um planning commission agenda um can we vote to approve it to prove it second got it oh comments all in favor fine okay call to order welcome new planning commissioners we have um um would you like to go first i'm going the wrong way okay i'm getting coached it's really good um so i've never done this before on the um but i could use the practice gayling mr chair you have two new planning we're doing through that one i just if we can i was just going to go go around yeah have everybody introduce themselves sure and i'm going to ask each of our new people to um then speak a little bit and tell us a little bit about yourself okay does that work that's great mr chair okay um so would you like to start just uh adrian hayes santos pleasure to have you on the board do you want to say anything about yourself or the newcomer uh sure um i'm a urban planner as well um and then i was also on the city commission um for seven and a half years as well on that good you can run okay good i'm barry ruttenberg um i'm a member of this esteemed body and i'm a home builder and a developer and i'm pleased to be here and i hope to be and try and do that as a good citizen yes can you hear me great my name is rod stevena i just came back from 22 years serving overseas for usaid the united states agency international development i retired and now i'm back in gainesville where i got my master's and phd and i'm happy to be here serving on the board sorry for about 25 years um i have been in myriad of fields including real estate um but that's where my passion is is in real estate so that's why i joined and i want to say thank you for joining this commission we we do have two items that are significant that we are going to go through this this evening and we'd like to start with the first one see what what am i missing i normally yeah ex-party community approval of the agenda we've done that ex-party communications mr chair has any member of the commission received any communication regarding the items on the agenda tonight no i haven't no i haven't thank you okay um then we have the party uh statement and mr chair we do not have any party requests for the items uh tonight however a person who is requesting party status would generally show that they are more directly or more significantly impacted by an application than a member of the public at large they would be given an opportunity to provide testimony and evidence and speak for a longer duration otherwise members of the public are limited to three minutes but as i said we do not have any party requests tonight okay then we're going to go ahead and um swearing in stand and raise your right hand do you swear or affirm that the testimony you will be providing today is the truth to the best of your knowledge and belief i do thank you mr chair good evening jerry brewing senior planner alachua county department of growth management for the record i have been sworn and a copy of my resume is on file also for the record both of these items were properly advertised on the gainesville excuse me alachua county public website and proof of publication was provided to the clerk the first item these are both quasi-judicial items uh the first item is a large-scale pd amendment z26 000010 or 10 the wiesman equal loop uh equal loop plan development amendment this is a large-scale amendment to change uh portions of the existing equal loop ed the property is located off of a northeast waldo road on the east side in the fairbanks area going north on waldo road towards waldo it is on the east side of the road and it encompasses approximately 260 acres this is an aerial view showing the property now there are some present or existing alachua county facilities levita brown is located on this property as well as other parts of alachua county uh facilities related to waste management there is a large portion also of undeveloped that you can see north of 63rd but again the entirety of the property constitutes approximately 260 acres it was granted a pd zoning excuse me a pd zoning district when it was first developed um the applicant which is the county is now requesting that some of these be amended given changes that have occurred at the site since the initial pd went into place mr chair commissioners the land use on this property is heavy industrial that is a land use that has a number of implementing zoning districts but in general will allow various types of industrial uses implemented normally by our code by the ml ms and mp zoning districts as you can see from this map the zoning of the property is pd it is already an existing plan development the county is seeking to amend that pd to change some of the conditions and update the zoning master plan for the property a little bit of background as i stated this was originally 200 or this is 260 acres originally known as the weisman track was purchased by the county for multiple purposes including the expansion of the eco loop facility under the auspices of alachua county waste management it was also intended to house structures and associated areas with the alachua county fair the fair site has subsequently been relocated elsewhere in the county the present request seeks to amend the implementing pd zoning district for the property as well as the associated permitted uses that are allowed by that pd on this parcel or these parcels in order to do this mr chair we analyze consistency with both our comprehensive plan and our unified land development code we have to prove see or assure that what is being requested is consistent with the plan and the code we have done that as staff and can make the following determinations we've analyzed the consistency with our level of service standards which are identified in our capital improvement element and we find that the adopted standards in the plan will not be exceeded by this request those level of service standards are things like traffic schools recreation waste water water and sewer solid waste all those are standards found within our comprehensive plan none of them will be exceeded by this request our future land use element also has a policy 7.1.2 which provides four factors that we need to analyze when we are looking at any changes to our zoning map consistency with the plan as a whole the availability of infrastructure the relationship to the surrounding development and the range of densities allowed as a right within each residential zoning district or residential zoning land use when we consider this request staff review again shows that the proposed zoning request is consistent with or maintains the