Special Exception (Consent) – Craig and Amanda Galleher/Galleher ADU – Request for Special Exception for a 1,684 Square Foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Pursuant to Land Development Code Section 530.24.B.1.a in an A- R Agricultural Residential District – Northeast Pasco County – North Side of Trust Lane, Approximately 670 Feet West of the Intersection of Trust Lane and Lowrie Lane – Containing Approximately 5.09 acres
What the county recorded
Staff recommendation
Approval with Conditions
No outcome in the minutes
The approved minutes do not say what became of this item. That is a gap in the record, not a decision. It is the normal state for 25% of items. Most of those are regular business and board reports that the minutes do not record in writing. This archive never infers an outcome from the fact that someone called a vote.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Planning Commission, Oct 8, 2026
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s agenda for Planning Commission, Oct 8, 2026
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
This case, across meetings
PDE-27-7954 in full →Heard once. PDE-27-7954 appears on no other agenda in the archive.
- Oct 8, 2026PlanningPC4▶No outcome in the minutesthis item
What was said
Machine transcription of 17m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 78% of 97 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Coming back to those comforts report.
Can I hear that? Yeah. Planning Development
and Economic Growth for E G.
Right, can you just make a class remote?
Hello?
yeah sorry.
Sorry. Okay. Hello, I'm Rama Sibha,
Century Development, Economic Growth.
Okay, I'm going to be presenting
um special session 7954 with yellow AEU.
PDE 277954. It's a special exemption for a thousand six hundred and eighty-four square foot accessory
dwelling unit.
So this is a special exception request.
With the uh zombie district of um agricultural residential ARD. We are. Um A feature land use of AGR, Agricultural Rural. And uh the process to construct a 1,684 square foot accessory dwelling unit pursuant to land development code section 53024 V1 in an agricultural residential district. The proposed ADU will exceed 1,200 square footage of living space, therefore triggering this special
exception request. It is located on the north side of Truss Lane, approximately 670 feet west of the intersection of Trust Lane and Lower Lane.
Subject
property is in the New York market
area, the northeast county rural area, rural area one.
Yeah, Location.
Yeah, I know.
Okay, future land use of the property is AGR Agricultural Rural. As to the north, south East to west.
The zoning of the parcel is agricultural residential to the north, south, east, and west.
The subject site is developed with approximately with
an existing 2365 square footage of modular home. on approximately 5.09 acres. So the applicant is requesting a special exemption to build an accessory dwelling unit comprised 1,684 square footage of living space. In addition to the living space, the ADU will also include 131 square footage Lanai, a 53-foot entry. The proposed ADU will exceed 1,200 square footage of these simple trigger special
exception requests, pursuant to LDC section 530-24 B1. Access to the properties located from Tus Lane to County maintained local road, approximately 30 feet right away. The subject site is within the North Market area and within Northeast Pasco County rural area. The applicant has agreed to a voluntary condition of approval to address the live local, the lived local provisions and ensure the property is used
for agricultural residential use.
The staff's recommendations to approve the special exception
request with conditions as set forth under the recommended conditions.
All right,
thank you. Any questions from here? With this um uh type of construction that they're seeking for the CDU. Is it also modular?
Uh yeah, so it's it's just double.
It's just a single fan. Oh yeah, single family dwelling. Sorry.
So so it's gonna be Frame. Block construction. Yeah.
So I I guess I guess the biggest issue because it looks like here it also shows So sixteen hundred eighty-four square feet, which is about forty percent larger than the twelve hundred square foot maximum. Um Plus 131 square foot lanai, which is assumed to be under roof and a 53 square foot nitry. And it also shows on the plan a Additional four hundred ten square foot garage. Um, which makes the total structure twenty two hundred and seventy eight square
feet. It's almost Almost the same size as the modular home that's Modular construction that's on the property that's gonna be the primary home. So um especially with uh Block and frame construction. Uh It it just I I d I don't know how this fits the spirit of accessory dwelling unit, especially I don't even know if the existing sh house has a garage.
