PC3 PDD 22-0241 landscape code tree preservation and solar carports
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Okay, our last item today is PC3 PDD 22-0241. And as a reminder for this, you're still sitting in this local planning agency, and Patrick Dutter will be presenting this to you.
Thank you, Patty. Uh good afternoon everyone. Uh Patrick Dutter, current planning, planning and development. Um
You could get me to the first slide. Thank you.
Um so we have some landscape code updates for you today. Um specifically in 802, 905.2, 905.3. Uh eight oh two is tree preservation and replacement, nine oh five point two is landscaping and buffering, nine oh five point three is planting and the rights of way of residential subdivisions. Uh so roughly, well, it's probably two years ago now, we were asked by uh I think the Tampa Bay Builders Association to look at amending some of our policies and our land development code
to clean up some items. So we kind of formed a task force with county staff and also TBBA members. So county staff included Frank Galdo and Catherine Harper from the Cooperative Extensions Office at for the UF Extensions Office. Elizabeth Blair from the County Attorney's Office, Mike Woodard, who is an arborist working in building construction services, Pam Shaw, who is a planner who is now retired, and myself on behalf of the county.
And then we worked with Hannah McAlear and Bridger Demmers. Hannah is a landscape architect from Clearview Land Design, and Bridger is a landscape architect from Level Up Consulting. So that is the group that worked on these improvements.
Yeah, if you go to the next slide, please.
What's that? Uh I will try next time. Um so it might be kinda hard for you to see. It's kinda hard for me to see. Um but there are quite a lot of improvements that uh we had done. There were I think three or four main things that uh the T BBA specifically wanted us to look at. Uh but then, you know, we kind of looked at another thing and looked at another thing and another thing and then uh here we are two years later with uh quite a lot of tweaks uh over time. Um so the first thing and
I'll I'll kind of skip around this list a little bit if there's something in here that you want me to speak to specifically I can. But uh a few of the things is we're allowing for tree sample surveys for developments. So um when we have you know giant projects with much lar large acreage, um what happens often is you know that's a can be a whole lot of trees on a project site. Um but uh what we have allowed in the past through the alternative standard process is to allow people with staff approval
uh to sample certain areas. So they're not sampling all of the trees in a project area. They're doing representative samples in different areas to come to a a number for tree replacement. Some of the other things that we're doing we were defining what a shade tree is. We're defining what an ornamental tree is.
Let me just go back for one second. I just want to make sure I understand the purpose of samples. Sure.
Sure. So the purpose of the sample, um, let's say you have a hundred acre project and there's a whole bunch of trees on that, someone's got to go out there and measure each and individual tree to to figure out, okay, if you're taking down trees, how many inches do you need to replace over time? Uh that can be quite time consuming. Um so uh what we've done in the past is we've allowed people to sample certain areas um with county approval. So we'll kind of both look and try and find the right mix of okay, we
understand that area is okay, sure. Sure. Some of the other things that we did again, we defined ornamental and shade tree. Some other things we've updated. There's a requirement that 70% of our buffers needed to have landscaping in them. Essentially, what that ended up doing is most of our buffers would have ground cover plantings and they would have mulch. generally don't survive
very long, so you've got most of your buffer basically being mulch and a little bit of landscaping. So we tweaked that requirement a little bit to rather than have that seventy percent rule, we added some additional landscaping specifically in our buffering requirements. Some of the other things that we did, we had to tweak our buffers a little bit. One of them was the vehicle dealership buffer that we had tweaked. The original buffer saw it be 75 feet wide, which is quite a
large buffer space. The code currently doesn't even have a visual screening component for it, which is probably the most important thing. thing you want when you're having a vehicle dealership abutting a residential project. So we shortened that buffer width and we added the visual screening component to it as well. So we kind of made that swap. We clarified what's required in vehicle use area landscaping. So there was obviously back and forth between staff and applicants
about what the appropriate landscaping was in those areas. We clarified that. We updated a lot of links that we had. We had the links to outside resources that were old and outdated, so we updated those links. Um we have a more accurate uh link to invasive species list. Um so we have we updated the link to that as well. Um And addition to this, uh we currently one of the code sections that I talked about was 905.3,
which is uh plantings within the rights of way. What we did is we we took this code section and we incorporated it into 905.2. The biggest part about 905.3 was a big tree list saying what trees were appropriate in rights of way, so in between the sidewalk and you know your curb and gutter. But what we wanted to do is we wanted to take that tree list and use it throughout the county and expand it a little bit, and we wanted to be able to update it more
frequently. So what we did is we took That tree list out of the code, added it to the development review manual so we can update it more frequently to account for various different things. In addition to that, we had part of the team that you saw listed out there, primarily the Cooperative Extensions Group and Mike Woodard, our arborist, went through that list of trees, found the appropriate spacing requirements. Um called out where mitigation measures would
be needed and where they wouldn't be needed depending on the type of tree. So you'll see the tree list. I know it's kind of probably small on what you have there, but it has all those columns there that spell out where the appropriate place for the tree is. Quite a few other things that we touched on. I'm not going to go into detail on all of them unless there are any specific.
