When someone wants to make a zoning or land use change in Pasco County, the applicant must advertise the request in a newspaper, meet posting requirements and hold a neighborhood meeting.
Changes are expected in 2024 that will affect those procedures.
“Last year, on Jan. 1, the law changed where public notification requirements to the newspapers don’t have to be made. We can put them on our website. We have been working on that,” Nectarios Pittos, director of planning and development told the Pasco County Commission during its Dec. 5 meeting.
“We’re pretty close on that front,” Pittos said.
However, that raised the issue of how the county wants to proceed with property posting requirements and the signs used to do that, he said.
“We were actually looking at the entirety of our public advertisement process and system, at the moment,” Pittos said. “As soon as we get the public notifications situated — whether we want to put these on our website versus the newspapers, then we’re going to also address what kinds of signs we do want to have and how to let the applicants participate in that process.”
Pasco County Commissioner Jack Mariano told Pittos: “When we talked, you told me that you really liked the Hillsborough County signs, I believe. They were larger.”
Pittos responded: “They had some good examples.”
Mariano added: “I don’t know why we didn’t just incorporate that. They were larger signs, very visible signs.”
He also told Pittos: “We shouldn’t allow cross-outs and write-overs. Sometimes you’ll see something crossed out and written in beside it.”
Mariano also wants the county to give clear direction on where signs are to be posted.
In the Saddlebrook rezoning case, one of the most controversial in 2023, Mariano said “when they first put the signs out, they were like in the driveway coming in.
“You’d have to stop, walk 200 yards, 300 yards to go read what that sign said.
“They changed it later, but you’ve got to make sure they’re in a good location.”
Pittos said ”the new signs that we’ve been working on would not include handwriting — handwritten signs. They would actually be printed signs. That’s the idea.
“They’d be large enough that you could see traveling the roadway (at) at least 35 mph,” Pittos added.
Denise Hernandez, the county’s zoning administrator, told the board that a proposed change to the land development code addresses when neighborhood meetings are conducted.
Under the proposed requirement, applicants must wait until their application has been cleared for content before holding its neighborhood meeting, she said.
In the past, an applicant has held a neighborhood after the application was filed but neighbors did not have a true picture of the proposed development.
Mariano and Commission Chairman Ron Oakley want the county to go even farther, to ensure that the neighborhood meetings are meaningful.
They want to create a mechanism for neighbors to submit their impressions of the neighborhood meeting, so that the county board isn’t simply relying on the applicant’s information from the meeting.
Brad Tippin, the county’s development review manager, told the board: “All of the meetings are noticed. We can include a line in that notice encouraging any attendees to provide the county with any written feedback that they would, regarding the meeting.”
Published December 27, 2023
