Minor rural subdivision road standards
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The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Feb 20, 2024
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The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Feb 20, 2024
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What was said
Machine transcription of 28m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 80% of 175 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Now we can Do ordinary business.
Mr. Whiteman.
Thanks, sir. I guess we call up Roy and Mr. Tippin, so We've been since we came in office we've been Some of you may be familiar working on minor subdivisions. And there's some pretty strict pretty strict guide guidelines there and this this issue comes out of Quell Hollow but I think minor rules. Offer a a fantastic housing product. Um e more executive style housing opportunities
for residents. works well in different different areas of our county. But this issue deals with uh in the code. And a and driveways. Uh so I'll let we'll need to make a I guess um the board. likes what we have to say here, a motion to try to help Temporarily. fix the code to help these these projects work better. So I'll let take it from here.
Yes, sir. Um Mr. Chairman Roy Major for Assistant County Administrator Development Services. So we had a discussion uh with Commissioner Weightman and and and several stakeholders who have projects in with Hillsbroker, sorry, last job, with uh Pasco County. uh for a minor rural subdivision. And and the particular applicant is having one with three lots. And so under the under the the code indicates that a minor rural subdivision will have to produce a paved road that is twelve
feet wide, foot and a half of paved shoulder on each side of that uh stretch of pavement. That would have to be engineered. And so while that seems potentially appropriate for uh one uh minor rural that's doing you know larger lots or that is going for that executive housing market, this individual is is bought this property to to just cut these three lots. Um I'm gonna need impression either one or two of them were for family members and one one
or two might be for sale. So so the the the crux of it is that that requirement to do a paved engineered road would be onerous to applicants that are doing smaller rural minor subdivisions. So we kinda put our heads together and and the idea came out that That the code is asking for a paved cross section. Yeah. Could we define paved as as a stabilized as a stabilized roadway? Stabilization
be defined by load bearing ratio. Load bearing ratio is a a well-known testing measurement that road densities are measured by. Not to go too deep into the weeds on this. But in as a the the ask is, could we substitute a a road surface that is LBR 40? load bearing ratio of forty as opposed to having it being paved and engineered. What an L B R forty. adequately substitute
for this pavement criteria. And so asking our county engineer if that would be something that he would find acceptable in initial discussion said it would be. Asking Fire Marshal Fromm if this would be acceptable to them, they said it would be. And so the the the idea is is that to give the minor rural subdivision Developers an opportunity to provide this stabilized roadway surface which meets
this LBR 40 criteria. instead of having it engineered and paved.
Yeah.
You know, you can save trees this way. You can keep what the minor rural subdivision field is. Through Amending the code doing doing this way. So it's very interesting.
uh the folks who do minor role subdivisions they they really kind of feel picked on almost and it's such an uphill battle for them to get their their their projects across the finish line. They're selling Million dollar housing product on acre pluses and it's what folks want. Uh
well I don't
want them all a dark road.
Yeah I have I have a couple questions on the about this. One Uh first I wanna make sure the roads so when they go to construct their house and all the heavy equipment's going in there in the in in the rain, who's gonna who's responsible to regrade it?
I don't want the county to be taken on that.
These are these are private roads. Yeah. These are private roads.
Okay, they'll be private. Okay. Um how many houses can be in a rural minor subdivision? I believe it's twelve.
Sixteen.
The two ag future land use classifications, ten in res one.
And when the P so that's so interesting, let's discuss that. And then when the P Bass comes through Th these people, if they do want it paid, they'll have to pay a premium.
No th there's no P BAS roads or no paving.
If they want to come into the county system, they can't they can never.
No. It's so sorry.
That's that's really the big difference. And so that's a private ingress-egress easement for these minimal the the small number of lots that this allows. The and that's why that's the other reason why the code standard is lessened. for the this access versus Uh uh full subject.
Okay, and more questions. Is there a minimum lot size? And are they on county water and utility or are they all on Seth Weightman? No,
they're on Centric and Well, I wouldn't
have to be.
Well do they
have to be?
They're large lots. Yeah,
they're acres.
Okay.
