Public comment on sprawl and Northeast Pasco rural area plan
What the county recorded
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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 Planning Commission, Apr 4, 2024
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The county’s minutes for Planning Commission, Apr 4, 2024
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What was said
Machine transcription of 14m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 97% of 61 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Um Take a min a minute today for anybody who plans to uh give testimony or come up and speak today, if you will stand and raise your right hand and be sworn, please.
Yeah.
Yeah, so
Okay, and For those of you who haven't done us done this before, um when you come up We just ask you to give your name. And your address. So that we can get it for the record and speak right into the microphone there so we can get everything recorded.
So we'd like to welcome everybody today. We're the Planning Commission. We're appointed by the Board of County Commissioners and we meet twice monthly. We serve as a local planning agency and we hold public hearings, transmit to the Board of County Commissioners. Our recommendations on comprehensive plan amendments, land development code amendments, rezoning, conditional use requests. Planning commission is the final decision-making-making body for special exceptions, certain appeals, variance
requests, and certain alternative standard requests. However, final decisions may be appealed to the Board of County Commissioners. We have a list of the those meeting dates. If they're important to you, you'll want to attend those. If anyone is in opposition to any comprehensive plan amendment land development code amendment rezoning conditional use or any item where the Planning Commission makes a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners, it will be important
for you to attend the appropriate Board of County Commissioners. For those of you who are not familiar with the format of our meetings, we have three sections. We have continuances. Continuances. Uh if we have any of those would be items where either the staff or the applicant has asked for a continuance for any number of reasons to get more information or Do some follow up work. It's been our custom to grant continuous requests unless we
have extenuating circumstances. And then the second area is consent. There's the these are items that are on the consent agenda. We're gonna go through those Items one at a time. As we read them off. If there's somebody in the audience that would like to have them discussed, please raise your hand. We'll pull it from consent and we'll put them on the regular items. The consent items, everything that stays on consent will be voted on at one time and approved. Others think
that are staying on consent. Things that move to the regular items or the items that were regular to begin with will be all heard today and uh the applicants will present their uh uh application and um then the anybody in the in the audience will have an opportunity to come up and ask questions. Or can state their concerns and then the applicant will have an opportunity to come up and answer those questions. And
uh And we'll make our decisions from there. Applicants will have uh three minutes to make their presentations and the uh uh audience will have three minutes to state their concerns following the presentation. Then the applicant will have a five minute uh space of time to to respond again unless they are uh continuing. questions that we approve. There's been a request at least twenty four hours prior to
this meeting in writing for additional time. Uh someone may be granted extra time, but I don't believe we have any of those. Do we do these?
Mr. Chairman no, we do not have any requests for additional time.
Okay.
So we do not have any of those. So um This would be a good time for you to if you have a phone, and I'm sure most of you do, please put it in the silent position or turn it off so that it doesn't interfere with anybody's presentation. Everybody can hear. And before we start the regular meeting, um We're opening the meeting for public comment. Is there anyone here to talk about anything today that's not on today's agenda? If there is, if you'll come up,
state your name and address. And I assume that you have been sworn. You can confirm all that for me, I'd appreciate it.
Hi.
Hi.
It's way over there. My name's Lisa Moretti. I have been sworn. My address is [address removed]. Thank you. I'd like to enter these into the record and a copy for each of you. All
right. Can yeah I have a motion or file received.
Second.
Okay.
All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Since we're all out of order, right? Yeah.
You'll have two maps, um two pages, sorry, that have maps showing Pasco County's projected uh conservation versus sprawl for the twenty forty horizon and the twenty seventy horizon from the University of Florida.
So I was reading something this morning. Are you okay for me to begin? Yes. Okay. Uh Yeah,
we you've already lost three minutes. Sorry, go out again. Yeah.