I have a question.
Sure.
And Patrick I apologize because I should have bought this uh months ago and maybe at O D T or something, but so I was out west recently and I noticed there was a few many parking lots out west where they have these what I'll call solar carports. Okay, they're basically um They're covered areas but they're also solar panels on top of them. Um so they're
providing shade for the cars and they're also serving as a solar generation facility for the business basically. Sure. So I as I saw them I was thinking Is that even possible to do in Pasco? And still comply with our landscape ordinance. Because as I know, because what I'll tell you, what I noticed is the areas where these Solar panels were you know the footers for the
that was hold they were holding them up were basically where these where we would normally have these landscape What do you call them? Islands.
Sure.
and there weren't there wasn't any v any vegetation that would be there would die because it would be covered by the the solar panels. Right. Um So I guess I guess that's my main question is is it possible for somebody to do something like because it has other benefits obviously. Right. It's providing shade, it's providing solar, which has an environmental benefit. But I would just hate to see us do something that's gonna preclude somebody from doing something like that merely because we
say they've got a meet code on landscaping. Sure. So I notice you do have some exceptions for Things like um large vehicle areas, boat and RV storage areas, distribution centers, where you let them put some of their landscaping on the perimeter instead of in islands. Is is that something we should consider adding a similar exception for somebody wants to do one of these solar I don't know what you call them, but the
solar coverings.
Sure. Um I I think they're a great idea. Um and I would love to see one in Pasco. Uh but I have yet to see one in Pasco yet. Um but we do have uh you know the alternative standard pro you
know
the main goal Of those trees in those vehicle use areas is to provide shade, right? And if those carport structures are doing that, it's meeting the main intent. So we would probably staff would probably be okay with approving an alternative standard. If we started seeing more of these carport structures come in, I think maybe then we'd think about adding it to the code.
Well, but I guess I guess all I'm asking is since you already have a this exception in C three says that for areas that are serving large vehicles, truck stops, whatever vehicle freight terminals, but aren't be storage, you say you can get a fifty percent that your landscaping can be transferred to the perimeter. Is it really much work just to add the solar you know, that they're providing that to the I mean, I just hate to see somebody have to go through an alternative standard process for
something that we're probably would encourage. Because it's providing shade, it's providing solar energy. I mean why not just write it into the code as opposed to say you've got to go through an alternative standard process.
Okay. I think R Tippin is
Brad Tippen, uh Planning and Development. I think that's actually something that we could probably add to that list of exceptions, uh, with a caveat that the county needs to see what's being proposed to determine if it actually meets that. Uh not a true alternative standard, but uh kind of an exception uh with county approval if the county determines that it does meet that requirement um to some extent. Just because we they could be.
But if it's providing just as much shade as the landscaping and it's generating solar, I would think that we'd want to encourage that and not say You need some old standard to do it. Yep.
And
we I
mean
I realize it's not occurring today, but I just was out west and I probably saw, You know, at least twenty five percent of the parking lots have these Cover I mean maybe they're mandating it out there, I don't know. But I wouldn't think we'd want to preclude it.
Yeah, I think I think we can put some language in there with a simple sentence before the the next hearing that that can probably address that. And we may also want to address uh things like electric vehicle charging stations.
That was my next that was going to be my next question. Thank you for predicting it. Because a lot of these commercial centers as they as we start moving towards more electric vehicles not just because I have one, but
you have one?
It's a logical place for them to retrofit to put in electric charging stations is in the landscape islands. And I wouldn't want us to preclude those just because we say, Oh, but you've got a tree in there. I mean there should be some ability that somebody can put an electric charging station without violating our landscape ordinance. So is that somet I I don't know where to put that but I think there should be some allowance for that.
Yeah, I think that that too is something that we can also uh address, get it get the ball started on addressing those as they start to come in and we'll see if we need to tweak it in the future. But
I just know that we don't open up the landscape organs very often for the first time in fifteen twenty years. I just don't wanna have to wait another fifteen, twenty years to say we gotta amend the code to allow for electric target stations or solar facilities. I mean we should anticipate the future. Then these things are probably coming and we shouldn't have our code preclude them.
And uh, you know, part of that discussion that we probably don't want to have right now, but uh there there's, you know, do we give up a parking space for that equipment and allow them a parking space reduction to put that equipment in rather than removing uh the landscaping features itself because there's other benefits of the landscaping features as well. So there's some trade-offs there, but it would be something that we could put some sort of language in here that would allow us to make that change without a formal more formal expensive processes.