Detached garage. Uh good afternoon, David Engel, Planning and Economic Development Director. Those are important questions, Mr. Pondless. And I just wanted to give you some history on the legislative uh development of this initiative since we did amend the ordinance to allow ADUs. There was a very lively discussion at the Board of County Commissioners and there was different points of view. One point of view was, hey, uh ADUs should be 900 square feet. Their accessory should be larger. Then there was another point of view, which was multiples
commissioners. We shouldn't limit the size of the ADU. So The deliberation and And uh common understanding and path forward was to allow up to 1200 square feet, but to require if there's additional size of or above the 1200 square feet threshold, that they could come in for a special exception. So that's why we're here today. The uh there was no uh deliberation or discussion about the housing construction material modular versus not. And there were examples discussed at the board meeting where
you could have a twelve hundred square foot house and then have an ADU with three thousand square feet, but That didn't seem to defeat the path for But of course, like That that was the sc that was the
discussion. Just that the other discussion that's for me was about impact fee and The board made a conscious decision that if it was under nine hundred square feet Yeah, you get a rank on some of their back fees. As an accessory unit. Well when you get to this size and twelve hundred and higher They're painful and path pains. Two. E mayor. concerned about whether it's consistent with the Ted or not, but I'm just The board did not give them a financial break for
this size of unit. I Yeah.
It's your thing. Okay. It's over five meters.
If he were to simply call this a conservation of condition. Development point can increase you and a half acres and make any unit size he wanted on the lot created Just conservation conditions at all. Yeah. If we attempted to limit here to twelve hundred square feet, you could simply turn around and take that avenue. And then build a million square foot house on there. There's nothing we could have saved on it. I'm here for our discussion. It
wasn't straight to staff level approval. Well, it just makes me wonder if maybe that's the more appropriate route as opposed to calling this an ADU one. It's going to be probably superior construction and superior in amenities to the primary homets on the property. I guess that's That's my issue, it just doesn't seem like it meets the intent purpose
of accessory dwelling in it.
Nothing that stops you from moving in this house and following the other house hating you.
Except that there's a requirement code to T Excessively maybe smaller than
principally so it's so in this case it is smaller than the principle.
An eye in the garage and everything else, it's still smaller, it's still
you know.
Where is the fifth garage?
Set the garage lifting. detached, we didn't calculate that as part of the garage could be an accessory to the primary. Okay,
so that I didn't catch, so the garage is detached from
that's the s the little uh square that's in between the two. So the garage is detached. And the code is also very specific to the ADU as being livable square footage. And so the 1200 is livable square footage. That's why the finding effects separates out both the Lanai and the porch area. That's not part of the livable square footage. So it's just over 1,600 square feet of livable space with the T detached garage. They can still have the detached
garage with or without this ADU.
quite numerous detached garages in the one with limitation on the number of accessory structures on camera. Right. That's correct.
That's a livable space. Right. And the livable space of the primary structure is just over 2300. So it is is substantially
lower.
Okay, yeah, that was probably the
the the crux of my I th there was one spot where it referred to two dwelling units, but I think that might have been a type of Page forty three of the packet.
And you put
that at one point to push through movies. point, which is yes they could maybe they could do a conservation subdivision, but that would be A much more complex process than getting a special time. Don't disagree while I'm pointing out is that Works. No,
still hasn't.
I understood. I was just saying that the board there was your board intent to make it easier to do ADUs. Now whether This qu you know, meets the intent of being the EDU or you I can't say that obviously Commissioner Starkey would probably have a different opinion, but the majority of the board Basically split the baby and said If you want a larger
size NDU, you'd have to go through this process to get one.
And there may be some places where that's not appropriate.
Trying to
Okay, anybody else have comments or questions or Okay. Yeah, we could present.
