Board of Adjustment and Appeals meeting on 10/01/2025 - Oct 01, 2025

And welcome to the October 1st, 2025 Pinellas County Board of Adjustment and Appeals hearing. We received your cases in advance and have studied them and in some cases visited the site. Members should announce the, board members should announce the sites that were visited during discussion, if you can, please. Please understand we do not bring these cases. We are citizens tasked with weighing the evidence submitted in order to make the most informed decision possible. We have no personal interest or stake in these cases except for the overall good of the community. Staff has made a recommendation in each case, and that recommendation is input only and may not necessarily be the opinion of this board. If you are planning to speak for or against any application, you must be sworn in prior to testifying, which is up here. If you have not been sworn in, please do so now with the clerk at the front right table. This is how we will proceed. When your case is called by staff, the applicant will come to the podium and give us your name and address. The applicant will then present their case, including comments from any supporters. I know my time's up. Any supporters in attendance. Comments by supporters should be new information, thus it's not an expression of support. The applicant may display the volume of support by a show of hands. Speakers will have three minutes. Opponents will then be given an opportunity to state their objection. If there are numerous opponents, it is preferable for them to select one or two spokespersons. Speakers will have three minutes. Any subsequent objector should add new information, not just rehash prior stated objections. Opponents may also display the volume of objectors by a show of hands. This will be the only opportunity for opponents to state their side. The applicant will then return to the podium solely to rebut the comments of any opponents and may not bring any new information or testimony at that time. Finally, we will close the public hearing and the board will discuss the case, make a motion, and vote. Our attorney will now provide additional information on our procedure. Thank you, Madam Chair. The matters heard by the Board of Adjustment and Appeals are quasi-judicial in nature. Please note that only competent, substantial, fact-based testimony or evidence may be considered by the board in deciding the matters before it. Pure speculation or opinion, not based on competent facts, cannot be legally considered by the board. Lay testimony with fact-based support, including but not limited to meeting minutes, surveys, engineering reports, etc., may be considered competent and substantial evidence. Thank you. Thank you. With that, to call the first case, please. Good morning. First item is VAR-25-12. This is a variance request to allow for a bedroom and bathroom addition, having a 5-foot, 8-inch rear setback from the northern property line where 10 feet is required in the R3 zone for the property located at 12101, 84th Avenue North and unincorporated Seminole. Staff is recommending conditional approval. This subject property is a corner lot measuring approximately 94 feet wide by 70 feet deep with its legal frontage on 84th Avenue North. The property is improved with a one-story detached single-family home, which includes a covered screen room and sunroom, and it was originally constructed in 1961. Historically, the property was platted as a 94-foot wide by 81.17-foot deep lot. However, coordination with the property appraisers' office revealed that 11.17 feet of the original lot depth was incorporated into the adjacent northern property, which resulted in this subject property having the lot depth of approximately 70 feet, rendering it substandard for the R3 zoning district. The applicant is proposing to add an attached bedroom and bathroom addition to the rear of their home. The addition would not extend beyond the back current structure's footprint. Again, staff is recommending conditional approval, that the applicant be required to get all permits and fees, all other setbacks to be met, and also all other unpermitted structures to be removed. There was a structure out there that was not permitted, and the owners agreed to remove that. Thank you. Is the applicant here? Come on up and give us your name and address, please. My name is Jeff Westbrook. I'm address 12101, 84th Avenue, Seminole, 33772. Thank you. Are there any objectors to this case? No objectors? Seeing no objectors, I'm going to move for the staff recommendation of conditional approval in accordance with the findings of fact that are outlined in the staff report. No second. All right. We have a motion by Mr. Baumstein and a second by Mr. Holloway. Is there any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It passes 7-0. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next case is VAR-25-07. There's following three variances were applied for. One of them was removed. I'll read them into the record, though. So first variance is to allow for construction of a 272-square-foot bedroom addition having a 13.7-foot front setback from the northern property line along the Georgia Avenue right-of-way where 20 feet is required. And a variance to allow for the construction of a pool screen enclosure having an 8-foot front setback from the southern property line along the Mangrove Lane right-of-way where 20 feet is required. And then this third one, which was a variance to allow for an in-ground pool, that one has been withdrawn by the applicant. Staff is recommending denial of the request. The subject property is 100-foot wide by 110-foot deep residential lot. It fronts on Georgia Avenue with Distant Avenue as a side street and then Mangrove Lane as an opposite frontage. So opposite of the front is another right-of-way, which also counts as a frontage. So the Mangrove Lane roadway, it was platted as an alley. It does provide direct access to four single-family homes and does function as a right-of-way, despite it being substandard width. The property contains a 2,056-square-foot, one-story home built in 1956. The applicant is proposing a new one-story attached