criteria identified in policy 7.1.2 of our future land use element lastly mr chair we have to analyze our code there are specific criteria in our code for rezonings that is chapter 402.77 of our code these are specific criteria that we must analyze when looking at proposed zoning changes even an amendment to a pd zoning like the one that is before you we have again found that the proposed amendments will not impact the health safety or welfare of the citizens of alachua county additional conditions have been proffered to ensure protection of resources on the site as well as the nearby murphy well field we are as part of this package mr chair proposing an updated zoning master plan the cmas or conservation management areas are slightly expanded if you see this zoning master plan you will see the dark areas are where we've actually proposed expansion of the cmas since the original pd master plan was put into effect this is one of the reasons for the requested changes so again we are slightly expanding the cma conservation management areas on the pd the residual area will be as developable a developable area some of it again has already been developed where you see levita brown but there are other areas still that are potential for develop development in the future the major thing mr chair that we will be doing with this is changing the permitted uses you will see in one of the conditions at the back of your staff report these are again there's a number of proposed conditions i won't go into detail for many of them but i will go into the one that about permitted uses uh and these are changing from what was previously being uh permitted on this property as part of the previous pd these uses are going to be all permitted uses will be allowed that are found in the ms or mp zoning district that is a zoning district that is found in our code with a list of already permitted uses a solid waste transfer station salvage or recycled material or entire yard a storage yard material recovery recycling composting storage transfer or treatment of hazardous household waste again this is reflective of levita brown and the present use of the facility by alachua county and this is just to confirm that those uses are permitted on the site c is government buildings or facilities d is public fairgrounds and lastly and importantly e there's a prohibition data centers or large-scale data centers as defined in florida statute 373.203 are going to be prohibited so that is especially noted in this section of the conditions with the amended pb there are other conditions there and we do have staff from environmental protection if you have environmental questions we have transportation as well as department of public works staff also here if you have any questions for any of those certainly they can come up and answer your questions in turn with that mr chair staff recommends that the planning commission find the application consistent with the comprehensive plan and unified land development code we also recommend that you recommend to the board that they approve the requested plan development amendments with the conditions and bases as noted in the staff report and mr chair that concludes staff presentation unless there's any questions as i said we have other staff from other departments here to answer your questions thank you thank you very much very much i think that perhaps um we could start with a um and i'm getting to the to the public but i just want to know if there's anybody on on the board that would want to say something or ask a question now is that one question yes uh thank you chair um a question is just on uh vehicular vehicular circulation and uh access i was reading this it's not actually nothing is set correct it can be changed later is that correct and it's one of if there's ever future development to the east or to the south it could be connected there too unless that restriction that was my question too so if the traffic pattern increases you have to do another development plan because the traffic pattern are there combinations for that yeah i'm not sure yeah i think it's a good question but yeah my thing is being able to access going other ways if the industrial area increases to the east or the south yeah absolutely mr chair my name is just i'm senior transportation planner with alachio county my resume is also on file um if you look at the conditions in the staff report we have a circulation condition on page 11 and that speaks to when this comes in for pdp which is uh their development plan they are going to need to add more detail we and provide more circulation as needed the plan being approved tonight is very conceptual as nature and that is not the final vehicular network that is just what is there now and then as things come in then the network will be added as needed okay so they can't connect east and they can't connect south or any direction yes they are there's also a condition there that specifically says that they can connect okay good okay thank you i had a question about um hazardous household waste and what does that really mean in practice and also um what operational safeguards are going to be put in place for this kind of waste and if there's any change in the waste in the future once uh once we approve this plan over um while they're coming here mr chair uh miss daniels pointed out and it's uh a little remiss on our part i just wanted to explain in 30 seconds this is a plan development the plan development is a pd that has been approved um it is a conceptual master plan there will be a preliminary development and final development plan at a future date that will be much more specific related to the nuts and bolts of development of the site we obviously do not have a development plan right now other than what is there already for um alachua county but when they do come in for that development plan you will see a much more detailed site plan this is a generalized zoning master plan that just gives basically bubbles as to what goes where and the question for for me would be i'm assuming for the public that as you come in with the more robust or modified it will go through this process and it will be it will be seen the once the pd amendment has been approved the actual next implementation would be um through development review committee or depending on the threshold of what's being proposed sometimes the board looks at them but there are thresholds within our code that determine that but there will be a detailed uh development plan that will be seen either by the drc or by the bocc depending on the