Pasco 2050 comprehensive plan update workshop
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The county’s agenda for Planning Commission, Jun 16, 2022
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The county’s minutes for Planning Commission, Jun 16, 2022
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Machine transcription of 1h 41m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 47% of 407 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Thank you so much. Valerie Brookins with Long Range Planning and Project Manager. On the update. I just want to thank you for joining and being willing to do this workshop with us. We're going to go through the introduction part real quick because we know you have seen it, but just for recording purposes and anyone that may be joining at home. And then we're going to jump into some of the topics that we have heard from our engagement effort. And we
will Make it um we'll go through each slide, but we will stop on each slide. So we'll run through what we heard. Uh it's kind of been organized and themed some of the things that rose to the top. So we will stop on each slide and then we can discuss and speak freely about the topics and then move on to the next and then leave a little time at the end too for open. So uh just wanted to reintroduce our consultant team. A couple of them are here. Steve Shoecraft
with HDR and then also Tammy Varana with Varana Consulting. So I am going to turn it over to Steve. Thank you. Thank you.
Good morning. Um Steve Sheekraft with HDR. Um I'm we'll go through we've got a slide set that has some introductory material, so we'll go through that first and then we'll um sort of pro what we'd like to do ideally is um review some of the feedback that we've received and re and sort of mind at in looking at past Documentation of engagement activities and survey results and other things. Um, and then get your feedback on that. So start to may build a bridge between what we've learned through some of this research and um how you
see that if influencing The comp plan, future of development in the county, and sort of your role in guiding that work over time. Um so we do I have control here?
Um do we have a control? Yeah, hang on one second.
Okay. Yeah, next slide. I think the first slide up is just a quick agenda. Um so two quick parts. One is an intro to the Pasco twenty fifty. The new slide in here is a little report on where things stand in terms of the work we've done so far. So I'll pause on that and talk a little bit about progress. And then we'll go into the issues and ideas for the plan process. Next slide.
Next one.
So as as you all know, Pasco 2050 is what we're calling the Comprehensive Plan update process. The Comp Plan is a requirement of under Florida statute for local governments around the state to develop long-range plans, and then that provides the basis of authority and guides decision making for zoning actions and capital improvement budgeting. Next slide.
Um the Comp Plan is very broad in the way that it's defined. So it provides the high-level policy guidance and long-term guidance about how the county manages growth, balances needs from different constituencies, serves changing demand, and so we know you know the demand for housing for commercial space, for industrial space, and employment spaces, increase as you know. It is I was gonna say increasing. It hasn't really it's not really increasing. It's been high
for a long time and you've experienced that sort of change that results from serving that demand. Um addressing congestion, um I'm sorry, back one or two?
Mm. Um expanding opportunities, improving planning tools. So now we'll go to the next one.
Um as we've talked about before, you know, we're talking b about a continuing significant increase in population in the county. So current projections call for two hundred and thirty, two hundred and twenty-three thousand people by twenty forty five. I think in previous presentations We've said 250 by 2050. But you can see that that curve has been relatively consistent since the 1970s and previously. We just didn't add those earlier years on this chart. Um And
that le that pace of growth that you've experienced is projected to continue Up into 2045 and 2050. So that's a significant number. Um as we've talked to folks in listing sessions, we've asked them to think about we many people have moved to the county during the timeframe represented on the slide, and we've asked them to think about when they came here and the change they've already experienced. And imagining That pace of change continuing. Next slide.
So we're in the early years of a multi-year process to help the county update the comprehensive plan. So these early years are um focused on research and listening and understanding issues and opportunities and then during next year's work, next fiscal year's work, we'll start to move into the plan development process. So that's when the pieces of the plan will start to come together and it'll start to look more like a a a full update. Thank you.
So I wanted to pause on this slide. This is where things stand with the work so far. So this is our early research and early engagement activities. The planned diagnostic reports are published on the PASCO 2050 website. So that's been made available to the public. That looks at the PASCO's place in the region and how you're connected to surrounding communities, looks at demographics and socioeconomics.
conditions, mobility, uh, and a review of your existing planning and policy framework that that guides development. We also did a market analysis to look at um where the market opportunities are, where your sort of the the strength and weakness in your market position. And then we looked at some planning best practices to look at how other communities have organized their plan to help guide development in an efficient way. Um We've Done two things to try to understand what people's
issues and concerns are about the future. We've done a series of listening sessions with groups from across the county. So we try to get kind of regional diversity and and interest diversity in those sessions. We didn't engage thousands of people, but we had these more focused discussions with groups from Northeast Pasco to Um Folks representing the Westmarket area, some of the county's specific interest groups. Do you want to help me with
the
Yeah, we had the Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee? We went to a road, the Land O' Lakes Rotary. We went to the Commission on Status of Women. And I know I'm missing a couple of things. Kona? Kona. Well that was West Market. And the Food Policy Advisory Committee. Thank you. Food Policy Advisory Committee.
So we the yeah, the goal was to get out to some select groups and start to get some feedback.
What about the Pasco Economic Development Council? Have you met with them?
We did a presentation with them and shared information, but not a listening session.
And we've been working with staff and collecting their, you know, data about what's in the pipeline for them and what their what the plans are.
Okay. I just think it would be a mistake to not get feedback from the economic development folks.
And we will we will definitely include them. We're gonna be ramping up efforts for next year too, but they'll definitely be included in future outreach
too. Um and then the other part of that was um The we have the website up and running now, and we've got a survey instrument on the website. Two different ways people can engage. They can post sort of comments and pictures. about um the k their perceptions of the county and then a more open-ended questions in a survey. um asking about what they value in the county, what they're concerned about, what they'd like to see in the future. So that'll be an ongoing web-based tool that where we'll get feedback as we
move through the process. Um That's on the Pasco County website. That's on the Pasco 2050 site.
It's a project, a specific project website. So like for example, when we went to the Economic Development Council to speak with them, we shared the website with them and on that survey tool there's also we the same questions we asked during the listening session. So We encouraged everyone to go there and put their feedback which we have gathered all of that too. So hopefully we've captured we've captured some of their input at this point,
but we'll continue.
Okay. And then for the issues and ideas research, we um There has been a lot of engagement around planning economic development. redevelopment issues in the county over the past ten years. So we pulled documentation of that effort and reviewed that to try to understand What people have been talking about in different forums. And um Tammy took the lead on that exercise, and we can talk a little bit more detail if we if you're interested. about the material that we looked at and some of our findings. But the next
set of slides tries to distill those and organize what we learned into a set of theme statements, substatements, and that's what we'd like to get your feedback on. So that report, the issues and ideas report, will be published in the next couple weeks. We'll get that out. I think that um County Commissioner's asked to have a look at it before it gets posted on the website, and then we'll announce that it's available for review. But that'll have a Um kind of our reporting about what we learned through that exercise and then a significant
number of attachments that's the actual documentation of those early feedback on planning issues.
So well this Committee received a advanced copy of those two?
I think at your request I don't think yeah, I don't think there's any issue with that. Okay, thank you.
Next slide. Oh I'm sorry.
Um so issues and ideas for the plan, these are th this is um our attempt to understand what the what broad concerns and ideas are for the future. Now these are this is we're trying to report this Relatively directly. So we're not putting a spin on it, we're not trying to message it in a certain way or head in a particular direction in it. We're just trying to report out what we've learned through the listening sessions, survey feedback, and what's in the our review of the previous reports and documents. So when we pull
this up, w this is our attempt to distill what we heard, not our attempt to interpret it or spin it in any particular way.
