for a quorum four four so you have it i'd like to call to get to um order this thursday april 23rd meeting of the community resilience and leisure services advisory board thank you for everyone who has made the time to be here we're going to be briefed today uh to respect the fact that council has chambers uh this evening has everyone had an opportunity to review does anyone want to entertain a motion motion second all in favor we have one more we can go ahead and move on to citizens to be heard regarding agenda items not items not on the agenda welcome mr johnson good evening madam chairman members of the committee i want to address the phillies term sheet for the bright house stadium and i have a presentation good um the uh the council in 2018 adopt approved a term sheet for the phillies and that term sheet included a 16 million dollar subsidy to the city by the city rather now that has increased to 30 million dollars so the question is uh and what's listed here or another way of asking this question is will the extra 14 million for the bay care ballpark cannibalize or diminish the maintenance of coach and park and the beach and the rest of the city the phillies term sheet is an excellent opportunity for bay care ballpark improvements it also highlights major leagues baseball high standards but more importantly they really mean to enforce those standards clear waters and this is what the the language that's in the term sheet clear water standard logo is bright and beautiful from the bay to the beach but do we mean it well we say it but but the former president of clear water's chamber told me monday the city of clear water doesn't follow their own rules let's look at evidence from clear water beach and coach and park looking at the development review committee process there's always an acknowledgement on here requiring that shell rock gravel or any similar material are not acceptable landscape materials so what is being done by the city that we're using shell and rock as landscape materials and apparently that's because we can't afford to do it in the right way and looking at some of the other examples this is coachman park on the beach again on the beach even in the roundabout and surrounding areas now even commercial properties are going to use shell which is prohibited so we asked uh the park department how why did you do this why did you use mulch and they said because it washes out the question is if the the code says if it's going to wash out you need to put keep it in and so if we can fund 30 million dollars to improve our already fine stadium why can't we maintain our coachman park to the designated standards thank you thank you is there anyone else who wishes to be heard on the items not on the agenda i do have copies of my slides for you thank you all right then moving on to new business items starting with 4.1 clear water 2045 presentation hi good afternoon thank you for the invitation i'm lauren maskey i'm director for the planning and development department hi i'm marcy stidmark i'm the long-range planning manager welcome to both of you thank you we appreciate the invitation to go a little bit over the city's conference of plan recognizing that the board covers a lot of different topics we knew that some of the interest was of course the parks and recreation element as well as the coastal resiliency but we're going to go over a little bit more than that if that's okay i'm going to ask for that so um we're going to talk a little bit about what a comprehensive plan is and what's in the whole of clearwater 2045 and then we'll go through as you see some of the related goals and objectives that i think touch mostly on this board's preview there actually are a couple of things in there about libraries as well but um i forgot to pull those in so sorry about that um so um comprehensive planning might not be everyone's jam it's not necessarily what everyone knows about but it's very important document to the city of clearwater because it does it details our long-term vision and future direction and provides that guidance for all of our policy decisions so that bigger picture piece it's required by the state of florida and it's been a little while since i had to look it up but um the state of florida requires certain what they call elements of the plan and that includes future land use transportation housing infrastructure so sanitary sewer solid waste drainage potable water coastal management since we're a coastal area conservation recreation and open space intergovernmental coordination so how do we work within all the other agencies in the area capital improvements and then private property rights so it's a pretty pretty intensive piece of legislation that we have to address but every city has one and every city's plan it should be tailored to their own local community additionally to make sure that we're keeping them up to date the state does require major updates every seven to ten years there's a review process where you check to see what statutes have changed but then also what locally maybe has changed in that period of time so the city's vision statement really guided a lot of our update for the plan that's now called clearwater 2045 so you can see here we're a city of diverse unique and special places livable neighborhoods economic resiliency friendly people and amazing opportunities and so everything within here really does tie back or try to achieve the vision statement as i mentioned you know the state requires elements we actually organized it a little bit differently in a chapter structure so there's a chapter on quality places this covers the land use and some of the other required pieces but this is you know more of the development piece where where will development go into what densities or intensities how are we looking at our neighborhoods and their stability how are we addressing housing affordability and economic development