And is that what
you
were going to say? Uh yeah, the minimum line size if you're in res one, uh it it obviously goes by uh the zoning and the land use comparatively, but uh it's gonna be basically none of these are gonna be smaller than an acre. They're all gonna be larger than an acre. Um most will likely be larger than that. We're looking at most of these four or five acre lots coming in here. As far as utilities, uh the actual presence of uh sewer and water lines, county sewer and water, actually means you cannot do an MRS. So it it changes the
type of subdivisions you can do. So these are these are well inseptic lots.
Okay. And
and private that so this is a private roadway to access lots that don't have frontage along a regular roadway, basically.
Well my problem is um I'm in a rural area now. And with what y'all were talking about. I wouldn't have a paved road to my house right now. I'd have a dirt road or Something similar. and it would not be very nice at all. And personally I I wouldn't wanna do that to anybody. If you're gonna have an executive home or a lot
You need to have a road.
Just to be clear, this doesn't prohibit anyone from paving a roadway. This is this is for those those smaller uh folks, maybe someone that owns a you know four or five acres that wants to split it up. and and do something and have the access by easement. But you know, paving a road uh creates costs with engineering. It creates uh some swift mud permitting processes and some other things that can happen that can actually creep in there and make that a very cost prohibitive thing to subdivide the property. Uh and there is also a a large group of of
folks that want access Off that dirt road, you know, the little go trail. They want that true kind of rural feel. Um so that's what this allows. It allows it as an option. Uh but we also wanted to make sure that it was safe. So we come, you know, that's why we talked to County Engineer and the fire marshal to say is LBR 40, something that's safe. You can achieve that through a number of different means other than paving uh and and it still provides a safe access point for these folks that just can't afford to do it in those other manners. But it does not prohibit anybody from actually paving.
If you're putting million dollar houses on a lot or million dollar things, more than likely a person's gonna want to do it.
Yeah. So that but they're
gonna they're gonna want
to pave the road. Uh th if somebody's trying to sell that type of property they're gonna want to pave the road. I've seen
some beautiful what people are asking for not having to pave a road Could buy all these lots of They're just trying to do away with a certain expense. The They make all this money off this land and they don't put any real effort in making a nice road for these executive homes on on rural acres like five acre lots or whatever. So
and commissioners let you underscore the the couple things. Is it the the L B R forty it can be achieved through putting out millings, compacting it, compacting the the soil. Something called geo web. You can put geo web, distribute that, put put sand or gravel in it, compact it. And so it's not something that is that is gonna be uh temporary or really subject to weather when you achieve that level of density. So it is that's a pretty reliable number. And then and then to answer the question is these again, these are more
intended for, you know, folks who might who might subdivide their property with the intention of of putting temporary, not temporary, but mobile homes on it or something like that. Not really the You know the upper scale housing.
I I think it's important that we give our residents and the landowners an option. to have to force somebody to do their property I
think it also
is.
That's that's what it is. They don't want to put any cost in it 'cause they wanna make more money out of the lots, uh I'm just not for that.
Yes. I want you to consider a situation and I know we all we all were briefed on it a w a while ago, but you had one gentleman who bought I don't know how many acres of land out in out in rural area and it was to keep a developer from coming in putting in
Well Larry, I'm talking about you can't put in a hundred homes. So
No, but I'm but I'm just saying in in general. So you so to take the pressure away from development trying to come in and redevelop everything, take away rural character. Um I think we called it a substandard road. I drove the road, it was actually had asphalt on it. And it was like uh drove the whole thing. Wasn't it wasn't a great road, you're not gonna go fast on it, but For those people if they're comfortable with it. I mean then making a decision if they want to do it or not.
That's a different situation though, because those were the example you're giving it was those were county roads that were substandard. That that and he was not doing a minor rural subdivision because he exceeded the number that would be allowed as a minor rural subdivision, but the He didn't run any roads into his project. Right. He cut 'em all off the county road.
Okay. Anyway, to to let someone subdivide their property if it's easement that need be go in and then and they don't want to have it asphalt 'cause they don't want to pay the expense for it. If they know what they're getting and and I'll give you an example with my grandparents they had a bought a house on a lake There was probably a hundred homes around this whole lake. And we drove on it for twenty years on a dirt road. So they finally paved it. But everybody knew what it was and everyone just did it and they were okay with it. So they make the
call. I really give them I give them the flexibility to make the call. Especially if it's a private road in that in that regard.