For example, you have some deviations when they use native landscaping. I'm not asking for you to give them a complete exemption. I'm just saying there should d be some minor allowances so that somebody can put in an electric charge station without having to redo their whole parking lot or find some other place for the landscaping. Yeah.
I I think we can do that. We can find a few sentences in that section to be able to cover that.
Okay.
So what would we do today about approving this without that language?
I
mean you can recommend approval with those additional with those additional changes. Staff can work it figure out the exact wording, but I mean I think you could do that. It's up to you.
Okay.
Just a quick question on this. I know that Commissioner Starkey's kinda tasked y'all with looking at landscape improvements and like does this dovetail at all with that or is this completely
separate? Say that again.
Does this dovetail at all with what she's requested you to do or is this completely separate or
um Commissioner Starkey knows about the changes that we're making. Um I I met with her uh two weeks ago and I think probably a year ago prior to that, so she's aware of of all these changes. Um and she seemed happy about them. So she might have other things that she's she's trying to tackle. Um I I I'm not gonna say that I have all of them in here, but there are some things that'll probably be addressed.
Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. They were not.
Okay, j just one question and I guess first off I mean I think this is a very thorough job and I think there's a lot of changes included in here that needed to be done and were probably long overdue and I think it was a very good job putting it together. Um my question and At some point I thought I remembered hearing something about deviations as well coming or forthcoming for parking dimension standards. Is are there any changes to parking dimensions?
Pending? Um nothing is pending, but uh I I know that is something that staff has talked about wanting to do for a while. Um it's just finding the time. This took most of the time. So
I mean pen obviously the reason I'm asking and again I know this is there's a lot of work that's gone into this and I'm very appreciative of all the work that's gone in. Just simple changes with increases to landscape island widths. Um has pretty substantial impacts to um people that have probably I mean, here's an ordinance that's scheduled to be adopted here in three or four weeks. Sure. And I've got several clients out there that have purchased property and we're ongoing and and preparing construction plans and frankly I don't know that we can beat those dates. But you know, adding
two feet to every l single one of their landscape islands is pretty significantly impacts their their plan. So in turn we're gonna have to come back in for alternative standard and do something else to kind of creatively
so um what we did we our current uh dimension for those islands that we're talking about uh is eight feet wide um with looking at you know what we spent some time putting together the tree list with our arborist and our our landscape Landscape experts, um most trees to to be successful need a little bit more room than that. Um so we bumped out that island width from being eight feet wide to ten feet wide just to give it a little bit more room. So that is the that is the purpose and
that is why we expanded it a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah, and and and admittedly I I think that the eight foot width, just for everybody's understanding, the eight foot width I think really limited to or what I've seen limits what you can actually plant in those islands.
Correct.
So p providing a little more width does give you a little more variety and I I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. It just has other impacts. As well as some of the other changes in here have costs, impacts and implications that people just have to understand. I mean not I mean I I've heard a lot of people complain about other municipalities and the cost of their landscaping requirements and everything in the code, not frankly I don't know that I've specifically heard that about Pasco County and and I I don't think they're a bad thing, I just wanna point that out, that's all.
Sure. So we we we m modifying parking ratios then to accompany to compensate for that?
Um w there are uh uh again staff would like to tackle the the parking code. Um that's probably gonna be one of the next projects that we do tackle. Um it's just we haven't started yet. Right.
Don't tell him yet. That's his next chore. Yeah, no, we we have plans and we've had a lot of internal discussions, uh initial discussions on how to handle parking. Uh there's a lot of changes that have occurred since our parking code went into place, um with ride sharing and other types of features that are really changing the dynamics of parking. Electric vehicle chargers being another one. So we're gonna have to look at all of that. So that is gonna be coming in the future, at which time we'll probably also look at dimensions, sizing, standards, numbers of spaces per
uses, different things like that. So we are gonna look at that. Um and in the meantime, where where this code impacts some of those other features for things that are already underway and and you know kind of deep. in the design process, we can look at alternative standards um to deal with that. We're we're generally realize that in in most cases we're overparked. Um in the county. So uh you know, we can look at some reductions uh based on certain reasonable criteria. Good.
All right. Thank you.
Patrick, anything else?
Not for me.
Okay, about up here. Roberto, you're deep thought down there. Okay.
Okay, Chris, nothing. Nope. Good. All right. Well if there's no further comments or questions, there are a motion. Motion to approve. Um before we do that, uh do we should we include some language that's talked about with the with modifications I guess by by David and can we can you sort of outline what modifications we want to
that they create some allowances in the landscape island standards for um Sol I don't know what you call them, solar car ports. I don't know what they're
solar. Solar car ports. I just looked it up there.
Solar car ports and electric vehicle charging stations. Okay.
That sound good?
All right, so we got a motion that that's fine. And then uh we got a second. Any further discussion of the motion? If not, all in favor, so you can apply by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, like, sign. Bay. Oh, he carries that.