So we based on the review of the material that we collected, um feedback that we collected in the live meetings, um the feedback that we abstracted from all the documents that we reviewed. We organized things around five
Um and again this is what pe as we talk about it, this is what people talked about or shared in different kinds of public engagement activities or through survey instruments. Um they talked about the counties
Um and then sort of countywide and then community by community. So you know what we know in in Pasco obviously is that people identify as Pasco County residents, but they primarily identify as residents of a community within PASCO. And so that's a very diverse set of perspectives and a diverse set of ideas about what their life is like in their community and how they see the county overall. Um Connectivity and accessibility is a primarily about transportation, about how people get around. What alternatives exist, what they're
concerned about, issues with capacity, safety, drive time within the county and between the county and other places. Um competitiveness and fiscal responsibility focuses more on or we pulled information that was focused more on um uh jobs, on employment opportunities, on the challenges with commutes elsewhere. Um To get the jobs and opportunities. Um and then how the how the how
the county um spends its tax money, whether that, you know, there there people raise concerns about fiscal responsibility, about efficiency, about focus of that funding on different kinds of projects to improve quality of life and to improve competitiveness. Um Livability and opportunity was more about how this uh peop what people valued about Pasco as a place to live, place to raise their kids, place to retire, place to visit. So those were more generally more focused on um
quality of life at the community level, how people, you know do their day-to-day business, how they experience um places in their community and across the county. And then stewardship is we've organized or rolled up comments about Um natural resource conservation Um A little bit of discussion about sort of character and neighborliness and how things are starting to change. A lot of talk about
Tampa or we don't want to become Miami or we don't want to become someplace else. You know, a lot of that sort of conversation um that fell fell into different categories. Um so this is our the next set of slides goes through these one by one and we're gonna highlight some of the um Some of the comments that we heard from folks, and then the real test here is to see if this material rings true to you. So, what we'd like you to do is think about this. Um Does it ring true? Does it sound like the voice of Pasco
County residents or business people or property owners? Um and what voices might be missing from this quick summary. So that's one of the key things is that we want to make sure that we're not Um through our looking at it through our lens, we're not missing something that you think is out there. Either we didn't talk to the right people or those voices just didn't come across to us or uh so that's one of the important factors. So this slide is about The green are things that came up Fairly often, and were pretty direct messages
to us. Concerned about the impacts of rapid growth on community character and compatibility. Um People talked a lot about um their concern when they see a site cleared for development, when they see um corridors getting more development and more dense over time. Um There was not I mean an observation that we would make is that there's not a real clear sense among the general
public about what the comprehensive plan calls for So they'll see development on the side of the road that's perfectly in line with what the Complan calls for and what zoning allows. They're just upset about it because it represents a change in their you know in their day-to-day life. Um there was a lot of talk about the diverse character of communities across the county. So Um, you know, we heard from folks in the newer large scale master plan communities that thought they had, you know, the best quality of life
of anyone in the country. Um we heard some people in older communities that felt like they were kind of falling behind. You know that they didn't have the advantages of of other folks in the county. They didn't have the same quality of facilities, um, same accessibility. Um so there was a big divergence in perspectives to pick you know, and we made we've tried to understand If someone made a comment, we tried to a follow-up question, well where where do you live and tell us about your neighborhood so we can understand where you're coming from. Um The
A lot of talk about protecting and conserving rural communities and landscapes and And this is another point where people said, I'm worried about rural development's effect on rural character is essentially what we heard and we heard that often and we heard that across the county. Um but we tried to understand what that meant for people. Do you mean
New development looks. Or you don't like the fact that um There's uh open fields that are being developed now. Um are you concerned about the agricultural economy? Are you concerned about how things look as you drive along a rural roadway? Uh so we and there's a whole b there's there's a a lot of Um Complex and overlapping issues and concerns when people when people say rural conservation. When we ask the question, we get a lot of different feedback.
Um Steak,
can I ask quickly what is some of the feedback regarding uh rural communities, farmland, that type of situation. What what If you could summarize in ten words or less, what would be the feedback? Is there a concern in my opinion would be that you're taking this land that used to be for agricultural purposes and then the next step would be where are we gonna get the products or agricultural products that we create? are currently developing
I think there's I think that's one I think that's a dimension of it. Yeah. People talked about um local agricultural production, local the agricultural economy, and then food source and f food security was part of that discussion.
Okay.
But it wasn't it w there was a lot of other factors in there. I think a lot of people it was really visual impact on a landscape that they value. You know, I like my open views, I like the Rolling Hills in Northeast Pasco, and I don't want to see those develop.
And to clarify Were most of these comments coming from North East Pasco or were they coming Throughout the whole county.
I mean in northeast Pasco it was the primary focus of discussion.
There's parts of the county that are already not agricultural, so I can't imagine those people are saying Like in West Pasco I doubt they're saying I want to preserve agriculture 'cause
But Northeast Pasco was almost Ninety percent of the comments were focused on that. In other plates it could have been twenty percent.
I think we heard it from every group we talked to, which surprised me, but it was more just having that rural option. It wasn't necessarily focused on agriculture, but liking that there was space that was open so we didn't just become one big suburb or
If I can chime in here.
Yeah. Yeah.
So and and so uh as somebody who lives in the Dade City area and lives on a rolling hill, has an open view and I mean certainly those ring true to me and I I I like the fact that what you said, because there's overlapping things and I know there's some people who Yeah, agriculture's going away and that's that's sad and I'm sad about that. But I also you know, there's also most of the people I talk to realize that it may not be sustainable for those people to do that. And
so we get the fact that development's coming, but I think a lot of the folks at least in my area around Dade City. aren't necessarily opposed to Some growth coming, but what they don't want is the Forty foot lots right next 'cause I live on agricultural land right now. I you know, I know across the street there's gonna be lots coming there, like forty foot lots, and to me that just kinda destroys that whole look of that area. And so I think that's again,
I know I'm sure there's some people who wouldn't want to see that developed at all. Sure, I get that and I'm not one of those, but at the same token I think we need to be smart about how that develops and it doesn't have to look urbanom eas where where you have these beautiful uh view sheds and things like that. So how can we do a good job of planning that?
Could I just ask a follow up question because Did When you asked for the feedback, did you show everybody the chart that says we're gonna get, you know three or four hundred thousand more people by twenty fifteen. Yeah,
that's how we started it. So
same set of slides on the front end of
the side.
So the people that are saying we need to protect our rural community, where are they suggesting that growth go? Because You can't say we want no growth. Because otherwise where are we going to put those four hundred thousand people? So the people that are saying we want to preserve the rural areas, where are they suggesting we have the growth?
We probed that question a little bit, but I think it's just generally not near me. So it's just someone else can deal with that. I don't want to deal with it. And that it and that's classic planning like public engagement dialogue that we hear is Uh we we try to push that question. But it's like well down south where there's already development, don't don't let that happen up here. Yeah.
Are we on Patrick? I can speak loud. So we did hear some instances where people said this is where it should be directed. It should be going into redevelopment areas where there's light so that there can be replacement uh in those areas to the benefit of the ones that want to stay more rural, more like rural villages. And we did hear too about the lot sizes they were permitted. fine with one acre lots or something of not necessarily even what you think of as agricultural size lots,
but something that was more akin to what they where they were living. So like for like as opposed to
Yeah, we asked about conservation subdivisions, so where you cluster some houses and you try to save some Um pasture land or woodlot or other resources and they said no way, everything should be Carved up in an acre, they don't want to see any smaller lots anywhere. So I think that's a good thing. f for us that you know that points to Um One of our primary challenges in developing the plan is how do we figure out what the right policy is. I think one of the key things is Um People don't know where that line is drawn
now between
future land use categories and the and the rural categories. And then even when they see some development in the rural categories, if it's clustered, it looks like more urban development, but it's actually a clustered subdivision. So it just means they're squeezing smaller lots on a site to allow for, you know, wetland preservation or other conservation areas.
I think the thing you touched on redevelopment is uh I mean there's plenty of areas that could be redeveloped in in our county, but The pr you know, from a practical point of view, that's how do you do it? Because Take an area like Win Lake Estates. It's a beautiful piece of property. It's all cut up in the You know, thir thirty, forty foot lots, thirty by a hundred and ten, forty by a hundred and ten. And you got scattered Owners and mobile homes all over it.
uh states of uh on repair and uh But how do you go in there and I mean, it's be almost impossible for for one person to go in and buy a ball. I mean, it's just
it would almost have to be some kind of a public effort. to gather those properties and You know, and acquire them so that they could be redeveloped. Um because I think there's a lo there is an opportunity to do that, but it would I don't see how you can do it as a private company. Um So You know, if we want to redevelop some of the areas where we made mistakes, you know, that that would be a good approach but we gotta figure out a way to do it. And I think it's a g Definitely
needed. I mean we have Wind Lake Estates on one side of the road and we have uh you know, a beautiful development on the other side of the road, so it's just not compatible. Yeah. To a certain extent, you know, that's that's one of the things I'm thinking about and the other thing that I personally don't like to say is I Really turns me off when I Drive by a a a nice wooded uh piece of property and then next day I come by and it's Leveled. There's not a tree on the
site. Yeah, that to me that makes no sense. I mean it might make sense you know, efficiency wise and engineering wise. But Um a place like a d uh development like Beacon Woods where they They have you know Roads that curve through the tree lines and so forth. To me, I mean we ought to encourage that kind of development. More than just go in and wipe out all the trees. I mean we I've seen them yeah, tear out. Yeah, five hundred year
old oak trees to you to put a car wash. That doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. So Those are the kind of things that I think When you drive through a county in Yeah, the beautification, the the what you feel, the the ambience, the the nature of the the whole
They t they're trying to redo the corridor on Highway nineteen and some of it looks great. But for quite frankly, the part that's in the county looks terrible. They planted all the trees and they're not doing anything with them. They they're all g getting all overgrown, nobody's maintaining them. They're just weeds now. They probably spent th thousands and thousands of dollars to do that. You could drive through New Port Richey and they're manicured. They cake they take care of 'em. I mean we We need maintenance. And we also need Code enforcement.
