8-12-25 Special Meeting @ 9:30 a.m. - Aug 12, 2025

call the special meeting of august 12th at 9 30 to order uh the agenda is um comprehensive plan valuation and update workshop before we get started our chair is not going to be here today so then ask to chair the meeting uh and with that i will entertain a motion to adopt the agenda second motion a second to adopt the agenda any discussion any public discussion commissioner book thank you for being here nice to see you um and all of you okay glad you're here i'll bring it back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay mr hayes you are uh at the head of the table today so you are recognized good morning uh thank you mr chair um we're going to have ben chumley is going to go through a presentation on the evaluation and appraisal process and this is our first of several workshops that we have planned for you and today it's about the future land use element and uh land development trends exciting stuff i see all the commissioners like beaming with excitement about talking about the comprehensive plan which it is our business plan for the community so mr chumley good morning you recognized good morning um as mr hayes said this is the first of several workshops that you're going to be having about the comprehensive plan evaluation and update uh just a reminder by statute this is a process that all local governments are required to go through every seven years of evaluating and updating the comprehensive plan to uh to to be consistent with any updates and statute as well as to address any local issues of concern um so these workshops are intended as a forum to review uh any kinds of issues related to the comprehensive plan and give the board an opportunity to discuss those um and to let staff know what what issues we staff has identified some issues but we also want to know what issues the board would like us to be focusing on so we do have a relatively lengthy presentation today i'll try to move through it fairly quickly um this uh workshop focuses mainly on the future land use element we're going to review the element kind of at a high level and focus on several key topic areas that may require amendments to the plan uh staff does have some conceptual recommendations on certain topics for the board uh and we're also looking for board directions on on other topics uh that we may not have brought to the forefront in this presentation so based on the discussion today staff will be coming back probably later in the year maybe early next year with draft language for amendments to the plan uh just to note your upcoming workshop schedule um after today we have three more special meeting workshops lined up on different aspects of the plan we also have a fourth uh tentative date on december 2nd if we need it um and just as a reminder uh the county is required to transmit any needed amendments to the plan uh for state review by march 31st of next year and at a minimum that has to include any amendments to the plan that are necessary for us to be consistent with state statutes so we have a few of those uh but most of the things we're looking at are are more local issues um so the future land use element really speaks to the overall development patterns in the community it addresses where different types of land uses may be located how dense or intense development may be and how development is generally designed the element contains the future land use map for the unincorporated area uh it has general land use categories and development policies that are the basis for your more detailed zoning and development regulations in the uldc uh the the future land use element has an overall goal and four guiding principles upon which other policies in the plan are based and this slide shows the actual language from the plan on on what those principles are um talking about promoting sustainable development that balances economic opportunity equity environmental justice and protection of the environment providing necessary services and infrastructure for new development and focusing urban development within a clearly defined area that helps to separate urban and rural land uses um recognizing residential neighborhoods as an asset and promoting communities with a full range and mix of land uses the element also has several general strategies which are the basis for other goals objectives and policies that follow um you can see them here i won't read them but generally um we're talking about minimizing the conversion of land from rural to urban uses promoting land development that maximizes the use of public investment in facilities and services and promoting compact interconnected and mixed-use development through urban design codes uh there are i believe 10 main sections in the future land use element and those are listed here on the slide i won't read them but um you know if you go through the the element you can kind of see the the organization of the element and the and the kinds of things that are addressed within this element so staff has identified several focus areas in the future land use element uh those are listed here and these are based on a combination of board direction uh and you know things we've heard from the board over the last few years as well as uh you know things that staff has identified as probably needing some review and update uh this is not a comprehensive list of everything that needs to be updated but these are just kind of the key themes that require some uh policy discussion um so one of the things we do when or we're actually required to do when we update our plan every several years is to look at population and development trends so in the presentation here we have uh some preliminary data on uh on population and development uh we need to make sure that our land use plan can accommodate the expected population growth uh that we're projecting into the future but it's also informative to look backwards at recent population trends for the county as well as the municipalities so uh this chart looks at population trends uh for the time period of 2010 to 2024 and if you look at this uh you can see the county's population overall has increased by just under 49 000 people since 2010 that's roughly 3500 a year county wide um probably worth noting that a few years of that time period we were mired in a recession and there was pretty much no population growth so that our the county's growth has been relatively steady um looking at the breakdown by jurisdiction about 52 percent of the population growth in this time period was in the city of gainesville which not a big surprise uh 31 of the growth uh over the last 14 years has been in the unincorporated county uh and notably uh 17 of the population growth was within the cities of alachua newberry and high springs combined so that's a telling number so ben when i add those up that's 100 100 does that mean does that does that mean waldo hawthorne micanope archer and lacrosse have had zero growth the uh the others if you look at them some of them have had negative growth and some of them some have had a little bit of negative growth and some have had a little bit of positive growth and it ends up it ends up zeroing out um not much 68 people waldo's lost 15 basically yeah walder's lost lacrosse is lost okay yeah thank you and we've also rounded some of the numbers so as far as the percentages so this table looks forward at the population projections for the county and its municipalities out to 2050 and it's worth noting i didn't put it on the slide but this is based on a study that the bureau of economic and business research did uh on behalf of gru and it's specific to alachua county so normally we would use the medium population projections from beaver as our basis for projecting but for uh this case we had some more uh some more county very detailed county focus projections from beaver uh and these kind of these are a little bit higher than the medium projections but a little bit lower than beaver's high projections so we think these are a good a good projection looking into the future yeah these fall kind of between beaver medium and high so you can see the county-wide population is projected to increase by almost 93 000 people by 2050 the unincorporated area is projected to increase by about 32 000 people by 2050 it's roughly 1200 a year in the unincorporated area and so that population increase would translate to a need of roughly 14 000 new housing units for the unincorporated area by 2050. mr albert then is that 14 000 units in the unincorporated area or for the whole county the 14 000 is for the unincorporated area so the 32 000 14 so it's basically two and a half three people per house yes i think our number is like 2.3 persons per household it's good uh commissioner book you can see the gainesville numbers and do your own map i'm glad you're here yep okay thank you thank you a lot of houses needed for um and so mr princey hold on i was just going to answer your question i did math really quickly um archers seen a four percent growth hawthorns a five percent growth and miconobian nine percent based on that 2010 since their yeah 2010 census so it's not huge but and i think some of these numbers though archers numbers aren't taking into account the fact that they're you know supposed to get like a sewer system which is going to allow them to possibly grow exponentially very quickly so some of these numbers could be what's that the archer you said yeah yeah if that happens yeah if if that happens but it i think it's gonna alter archer well it's funny you say that because i actually think the opposite based on what i've heard from the state and when you look at the cost well it's a different conversation it's a different conversation yeah i i just you know i think these numbers these numbers are wiggly you know but i still think really yeah but those are archer and harthorne are large swaths of land when you compare it to kind of our others yeah the other gainesville and the other three cities that are growing quickly and my point was a lot of that growth in the archer area could be in the unincorporated area because uh well like and i guess what i'll say on that front is that i think as we're having conversations about population growth and about density i mean obviously we want the majority of that density to be in our urban cluster if not all of it but if not then the next best place is in our municipality you know well i mean not the next best place the other best places and inside the municipal boundaries so we need to be thinking about how we drive that conversation when we have our joint meetings like you know yeah we want our cities to continue to grow and within their rural areas you know