I wouldn't wanna do this a lot.
No, well they're gonna do it a lot. That's what they're
doing. I
yeah.
I don't think it's premiere really. Um So
Your Jeff's helping a small group of people that are developing a little bit. Is there another
way to help these people?
Oh they want the cost to go away when you're doing that.
So um Uh we had this discussion starting last week. This was uh we thought was a pretty workable idea. Um with the again with the LBR 40 idea. We could certainly kick this around some more. Yeah,
can we do less less houses? Like less than twelve Sure, sure.
W would you mind if I read the language that we're suggesting? Because it might answer some of the questions as to kind of what the intent is here.
This is a modification of the existing language. It says MRS access ways shall consist of a 12-foot paved cross section with a one and a one-half foot Stabilized shoulder on each side. On individual applications for MRSs, where the fire marshal determines there is no life safety issue for an unpaved access way, a twelve foot unpaved stabilized section with one and a half foot stabilized shoulders may be used. Unless otherwise determined by the fire marshal, unpaved stabilized sections for an MRS should
have a minimum load bearing ratio of forty LBR forty. Uh such unpaved stabilized access way shall not be considered an improvement requiring the applicant to be a civil engineer in terms of L D C four oh three. Um so you know we're still Encouraging the pavement. But it's allowing the option for folks uh that they really wanted that rural character. I mean rural character you go out half the places in Pasco County Administrator
in Odessa where you can't get to because popularity.
But but some people do want that and and we're just trying to provide an opportunity for for people to that want that to still have that as an opportunity. Um and we're trying to create that flexibility through this.
How about that government creating flexibility for people.
We try
headaches for
government. ends up a headache on the long run for the government.
Um To answer your question, Commissioner, yes, you you ha would have the discretion to lower it to a minor rural subdivision of five lots or three lots or whatever. That's completely up to you what if what if they had
uh Just say what if they had twelve lots? And so to stay within this boundary to be able to do it this way, you're only allowing Three homes to be off something like this. And so they do three different areas on the same Same master property they have.
So so typically the way these uh these get discussed and I
You're with us, uh is the fire marshal actually looks at the amount of distance that their heavy trucks have to drive to get to somebody's house. So if this road gets too long, they say no. And that's what this clause is in here that says unless the fire marshal says no. Because typically what will happen is on those 10 or 12 lot subdivisions, there's a long access way to get back there. And that's what the fire marshal says, no, that's too far, we want it paved. But it generally will leave this up to the fire marshal to determine, you know, what
distance is too far, what distance is safe. Um and if that's you know one lot back off the road, two lots back off the road, and then you know once you get a little bit further than that, maybe he says no. Uh but it leaves it up to them and then that safety aspect.
You know. Um I'm really torn coming, you know, being married to a ransom family. But I can show you a streets that are not county maintained in Odessa that were built like this. Yeah. They're bigger lots. But you if you drive down Chesapeake and you turn left and you go back in there, you can't drive 'em. And you know what? Nobody on there wants to pay to have their road fixed. The county came in there once and tried to fix it, but It is. It is like It's crazy how bad
those roads are, but they're their roads. And um and it's and that so the houses have deteriorated in value down there? It's a rough it's gotten rougher and rougher and rougher and I don't know what the answer is there, but I I'm not sure I want to be encouraging that.
Well I can tell you this is this is a three acre a little over three acre road in Quell Hollow and the roads in Quell Hollow are pretty tough. and it's coming off a main main paved road, easy streets intersection. And you come in and it's it's it's three acres and it's one, two, and three. So if there's a cap on the number of homes like you guys are talking about. At twelve, I mean this is This makes sense for for a project like this. And the roads that are coming into Quill Hollow that the county's responsible for Bit
of a mess, but I I think this is a fine compromise and if you cap the number of homes I I have no issue with that, but when you create an option for for people, government's creating an option and actually being
helpful.
Well I I made
a compromise. You know,
you know, for that's a different thing.
