It sort of felt like something out of a Hollywood movie: A fresh, new face arrives on the scene and quickly captures the imagination of the public, only to have the government pull the rug out from under them and their many โfans.โ
But, this was no movie and, thankfully, the rug in this case has seemingly been neatly replaced and the young โstarletโ and her supporting cast are back to doing what they do best โ keeping people informed about new development projects throughout Pasco County.
Wait, what?
Yes, itโs true. The fresh face in this case is Kelly Gilroy of the super-popular Pasco County Development & Growth Updates (PCGDU) Facebook page (which I discussed in last issueโs page 3 editorial, too) โ who admits she feared just this type of retribution from either the county government, developers or both โ and the โvillainsโ at least appear to be one unnamed member of the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BOC) and Pasco County Planning Commission member and civil engineer Jon Moody, who at the Planning Commissionโs meeting on Sept. 6 said, โYou shouldnโt believe everything you read on Facebook. Ms. Gilroy spreads false information.โ
Moody was referring to a post Kelly had made on Sept. 3, where she said that a land owner whose property is located inside the Northeast Pasco Rural Protection Overlay District was seeking to rezone their property from agricultural to high-density apartments and 1.5 million sq. ft. of warehouse and commercial space and was attempting to remove said property from the Protection District. Moody said that Kellyโs assertion was false. Whether it was true or not, thatโs a discussion for another day, but it appears to be what set off a chain reaction of craziness. Or was it?
Less than a week later, on Sept. 12, Kelly sent me a Facebook message (that she also posted on the PCGDU Facebook page) that said, โPasco County has taken the extraordinary step of blocking public access on their Accela Citizens Portal (to) all pre-application developer site plans future and past because of the info I post in my group. Despite being public records, they literally paid their software vendor (Accela) to remove the search function from the public-facing website, apparently at the request of a county commissioner. Now, to get the same info, they (Pasco) require an โOpen Recordsโ request (to the countyโs staff), which they delay responding to and charge fees to retrieve.โ
Were the two events โ Moodyโs โcall outโ of Kelly and the removal from the public access of all pre-app development information โ related? And, which of the five county commissioners made the request? Is it a violation of state law to allow electronic access to public records and then take it away, while still allowing governmental officials and developers to continue to have access to that info?
Consider this: Chapter 119.01 of the Florida Statutes (the General State Policy on Public Records), Subsections (e) and (f) clearly state that:
โ(e) Providing access to public records by remote electronic means is an additional method of access that agencies should strive to provide to the extent feasible. If an agency provides access to public records by remote electronic means, such access should be provided in the most cost-effective and efficient manner available to the agency providing the information.
โ(f) Each agency that maintains a public record in an electronic recordkeeping system shall provide to any person, pursuant to this chapter, a copy of any public record in that system which is not exempted by law from public disclosure.โ
And, after I had given Kelly those mad props for helping us lock onto the updates on her page that affect Wesley Chapel, and the fact that our editorial researcher and correspondent Joel Provenzano admits that the countyโs Accela site was where he was getting so much of the background info for his stories, I vowed to help Kelly get to the bottom of this unfortunate situation.
So, while she talked about possible lawsuits and injunctions to restore the access, I started calling county commissioners to find out if they knew which commissioner initiated the removal of the publicโs access to Accela, and why this seemingly drastic step had been taken by the county. More than one of the commissioners I spoke with said that no only did they not know about which of them initiated it, they werenโt happy that they werenโt consulted or asked to vote on such a proposal before the public access was taken away.
To continue my earlier analogy, before I got very far into my investigation into the โwhodunit,โ in stepped Dist. 5 Comm. Jack Mariano, who publicly stated that the publicโs access to Accela needed to be reinstated โas quickly as possibleโ and his legislative assistant Sonya Walling put that demand in writing:
โComm. Mariano has requested staff to reopen the access to Pre-Application items on the Accela portal as soon as possible. Please reach out again if the PREAPPS are not available by Monday (Sept. 23).โ
Around the same day that email was made available, an unnamed admin on the PCDGU page said, โWe sincerely thank everyone who contacted their commissioners about this. Hopefully, we can all move forward. We also learned that the county may repeal or waive the requirement for developers to submit a pre-application proposal altogether at some point in the future in an effort to streamline the application process [since, according to one commissioner, not all Florida counties require it and the process takes up a lot of staff time] and instead only accept site proposals the developers intend on actually moving through the permitting/zoning process.
โRegardless, this groupโs primary purpose will remain the sharing of raw information about proposed development, zoning and growth in Pasco.
โIf this is true and access is restored, we have no animus towards the county and will move on and try to keep the group non-partisan and non-political. Thank you.โ
Fade to black
โAnd cut and print it!โ