threshold it will be going through some process where you can see it being posted into papers and that is correct all of our um public meetings are publicly noticed yes mr chair missy daniels assistant county manager um to add on to that and i'm not sure if jerry said it in his presentation there is nobody who is coming out here right now this is just the zoning to get ready and hopefully to attract some industry to the site now that we don't have the fairgrounds restriction on the site um can you repeat your question about hazardous waste please well i wanted to know it was talk about hazardous waste and um what types of household hazardous waste will be accepted here could that change in the future as the demand changes and also is it going to be an operational standard to deal with the various types of hazardous waste that may be coming from the site okay um is there something in there that accepts hazardous waste it does mention the um right now any hazardous waste household hazardous waste especially is accepted at lead of levita brand which is across the street and we do accept those in any industry producing waste or if they were a waste based industry dealing in that kind of thing they all have to register with our hazardous materials group in environmental protection and i don't know if mark can give you a little more information on that or not we don't have our hazardous materials manager here tonight but they have to register and they do get reviewed and they do inspections to make sure they're handling it correctly but i don't know that we're attracting hazardous material industries with this plan development um i'd have to check the staff report and see why how it was mentioned if there's something you read that you want to tell me i can speak to that yeah i'd read i'd read something and i it's a big report so i just took some notes okay uh well i'll i'll look at it while you're letting the public talk and if i see something that i can respond to i'll come thank you you're welcome okay my question was a follow-up on that as a matter of fact one of the things i saw there was a residential development somewhere around there am i correct there is yes okay my concern was was that have you guys done any type of studies because it does allow for hazardous waste in the um i guess in the processing for what you're you're recommending for development and i'm just concerned since this is waste you know that can be obviously i mean air waste the smells everything that can you know obviously impact a residential community around there um has any study been done do we know necessarily that it will not um impact any of the residential neighboring community that would certainly be done as an industry came in again the the hazardous waste that we accept now across the street and behind this this plan development um he uh mr burlington was showing me the wellfield protection description in here and speaks to hazardous materials but um the plan development itself kind of um goes behind and to the north of levita brown and at levita brown our our waste transfer site that the county has now we accept those hazardous waste if an industry came in that was doing something producing hazardous waste i mean a lot of them do you know as a byproduct not as what they're dealing with or if they were processing something all of that would be heavily regulated again we don't have anyone coming in so yes all those studies would be done all of that would be looked at by our hazardous materials section and environmental protection that division before we approve any kind of use out there including looking at the surrounding residents and there we wouldn't allow an impact the reason i ask is the flu 451 4.5.1 requires the climate prevailing wind direction that does not impact adjacent residential areas that's what i was looking at which is sub portion b and that's what i was concerned about is because of the nature particularly of the hazard place we can't define it right now then we can't put conditions on it right now and that means that it's going to escape any of our approvals or recommendations because it's going to be kicked over to another advisory board to be able site plan conditions and that's my concern is just making sure that what's currently there and i don't see anyone from the community if they do have someone from the community i'd be welcome here okay i see that policy now so so that's a comprehensive plan policy that is a requirement for any industry coming in and it would be looked at some of these plans might go to the development review committee i would bet a lot of these industries if they come in are going to be such a size that they actually go to the county commission for site plan approval but anybody development review committee is another advice it's not another advisory board they are they have final decisions now some things they look at end up like plats end up at the county commission but they are a decision making body and they do have to follow the comprehensive plan so anything in here would be applied to any industry coming in um i think probably the reason that that's in here is showing you that industrial facilities shall be grouped together and plan industrial areas which this is and can you remind us what exactly is covered in the um i guess you said it's the pl it would be the uh areas i think for uh 24 24 ms mp ml that would obviously now be expanded for this i can we have mr chair we have a use table that is in our unified land development code in chapter 404 and it defines by there are pages of uses but i can i can give you a general idea these are either light industrial uses that are like me that don't um like not like a concrete batch plant or something but uh more of office or a laboratory or things that are fairly low impact that's more in the light industrial end that's ml msnmp do allow for some manufacturing those don't take into account the fact that some manufacturing may be and we have other regulations in place that would limit impacts to surrounding uses but the msnmp are in uh zoning districts that implement that heavy industrial land use and more a lot of storage you'll see self-storage facilities many warehouses a lot of those are also included those are the types of uses the typical heavy industrial uses that i think you think of or that many of us think of don't usually show up in alachua county at least not in any great extent in our comp plan in our code we usually see light manufacturing and again a lot of warehouses many storage is a big thing we see a lot of that