we um instead of just calling it transportation we went with mobility because there's a lot more to it and yes lots of vehicular use um and the roads and everything like that but there is also you know promoting walking biking and transit use making things safe for all of the users so not just again the people walking but also the people driving and safety is a very important thing and then how are we connecting to all of our employment districts um parks and rec chapter which is specific to our parks and recreation facilities and open spaces conservation and coastal management were combined because they really work a lot together regarding the natural resources and then the our coastal areas how are we dealing with stormwater but also the disaster redevelopment pieces in there and then um this would be where some of the separate libraries and we have we chose to add this this is not required although parts of it are part of the necessary elements because we wanted to address all of our different support services so where the state doesn't require you to address police fire rescue and library we felt it was important to add that in because it's a big part of um what makes our city the livable city that we're in so um would you like i don't know which piece would you want to start about okay okay well i'll go through this part and then we'll tag team she's working on some pieces right now so there's a number of sustainability related policies so again we had because there's so much interconnection between the topics we broke it out by um to talk to you all more about the sustainability than the coastal piece so um and some of it does come from the statute so this was something that was added in this last update related to solar facilities being constructed in stormwater ponds and everything like that there were some statutory changes and this was to address those requirements so you'll get a sense of the types of policies and goals and objectives that we have in it um also related to sustainability but the m is for the mobility chapter um looking at our transportation system tying back to green print 2.0 which is kind of that broader package there are just a lot of connections between transportation systems whether it be um well timed lighting um lights like signal lights um and and kind of moving traffic um sometimes you know reducing those stoppages is also you know consistent with green print and so there's a lot of different ways to look at it um integrating in sustainable and resilient techniques into our land use transportation and housing so again these this is a goal so you can see it's a bigger aspirational piece to it um so objectives we have a lot of different there's policies under each objective so we have a variety of objectives related to sustainable and resilient uses building techniques and again some addressing clerk water green print specifically um talking about our water system and making and um touching on the conservation and protecting our natural resources i think natural resources comes up a lot it's definitely part of what your board does but it's it's a part of the council's strategic vision plan as well we have some pieces related to resiliency including you know protecting um from flood events uh now this was in place before the storms but now it's certainly even more meaningful the need to continually look at this from that bigger picture you know how it it drives our policies it drives you know some of our public spending so things like reducing flood risk and losses making sure our city facilities are adequately protected um and conserving public access that would include you know the the places where we have public access to the beach the street ends areas like that making sure that those are conserved um we have a a definition for a coastal storm area and in the coastal storm area you're we prohibit um increased density or increased intensity of residential or permanent populations because those are the the areas that are most likely well it's um category one or category two storm surge areas and so we don't want to increase beyond what's already entitled through our plans from years ago we don't want to increase our population or permanent population of those areas so and you also don't want your critical facilities in there right it makes sense that you don't want to build new hospitals we'll use a very obvious example in in a coastal storm area where evacuation would be necessary the state requires us to address evacuation times and then we also um have continued to discuss adaptation action areas this is more of a um something that we could do identified there because there are ways to incentivize some some pieces there so that's just a more aspirational objective within the plan this is more directly related to the flooding and so when we're working on like our storm water teams and teams in public works are working on some of our watershed management plans they're working towards these objectives which are we're looking at lowering our high water profiles during these storm events what can we do as a mitigation or in advance of so that you know when those unfortunate storms come we're not as affected um you know just identifying best management practices bringing it all together and then of course some environmental um we just heard about the landscaping from mr joneson but we have tree protection standards and landscaping codes and so that's always been a part of um again what what helps us achieve our vision through that and making sure so a lot some of the policies will directly apply or direct items that then become implemented in our community development code so the regulatory side it comes from policy to the actual standards and how we oversee development tree canopy preservation again that was very important a few years back well i mean it's always important but when duke energy was doing things we heard