You know, I know When I drive through an area like Regency Park Every third home is a nice home. But They're they're rented out. People park all over the yard. Um You know, when you have a nice development it Um I'm happy where I live because we do have a an HOA that enforces the rules and you gotta You know, you're not allowed to park all over the yard. Follow certain guidelines. You gotta keep your property looking nice. That's
If you just if you let it go. then that's a that's gonna be a big mistake. And that's a mistake we've been making in the past. So You know, I think that's a lot of it and I think there is a lot of property that can be re Yeah, but I've seen property redeveloped like down in Saint Petersburg, places like that. But it's a one house at a time thing. It's gonna take forever to do that.
You
know, so
I think that's the the um
The HOAs are kind of designed to take care of their own turf. So there's this sort of internal control if you're in a master plan community. But when you're in an older community without that, But the possibility is the county could step up services to provide not HOA level services, but an enhanced level of service in some of those older communities to help for stabilization, for beautification. Um And then eventually maybe the county would move into more uh play more of a redevelopment
role so that you know there's county there could be county level redevelopment areas. where they focus attention on places that are really struggling. Um but those would be new they'd be new roles for the county to play. So really, you know, the this process is kind of asking the question, is that an appropriate direction to take? Um Even the what you mentioned. You know, one of the challenges the county has is a lot of the development is concentrated on the major arterials. So when people drive through the county and experience the county, that's what they see. And all
the density is pushed to the frontage of those master plan communities because it's the logical place to put it. So you have apartments and townhouses and then you've got single families. And then in the back of those you've got major conservation areas. But you don't see those when you move through the county on a daily basis. So a lot of those really valuable actions to protect major resources are not really experienced by people. Um so part of it I think is Um figuring figuring out how to
manage the the place quality along these corridors. So a lot of those are DOT corridors, so the county doesn't control that right away. So you have to work with DOT. You'd have to commit to some sort of an enhanced landscape program because DOT's not gonna do that as part of their standard work program. um the cities tend to be better at that because they're more focused on their turf. Um so that would be a new role for the county would be to move into more of a active beautification and quarter
improvement program.
Yeah, I was just in uh I think it was Lake County. Driving through somewhere and I mean, you know, those corridors, you you see development, but it all you see is like the sign and you see uh a bunch of landscaping. You're not seeing like, oh, there's five hundred houses back there. You don't even see those 'cause, you know, it's all beautifully landscaped in front. and then you drive back and then you see that. So I mean It'd be n I'm not saying all of it should be like that, but it'd be nice to have more of that where
you're not just blasted with Forty foot lots of houses sitting right there, right on the right on the street there that everybody can see. It'd be nice to have just a it was just a much more pleasant look. Mm-hmm. And again I'm not sure if that's Culp Plan or L D C or whatever,
but I think it's some of it comes down to the Comp plan, so the Comp plan would set the stage for that sort of action.
Yeah.
Um the other th the other community I was thinking of when you were talking about the corridors and landscape is um Sarasota County. committed to a really significant tree planting program along their major arterials. And so that's goes back twenty around twenty years. So now in some corridors they have Nice wide medians and you know, maturing oak trees that are throwing out some shade and they're it's really attractive.
And it's it is attractive and it also um increases the value of the property, which increases the the you know, the taxable value and which is a you know, flows into the into the county itself. So You know, it's an investment. that I think can provide a great return for a for a lot of reasons. For not only for the county but for the for the public and uh So um I just think it's that's something that we really need to Make
part of our focus. I agree, Chuck.
Yeah. Yeah, I think there's probab from a planning standpoint too the Um We'll be moving into this in next year's work more directly, but Um some of those arterial corridors, you know, nineteen has been developed for fifty years. Fifty-six has been developed for the last fifteen to twenty years. Um and then you've got fifty-four and fifty-two and questions about how they're gonna develop out in the future. So There's a strategy for those older corridors where it'd be more focused on
beautification And managing smaller scale infill and other projects and then for the corridors that are developing now try to get the right tools in place. So you're not necessarily reducing what someone could do with their property, you're just reconfiguring it in a way that could be more attractive. Uh, so those are the I'm I'm getting ahead of ourselves, like you know, ahead of the presentation definitely, but th that those are the sorts of things we're starting to outline
I think Tammy had presented presented the idea of redevelopment along that Nineteen quarter. from Hudson to Holliday, those homes were built in the Probably sixties. Maybe into the seventies. And redevelopment of those areas. has merit. And you and you talked about the re The population coming that could That definitely could fill the gap for in s a significant number of people who want to cunt to Pasco
County, in my mind. In other words, you redevelop it, you then you can sell it.
Yeah, and I think regionally relatively affordable places to live too, so it it wouldn't be um necessarily
priced down to the market. No, and you have all the infrastructure already there, so you don't have to create new infrastructure, maybe enhance it but not redevelop it or develop it as you do on the east side of the county. So
And back to your tree planting, I mean we were you know, when they widened fifty two near the interstate, we were all s sad to see Yeah, there was this whole line of hundred plus year old oaks that that were taken out when they did that. And I mean I get that. But it would have been nice if they had gone in and planted oak trees so that a hundred years from now had a whole nother row of but the you know, that wasn't done. Right. And so it's just sad to It would have been nice to have had a something in
place whereby those would have been replaced for the a future generation.
Yeah, it's one of the things like in dealing with the DOT, if the county comp plan calls for that, then there's leverage for the county to seek that to be built into a project. If the county comp plan is silent on it, then there's not a lot of leverage.
Yeah. How are we doing for time? We were gonna try to do that.
Um and then I didn't read the last bullet, but the last bullet is really sort of trying to talk about redevelopment of older communities and improving older communities, which is You know, when we use the look at the county through the market area lens, that's really the west market area. But there's other there's pockets elsewhere that are now you know, thirty to forty years old. Commercial development along stretches of forty one and other places that um are approaching that time where we're gonna start to see reinvestment um and there may be a sh a chance to shape that a little bit.
Well in three oh one and and
cities, ever hills, yeah.
Um The next one is the pretty straightforward concern is you know one of the direct impacts of development is traffic and Um most of the county is developed in an auto-oriented fashion so to get a gallon of milk or to get your kid to school or to get to work, you're driving. So you're in a car and you experience the county from a car for most to meet most of your daily, weekly needs. Um so we we need to look really carefully at how that Um
How we accommodate that those additional trips on the network with Already constrained capacity. It's a fundamental problem. A lot of that gets addressed in the long range transportation plan. um by the Pasco MPO, but it's the comp plan also provides some guidance about what should be focused on. So the these bullets the in green is really you know, dealing with this question about projected demand and limited capacity on the current network. and then creating more safe, walkable
and connected places. People did talk about wanting to get to places where they could walk from destination to destination. Where um kids in a subdivision could visit their friends in another subdivision without going out onto a major arterial and or crossing a major arterial. So some of it is that, you know, there's the arterial grid network that serves
Yeah. But a lot of the subdivision streets are isolated, so there's not a lot of interconnectivity. So it's hard to stay on the local roadway network and get from place to place. You've got to go out onto the arterial And then back into a either, you know, a commercial destination or your you know, your your kids, family's subdivision and circulate back on that street network. So the lack of uh secondary streak grid is one of the things that's really pushing congestion onto the arterioles. And w I
think we need to look really carefully at where you have Um the identification of corridors for conservation and preservation. and think about building on that program. I mean at quarter preservation And the um vision road development process in the county is really critically important to help take some of the pressure off the major arterials. And then longer term thinking about how Um transit and walking and biking can become even for a small percentage of
trips. We're not saying 30% of the people in the county are gonna bike to work, but if five percent do or two percent, that makes a difference. We start to take a little bit of pressure off the roadway network. Um so we'll be looking at the possibility for um better integrating in integrating planning for transportation and transit or land use and transit. So it can be possible to take a bus someplace. Right now it's a real challenge. And the folks that are dependent on transit to get around are
really limited in what their job opportunities are, what their educational opportunities are, and their access to to services and resources. So pi we did get that discussion um specifically m But I would say eighty percent of the discussion we had was about roadway congestion and roadway safety. You know, people are concerned about Um How we serve this projected development with the existing roadway network. And you're kind of
to a certain extent you're getting to the point where you're maxed down in travel lanes. in the built up parts of the county. So thinking about how you manage um those volumes on that limited capacity is really critical.
