okay call the meeting to order approve the agenda second second commons on favor opposed make sure of that i do not have the home i don't have an agenda thank you save the chairman okay approval of agenda we have just done attorney office polling for ex parte communications has any member of the commission received any communication regarding the item on the agenda tonight swearing in to the court by the clerk for those who will be speaking at tonight's meeting please stand and raise your right hand do you swear or affirm that the testimony you provide today is the truth to the best of your knowledge or belief thank you and mr chair before we begin yes this is a quasi-judicial item we do not have any requests for party status but just for everyone in the audience a member of the public who is more directly or more substantially impacted by the decision tonight could request party status which would allow them to speak or testify for an additional period of time cross-examine witnesses and whatnot otherwise members of the public will have three minutes of public comment everybody understand do you have a method of getting a little bit more time okay um quasi-judicial item z25-000021 tyrone private landing strip a request by avery hill applicant for tyrone and tyrone trustees owners of a special exception to allow private landing strip the site in the agricultural zoning area um has future land use designations of rural ag one the site is located at 3828 southwest waccahuda road on the 2.54 acre portion um tax parcel number zero seven three eight five zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero good evening commissioners this is matey bangatar elijah county growth management department um again this is z25-000-021 which is a special exception for the tyrone private landing strip this slide shows the location of this application it's located on southwest waccahuda road which is in the southwest portion of the county this aerial image shows the parcel which is outlined in red the special exception however is only being uh applied to this area here where the actual landing strip is so the entire parcel is about 170 acres and the landing strip is about two and a half acres it's just south of where the residence is and where the barn slash hangar is the future land use map shows that this parcel has rural agricultural future land use designation as long as well as those parcels to the south and east and west and to the north of the overall 170 acre parcel is paynes prairie and that has a future land use designation of preservation the zoning map shows that the overall parcel has agricultural zoning and parcels again to the south east and west have agricultural zoning and the paynes prairie parcel to the north has c1 conservation zoning background on the special exception request private landing strips are allowed only in the ag zoning district and only with a special exception approval the site is located within that 170 acre parcel owned by the applicant there is no construction that's being proposed as part of the special exception application they will simply be using the area that's open within their property to land the airplane that they have this is a bush style plane as you'll see in the upcoming slide these don't require that much takeoff area i believe that the overall runway is about 850 feet so they're not that big of planes then they're able to land in these short areas the applicant will also need to get fdot and faa approvals as necessary this first photo shows where the uh barn slash hanger adjacent to the private landing strip will be this is where the plane will be when not in use this is the photo showing what the landing strip looks like looking towards northwest and on looking at the opposite direction to the southwest this is what the plane would be it's restricted now only to the private use so we wouldn't have other people bring planes in and this slide shows our staff basis for approval first is that private landing strips are considered as an ancillary rural use second is that the zoning use table specifies private landing strips are allowed in the agricultural zoning district with a special exception approval the third is the special exception criteria for approval section 402 113 of the unified land development code and those criteria have been analyzed in the staff report and lastly policy 3.4.1 of the conservation and open space element which involves environmental resource assessment this slide shows staff's proposed conditions for the special exception the first is to allow this private landing strip on that two and a half acre portion of parcel 07385000000 and there's an attached legal description that corresponds with the special exception area the second is to limit the hours of operation for the landing strip only to daylight hours the third is that the private landing strip will not operate without all the necessary approvals including the fdot and faa and the last is that uh storage of aviation turbine fuel is not allowed with that our recommendation for the planning commission is that they recommend the to the board of county commissioners to approve this application with our conditions and bases as listed in the stack report that is the conclusion of our presentation we can take questions if you have any questions please thank you um so there's a hangar already on site the picture was of the hanger crack that's there and an airplane inside have they been using this as an airstrip i can have the applicant respond mr chair um this building they do have an agricultural uh classification with the property appraiser so it's been deemed a barn but um as far as i understand that they do not have this plane built yet it's not able to be flown so this is why they're going through the process to make sure that they have the approval before they actually fly and then um so for the special exception what are some reasons why staff would um recommend not approving it like uh yeah yeah mr chair so if there is some any any number of reasons compatibility um with other homes or yeah or environmental or environmental impact so utilities yeah so initially the entire 170 acres was being looked at and there were wetlands closer to pains prairie however after discussion with staff they proposed to reduce the size of the special exception only to the legal description of the runway and then um are there um any local noise ordinances that are applicable here or are plane like aviation pretty much exempt uh they would follow the noise regulations of ag zoning but this type of plane isn't typically that loud and probably won't be heard outside of the 170 acre parcel that the applicant owns um so as far as falling in with the spectrum of other noises you might expect in the ag zoning district it probably is not going to be uh an outlier there and then um so this particular plane will um will adhere to that but um i mean this this is a something that will carry on with the with the property so we have to look forward beyond the current owners um is the length of this airstrip does it um prohibit other aircraft does it limit the type of aircraft that can land here well mr chair it there's it's not being paved so