Preserve Rural Lithia

We are bringing back our weekly Zoom Meetings 🐄

Sundays 7pm

If you're tired of seeing development while houses sit on the market and you're in traffic on a 2 lane road. If you feel like the current BOCC isn't listening! Join us. 💪🏼

Tomorrow, Sunday, October 4th, we will discuss

-CR39 Strawberry Fields meeting that's coming up
-October 7th BOCC meeting - Lithia Pilot program for a transportation corridor
-Tevalo Hills
-any other communities we can assist
-election updates

We hope you will join.

Link to sign up will be in the comments. If you have previously signed up no need to sign up again.

🔊We got a fresh batch of Aileen Rodriguez For Hillsborough County Commission yard signs.. let us know if you're interested and we'll get you one for your yard!

We've been looking at the public records.

When you have **THOUSANDS**of letters emailed to BOCC from voters in opposition for development in Eastern county and they still vote YES for the development. Are they really representing the voters? It doesn't seem that way.

Time for a change!

Lithia picked as the pilot for a new corridor plan, once again an example of public servants ignoring their constituents.

On the October 7 County Commission agenda, Commissioner Boles is asking the Board to make Lithia the pilot area for a new "Transportation Investment Corridor" framework covering CR 39 and Lithia Pinecrest Road. The framework is meant for "high-growth or high-need corridors," and the proposal picks Lithia because of its "continued development." It calls for aligning private development, right-of-way, and utilities along these corridors, and for a list of road improvements that developers could build in place of paying mobility fees.

Our community has been clear: fix the infrastructure we already have and slow down the growth. This proposal starts from the assumption that more growth is coming and works out how to make it easier.

Most of Lithia is outside the Urban Service Area, and it isn't included in either of the Urban Service Area studies. Residents have also been working to complete a Lithia community plan so we have a real say in how our area develops. Designating Lithia as a growth corridor pilot before that plan is finished puts the County's vision ahead of ours.

The timing also raises questions. The Strawberry Fields project on CR 39 goes before the Zoning Hearing Master on October 19, less than two weeks after this vote. Does this mean this development is already approved in the eyes of commissioners?

What you can do:

📧 Email [email protected], reference Agenda Item F-1, October 7 meeting, and tell the Commissioners that Lithia residents don't want more housing development pushed on our Community beyond what the land is currently allowed. 1 home per 5 acres in AR land.
🎤 Speak at the meeting. Signup opens October 5, 48 hours before the meeting, and you can attend in person or virtually. We will be at the meeting on Wednesday!

Walked out to feed the horses last night and this guy was just sitting on the fence. 🦅

This is what I want to see in my backyard. Not more rooftops.

This is why we're being so loud about preserving rural Lithia. Every new subdivision out here takes habitat with it, and wildlife like this doesn't come back once the land is gone.

If we can't protect a place where our national bird still shows up, what are we doing?

Neighbors, it's time to get back to work 💪🏼

On October 19th, the Zoning Hearing Master will hear the rezoning request for the active strawberry fields on SR 39, across from Old Welcome Road.

If approved, working farmland that feeds our community gets traded for more houses in rural Lithia, while plenty of homes already sit for sale.

We need you in the room. This is a Zoning Hearing Master meeting, so you don't have to speak. We just need the community there, filling seats and showing that people are paying attention.

If you're frustrated and feel like you aren't being heard, you're not wrong. But that's not a reason to give up and make it easy for them.

Email your opposition today.
📧 [email protected]
📄 Application #26-0785
Tell them you oppose the rezoning of this parcel.

We'll be posting more updates to spread community awareness. Also Tevalo Hills will be at the ZHM in November.

Add October 19th to your calendar!

Goats are out on Lithia Pinecrest by Ace across from Pinecrest elementary.

Commissioners want $75 million for ZooTampa. It's a great institution. It's also in the City of Tampa.

Context, in order:

📍 August 28, 2026: Hillsborough County Commissioners approved $796 million toward a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium. $360 million of it pulled directly from Community Investment Tax (CIT) revenue. 5-2 vote.

📍 Also in 2026: Commissioner Wostal disclosed that $570 million of the $600 million set aside for "community projects" is already committed, leaving roughly $30 million. A new Pet Resource Center (40 years old, routinely over capacity, no A/C in most kennels) was estimated at $30-35 million before inflation. The county's own statement says a funding recommendation won't come until late 2026 or Q1 2027.

📍 Now: Commissioners are negotiating a $75 million match (of a $125 million total) for ZooTampa's expansion, a new South America realm, Africa/Asia renovations, riverfront access. Located at 1101 W. Sligh Ave, Tampa.

Meanwhile, out here in unincorporated Hillsborough:

🛣️ Lithia Pinecrest Road has carried a documented Level of Service F (v/c ratio 1.55) for over 30 years. It's still in preliminary engineering.

🚒 The county's own 2019 Stantec Fire Master Plan found 60% of rural EMS calls miss the 10-minute response goal.

🐾 Our own animal shelter can't get a funding commitment, but a zoo in the city can get commissioners' attention for $75 million.

And here's the part that should bother everyone, not just us: commissioners are praising ZooTampa's wildlife rehabilitation and conservation work while approving development after development that paves over the native habitat and wildlife corridors those same animals need to survive in the wild. You can't fund conservation messaging in one meeting and greenlight the bulldozing of the corridors that make conservation necessary in the next.

We're not against the zoo. We're against a pattern: unincorporated Hillsborough pays into the same countywide pot as everyone else, and watches county leaders find hundreds of millions for city-based marquee projects while our roads, our fire response times, and our own county-run animal shelter wait.