Pasco County is considering updates to its landscaping code — and, while doing so, is contemplating how to deal with electric charging stations for cars and for carports within parking lots that have solar panels on top.
David Goldstein, chief assistant county attorney, asked county planners and the Pasco County Planning Commission to consider including the electric charging stations and solar-paneled carports, as the county amends its code.
He made the suggestion during the planning board’s April 7 meeting.
The attorney said he’d been out West recently, where he saw that in many parking lots, “they have these, what I’ll call solar car ports.”
They provide shade for the cars, while also generating solar energy for businesses, Goldstein said.
“As I saw them, I was thinking: ‘Is that even possible to do in Pasco and still comply with our landscape ordinance?” Goldstein said.
“What I noticed was where these solar panels were, the footers that were holding them up were basically where we would normally have these landscaped islands,” he added.
Patrick Dutter, a senior planner for the county, told Goldstein that the code amendments didn’t address those particulars.
But Dutter added: “The main goal of those trees (required in the landscape code) 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, staff would probably be OK with approving an alternative standard.”
Goldstein, however, suggested adding the solar carports to the list of exceptions included in the proposed code.
“I’d just hate to see someone have to go through an alternative standards process for something that we probably would encourage, because it’s providing shade, it’s providing solar energy. Why not write it into the code, as opposed to saying, ‘You’ve got to go through an alternative standards process?’” Goldstein said.
He continued: “If it is providing just as much shade as the landscaping and it’s encouraging solar, I would think we want to encourage that.”
Brad Tippin, the county’s development review manager, responded: “I think that is something we could probably add to that list of exceptions, with a caveat that the county sees to what’s being proposed, to see if it actually meets that.
“We may also want to address things like electric charging stations,” Tippin said.
Goldstein responded: “That was going to be my next question.
“A logical place to retrofit putting in an electric charging station is in the landscape islands, and I wouldn’t want us to preclude those,” Goldstein said.
“I think there should be some allowance for that,” the attorney said, providing the planning board approved that direction, which it did, later in the meeting.
Tippin said county staff will draft language to address those issues, before bringing the proposed landscaping update to the Pasco County Commission for a vote.
Goldstein said it makes sense to include the changes in the code update.
“We don’t amend the landscape code very often,” he said.
“This is probably the first time in 15 or 20 years. I just don’t want to have to wait another 15 or 20 years to amend the code, and allow for electric charging stations and solar facilities.
“We should anticipate the future that these things are probably coming, and we shouldn’t have our code preclude them,” he said.
Published April 20, 2022