that probably is going to limit the kind of aircraft that could use that other than a bush plane but if the applicant has more knowledge or technical you know what kind of planes could use an uh a grass landing strip then that might they might be able to give a better answer okay and then um that's my last question so um when the special exception is limited to grass it's that can't be paved um that's part of the special exception right it has to be the grass strip and the legal description where it is and then the the staff's um recommendation or the list of is it yeah the list of conditions so under the special exception um it has to be grass landing ship that can't change can't be paid for further along the line that is not that has not been specified but probably the cost might be a factor in their decision um but if that's something that you want to put as a condition then that is your discretion i might be entertaining that so thank you appreciate it other questions yeah thank you thank you so in terms of precedence when was the last time if any a private name strip was approved in alacho county and if so what were some of the concerns or trends that you're aware of what groups aware of that would help inform the decision today so mr chair i did some research on over the last 30 years i believe we've only had one and it was a similar situation to this um and that was in 2009 there was a private uh landing strip on a large ag parcel over 100 acre um scenario so this they that that time there were similar conditions placed on that uh special exception um that we are proposing today mr chair we do have some legacy private air fields in alachua county they used to be a lot more prevalent people would just kind of pop up a hanger and have little communities and everybody flies in so there are some legacy air fields that we have there's not very many that are particularly active and most of them again are they're in the ag area if there are residences around they're typically large lot residences and they're people who have some usually some participation in the landing strip itself but as matey said we we really haven't had a lot of requests in the recent past as a member can i just disclose something i am a pilot and that strip that you're talking about is near my house but it's not that near so that would be that would bring me to my next question can you remind me again how what's the what's the distance between the nearest residents so this strip is within um the 170 acres and i believe these residents is over here so you'd have to go across the the parcel on this part of huacahuta road be the nearest uh residences well this that strip is 850 feet so it's going to be maybe a a couple thousand feet got it mr chair i think the nearest residence is about 2 000 feet from the end of that strip is there a parcel to the uh east there is a parcel to the east i don't believe it has a residence on it right now no but it could sure other questions then i'll i'll ask a few um i'm going to go back to the other point the strip is very is located very much to one side and it's not centered whereas the other one that you talked about that was approved in 09 was pretty much in the center i live close and i never hear it and from that viewpoint it's and i know the owner and the owner was involved in the aviation industry and teaching um but not looks not you know not not personally going up so it's um there's i i wondered about the location is it because of the street you know you have streets going in there to the to the structures you know why why locate it so close to one side when somebody you aren't you precluding somebody else from doing something with their you know with their land so mr chair as i understand that they want to be close to where their barn is and where the residence is and this is also an area that doesn't have any wetlands or any resources and it's cleared so for those reasons this is why they're proposing in this particular area of the site it looked like a strip and you have an individual behind you who has raised their hand just for your information right so we we still have the the application is here to fill in just want to let him know that he was wrecked that he we see him okay um and i'll be quiet and let everything everybody go on i have an additional question if that's well please do so i'm less familiar with this um so what if any coordination is made with like emergency services or fire rescue to kind of alert them that this is going to be taking place uh are this is going to be instituted to address any like issues with air if something unfortunate should happen is there some kind of coordination that happens preemptively to alert them or uh mr chair i'm not sure if there's anything beyond just what they would have already on the parcel if if the applicant is aware of additional additional notification they have to give emergency services but i'm not aware that there is anything additional please maybe a silly question does the staff or does the faa um actually dictate what direction the plane comes in and comes out you know so if there's any concerns with the the neighbors and everything if the plane comes from the west of the east you know that's not really affecting the eastern neighbor um is that something that faa does or does do we recommend that uh we don't recommend anything as far as the navigation of how they take off as far as staff just for the strip maybe the applicant can answer that okay thank you um so page prairie is right nearby um conservation area has the state parks been contacted or has has the environment um epd looked into impacts on the wildlife at page prairie so mr chair as i understand our environmental protection department when the application first came in looked at the entire 170 acre parcel um and as far as pains prairie they are adjacent to this parcel so they would have received notification uh anyone within a quarter mile would have gotten a letter in the mail notifying them of this application um so epd had um no comment on the impacts or potential or no impacts to um pains prairie right we we have epd staff here so if they want to elaborate on any concerns they might have had um but as far as this reduced area they don't have any concerns we do unless you have any other questions there was a person behind you who raised their hand okay thank you mr i'd like to say hello my name is john tyrone i'm the owner of the parcel and the applicant um i think the one question i wanted to answer is the 100 acres to the east of this i own as well so we just applied on this one parcel and the the landing strip is actually centered so there is nobody on that side as well so it's centered between those two parcels that's the location of it and as far as the faa yeah when we apply we're going to make it a certain pattern that all the flight my flights would come off the prairie side so they'll never go over houses or anything like that so turn out to the prairie to the northeast or to the southeast that side both ways going either way you're building your own your own point yeah building one congratulations yeah thanks it's not done so and no it hasn't been flying yet it's not completed