What's pending
A condition-triggered watch item — there is no specific date. Resolution arrives when:
- Groveland's Planning & Zoning Board agendizes CDC V5 for substantive vote, OR
- The City Council adopts CDC V5 (or a substantive subset), OR
- Groveland materially deprioritizes the code update (e.g., the city pivots to incremental amendments rather than a code rewrite)
The constraint stack
CDC V5 is structurally blocked by three layered constraints:
- SB 180 — the statute prohibiting "more restrictive or burdensome" land-development code changes, retroactive to August 1, 2024. Its prohibition runs to October 1, 2027; Ch. 2025-190 §28 expires June 30, 2028. The June 2026 date named earlier in this watch belonged to SB 840, the fix bill that died in House subcommittee on March 13, 2026 — its failure extended the freeze rather than ending it
- Hurricane state of emergency — the layered freeze on comprehensive plan amendments, on top of SB 180; persists as long as the SOE is active
- Institutional capacity — three "interim" titles (City Manager, Community & Economic Development Director, Senior Planner support thinning) plus the outgoing City Attorney with no announced successor (see groveland-new-city-attorney)
Each constraint must lift (or the code must navigate around it) before adoption is operationally possible.
What's at stake
CDC V5 carries:
- The Village Core / Village Center / Village Edge tri-zone framework
- The "Eco-Agrarian Lifestyle" zoning recognition (front-yard gardens, hand-tendered farms, rain harvesting, rooftop aquaponics)
- Form-based regulations governing building placement, street design, pedestrian orientation
- The CNU-recognized "new frontier for New Urbanism in Central Florida" architecture
Without adoption, Groveland's defensive regulatory posture is non-binding. With adoption, the city's identity bet converts to enforceable code — and the gap between brand and build-out narrows.
Resolution criteria
This watch item resolves on the first of:
- Groveland Planning & Zoning Board substantive vote on CDC V5
- City Council adoption (or rejection) vote
- Material deprioritization signal (e.g., a post-sunset window passes without the code reaching a vote)
The outcome assessment captures:
- Whether adoption occurred and when, relative to October 1, 2027 — adoption before that date is void ab initio under §28(1), so an early vote is exposure rather than protection
- The successor City Attorney's role in shaping the final code
- Which Village zones pass first; whether the eco-agrarian recognitions hold or are stripped
- The first development application processed under the new code