that's light industrial or heavy industrial so those are the types of uses again if you go to chapter 404 of our unified land development code you'll see pages of special exceptions limited uses permitted uses and then lots of blank cells where nothing's permitted and so um those are the general types of uses that we see along with some office type uses which are also permitted i'd like to jump in for a moment i've been working with materials on the job sites and otherwise for a long time and we have been using levita brown selectively where it's appropriate and they're good and they will tell you when no we this will not go here and you know or something else it's it has worked it has established its own balance you know when when as a customer or a citizen i guess would be more accurate because i'm not really paying the person first on that one for by transaction um and it seems to me to be having a good balance and it's self-regulated and they have told me like no we cannot take this and it's okay and then we have to figure out something else to do and we we can take care of that too in an appropriate way may ask another question exact time um thank you for the due diligence in this report it's very comprehensive and you may not be able to answer this at the moment but i wanted to throw it there what future factor finding would cause your staff to conclude that this particular development proposed under this pd would no longer be compatible or consistent mr chair i think um the answer to that is that every subsequent application for a development on this site is required to be reviewed by staff for compliance with our plan and our land development regulations and those also go to either the development review committee depending on the scale of a site or to the board of county commissioners so i don't know that i can sort of identify every specific situation that might lead us to reconsidering whether something would be consistent i think i would sort of flip that around and say that every proposal that came forward for development on the site would have to demonstrate that it is consistent with our land development regulations and comprehensive plan okay mr chair mr hayes has been so gracious as to pull up the our this is our use table i was just telling you about and so for commissioner thomas's benefit and well everybody's benefit um if you go to the right hand side and i'm going to try to move the cursor but you see ml and ms and mp on the top right where my cursor is moving and then you see a number of cells these cells represent various uses if you look on the left hand side just as an example going down and we won't go through all of them because they're quite lengthy research development lab heavy machinery equipment sales from the repair a cab company or limousine company um uh you could do an asphalt or batching plant but only by special exception which is a public hearing which is something where you um as the planning commission would see it and when you would look at the special exception and it could be denied and so it is not permitted by right it would be permitted with a public hearing so usually we tend to in the code err on the side of caution when those impacts that might cause more impacts are usually then required by special exception they're not just permitted by right they are required to go back before the planning commission and the board of county commissioners and then if you find this in the code you just scale on through you'll see other things and again a lot of these have that sc or su that is a special exception or a special use permit so most of the more intense uses are only going to get there with a public hearing they're not going to be permitted by right the only things that we were permitting by right were those uses that were relatively less intense and so that's kind of a check and balance for those particular uses we do have them but a public hearing is required okay i may have another question if that's okay yes we did talk about um wildlife protection and part of this land i think has about um 95 acres identified as a listed species habitat where gophers and tortoises are the principal species um i think the last land survey was done in 2018 and before that 15 and 8 we don't know if anything's changed have we done any new surveys or they're planning on any more surveys so that this habitat isn't going to be disturbed over chair mark brown epd there hasn't been any follow-up in 2018 everything that was concerned determined to be conservative was put in a cma and actually recorded in a conservation easement so that area is protected they can't any facility proposed would not be in that location the problem that when our problem is that because there's actually the areas on the western half of the project is so dense with pine trees that we've seen what uh gophers is relocating to the eastern portion so from that standpoint areas that are where a lot of boroughs a lot you know a decade ago are less occupied so any facility that's proposing there if developer comes in buys they'll have to do a hundred percent survey of the area that proposed the footprint the site was originally anticipated to be used as a recipient site the cma for gopher tortoises for the west for the east that requires permitting through fwc and if it's determined that there's not worth the value does not mean tortoises need to be relocated that's something that the county would not do in the meantime starting in 2018 our land conservation staff has actually been managing cma areas they've harvested slash pine and they've been planting native species and doing prescribed fire so they're managing it for tortoises right now and so if there any relocation is going to happen it's going to take them from areas that are not suitable really for the tortoises and put them in the area that where everything's being prepared for them thank you very much thank you all right i've had my personal experiences with the gulfer tortoises and i i can tell you that the staff um is pretty vigilant and as a person who um is regulated i could attest to that good to know we have other comments yes i just wanted to reiterate why i this area should be heavy industrial and should allow the worst of uses we have to have bad uses here unfortunately we can mitigate the risks of them and how much they they put off on other places but this area of our community is where in essence those uses are we have in essence our landfill or while the waste goes there the airport directly next to this property is a massive chemical plant