Westlake Sweeping Streets Of Unwanted Trucks, Other Vehicles

For nearly two years, big-rig truckers in The Acreage have been fighting to be allowed to park their 18-wheelers at their homes. Now the City of Westlake is saying, don’t leave them here.

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, the Westlake City Council, meeting as the Local Planning Agency, passed regulations that prohibit the parking of 18-wheelers and similar vehicles on all public streets, alleys and rights-of-way for more than one hour in any 24-hour period.

The ordinance also includes watercraft, boat trailers, recreational vehicles (RVs), swamp buggies and buses; trucks with a gross vehicle weight in excess of 10,000 pounds, or rated over one ton, or height in excess of seven feet including any load, bed or box, or length in excess of 22 feet; truck tractor, trailer, semi-trailer or pole trailer; step-van or commercial vehicle; or construction and industrial equipment.

The ordinance also passed 5-0 on its first reading when the council subsequently held its regular meeting. The ordinance will have to be voted on again, likely at the council’s Tuesday, Oct. 1 regular meeting, before it goes into effect.

“We’re not against truckers,” Westlake Mayor JohnPaul O’Connor said Wednesday. “But we were finding that some drivers were parking their trucks on some little-used stretches of road or in rights-of-way and leaving them.”

City Manager Kenneth Cassel said they discovered that 18-wheelers were parking all weekend on parts of Persimmon Blvd. “And that’s just not Westlake,” he said.

O’Connor said he has no knowledge if the left-behind semis were spillover from The Acreage, which is a short walk from Persimmon Blvd. “[But] we just can’t allow that sort of random parking. It’s a quality-of-life issue,” he said.

O’Connor noted that the city owns no land but that he has had talks with individuals who might be willing to invest in a truck park venture on land within the city zoned for that sort of use, far away from residential areas.

“I don’t think the issue is unsolvable. I’m trying to solve it,” he said. “I think there could be an opportunity here for the county… or for a private investor. These truckers need a place in the western communities to park.”

In other business:

• The council approved the site plan for a 1.3-acre shopping center site to be known as “Westlake Palms” located within the Westlake Landings development on the west side of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road. The shopping center would be next to the recently approved Tractor Supply Co. store. The new structure will include a 10,400-square-foot building with seven tenant bays and 520 square feet of outdoor seating area.

Agent Donaldson Hearing, representing the developer, said that much of the space already has been reserved by a single business on a 10-year-lease. Hearing said he was not at liberty to name the business.

“I think this is going to be an absolutely beautiful addition to the city,” O’Connor said. “I think they have their thumb on the pulse of what we want here. The long lease shows their confidence in the community and their commitment to it.”

Even Councilman Gary Werner, who is often critical of development plans, told Hearing, “Nice project. Good job.”

• The council approved the tentative 2025 city budget of just over $10 million with an expected property tax rate of 4.70 mills.

At the second workshop of the budget season held Aug. 6, council members instructed Cassel to cut the property tax rate from the staff recommended 4.90 to 4.70 mills.

The reduction would result in a $180 savings for the average owner of a property valued at $600,000 for tax purposes, according to Cassel. The number does not include taxes from other government entities, and the amount an individual homeowner actually will pay also can be affected by increased property values.

If approved at the council’s Wednesday, Sept. 11 final budget hearing, it would mark the third year in a row that Westlake’s millage rate has been decreased.

The hearing will be held at 6 p.m. at the Westlake Adventure Park Lodge, located at 5490 Kingfisher Blvd. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

• The council congratulated Vice Mayor Greg Langowski on completing the Institute for Elected Municipal Officials run by Florida League of Cities University.
• Following up on a recent issue that caused a tightening of Westlake ordinances, O’Connor said Wednesday that two registered sex offenders were no longer in residence at a home in the community’s Cresswind development. They were not the owners of the home. “I was extremely happy to hear this,” O’Connor said.

The men were the only two such offenders registered within the Westlake city limits with the U.S. Department of Justice sex offender public web site and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement sexual offenders/predators search. However, numerous such individuals are registered in nearby residential areas.

Concern grew in Westlake when the situation became public in July, and council members quickly moved to strengthen the community’s sexual predator ordinance over the objection of individuals across Florida and from as far away as Colorado.

The change to the ordinance extended from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet the prohibition against persons listed as sexual offenders or predators living near parks, playgrounds, daycare centers or “any other place where children regularly congregate,” such as bus stops or the Westlake Adventure Park.

A municipality cannot enact an outright prohibition against registered sex offenders.

O’Connor said Wednesday it might not be “impossible” for a sexual offender to find a residence in some corner of Westlake, “but he would be very hard pressed to find a house he could [legally] move into.”