Public comment on current or future agenda items
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, Jan 6, 2026
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Jan 6, 2026
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 9m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 78% of 36 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Here. Now is the time for public comment. Citizens are given an opportunity to comment on any current or future agenda item coming before the board and on other businesses under the board's purview. Today's public comment will be handled as follow. First we'll take public comment from those who are here in person. Then we'll take public comment for those who are pre-registered for a WebEx length and currently on queue. We request that when you address the board, comments are not directed personally against the commissioner or team member, but rather directed at The issues. This provides mutual respect between
the board members and the public. After stating your name and address for the clerk, a three-minute timer will be activated. A green light will be shown to you on the podium. After two minutes, a yellow light will indicate you have one minute left. When your time is up, a red light will be displayed. Three beeps will sound and you should close your comments. WebEx participants will be disconnected automatically when their time is up. Mr. Clerk, do we have anyone signed up for public comment?
We have both uh on uh present here in the in the room and online. Uh Julia Bartunik.
Julia Artounik.
Public comment. This is for public comment.
Okay, uh she's she's got L L P sixty three.
Okay. Um
Nancy okay. Same thing.
Nancy Hayswood, [address removed]. And I messed it all up, I'm sorry.
No.
Um, it's good to see y'all. Happy New Year, Jack. Congratulations. And maybe it's a relief for Ms Starkey not to be up there anymore. Anyways, um I I went to the meeting uh on the December the 15th at the Hugh Emery Library and have some comments on that. It's on the Employment Center at Blanton Road. I don't think the meeting knew its o audience, first off. They put it in a room for
30 people, at least 80 showed up. Uh staff started with a survey and asked us which house we would want in the employment center. And um Uh they should have started with something about maybe asking the community if we wanted an EC in this way, you know? And they didn't and the questions were just not appropriate for our area. And it was uh this point that I decided not to take the survey and there were a lot of others that didn't. And
the question really is, do we want a high density development in the middle of Northeast Pasco's rural area plan? Which is where it is. And uh The densities over time have obviously grown. Guilford's land comes to mind. We fought it, didn't win, and they added it to the employment center. So um Now it looks like basically the county wants to put a small city in the middle of Northeast Rural.
Uh there's well over a thousand units, commercial, industrial, light industrial, it's all approved for the E C area and we didn't have any other community meetings on us. And all of a sudden we're here. This is your rural area. Is that what you want to do? And I don't know how we're gonna survive if you put thousands of houses, that traffic's gonna get out and then s that's what's gonna destroy us. So Let's do this instead. Let's find incentives that regulate
and lower the densities in the area. So we don't lose the rural protected area. It's a high recharge area. It's Pasco's water supply. We also have the Green Swamp, the Brooksville Ridge. We're your last stand basically. This is just one of the projects in the Northeast Rural that puts open space and water resources in jeopardy. You got some more going. You're putting a well field
out there or trying to. I don't know how that test has come out yet. And then you've got the Ayres Road coming in or trying to. We don't need it. We don't want it. It didn't fit. Spend your money someplace else, please. Uh I know you know about the congestion, some of the things that have been happening. I hear you all talking about a lot. Um of course that also is traffic accidents and uh
Please wrap it up.
Ran up time. But there is a lot that is going on out there and for Northeast Roma protected area to survive, this has got to slow down, stop. I recommend that you think about growth across the county and try to modify it. Thank you.
Cindy McCall, you not remark what you're wishing to speak to. Cindy?
Yeah.
Cindy Buckle, [address removed]. Jack, it's good to see you sitting in that chair.
Thank you.
Okay, I want to talk about County Road 54 and Gateway, the phase two expansion of of Forest Lake Estates, which currently has about two hundred and fifty homes in it for sale right now, including most of the Canadians that are leaving Florida. We have been blocked. from getting in and out of our homes since it started two months ago. Literally blocked. Traffic is backed up from All
the way to 98 to the east and all the way through the intersection at Chansey and County Ron 54. are not allowing us to get in and out. They are stopping us. I have missed appointments and have had to reschedule appointments because of this. And I have the pictures. That's the before picture. I'd like to see the after picture. So that you can see, this is what it looks like. Gateway is a dirt
road. It was paid. They put a huge metal thing over the hoses because they planted little shrubs instead of the fence that we were told was gonna go up. This is so high that when I go over it with my Honda Pilot, it hits my running boards to the point where my husband has to go underneath it. Retighten them each time I go. And
it it it's causing a lot of problems. I mean, traffic backs up around. Gateway to marks to Frontier for us to get out and what they're doing is they're allowing the construction traffic to come in first before they let us out. So that's the only way we have to get in and out because it backs up against the Upper Hillsborough. Reserve. We there's no back way out for us. Only one way. And we've been blocked over and over. Even
this morning when I tried to come out, I had to sit and wait. And this has been going on since it started. Then they're gonna start moving in these huge manufactured homes. What's gonna happen then? We have no way out. I watched two different times an ambulance try to get into the existing Fores Lake estates. They couldn't get in because both sides of the road There's a total drop-off that probably would have rolled the fox the the the ambulance. That's
dangerous. There's train tracks, two sets, which are both used. We hear the horns, we hear it all the time. And It's just gotta stop. The other issue I have is traffic lights. I see traffic lights going up. Pretty pond and 301. You've built all of those things, the car wash, the McDonald's, the storage, and there's no way out. And you have three turn lights and you do not have one going east.
So I'm talking to William Poe about that and I will push and push and push. Well
let me have you meet with David Allen uh so we can talk about that uh especially the first issue we're talking about as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
He's working on it. Yeah.
That's all we have signed up in the room. We have one online.
Okay, let's go to the online first.
We do not have the one online now. Okay.
Okay. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak and address the board?