yeah okay thank you go ahead ben okay so looking at some uh just kind of high level development trends uh this table kind of gives a picture of both the volume of residential units that have been approved in the unincorporated area and the density of that residential development and this goes back to the year 2000 and this data is based on final development plan approvals not necessarily units that have been built so i just wanted to note that some key takeaways from this data that you can see in the past five years our volume of development approval in terms of just the numbers of residential units has been relatively high we're back to kind of the near the early 2000s levels which is also a period of high growth uh another takeaway which relates to your big picture comprehensive plan goals and objectives the density of approved development just in terms of the number of residential units per acre that that we're seeing in new development that has increased fairly significantly um in the last 10 years so that's that's a good indication that that your your policy is promoting higher density and compact development are are working to that end that's great we just need more of that maybe that's on the next slide but i'm curious how the population growth projections um what what the footprint of that would be on the county at current density numbers that we're seeing versus what they need to be in order to make that growth happen sustainably um that's that's not on the next slide or i don't think it's on any of the slides in here but it's something we can we can certainly look at that yeah because i think that's part of the conversation we need to have as we're thinking about this where are the 14 000 homes going yeah where are those 14 000 homes going yeah well and i maybe to that point you know i was when reading this i was you know some of the things that i think i think it gets down to some of the policies that we have like for example our high density our high density is only a two to three story building our high density zoning but it could be that that's increased because we're allowing seven and eight stories in our tods and tnds already so why aren't we creating a more dense high density that allows for you know larger density in the places where it belongs in the places where it belongs and where we have high density yeah i mean where we have high density we need high density if we don't start densifying our urban cluster we're either going to be built out or we're going to have to make a difficult decision and it's not a decision that i'm going to make while i'm on this dais so it's all about moving the urban cluster line yeah yeah so anyway anyway yeah yeah you hear two no's on that then you're getting some real good direction at this workshop okay that's a big one okay it's not time to do that um and speaking of the urban cluster um this chart shows the percentages of approved new development uh in terms of number of residential units that have been located in the urban cluster versus in the rural areas since 2014. so again this is based on final development plan approvals and not built units but um about 97 percent of the newly approved residential units have been located within the urban cluster uh we we try to keep that number 90 and above um and and you know the county's been been doing a good job of of that of focusing growth within the urban cluster uh can can you all do you all have the number of um units approved in the cities that you could get us is that something a number that's accessible fairly easily at least the ones that are growing at least the four cities before you said it it's we can i don't have it but i think we can probably get that data for some of the cities anyway um at least the ones that have yeah yeah we can um we can ask you to understand so we have you know so we're looking at total housing starts and not just our housing yeah i would love to know how many um new units the city of gainesville and then the other three that are growing have approved of kind of what their capacity is we always hear folks are having to move out to newberry and high springs and elatra but does the data say that um are they choosing to do that yeah i think those growth patterns also speak to how we're going to plan the you know development in the outside of that area too 23rd avenue uh west is a big discussion okay go ahead ben um okay so moving into kind of the the next issue this is also kind of data related too but uh the urban cluster as we've talked about is one of the main land use strategies in the comprehensive plan it serves as a boundary for urban growth in the unincorporated area and by focusing urban development within the urban cluster it helps to maximize the efficient use of urban infrastructure and minimize cost of expanding that infrastructure it helps to limit sprawl by promoting compact development patterns and it also helps to protect and preserve your larger rural and agricultural lands in the outside the urban cluster could there be an argument since it lowers the cost of of infrastructure that this helps keep taxes lower absolutely i think i mean i'm sorry say say again i i think the compact development keeps taxes lower in a short it's you know i i believe that to be true but i wanted to say it out loud because i think that's an discussion i have out there i think there is too and i i think that's a point that we need to make that you know that a lot of our efforts towards urbanization and keeping the cost of of infrastructure you know managed as part of our strategy to keep taxes as low as we can i mean luckily all of this has pretty much been litigated so we're sort of in a good solid oh i i agree it's just conversation yeah no no i agree with you no i think it needs to be said so for sure for sure it's why we it's part of why we do it um okay um so by policy we are required to periodically evaluate the urban cluster to ensure that there is enough capacity in terms of available land to accommodate the population growth that we are expecting for for a 10 and a 20 year time period if that evaluation shows there is not sufficient land available then the policies start to identify what corrective measures could potentially be taken and those include things like revisions to the density standards within the urban cluster coordination with municipalities to focus more more development more density within the municipal boundaries and then also the possibility of phased expansion of the urban cluster in the future so it's there's there's kind of a road map there of different things that that can be looked at before we get to looking at an expansion of the urban cluster periodically that's just uh every seven years yeah we we've taken that to mean we do it yeah every time we do an evaluation and appraisal the comprehensive plan we look at it that's by our policy there's no statute requiring us to do that correct that's that's our policy i thought the statute required every seven to ten years it not the population not the urban cluster evaluation that's our overall comp plan right we're required to evaluate our comprehensive plan every seven years uh but the the urban cluster capacity piece of it that is strictly a policy consideration of our comprehensive plan yeah of course and isn't part of that whole strategy also predicated on like the capability of the utilities to make those changes like if for instance there's you know uh connect pot wastewater treatment plan is that capacity and there's not so we we coordinate all of this on a much larger scale it's not just like we got land here and we need more development so let's make this available it's more complicated yeah process yeah absolutely i mean if if there was ever going to be consideration of an urban cluster expansion we would have to really coordinate that with gru um just in terms of their capacity uh as well as where force mains are i mean it's it's a big big complicated right and mr chair i think ben mentioned that that bieber analysis that we're using was undertaken by gru and that was part of why they were doing it was looking at facility needs really long term for gru but they it's a county-wide analysis yeah commissioner prisian yeah i guess i just want to say i mean i i need to read that 7.1.3 more in depth again and just sort of like think about it but i do think that the other things that we need to consider are that there are this is not just about like density and like where people live and then if we don't have enough space for people to live well then we just expand because there's like in addition to utilities there's lots of other things that people need like people need recreation space and people need clean air and water and people people need food and right now i think you know the way that our comprehensive planet is designed to protect our rural areas for clean air clean water recreation and food and so like if we start eating into that we're chewing into the other resources that allow for people to to live life like the natural resources that we rely on for our lives so i think we need to think about like how we evaluate those needs as well and as our world as our planet is coming up against planetary boundaries like it's an important conversation to have like i don't think the phased expansion of the urban cluster is a given if we don't have if we just don't have the density somewhere else like i think at some point we're built out and i know that's not a popular conversation to have but it is a reality like that there's only so much carrying capacity of certain land it's not just sort of like we keep going and going ad infinitum adding people because there's land available to quote add people because that land is a is giving us a lot of things right it's giving us food air water all the things that we need for life and so we have to have a certain amount of that land and i you know i it used to be that i believed that at a national level we were also having that conversation and so there was balance to be had in certain places or you know there's bigger spaces in other spots and so you could sort of mix and match you know but the less and less is that true and ultimately i hope for one want to make sure that we're resilient as a county right and so i just i want to be careful about that idea that there's just this phased expansion of our urban cluster over time as as those limits get bumped up against across our state and region so anyway i know that's a really no that's all that's all from my perspective that's a long way of saying 20 30 by 2030 40 by 20 40 50 by 2050. and i you know it'd be interesting to know what percentage of our land is in some kind of urban zoning at this phase as well