afternoon this meeting the community development board is called to order at 1 p.m on today's the 18th of November let's first order business today is an invocation I'm going to ask Mike to provide to do the invocation today Heavenly Father thank you for the opportunity to speak to say your name Lord we thank you for the discernment that you give each and every one of us as we serve the citizens and the city help us to follow your ways Lord we ask the blessing upon this city especially in this time of holidays coming up at Thanksgiving and Christmas Lord let us be kind and generous to people that aren't as well off as we are Lord we thank you for all your blessings in this thing we ask in your son Jesus's name amen please join me in pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all this board consists of seven members and one alternate who are appointed by the city council and serve voluntarily I am Michael and I'll ask the other members and the staff to introduce themselves beginning on my left Obray to hold record Mike Mastrosario Jay Daniel attorney for the board assistant city attorney Ted Kozak planning and development Lauren Matzky planning and development Diane Acinelli Kurt Heinrichs Michelle Chenault Andrew Huffman Please remember to turn off your cell phone so it does not become a distraction during the meeting please also refrain from having conversations in this room so that we might hear all the testimony given today to ensure a complete record of this board's actions we ask that each individual wishing to speak including the applicant speaking to the microphone at the podium in front of us clearly state your name and spell your last name for the clerk now I'll ask all those in attendance today who plan to speak to please rise and be sworn in by the clerk agendas of today's meeting are on the podium to your left near the entry door also on this podium are a roster of community development board the list of city staff experts in your resumes the board's rules procedure and the annual schedule of this board our first order of business today is to review and approve the minutes from last month's meeting may I have a motion for approval of the minutes a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting second motion made and seconded any discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries is there any person here today wishing to address the board concerning any matter that does not appear on today's agenda seeing none this board has adopted a consent agenda format and the consent items are identified as such on the agenda consent agenda items are those items for which the planning and development department recommends approval and the applicant is in agreement with any proposed conditions please note that written comments to the case that have been received to date do not result in any item being removed from the consent agenda it may be removed from the consent agenda today by a member of the board a member of the staff or any person in the audience for questions or objections I will read each item on the consent agenda and if any person wishes to remove this item from the consent agenda please so state or raise your hand and we will remove it from the consent agenda items removed from the consent agenda will be heard in the regular order of the meeting items that remain in the consent agenda will be approved with a single vote as to each type of hearing today's agenda items there are two one is TAT2025-09002 amendments to the community development code to update the city's planning process and to address statutory changes pursuing the senate bill 784 does anybody wish to have this matter removed from the agenda I see that one will be removed the next item on the agenda is TA2025-09003 amendments to the community development code to update certain development review processes and time frames reflect current processes and address statutory changes pursued to the senate bill 1080 does anybody wish to have this item removed from the consent agenda seeing none may have a motion on item 4.2 I motion to approve the item TA2025-09003 amendments to the community development board code to update um it's pursuant to the staff report and its recommendations if I if I may it's a level three it's level three so you go on the back of that page the motion for recommend we're recommending approval to the city council and recommend sorry and recommend the rec the staff report recommendations to the city council I'm fine with that okay do I have a second on that motion second motion made second any discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries that takes us back to the regular agenda that's a level three item and I'll read the procedures for our level three cases all level three cases are planned amendment rezoning or development agreement are considered legislative hearings the development board reviews the application the staff report correspondence and all evidence presented today and makes a recommendation to the city council for level three application city council makes the final decision the procedure for our level three cases is as follows presentation by planning staff 10 minutes maximum presentation by applicant 10 minutes at maximum comments by the public 3 minutes per person closing remarks by the planning and development staff 3 minutes maximum and closing remarks by the applicant 3 minutes maximum we then close the public hearing and discussion and vote by the board our first level three case today is ta2025.09002 good afternoon lauren matsky planning and development so this past legislative session brought forth several statutory changes that then necessitated amendments to the community development code ordinance 9856-25 specifically addresses the city's plotting process and senate bill 784 requires that final plotting be an administrative process or under administrative