Maybe you think it's far out. at this stage. But In twenty fifty it might not be. Is that What you just said is that we're maxed out as far as widening roads, some of these major roads. Yeah. Because to widen the road it's gonna cost a lot of money to uh to acquire the right of way just to do that. And Yeah, before you even start paving the road. And w y we're always talking about trying to cut cut down on emissions and things like that. We
have We have this median in the middle of the road. w it why can't we at some stage start thinking about you know, like tr overhead transportation, like a monorail or something like that. on the media and and You can drop people off.
uh shopping areas and places like that. because that's where masses of people go. uh the the individual businesses you can still drive to. You don't have to take mass transportation. But It's a it's a method of of getting around that's I think pretty darn efficient. They do a lot of that kind of stuff in Europe and I'm not saying Europe's a good example of what we can do, but it's But I mean It it's a it is a way to get around and it's it's in the Space
is already there. there. So
I just add want to just add address So MPO has has been looking at this particularly on the fifty four quarter because that's The best example of a roadway that It's mostly six lanes. Can't really expand it much more than that. Right. So As part of the first place this is being discussed is at the fifty four forty one interchange. Because they're talking about doing Maybe a fly over there or some other form of Improvement. But
in m and there was a task force created and they looked at many options but Many of the preferred options had transit accommodated either in the flyover or, you know, in some way put into that improvement. Um But You know, there's there's some issues with it which is one there's it's it's there's the cost, like how are you gonna pay for it. But we're not going to be able to You mentioned the beautification issue because
if you're using your median for Transit, that means you're not putting trees in. We had this very conversation w we had a group come in that wanted to Put beautiful landscaping in the median of fifty four. But then we had to remind him that's our possible location for transit. So you can't have both. It's um at some point you gotta
Yeah. Well then at one point we talked about doing an elevated facility. And the public didn't want to see that either. So we you know
Yeah, I'm not talking about an elevated road and I think that's problematic. I mean one of the problems that they have on Highway nineteen it's it's great driving down nineteen if you're going to the Skyway. But for businesses. Um every time it gets elevated those businesses are wiped out. You know, so That that's That's really counterproductive in my opinion. But if you had a single rail above the trees. That doesn't take up the space. But
we'll tell you that the light rail, uh maybe BRT could work, but The light rail's only gonna work it work if it connects to other light rail. I mean if you just have light rail on fifty four corridor it's not it doesn't connect to anything it It's not gonna be you won't get enough ridership for it to support it. You would need light rail throughout the Champion Bay region. for it to be effective. And so the only meaningful transit tr in terms of the Tampa region that that's being developed right now is BRT
along the interstate corridor. And so we've had conversations about How do we connect? our local system like the fifty four corridor and other routes, other major arterials to that B R T system on the interstate. Um And there could be a a fifty four route that does that, but I don't want I'm just being honest with you. The chances of us being able to get light rail up in the air um fifty four, I don't know that we'd ever get the ridership unless The whole Tampa Bay region's doing it. We've
seen no momentum whatsoever. The the one place we were talking about doing was on the C S X corridor. But then apparently C S X decided they weren't gonna sell us sol sell the right away for it. So
W unless the region decides to do light rail, it's gonna be hard for us locally To do light real. So the options I've seen on the fifty four corridor do have some options that have the B R T in an elevated facility. So But you have to elevate something. I mean, if you don't elevate something you you get everybody would get stuck at the intersections. So you have there's gotta be some balance there. If you're gonna have urban level development,
at some some point you're gonna have to elevate some facility, some foreign transportation facility Whether it's transit or the road or some Because If you don't elevate, you're stuck at every intersection. And you see how many lights we're putting in on fifty four? There's a new light added every month.
Putting
is going to be minimally effective.
Yeah, uh I would All of those things I would support that um the uh but in in a lot of it transit is effective when it can connect places with higher intensity either jobs or housing. So if you can start to put those nodes together, then you've got the potential to connect them and people have some options of getting around. But it's really hard without the density first. And it a lot of it is um The way the money flows to transit projects
from the federal government is you have to prove ridership and you have to prove that population employment concentration. to access federal money. you know, that could be fifty plus percent of a project's cost, capital costs, but you gotta make the case for that. And even You know, Tampa struggles with that on projects. Saint Pete's struggling with that for Sunrunner BRT. You know, they barely made the threshold just to get that BRT line approved. And they're serving downtown Saint Pete, you know, and and the tourist destinations on the beach. So it's a
tough it th that's one of those things we'll Um we'll have to grapple with when we move into the plan, but the when we think about 56 and parts of 54, um right-of-way is gonna start c start costing as much as pavement. And so you're gonna be working, you're gonna squeeze as much capacity out of that existing right-of-way. It could be great separating major intersections. Um so you can take some pressures off the intersections and then um trying to figure out ways to get
transit to work and benefit the transit in this in the quarter. So if a transit is stuck in the same traffic as a car, it's not a very attractive alternative. So you've got to favor the transit trip in some way to make it attractive.
Okay.
But the other the the idea of even Without transit, the possibility of creating more walkable destinations in the county is something that came up. So looking at I know the county has worked on this with uh Some of the transit-oriented development policies previously looking at development on a 54, but trying to take some of those places and making it so it's possible to Um park once and access and and do different things within a development rather than driving from place to place along a
strip center or between shopping center and shopping center. Those are the kinds of things that can be incorporated in the land development code eventually To help promote more compact development. And that starts to set the stage for a place that can be a transit node.
creating more safe, walkable, and connected places. Has there ever been a study done on what would be the limits of distance between to encourage people to walk? In other words, would a distance of two miles or three miles be the target for a walkable distance or would it be less? I'm just gonna say
it'd be it's a lot yeah, I mean that's that's a good it's a great point, is that all the research shows that People talk about a quarter mile walkshed. as a five to ten minute walk and that's what people tend to tolerate. So all of the research about who will walk to a transit stop to use transit. It's within a quarter mile and maybe a half mile of that transit stop. Okay. So that's your kind of node That you're trying where you're trying to concentrate development.
But I would also think that you would try to create walkable distances but with connected have connected places here, but with like supermarkets or a a outlet store or a walkable to a Uh In my area we have the the new Um Um Plaza or the uh S Sierra built that there at McKinley. Okay. Okay. Uh and
there are some people that I noticed that will walk to certain st uh stores within that community, but they live within that I would say within that mile at the maximum distance. Or people in my community will go to a grocery store
to purchase certain merchandise because they can bring it home in a paper bag or plastic bag. Right. So I think that's, you know, something that needs to be looked at as to what the distance would would be. And and transportation is a tough pr uh one. I know I live out there by that Divergent Dime and and I think it's I think it's It works well. Yeah. But there are people that are on uh social media that have said negative things about
it.
Right.
Uh but I see the traffic moving much quicker through that area than it did in the past. So Uh I guess the point is that you're not gonna be able to please any a lot of people. You're not gonna please everybody when it comes to these walkable areas. I would like to see more bus transportation. Personally, yeah.
I didn't know you were a social media guy.
Well let me just make one comment on this because I think To a large extent the county has been good about it trying to incentivize and encourage compact walkable communities and you'll see some examples throughout the county, you know, Starkey Ranch or Bexley that some of the newer communities have pretty good compact, walkable we call them Mutterum or T and D or various forms of development. The issue I see is that We
have a lot of them that are not a little bit more than a little bit. Planned out very well. But encouraged and incentivized. It's not mandated. And so What happens is you get a great community like a Starkey Ranch or Bexley that has all these compact, walkable, mixed use requirements.
But then one development over as a geated subdivision. With no interconnectivity whatsoever. Doesn't even interconnect to the one that is connected. And so
And I'll just be honest with you, I mean we're sometimes our own worst enemy. We we'll approve M PDs that are just flat out gated subdivisions. With no interconnectivity They require an alternative standard in our code, staff recommends approval of it, the Planning Commission approves it, the Board approves it, and everybody just Acts like it's not a problem. But We're kinda doing this to ourselves because we We all say we want the f the Starkey ranches of the world which we'll approve. But we're approving
gated subdivisions every other week. With no interconnectivity whatsoever. So I mean, I think that's a good thing My point is if we if we're serious that this is what we want. There's compact walkable communities with Intergr you know. a street network that's connected and and plenty of alternate modes. At some point we need to just step up and say this is what we you have to do. Because Otherwise, what's the point of having a beautiful project like
a Starkey Ranch and then everything around it is just gated subdivision. I mean, I'm not sure you're achieving your goal. Right.