if we have that information i know that means looking at the city's zoning and stuff too but i'd be interested to know what percentage of our land in the county is in some kind of a you know urbanized future development versus rural ag or conservation or can you get that for of course jeff yeah that's a great question from the 20 30 40 50 right mary helen and then and then mary apple i just wanted to say too we have people who are perfectly willing to live across the county times and we have people who are perfectly glad to leave them live in bronson or you know the stark right coming into work here so it's it's been a pattern yeah i know yeah but i mean and that's and that's a really important conversation to have right because increasing sprawl into other rural areas where there's not services is also not necessarily the best strategy because then they're driving and until we have good transit options or good ways of thinking strategically at a regional level our regional planning council person you know it's it's a bigger picture conversation but i just i felt like if we're going to have that you know now is the time to sort of point that out so mary my point was is that um you know for the last 20 more or maybe even 40 years uh the housing our quality of housing stock has changed and so um used to you know you go into northeast gainesville and houses are built in the 1950s are still great houses but houses built in the 1970s 1980s are your funding are you know and some built even in 1990s are not holding up you know so we we have an opportunity to look at the redevelopment also yeah many many neighborhoods as as uh you know housing it's a great point end of life like what does our zoning look like in those areas i mean they in most cases what i was noticing is that we haven't maxed out our zoning densities in a lot of places as it stands but is there opportunities to increase some density in some of those places part there the hard part there is the fact that there are neighborhood covenants that govern many of those subdivisions because you know they assume that they're there forever when they write their their things and so that's that's going to be the big challenge is how do we you know um how are we going to address that as as housing but what i've seen to that point is that that is really the issue that the city of gainesville has been struggling with because in many of these older neighborhoods there's actually not hoas whereas in the unincorporated urbanized to the west there are hoas and so it's kind of a mix it's a city issue but it's something that we do have to think about well i think it's going to be a big issue for us because a lot of the growth that's happened in the county has had a hat do have hoa they do have that's what i'm saying yeah so we are going to if we want to increase that density you know that's going to be a that's that's you know we're going to we're kind of stuck and i think we need to think about that as we go home because the house is just you know jeff did you have a comment to that point no okay i mean i'm sure he has lots of comments even he's going to keep staying out of the fire for now but he'll be back in it soon okay all right back keep going thank you okay um so looking at some uh preliminary data about the urban cluster evaluation uh we have not completed a full analysis of that but this is we wanted to preview some preliminary data this table shows the amount of undeveloped land in the urban cluster by future land use category and for this we've only included land that's designated for the potential development of residential uses so residential land use categories or mixed use land use categories are included in this table and so what we do we're looking at undeveloped acreage by land use category and then we use a density multiplier to kind of estimate how much development could potentially be in those areas and from there we we kind of determine an estimated capacity of the undeveloped land so currently we have roughly 4 600 acres of what i'll call raw land that's designated for residential or mixed uses and when i say raw land i just mean greenfield available land and that land we're estimating could accommodate roughly 14 000 or so residential units uh translating that into population that would be about 32 700 or so uh people uh we need to look a little more we need to take a little bit more refined look at this data um but we wanted to at least preview it uh for you here today um worth noting our population projections indicate that we would need capacity for roughly 32 000 people in the urban cluster by 2050 so we're we're kind of kind of kind of nailed it commissioner presia yeah um i guess just on that front like you know that's one of those cases to be made because we're bumping up against it i guess i just want to point out the same thing i said earlier our high density residential you know we have an opportunity to increase opportunities there yeah to increase more housing in those areas as well as in the mixed use the low density medium density and high density i think there's opportunities that you know in those mixed use areas particularly tods and tnds that we could where we have those services where we're trying to drive services like that's where we should be looking at the possibilities of increased density if we're going to offer it and then the last is a question why 2.33 people that's a really low household number it feels like i mean is that the average of our county it's a number we got from the census for alachua county as a whole okay so i'm slow at math but this slide says we have capacity through 2050 and if we do what anna says we could extend that way past 2050. is that essentially what this slide is saying that's essentially what it's saying there there's some more nuances to it which i'll get into i think on the next slide and there's also things like market factors that we have to build in as well um so i think we have enough capacity we can demonstrate that we have enough capacity now um but you know when we start looking you know when we do this the next time or the next time or the next time after that then we may start a hurricane and we have a bunch of immigration and et cetera et cetera i mean but yeah i mean this is for the next four eARs yeah this is what this i mean to y'all's two points of i'm not moving the line this supports why you wouldn't right okay next slide so there are some other considerations that i mentioned that affect the capacity of the urban cluster we currently have about 2800 approved but unbuilt residential units that are within active approved developments and those are developments with approved final development plans and construction plans that are actively getting permits for for new units today so about 2800 uh we also have about 10 000 approved but unbuilt residential units within approved preliminary development plans so these are developments that don't have a final development plan approved yet it would include things like spring hills for example and we identify those separately but they are still part of the the they factor into the capacity of the urban cluster uh also worth mentioning uh the live local act which now allows the potential for uh residential development within areas that are designated commercial or industrial or mixed use uh it's not we don't we can't really predict to what extent people will take advantage of that opportunity but um it is there you know so that's that could potentially add a little more residential capacity as well um also want to note that in your existing comp plan policy it calls for the use of a market factor in the analysis to basically ensure that the housing market is not being unnecessarily constricted by our policies and that policy basically says that with the market factor we need to have two times the needed capacity available for a 10-year period and 1.5 times the needed capacity available for a 20-year period so we're required to have more than we need so so the housing market doesn't get constricted and causing housing prices to to rise um so with all that being said it does look like we will have enough capacity for this particular evaluation although our margins are getting smaller there you know i've i've done a few of these now and they're the margins are getting a little bit smaller every time but i think we're we're okay now uh as far as capacity commissioner presby um i was just going to say this is a little bit of an aside but those 500 unbuilt lots within existing planet subdivisions are those i mean it's an estimate but those are identifiable i mean those are potentially perfect targets for our infrastructure tax dollars if we want to do affordable like we're talking about creating affordable housing across existing subdivisions trying to create more diversified opportunities for housing i mean those are target lots where we could be doing interesting projects where we partner with a land trust and like the city is doing with bright community land trust to build houses own the land in this subdivision and then build um in existing subdivisions to provide that diversified opportunity so i just want to throw that out there it's total aside and not related to this complaint thing but it is a an interesting note and a place where we could really target some of that home ownership piece and that affordability piece within existing subdivisions to start spreading affordable housing across our community commissioner wheeler my question on all of this are do we consider or factor in at all um economics in terms of the stability of our economy and also the the natural resources we have to support all of this this growth you know i don't know if that's something that we factor in water for instance you know as we continue to invite people into florida or into our area this is one of the things i'm concerned about because as we see heat as we see you know issues of heat and water um affecting our our even our ag economy our local our ability to provide these resources for folks i just do we factor that in at all i don't get to be too like little penny penny but well yeah that's what anna just said that's what she said about protecting the uh uh unincorporated non-urbanized i mean just to respond to that question um the the methodology that's called out in our comprehensive plan doesn't really call for us to look at the overall economy although i think to some degree our population projections are reflective of our economy so um in a way it's incorporated into the analysis although not specifically um natural resources i mean if we're looking at things like water uh you know one of one of the things that is or just one of the foundations