directly there as well um and i think by key i think in the comp plan is all well it says that we should keep our heavy and bad uses together one place um and i think this has kind of essence become that place and because the airport's next to it too it's not going to have a lot of residential around it and and other things in the future and probably is a good place for it to to stay and to really beat the use as we have two concrete batch plants that are half a mile from here they really shouldn't be in the heart of the city much better to have them up there where they're not thousands of people living within a mile of it thank you chair i i think it's time for us to um get input from the public anybody want to speak then we will move on okay if the motions move on is there a motion approval there was something for approval okay is there a second second okay we got two seconds okay um any more comments otherwise i'm going to call for a vote yeah so are you coming up for this one no okay they don't want to be accused of being rushing okay so if we're all ready all in favor aye opposed four zero five i'm sorry oh god did sorry sorry slap my hand okay and glad to have you you've always had it okay so we're going to go on to our second good evening commissioners this is matey bangatar alachua county growth management department check your mic here you're not quite can you hear me okay yes matey bangatar with alachua county growth management department and this second item tonight is the uh lacrosse personal wireless services facility special use permit and the application number is z26 00011 this application again is a special use permit that allows a personal wireless service facility it's considered a tier three in the code there are three levels or tiers for personal wireless services facility and depending on certain criteria there are thresholds for which tier it's considered and this arises to tier three and requires a special use permit if this is approved a monopole type tower up to 199 feet would be allowed this slide shows the location of the application it's located on north state road 121 it's north of the city of gainesville and south of city of lacrosse this slide shows the aerial image of the site the area outlined in red is the entire parcel which is about 68 acres however the application is only within a portion of that site where the word site is on the slide it's about 0.15 acres and surrounding this site to the north is the jungle friends private animal sanctuary which has been there for a long time there are large parcels surrounding to the east and the west as well as the city of gainesville primarily used as timberland and residents also to the south the slide shows the future land use designation of the site and surrounding parcels as a rural agriculture future land use designation and all the parcels surrounding it as well within alachua county have the rural agriculture future land use designation similarly on this slide it shows the zoning this site has an agricultural zoning as well as those parcels surrounding it this slide shows the wetland map and the flood zone map for the parcel the site is indicated with that yellow star the site and the access road will not lie within the wetland area or wetland buffer and on the right of the slide is the flood zone map and the flood zone is indicated with that red color and the site is located just to the south of the south of that flood area the access road will go through the flood zone so we have public works staff that will look at that when this comes through for a development plan the slide shows again what the tower site will look like with the access road shown there in the beige color and then within an 80 by 80 foot area is the equipment for the cell tower and the actual tower itself and that it will be surrounded by a landscape buffer and then on the right hand side that shows the elevation of the tower since this tower is 199 feet at maximum it will not be required to be lit and also due to the monopole design it will not require guy wires so those are factors which reduce the visual impact as well as reduce likelihood of bird kills so tier three applications for cell towers require a minimum of four photo simulations which would show what the tower looks like if it was constructed at 199 feet and the applicant provided um seven photosim locations um from locations that you see here on the slide and that's um more or less within a half mile radius of where the proposed tower is on only one of these sites was the tower able to be seen um by doing the photo simulation so this is from the site indicated with uh marker e to the south on state road 121 and you see there within the red circle if you're driving um at that location what it would probably look like again this slide shows the existing versus the simulated uh view about looking from the excuse me yeah yeah looking from from the south yeah um so it's about a quarter mile or so maybe a little bit more from looking from the south at this point we we are required to have a rf consultant as part of the special use permit application review and they look at some of the technical aspects and including the need for the tower and why um this tower is needed and if it's uh you know the minimum height necessary to be able to serve the area intended so we have mr chris monzingo our consultant that will speak for that aspect of this presentation thanks sir as i said i'm chris monzingo hired as a third party technical consultant for the county to review these types of applications uh i'm pretty sure my resume is on file somewhere with you guys that i've proposed this i am a registered professional engineer in the state of florida been doing wireless communications now for 20 plus years so our main goal like maddie said was to first search for any alternate structures that may be in the area that could be used for co-location um and if the height that they're proposing is what's required really to provide the coverage that the applicant is saying they need so we use the fcc asr database commercial tower databases that are available to us to search for these towers plus google earth is a great tool they're pretty easy to find if you know what to look for when you're looking for towers just on google earth um there are no towers uh within two miles the faa guidance site there is there like four short towers about 50 foot and even if you wanted to co-locate the faa is not going to let you co-locate on their guidance air traffic uh the closest tower to the site is currently being used by