the audience that wish to speak this morning to public comment? If you haven't signed up, you could come forward now.
You don't get two oper you don't get two opportunities. I just wanted
to
know if I can make a clarification.
No.
Have your friend there do it.
No?
Come for the right-of-way. State your name and address for the record.
Gregory Hicks [address removed]. Yes. Good morning everyone. I'm uh I'm speaking today on behalf of Dr. Eddie Williams from Pasco Hernando State College and the Recovery Roundtable. And what we have wanted to s do is bring it to your attention and make a proposal to possibly put a voted member of the round table into the opioid task force onto
their board. We have um Many individuals with that are like-minded with everything that's going on, uh professionals, people working very hard in this battle against our opioid pandemic, and we are trying to get one of our members onto this, onto the task force. that would be voted in. And this is um pretty much what we would like to see happen if if it's all possible, if it could even be considered, it would be um greatly appreciated
by all of us that are involved. Yeah.
Uh Kathy's outside, isn't she? Yeah.
Paula's there.
Paula, could you uh meet this gentleman in the back and talk to him about his issue there with the opioid? Sure we need you back there.
Thank you so much guys. Have a great day.
Yes, sir.
Next. Well, I'm not sure. I'm Gina Finacaro. Um my address is [address removed]. It's on the Pasco side. And um I am here today because of the last meeting. Um I understand that um Uh they wanted to try to close my church's food pantry. My pastor has been In Pasco County for 16
years. This is First Baptist Church of Hudson. and to get rid of the homeless. Okay, only 10% of the people that come are homeless. We feed over 300 families, and we do preach the gospel every week. We are fortunate that we have an East and a West campus, but they both preach the Bible. My pastor is very passionate. about what he does and he saves a
lot of people, including myself. I've been working at the Church's Food Pantry, volunteering at the Church's Food Pantry for eight years now. Okay, when I started, we had maybe 30, 35 families a week that we used to do. Now we're doing close to 300, sometimes even more, families. Not just people, families. So figure out, some families come, there's nine, some families come, there's ten. Okay. These are not uh all homeless people. These
are our poor and our middle class families just trying to make ends meet. That's all they're trying to do. My truck is full of baby formula. Yes, I'm even getting baby formula for these parents when we can. I was fortunate enough another pastor from another church gave me a box of formula. I will bring it to my pantry for tomorrow's giving out. Okay? And yes, we do have mamas in the woods too. Which is sad, okay? There's no reason for
that. Not in our country. Not in our county. Okay. I know we can't save the world, but we can make this place a little bit better. Okay? The Um Homeless epidemic is not just a homeless epidemic. It involves opioid. epidemic Um the uh um mental health. And yes, even human trafficking. I know nobody wants to talk about that, but no little child ever got said,
I want to grow up to be homeless or a little girl, I want to grow up to be a prostitute. Nobody's ever said that, I'm sure. Okay? This we're doing this for the grace of God, and that's all. Thank you.
Thank you. Kathy, you please don't call it.
We'll send someone in the back to meet with you. Ma'am.
Hi, um my name is Alma Key, K-E-E, and my address is [address removed]. And I also live in Subdivision 10 that includes Sierra Pines and also Meadowbrook Estates. Okay. And I'm just here to make a comment about the fact that But I I guess the current code requires any subdivision of more than 450 homes or 401 homes to have two
public access roads. Right now we only have the one. And if and the second one is just by the efforts and the generosity of our owners, they repair potholes just to keep it passable. But i it could easily become impassable if you know the current owners are no longer able to. donate their time and money. And so I wanted to bring out a point that, you know, as Linda previously mentioned, Let's
say a fire truck can't get in, the it the one access road is closed, both of them are closed, and you know, uh emergency vehicle can't get by, and somebody somebody's house burns to the ground, or you know, a death occurs that was needless, then I don't know, I'm not an attorney, but I would think that you know uh uh someone might try to sue the county too for for not uh you know bringing the neighborhood up to the current
current standards of two access roads. And I'm also a a realtor and I as Linda stated, yeah the One entrance road that's you know, maintained by the owners. It's pretty it's pretty rough and it does affect the values. We have homes from three hundred thousand up to one that recently sold for one and a half million. And I I think if that road were repaired and maintained correctly, then I think all the values would increase and mm development would
go in there to create other one and a half million dollar homes. So it would increase the tax revenue. And that's that's all I have to say.
Thank
you
very much. Yes ma'am. Mm-hmm.
Name and address for the clerk.
