What the ordinance does
Ordinance 2025-25 adds a new Section 5.6 to the Groveland Community Development Code, establishing definitions and standards that allow agrarian uses across multiple zoning districts. The ordinance covers:
- Front-yard gardens as a code-permitted land use, not a variance
- Hand-tendered farming on small lots
- Urban chickens at scale below the prior 5-acre minimum (subject to standards on count, fencing, coop, sanitation, and complaint-based enforcement)
- Rain harvesting and rooftop aquaponics as standard residential elements
- Local food systems and sustainable land practices consistent with the Comprehensive Plan
- Application across the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern — explicitly compatible with the environmental layer
Apiaries (beekeeping) were removed prior to adoption due to state preemption.
How the corpus reads it
The Agrarian Code is the first adopted element of Groveland's multi-year Community Development Code V5 rewrite. The ordinance arc spans the dataset:
- January 2024 — first presentation by Planning Manager DeWayne Jones
- 2024-2025 — workshopped, refined, and supplemented with the Local Farmer Forum (March 4, 2025)
- March 2025 — line-by-line debate (chickens, ducks, quail, front-yard gardens, rain harvesting barrels, composting, green roofs)
- October 2, 2025 — adopted 5-0 by the Planning & Zoning Board, apiaries removed
- April 2, 2026 — referenced as Groveland's "signature regulatory achievement" the same meeting Anita Geraci-Carver announced her departure
Why the entity matters for the corpus
The Agrarian Code is the operational substrate of Groveland's "Eco-Agrarian Lifestyle" identity — the regulatory architecture that distinguishes Groveland from every other corridor city. It is also the cardinal example of a post-line code under the Grandfather Window: adopted October 2025, fourteen months after SB 180's August 2024 retroactive line. §28 declares null and void ab initio any more restrictive or burdensome measure a covered local government adopts before October 1, 2027, and any resident or business owner may sue — so the ordinance carries citizen-plaintiff exposure through the window rather than until it. October 2027 is the date covered cities may adopt again; after §28 expires June 30, 2028, s. 252.422 carries the same prohibitions permanently, for one year after every hurricane landfall within 100 miles. The same applies to every other element of CDC V5 still being drafted. The bench writing the code is thinner than it has ever been; Anita Geraci-Carver — the legal voice tracking SB 180 across the dataset — departed April 2, 2026, mid-EAR-amendment cycle.
The Congress for New Urbanism has recognized Groveland's form-based work as the "new frontier for New Urbanism in Central Florida." The ordinance is the first piece of that recognition that has actually shipped as code.