of the urban cluster is that potable water has to be available for development in the urban cluster and we do that primarily in coordination with gru so um i don't think water water capacity is necessarily built into our urban cluster analysis but it is built into our comprehensive plan as as an important factor in our in our growth policies i think it's not just statewide it's nationwide with what we're like the instability of what we're looking at you know this was all based on stuff that we've had that we can predict but right we're in a place where it's hard to predict you know where we're going yeah i mean you just made the point like it's it's just it one the economy is so volatile it's hard to predict i think so it would be hard but i to your point i think one of the challenges that we have is that we aren't in a position to regulate consumptive use you know like we can't say that there's not enough water that's up at the water management district level and at the state level and so unfortunately most of the time like we can ask gru or we could ask a utility like do you have enough water but their answer is almost always going to i mean their answer is going to always be yes right unless they're bumping up against their consumptive use permit but there's never been a denial of a consumptive use permit so you know if they expand their consumptive use then but we may even be looking at a shortage of materials for building yeah labor right totally absolutely oh i know it's bigger picture exactly 100 i think our bigger role in all of that is just the maintaining groundwater recharge through land conservation exactly you know so that's when i think about water and water availability i always think about and keeping it clean i mean we're getting ready to have the conversation about the b map today and like where we're at with the cost of keeping our water clean and our requirements by the state to meet b maps of lowering overall nitrogen and phosphorus and the cost of that and sort of you know again the limitations of the state for us to be able to use education and outreach and community engagement and you know non-point source efforts in order to be able to do that work which really can be the most effective possible way to do that but unfortunately we're limited the amount we're allowed to have that and then we end up with these really expensive projects that we have to do to try to reduce that cleanliness you know make sure the water is clean for the bottlers to send it out of the state right exactly and right and we have to sort of allow any kind of activity in in certain areas because of state statute preemptions and and so they can do all these things on the land that pollute the water and then we're supposed to be the ones to clean it up so there is a lot of that challenge that we're sort of faced with where we're we're not allowed to regulate things but then we're required to manage so subtle unfunded mandates yeah so so ben from this slide we have 13 300 units which is the sum of those three numbers of actively approved developments preliminary development plans or planted in the previous slide can you go back are you able to tell us how many of those 13 300 are in those categories um i can i don't have that number at my fingertips but we can certainly produce it i mean i think if you're talking about the well i would say most of the 10 000 that's probably either going to be in one of the activity centers or the low density residential category one or the other yeah i mean if we if you could show me that that going back the majority of the 14 000 is 10 600 low density residential if you could show me that we've already actually had that platted preliminary development plans are approved then that's right in line and then back to your question where are the opportunities for increasing these numbers well i guess that's the question is do the numbers on the next slide are they in these numbers the numbers on the next slide are not in these numbers so they're in addition they're in addition so we're saying 14 000 055 is our need here right plus the stuff on the next slide so we can combine those two and have a chart that shows total yeah yeah gotcha yeah right then we can see if we that's the need for 2050 we already have it approved we may not even so just to clarify the when you say undeveloped raw land something like spring hills which has a couple thousand units approved is not in this number that that is correct in the next slide it's part of that 10 000. so it may be that we don't even really need to play around a whole lot with our densities at this stage and once we include those it's just a matter of keeping an eye on it the next dar and but recognizing that those would be the ideal strategies okay is that something you guys can get to instead of future minutes yeah okay um we also look at our commercial land use availability in the urban cluster although the policies are not really specific about a methodology um as they are for residential but we just wanted to show you how much uh land we have available for different kind of commercial uses so this just kind of gives you an idea of that in addition to the acreage figures that you see on this slide we also have a good amount of approved commercial floor area that's within both preliminary development plans as well as final development plans that just haven't been built um and uh this doesn't take into account the fact that non-residential can also be built within tods and tnds so there's a tremendous opportunity for non-residential within those as well mary i should remember this but i don't can you talk to me a little bit about what tourist entertainment is why that number is so high yeah is that that old movie well yeah and i actually have a couple slides on this later in the presentation but it's basically they're they're areas that as a land use category it's intended to serve uses that are needed to serve the traveling public so most of that acreage is around i-75 interchanges like uh the the northernmost one up at high springs as well as the southernmost interchange down at micanope um i'm trying to remember uh the gainesville raceway i think is uh tourist entertainment there's a few others it's just a really high number so i i we're going to talk about it later okay yeah 300 acres compared to what we have for commercial development yeah oh yeah well the big number outside the urban cluster is the what he just said the north exit and south exit yeah yeah no it's just i i wanted to understand that because gotcha yeah yeah because it seems like you said we have a bunch of commercial potential in our tods and tnds and their mixed use areas that aren't accounted for in here so really there's plenty of opportunity for commercial development but there's also tourist entertainment opportunity in those same areas so yes okay so uh the next topic is our tod and tnd policies it's transit oriented development and traditional neighborhood development uh the board discussed this at a workshop back in january and i think there was another workshop back in 2024 on this uh so uh staff does have some direction on uh tod and tnd as far as some code amendments so for this comprehensive plan update we are going to be kind of looking at what we're doing in the code and then also looking at our comprehensive plan policies to make sure they mesh or there's nothing nothing in the comprehensive plan will be inconsistent with what the board has uh asked us to do in the code for tod and tnd is this the time to provide you feedback on those areas if we have them or uh and then get through it and then uh yeah absolutely let's do it now yeah okay i have a few things i guess one i noticed on page 10 under 1.3.5 i mentioned this to you guys but it seems like we have a minimum but i didn't think we had a minimum acreage so there's that i i guess and um it just the minimum acreage here seems high so i didn't know if we do need to discuss this acreage being high or if i thought we had places where we said we didn't have a minimum you guys mentioned that to me so i didn't know which way we were going with that if it's just a matter of updating this or right and that is a a point where we actually probably have some conflicting language in the comprehensive plan we have some other policies that say notwithstanding that policy you can do it at any size so it's probably there's some room for cleanup there okay so i guess you know i i guess i just will say i'm of the mindset that that number could be and should be reduced so that we could get more mixed use and more opportunities for utilizing this strategy um you know for the way that we are developing it within the urban cluster yeah yeah okay um and then the other thing that i had in here and um i mentioned this to you all before was just um and i know it's probably more on the uldcs but i wanted to bring it up here because i really noticed it being an issue is like for like block sizes and for um like um listing of like amenities or things that we provide i just wanted to really highlight bicycle parking because we're doing all this work to encourage bicycle transit we're putting in all these trails and everything but i noticed like in almost every instance there's really not enough bike parking in any of these areas like you you've got lots of bike trails going to them but then there's no place to put your bike when you get there people are locking up to like fences and trees it's a small thing but you know just mentioning that and having it be part of the block design considerations and things like that would be useful um and then i guess i was just this is more of a query but i was interested to know um like if we do know the average acreage and how many and sizes and things like that it's just a more of a curiosity and to see how these are being actually implemented on the ground if that's something that's easy to do i don't want you all to have to spend a lot of time on it but we can find that out pretty easily okay i was pleased with the development and um celebration point with the height because we're seeing yeah i know i'd like to see that height that we're getting more density through higher buildings and um i know that that's a cost factor for many developers going above four stories changes all the requirements of architecture and building codes and all that but i do hope that we have a lot of anything we can do to incentive that where the transect is appropriate for it i think that is um one of the ways that we can achieve a lot of these density goals and so i don't that was anna's point yeah yeah and i and i and i so i just want to make sure that in our tnds and our tods that we make it easy to build higher