t-mobile who is proposed as the anchor tenant for the tower so there were no other existing tall structures or towers otherwise to use uh to put a site up at this location so we request a certain amount of information from the applicants when they submit it to the county so that we can somewhat validate what the applicant is presenting as the existing uh borrows network and what it is now what it will be with the site proposed we use our own in-house coverage software to to do this modeling of the information provided by the applicant so on the left is the coverage map that i created from the information that was provided by the applicant uh what's on the right came from the applicant's uh submission to the county lines up fairly closely i would never expect it to be exact exactly the same it's fairly close there's definitely a pretty large hole there in coverage where they're trying to put that tower uh this is what it looks like uh with the with the tower in place so uh if you look there's the whole the whole uh coverage kind of goes away there's still gaps in coverage uh so there'll be uh probably more co-locations or towers coming at some point in the future but this one is covering a fairly large area where they're proposing uh the 199 foot tower allows them to have i think they proposed up to four carriers on that tower so we get all the major carriers in the area if if they decided to lease there the tower will support them so based on our review uh we recommend the approval of the su the application by the applicant thank you thank you uh mr's chair this slide shows uh bases from uh staff as to why this application especially as a special use permit application should be approved uh policy 5.2 uh point one and objective 5.5 and policy 5.8.1 are from the future land use element related to institutional uses and cell towers are considered an institutional use and um within our staff report we have indicated those as bases for approval of this application policy 7.1.2 of the future land use element uh from the comprehensive plan also uh related to zoning uh approvals and uh criteria for approval policy 1.24 and 125 the uh capital improvements element uh related to levels of service um and being able to meet that this is an unmanned tower it's not going to have very many impacts on the uh public services and section 404 uh 54 c of the uh unified land development code is specific for uh cell towers personal wireless service facilities and that's also mentioned in our staff report and section 402 124 is related to special use permit approvals so these are the bases for approval of this application also in the staff report there is a list of conditions proposed by staff relating to maximum height the design uh to be required to be a monopole landscaping buffer requirements compliance with federal state and local regulations requirement for five-year inspection removal if the tower is to ever to be abandoned and also our environmental protection uh staff indicated um they would like to see a condition related to bats and um protecting bats um for certain times of year where they'd be more impacted so that's also a condition proposed by staff so with that our recommendation is that the planning commission uh recommend to the board of county commissioners to approve z26 000-011 with the conditions and bases that we have in our staff report and that is uh our staff presentation i can take any questions you have questions from the commission yeah i have a question um it looked very good i had a question about our our jungle friends so i noticed that you did the evaluation for the local house at local residence but did the staff specifically evaluate whether the towers construction maintenance activity or lighting or eventual operation could affect the jungle friend sanctuary or the animals house there um so mr chair through the uh staff review environmental protection department looks at those sorts of impacts and uh they did not identify anything um to my knowledge it was indicated that there would be possibly impacts to the bats but nothing um specific to the primates that are there okay and one more question if i may go um the 199 foot limit isn't absolute from what i understand so uh what types of future hike increases could occur without coming back to the county for another special use premise because fcc doesn't really consider substantial change um under their rules uh for modifications as something that's prohibited so i'm wondering do we have any combination for that yeah so mr chair there is that um term from the in like the minimal amounts that could be um not considered substantial otherwise it would need to come back for uh an amendment for the special use permit so there are some slight modifications that are allowed um based on the fcc rule otherwise they will have to come back to modify that maximum height do you have an idea how much that is um it's it's very minimal it's uh it's 10 or 20 feet is the max but given this tower they they brought it in at 199 which is under the barely the threshold for having to submit to the faa depending on where you are you could have a hundred foot tower and have to submit to the faa for clearance depending on where you are in relation to airports but if they go above 199 if they add even a foot they're definitely going to have to do some more regulatory uh stuff with the with the faa and the metal and the fcc but it's 10 or 20 feet thank you i do have a question i'm sorry i was looking through i try to put all the information in that i you know to assess this that you guys identifying report and i understand there was a workshop that was done on this can you um list if there well first of all i don't know how many people attended that workshop information or packet wasn't with this material so i don't know how many people attended what objections were made at the workshop and did the jungle whatever the the neighboring uh um sanctuary did you have any attendance from there yes so mr chair um as part of these special use permit applications the applicant is required to do a neighborhood workshop and there's a certain radius and we actually have a larger radius for this kind of application it goes up to half a mile so the jungle friends property would have been within that notification and the applicant is here to speak about that neighborhood workshop and could address any of the conversations that were had there so that the applicant can fill us in on what they had yeah i'd like to hear that we'll get we'll get to the we'll make sure we get there okay on this