bedroom addition and is requesting relief to encroach further into the front property than normally allowed. The applicant is also seeking to build a pool screen enclosure closer to the southern property line, subject to the front setback requirement along Mangrove Lane. Again, the in-ground pool addition has been removed from the variance request as the applicant tending to meet all setbacks with that. So does the pool screen enclosure go away? No. Just the pool. Just the pool. Just the pool. They're still asking for the pool screen enclosure to encroach. So staff finds that the request does not meet the criteria for granting a variance under Section 138-231. Specifically, there are no special conditions or unnecessary hardships. The request does not represent the minimum variance necessary, and it is inconsistent with code requirements. Staff notes that both the proposed bedroom and pool screen enclosure addition could be redesigned to meet all setback requirements on the property. Thank you. Is the applicant here? Come on up. Give us your name and address, please. When the case is called, just come on up, if you don't mind. Rick Sinning, 35 Georgia Avenue, Crystal Beach, 34681. Justin Sinning, 35 Georgia Avenue, Crystal Beach. Morning. I did go to this site. I don't know if anybody else did, but I did. You want to tell us what you're doing? So we're doing a bedroom on that front side. Obviously, the back side of our property, long term, we would like to put a pool, which is why we asked for the enclosure. That was not our original design, but because there was no hardship, the sewer lines run on the north side of our property, closest to the fence and the neighbors. The air conditioner and all the units and everything within the house sits on the south end of that property, and then the water lines come in from the west side of the property. So going to the east side of our property is the best, like we've looked at this, we've talked to our contractor and tried to change things within our house, and that was, this is the best option that we have. So the issue with going to the east side is it would put an additional door inside of our living room, so we would have our door that comes into the main house, and you would have to have a door that would go out to the bedroom, which would then cause us to have two essential doors in the living room, which we would essentially have to get rid of the couch, I mean, cause a lot of issues on the inside. We also, on that side is where the plumbing is at, where the sewage line comes clear out to the front, so we would have to adjust for that as well, so that would have to be rerun. And then additionally, with the, we are not in a flood zone, our house sits up high enough, but on that east side of the property, it would be close with putting the addition there that it potentially would put it into a flood zone. So that was the, the reason behind going that way, going out towards the front. So your address is Georgia Avenue, but your house fronts on distance, is that correct? It fronts on Georgia, but our driveway is on distance. Your driveway is on distance. Yes. Okay. Which the, on the, that's the west side, so the air conditioning unit is on the west side, which we would have to move that out to put an addition on that side as well. And then with the interior doing that, it goes through our master bedroom, so we'd have to essentially put a hallway through our master bedroom and redo our master bedroom as well, which would shrink our master bedroom down. So the addition you're trying to put on is on the front facing Georgia. Yes. And that's significant because you've got a 20-foot setback there. Yes. And you want to reduce that to 13 feet, 13-7, is that correct? That's correct. So you're looking for a six-plus foot relief. Yeah. Michael, are there other, any other examples of homes on that immediate area that have that kind of setback variance? There are homes along in that area that look like they do encroach into the front setback if there were variances. I don't know how long ago they were. I don't remember any of them in that direct area. Oh, it is Crystal Beach, so. Yeah. I don't know. But no, there are a few examples around there with encroachments. Whether it's historic or not, I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that in Crystal Beach. Are there any other questions? Are there any opponents here or proponents? Anybody else who wants to speak to this case? No. Any route? No? You're on your own. Does the board have any questions? Any other questions? Is it possible to redesign everything to meet the setback requirements? I mean, I'm not saying it's not. Within a budget. Yeah, I'm not saying it's not, but it would exceed our budget, what we have. That was another reason with going where we went was it fit into our budget. No matter what, it would, without going to the front, it would cause a redesign for essentially the whole interior of the house because where the kitchen's at to go out the back, to put a bedroom there, essentially you're going through the kitchen, and that interferes with what we want to do with the pool. To go to the, like I said, to the west side, the air conditioner's there, we have a tree there, like we'd have to take those things out. Like these were the only things that really made sense to us when we looked at it and with our contractor as well. So this is a relatively small house, if I'm correct. Yes. Yes, we have three daughters. 