You know, I think knowing what I have in my district um I I just don't want to encourage that, so I'm gonna probably be a no. Yeah. I'm not I'm not gonna encourage that. I and I'll be happy to show you that road those roads. That are private roads, dirt roads that are Turned in worse and worse and worse.
So Mr. Chairman M let's let's talk to that area. So quail hollow. It's got all sorts of pressure for development. Like all the apartments are gonna be down up and down Old Pasco Road, all the way down. You got so much development pressure going on right there. So I didn't even know this was the area, but now that you mention it That's probably a perfect area to go do this because we can't You can only take so much traffic in that area right now anyway. We're jam packed. All right?
Some of their main roads which I don't know if I don't even think they're county maintained. Yeah, a pothole big as this whole Dais here in the road. Then when it rains and all you can't travel that way at all. I
I I
wash out and none of those neighbors take any responsibility to straighten out that road. It's the biggest mess you've ever seen in your life.
Well, I've I've driven the area 'cause I'm between looking at the Telephone or the poll that was going on out there. Drove all the way down Lynnhurst, all the way down Some side roads there to try to look at like a is there a connection there from forty one to going across? When the backside from the Swift Mud property came across. And it's like They're big, big homes, big, big properties and rather than having more homes being jammed in there trying to get them out later on. And all that pressure that's out there? I'd rather minimize it and have the big lots. Crazy
man.
Mm-hmm.
So these these are uh MRS subdivisions are you know limited to ten lots or sixteen lots depending on the the land use area that there is. Future land use. So we can look at if if you prefer to cap it, we can do something like half of those lots if it's you know five where you're allowed ten. Or eight where you're allowed sixteen, make it simple. We can cap it like that. I mean if you're if you'd like to pursue that, that's a very easy add to this that we can allow 16? No. So an MRS in in the AG land uses
allows for 16 lots. Um in a Res One land use it only allows for 10. So I was saying that in those ags, you, you know, eight of them, if it was eight or less, you could use this method. Or uh in the res one, if it's five or less, you could use this method. We can we could do a cap like that and make this uh uh fairly I mean that's a very simple fix of this language. We can we can do that. And have that.
I don't think it's a good idea.
We hadn't heard from Mr. Bradford. Mr. Bradford, what do you
think?
Private
roads, I don't know that he cares.
He
fell
asleep.
Oh but he has to go in for the one time fix when they're begging us.
He's coming.
No Commissioner Weightman.
We would seem to me if we got a subdivision. Uh the road. You should be able to accommodate it like a fire engine at least. Well And this prime development. I get that. I love that. Everybody wants that in the correct way. I just I just think uh uh
And make sure it's number one. And make sure it's done properly. Those are my thoughts.
Well the fire marshal doesn't disapprove of this. Fire marshal support. I mean we have the fire marshal, staff To approve it so the fire marshal in this This instance and if we cap it Says hey there's there's not a problem here and we're creating real real value in a in a prime value area of our of our county and it gives landowners An option an option to actually have some property rights. and do something with
their their property that they choose to do. And if they want to pave it, hey, they can pave it. If they have to have standards of L B R forty, fantastic. It's better it's not like the Wild West here. It gives the landowner and the homeowner an option. And that's the great thing about this country, we have choices. They choose to maintain it. Hey, they choose to maintain. If they don't it's not it's not the county's obligation To maintain to maintain this road.
You you haven't been here when uh
When
they're coming in, they show up with all the pictures and they say we can't, the school buses won't come down, the ambulance won't come down.
Look,
I'm in the garbage
business. We get down road, you get down road more than anybody, more than any fire truck, more than. Yeah, we get it done. I just think we need to give property owners a little bit more flexibility in what they do, and I'm for this fee.
Is there is there something else we can do?
Uh we can take this back and think about it some more, but quite frankly I don't know that there's much else we can do because uh like I said, we're really leaving this up to the fire marshal. um and the safety issue and and to to Commissioner Bradford's point, uh you know, we we won't let any development do this if the fire marshal says it's not safe. So if they if they need something more then they then they'll ask for it. Generally on most of these shorter runs of roadway, they're okay with the LBR 40.