side we're good oh i do have one more question but i think it's more for for chris or corvin um i understood that it's like self-executing for enforcement um purposes in other words the inspections all come from the owner operator um what do we have for the county to track to make sure that you know what they're saying is is correct in the five-year inspection period do we have anything i i don't know there so mr chair um um i i think you're sort of speaking about like the the making sure that it um you know continues to be maintained and doesn't have any structural deficiencies and we don't have a um a specific process at alachua county uh for that um we uh obviously we we have a building code and um to the extent that any of these um towers have to meet that florida building code um they'll get a permit and they'll be subject to it um in the future um but we don't have a specific regulatory um plan for for reviewing those so we'd have to put it in as a condition here if we were going to here do you have mr chair i i'm wrong how about that it'll be the first time i said it we actually do get reports to our building division um they they report to our building division and are reviewed by them because what if they they cleared you know i mean there's other uh development in the area and like all of the buffer that's already that they're depending on gets cleared what does that leave us as far as you know the buffer that was intended these are my concerns if we don't have something going out there because it wouldn't be a code violation yeah so mr chair um when we have any of these sites so in addition to your review of the special use permit these applications are subject to development plan review and those identify the specific uh trees that are either planted or maintained as part of a buffer any requirements that we have in our land development regulations usually you know when we talk about the sort of visual impact things it's hard especially in a location like this where there's timberland that's nearby so that's why we don't depend on those trees that are nearby they won't necessarily they provide a visual buffer sort of when you're right next to it and to the extent that those trees are are maintained on the property where the tower is those would continue to be there any trees that are farther away obviously we can't regulate those trees with this development plan so there is the potential that there's a change in the sort of landscape that's around there that's true with any development application that we have but the drc would be covering those conditions for the site any of the landscaping requirements that we have our only development regulations would be enforced at development plan and that's enforceable through a code enforcement violation so if those trees that are required as the the buffer for this development plan if those were to be removed um that is a code enforcement violation and and could be um approached that way all right thank you i was going to jump in for a second and say that you know the faa does not hesitate to tell you that you're doing something wrong and they kind of look after that but i also would think that um the tower operators do not want too many trees around it because that's an enemy you know that's a potential problem it's more problematic for them than it is for us and that would be you know multiple issues and so it would be to their benefit to be cautious and vigilant and i'm sure that if there was a complaint that somebody was worried about it that somebody from here would get together with faa or whatever and start to figure it out what needs to be done you know if there was a problem in there in there um probably get no licensing this is not my area of expertise but having been a pilot for more than 60 years the faa does have their tentacles out yeah but it's under the faa height restrictions that's that's so they're actually 199 foot is you're not lighting you're not you and if you're 99 feet or lower you're underneath the the lighting requirement yeah yeah if you go 10 more with the i i would think that if the neighbors saw something that it was dilapidating and they were worried about it that somebody would be contacted but may i ask a question based on my colleague's question um based on your rf analysis um can the staff tell us whether there's any reasonable way to provide the documented coverage you showed us with a shorter tower so you could have a shorter tower and provide upgraded coverage there the problem comes in when you start lowering the tower obviously coverage goes down but it also reduces the ability to have multiple tenants viable on the tower so if you make the tower too short then someone else is going to come and say well now it's i can't co-locate on the tower because i needed 150 foot but there's no 150 foot slot so now we have to build another tower somewhere in relative close proximity so in my brain the lesser of the evil is to take it to the to that height and allow for up to the four tenants on there so now the next the next person that comes along they can't build another tower in that area you're going to say well you need to go locate on this tower there's one there that's 199 feet comments comments from the public mr chair we do have the applicant here to provide a presentation as well oh that would be nice thank you mr chair commissioners uh gary hunter um with holstman vogel law firm here on behalf of next hour communications your staff does such a good job of explaining what's going on i'll i'll answer a few questions and if you all have additional questions i'll try to answer those as well um first of all uh chair uh to your uh question chairman or commissioner the the lighting issue on this tower is there is no lighting uh so could we come ask to raise the tower higher and would it would require lighting at that point we could i mean we've never done i've been next hours attorney for a long time um over 25 years and i don't ever remember a circumstance in which we've and we've done towers all over florida georgia all over the south um ever having gone in and asked to raise the tower we've gone in and lowered towers before but never asked to raise a tower um and if we did uh the the avia federal um aviation administration would have a say in whether or not raising that tower would be permitted because lighting would be required the faa by the way was notified on this tower um they've uh agreed there's no issues with this tower the fcc was also notified on this tower they agreed there's no issues with this tower as