A few different people ex share the experience of them of their growing up in different neighborhoods in the county as and as kids, their ability to weave their way around the local street network and avoid the big arterials and avoid crossing and avoid big parking lots. Um and that's for that's uh real almost almost impossible to
do now. And I cause I review almost every MPD that comes through the county. I'd say probably eighty to ninety percent of them have some Port part of the project they don't want to interconnect. And with all due respect to staff, staff says okay, you don't have to. And then Planning Commission approves it too and the board approves it too. I'm not blaming anybody, I'm just saying that Right, right. We're just we have a code section that says you shall interconnect. And But we are frequently granting alternative standards or
variances so that people don't have to do that. In many cases just because The developer says I don't want to. Um Or I want to have a geated subdivision. I don't want to have an interconnectivity.
We have some somewhat that same problem with some of the commercial properties too.
Yes.
opinion. I'll defend staff with a little commercial. They're less likely to grant an alternative standard when it's two commercial projects interconnecting because And also the commercial is less likely to resist it because Because commercial actually wants customers to be able to go back and forth
between
the eastern.
I I see a lot of properties though that where they have an a adjoining parking lot and then they block anybody Yeah.
I agree, but that tends to be the older ones. Mm-hmm. I I I think it would be rare that you would see a new project a new Brad tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it'd be rare if you saw a new commercial project where staff was not requiring an interconnect or or agreeing that they didn't have to interconnect unless there was some major wetland system in the way or something that prevented it from happening. Uh what I'm saying is I think we're probably doing a little better on commercial. that as far as requiring interconnectivity. But I can tell you
on residential. We are frequently granting alternative standards or variance is so they don't have to interconnect.
And that's because they want a gated community. Because they want a gated community,
isn't these
are
the
other things?
Yeah, I think we you see that where d uh an owner wants to control their turf. turf. They They don't don't want want to punch their road out to the guy next door because they're selling a different property, you know, different
And sometimes they're doing it because the adjacent residents say they don't want to interconnect or or the adjacent property owner says And so staff says. If the adjacent landowners don't want it, we'll just say, Well, okay. You don't have to do that. I'm just saying w it's sort of a death by a thousand cuts, is what what's exp we're experiencing now is because Nobody realizes we're doing it, but I'm just telling you we are.
I think it's I think it's a s it's an incredibly common challenge for high growth communities to have to to hold the line on that. Both said both The right of way reservation for more, you know, like collector arterial roadways, new arterial roadways through undeveloped areas and then the interconnection of the local street network.
Yeah, I will say though that on the Vision Roadway Network In my opinion, staff is is fair my opinion is staff is fairly good about making Making sure those right-of-way is a reserved, making sure that the The connections for the collector vision roadways Is there But in terms of Local s local connections, local road interconnects. In my opinion we're doing a horrible job with it.
So What would be the answer? Uh I could I could see
But our code already requires it. Our code our Land O' Lakes explicitly requires interconnectivity of local roads. But we are frequently granting alternative standards of variance is to not do it.
Well dude, I mean, are are there communities out there and this is kinda just uh you speak about gated communities and just so strictly talking about residential here, but I mean are there places around that if you want to put a gate you pay some type of surcharge?
I don't know if I've heard that specifically.
Yeah, historically we're sort of doing the reverse, which is like if you're a moderum or T and D where you have interconnectivity, you pay a lower mobility fee. And we so we actually Create an incentive to have interconnectivity. We have not done the reverse though and say if you're not gonna have interconnectivity you need to pay a higher mobility.
Sure, right.
It's something something we could probably look at. I mean because you you're right though, Jamie. If you have a gated subdivision with no interconnectivity, you're putting more pressure on the arterial network than than a Starkey ranch is. Okay. So Maybe you should be paying a higher fee. Um
But it's not just a fee issue, it's also a
Are we gonna enforce our code or not?
Yeah, practically right. I guess just one more thing to add on this 'cause I know we'll probably wanna move on, but just uh the terminology and and this might be a kind of a more of a pet peeve of mine When I when I hear the w words in the terminology walkable, um, and I think of you know, the climate we live in and th y you know, some communities are a lot more walkable in February than they are for the average resident in August here. Um I mean I I I definitely see the merit and I think there's a lot of value to the to the connectivity But if
somebody interprets is that a walkable community, well yeah, we have a sidewalk. versus is it connected where I think of now when I drive around some of these places that are more connected where I see golf carts and scooters and you know those those kind of means of of of getting around I think is an important aspect. No, it's a little it gets a little different if you talk about proximity of shopping centers to one another and can they walk from one to the other? I get it, but when you talk about connectivity to subdivisions and quote unquote walkability I I see a lot less people walking at five o'clock this afternoon than I would
in a February afternoon when it's seventy degrees outside. So
Well, and I let me add to that, 'cause in some of the newer places we planned out like Connected City and V O P H the multi use paths have to not only serve Bicycle and pedestrian but also golf carts.
Correct.
So I agree with you that bicycle and golf cart is probably more realistic for Florida in terms of interconnectivity there. Walking Um But we're not uniform there. I mean so if you're in Connected City and and B O P H Yes, we're planning for this wonderful community that's gonna be interconnected with golf courts. What are we doing in the rest of the county? Yeah, correct. So That's the issue is we're we we have these pockets where we plan so well.
Mm-hmm
But then we have other places where we do know virtually none of the great things that we're talking about in these other places. So we're just gonna create keep creating the haves and the have nots in Pasco. You live in VOPH in Connected City and get around great. You live somewhere else, you just have to to get in your car to go anywhere. So
That did inside the gate, outside the gate. Yes, that was multiple times. this. Let me switch forward to another.
Maybe we need to start thinking about that.
Yeah, but w when people submit MPDs that they're required to include a mobility plan with their They
do, but I'm telling you I see so many M P Ds where they say I don't want to interconnect to anything around me. Even though the code says that and they seek a variation to not do it and
I'm not b again I'm not blaming anybody in particular. We're all rubber stamping this.
Okay, good point.
So the the we Pulled some of the economic development related comments together under this category. Um The And it's some of the nuance here is that, you know, people want increased job opportunities, but they mean specifically closer to home. So they there's job opportunities in the region, but they'd like to access those opportunities closer to home. So we know that's been Um you know, significant focus of Um the county's economic development efforts.
Can can I stop you one second? Is there a way to get these screens back on so we can actually see what's oh, are you down on your screen? Yeah, we're down on our side. They're all went down. Otherwise we can turn the screen the T V screens but can we swing them back around to you? It's helpful to See what you're doing.
Well they do something.
Sorry to interrupt. That's all
right. We reboot we had issues earlier today and we rebooted it and it was working before the start of the meeting.
Did go off one again.
Uh make a comment if I may. Uh Don Anderson, my my apologies for being late. confuse the time, but when I walked in you were talking about the character and identity aspect.
Mm-hmm.
And just something that really struck me in that was you mentioned uh knowledge around the comp plan. Um illustration is my wife. Uh we We voted voted on some things here that she is one. adamantly opposed to for a number of reasons and and ridicules me for The vote, but yet uh it's obvious to me, and this is community-wide in most instances, the average citizen just doesn't have The clue is to how decisions are made at this
level. And I and I think it's a uh an extraordinary shortcoming that can easy well, I won't say easily overcome, but it certainly can be with more informational sessions and and uh
I would say um abbreviated but yet uh factual related to uh the processes that has to occur. And it just uh it just struck me. Thought I'd take a minute to say that.
Yeah, we think j the one observation it seems like the The market area framework for thinking about the future of the county is something that's really stuck with people. But it's still at a pretty broad scale. Um so it's hard for people to visualize that. Like what does that market area line across the you know south market area really mean? Um and we think sort of Breaking that down a little bit further is probably something we'll start to get into in the Complan work. So when people see a map, they can say, Oh, I live
here, here's what the map says about my future, and either I like that or I don't, but then they would have a basis for
And then the process of course by which anyone wishing to make a change Uh
has
to go through.
