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Need new sign rules now, say proponents
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer WESLEY CHAPEL -- Backhoes claw soil at a half-completed Publix supermarket at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and State Road 56. A 35-acre commercial parcel across the street will soon go under contract for some big-box retailers and possibly another grocery store. Down the road, a SuperTarget teems with cars after opening in March, its red and white sign looming atop a pole on Bruce B. Downs. The three projects slipped in before the county could overhaul what most everyone agrees are overly lax rules governing signs. A new-and-improved sign ordinance promised last year has been postponed, to the chagrin of residents, mostly in Wesley Chapel, who fear the replication of the eyesores that afflict U.S. 19. As the county tinkers, the clock ticks. In addition to Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, developers are proposing dozens more stores along such roads as State Roads 54 and 56. "There's just so much going on in this area. The longer it takes to get the ordinance passed, the longer the developers have to play by the old rules," said Dennis Smith, a Meadow Pointe resident who has urged tougher sign standards. "That's going to lead to more visual clutter." The ordinance's main author, county planner Rick Lambert, quit his county job this month, slamming the county's growth management practices in the process. The county's original schedule had the ordinance going before the county commissioners as early as this spring. No longer. Even though Lambert, at his departure, had completed an estimated 95 percent of the ordinance, the job hangs in limbo. "We're thinking whether to redo the draft of the ordinance," Assistant County Administrator Bipin Parikh said Tuesday. "Nobody has had a chance to review what Rick has done." The new sign rules aim to reduce the number, size, intrusiveness and ugliness of business signs. Pasco's inspiration is the New Tampa section of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, where low-slung monument signs, rather than skyscraping pole signs, are the rule. County Commissioner Pat Mulieri, whose district takes in Wesley Chapel, wants to know what's causing the delays: When she asked for a status report on the ordinance in February, she was told "a few more weeks." The longer the sign ordinance languishes, the longer developers can erect pole signs along highways such as Bruce B. Downs, Mulieri said. She pointed to the nine parcels awaiting tenants beside the SuperTarget in Wesley Chapel. "The whole supposition is to get this sign ordinance in so we don't look like Pasco has looked for years with all these large signs," she said. Speaking for county administrators, Parikh suggested it was better to spend more time writing a solid sign ordinance than to rush a flawed ordinance to completion. Mulieri wasn't so sure. In the hopes of speeding things along, she plans to request a copy of the draft ordinance at tonight's meeting in New Port Richey that starts at 6:30 p.m. "Why not take the draft that's like New Tampa's and put it through?" she said. "As with most ordinances, we can always tweak it later."
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From today's Pasco Times Editorial Letters |