because it's already hard to build higher you know from other perspectives and i think that's something that i think we should uh you know make make sure that we don't have anything you know that's yeah that's not encouraging that i did have two other things one is uh policy 1.6.7.8 we it's actually in a couple places in here so they probably are better identifying but that was the first place i saw it we talk about the ability for our neighborhoods to have a multi-use path parallel and in lieu of sidewalks and i think that works but i think we need to make sure that as we're doing our street standards and as we're doing like things about that that we make sure that there's adequate crossings to connect existing sidewalk networks to those multi-use paths because oftentimes you know you'll have this multi-use path and then the sidewalks on the other side of the street and then it's like kids are crossing the roads with or people are crossing the roads without adequate crossing so if we could just make sure we're addressing that issue and again i don't know if that would be more uldc or more compound but just i saw it there so i wanted to bring it up and then the only last thing and i i mentioned i'll just tap this gently but 1.7.9 talks about our express transit service and it has it calls out that we we want people to use uf as the the location that their express transit is going to and i while i i get it it's the major employment center and so it makes the most sense because we want people to have transit to get to work there slowly but surely potentially if if dismantling you know the bus services that provide outgoing to those areas and so i just want to keep an eye on that as we see how the uf responds or the students respond to the existing cuts and what happens we may need to adjust that or at least include an additional location that express transit would go to another bus hub like g tech or downtown or something such that people can still access other buses to get where they need to go so i'm just just pointing it out and may may be a moot point hopefully it will be a moot point but i've had three conversations about that in the last week with students yeah i mean i mean the big point is uf is the economic engine and if they change a significant policy like that it's going to affect the whole county and they have they have changed it and it is affecting it you know i have well i have a feeling it will hopefully bounce back when the students realize what's happening and they start like complaining you know i mean ultimately my intern they had two city buses going to our apartment complex and now there's one half bus they need to write to their administrative officials yeah they really really do okay okay moving on to activity centers as a topic activity centers are essentially nodes of higher density and intensity mixed use development that are designated throughout the urban cluster these are areas that that kind of existed before we had TOD and TND they're areas where most of your larger commercial development is located within the plan we have general design policies that apply to all activity centers and those essentially are promoting compact mixed use pedestrian oriented development that is interconnected with the surrounding area but then each activity center also has its own set of detailed development policies in the plan which are in addition to the generally applicable policies the the general activity center policies are kind of geared more toward large-scale greenfield development and as you're probably aware most of the activity centers are substantially built out so one of the challenges we're beginning to see is uh how do we better promote redevelopment or infill within our existing uh within the the activity centers that are substantially built out um so we may want to consider in the policies trying to build in some more design flexibility into our um well really both our general activity center policies and the the individual activity center policies to to account for um redevelopment at some point uh i mean and another issue potentially is that some of the individual activity centers have very highly specialized land use categories um that that only exist within the activity center they're not necessarily anywhere else in the county um you know some examples of that are like office business park or a shopping center there's just one or two places in activity centers where those exist um and so those some of those land use categories can sometimes be overly restrictive of land uses that would otherwise be compatible within an activity center so we want to kind of look at those very activity center specific policies and land use categories to see if there's anything we can do there to provide more more land use flexibility um looking looking more emphasizing the overall form of the development and not so much the particular use uh anna and then mary um my my only i mean i i think that's a great idea and i'll be i'll be interested to see what ideas you all bring back i guess my only comment on that is to the extent that existing development within these activity centers includes housing you know i want to be careful that that flexibility in changes doesn't sort of foster displacement of existing people and communities because oftentimes when you have redevelopment or demolition opportunities or things like that that's like one of the first things that comes in to displace you know populations and people who have historically been in areas um example would be you know you have a trailer park in an area right and we suddenly say like oh well that can now be this and then like those people who otherwise that's their only affordable housing option are like displaced and end up getting shoved out because they suddenly that land is worth a lot more because we've turned it into commercial so i just or things like that so i just want to put that out there that i want to be sensitive to the idea of sort of displacement and gentrification as we're having these conversations around what we do with our generally in our comp plan overall but in particular in these areas where we're trying to gain more flexibility with form that's a good point i was thinking more in terms of like real specific commercial uses and then you know the associated requirements that might go with those which might be parking or or things like that which there's you know not the highest and best use of land my question is is you know there are other larger cities that have gone through this process um you know have been going through the same process for some period of time are there any is is that like typically the best practice is to just change the zoning to allow for more flexibility are there other practices out there to sort of manage this redevelopment of activity zones that's a good question i don't know i have a good answer on that right now um i think for for this particular exercise we're just we're trying to we're trying to make the very prescriptive land use categories just a little bit more flexible and i think that's a really good strategy i really yeah and i'm i'm sure there are and we can look into this more um in terms of other potential strategies to help promote redevelopment because as our activity center's age you know there's just it's just a real opportunity you know to to to you know maximize that that use there so i just i was just curious because i've watched you know other some of the suburban areas around tampa i used to live in um tarpon springs and i watched some things change you know over time and i'm thinking back on it i'm like huh i wonder how they made that happen you know yeah i mean and i think some some type of design flexibility is one good thing we can do there's also i mean i know some places provide um like economic incentives and tax incentives and things like that um but that's not something that we really contemplate in the yeah yeah it would be a complex thing yeah yeah i was just curious about about that because it does seem like especially in some of our older activity centers like there's real opportunity there um and then just so to summarize um recommendations uh for activity centers would be to uh amend the general activity center policies to provide a bit more design flexibility for redevelopment and infill um taking into account the things that the board has just discussed um and for the individual activity center policies uh looking to kind of reduce the level of detail in some of the land use categories about the where we're very prescriptive about commercial land use types more emphasis on urban form and less emphasis on the specific land uses uh and also another thing is potentially considering the possibility of activity center plans going through some type of i hate to use the word special area plan but some type of planning process to um to help look at those areas um in a little more focused way um with the landowners and try to think about uh redevelopment possibilities i like that i mean i like that idea i guess in that would that be something that i guess like that to me also feels like i mean i guess you could have we already have that strategy the county can initiate master plans for activity centers where necessary so we already have that policy in the compound so i'm wondering if that's more of a potential recommendation for certain areas where we see as we see that redevelopment need like you all sort of bringing forward that like this is an area where that need is coming up and like we did with the pine hills like it was like okay it's time to do the sas because demands for development in that area are coming and we need to be thinking proactively about it like east side would be a great one right now we could be doing that and we can certainly bring those forward um we are going to be looking at the east side activity center i think the next slide and that's one area where where we're kind of recommending taking a closer look absolutely we have a heart so we have a hard stop in here at 11 15. so and we want to give the folks out who's here to speak uh today okay got a couple folks that want to speak so i just want to keep everybody we're on page 21 of 35 36. it's just some heavy conversations here oh i know i'm like it's one hour and a half for land uses but no i hear you i'll move i'll move it's not your fault it's our fault um okay so as i mentioned the next issue um that we identified is the east side activity center this is an activity center that's been designated in our plans since 1994. it's intended or it was intended at the time to be a mixed-use development node within the eastern portion of the urban cluster and going back a ways it was