There may be certain terrain, if it's a certain type of hillside or something like that, where it's going to be going, that they might want something different. But uh you know otherwise the the code language that's already in there at twelve feet of paved is as uh pretty much as low as you can go besides this. So there's really not much else that we can do to help them out except for possibly take this and and use a cap to allow certain smaller versions of these MRSs to come in and do this.
All right. All I can speak to her is District One, so District one doesn't want more dirt roads, so We got more than anybody else in any district right now. and since I have half the land mass, you won't give me half the paving, so I don't want to continue having just a bunch of rough roads and dirt roads. We want something better than that either.
And the dirt roads, the the non county maintained dirt roads of my district in the Odessa area, disaster.
Yeah.
Property buy is going
down. They work out, they get potholes, it just goes on and on and on.
Yeah, I'm not okay with it.
We're a lot of sand hills and things of that nature in District One, I know.
I don't know if you have any dirt roads in your own.
I wouldn't have bought the lot I've got if it had been on a you inherited all the district.
So this is not your your
lime rock road either. So But there's a pile of monoral opportunity up Jack's way.
Well you you did say millings, right?
Stableized service.
Yeah, there are a number of different ways that you can achieve this through compaction, millings, and geo web and uh there's uh in you know, million ways to skin the cat really to to get to that LBR forty. Um but once they get there, once you have it at L B R forty, it's considered stabilized. Uh it's it's not gonna it's not gonna dissipate like not everything doesn't want to everything needs some repair eventually, but it's it's not gonna dissipate as badly as uh just a basic dirt road that you might see.
I think I think maybe I would consider it and you'd have to bring it back, if they're if all those people enter into some kind of P O A HOA property owners association or something that guarantees that they're fixing that route. That's the only way. And it's and it's tested to be an LDR or whatever that thing is. I I need more assurances that that road's gonna be taken care of and we're not gonna have headaches in the future. Is there a way to do that?
We would We we would certainly w wanna see the the you know the cores, the core samples to validate its L B R forty. Or L D R forty. And so that's that's pretty
Only one time or every so often?
Well we can always condition this to any way, you know, with with a a cap on lots. We can they can take core samples and and produce that in a period of time, but um taking the core samples is is a is a well known testing procedure. And so we could
I know that we've built lime um we've built limerock roads with millings on it at our blueberry farm and they don't last forever. Um and y you have to come back and we have to Scrape bomb and do things to 'em. They're not maintenance free. Well neither so and so I wouldn't you know, you'd have to have some kind of association of degrees to maintain it. Because one person M may want to fix it but everyone else doesn't in those kind of neighborhoods, right?
And you never have.
Whip Yeah, I've seen it. Uh Yeah.
I think we'd be going backwards to be honest with you. I don't care to do that.
I don't know where Jack is, but that's
You got something else to bring forward? Uh
no sir. No sir. This is it, but I'm I'm for for this change, so Just pleasure with what the majority is.
That's right. So you I wouldn't mind looking at it further.
I
I think you might have three.
My vote to to make the change and cap I mean if other board members Cap it or what have you, but I vote to make Make the change recommend recommended by by staff with Whatever makes other board members comfortable with capping it or what have you.
So I I think maybe if we bring this back in a couple of weeks or something it might be a better way to go. We can we can certainly do that. Just to get some more information and give us something to look at right off the cuff in the study and we can ask questions too about it at that.
In the meantime, please go drive Ballow, drive Ballow. Rowland. What else do I have back in there? Yeah.
Just go ask your mother. Look up those roads in uh Coal Hollow where people don't take care of the road and nobody else helps I mean it's terrible. I mean half this room could be one of the potholes in the road that they got. It rains and you can't drive through there.
Alright, I'm not feeling well, so let's keep going. So uh just to clarify, uh really the only thing that we can add to this would be a cap. Uh and if if you could do a cap and a p and a property owners association. Uh we can't really do a property owners association with this type of situation. It's gonna be a little bit different.
Well the board could do it.
Are we gonna require that of all of them?
We'll take it back and look at it.
You need to
need to do some research and bring it back. You wanna bring it back?
If there's an agreement to maintain the road then I I might be
Well
mine are
rules, yeah. General.
But
thank y'all. you. All right, Ms. Dorkey.
Is that it for you?
Nope.
I have some things more things where I'm gonna wait on something.
What?