Public comment on Lacucci plan and rural area
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 9, 2024
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 9, 2024
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 24m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 80% of 118 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
I can't do that without the help of four of you. And I look forward to going through it and we've been over all these informations prior to this meeting. This time uh it's time for public comment. Today's public comment will be uh handled as follows. First we will take public comment for those uh persons that are present. We will take uh uh those that are pre registered for a WebEx link and currently on Q. Uh we request
that when you address the board that you uh do not direct any uh Personally against any commissioner and and also team members. But this time prov this provides mutual respect for the board members and the public. After hear after stating your name and address for the clerk, a three-minute timer will be activated. After two minutes, a single beat will indicate you have one minute left. When you When the time
is up, two beeps will sound and you should close your comments. WebEx recipients will be disconnected automatically when the time is up. Okay, Madam Clerk, who is our first speaker?
Um we have a couple people signed up in person. We have um I'll list out the first three. We have Craig and Joanne Pearson. If you could please come to the podium, followed by Richard Wiley and Gregory Smith.
I do not see anybody moving for Craig and Joanne Pearson.
Maybe outside? Okay.
Okay, I think they're with Roy Bayer.
Okay. How
Mr.
Riley.
I don't there he is, I see. Okay.
Good morning. I'm Richard Riley. I live [address removed], in the community of Trilby, and part of the rural area. While the rest of us have been sleeping, a county has been planning to replace part of our protected uh northeast rural area with high density suburban homes. Yes, we take this personally. We, the residents of Blanton, Trilby, Makouchi, in the rural eastern quarter of our
count of our county. The history is that the rural area was designated in the 2005 comprehensive plan adopted in 2008 as a compromise to development of the area between Belingborough on Brothers on the West. State Road fifty two on the south. We agreed to let the development of the Pasita Hills area south of Dade City in Saint Leo, San Antonio, to be developed through a developer-based
committee called the Villages of Pasadena Hills Financial Plan, in return for leaving the rural area alone. District One Commissioner Ted Schrader and County Manager John Gallagher were the driving forces behind designating these two areas. This grant agreement has worked very well for the for Pasadena Hills. It is being developed with a subcommittee of large landowners and developers. Uh uh as a part of as a part of District
One with high density development along curly road and overpass road. For our protected rural area, it has limited growth in this open area with few exceptions. When the McC committee was established to draw up commercial standards for the um area. It was eliminated by um uh because it tried to limit commercial development. Now there is a plan to effectively eliminate the proposed rural area. It is hidden in a report to be presented on this week called the Greater
Lakouche Community Plan. That's it that's on the agenda. This plan was established to help the rural area develop with input from local residents. Consultants prepared a plan to urge the business and rural development in the area. But the plan also included the portion of that designates the Trilby Hills, a rurally protected zoned area. Owned mostly by Evans Properties Incorporated. The Greater Likucci Community Plan follows several other initiatives over the last 20 years to create cohesive development. The new
study covers approximately 11,288 acres and includes a portion of the Northeast Rural Area and Trilby, Lacucci, and Trilby communities. What concerns us is that about 7,000 rural acres to the west of Trilby, the green spot, big green spot number one on the map up here. Number three. Ha. It was seldom mentioned to the public hearing and with the plan consultants uh in the formation of this plan, and only appeared in the final report that this has
been re submitted to the committee. Yes, they try and brand this into the process of developing the county in contrast to prior um promises for protection. Please direct the planning division to eliminate this high density plan for the Trilby Hills part of the Brooksville Ridge. The plan is nice as long as we do this. Take rid of the green part and keep the rest. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Uh Gregory Smith followed by John and Beverly Williams.
Good morning. Good morning. Name and address.
My name is Gregory Smith. My address is [address removed].
I'm also here to address the Greater Lacucci Community Plan as a strange variant of the Northeast Pasco uh Rural Protected Area. I'll be brief. I've been involved with this group of people, dozens of people who have met individually and collectively with commissioners, time after time.
The general message is pretty clear. Keep the rural area, the rural protected area rural. The Commission made a commitment to that effect in 2008. And if we haven't gotten the message through in that length of time. Somebody's hard of hearing. Thank you.
Thank you. The one else?
Uh John and Beverly Williams. Followed by Nancy Hazelwood.
I made a motion.
Move for receive and file. Second.
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion
passed. Good morning. We're John and Beverly Williams from Universal Gifts in Hudson. We've worked in healthcare and medicine for thirty-six years before retiring.
State
your full name and address.
John and Beverly Williams, 13825 US 19 Hudson is our business address.
Okay.
So we've worked in health care and medicine for thirty-six years before retiring, and we decided that helping people was in our blood. So we decided to open a holistic wellness center in Hudson two years ago called Universal Gifts. Um we love the community, but we've had a lot of issues with um vandalism, graffiti. And garbage on our property. All our business neighbors have
chain-link fences surrounding their properties on all four sides of us. We hired Fence Outlet to install uh fence at the back of our property to help keep people out at night when we're not there.
