PDC Voting Record: Stacey Worthington

Good morning! Hope you all are having a wonderful week so far.

For those not aware, I did candidate interviews yesterday for Holli Herndon and Diana Finegan. The others, Stacey Worthington, Rebecca Bays and Jennifer Grogan, were invited to participate but either declined (Worthington and Grogan) or did not respond (Bays). I did a video for them of the questions I would have asked, so you will be able to see all of that.

The videos will come out tomorrow morning.

Today, we are going to jump into Worthington's time on the PDC. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the votes that Bays and Finegan have taken while on the board. These were votes for things like housing projects and largely ignored the things like Land Development Code amendments and Interchange Management Areas. I was looking at growth to see what their approval rating was.

Bays approved 71.93% of the projects she heard. Finegan approved 64.91%.

Since Worthington also made public votes on projects as a member of the PDC, I wanted to see what her approval rate was. I spent the July 4th weekend going through every single PDC meeting agenda and every single PDC minutes. This took roughly 20 hours of work to get it all put together.

I loaded these into Chatgpt to build a data base of votes. If the minutes were not included for whatever reason, I went to the Youtube video for that meeting and manually recorded the votes. As the results populated, I verified that they were accurate, as AI tends to make mistakes.

For example, if a motion was made to deny a project and Worthington voted "Yes" to approve the denial, Chatgpt recorded that as a "Yes" vote for approval of the project. I had to "train" it to find the actual motion and not just the "Yes"/"No" words.

So I was "babysitting" it and not just blindly feeding it information and having it give me results. Now I have a database that I can ask questions to and get answers. That is how you utilize AI. It has to be "trained".

In any case, let's take a look at the numbers.

During her time on the PDC, she sat and heard 95 applications that were quasi-judicial. These are development/rezoning projects and not things like variances, conditional use applications, etc.

Of the 95 projects, she voted to approve 73 of them. This equates to a 76.8% approval rating. She voted to deny 22 of them, for a 23.2% denial rate.

As a whole, the PDC voted to approve 73.7% of those projects.

She voted 4 times to approve a project that the PDC ultimately denied.

One of those votes was for the Ozello Glampground. Another was a project for Grow-Land, LLC to rezone property to commercial... which is owned by State Representative JJ Grow (he was not in office at that time).

She made 6 votes of approval where she was the swing vote. Had she voted "No", the PDC would have recommended denial vs approval.

One of these votes was for Hampton Hills (Citrus Hills development) to allow a higher density on MDR land. Another was to expand zoning to allow a boat and trailer business. Two votes were for RV parks. One was for three story mini-storage units in front of Target. The last was to rezone from RUR to RURMH to allow for a mobile home to be built.

Of the "contentious" projects in Citrus County that many are not a fan of...

• Tuscany Ranch - Approved Development of Regional Impact master plan changes
• Target Shopping Center
• Crystal Ridge (Rock Crusher development by James Dicks)
• Amber Ridge (housing development/apartments next to Target by James Dicks)
• Pine Ridge Golf Course (convert golf course to housing by James Dicks)
• Cardinal Farms (600+ homes on Cardinal)
• The Crossings (housing development by Lecanto High School by James Dicks)

A note about the Target project. They came to the board asking for deviations to the LDC parking requirements as well as Impervious Surface Ratios. They asked for 80% ISR vs 70% which is allowed by right without approval. This means if there are 10 acres of property in a project, 7 acres can be covered in an impervious surface (concrete). With 80%, 8 acres can be covered.

Why does this matter? Did you see the flooding on 486 last week after a hard rain? This is due in part to the amount of concrete at that intersection and no where for the water to go in a heavy rain.

Some other things she voted to approve throughout her term on the PDC include many waterfront/wetland setback variances. These are instances of people wanting to build closer to the water than what the Land Development Code allowed. She also supported the reduction of the setback from 50ft to 35ft that was ultimately approved by the board.

She also supported the Land Development Code changes that allow developers to include drainage retention areas and buffers as open space on their projects. The LDC requires developers to have open space in their projects. Prior to 2022 changes, drainage areas and buffers were not allowed to be included as open space in these calculations. So developers had to do open space PLUS these areas for their projects. That reduces how many homes can be built on their parcels.

The change now allows them to include those areas as open space for their calculations. This allows more homes to be built as they do not need as much area to be cleared space for drainage/buffers/open space.

When I asked her what we can expect from Commissioner Worthington vs PDC member Worthington, she told me it could be different. As commissioner she said she has the ability to make changes to the LDC, Comp Plan, etc... She can also negotiate with developers on their projects and seek to get more concessions and things like that... that she was not able to do as a PDC member.

While that may be true to an extent... PDC members routinely added conditions for approval... as a commissioner she has to take the application and consider it under the current LDC and comp plan. She cannot change those things on the fly. Those are also the requirements of being a member of the PDC.

Not sure how she can say she would view things in a different lens when they are supposed to be using the same lens. But she does have a point about negotiations and the ability to do that upon final approval that she wields as a BOCC member.

As we know, the BOCC often goes against the PDC recommendations. Maybe she does the same and votes in a completely different manner on the BOCC than she did on the PDC.