At Tuesday, January 11th’s Board of County Commissioner’s meeting, Pasco Commissioner Ron Oakley decided with the encouragement of Commissioner Mike Moore to disband his advisory committee for the rural area.
Pasco County was supposed to have identified commercial guidelines for the Northeast Pasco Rural Protected Area in 2006. The Commissioners have pushed that deadline to 2008 and then 2016, leaving no guidelines in place. As development has crept up the 1-75 corridor, residents have been asking to establish those guidelines for years.
Things erupted at the recent Planning Commission Meeting when a proposed RV park was on the agenda for zoning changes and a new subarea to be designated in the Pasco County Comprehensive Plan. The subarea’s regulations are being written by Barbara Wilhite, a private attorney representing the RV park’s developer.
NERAC Chair, Lisa Moretti, stated clearly she was asking the Commission to continue its decision for 60 days so that the committee could address the RV park and bring forth recommendations since the park is located squarely in the rural area and has a commercial component to it. Community members and Ms. Moretti pointed out that Mr. Oakley had prevented discussion about the RV park when it was raised by residents during the public comment section of the NERAC meetings.
Over 1200 residents in this low-density area of the county have protested the RV park.
The Tampa Bay Times has now revealed that Mr. Oakley and his family have a vested interest in this property since Oakley’s sister, Annie Oakley Maggard, who is married to Randy Maggard’s brother sold the land to VCare Consultants.
The Northeast Rural area is a protected market area in the Pasco County Comprehensive Plan. It is specifically called out as an area to be developed carefully to preserve its agricultural and rural lifestyle. Its rural scenic roads are also specifically called out to be preserved as low volume, residential/neighborhood roadways.
You can see more about the area and the proposed RV “resort” at https://nostjoervpark.com . The developer anticipates 1 full-time caretaker, 550 RV spaces, a bar and grill poolside, a lodge, two swimming pools, a splash pad, a wastewater treatment plant, and new turn lanes on the two-lane Lake Iola Road.
“It’s a lovely plan,” said No St. Joe RV Park spokesperson Kelly Smith, “it just doesn’t belong there. It wasn’t zoned for it, it’s in the middle of the rural area, and it’s just the worst possible location for such a project. More importantly, the citizen’s advisory group should have been allowed to come back with recommendations about it.”
“I think NERAC and the Planning Office staff have done a great job of working through the deeper and frankly complicated issues of how the protected area is defined in the long-range plan and how it should be preserved – the area is specifically called out in the plan for a reason. I’m sorry Mr. Oakley wasn’t happy with the compromises the committee came to, but I don’t think we were being “negative.” I’m saddened to see him disparage the group’s work,” said Moretti.
Nancy Hazelwood, who is also a NERAC member and helped develop the Northeast Rural Plan said, “We worked hard years ago to create this protected area. I’m sorry to see Mr. Oakley disband the group because he thought we had not given him any recommendations about the rural area and commercial density — we thought we had and were in the process of making them more formal for him. Frankly, I don’t see what this RV park has to offer the rural area and I don’t see that the rural area has anything to offer the RV park – it’s a nice inclusive, gated project. We residents won’t have access and RVers will have no reason to leave it. In fact, the developer is touting that it will bring tourism to Wesley Chapel. How does that do anything positive for the rural area communities?”
The Tampa Bay Times article can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3nxKEnY. The Commission Meeting regarding the disbanding of the committee can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3KmQrq8
Media Contact: Kelly Smith 813-716-8454