from the community and council took action based on that because there were concerns about our tree canopy um the causeway you know these are our gateways but there are also very natural areas that are identified for your preservation i remember the first time i learned about the what the causeway looked like so many years ago and how important it was to you know the originals of clearwater beach it was pretty phenomenal to learn the history of the city in this and i have a you know ours is very beautiful and sometimes people ask well can we build more lanes but there's you know there's trade offs to everything and so our city has you know established policies like this to and that you start to balance everything because there's there's always you know many sides to everything so aesthetics that helps us you know a lot and so that's like that character our our natural areas of our neighborhoods maintaining our water views and view corridors because as you know we're a redevelopment community so when new growth happens which we embrace you know we do like to have our new neighbors that helps with our housing and all the other pieces but you know our our community's values are also represented within the comprehensive plan so these are some of you know there's a series of maps in there as well that if you flip through it you'll see and this is where we have maps to show what our view corridors are i think you know there's a lot to be said about the the economics of the city and how how our um natural side and our um our beauty our beaches really is part of our economics so you could we could give the same presentation but through an economic development lens and you'd see some of these same goals because they're so important to who we are and that's what i meant earlier when i said you know other cities will have environmental goals they'll have economic goals but they're this is this is clear water this is our plan um so you'll see a lot of similarities right more protection of natural resources our wetlands our wildlife habitat but then of course our water wells it's important that we have the potable water and how are we dealing with our storm water discharge and maintaining compliance with federal laws as well um and i'll hand it off to marcy then specific to the parks piece thank you so much so i'm going to go over the parks related goals and objectives and the comprehensive plan so we have a parks goal to promote the equitable design of trails open spaces and parks and recreation facilities to make it safe and easy for residents to use the parks regardless of their um age race ethnicity income age i'm sorry ability or disability we have an objective to ensure the city's system of trails open spaces and parks and recreation facilities and that they equitably serve diverse community needs we have a goal to ensure that trails open spaces and parks and recreation facilities are located throughout the city and then we have objectives under the goals to maintain adequate level of service so we take a look at how many parks we have and ensuring that we are meeting a level of service and i can report where we are meeting and are way above our level of service requirements we increase we want to increase parks and areas that need facilities and we want to implement and evaluate the parks master plan and while i'm mentioning the parks master plan i wanted to let you know that it was recently updated and we will be going through the comprehensive plan to see if we need to update it in any way to reflect the plan update and as we do that we'll be sure to come back and share with you our ideas for updating the comprehensive plan to reflect the parks master plan and see if you have any ideas for us and how we move forward we have a park's goal to preserve and expand natural features of the city and objectives to preserve natural open space areas and to preserve existing and future trails and parks there's also a park's goal to utilize the parks and recreation impact fee to improve open spaces in parks and recreational facilities and the impact fee was updated a few years ago there's an objective to continue administration of the parks and recreation impact fee and then that's it for us thank you so much and we want to see if you had any questions about the comprehensive plan my thought when you were before you got to the part about accessibility uh in the mobility portion i was curious about efforts to increase the amount of walkways for real chairs at the beaches i know they're very expensive but is that the kind of thing that we can apply for a grant for um so what we like the planning and development site right we work with the community and help develop plans we also certainly work with um our departments right they were they were working with us through this validating everything that was put in there but in terms of the implementation side that really is like parks and rec has to to make those decisions that seems like a grant opportunity that is aligned with the the piece that was in the plan um i have a friend who who um often writes grants for other projects in the city and um she uses the comprehensive plan regularly to better support you know to show that this is aligned with the city's you know objectives and policies so you know our our intention is to always have the pieces in in the comprehensive plan the policies to support what the various departments are trying to achieve kind of goes back and forth you don't want it to be overly prescriptive of course but but we should be aligned and if there's things that you know change over time that's why we do regular updates but we don't have to wait every seven to ten years in this instance we did the major update for clearwater 2045 knowing that the parks and recreation master plan wasn't quite complete so we we identified it as a very specific policy to give direction then to come back and and make