it's presently proposed um and again we have no intent to do anything differently than what has been proposed um let's see if there are any other issues the public meeting that the neighborhood meeting that we did need to have there were actually only two attendees of that meeting we had it at the country club um the ironwood golf club uh area um and there was no opposition there were some questions but there was no opposition to the tower um at at that meeting um i'm happy to answer any other questions you all have um providing additional information that you think you would need but otherwise your staff does a really good job of presenting these applications and no sense of me repeating them nice to hear other questions comments thank y'all thank you thank you for being with us mr chair now if you wanted to take public comment this would be a good thing i was ready comments from the from the public public comments my name is edward mentioned uh until december 31st i was a professor at the university of florida in the school of rinker rinker school of construction management um before that civil engineering and was a associate director of the school um yeah i'm here uh as one of the neighbors and uh i'll skip the nimby stuff uh like uh this ugly thing is going to ruin our property values and we're going to look at this thing all the time and that kind of stuff will that's going to be anything you do right so we'll we'll we'll just dispense with that um but there are several single family homes around especially on the well on the south and east side of this and that wasn't brought up um the uh the tower will emit and receive non-ionizing radio frequency electromagnetic waves and uh obviously you guys have checked you know all about that stuff and you've checked it out and um i i guess what the people that sent me here are worried about and there's all the neighbors sent me um is uh that uh the uh american cancer society won't sign off on this stuff uh they don't condemn it either they just say that there needs to be more research done on it um before they'll take a stand one way or the other and that's kind of scaring the the neighbors um so i don't know if that's been really discussed maybe we could get a few more people to look into that before we start construction um and uh i guess that's really all all i've got to say um because uh again anything else would just be nimby stuff from your level of expertise um do you have any data that would make us cautious do you have data that would make us cautious uh-huh i i've i've had that happen to me yes and mr chair as far as uh some of the concerns i'm not sure exactly what data you're asking for but local governments are preempted from getting into the fray as far as the the health concerns associated with these so the federal government has essentially bound our hands uh on issues like that thank you i'm i was curious as to you know if we had data but i also understand what you just said and so we're supposed to should be operating i'm thinking of some ways to modify homes i'm a home builder so i'm thinking of some ways to modify it thank you but it's um um i guess that kind of closes that door for the moment you know if we're if you're not permitted if you're not supposed to be in the middle of that with the faa then that's where we are and that's where you know that you guys think that that's where we are and mr chair that's why the the standards that were brought to you as far as the the county standards you'll notice that it doesn't have those criteria as part of it but uh you can review it in compliance with the uh criteria you do have okay comments any more from yes yes absolutely for mr um so if you could just reiterate what would be the closest tower that you would have potentially considered to have as a co-location situation what was the what was the distance it's about 2.1 miles 2.1 miles it's uh down here to this to the south and uh south and west yes okay and if one would have acted on that t-mobile is on that tower currently so oh so so if you look at if you look at uh go back to the coverage maps i go the right way so that tower is the one that's down here to the to the south and the west so they're currently utilizing that tower i see they're utilizing all of the existing towers around that area and they're still still the hole in the middle yes got it okay all right thank you i had a question about um yes the wetland areas i'm not sure who can answer that but um the tower compounds and the entire access road avoids the wetlands and the required buffers um and can we confirm that no future expansion to this tower will associated with this facility would be allowed to encroach on any wetlands or uh have any additional um environmental impacts that are review a new person hi hello jessica hong uh planner and epd so for this project area it doesn't impact wetlands and buffers and those are protected in perpetuity so there's no for this project there's no expansion or potential impacts in the future thank you other comments everybody we're ready to vote ready for a motion oh move staff recommendation there is uh sorry and we got all the public input we're good okay is there a motion recommendation there's a motion for second second motion okay any more comments just make sure on the motion it's the staff recommendation with the conditions that were imposed from the staff correct there's conditions so assumed okay all in favor aye aye opposed okay we have the next thing is election of officers for a chair and vice chair going forward this part we have if anybody has a nomination it would be that time if that ms mccaslin would like to be the chair i think you'd be a very good chair you are well thought of appreciate that i'm i'm more than willing to be a vice chair i still have a lot to learn okay is there i would like to flip the nomination and nominate my colleague i would accept if you were a vice chair i accept okay um yeah i confirm i agree okay so we're so we anybody want to talk anybody want to are we ready for the for the vote i think we're ready we're ready okay all in favor aye opposed we're all good thank you okay so now having done that um approval of the minutes motion to approve the minutes okay any comments all in favor aye opposed attendance report chair there's there's no issues with attendance right now okay have a comment um for items not on the agenda okay planning commissioners comments are we ready for adjournment all in favor say aye aye aye opposed got it thank you very much actually thank you for your thank you so thank you