44 by 26, all over 1,000 square feet. Help me out with item three, the pool screen enclosure. What are you trying to do there? In all honesty, we were told that we were going to be denied for the bedroom with the thought of, they said, why can't you just put it on the other side? And it said, bring into that if you create a variance, then potentially that will show them what your future plans are, which it is our future plans, but we wouldn't have actually brought that into this case, had we not. Because we didn't know that there was frontage on the backside of our house. When we originally got the house and they did all the surveying, they didn't say anything about frontage. We had, I think, 10 feet, I think was a setback on the backside. So we didn't consider that. We just assumed like. Because of Mango Lane? Yes. Yes. And so we didn't consider that. And with our neighbors, we've. We have good neighbors. They've sent information in and said that they are, you know, they approve it. With that, when the county was out there most recently doing road work, they're, I mean, they looked at my husband and said, you know, half your property comes into the middle of this. It's not about, you know, making the neighbors mad. It's about just a living space and being comfortable. So the pool screen is off the table right now? It's not off the table. But you just wanted to know for the future. Yeah, because we will put a pool in and then we'll screen it. And so we will need that variance in the future. And to do them both at the same time made most sense. Just in curiosity, on your proposed floor plans, there's a defined room. It's not, but it's not defined between the carport and the screen enclosure. It kind of looks like an out. That's the shed where our laundry is at. Okay. I mean, that's, that looks to be bigger than most of the bedrooms inside the existing footprint as it is and it sits right now. It is. And again, we would have to, so that's our pool is going on the back side. That's a flat roof. And electrical comes over the top of that. So we would have to have the electrical rerun from the outside. And the water lines come along the back along with the plumbing. So we would have to have all of that redone as well. I just, I just look at it as a, as an opportunity. Like you could transfer that as another bedroom, right? Yeah, we, we could. And that's what I said, like potentially, like if we did redesign the whole thing, we could. But, but the cost to do that, we had an estimate a few years ago, it was over $150,000 a few years ago to do all of that. Now, with prices even higher, I'm sure it's exceeding that, which is way out of our, and like you were saying, we have, you know, just over a thousand square feet and we have, there's five of us. So there's three bedrooms now. We need another bedroom for our, another one of our daughters is what we're doing this for. Have you looked at enclosing the carport? We have, but again, that falls into how we're, we'd have to put a hallway down the backside to be able to get into that, which kind of, I mean, when you look at the floor plan, like, yeah, it, you can do that. There's no way you like, you can definitely do that, but floor plan, then you literally have a bedroom that's separated completely from the house. To bring it into the house, like again, we'd have to come through, you could add it with the bedrooms, but you'd have to put in a hallway that would cut through our master bedroom to be able to add to it. Yeah, here's the issue. You've got a sizable lot. I mean, you've got almost a quarter acre lot. Yes, for sure. And all of the hardships you're describing are within the confines of how your house is currently laid out. And that, that's not a hardship to us. The hardship to us has to be associated with the real estate, the property itself. Like, you know, I mean, the, the, the biggest hardship you've got is you've got front frontage on three sides. You've got mango distant in Georgia, which creates a somewhat unusual situation. But, you know, it, you, there should be a way to fit all these potatoes in the sack. I mean, it's. And if they would have, if we would have built the house originally, we would have put it back 10 feet and been back closer to the back side. But we didn't build the house. Like, we bought it this way. I, trust me, I would, if we could tear it down and build new, we would. Are you above floodplain? Mm-hmm. You're okay? Yep. It's almost on a little hill. Yeah. It's almost up on a little hill. Yeah. And going out the front avoids the flood, like on the east side, there would potentially bring that floodplain in to that addition. Going out the front does not bring it in. And on the east side, we also have a gopher tortoise that's under the house. I don't know the issue with those, we haven't looked into how you remove those, or I know they're protected. Yes. Any other questions? I'm trying to figure out what could work here. And, I mean, it's. We've looked at it for about six years trying to figure out what worked best. Yeah. Well, I'm talking about what's acceptable to us. So, yeah, the six-plus foot of setback relief on the Georgia Avenue side is a little bit rich. I mean, I would be willing to consider, you know, a four-foot setback, which is a 20 percent relief from the 20-foot setback. But beyond 20 percent is, we begin to set precedents. And I know it's Crystal Beach and there's 1,000 violations up there. You know, it's just. I can take this control to you. I know. It's, you know, it evolved over time. And what can I say? Would you be willing to live with a 16-foot setback from Georgia? That means your addition would be only 14 and a half feet instead of 16 feet. You may have to reconfigure that or do something else with it. Move that to the inside then? I mean, if that's what it takes. Like, I mean. I don't think this is going to fly here, to be honest with you. I don't know. If you'd be willing to live with that, I'd be willing to go with the 20 percent relief on that side and give you a 16 and a half, I'm sorry, yeah, a 16-foot setback in lieu of 20 feet on the north side. I think we could live with that. Also, in addition, another way that I would look at this is that if you extend, you've got 20 feet of buildable space to the west, or, yeah, to the west, right? So there would be no setback requirement or no variance requirement there. With a slight addition to your, or slight change to your floor plans, if you go out to the west, you'd have to put a hallway that bifurcates whatever the bedroom is. And it seems like a very large bedroom, and it's not completely drawn out. Yeah, it's our master bedroom. There's two bedrooms up there. So you could bifurcate that, and then you could put your master bedroom out to the west, and it's all inside your property line. And it even encapsulates the roof structure of your hip roof, and it's just you're running it straight all