those changes that was a bigger answer than your actual i mean that tells me that at least it's not a no it's not a no i don't i don't you're taking into consideration all kinds of mobility right and they regularly assess that and work in the department but i personally can't commit them to thank you i was going to add that i know that perks and rec in the past has tried but that would be a question that i'll pose to mr cater and if there is a potential project that they're working on i'll ask them to come to the meeting to next meeting to provide that update for the committee otherwise i will try to find that information to share that thank you you have a big job i mean comprehensive plans that's that's a lot of work it's a lot of work and uh and you know like you say it's mandated so by the state um so i have i have a couple of questions by the way excellent presentation appreciate it um so a couple of questions as relates to conservation of our waterways um are there safeguards in place during the site plan reviews to prevent overdevelopment on existing utilities and infrastructure such as stormwater runoff drainage sanitary sewers etc and i have an example to get marshall street sewage treatment plant it's an old plant operating at capacity and known to have leaks and illicit discharges in the stevenson creek during storm events so and then another example is the landings and whether or not it will be developed and my question is the landings were to be developed would it contribute to more over servicing of marshall street plant i'm not going to intentionally try to skirt the last piece i just honestly couldn't speak to that um i know that i know what's in the newspaper as well i know the bits and pieces that i've been exposed to and none of the project is at a point where that analysis would have been done so and i'm not a stormwater expert or utilities expert um regarding like how does the site plan review process work so i gosh i could totally geek out on this all day but i know we have a time constraint too so i would say so there's a couple of different maps that regulate the city there's a future land use map which is of course we've talked about it a future land use element and that piece i always try to say that's what gives you your entitlements that's you know your entitlement to your land it says how much can you develop and general uses you know so we have a few different residential categories and they talk about how many units per acre you could build then we have some mixed use categories and those will allow a certain amount of commercial uses or maybe hotel density is established and then you have just you have your industrial categories right then it gets more fine-grained at the zoning level and zoning is what more people are familiar with and so zoning you're still limited by your future land use but zoning gets much more detailed and there's a lot more uses very well defined in there that's where your setbacks come into play but that's also in our community development code where all the other standards are established so we have stormwater standards that also refers to their manuals and things like that so when a new development is proposed or remodel or anything like that it's reviewed by a variety of people in the city of clearwater of course like the building construction piece is reviewed by our plans examiners who are strictly limited to the florida building code standards right and then there's the rest of us and so we have planners who review against the setbacks and the zoning and the heights and the uses we have stormwater team who is reviewing um either you know all of the stormwater calculations and and details of ponds and retention that the the development team has provided and they and you know the utilities team is reviewing where the utilities placed and doing their evaluation on capacity your fire reviews etc so you know through that process and there's a couple of different ways it happens but in general through that process there's a back and forth right if it meets our standards we check off on it if we have to ask questions or we need more information we send it back for more information until we can say as the review professionals that it meets the city's standards the florida building code etc um that's kind of that piece of it and like i said it comes in a few different pieces so um the other thing i could touch on though is while planning does the long-range planning piece for the city as a whole our our other departments do that also they have 10-year water master plans they have bigger utilities master plans that come into play and one of the things that we do is we all use similar population projections we actually use those on a regional well a county-wide scale so um the organization called forward pinellas which some people may have heard of they're a joint land use and transportation agency in our instance it's just for pinellas county um we all work with them but as as a staff their staff they um prepare a long-range transportation plan it's like a 30 year plan i don't know 30 or 40 years out and through that process they have to update it every five years and they do updated population projections as well as economic and socioeconomic so where our business is going what are our needs and demands the planners each of the city we we work with our our utilities and other groups to validate those numbers and we're doing it based on you know where are we seeing growth where do our plans call for growth and so there's a lot of the then all the the excel sheets i imagine that go into place but that's where that's how like it all kind of comes together so ultimately though on a project by project basis your the city's staff is reviewing to ideally talk about those and then of course with um you know the longer you you know have certain staff then we also have seen all the different projects and you know