originally considered as a potential foundation for an unincorporated cra and that i think that discussion was had about 10 or 15 years ago and it was decided to not move forward with that at the time but um going back to you know there's some history with this uh the original 1994 policies for the activity center focused on employment type land uses it was envisioned that this would be an employment center on the east side and there were actually specific limits on the number of residential units that could be located within that whole activity center so the county updated that activity center plan in 2008 to get rid of the the residential limit and also make it more of a mixed use type of activity center that would be geared a little bit more toward residential but also have some employment opportunities as well so now most of the land use categories in the activity center are some form of mixed use residential or mixed use where residential is the primary use but there's also an allowance for non-residential as well and ben gru does not go down 43rd do they i believe yeah i believe they do schools yeah that's east side high school and i have to be completely transparent that property just north of east side is my family property that makes you residential so is there water and sewer available there um no but it could be it could be extended it's available i mean it's empty it's empty farmland right yeah it's available yeah it sewer and water are there yeah i just as i have this conversation it makes me hesitant to well if we have a conflict you just have to declare it i'm declaring it because that's no i mean there's a form but there's yeah um and so in a for a multitude of reasons development hasn't quite happened as um we expected in this activity center um some of the reasons for that have to do with the infrastructure like water and sewer um the the main lines are available up and down 43rd street and i think they you know they go a little bit off of 43rd street into the to serve the development that's fronting on 43rd street but it's not extended into the interior parcels of the activity center you also have some parcel configuration challenges here you have a lot of smaller parcels with different owners and there are some landlock parcels in here as well also worth noting there is a strategic ecosystem that covers this activity center roughly the the land or a good portion of the land west of 43rd street is covered by the east side greenway strategic ecosystem so there's a requirement there for i think it's a maybe a 300 foot average set aside corridor for that strategic ecosystem there's also some unique land use categories in this activity center and some of those actually require that development must be mixed use and we're finding just in conversations from potential purchasers of property in that that activity center um that those strict mixed use requirements are can be somewhat limiting uh yeah so those houses yeah and and and actually some of the rooftops yeah and some of the policies actually require a vertical mixture of uses um and don't uh necessarily take into account the possibility of horizontal mixture of uses so um they're very some of the policies can be very limiting um in that sense um and difficult to achieve particularly when you're talking about the kinds of smaller parcels that you have in this activity center so reevaluating this one and digging in a little bit yeah that's excellent yeah staff uh one of the things staff is recommending here um is that we reevaluate and update this activity center plan and that we do that in two stages uh i think in the short term as part of this process we're doing right now i think we can make some tweaks to the language and the for the land use categories to to kind of help uh make those land use categories a little bit more flexible than they are now um and then longer term i think staff would recommend that we take a a really deep dive on the east side activity center you know involving the landowners and the community and try to and try to essentially update the plan for this activity center because it's been almost 20 years sounds great to me anybody object to that no i think it's good no i i just want to say that um you know since i'm real familiar with the area on the north of what's in the activity center is also some very sensitive environmental land um and so it's kind of surrounded really by sensitive environmental land and i think that needs to be a large part of the planning process here i think this is a real good opportunity for us to show what a um an activity center that is sensitive to the those environmental um concerns constraints opportunities however you want to look at it what could look like and i think that that's you know i would i would love to for this to be that kind of example yeah i agree and is this fall in our east on our forward focus area it does not just outside just outside just outside of it yeah okay i i like what you're recommending does anybody disagree no i think it's appropriate all right good move forward and prosper um okay moving on to the commercial land use policies um our commercial land uses include things like retail and service businesses um commercial land uses are mainly directed to be located within the urban cluster they can be located within activity centers or within tod or tnd or within what we call commercial enclaves uh there are some limited opportunities for commercial development outside the urban cluster within areas designated as rural commercial agriculture as well as pretty limited opportunities for commercial within rural clusters as well so i know there's a lot of a lot of text on this slide but the the main uh point here is that the commercial section of our plan is kind of organized around these very detailed descriptions of commercial centers or shopping centers and you can see like across the top of this table you know these are the the type of shopping centers that are identified in the plan and these descriptions i think they go back to the early 90s it was like very much shopping mall like i mean yeah they're they're generally outdated they probably have too much detail in terms of identifying leasable area and tenants a number of stores that's not necessarily the kind of detail we need in the comprehensive plan and the the shopping center concept also doesn't acknowledge the fact that we have tod and tnd now and mixed use development so for commercial land uses uh staff is recommending that we we try to update or greatly simplify these detailed descriptions of of the commercial shopping centers and all of these are also cross-referenced in our activity center section so part of this is just updating the commercial section but also making sure we're fixing references in our activity center section as well love it anybody object to that no not at all i think this is way way up yeah i started to make a bunch of comments on this and then i saw that and i was like great i don't have to yeah yeah so we were talking a little bit earlier about the tourist entertainment land use category um that's kind of a subcategory of our commercial policies um this land use category really is for um services and businesses that serve the traveling public um things like gas stations restaurants lodging and entertainment facilities so it's a very broad category it seems like those two categories should be different when they're in like a rural area versus when they're in an urban area though right because otherwise you're just going to get a bunch of like gas station clusters and stuff like that and that's that's actually one of um the staff recommendations is to kind of give that a little more more in this case i think we probably need a little more detail um yeah so basically the the way the lane use designation is constructed now is that these areas can be located around i-75 interchanges they should be located along arterial roads and preferably at intersections or they may be located near environmental features or cultural resources so that would be near lakes or marine business uses um things like that mary do we need to add one out um by the old fairgrounds since we're anticipating uh development there from the uh the new army facility it's in the city is that all in the city i thought part of it was out the city no it's all in the city never mind okay i thought part of it it's our land but it's all yeah i was thinking that it was at the airport yeah and so so this land use designation can be located either inside or outside the urban cluster the way it's structured today um so one a couple recommendations that staff has on this um it would be adding some more specificity and clarification about the potential applicability and allowable locations for the tourist entertainment land use category and in particular um some distinction may need to be made i mean we could make kind of an urban versus rural distinction or we could make more of a distinction based on um you know certain certain things like gas stations restaurant lodging versus um tourist entertainment that may be appropriate in a rural area um things like it's what anna said it's you got the two interchanges in the urban cluster and you got the two one on the north and one on the south yeah um and there may be other places i mean i guess i feel like this is one i would love to see staff look at a little bit and like are there other places where we do have cultural or natural resources where some of this kind of support and mr chair that's that's one of the issues that we run up against a lot especially we get a lot of calls about rv parks and some of the language we have on adjacency or nearby a cultural or natural resource it's not very clear so how close am i to paints prairie or now that the county owns a lot of property i'm near bar hammock and i have an rv park and that's in tourist entertainment so those are the kind of issues i think we need to explore a little bit more in these policies yeah i think that's great any objection guys nope good just real quick you you because we're done with commercial i think i just want to quickly say that i asked um at a i may have i don't think i did it at a meeting but i did talk to staff about it several times i would like for us to explore how like in particular data centers as we're seeing more and more tech and more and more data like the big i'm talking about the big data centers that use a lot of energy and water and can be really intensive um that we look into that as an industrial use and the possibility of a special exception requirement for those sorts of things so that we can evaluate um what needs if any we do we have data centers as a use in our comp plan i don't