so that was the other question any other questions for i do yes uh dr tyrone um it has in here that you're not permitted you will not be permitted to put any turbine fuel all right do you have a turbine engine no it's a gasoline engine i thought so like a lot so really it should say any type of petroleum-based fuels that's that's fine i have no problem with that this is a little bush plane you basically get five gallon cans from your gas station and you i i thought so so but we won't be storing fuel there for that okay so either that it turbine should be just taken out and we can work with it from there put aviation fuel or something like that if they want yes sir thank you any other thank you um and congratulations that's pretty cool yeah it's kind of exciting so in terms of what would you anticipate your the utilization so flights in and out not the the uh we had a public meeting with the neighbors and everybody hears this they think it's going to be some major airport that's that's not what it is it's on a saturday i take the plane up for an hour and land it during the day there's no nighttime flight you're not going to be able to land at night it's not going to be open to anybody else it'll be me and that's it so for an hour on every other weekend or something yes um hi um so are there any aspects to like elevation gain or altitude gain or um anything with a flight pattern that would limit impacts of um their nesting birds or bird strike as you're going over the prairie uh i don't i don't think so i'm not a bird expert but um the the trees i don't know if you can see it or the heavier trees are far enough away this plane takes off this is 800 and some feet this thing takes off in 60 feet and it's going almost straight up yeah that's what is we're doing so it'll never and that's why even these houses even if i was to take off and continue straight i'll be so high they're not it's not going to be any different than if a plane came from gainesville airport and flew over willison airport which is more towards the i guess the west i have a question are you going to be carrying a transponder oh yeah they always do that that was one of the questions as far as ems all these planes have transponders if god forbid something happened it's going to alert the sort of the services but also for for everybody else it will show you it will let controllers know where you are oh yeah absolutely nowadays with adsb they all you have to do that they always know where you are i understand that you understand but not everybody else does yeah okay we're good comments done staff anything else i'd like to hear from epd if you have my question thank you chair mark brown dpd um he asked about the flight patterns and fortunately it's kind of a plateau area there where the flight's going in one of the things we were looking at not only to make sure that there wasn't any flights over the prairie but also we didn't want any regulated trees and so dr tyrone was able to locate it that's a perfect location because everywhere else with 800 feet you're pretty much going to have to take out a regulated tree so fortunately with the migratory the migratory birds in the prairie they stay at a lower elevation so and they'll hear the plane i mean they'll put in terms of like if there's any vicinity they'll be able to fly off but really it's just they're only here really in the winter time so with that saying we staff all looked at that that whole property and that was the most appropriate location for for an airstrip from an environmental perspective yes so the um the noise of the craft won't disrupt um nesting birds no no they're they're more that's pretty uh flat and shallow area they don't really you know when they they congregate in more of the wetter areas particularly in the winter time and that's further further away from the site all right thank you thank you okay okay it is not unusual to have airports come and go um betwood plaza used to be a airport and i hate to say it but i landed on it in my earlier days and it's but that's there's this transition but i'm very i'm glad that we're talking about the protections of the you know the environment and the other parts of it and i feel much better um having no knowing that this is in the center of a site as opposed to on the very edge and the 70-foot buffer bothered me but now i'm less bothered okay so if it's board discussion is that where we're at yes so yeah it's like i'm interested in um amending staff's recommendations to include commissioner much's um recommendation and also to limit as a grassy strip that it um no um imperial no impervious surface yes is there a motion are you a second yeah that wasn't a motion that was just discussion but i can make the motion if you'd like if you if you want do you want to sure um let me pull up the number all right move to recommend approval to the board of county commission for um oh that's not the applicant number um application z uh two five zero zero zero zero two one with staff's conditions um with the addition of um or with the strike of um the turbine from condition four and addition of number five to limit um i guess limit to the grassy strip grassy um how do we want to avoid that is that fine unpaved impervious impervious okay we have a motion in a second and i think a third okay questions comments mr chair don't forget we also need to take public comment that's a very good idea public comment it takes a team here a comment ready to anything else before we make before we vote you ready to vote okay all in favor aye opposed congratulations okay and so going on to the rest of the agenda the approval of the minutes we did that park uh move to approve the minutes from the september 10th meeting thank you very much comments all in favor aye opposed um work annual work plan mr our work plan is pretty straight streamlined and straightforward um so i'm i recommend approval or i move to approve is there a second second comments discussion all in favor aye opposed okay attendance report no action required no attendance issues planning commissioner comments mr chair do we have a class in attendance this evening okay what um can we ask what class it is absolutely okay would someone like to come to the microphone and say what class you're from sure hello commissioners uh we are with professor hawkins uh land use law class at 11. you're welcome thank you thank you for being here any comments questions this is fun time glad to be here thank you are you at are you in the law school are you oh yes the law school oh sorry yes uh john wiggins thank you yes and what are you trying to to disguise yourself as a canuck instead of a yankee um i got this at a thrift store it does not belong to myself or anyone i would ever associate with i saw plenty of those in europe last week never had the pleasure canada's not in europe right no but it's a lot of yankees trying to get away as can that makes sense that makes sense any other question oh thank you for being here thank you yes thank you for being with us um any more comments from the planning commissioners we're ready to wrap up okay and uh is there a motion for adjournment let me just say it okay just declare it okay we are adjourned