Uh I was reading something this morning and it struck me, and I thought uh this would be a good reminder from the book that I was reading. It's not just sentimental attachment that has you upset, it's the expectation based upon decades of experience that what will be built here. Will you will detest. It will be sprawl, cookie cutter houses, wide, treeless, sidewalk-free roadways, mindlessly curving cul-de-sacks, a streetscape of garage doors, a beige vinyl parody of Leave it to Beaver, or worse yet, a pretentious slew of McMansions, complete with the obligatory gatehouse. You are
against unbridled growth because you believe that it will make your life worse. You are correct in that belief. Because for the past 70 years we Americans have been building a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about. Soulless subdivisions, residential communities utterly lacking in communal life. Strip malls, shopping centers, big box chain stores, and artificially festive malls set within barren seas of parking lots, antiseptic office parks, ghost towns after 6 p.m., and mile upon mile of clogged
collector roads. The only fabric tying our disassociated lives back together, this is growth, and you find little Mm-hmm. In fact, so far as your daily hectic schedule allows, you fight it. Once a citizen, you have now become a nimby, not in my backyard, or what professional planners demissively turn a banana. Build nothing anywhere near anything. Still it would be nice if there was a more constructive role to play. Only if there was some third choice. Obviously that
third choice is good growth. But there is really such a thing. Does there exist a man made place that is as valuable as the nature it has displaced? The problem is that one cannot easily build Places like Charleston anymore. Because it's against the law. Similarly, Boston's Beacon Hill, Nantucket, Santa Fe, Carmel, all of these well-known wonderful places. exist in direct violation of current zoning ordinances. Somewhere along
the way through a series of small and well intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America. At the same time, one of the largest segments of our economy, the home building industry, developed a comprehensive system of land development practices based upon sprawl, practices that have become so ingrained as to be second nature. It's these practices and the laws that encourage them, which must be overcome if good growth is to become a viable alternative. I hope you'll take that to heart. Because
we are at a tipping point in our county. And that's what these two maps show you. is what is projected for the 2040 horizon if we take a conservation. View of Armageddon or County. Or a sprawl. And then the twenty seventy horizon. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Appreciate you coming. Uh d but let me just ask you a quick question if you don't mind. Um Obviously, I mean you've outlined the con some of the concerns that a lot of people have, even people on this board. Um The big big question is what's the alternative? How do you ha how do you do it without stepping on people's rights? So I'm interested to hear your uh your solutions.
I think there are better ways for us to plan our growth and better bo boundaries and guidelines we can set for our developers. Um my personal belief is that development is a privilege and not a right. And so in my perspective and having listened to some of the horizontal roundtables, we view the developers as our customer. And we've kind of forgot who bring us to the dance. And that's your residence in Pasco County. So to bring back citizen input into how the county develops, I think, is primary. And then to
look at better ways of planning. Forty li forty-five. Lot lines, come on. Now we're talking 900 square foot houses so we can put even more properties into a smaller space. It's not healthy for our community. It's not healthy for what we are. It's not healthy for the future of our community. It's a huge impact on our schools. Our deferred impact fee are My gosh, we're losing out on so much interest money just right there alone. I think that there are far better ways for us to be developing our county.
Anybody else have any questions?
Well, just a reminder that the landowner is part of that equation.
Correct.
And so they have well that goes back to what you said, Mr. Chairman.
So if our large landowners had other alternatives or were aware of other alternatives rather than selling to development, that might be something we could look at as well.
I would agree, but it's not just large landowners, it's landowners in general.
I don't know.
So what's your definition of large?
I think when you get to over a hundred acres you're stocking large land.
But we're reviewing properties that are less than that as well, ten, fourteen, fifteen acres, twelve.
I agree. I agree, but most of those are not looking to do major subdivisions. That's not an Angeline. That's not a you know, a connected city.
No, I understand, but I I'm referring to something like one thing on our agenda today is Orange Orange State. That's not It's less than a hundred acres that has townhomes on it. And I'm I'm not debating it, I'm just saying that the landowner is part of that equation. So they have property rights and and you're right, it's a hard balance to figure out.
Exactly. And I think that there has to be a lot of really thoughtful evaluation and balancing of our infrastructure. along with how we develop. Our infrastructure is lagging, dramatically lagging. I'm sure with schools you're more than well aware of that. Our schools are stuck to the brim in most of our cities. And so I think that if we were to stop pushing so hard and take a little bit more of a r introspective look at what's happening and a little more planned look, I know we
could probably go back to the ULI reports and glean some new insights there. You know, it's always fun when you go back and reread something, you find something new. So I think that there's some alternatives that we could explore. Anybody else have
a question coming? Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Alright, Denise.
Ms. Hazelwood would also like
to speak in public
comment.
I didn't see your hand go up, Ms. Hazelwood. She didn't, but doesn't mean
she needs the right-of-way.
Uh Nancy Hazelwood, [address removed]. Um, I'm kinda echoing something accidentally that she's saying. The people in Northeast Pasco have been asking for meetings with county staff, particularly planning. But with the turnover and because of the turnover in staff they've always they haven't always caught up with the rural area plan and don't quite take it into consideration. the
development community and sometimes staff um Seems not to be aware that they're influencing and affecting the Northeaster plan in some cases ignore it. Maybe it'll go away and nobody will notice. So their projects are gonna affect the Northeaster area plan. And there's a project coming up maybe two of them later today. Okay. So that's
that's one thing I want to say. The other thing is I was wondering if the county w couldn't put together a workshop on how many MPUDs can be put in Pasco County before the county's natural resources become compromised. I know a certain I know there are a few certain that would Yeah. citizens that would like to attend anything like that going on. I'd like to see more workshops on where we're growing to and
what's going on and have our input into this. I'm sure if we all put our heads together we can come up with some answers that can make this a better county than what seems to be happening today. Thank you.
Thank you very much.