Yeah, whether it's a comp plan level discussion or a land development discussion. Yeah. So this was um d w sort of two ideas in this set of comments and you'll see this when we when we get the report out and you can dig through it in more detail. Is the idea about Um economic development and reserving those sites where you can get um High quality jobs, close to where folks live, well connected to surrounding communities. Um and then thought about The thinking
more about the fiscal impact of projects and the fiscal challenges that certain kinds of development um presents. So, you know, one of the things that's happening obviously in the county is you've got a lot of development that happened in the sixties and seventies. So there's a significant increase in cost for improving sewer and water infrastructure, dealing with drainage problems, um repaving roads, Um which is going to take resources away from doing some of
the big things you might want to do elsewhere, like preserving significant tracts of land for conservation or improving. parks and recreation facilities or community facilities like libraries. So Those are b a lot of people raise those concerns about You know, how do we pay for the things that we want in our communities? Um how do we pay for these additional services like you know enhanced landscaping along corridors or other things? Um So there's that it it's a fundamental tension, like we don't want to pay more taxes but we want more stuff out of the county. Um so you know the it's
the pressure on the Board of County Commissioners. About Um understanding long term implications of the kinds of development they approve Um and what that what what the how that affects the um tax base over the long haul. So you know,
I ask you a question about that. Because this has been a recurring issue With our staff because We have an existing policy in our Com Plan that talks about encouraging Land use is that generate more in taxes than they consume in services. It's basically requires a fiscal impact type analysis. And The few times where this has become an issue and it tends to be an issue when somebody's trying to convert a non residential use to a residential use. So But
what we discovered is that there's no good tool
to for our staff to easily use To determine the fiscal impact of a proposed land use change. They Our Office of Economic Growth had to go pay Remy some exorbitant amount of money. to do this analysis and they did it for one or two projects, but Okay. There at one point there was something called Phiam that Fishkine had done, but I don't the apparently it's not supported anymore. So
concept that we should be encouraging more Land use is that generate a positive tax impact. I fully agree with it. But I will tell you that it's very difficult for our staff to make sure that's happening.
tool out there that they can just Plug in the land uses and determine whether it has a f positive physical impact or not. So I don't want us to put something in the comp plan that staff is incapable of implementing in practice. Love the concept, but I you all need to help us figure out a way that staff can actually implement it. on the ground Or otherwise that th we have all of these policies in our component that say we want to do this And
they're almost meaningless.
Because we already have a compliment policy that says we'll do this and it's very hard for our staff to implement.
Understood.
Yeah.
I mean this is it this is our attempt to report what folks were saying they wanted to see.
And I think a lot of people say they want this. They want to see our as improve our tax base. Have more non residential development because it We almost make a profit on non residential development in terms of taxes.
create more services. But I could tell you I could Every day of the week I get that we get a request to convert a non residential use to a residential use. And I'm always saying, What about the fiscal impact? And staff can't They're incapable of figuring out whether it has a positive or negative fiscal impact. I'm not blaming staff, I'm gonna be clear. We have some smart people on our staff. But they legitimately do not have the tools to do it.
Understood.
Yeah, I mean the state that that the old fishcon model I believe was supported by the state for a period of time and then they pulled support so it wasn't maintained. Um And that was intended for Complan policy development.
Right. It was it was great when it existed, but it doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah.
So If there's some other easy way of developing like
Is there some threshold at which for certain land uses that we know of a positive fiscal impact. In other words, if there's a way to boil down what FishCine had done into more easier to implement rules Mm-hmm. That says you know. this amount of non residential is enough to create a positive fiscal impact or this Amount of residential is gonna create a negative im fiscal impact. Or this type of residential is a negative. is multifamily positive and single families not.
I mean those are the kinds of things that If we can't do it through a model, Like FishCon's model, maybe there's a way to create simpler rules that our staff can use to say These land uses are positive, these land uses are negative.
Yeah, we've had that we've talked about that as a possible research task for next year is to look into Um the either through specific county or case study research about just the cost of Or the cost and fiscal impacts of different development patterns and types. Um which could mi It's n it wouldn't be a model, so it wouldn't be plugging in an individual project. Um but we could look at what models are out there. I mean there are some off-the-shelf models and there's some communities have developed their own spreadsheet-based tools
that aren't, you know, a black box or a proprietary System.
I just don't want it to be in a position where we have to go out and hire a consultant every time we want to do a fiscal impact analysis. It's It's We would go bankrupt doing it.
Yep.
Fourteen minutes total. Um race is on.
Okay, okay. Um This g this one the we lumped topics, if you look at the sec the bullet the second bullet with the green text, um people raise a s whole set of concerns about housing affordability food insecurity, transit accessibility, and unequal access to opportunity. Basically This county works way better for some people than it does for other people. How do we how do we t achieve a better balance of um how people experience life in the county.
If I may. I know I missed this slide, but back to slide number seven as it relates to housing affordability. You have year one and two diagnostics. What what kind of data Have you collected at this point relative to housing affordability?
We we've we held on that until the housing affordability research that was done for the moratorium was complete. Okay. So we're looking at the we're sort of digging through that data to see what to what extent we can use that or we need to look at other sources. So that could be something we look into more deeply next year. I mean what we're finding that our subconsultant, SB Friedman Associ or S S B Friedman Development Advisors, has been doing um affordable housing research in the region. So they've done a lot of work for Pinellas
County.
percent of their penny for money that's used for to support affordable housing projects. And they've been providing we did some additional work to look at setting up a system to um f to get proposals to figure out how to spend that money and then they're doing evaluations of projects to see if it's a good use of the funds. Um and we're doing some work similar work in Hillsborough County. But they're supporting that work here so they understand the regional support regional affordability challenges. Um And honestly
what we're finding is it's really about how much public money goes into subsidizing units specifically. It's really hard to do it through zoning and through other mechanisms because they're just not targeted enough. Um like inclusionary zoning and affordable housing bonuses aren't producing a lot of units. It's the projects that are getting some sort of direct funding. So more likely in
a place like St. Pete where those things are.
St. Pete has applied worked with developers to apply for some of that penny for money specifically, and they have their own funding. So they're patching together a series of public sources to write down projects.
We had the sources, the the Alice report is one, the um what is this? The Schimberg Center at University of Florida does h housing research county by county, so they have good data on the county. And then they look at um what we did for Penellus was look at um For four sale housing looked at MLS data about what's on the market and looked at compared that to income. by class of income and then we and we looked at um We used a couple private sources
like CoStar for apartment rents to try to get a handle on what the rental differentials were and how that served demand. That's encouraging.
Thank you.
But it really the the key uh the At the end of all that, there's there's no question there's significant need for more affordable housing across the board. People are paying you know, forty five, fifty percent of their income on their housing and the guidelines are thirty. Um and all of the region all of our all the communities in the region are struggling with the same question. It's really targeting the tools to start to try to solve that problem.
Um
What was the other sp what I'm trying to think of specific anecdotes about these items? Um
There was a some
There was regarding the opportunity, there was some discussion about the great employment center opportunities that the county's developing and how people who were maybe working a convenience store job on the west side of the county could actually access those employment hubs. So there was discussion about opportunity through transportation, transit transit hubs.
If I may mention one other thing that I think um I I don't know if it's something that you can create some kind of a baseline but with the added two hundred and twenty three thousand folks. Joining us. already occurring displacement that I'm I'm seeing tenants experience. They're being displaced because of people that are moving into the area. It really started at the you know It's better home value. Um for people coming in, but it's also down to the the tenant level now, rental. properties
where people are
as prices are going up.
Are actually being displaced Because of the increase in rents and people coming into the area
for
that demand.
Yeah, I think uh I mean it it's a little bit more than a little bit
The amount of market money that's coming in is definitely, you know, people are bringing fat checkbooks into the region and and pricing ever pricing folks out. And then just the movement from folks that are getting priced down of Hillsborough and Pinellas coming up to Pasco to try to find cheap housing is pressure is putting pressure on the market too. So Um you some of it has to do with just raw supply. Like the the p you know, the market needs to pr probably be producing twice as number of housings ho houses per week or month or units per Week
or month to meet that demand and that ramp up hasn't happened yet. And a broader spectrum of housing as well. A bro that's yeah, so we mentioned that a little bit of
advised workforce housing
is is
Completely.
And I was gonna add that was one thing that came up too just diversity and types of housing. You know, not everyone can be a homeowner and have these, you know, big lots and not everyone can afford these new high rents and these new developments. So even some of those fourplexes and you know just different diversity and options also came. Yeah.
So I know you said that inclusionary zoning's been not very Um successful. What about linkage fees, you know, the where you the the developers pay a an extra fee that we could then use for Creating more affordable housing. Has that been successful in other communities?
