Author: Gary Nager

Even though the county attorney’s office told Pasco County’s Board of County Commissioners (BCC) on May 6 that there was nothing they could do about Metro Development Group’s plan to put the only entrance to a new townhome community —  located in the Epperson North Community Development District (CDD), through a quiet Epperson II CDD community along Abby Brooks Cir. (ABC) — the residents who live on ABC have been encouraged by the possibility that a possible solution appears to be on the horizon.

As of today, the efforts of ABC residents Candice and Mark Alfieri, Danielle Polovich, Alexandra Lewis, Erin Totaro, the Epperson II CDD Board and many of the 120 total affected families on ABC and Lily Arbor Way — who met twice the week before the May 6 BCC meeting to put together a strategy to protect their quiet neighborhood full of children — seem to have been fruitful, as a Metro spokesperson told the Neighborhood News that the details of an agreement for a possible second entrance to the JK2 townhome community off Elam Rd. is in the works, but is not yet finalized, and released only the following statement:

“Metro has heard the concerns raised by residents regarding access for the Epperson North townhome community, and we want to assure you we are working with local officials to devise the best possible plan for everyone involved. We ask for your patience as we navigate a solution. Metro prioritizes resident safety and neighborhood connectivity. We’re committed to thoughtful planning and collaboration to ensure the long-term success of the Epperson community.”

The current plan — which was approved administratively by the county staff using the State of Florida’s new Land Use Equivalency Matrix, without a BCC vote — has Elam Rd. as an emergency-only entrance to the townhome development. 

In other words, the townhome site, which was originally donated to the Pasco County School District for an elementary school, did not need a BCC vote to be rezoned for JK2’s 186 planned townhomes after the School District gave the site back to Metro and said it didn’t plan to build a school on it.

County attorney Jeffrey Steinsnyder told the commissioners on May 6 that there was nothing they could do to change the development plan, but commissioners Jack Mariano, Kathryn Starkey and Lisa Yeager all said that they supported the efforts of the two dozen ABC residents who spoke or planned to speak at that meeting. 

Representatives of the ABC group then met with Pasco Planning Dept. director David Engel and Development Services Dept. director David Allen while the May 6 BCC meeting was still taking place to see if, in reality, anything could be done to keep ABC from being the townhome community’s only (or main) entrance.

A week or so later, even though the future townhome residents currently are still planned to also have access through ABC, the main entrance to the JK2 community could now be shifted to Elam Rd., which is much more capable than ABC of handling the additional (estimated) 1,000 or more trips per day the 186 townhomes are expected to generate. 

Look for another online update as soon as any agreement is finalized, as well as a fully updated story in the June 10 edition of Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News.

Pasco Seeking Park Site In Connected City; Plus, Epperson II Townhome Concerns 

Although the meeting happened a little more than a month ago as you’re receiving this issue, there were two important new pieces of information that came out of the presentations about the 7,800-acre “Connected City” (CC) development made to the Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BCC) by Metro Development Group principal Kartik Goyani and the county staff on Apr. 9. 

The first had to do with the number of single-family entitlements still available in CC. William Vermillion of Pasco’s Planning & Economic Growth department, who oversees MPUDs in Pasco, said that a recent study by the county found that there are still 44% of the single-family detached home entitlements left in CC. 

“Even though you were told a couple of years ago that there were no more single-family (SF) entitlements left,” Vermillion said, “there actually are still about 4,400 remaining [of the 10,583 SF homes originally approved for CC]. We also have about 50% of the multi-family, which includes townhomes and garden-style homes for the higher density areas. We also still have roughly 37% of our commercial left and 75% of the office. And, we have roughly 26% of the land remaining.” 

Dist. 2 Comm. Seth Weightman told me after that meeting that although he was shocked the staff had been giving the commissioners the wrong figure for so long, he didn’t believe the “mistake was intentional on anyone’s part. We’ve had a lot of turnover in our staff.” 

But, had Comm. Weightman known there were still SF entitlements available, would he still have voted to allow other developers within CC to convert their plans from SF to multi-family (MF)? 

“No, I would not have voted to convert them [to MF] had I known the correct figures,” he said, adding that he remembered that one of the conversions he reluctantly voted for, “felt like chewing on a mouthful of sandspurs.” 

The Bigger Issue: Parks 

As for CC’s current Park Service Areas, Vermillion said on Apr. 9 that if you combine “all of the parks in [CC], there are 115 acres of neighborhood parks already built, not inclusive of the planned VOPH (the adjacent Villages of Pasadena Hills development) Superpark or the Wesley Chapel District Park” (neither of which are in CC). 