Alright. Would you would you like to say something, sir? Are the applicant?
Is there anybody here to have yet?
Give me I'm now speedy when I used to be. We come.
Yeah, that's fine.
You just need your name
and your address, sir. Yes, my name is Douglas Career. Present address is one four nine zero five Cold Water. Wait. And
Tampa, Florida.
Um did you get that name?
Yeah. The Gallagher part It's from my lovely wife sitting back there. The Craig and Amanda, Craig is her youngest son. And he's actually been on us for probably at least four years. Two do something to have an ADU up. Next to them. And a lot of it, um, somewhat embarrassedly speaking has to do with my physical health. I have two non curable diseases. And my legs. Um
along with foot proposing. But as a result, it's difficult for me to get around. And like last Friday night. I fell and I can't get up. And I I was a real estate appraiser. And very very familiar. I was down, I was in Hillsborough, but I covered a lot of Pasco. So I'm so familiar with the rural uh concept. Of a Pasco has Well I had to give that up. Because I was afraid of being in a vacant
building and falling at any rate. Um, the primary reason why all of this came about Had to do with me. Because Craig and Amanda plan on being Our Caretakers. Um And they said, if you can just if you can please get next to us. We can help you. And they've got three kids and You'd have to know their kids, but they'll be at our house more than they will at theirs. You know, not has that
effect on But um Yeah. What we're asking for is merely the opportunity. Thank you very much for hearing me. to uh share with you why we're doing this and what the impact is. We are fortunate. There are We are surrounded by cow pasture. And on five acres, Craig actually leases out a small portion of the back to the neighbor because he's got a few additional head herd. So You know, and and I've gotten because of the signs
that we had to put together, I had gotten quite a few phone calls. I'd say at least eight, if not ten. um of people encouraging us and saying, please we'd like to you know I get I had one phone call. who she was not happy at all about it. And I talked to her for about 45 minutes and then later she got a hold of Craig. And the two of them worked together and by the time it was all done, she said, Okay, I understand. And that was uh You know, the
community itself is not. That's free. populated uh One of my assignments was to send out mailers. to everybody that lives within. a thousand square foot radius. Exactly. Include fifteen total neighbors. So again, we're not exactly We're down three dirt roads to get to us. And Second dirt road's a little challenging. So uh I'm not I'm not thinking that anybody's planning
on coming in there anytime too soon. Time's up. But um Anyway, that's that's why we're here and we thank you for your consideration, for your time. Thank
you very much. I appreciate that.
Yeah, the only comment I would uh make. So first off, not
against I totally understand why you guys are doing what you're doing. Why you need to build the accessory and there's no like no issue with that. So I totally understand that. The only reason I brought it up is uh I just worry about precedent when it comes to um you know in theory under this, we discussed this at nausea when we're talking about E use. Um you can have someone come in and build a a home right next to existing home that's one square foot smaller and call it an ADU and suddenly you double the density
that we have here in the county. So that's that's I'm I'd recommend it more from a regulatory standpoint, not so much your particular case. Um again. Um wish you the best of luck and Hope you guys do good. Here was that.
Yeah, I think it's the right solution for your problem and you know, I'm sure that We'll see, yeah. What's your vote, but I'm sure that you'll get it can result. Right Vers. The comment on that that each special exception is based on the facts of that particular case. So just because you prove A greater than twelve hundred square foot ADU in this class doesn't mean you have to prevent the two.
That's the correction. they go to five hundred building with some other section, right? How would easy no doubling the density on the lot?
That's what you're doing. Yeah.
The density. Well they've got a brand. Fine. Although you can get more people in a three thousand square foot ADU than you can at five hundred, but But you weren't a painful
back feature.
Okay. Uh any other comments? If not, in your motion. I lose prevalent. P C free. Okay.
Yeah, motion points in the PC. I'm sorry, I can see four yeah.
Because he's still saying that.
Yeah.
Bayonet Point.
Okay. Right.