After we had a murder happen behind our property on September nineteenth of this year of this past year.
Had a lot of issues with the homeless hanging out. It was an old bank building, so they love to hang out in the uh drive-thru area, which is kind of protects from the elements. And um the problem is they're always leaving a mess with human feces and urine and garbage. So we installed um a fence protecting the back of our property. Um This uh fence.
Is the same fence that everybody and and the whole neighborhood has?
On all four sides of us. Um day after we installed the fence, code enforcement stopped by and told us we needed to remove the fence because it was against the ordinance. Um Done a survey and most of the businesses in the area have chain link fences to protect themselves. Um
Our front of the building's gonna always remain open so Emergency vehicles can always get in the front, but the back gates will also have a keypad where the emergency vehicles can get in if necessary from the rear.
So we ask that you please help us out, help us protect our tenants and our employees and property by changing the ordinance. Uh the county is still installing chain lake fences to protect the county properties.
We would like to be treated equally.
Thank you. All right. Thank you.
Nancy Hazelwood, followed by Craig and Joanne Pearson.
Nancy Hayswood, [address removed]. I have something to hand out. What
do you see
the file? Second.
All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passed.
Thank you. I'm having a hard time believing the county
status
so much. She said she didn't.
Stop that. You're taking my office. I didn't recognize you, so
That's my mustache. I am having a hard time believing the county is taking so much of the northeast rural protected area within the Lakuchi plant. I had no idea that the Lakucci was so huge. And actually the people living in that area don't realize they are living in Lakuchi. This appears to me to be just a land grab. And the county has already taken some areas in our plan. We've got a couple of cities in it. So what's
gonna be left? What's the hurry on this plan? It hasn't been to the Planning Board actually. I mean it was there for maybe fourteen minutes and they didn't get a chance to speak on it. So Y'all did not receive their comments to help be advised on this. So I like the Lakichi part, the area around 301 and 98. I am hoping for a library job center are
created. If more housing is needed, there's plenty of room on 301 and 98 for those houses. The rest is why you should not reprove this plan as with the hundred acres that are in the northeast rural hundreds of acres. They're disappearing it from the county maps and making it normal. So The county said the number one issue when when went to all the
meetings was that they wanted to protect the rural lands. So how do you protect it? You put subdivisions on it? Come on guys.
So also as Richard mentioned earlier the Brooksville Ridge is there. Now over uh near Dade City they've already taken down a couple of those hills about twenty to twenty five feet. So they'll be able to do that over in this side of the county too. What are we gonna have left of our beautiful county?
The citizens did say they wanted everything protected. That was their one priority. So I'm hoping you can listen to that. We do not need
this amount of density in our area. Um
I would hope that if you're gonna take from the Northeaster Row area plan You would inform everybody in the Northeast Rural area plan that this is gonna happen. We didn't know at those Lakouche meetings that hey nobody said we're gonna take a great deal of your Northeast Royal area plan, we're just gonna take it out of there. Well why wasn't the rest of the northeast row area plan told to the other people in that county. area, it was just Lakouche that got the message.
Thank you all for listening.
Thank you.
So Mr. Chair, I've been told that um Craig and Joanne Pearson have discussed things with staff and they're going into a different direction so they don't want to speak further. Um and I do have uh two people signed up on WebEx, but I don't know if you want to give one final call.
Yes. Anyone here would like to speak today on uh any item that you hadn't signed up for for public comment? Come forward and state your name and address.
Hi. My name is Lisa Moretti. I respectfully decline to give my address because this is publicly broadcast and it puts my personal safety at risk.
We gotta have your address.
What
did you say? She doesn't want to give her address, but we all have to give her address. Yeah unless
you're
all addressed. The only time you can't give your address for a law enforcement officer. Yeah. You're exempt by state law to do that.
I would ask you to reconsider that in the future. [address removed].
Um I am
going to get your address?
She did. She just
gave
it.
Oh I couldn't even I couldn't even hear what you were saying.
Bonus.
Yeah.
Uh I would like to say that I was amazed to look at the agenda and see that you were being presented with the Lacucci Plan with a recommendation from staff to go ahead and approve moving it forward when the Planning Commission unanimously asked you to bring it back to them. And I can't think of a bigger giant GFY to your planning committee commission than to just override their unanimous decisions. So I hope that you will reconsider that recommendation from staff.