even think we have that's not in the comp plan we do not and i would yeah mr chair i think it is something that is more of a code issue um and we don't have it well defined in our code it's definitely one of those newer uses that you know our code is not up to date on so it's something we could we could update i mean it's the next two decades yeah i guess i'm just thinking about that and any of large scale like large scale distribution that would be located in an unincorporated area like where we have large scale i think it's some of it's about resource use and incompatibility and scale um and demand for sort of like road infrastructure other infrastructure and the the challenges that they're posing and so just thinking about what the threshold is for a special exception or for it to come to the commission or to be able to like really evaluate those types of things is the former energizer plant in the city of elastro or in the unincorporated uh it's unincorporated it's designated as a rural employment center um and in our complex i believe some of it's been annexed some of it has been annexed yes but not all of it and does the city of alachua have a designation for data centers do any of our cities i'm not sure we can look into that i'm not i'm just sent to anna's point and everything you read about is data centers and energy is where a lot of funding federal and state is coming and if we think about it now then we'll have some say about it versus it just happening it's an interesting thought because there's a huge power right i just want to make sure we think about it and we have like good policy for it so that's that everyone's okay with that the only other thing is i'm under our institutional under educational facilities we say um that public elementary schools should be located on paved roads but we don't say anything about where a school zone can be um established i just want to i don't know if schools are going to be established anywhere if they're but i want to make sure that we're locating because we're having issues now where we've got these high-speed roads we've got schools adjacent to them kids can't cross we're having trouble establishing a school zone so i feel like they should demonstrate some ability that they've explored that a school zone can be established there and that it's going that they're like on the process of that if they're going to be putting a school there so that we are keeping our children safe and walk home yeah okay yeah okay just very quickly to the rv park i don't know if you all are looking at ones that come and go are the ones that are established as actually residences you know like the one up in waldo yes it's five minutes it's a town it's keeping us on task yeah we'll have to look just you know yeah just yep just so y'all know that clock is five minutes fast oh that makes me feel good yeah so it's 10 45 so we're good okay we're getting near the end okay so the next issue that staff identified is accessory dwelling units and an accessory dwelling unit is essentially an additional dwelling unit built on a single family residential lot the adu is essentially subordinate to the principal dwelling on the site just in terms of its size location and appearance these do provide several benefits it's another housing type option for consumers it can potentially be an affordable rental option and provide rental income for the owner it promotes multi-generational living arrangements and it can also allow for generally more housing units without necessarily consuming more land yeah the same thing about the homeowner i think does the homeowner have to be there on site with them so that's actually the so that's what i was gonna say okay so a hack i just wanted you to know i was listening yeah that yeah that's that's the crux of the issue um so currently uh the county has fairly permissive policies for accessory dwelling units they are allowable in most areas of the urban cluster they're allowed in rural agricultural areas and in rural clusters so that that accounts for most of the county in order to build an adu though the owner has to provide proof of homestead exemption status establishing their ownership and principal residence on the property uh permanent occupancy by the owner is also a requirement for the primary residence or the adu uh the adu is required to connect to the same water and wastewater system as the primary residence and the adu is not counted toward the residential density restrictions so that is a potential incentive to to do them um can i ask a question about that uh anna first and then mary yeah i was just going to say um i mean i think staff's probably going to bring this up but i or they were going to but um a hack met and made a formal recommendation that we remove the homestead requirement for adus because it is especially and i um wanted to bring up that i think that's a good idea but i think we should only do it in the urban cluster because in the urban cluster where they would increase opportunities for what we've been talking about opportunities again for rental housing and for more diversity of income opportunities within neighborhoods and affordable housing but i think that within the urban cluster it makes sense outside the urban cluster you know what it may do is promote people building homes on building to you know building a home and an adu on a lot specifically to create rental housing outside of areas where we have urban services and so i feel like it makes sense to do within the urban cluster but outside i think we should do you think homestead outside the urban cluster not required inside the urban cluster i don't disagree mary mary helen you agree yeah four is pretty close to five so that's a pretty good direction okay well i i will skip through a couple slides then i think um look i got it done faster our recommendation was to get some direction on on that homestead exemption issue and i think you just gave that to us so was that something that you had considered was that what you were the direction you were going that that was one of the things that i mean i like the idea of linking it to an affordability standard if it's not homesteaded so it it's another incentive to create affordable housing but i'm not sure how we well how would you do that yeah i'm not sure how we i mean it would be difficult to enforce yeah that would be hard to enforce there was there was some legislation in the last session that was going to make affordability a requirement for adus but that bill did not pass but that's still it's an issue that's on the legislature's mind and could come back you know if the city of gainesville has a homestead requirement i do not okay so we are just that that direction is just lining up with the city which the urban cluster theoretically should be ultimately the city at some point yeah good job um so we've highlighted a few kind of the big issues um for the future land use element there's also several other um kind of technical issues we're going to take a look at uh the first is uh ev charging stations uh were preempted by the state on regulation of those uh and we do have a couple policies in the plan where uh those are required within new developments so we're gonna um have to revise that language we can say something like they're encouraged i think and i i can say that i was at um celebration point in butler just last week and at the all the charging stations at the wawa were full and all the charging stations next to the um whole foods were full yeah i think market's gonna drive i don't think we need to require it anymore yeah i think market's driving that especially by i-75 yeah it was it was amazing they were all full every one of them yeah it drives people to their retail another issue is uh parking requirements for new development uh currently we have some language in our uldc about uh the the circumstances under which you could development could potentially have reduced parking but we don't really have that language reflected well in the comprehensive plan so maybe some general enabling language in the comprehensive plan about reductions in parking requirements would be beneficial we also need to look at the issue of medical clinics as a land use and where those are permitted this is an issue where our zoning allows them uh i think in industrial zoning districts but the comprehensive plan doesn't necessarily reflect that so i think we need to kind of look at where those would be inappropriate land use and make sure the comp plan and the code line up do we have anything that allows for um uh different retail uses to make parking arrangements and share parking yes i i thought we did i couldn't somebody asked me that i could not find what we do i believe it's in the code oh it's in the code okay in our land development code we have those okay um also rural clusters um we have some policies in our comprehensive plan about how rural cluster boundaries when i say rural clusters i mean the land use category of rural clusters and and how those boundaries are delineated um it's somewhat of an odd situation and that most land use categories are drawn in detail on the future land use map but the rural cluster is kind of a it's a land use category that's determined by policy criteria versus actually being on the map we have delineated boundaries for two of the rural clusters uh but not the rest of them um so i think we want to see if there's any which two of those it's melrose and evanston and evanston yeah we have a lot more than that yeah we have 13 i believe um so we're going to look at that a little more uh and then finally the issue of urban agriculture is an area we want to look at just in terms of expanding opportunities for small-scale agriculture within the urban cluster um and one of the things that's been discussed i think is the idea of urban agriculture uh ordinance uh and i think the city of gainesville may have something like that so we're going to explore that concept a little bit more as well that's good yeah um i just wanted to quickly say uh under policy 6.1.5.1 i think there's an opportunity to expand what's listed there for to help support the comprehensive plan having the right policy then to support an urban ag ordinance in our ulbc and um i was at 6.5 6.1.5.1 and right now it just says farmers market shall be allowed in the urban cluster i think if we expanded that to small-scale agricultural farms and blah blah blah like we could just expand the uses that it promotes in that policy and then um the urban ag ordinance with the city of gainesville is one that i worked on as a project with the environmental law clinic we wrote that urban ag ordinance and then worked with the city of gainesville to get public input