the way across our entire gable roof. Yeah, we actually, we talked about that, but we would be moving our air conditioner. We'd have to move it all the way out, and we'd have to cut a tree down that sits out front that basically shades our whole house. Which is our own tree. Which is, yeah. And, yes, we looked at that. A hallway would literally cut our master bedroom in half. I know that end, it looks like there's two bedrooms there. And it would, like, the cost to do that is through the roof, just because of the amount of work that would need to be done on the inside of the house. Well, again, that's not a hardship to us. I would, yeah, the four foot. Can you wait on that pool enclosure until you have the pool? I mean, I feel odd approving a pool enclosure without a pool. No, I understand that. Let's see if I can cobble together a motion here. I'm going to move for denial of the request for the 13.7-foot setback on Georgia on the north side, but to approve a 16-foot setback on the north side and denial for the pool screen. And I base that on the fact of the hardship of the practical difficulty of trying to work within a lot that has setbacks on three sides, has street frontage on three sides, which does create somewhat of a unique hardship for the property. So if that's okay with you, what I'm going to move is to essentially approve a 16-foot setback and move a 20-foot setback on the north side, denial of the pool screen. Is that it? And that's it. Any conditions? Yeah, all the conditions. Permits and fees. We might need a little more to do. Permits fees. Permits fees meet all other setbacks. And meeting all other setbacks. Add that to my motion. Is there a second? I'll second that. Do we need to address two, the variance for the pool? It's been struck. They've withdrawn that. That one's fine. Okay. Okay. Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Baumstein, a second by Mr. Warner. Are there any other questions from the board or any other comments? Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That's a 7-0. That's something. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next case is VAR-25-13. This is an after-the-fact variant to allow for a single-family residence currently under construction, having a 5.5-foot rear setback to the southern property line where 10 feet is required in an R3 zone for the property located at 8766 94th Avenue North in unincorporated Seminole. Staff recommends conditional approval. The subject property is being developed with a single-family home that's under construction. It's gone through foundation framing, drywall texture, and interior painting have been completed. The applicant secured a building permit for construction of the new home on May 14th, 2024, which confirmed adherence to all minimum building setback regulations resulting in the permit's issuance. During construction, when a slab is poured, a tie-in survey is completed and provided to the county for a slab inspection. This inspection never occurred as the slab was poured during the time the county offices were closed due to Hurricane Helene. Construction further commenced on the home, and after many inspections later was when it was noted by a county building inspector that the foundation slab appeared to have been improperly poured into the rear setback. This oversight was attributed to a multitude of errors and events, the missed slab inspection and tie-in survey not being provided to the county, the property being surveyed in error, and the subcontractor's error while pouring the slab as they measured the required setback from the wrong location. Staff has determined that this situation aligns with the objectives of an after-the-fact variance request as outlined in Section 138-232, and we recommend conditional approval with the following conditions. All applicants shall obtain all permits, pay all applicable fees. All other setback requirements shall be met, and there is a five-foot easement along the rear of the property, so no structure enclosements into that rear easement are permitted, including any roof overhangs. Good morning. Good morning. Your name and address, please. Yeah, my name is Ash Diwari, and my address is 8766 94th Avenue, South Seminole, Florida. Thank you. Are there any objectors to this case? You heard staff tell the history of this. Do you have anything to add to that? No, I think they covered it. Is construction stopped on the house, or has it been completed? It's in process. It's still underway? Yeah. Okay. Give us your name, if you're mistaken. Joseph Lalemont. And your involvement is? Yes. I work on the job with the contractor. Okay. Have you been sworn in? Yes. Okay. So a question to staff. When a tie-in survey is provided to the county, is it not just reviewed in-house, or somebody actually does a physical inspection? They do a physical. The slab inspection, they would go out there, and as they're reviewing the slab, they look at the tie-in survey as well. Again, the slab inspection was not done. When the slab was poured, it was during the storm time, and it was never called in for slab inspection, and then construction continued on. It was missed from the applicant. May I speak? Yes, please. Okay. So there's been a lot of different changes with Pinellas County. When you do a footer, there's also an inspection for a survey. We put that in so they make sure the house is not too big, so when you put that in there, there was one. So if someone says there wasn't, there was also one for there. Then the stem wall, there's also one at stem wall where we had that done. When they came out, inspected the footer, the stem wall, that is done way before the tie-in survey is done. You guys added that in there, so you don't have these issues where they happened a lot. Somehow this, where the footer and at the stem wall, we had a hiccup. A footer and a stem wall inspection is purely for structural, it's not for location. Okay, but that's where all the walls are going up, right? The purpose is to verify structural integrity of the footer and the stem wall. It is not based on location. That is the contractor's job to verify that he is inside this location. The top-of-block survey, or you want to call