that helps us as well become better even better at our jobs i think like as we reflect the city's values even that much more thank you for that but that was i don't know that answer but that's like in my head i would say no that's great you you indicate how many moving parts there are and all the pieces involved it's very complex but you really didn't answer my question about sewage treatment okay so so with that though i mean that's where like i would say like utilities and their long-range plans are looking at those capacities and and you know where are they having it they're working on their repair plans and everything related to marshall street specifically when a project comes in that's within the marshall street area they would be looking at that i could say um at a different example if someone wanted to do more on their property and we'll keep using marshall street so it's within the marshall street um facility area and they want to do more what does that mean they would maybe be asking for what's called a future land use map right i said the future land use is what gives you your entitlement so to speak let's say they i'm just making stuff up obviously on the fly let's say they want to triple their density well they have to go through a process to request that and in that process first our development review committee reviews it that's a lot of our staff people um everyone gets eyes on it then we ask a lot of the questions and this is just at the policy level we're not talking about a very later on the nitty-gritty of the project they're just like nope i want to i have a project in mind and i want so i can't make it work until i get this many more units right so we're doing all that analysis and and the planners are reviewing the plans that we have and working with utilities and doing an analysis based on the most that they could do and what does that change right if it's going to require you know x numbers of gallons of water per day or generate y number of you know impact the change it's going to be this much more and can our systems accommodate that so utilities is involved in that planning is involved in that it rolls through a few more steps you may have heard of we go to our community development board with a staff report and a rec and ask for a recommendation we make staff makes a recommendation but the community development board then makes a recommendation of their own and then we present city council because a a change of that nature is a legislative action and so council would be able to read you know staff's analysis and testimony the develop whoever the applicant is their analysis and testimony and then they weigh all of that and make the decision yeah good um so um there is there a way for the city to prioritize and expedite the plan to modernize and consolidate the three sewage treatment plants into the one modern northeast plant is because i keep hearing it's 10 years out it's 10 years out is there i would not be able to speak to that so that would be a specific request and i'll see about the department but but it is true it is a project that's undergoing it is going to take some time because it's uh obviously i'm not the expert in that area but based on the information presented at council you're talking about consolidating several areas and it just happens to be bigger areas of the city into one plant and it's going to it will take some time and it's a lot of coordination in terms of the actual infrastructure that needs to occur plus plus the funding yeah i do have a brief question before we proceed with questions is it safe to say that we should restrict our questions to the 7 000 foot view and not so much the like implementations uh well i mean because we all kind of seem to be on an implementation of the road and that's really you know that but i mean i can answer the broader policy i've been at the city 17 years so i won't speak out of turn like outside of my lane too much but you know similarly to miss paul you know i've been in many of the discussions and stuff like that so if it is something but you know i mean the plan itself the the main topic is the policy side but i like to you know as part of planning and development you know we do touch a lot more of that so i don't mind okay i just wanted to make sure we respected your no i just wanted to respect your time and i didn't want you to have to continue to say that that's not your that's okay i'm also used to it for what that's worth respectfully we both also have to be a council tonight so we're here good very good so my next question has to do with our barrier island does the city have a plan to consider applying for fema related buyouts of distressed properties on our barrier islands that are repeatedly damaged by severe hurricanes and sea level rise no and if not i don't mean to laugh like that's a funny but no that one i can answer okay if not would you support buyouts of such properties and establishing passive parks by returning the most vulnerable and flood prone properties to nature i won't give an opinion on that because i think that's you know will vary by person but i can you know i'll do a higher level and you know you can use that and you know if you want to talk to certain people on my staff about things that's fine um the city added an official floodplain administrator role um in 24 we were very fortunate because he has decades of experience responding to storms and and administering um floodplain management he's a wealth of knowledge and so um we would have handled it but we handled it even better thanks to having eugene on the team and um he has a lot of experience working with fema and everything there so as we worked in our department to help our our neighbors and residents rebuild you know we've been making sure that we're remaining compliant with both the city's floodplain management ordinance and and to be clear the 50 percent rule that gets