and engagement and then to pass so it's um it's it's older it's but it i think it is a good policy and they looked into policies across the state of florida the um in order to write it so they looked at what all the counties around were doing so i think it's a pretty solid ordinance um obviously our staff can look at it but i think that it'll be a good one so i'm excited about that opportunity and the only other thing under rural and ag policies is 6.1.7 i think we need to include additional language like we have for other potential nuisance type uses um like in policy 4.4.1 um it's a the clean debris and demo and construction and demolition and debris landfills and where they're permitted and i think we just need that language around considerations of environmental justice etc etc to be included in this policy the way it's included in other what's the second one you said 6.1.7 is the one we need to edit to include the language from 4.4.1 which is the like how we take into consideration like compatibility and neighborhood character and all of those things when we're citing landfills got those two numbers jeff okay good um and this is just kind of a listing the summary of uh the staff recommendations that we've just presented so we're gonna follow up on these as well as the direction that the board has given us today um and we will be coming back to you with these amendments the recommended action is to receive the presentation provide any direction to staff on potential updates to the comp plan related to the future land use element i remember yeah i was gonna say i would i guess i would yeah okay we will be referring to staff i don't know the you know the updates and the changes that we've talked about today and to bring back a comprehensive list of edits for the land use category second motion is second okay thank you commissioners um okay we got a motion on the floor you know what i was going to say is i asked i asked um corbin when's the last time we would do this uh i remember the one in 2019 because i was you know pretty active a part of that mary ellen you were kind of new but that was then the one before that was 09 that took a couple of years so anna and mary this is yours you know this is the next big one you've already i think provide a great direction and i think we got some great potential changes so yep i didn't one last thing i wanted to say and i did say to staff already but it's night sky provisions you know i think that's become a bigger and bigger issue so i think we've used probably those standards back in the day but thinking about ways in which we can incorporate incorporate a policy around um night sky compliance yeah we got four of us in favor of that one too yeah and i know john yeah i assumed we were going to talk about that at a future meeting but that's been on my list for a while all right it's 10 57 we have plenty of time we don't have to be out here until 11 15. so got a motion on the floor we're going to now open it up to the public to come forward and give us their thoughts on what they heard on the motion and then we'll have another opportunity to do public comment on things that we have not talked about welcome good morning morning soria lindberg um thank you for having this conversation i always hear about comp plan this comp plan that so it was cool to see on the calendar that you can come and watch the first stages of it um i have spent a lot of time just to get into like numbers for just the city of alachua so um but it might apply to the county too that brought up this conversation the 2020 census was so robust one of the reasons besides people wanting to move here you know moving away from an office i was one of those people because i work from home um the 2020 census was unique because it was the first time they allowed online responses so they could get more answers and also it was the first time they included students as residents it said anywhere you lived and slept on april 1st you we were counted so that was like huge 16 percent jump um so i thought that was interesting too because since then at least in the city it's only grown two percent a year from the numbers i could find online which is about um 200 people 80 homes and i did that which bring me to um the next question i think commissioner cornell you asked like how many units are in each city this is just my number i'm a regular person i don't work for anybody that you know and so um based on their may concurrency the city of alachua and i can send you this with the documents and they have it too um this took a whole weekend so i'm very proud of these numbers um they have 1058 residential units just based on concurrency but then if you go through the development projects map which does not include the concurrency it's 1500 more so we're at 2500 and that includes not every terra and zero tower hill which could be thousands um so if you put that together 2500 that's would allow 22 growth in that city when they're growing about two percent so i only bring that i brought that to the planning board and the commission they're like thank you um but you said that you wanted those numbers so i just it is available it just took some digging um and commissioner presume changed my mind about building up because for a while i was like well i like everything low because i came from orlando where everything is just so crowded but i i understand now if you build up you could save the green space around you um and something that came up when the city of alachia was doing a mixed-use ordinance and that came up actually in the city commission joint meeting is the need of a ladder truck for municipalities so if you want to build up further out that would be something for consideration i think they said if you ordered it today it'd be two million dollars in four years so it's like that'd be cool but yeah you need like yeah more left or right yeah what do you like how does that talk i mean the additional potentially hopefully the additional rooftops and taxpayers pay for that right two years ago let's let it get the comments because i'm sorry um and also yeah so preserving the green space same thing i support it because i saw a ad it's like visit gainesville visit alachia county and you see people kayaking you see trees even the city of alachua real it's beautiful they show the farmlands you don't see the rooftops you don't see the you don't see butler plaza because we want to show off the green we want to show off the pretty um see is that my time yeah we could you we talked over you right so she got a little bit go ahead just finish up sorry and then you can come back at public comment and speak again okay cool um yeah i just clutched my pearls and you said data centers because it takes away the water you know the river the swanee river will approve everything so um that's really scary thank you all right next speaker yes it is really scary why i'm bringing it up now welcome thank you i will give one to the clerk two i'll pass one thank you this morning commissioners my name is grace and i am here in concern of object objective 8.4 which did not come up today i just wanted to make sure that the residents of alachua county are represented in their concern against the proposed rezoning of um the idyll wild slash saranola special area study by miranda homes llc they are seeking to rezone seven 72.5 acres located between highway 441 and paynes prairie preserve state park as you can see on the photo in the bottom left you guys brought up having a distinct line between green areas and urban development um i believe that us 441 already serves as a pretty distinct line between paynes prairie and development and by encroaching closer to paynes prairie we will it would be causing development that would affect the wildlife and protected area of idyll wild saranola special area study as it currently exists it allows zero to two dwelling units per acre and their request for rezoning would allow them to put 134 single family dwelling units at a concentration of 0.18 homes per acre in that area so they would require a change in what the current objective allows the parcel in question acts as a critical buffer shielding paynes prairie from the impacts of urban encroachment and a portion of us 441 allowing dense residential development on this site would bring inevitable consequences stormwater runoff light pollution noise and habitat disruption that no amount of planning or mitigation can fully prevent of particular concern are the wetlands and the fema flood zone designation a that covers much of parcel seven seven two two six these wetlands provide essential ecological services and i believe after listening to you guys today that you do have a concern for that and i can skip over a fair bit of this but i urge the commission to stand by the values enshrined by the current comprehensive plan and reject the reject the rezoning request we are proud to live in gainesville a city known for its green spaces environmental consciousness and commitment to sustainable growth let's not trade that identity for development that undermines our natural heritage again thank you for the opportunity to speak and be part of the important decision making process i appreciate your time and service to our community thank you next speaker on the motion anyone else grace thank you grace all right we'll go ahead and close public comment on the motion anna i i just wanted to let the woman who just spoke know that as that's a quasi-judicial item that we'll be hearing sometime likely in september we have to consider stuff that's presented during the hearing for our decision making so i would encourage you to attend that and if you live in or around it or you feel like you're more adversely effective than the average public you can be a party to that hearing that would allow you to present evidence and so if you're interested in pursuing that i would chat with these gentlemen afterwards and get information on how to request party status yeah all right any further discussion to the motion see none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay great we got through it ben thank you jeff and plenty of time 10 minutes to spare for public comment commission comments so now is the second up is an opportunity for the public to address this board on anything that we did not discuss today is there anyone in this full room that wants to address this board we'll close public comment commission comment anything in i got some stuff for later i mean i got stuff for later yeah okay um okay so i'll cover my stuff when we have our board meeting and commission comment and we stand adjourned until 11 30. thank you thank you thank you look at us in an hour and a half ago a miracle