Good morning. My name is Terry Ippolito. I live at [address removed]. Um, I started working, I'm here on behalf of Sierra Pine Subdivision. I was the original president of the Homeowners Association when in the n late nineties we formed the association primarily to take care of the road. Unfortunately, it were the residents that didn't want to be assessed for that project that made us fail. I spent many
hours working with Hillsborough County. They were open to the idea of taking the road. Unfortunately it fell through by our own residents. I'd like to bring your attention that there is a road perpendicular to Sierra Pines, about a hundred mile um a hundred feet to the east that is owned by Pinellas County. That is there for the benefit of the well fields. So there are situations that counties own. um
properties in other counties. We do need you to consider our situation. We've worked hard to try to do the best job we could as a subdivision. We have а ми дисбанд. The Homeowners Association primarily because of the liabilities that only a very small portion of the community accepted. So we had to disband the Homeowners Association and let whatever happened happen. Here
we are again. We need your help. I hope that we can accomplish this. Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman,
can I say something real quick? Yes. I did go out there and explore and I took someone a staff member, it might have been Matt Campbell, I can't remember who, to look at the opportunity to take that well field road that that's in the St. Pete owned well field. Mm. and connect it to fifty four 'cause it it connects. And you could actually go up
then then come over onto that road. And it's a new north south road taking pressure off of fifty four. So I'm happy to show that to you or S someone if they wanna, you know, explore it, but I think it's a it's a good idea.
We'll have someone check that out. Thank you.
Name and address for the record.
Pastor Jen Kerouac, uh [address removed]. I just wanted to come to support actually Ms. Finocaro's um understanding uh you know as pastors we kinda have to stick together and since her pastor isn't here, uh God moved me to come and speak on his behalf without his permission. So um, you know There is an idea that food
pantries um are bad. There is an idea that We are giving away food and that helps to support the homeless being in that area. And I can tell you as I have met folks that go to Gina's Church. I know the folks that go to my church. We have opened it up to the county. We have opened it up. We have collaborated with the county. We collaborate with the local organizations such as
the Continuum of Care, which is the County has representation there as well. And I would just, you know, hope that the commissioners would support um you know, whatever need uh arises, we know there's a significant need. Um for answers to where we're gonna move these folks. Um they are still, you know, we move them to Hernando, they're gonna come back. We move 'em to Penellas, they're gonna come back. We move 'em to Hillsborough,
they're gonna come back. There is a greater need. And so I just would hope that as we have the opportunity to obtain funding, to do the things that are needed, the the the care, you know, case management. You know, for for my church, food is just the way to bring them in. And then when we get them there, we help to minister them. I have I'm just gonna say it out loud. I've
put people in my car and got them to detox. I've got them to rehab. I've got them to counseling, you know, and I believe these are the things that Pastor Steve is doing. If I'm res representing the correct person, I know that that's what he's doing, and he's collaborating with other folks besides, you know, his church members. And I've I've talked with many people that have benefited. So I am happy to talk with anyone with regards to the ways to improve, to
connect. I go to the COC meetings, you know, I'm actively involved and I do express my voice as many of you understand and agree with that thought. So I would just ask that you, you know. Do what you can if there's an issue with regards to that food pantry that is outside of their control that you would support an effort that would allow them to continue to do work to assist folks to get on their
feet.
Thank you for your comments. Kathy, did you already speak have you spoken to this lady? Meet her in the back. She'll come meet you in the back. Does anyone else in the audience wish to speak at this time? See no one will go to WebEx?
Okay, so we have a uh Mr. Chris Shepherd online. Mr. Shepherd, are you there?
Can you hear me?
I can't hear you. If you'll give your name and address for the record, sir, and then you can speak.
My name is Good morning, Commissioner. I live at [address removed]. Um I'm here to talk about the Sierra Pines Boulevard. Um twice how it works is my father and and myself and a couple other people once a year, maybe twice a year, we get we use my dump trailer and we go down to Ajax where we get uh asphalt. And Um we use donations and
we patch that road, like I said, once or twice a year. We've been doing it for the last ten to fifteen years now. And it's getting so bad that, you know, the road's so deteriorating that You know, we just can't keep up. We're putting band aids on it. And we're using people who drive down the road and donate stop and donate money and we have a uh my mother keeps the account. And that's the money we use, the donations to patch the road. But like I said, we're using my truck and my equipment the last ten years. Uh it's just getting so bad that we can't
keep up anymore with it. And uh It's not just the residents that use that road. When we're patching it, I see you know the the post office uses it, Amazon.
So Like I said, it's just getting so bad that we can't keep up with it anymore. Uh That's real I wanted to you know Tell you how bad it's getting. Um but that's all I really had to say. Okay.
Thank you for your comments.
Is that is that a county road? No, it's in Hillsborough County. Oh, that's all Hillsburg County. I keep
saying
it's we don't pave roads. The problem we have is we don't pave roads in Hillsborough County. Yeah.
Okay.
No sir.