It's a i the I mean one of the issues is is under Florida state law you can really only do it through a bonus. You can't do it as a raw requirement. So you can't just say everybody has to pay into a linkage fee. You have to say if you want twenty percent more units Um there could be a fee you pay to get access to those additional units on your property that could go into a fund. So you do we have to look at the How the um the ma r th how the math works because the under state the state law says you have to make the developer
whole for that contribution in some way. So you have to give them enough units that they kick off additional income to pay into either into a fund or to provide that unit on site. Yeah, you can't penalize them. You have to make them whole
for
the bonus you have to make them whole through the bonus. Yeah. So which is a ch it's tricky from a legal standpoint because it's a moving target that value of that unit changes over time and the cost to construct it changes over time. So getting the math right is pretty tricky. And ultimately the funding for such a
Uh
A where of anybody that's done it under the new state law successfully?
Uh I there has been very few units constructed under the new law with the bonus system. I'd have to look at the research. I don't know it off the top of my head.
I think they've been successful in St. Pete with some of that.
Where they've actually taken revenue. As for through the through a bonus program? Yes. Yeah, we could that's what we could look in that be could be part of.
Okay.
Uh
The market rate.
You could do it through a fee reduction and other other methods to bring the cost down of delivering the affordable unit. Right.
Well I mean for example like our mobility fee we subsidize it to zero. So we If it's an affordable unit they pay zero mobility fees. So I guess you could say that's part an offsetting the cost, right?
It would be part of an offset. Yeah,
you could count that as part of an offset. The the
fees can be counted for that.
I think for us from a research standpoint, we could either look at the broad question about affordability Um but there are sources that tell us what the different affordability challenges are about income level. Um or we could spend more time looking at the specific tool to try to calibrate the tool to work here. Um So that's sort I'm I'm sort of leaning toward the second
And the mechanism rather than we we know affordability's a affordability is a challenge. We could put a really fine point on that, you know, finding, but we know it's a challenge. So basically I'd rather focus on the tool. What we do about it I think is more useful.
Unless I think our community development department knows there's an issue. It's just a matter of how do we address it. Yeah.
Right. To address the issue. Yeah. I agree.
What what's the criteria for affordable housing? What what what makes it affordable?
Well the the statistically it's generally as you said thirty percent. Uh and then HUD in each jurisdiction comes up with Um The
profile. For the income qualification. So you if you're sixty percent of median income, you could qualify for a subsidized unit in a the low income low income housing tax credit program. So it's a federal tax credit program. um that a developer would participate in by setting aside a certain number of units that a certain income level could afford. And then so those people would have to be qualified to access that unit at a certain price.
Make it a little bit. Clearer what price unit would meet that criteria in today's In Pasco County. Pasco County.
I don't know the n I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. Yeah. I'd have to do math faster than I typically can. They
they've actually the fair market values out of HUD are right now sort of limbo you can actually make application as a Oh like.
for um
Yeah, I
mean
there I'm I'm sure that there's nothing it I think it's easy to say that there's nothing on the private market now available to people making sixty percent of median income. They couldn't afford it for rent and they couldn't afford to buy it. Um So it would it requires some sort of intervention. But how do they afford to build it then? That's what I'm that's the credit. That would be the purpose of a tax credit or a grant program or a
Land Corporation will have RFPs that are available with certain criteria they're looking to meet and then you compete for it, but it's highly competitive.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean my experience with that is that's very difficult to One of the things that makes it difficult is that be the all these various companies are competing for the money. to build these affordable housing projects. But the problem is it could take, you know, most of a year. to figure out if you're even gonna get the money. Because it's all It's it's yeah, there's no guarantee. Even if your project would normally qualify. And so competing against
other affordable houses.
owner to essentially take their property off the market under Right.
to wait and
see if they can put the dealing over that somebody's gonna you know approve that that project. Right. And that's a problem. That is a real problem, especially in a in a a rising market because People are thinking, Yeah, I don't know if I wanna take my pr uh my property off the market for It's eight, nine, ten months while I wait to see if you might get funded. You know. It's almost like a a drawing.
Heraffle almost. In the total timeline, even if you've lined up property today and you go through this process, it's five years, literally, until you can unlock the door and let people in. I mean That's
not a I mean. But what I'm but my th my what I'm saying is the problem is the actually acquire property under that system because In order to acquire it, you have to tie it up. And Yeah, if it was my property I'd be in in this especially in this kind of a market.
Maybe what they're saying though is that if there was a local funding source that can be used to provide the same subsidy. And you're not dependent on this state raffle. Right. Right. That's different.
If you if it's a ninety day window, that's a lot different than a t a twelve month window.
But I I think that the I think the value of some of our research could be on that end of the spectrum about how how do you deliver, what tools do you need to deliver. those affordable projects because there's no question about the need. And it's only, you know, it's that need is a greater challenge day by day. housing costs are out you know, outpacing increases in salary. Across the board. So it you know there's no question about the need. We talk a lot the
commissioners talk a lot about Live work. And and and uh at the upper echelon it's it might be practical in some of the new developments, but for the folks that are servicing at the um service level. Live and work is going out the window here in Pasco. If you're in a s if you if you're making minimum income. You It would take you almost three jobs.
Uh in order to Me. the thirty
percent standard
on
on
your housing
expenses. So even if you put an apartment complex next to the mall, they can't afford to live in the apartment complex next to the mall.
If it's probably if it's new construction, yeah, they're that it's gonna be pretty pricey.
But it's i the I think the key I think the challenge really is that that it has to be Um
Expand the range of possibilities to create more affordability. So a mall next to I mean a Multifamily project next to the mall. Could be good over time to allow people to walk to work and meet some of their daily needs without requiring a car trip. Um but then there's the you know, how do we meet the workforce housing, how do we meet lower income housing needs and there's folks that are, you know, you st have a still have a homeless population in Pasco County, although it's not Super evident. But th you know, the the
whole spectrum of need is significant. So try to align strategies to meet different levels of need would be what we what we try to look at.
I have one concern there. You said serviceability. And our our uh Nationwide we have moved from a manufacturing economy to a serviceability one. I would like to see at some point in time, because we talked about uh affordability uh at some point in time, jobs within the county. Better jobs in the county better jobs. And I think that that's manufacturing, not s not uh service. Uh uh there are some service industries that like your medical facilities, that's a service. They are definitely high paying positions. But
when you go to your Retail. service industry. As you said, that's minimum wage course minimum wage. It fluctuates and has gone up considerably nonetheless. This last year. So I'd like to see more and uh
Job development. in the manufacturing industry Throughout the county.
Yeah, I th I mean I think that's that's part of what's on the table for economic development. I
I hope so. I haven't seen much.
Let me just tell you that we fight this battle every single day and About making sh staff making sure that there's adequate set aside for Office industrial development and it's a constant battle because the developers all want to do residential.
Yeah. I
agree with you.
Yeah. I concur with that a hundred percent. And uh but I still see manufacturing as as a key component. One of the m uh one of
the real fundamental problems I think we have is that If you talk to anybody in business today, it's they there's nobody who wants to work. You know, they want the apartment, but they don't want to work. And I don't care how affordable it is, if you don't have an income that's right. Somebody's gotta pay. And You know, and I uh and I've been involved in some of those where I you know, I've tried to help somebody out and put somebody in the one a w a property maybe that I own. And you
know, they got a they get a job and they're there for three days and then it's They just don't show up again. You know, and then I don't think we can tackle that one with the company.
Yeah, yeah, but well I'm talking it's an affordable housing issue. Yeah it is. You know, and that's why we have these affordable housing needs 'cause People don't want to work. I mean I can't believe it. It's just And it it isn't you know. Throughout the community, everybody you talk I don't I don't think I have to tell anybody here. Just about everybody you talk to that runs a business Or even Doctor's office or anything like that. It's all I can't hire anybody. Nobody
wants to work. You know, I'm paying them twenty twenty dollars an hour they still don't show up. You know, I mean it's it's it that's a problem. And one of the problems is is that that they get out of high school and they don't know how to do anything. You know? Yeah. We we we need some more trade schools. We need people to teach people how to do something. Fix an air conditioner, weld the s piece two pieces of metal together, fix a car. I mean practical things that people need. They don't n necessarily need people that Have a degree in
animal husbandry or something. Between some of the programs the school district has and that we have there's a Movement to create trade trade account. So I That issue is being awful.
But there is a lot of areas that don't aren't doing that and And I think we're smart to do that here. Because But you know That creates pride of ownership. That I mean it just creates so many
positive things when you have And some of our Penny for Pasco money this next round is gonna be allocated for those type of trade programs. So That I think we're doing. I don't know that we're going to solve the problem of people not wanting to work at all.
