The Hillsborough County Commission wrongly turned down zoning for a residential material abuse center in a Carrollwood neighborhood, a circuit courtroom choose has ruled.
The March 28 final decision from Hillsborough Circuit Decide Mark Wolfe means Northdale developer Stephen J. Dibbs, a longtime critic of the county’s land-use polices, can carry on with options to switch a solitary-family members property on Hoedt Road into a 25-mattress treatment method facility.
Dibbs sued to overturn commissioners, who voted 4-2 to reject the rezoning ask for very last year. Prior to the vote, Commissioner Ken Hagan claimed the zoning modify would allow industrial exercise to intrude into a residential neighborhood.
The county’s development expert services staff, Scheduling Fee and land-use listening to officer all reported the proposed zoning change was permissible under the county’s codes and in depth approach.
Neighbors, on the other hand, objected and sent the county 62 letters and a 268-signature petition in opposition. They cited the potential for reduced home values, extra traffic and security worries stemming from achievable legal activity at a drug rehabilitation middle.
“We have been doing work hard for yrs to preserve our neighborhoods safe and sound and develop our reputations as household-pleasant. This proposal put our neighborhoods’ safe and sound track record at chance,” claimed Jeff Cain, head of the Neighborhood View for Hampton Lakes.
Numerous residents also appeared at the May possibly 10, 2022, fee hearing wearing pink clothing to display their opposition. They identified a sympathetic audience.
“I stand with the citizens,” Hagan stated in shifting to deny Dibbs’ request in the course of that listening to.
Commissioner Pat Kemp and then-commissioners Stacy White and Mariella Smith voted with him.
Wolfe, nevertheless, famous that prior courtroom rulings have explained “that denying proposed improvement based on a ‘popularity poll of the neighborhood’ is impermissible.”
Neither citizens nor commissioners cited factual details to again up the statements of decreased property values and other assertions.
Wolfe’s ruling quashed the commission’s determination and granted the rezoning “because the county fee departed from the necessary prerequisites of regulation, and the report consists of no qualified, sizeable proof for the willpower that denial of the proposed rezoning advances a respectable general public function,”
Kemp stated it was inappropriate to remark on Wolfe’s ruling considering that the fee served in a quasi-judicial purpose when it voted on the zoning request. Hagan did not reply to messages seeking remark.
Dibbs, in a textual content information to the Tampa Bay Moments, claimed, “a rehab center is a good for the local community and no threat to the neighborhoods.”
Dibbs has butted heads with the county several moments previously. He unsuccessfully sued in federal court to check out to void the neighborhood program for rural Keystone/Odessa and also led the cost to attempt to overturn the county’s wetlands protections ruled by the Hillsborough Environmental Defense Commission.