review the bill also addresses some basic parameters to what would need to be included in any notices that would go out for both preliminary plots and final plots including that we must send written acknowledgement of receipt of such application within seven business days any response must identify missing pieces if applicable i would just say this aligns with staff review for completeness upon intake of any of our applications so it's not a change for us we're just codifying the statutory requirements and additionally the notice must include information regarding the approval process so we would be outlining to an applicant what that process would be so for context preliminary plots have been and will continue to be reviewed by the development review committee however when a preliminary plot is accompanied by an application that would require community development board approval the planning application would be brought forward to you while the preliminary plot would be held so if the community development board approves the planning application then we could issue a development order for the preliminary plot so instead of seeing both concurrently you would just see the request for flexibility um planning and development staff so we've been working with the city surveyor then on developing a process for a final plot um the current process is that it's submitted to the city surveyor and they go back and forth with the applicant and then when everything's ready it is presented to city council for approval and the city manager signs on behalf of council since this now must be an administrative process we'll be routing it to the applicable people in the development review committee to continue to review against what was approved as a preliminary plot and the city surveyor will continue to review against the statutory requirements for final plots when everything is resolved then the community development coordinator which is the planning and development director would sign on behalf of the city and the city surveyor would continue to sign under his authority granted by the state so the ordinance though also does include some minor changes proposed by staff to offer some clarity for minor block line adjustments we found it wasn't written as clearly as it could be even staff sometimes had to read it a couple of times just to make sure we were following it for as many times as we've read it if it still requires that it warrants some relooking while we're in that section of code that's something that we like to do if we're moving or proposing amendments to a section of the code if there's anything that's ever come up we try to address it at the same time so this was presented at work session to city council because our goal was to get this done this calendar year and city council only has one more meeting in December so while atypical it was you know just at least presented at a high level city council and I reported to them that I would bring back the community development board's recommendation for their first reading on Thursday night and I can answer specific questions as necessary I have a couple thank you Warren and first of all I talked to a couple of developers and I agree with you 100% I think and I did my research on the bill it came in I think in Miami-Dade County I believe is what it started with or whatever and it was all the it was a 100% vote on everybody both sides of the aisle was 100% to zero so it was a good declaration but I have questions and that's the reason I asked to pull off the agenda and they're very minor questions as far as that goes one of them I was reading here and it says whereas do we know the public meeting of Clearwater City Development Board or no I take that back it was further down it was talked about it was a meeting where this has been discussed before public meeting has there been one has there been a public meeting when this is brought up before that I wasn't aware of because the ordinance is ultimately approved by city council these are our standard recitals that cover the fact that before it goes to city council we would have brought it forward to you so this is capturing the fact that we're presenting it to the community development board if for some reason the recommendation changes we would modify these for the city council meeting but these are our standard most of them are our standard recitals that we've used for ordinances for amendments to the community development code Mike, on that point since this gets approved by city council not us and we're just making a recommendation that's actually talking about today's hearing okay and that's the way the actual ordinance text is consistent when the council looks at it next week or whenever they review it I just I was just found it ironic that there wasn't any discussion among the public but the other reason for my I'm okay with that I'll get by that that's easy my other question was how does this apply at all to what's going on on Garden Street or will it have any effect at all on what is going on there because there's over 6,500 registered voters who are in favor of making sure that doesn't go as it was to go and will plotting have anything to do with that that is not a plotting process that is through the vacation of right-of-way their request was to vacate right-of-way that's a separate process not governed by this ordinance and remember right now we don't even have a vacation there is nothing going on so they can't replat that to serve somebody's needs no because it's city right-of-way okay thank you for answering my question you're welcome I have a question who is the community development coordinator that is the code's term for the planning and development director okay so regardless of department names over all the years because they've certainly shifted over time the code likes to use community development board