But, Weightman noted that the 240-acre (previously reported as 300-acre) VOPH Superpark, “isn’t going to be as ‘super’ as we anticipated. We’re going to fall short on a few areas of uses, and, with the age of the people moving to the area growing younger, I really feel we need to revisit the diverting of [CC] funds to the VOPH Superpark.” 

He added, “With the [WC] District Park already at capacity, we need to find a way to have a similar style park within [CC] and whether we reallocate funds from the shortfall that the Superpark is going to have, or we restructure the way that funding mechanism works, I think it needs to be done because [CC] is here today. The youth and their parents are demanding that we have field space now for a variety of sports. The people are here now, so the 40 acres we have in the site we [Pasco] already owns [in CC]…that footprint needs to be doubled and we need to figure out the funding between VOPH and [CC] because something needs to happen sooner than later in the [CC} corridor.” 

Pasco Parks Dept. director Keith Wiley then responded that Comm. Weightman was correct. 

“And, the question is,” Wiley said, “Where should we locate the other park facilities in [CC]? We’d have to ‘swap’ projects in order to have a district park, since a community park doesn’t really get it done. We’d have to decide which of the 21 capital projects identified need to be removed.” 

Board chair & Dist. 3 Comm. Kathryn Starkey said she would like Wiley to look into using the site Pasco owns near the future CC Town Center Hub, either for a land swap or to build a District Park on property that had originally been slated for a utilities maintenance area. 

Wiley added, however, that the county’s Master Parks Plan was done more than a decade ago and could be updated, “rather quickly” to see if there are locations within CC that could accommodate a District Park. At our press time, we had not heard if that update had been completed. 

Dist. 1 Comm. Ron Oakley, whose district includes CC, cautioned, however, that the entire county needs more ball fields, not just the [CC], “and we can’t build more parks without having the money to maintain them.” 

Epperson Ranch II CDD Issues 

On May 1, I attended a meeting of the Epperson Ranch II Community Development District (CDD) Board of Supervisors, which is, “the only CDD in Epperson that has no parks and no amenities whatsoever,” said CDD Board chairman Joseph Murphy (as well as several of the 50 or so Epperson II residents in attendance during the three-hour meeting). 

“And the site in Epperson II that previously was designated as a school site has been rezoned for 186 townhomes and the one entrance and exit for that townhome community is now Abby Brooks Circle (see map), which is a quiet, residential neighborhood that can’t handle the 400 additional vehicles per day from those townhomes. The entrance to that townhome community should be off Elam Rd., which is already a main road through Epperson, and which was designated as the entrance to the school site. But, when the property was converted to townhomes, the Board of County Commissioners agreed to change that to only allow emergency vehicles to access the townhome community using Elam Rd.” 

The Epperson II residents who spoke at that CDD meeting all voiced their displeasure, concern and fear for the safety of their children if the townhome community was able to proceed with the plan to use Abby Brooks Cir. as its only ingress and egress point. Although the next BCC meeting was on May 6, two days after we went to press with this issue, the residents shared with me a resolution drafted by the CDD’s new lawyer, Jere Earlywine of Kutak Rock, which was sent to every commissioner on May 2, asking that the BCC reconsider its decision to not allow regular vehicular access to Elam Rd. and to commission a new traffic study — since the previous study was conducted in 2015, when the townhome site was still a school site. 

The CDD resolution says, “…In order to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the [Epperson II] District and its residents, guests, and constituents, the Board hereby declares its objection to the proposed change of roadway configuration for the Former School Parcel, specifically as it relates to authorizing a single point of ingress and egress to and from the Former School Parcel, and without a primary access from the Former School Parcel to and from Elam Road. The Board hereby directs District Staff to transmit this Resolution to Pasco County, Florida, and respectfully requests that Pasco County take all appropriate action to rectify the improper change of roadway configuration for the Former School Parcel, to conduct and/ or re-conduct a traffic study in order to determine the impact of the anticipated traffic on the existing roadways and residents of Epperson Ranch II CDD, and to modify and/or revoke any development approvals related thereto.” 

The only Epperson II CDD supervisor to vote against drafting and sending the resolution to the BCC was Mike Lawson, who also is the only CDD supervisor who works for Metro. Lawson is the director of operations for the CC developer. 

The BCC didn’t have anything about Epperson II on its May 6 agenda, so no action could be taken, but the residents of Epperson II, particularly those who live on Abby Brook Cir., were planning to show up at that meeting in force to again express their concern, this time to the county commissioners. 

We’ll keep you posted.