I was also amazed the last time I was here with regard to Cherry Hill Or Cherry Woods, I'm sorry. That um You have a developer. that signed an affidavit that she had advertised and signage that area. And that There were no pictures submitted because they couldn't be and that you went ahead and moved that forward. That staff decided that yes, that signed affidavit, which was illegally signed. was
okay. That we didn't need to do the completed staff work. That goes into development requests. That's disappointing. And third, as a just a citizen. Um I was surprised to see that the speed limit signs by Sacred Heart School on uh St. Joe Road We're all gone. It used to be that you had to slow down and yeah it was annoying, but you know what? There's little tiny kids there and they're running around and little tiny kids can be a little bit unpredictable. And
so now that's just the open speedway that it's always been, instead of reducing speeds to like thirty. So that maybe if a kid got out they'd survive a crash. And I can't understand why we've decided to make that a freeway game. So I appreciate your time. I hope you'll consider especially on the Lacouche plan. that that doesn't need to move forward just yet, that that hasn't had enough hearing. and that the citizens of all of Pasco have a right to speak to that. um
on behalf of the Pasco Communities Network. I know that we are going to be talking about this tomorrow. and that there is quite a bit of unrest about that plan moving forward. Thank you.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Seeing no one, move on to WebEx.
We have Doris Carroll.
Hold on just one moment. They're elevating you.
Hi, this is Doris Kittle. Can you hear me?
Yes, ma'am. If you could state your name and address and then you can proceed.
Thank you. Doris Carroll, [address removed]. And I agree with Lisa Murreti. This is a time when we are facing a lot of press. And I'm sure that the commissioners are and other county officials as well, please reconsider the use of addresses. We can give our address when we sign up. But I'm here to talk about the Ancore River Park development.
I'm kind of concerned. I noticed that when the 10-year lease was passed on August 9th, 2022, The board uh memorandum states in the background section that the uh public On September twenty-seventh of twenty twenty-one at a properly known public meeting. The evaluation who maybe discussed and carefully considered the proposals, qualifications, and
experiences outlined in its proposal. I hope you have the document in front of you since I submitted it yesterday. In fact, and then it went on to say on October 1st, 2021, at a properly limited public committee. In fact, there are no, no such evidence of any uh advertisements or postings for those two dates. And I've done the research for that. I've uh talked to others, we can't
find that. That's very concerning. And as a matter of fact, when you put items like these on the consent agenda, That's it. really little notice and you I I know that that's your practice and probably the whole state's practice, but my God, why can't we hear about these issues and Talk about it before you
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on moving this forward. And secondly, but more importantly, is the fact that I hope you saw a recent article in Tampa Bay Times about canalis. The County Park there, uh Lee Park, they have decided to be respectful and honor indigenous peoples by shutting down in the next month or two the playground and
the shelter, park shelter that's on burial mounds. Now our county thinks that we've had more burial mounds at uh uh and hopefully park in fact it's never been excavated And that because you will excavat the surrounding area does not mean. It does not mean that there are And there isn't any possibility of human remains. Even if there
aren't any human remains, this is still considered sacred land to the indigenous and should be respected as canalist impulsive right-cave.
Yes, um I have Julia Sash Sasha. Julia Sasha Bertunic.
Hold on just one moment as we elevate you.
All right, you are good to go if you could state your name and address for the record and then you may proceed.
Um you are on mute.
Ms. Fartenek, check your mute button.
Okay, there we are. We live slash reports in it [address removed].
The Song Trust Zero Five. Our Council Conservation Committee strongly opposes the destruction of the environmental jewel Ancla River Beach Frog. This living sherlop has endangered species such as manatees, along with bald eagles, crochet crabs, and is an important estuary feeding supply for many species, including humans. The commercial and safety of public property and its impact to federal borderways is so egregious that
the Taunton Springs City Council has voted affected party status. This also violates Our strategic plan goal number one to be slightly playing impact and playing emotions. Secondly, the Sierra Club Executive Committee has voted to stand opposition to the Brigham Lakuchi Plan. and with committee members and supporting the Northeast rural protected
area. Thirdly, I would like to think as an individual that the opening the the clear cutting and burning of of our material built at New Port Corners is really distractive. I'm really need the mulching and recycling of all the trees that are being critical. and burned. Thank you for your attention to these matters. That's all.
Thank you.
Okay, is that that's all
that I have on WebEx.
Okay. Again I'll ask before we close public comment, does anyone in the audience wish to speak? Okay, seeing see no one we'll move move forward to you got somebody? We're coming forward.
Don't want to forget you. Your voice needs to be heard.
Um good morning. My name is Sharon Hannah West. I reside at [address removed]. Um the Pasco County Planning Commission has requested additional time to review the Lacucci project. I would hereby request that the Board of County Commissioners grant them that time prior to your voting on the project. Thank you.
Wait a minute. What what project you're talking about? With Likucci? The Likucci appointments. Oh the Likuchi. There's no public comment, that's just a presentation.
Yeah, I'm not.
I'll make I'll be making the comment. So okay. All right. We will close public comment and then we'll move to res one.
Madam Clerk?