it the slab survey, the tie-in survey, that is done for location. So before you pour, your surveyor should give you a courtesy of saying you're not in the right place. But on that, the distance and everything, that was on there, with the footer and all that, that's where we're putting the stem wall up. That's why you guys put that in place, so we don't build out of that area, correct? No. The tie-in survey is what, because how are an inspector going to know where a property line is, because it's not necessarily a fence or anything like that? And that's the purpose of a tie-in survey. There were stakes put in there, or where the footers are. So it shows where we're building the house. So if you build a footer out of that, usually they catch that right there if you're building the house too big. Everything on the plan, it just, that wasn't just because of us. That was because of somebody looked over something, how this house is laid out. So it's not just on us. It went through the county, you know, the engineer did that, and also the county. Your name, please. Neil, Bulk, Zoom, Ashes family. And you were in, you were in, sworn in. Okay. So we did provide the survey. The problem was it was never with a raised seal. So they had the survey in hand, but they didn't upload it or whatever to the system because they wanted actually an embossed seal. So they had the survey in hand, but they just wanted us to do it. But it was 30 inspections later until they asked us for the actual embossed seal one. So we did 30 inspections later. And then they said, then Inspector Kevin said, hey, something's wrong. And we were like, what are we talking about? Something's wrong. You guys are in the wrong spot. And then I went and gave them this. So it wasn't provided. It just was never uploaded into their system. So, and there was some inaccuracies from what they found, the staff over there found on the survey is what they found some inaccuracies. It's eight inches off on the back on one side and five inches off on the back on the other side of the overhang. So, and that's where the whole debacle came in play. And plus the engineer gave a letter for the slab, but they don't do a slab. He doesn't do location. He just, like he was saying on this structure of it. And that was it. So that was the problem. And then it went on and went on and nobody kept asking and nobody just, they just went on for 30 inspections later until a framing inspection caught it, which that has nothing to do with that part of it. Are you okay with the conditions that we gave you? Yeah, we're okay. I don't think we have a lot of choice here. I mean, this is errors on multiple parties. Primarily the surveyor who initially gave you the stakes of where to put the foundation, the footers, he screwed up and then it just never got picked up until it was too late. I am confused, however, by what you're saying is a five and eight inch overhang problem. The county thinks you have a four and a half foot overhang setback problem. So it's the roof line is hanging over eight inches over into the setback and five inches. There's the five foot utility setback? In the easement. The overhang. Encroaches the easement. Yeah, the house, the overhang encroaches in the easement. What was discussed at DRC with staff is that that overhang would need to be cut back because there is county sewer in that easement in the back and if they need to get equipment in there, they cannot have an overhang that could possibly impede equipment. So do we need to make that part of the? That's part of the condition. That's the second condition. So that's the second condition. Yes, second one. Oh, no structural encroachments. Okay. You warned me out. I'm going to move for a conditional. Is there anybody here to talk about? No, I asked. Okay. I'm going to move for a staff recommendation of conditional approval in accordance with the findings of fact as outlined in the staff report and with all the conditions that are in the report as well. Thank you. Second. All right. I have a motion by Mr. Baumstein and a second by Ms. Vaughn. Are there any questions or anything else? Any other comments? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes 7-0. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Our next case is VAR-2511. This is, there's two variance requests on here for an R3 zone property located at 5746 Hillside Street North and Unincorporated Seminole. The first is the variance to allow for an after-the-fact in-ground pool under construction having a 7-foot-9-inch side street setback from the water's edge of the pool to the southern property line along Walker Avenue right away where 10 feet is required and a 5-foot-7-inch 7-inch rear setback from the pool water's edge to the western property line where 8 feet is required. The second variance is to allow for the construction of a pool screen enclosure having a 4-foot-6-inch side street setback from the southern property line along Walker Avenue where 10 feet is required and a 3-foot rear setback from the western property line where 5 feet is required. Staff recommends conditional approval of number one of the pool and denial of the pool screen enclosure. Good morning, Justin Fly. I'm still. He's still going. I'm still going. Sorry, Justin. Sorry. The subject property is a corner lot with Hillside Street North serving as its legal frontage and Walker Avenue as a side street. The property is improved with a detached single-family home bill 1964. The owner is currently constructing a permitted pool and deck that had a permit that was issued on May 7, 2025. During construction of the pool, a survey dimension error resulted in setback issues affecting the southern and western property lines. As a result, the owner is requesting an after-the-fact variance for the side street for the pool of 7.7 feet 9 inches and a rear western setback of 5 feet 7 inches. Additionally, the owner is requesting a variance to reduce setbacks for proposed pool screen enclosure which would be situated closer to Walker Avenue and the western property line. The enclosure is intended to align with the pool deck and would be complemented by a 6-foot-high privacy fence around the perimeter of the