kind of generalized yes it's administered by fema but it's a city rule so we'll take ownership of that and give our friends at the federal level a little bit of a break um so we make sure that we're remaining compliant with all of that we have a flood board so if there's a variance needed for certain projects it can go to the flood board um we are we do track repetitive lost properties they're um very um protected in terms of the data that you know only a few of us have access to that data and um it's not allowed to be shared so there's we're limited in what we can do with it but we know generally you know where the repetitive loss areas are um i think what was probably surprising to to some residents in clearwater it kind of caught me i'm always used to the beach but i happen to live on the east side of town where there was a lot of flooding um and affected people over there you know along bay shore and areas and so we and and inland when we talk about the standard um so i think the city is is is cognizant of that we're doing a lot of different efforts related to floodplain management i think you know not to offer up topics but that would probably be you know a great individual topic for her people so no that's great thank you so much appreciate it madam chair per roberts rules i request my questions to be included in the minutes do i have to call them we do summarize minutes um but they are part of this the record in terms of the the video the stream so we do summarize minutes so it's not and the reason why minutes should reflect the action of the collegial body not individuals but your questions and comments or rather responses provided by miss matski will reflect your questions of the board so not specific your name will not be listed it's the board's actions does anyone else have questions about for our presenters well thank you very much for your time i appreciate it thank you again we look forward to engaging you on our other processes thank you thank you moving on to item 4.2 setting the agenda for the next meeting i do have an item i will leave it to you to decide who is the best person to do this but whoever can present to us on subject matter that we cover as it relates to hurricane prep so that we are prepared when we are out in the community and people are asking does anyone else have agenda items does the board want to continue maybe and i don't know maybe after having the presentation for hurricane preparedness maybe um consider an opportunity for an educational outreach because that is one of the items that falls within your purview and that could be a topic given that it is coming up soon yes please that would be fantastic well and our meeting won't be until june so i mean hopefully we won't have active storms before we meet again so i do think that's a good idea okay um and then the other thing i would like to ask for is when parks and rec was its own standalone board we would receive updates on ongoing projects okay i found that to be very helpful because again it educated me for when someone's asking me as a member of this board um i don't know if the library has an equivalent but there were it was very long ongoing list of projects for what i can do is i can ask the department directors to create or share a project list if they have one um and then i can share that with the meeting agenda and then that could be a practice moving forward that any time a meeting agenda is provided that we provide any lists of projects yes but not necessarily to present at the meeting but that way you guys have it ahead of time and then if there is a need for a presentation or follow-up right based on that you can discuss at the meeting i think that's a great idea um with regards to the three different areas okay great does anyone else have items they wish to put on the agenda for next month or for june i apologize i'm interested in best tree policies and the best practices for the future so if anybody if as far as canopy goes because we want to improve tree canopy in the city so any other agenda items before we move on okay board members to be heard do you all want the opportunity to just go down the line sure well thank you for a very short meeting obviously this was very eventful in terms of the planning and development i really appreciate the presentation so thank you very much for putting that together it is insightful obviously as we continue to you know kind of learn as a new board you know a lot of this these presentations are really helpful because there's a lot that is now being covered in one board so thank you thank you lauren and marcy that was a great presentation i already brought up my items of concern mostly just wanting uh some additional information to be more informed on ongoing projects um and i appreciate your time very much and i look forward to listening to you tonight at council i'll just reiterate what everyone else said but thank you very much you guys did a great job and uh appreciate the the upcoming list that we can have so we can have some more thoughtful input thank you yes and thank you very much it was a great presentation and i'm sure we will do whatever we can to help you out thank you very much uh ditto it was excellent thank you i do have one more thing only because it was already mentioned during this meeting and i don't want to overlook it as i told glenna that i would make sure that it was a priority is the status of the landings still not a project still just i think um miss maskey mentioned it earlier in the meeting it's still not a proposal i know that staff is reviewing whatever the unsolicited um proposal that was submitted by the developer to see what can and can't be done but that it's still not anything that has come before formally so it's it's kind of like well this is an idea what can be done and staff is still analyzing that proposal thank you for the update if that is everything then we are adjourned