Well, I don't know how we got here, but uh Valerie
just warned me that we're we're over time. Um so we're eating into time spent elsewhere. I really appreciate the feedback. The last slide was a quick note about um The You know, comments about people not understanding what the fut what the future of the county holds. So, you know, when we say two hundred twenty three thousand people, it flips 'em out because they don't know what that was so our part of our job is to explain what the implications of that could be. Um and that's some of the research we're doing now. So I
wanted to mention a couple of the things that we're doing now is we're looking at Um Both demand like the the nature of demand for different real estate products around the county. And then we're also looking at the capacity to support demand under the current future land use categories. So what is the headroom under your current plan to support New development. So we want to get it we're trying to get a handle on that number. It's a little it's gonna be a range, it's not gonna be a precise number because sites develop in
different ways for different reasons. Um but we're gonna try to get a handle on that. So we'll say you need more or less of a certain kind of category. Um or you have enough now you need to focus on land development, not comp land amendments, you know, or or or land development changes, not comp land amendments. So we're we're trying to get a a a rough match between What that demand picture looks like and what you've got available under the current plan to support development. Um we should have some We should be able to report back on that
research in the next couple months. So by Um August, September we should have that wrapped up and then we would move into at when the fiscal year turns September thirtieth we'd move into the next year of services. So that would be new research and then starting to put together the broad framework for the plan itself.
Okay.
I'd just like to have one comment. Uh going through the the your your presentation I did not hear anything about law enforcement. and you had on one of your charts there a low ability in in in communities. Mm-hmm. I think that You don't have good law enforcement. You do not have to do that. good living conditions in some communities. And in some communities they they now hire or contract with the Sheriff's Department to bring extra law enforcement into a community.
So I think a key point to anything that we do in this county or in any county is you've got to have a But and a uh an active law enforcement presence. So we just end up
with
the
I i you know law enforcement specifically is not a comp plan matter, but the neighborhood stability, neighborhood stabilization, quality of life is, and that's influenced by safe you know, safety and security in a community. Absolutely. It's also g it raises for me it raises the question about how This is part of the county's transition to be acting a little bit more like a city in the older parts of the county. You know, the as a Pasco County is a full service county, so you provide, you know, m
outside of the cities, incorporated areas, you still provide municipal services and act like a city in many places. But part of that is dealing with these questions dealing with the challenges in older communities. Um And that may require some different thinking, either, you know, redevelopment agency, neighborhood stabilization programs. Um that we're we haven't jumped into that in any level of detail yet, but I think that's one of the things we'll address in the plan.
So I agree with you and disagree with you about you saying it's not part of the Comm Plan. I agree with you in terms of the operation of the Sheriff's Office. That's not a Com plan issue. But the infrastructure needed to support law enforcement is somewhat of a comp plan Land Development Code. You know, for example, we don't have a law enforcement impact fee. We have one for fire rescue We have one for all the other public facilities. We talked about doing one for law enforcement and never did. Not sure why. I
would also say as part of our land development process we're pretty good about exacting sites for parks and schools. And fire stations. You rarely, if ever, do I see us any discussion about, hey, does the sheriff need a substation or There it seems like there's a lack of planning. for the infrastructure needed to support the Sheriff's Office. That's a good point. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. That was yeah, understood.
Yes. That was a good point. Are there any other questions or suggestions? Anything
else you want to We just that we'll the re the write up for this, which is supports these slides and the statements on the slides, will get out in the next couple weeks and as I mentioned at your request we'll send it to you when it goes to the county commission. And then um We'll probably uh the goal would be to have you all review it, see if you're comfortable with it, and then we'd release it into the public and then we'll move into the next phase of work. But what you'll see again is an an attempt to to do a um uh
a straight report of what we heard, not our interpretation or spin or you know, uh a uh selective evaluation. It's things we heard that are relevant to the Comp Plan update, we're reporting those out as clearly as we can. So this is just a statement of um of what folks are saying about
I mean for example You can't say we're gonna accommodate three hundred thousand new people and then we have to keep the whole county rural. Th those two statements are Mutually inconsistent with each other. So at some point You are gonna have to say that. The public's saying this, but this is impossible. So We recommend you do X.
W that's part of what we're testing now is the capacity under the current categories to see Um there's a lot of stuff that looks rural that's not rural in terms of the comp plan or a zoning category. So we have to help people understand that although you see it as rural,
Completion category and it's gonna get it has the potential for development. So you know, helping people understand that question is part of it. Like what What is the current comp plan likely to produce? And where
the available acreage is a very good thing. And then in these categories.
That's that's the step we're going through now. Yeah. So we we we should be able to say um
It's y if you don't have enough land to support the the residential units under your current suburban categories, you're gonna have to remap some of your agricultural categories and we're gonna have to have that debate with folks. So we have to present that. and be prepared to talk about it. But I don't know what that I don't know the answer to that right now.
But yeah, I mean clearly that's one of the significant tensions. in the in the whole plan. is where that where you're talking about.
have to make a recommendation to staff and our board about what we should do from a lane's perspective, not just what the citizens said they would. Yeah. This is
th this is still kind of just a data dump right now. We're doing the research to to figure out if we need to challenge those statements and to what extent we need to.
May I ask one more question, Chuck? No.
Go ahead. Um the figure, the two hundred the forty percent, the two hundred and thirty-three thousand uh um
How was that number arrived at? Is that something that was reported elsewhere and we adopted, or is it something that you've fleshed out?
It's it it's um the way The the There's control numbers by county and region that the state develops for population projections. And then the county takes those in in this case, the county um working with the MPO and DOT take that Projection and allocated across the county by tra what's called traffic analysis zone. And that becomes the basis for the long range transportation plan. So you're using Bieber numbers. So
it starts with the Bieber numbers and then it gets allocated locally in the regional Tampa Bay regional planning model. Are you using Bieber High, Medium, or Low? It's a Bieber medium, I is what goes into the regional model.
I did. And this model is used consistently throughout the counties here in Tampa Bay. Yes.
Throughout the state
basically.
I think almost everybody. There's a calibrate there's sort of that allocation process that happens with the planning staff and the um MPO staff to allocate it based on fee existing future land use category. And then that's the um recognized as the official projection. So we haven't challenged that. I mean it do it tracks with what you've seen in the past. So that's I was just going to ask if
we go back to the last time the plan was updated. What was the uh how accurate was our I
haven't looked I
haven't
gone back
and asked that specific question. It'd be interesting to know how accurate we were in our forecasting of the population.
to a accommodate that. So that allocation Um The where that two hundred thirty three was allocated to traffic analysis zone basically tracks with what you've got allowed in future land use categories. But that's what we need to report back to you is a more a more deeper analysis of what the future Landy's category capacity
is. I promise just one more quick question or comment. I I wrote and ask John. Yeah. I don't listen to John.
It can't be about
social media. Actually I really don't go on social media. Too many negative things about me. Hey l uh you talked about the two hundred and thirty three thousand people. And he said forty percent growth. And I wanted to know the age of the your anticipated growth into the community. I came here because I retired from a job. Well, actually I retired, period. I didn't retire from the job. The job retired me. But uh I'm just curious on many people in my community and most of the
people that moved here in the sixties and fifties, the late fifties, they retired to Pasco County. So I was wondering if you have that figured into this two hundred and thirty-three K because those that retire Don't need as many services other than the hospitals.
Mm-hmm. We don't uh we don't currently have a breakdown of uh like a demographic breakdown of the projection. We've got some info on um. The age the age distribution of the population now and in the past.
When the Schimberg Center for Affordable Housing does their update based on what 2020 census, which I have not heard when that's coming, but they do a break an age breakout. Okay. So they project that out. It's a projection.
I did a rough. Calculation and That would be thirty-five thousand more students.
How many schools are about thirty that's about thirty-five more schools. Thirty-five more schools. So that's about one per year.
So we're projecting the need for infrastructure schools, I think in including your models that some people aren't generating school age children.
Correct. So what I d I just took what our existing population is, about how many students we have in the system now. And then use that to calculate It's just a lot rough.
So it depends on the school. So elementary we're looking usually looking at about eighteen to twenty two acres. Uh middle school about thirty-five, high school seventy. Those are traditional those are traditional schools. Now I think we're doing a better job here in Pasco of trying to Do some different stuff. To bring your landscape. So for example, in the Angeline development, we're doing a six through twelve STEM school that's located on about eighteen acres. So, you know, we're trying
to do different things but there'll still be a need for traditional Mm-hmm. High school, full blown athletic facilities, all that stuff. So I mean we have some future sites that as David said, I think we have a pretty good process of e you know, reserving sites, but No we don't have thirty-five sites.
Bish.
By
the way, Pete, just so you know, I think that retirees do put a bigger burden on fire rescue than you think.
Definitely on fire rescue. Absolutely. There's probably more hospitals. More doctors. Try to get a doctor's appointment. Yeah,
that's
true. Exactly.