community development coordinator community development code okay so yes that's me for now I was just going to say yeah okay thank you do you think your process will be longer now with this new statute no the we don't anticipate changing any of the process I spoke with the city surveyor you know again who had directed it and actually I guess it should be shorter because once he's finished with any of the back and forth necessitating that it matches it he can sign it as long as everything met the code I can sign it and we don't have to get in the queue for a public hearing so it should shorten it by a month or more what's your typical time frame for getting a plot done we were talking about that because the notice needs to include that and for now we're estimating 90 days because it would be and it's just it gives us something to sue for it may be quicker it may not you know it just kind of depends our goal is to keep things moving you know we don't have any intention of not signing it when it's ready if everything comes through perfect we sign it and move on so what we've talked about is using that because that tends to be about how long it lasts and if we find that you know we're going to measure and if we find that we're getting it done faster we would update our our notices accordingly there's nothing codified specifically for that because I think there's various nuances in terms of the quality but I have two at 14 months so I was wondering what your time frames are okay and they're still not done with us no okay I was like I checked to see and we don't have any we don't have any pending right now so if they were pending with us then I need to go back and find them she turned right there for a moment small cities I sometimes try to read the faces and I'm not sure if that was a good or a bad answer for me no it was good okay any other questions so when we get a project then and it does have a plat that's holding until the project's approved or not approved will we know that I mean will that be as part of the documentation that tells us that yes we would still let you know that there is a preliminary plat that's part of it it just wouldn't be read into the record that you were approving a preliminary plat so we would modify our request to reflect that difference that raises an interesting comment I want to throw out there just from past experience and it may fade into memory as other people drop off the board over time but there are a lot of times when people come to us and they're making an issue of something that's not before us and since the plat's not before us now that's something that I don't want to say we have to be on guard for but I don't some of the things that delays or lengthens some of the hearings that we've had in the past have been discussing issues that have nothing to do with what we can and cannot approve and so now the plat's kind of out of that domain and we just need to be weary of that so that way when that comes up we can say yes we understand your question see if it impacts anything else we're considering but not we can't really do anything about the plat I guess if we knew ahead of time could we then basically make that type of situation I think we could always make comments there's always questions that can be raised it's a matter of whether that it can't weigh into our motion it can't weigh into how we vote to approve or deny an application that's in front of us but it is something that things get lost and we get lost in those weeds often enough where it's worth bringing up just to be having the back of our minds I thought it was anybody else have any other comments thank you it's a level 3 application do I have a motion for anyone to approve this one to recommend someone else do it someone else do it okay I'll read it it's right here as I spill my coffee there was going to be the rest of the hearing that was just my question that's true I'm also the applicant thank you for reminding me but since there are so few people in the room I told her yeah is there any who are the planning staff and the applicant so that kind of covers that size is there any comments from the public that's the important part it does not appear to be any there's one person in the audience and they're shaking their heads thank you are there any closing remarks by development staff or yeah no thank you okay and now I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and now I can take a motion thank you for correcting me I have a procedure there I have to do it right I move to recommend approval of case number TA-2025 09002 based on the evidence and testimony presented in application the staff report and at today's hearing and hereby adopt the findings of fact and conclusion of law stated in the staff report second I'll second I started out recommending approval right yeah I wrote it a little different so I want to make sure I had it covered there okay any discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries director's report the only thing I have is I'd like to introduce our new assistant director for planning and development Rebecca Mulder she started this week as our assistant director but she's actually been in our department for several years she was previously our code compliance manager but before joining the city in the code compliance division she was in Colorado and had many years of experience on the permitting side so she brings a wealth of knowledge from that background as well which is of course a major part of what our department does so congratulations welcome congratulations anything else I don't have anything else right now thank you any board members wishing to be heard on any topic I guess I would say sorry I just interrupted happy Thanksgiving too I was going to say it as well as opposed to happy holidays happy Thanksgiving to everybody and that adjourns our meeting for today thank you