decking. So staff does not object to the conditional approval of the in-ground pool finding it. The request meets the criteria for granting a variance in Section 138-231 and also the after-the-fact variance provisions in Section 138-232. However, staff does not support the pool screen enclosure request as it would be visually obtrusive along both frontages. Requests for pool setback variances typically do not include companion screen enclosures for this reason. Approval should be subject to the following conditions just for the in-ground pool only, no screen enclosure, applicant to obtain all permits and fees, all other setbacks to be met, and must make sure that the impervious surface ratio of the lot does not exceed 75%. Okay, Justin. Sorry about that. Sorry. Don't worry. Good morning. Justin Fly, Hogfish Pools. Property address is 5746 Hillside Street. Is the pool screening still on the table as well? It is, yes. Are there any objectors to this? Hold on a sec. Any questions before I bring the objector up? Do you want to present your case? Present your case, I guess. Sure. So we had a survey given to us from the homeowner. We designed the pool around that. We designed the screen enclosure around that. That's what we submitted for permitting. Got it being back approved. We put the shell on the ground. We started to lay out the footer, and something didn't look right. So we double-checked our dimensions again, which we do prior to shooting the shell. Everything matched up. And we called a surveyor out to come repin for us because the dimensions weren't lining up. Things didn't look right on the house. And that's when we found the error. We did stop construction. We self-reported this. So that's kind of where we are now. So the shell is in the ground. The pool has stopped. The customer is okay not doing the screen enclosure. They really want the pool. The fence meets all requirements. That's going to surround the pool. So that's taking care of that. So that's kind of where we are with it. So this pool is actually on the side of the customer's house, but it happens to be, because it's a corner lot, adjacent to the frontage of houses on that side, what would be that side street. Is that Walker? That's Walker, and that is correct, sir. Yeah. And there'll be some sort of fence? There's a six-foot privacy fence that fits all the requirements that will be going around the pool. Okay. All right. So, all right, let's hear it. Yeah, if we're going to be objective, come on. Do I sit down? Yeah. I'll call you back up. Morning. Your name and address, please. My name is Susan Hudak, and I live at 11600 Walker Avenue, which is across the street from the subject home that you're talking about. There's a lot of traffic in that particular area, hundreds of cars exiting. The water homes that where I sit, it's an intersection of four streets. Um, what I would ask if it hasn't been done is some type of, um, traffic survey. That those exiting hillside onto Walker, if they're at the stop sign looking to the right, um, my concern is that there's going to be an obstructed view looking to the right, and the traffic coming out is very fast, and I am not interested in having an accident that ends up in my front yard. Um, if you remember many years ago exiting out of Walker onto 113th Street, because of, because of the curvature and the road at the end of Walker or the upper part of Walker onto 113th Street, there was, after multiple accidents, someone who was killed, a young person, and it wasn't until that point where there was the death of a child because of a motor vehicle accident that, um, traffic changes were made on Walker Avenue. So, I would just ask if it's going to move forward, I understand having a pool, that's great, but the obstruction of view of cars coming out of hillside onto Walker is my concern that there is not another horrific accident in the Oakhurst Shores neighborhood, um, that would potentially end up in my front yard. Your, your concern is the fence that they're going to put up is going to obstruct the view? Of those vehicles that are exiting out of the neighborhood from Walker. Okay. Because the pool itself. Because there's a curve in the road. Because, because we're not going to build a, a, uh, pool cage. It's cage, yeah. So the pool itself is not an obstruction, but you're concerned about the fence that's going around it. How far back does that fence sit, uh, Michael? The fence isn't, isn't built yet. The fence on a corner lot requires them to come in and get a, a zoning clearance. And part of that zoning clearance is to make sure they meet site visibility requirements at the intersection. So the fence cannot encroach into what is considered the visibility from that right away. It sounds like that would be taken care of. Yeah. So, um, the, the right of, there is a significant distance between the right of way and the lot line. As I'm looking at the survey and I'm looking for a dimension which does not appear to be here. Yeah. On a side street they can go, a six foot tall privacy fence can go right up to the property line along the side street. The front setback would be 20 feet, which would be from hillside. So that's, that's, has to meet those minimum setbacks. But then if that encroaches into the site visibility, your angle, they would, they would have to modify it off of that. And sometimes that's when you see the fences at an angle along the corner. Yeah. So, um, just to help you out here, from the curb at the edge of the street to the lot line, uh, appears to be close to 20 feet. Um, and then the fence would be inside the lot line. Yes. It's not all the way out to the street. There's going to be at least that distance, that 20 feet or so, of, between the fence, the proposed fence, and the curb of Walker. Walker. So it's a pretty good distance. It's not like the fence is coming all the way up to the curb. I, I know that sounds confusing, but I, I, I, that site visibility issue is a real concern at the approval level and it will be addressed and it's approved at the permitting level. Yeah. Fence would require come in for that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for your input. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Madam Chair, staff expressed a concern and I understand why, and I'm not picking on the last speaker because it actually turned into a triangulated conversation with staff and, you know, the board and, and, and the objector. But we're not running the timer, which we should be. Okay. Okay. Because we've got. You're right. Sorry. Forgot. Yeah. That's okay. But, and that's, again, when you start having dialogue amongst the board, then it's a different kind of thing. Right. But we've got some matters today. Yes, we do. Where we're going to do the timer. So. The general has to be somewhere. I know. Justin, where are you? There you are. Come on up. Well, I ain't the corner where I'm supposed to be. All right. All right. Don't do that. All right. I'm going to move to approve the recommendation, staff recommendation, which is conditional approval of the pool, denial of the pool, screen, and closure, and to meet all the conditions that are included in the staff report. And I do so in accordance with the findings of fact that is outlined in the staff report. Is there a second? I second that motion. Thank you. So there's a motion by Mr. Baumstein and a second by Mr. Hunsaker. Is there any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? I pass a 7-0. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day, guys. You too. I think so. The first case is TY2-25-07. This is a modification of a previously approved Type II use to allow for a 11,570.7 square-foot detached addition for a place of worship in an RA zone for the property located at 600 19th Street in Palm Harbor. Staff recommends conditional approval. This site is approximately 4.87 acres and is in the southeast corner at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and 19th Street. The site contains a place of worship that has been in operation since 1984. The prior BA approval permitted an expansion in two phases. Phase 1 added an 1890 square foot modular building, while Phase 2 included the construction of a 17,000 square foot sanctuary with associated parking. Only the first phase was completed and the second phase was never built. So the church has come back with new plans to construct an 11,570 square foot sanctuary building. Rose expansion would include sanctuary, dining halls, storage areas, classrooms for religious educational programs held during worship services, a chapel, and administrative offices. Existing buildings currently serve as an education facility and a sanctuary. These structures will remain and be converted into the pastor's office with adult Sunday school classes continuing to be held there until the new sanctuary building is finished. The proposed sanctuary building will meet all minimum development parameters and parking requirements to serve its use. Separately, the applicant has provided conceptual architectural elevations of the sanctuary building, which appears to meet the intent of community assembly facilities use section concerning architectural compatibility to residentially zoned properties. Approval should be subject to a DRC site plan, which is full site plan. The applicant shall be required to obtain all permits and fees. All specific use standards pertaining to meeting halls, community assembly facilities should be met, and the applicant must meet all other development requirements as identified in Chapter 158 of the Land Development Code, which is floodplain management. There's a creek that runs through the property kind of at a diagonal, and so there is flood zone out there, so any requirements that they would need to meet regarding that, which could be an increased setback off of that creek, could be possible. So if they had to meet that, they might have to adjust based on the concept plan, would have to push the building a little bit further north on there. However, they would still need to meet all district requirements, and it wouldn't be considered a major modification that would be required to come back to the board if they had to go through this process and bump the setbacks off that creek. Thank you. Your name and address, please. Good morning. My name is Hush Govahi. I am with Northside Engineering, located in Clearwater, 300 South Belcher Road, and I have been sworn in. Today with me, we have church representatives and also our architect. If there are any questions you might have and I cannot answer, I would like to ask them to join if you don't mind. Can I say one thing? Let me just, are there any opponents to this application? No. Seeing none. Okay. Skating by here. We'll be glad to answer any questions. Michael eloquently described the project. The biggest challenge, as he stated, has to do with the floodplain mitigation, and we'll need to address that. We have a consultant on board, so the building will be shifted or may be shifted. However, in no case will we violate any setback requirements. So as it stands right now, we're not asking for any variances. It's basically just straight-through requests. And there's plenty of room to do what you need to do there. Yes. Yes. Okay. Anything else? I'm going to move for staff recommendation of conditional approval of the type 2 use in accordance with the findings. In fact, as outlined in the staff report. Second. There's a motion by Mr. Baumstein, a second by Ms. Vaughn. Is there any other questions or comments? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? As a 7-0. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. One time, no shake. Great seeing you. Enjoy your day. Thank you for your public service. You're welcome. Okay. Are we done for the day? Yeah. Isn't that it? You want to explain it first? Yes. Yes. Yes, first. So we did, I know the board members did receive an email on Monday regarding whether this case was eligible to be heard, this next one, TY2-2505, whether it can be heard by the board. They raised a couple of objections in this. Just go through it on objection one. And three had to do with, as part of the board approval, there's an addendum letter that outlines the requirements for an applicant. And one of the requirements in there is that any permits need to, that were conditioned by the board, need to be approved. That previous case in 2018, there were no conditions for permits placed by the board. And then additionally, objection three had to do with the site plan approval, meeting the site plan. However, there's, again, this in 2018, there was no condition for a site plan approval because at the time there was no expansion on the property. So those, staff does not feel that those are warranted. Objection two has to do with county language, which is our Section 134-8, which is applications should not be taken in for any kind of development permits, site plan variants, et cetera, when there are code enforcement violations on the property. However, further down in this section says these restrictions shall not apply to applications submitted to correct a code enforcement violation, building violation, et cetera. This case does have code enforcement violations. They do, one has to do with minimum standards on the property. The other is from 138, which is they're in violation of their 2018 approval for the property. So similar to how we've had cases come to us all the time that have code enforcement violations is that staff feels this is the correct avenue to address that and to seek relief that these restrictions should not apply to these applications because this one is coming into, if they're approved, denied, this will correct the code enforcement violation on a property. So staff feels after reviewing these that we can take these in and take them forward and this application can be heard. I do have the code enforcement officer for the cases here today if you need any specifics on what the violations that are outstanding on the property are. Thank you. I'll introduce the case. All right. This is case TY2-25-05. This is a modification to the conditions of a previously approved type 2 use from 2018, case BA 03-18, for a community service use on an R4 zone property located at 4017 56th Avenue North in Lilman. Specifically, the request is to remove the conditions that were placed on that 2018 approval, which are that the use of the space shall be limited to dry food storage to supply community partners who separately provide single meal delivery. Two, that the uses shall be limited to office and storage space to support the provisions of services to the Lilman community, specifically neighborhood improvement programs and child hunger programs. And three, activities shall be limited to normal business hours. Staff is recommending denial of the request as submitted and a conditional approval of an alternate staff recommendation. And this is a little bit different on how we do things, so I will go through and try to summarize all of this. Ask me any questions if you need me to stop and re-explain. So staff finds that the request as submitted does not meet the criteria for granting a type 2 use per section 138-241 of the code. The subject property is about 1.64 acres, R4-zone property, developed with a two-story building originally in construction in the 1960s as a fire station. The property is currently owned by the Florida Dream Center. Historically, the property was used by the Lilman Fire Department until it was sold in 2008. And the property had various temporary uses, non-profit and religious uses on the property. In 2018, the property received a type 2 conditional approval for a community service use with the conditions noted that I described above. The property was owned by Pinellas County at the time and utilized by the Florida Dream Center. Florida Dream Center purchased the property from the county in 2024. The sale included a deed restriction limiting the property to be used for a broad array of public and social services for residents of the Lilman community. The applicant's request to modify the 2018 type 2 use approval is due to expanded activities and services that are currently being provided on the property. The applicant has, and I'll just summarize what those uses are on there, which are, they've added both dry and cold food storage for distribution. They have mobile food bank operations, walk-in services for food, case management assistance, work readiness training, both indoor and outdoor. Outdoor activities involve using a forklift and other construction equipment. The applicant has stated that due to growing demand for services in the community, the expended the services and activities as well as the hour of operation offered beyond the conditioned activities of 2018 approval. These expended services and activities necessitated a modification to the 2018 type 2 use approval from the Board of Adjustment and Appeals. However, no modification was sought from the applicant. These expanded activities and hours operation have increased traffic coming to the site, both vehicle and pedestrian. The addition of outside storage, which includes shipping containers and a covered storage areas, increased trucks for loading and unloading, and the offering of outdoor training with heavy equipment, such as a forklift and other construction equipment, has increased the impacts to adjacent property owners above the 2018 type 2 approval, which did not include any outdoor activities. This went before the Development Review Committee twice. At the first meeting, the DRC Committee had asked for a parking plan to show, you know, the parking need for these uses on the site. So the applicant did provide that parking plan, and then they also provided an optional operational plan. This option proposes modification and staggering of hours of operation and reduced overlap of activities to reduce traffic and parking needs. A concept plan was provided that showed 17 parking spaces on site and areas for outdoor storage as well and parking removed from the right-of-way. It's noted that this was an improvement from the original. However, staff still has the same concerns as outlined below. And those were as submitted is that I'll go through them as the criteria. The regulations in the R4 zoning district are designed to protect residential character of the neighborhood while permitting rehabilitation improvements and redevelopment in keeping with the scale of the neighborhood and surrounding area. We find that the proposed use as submitted is operating at a scale that exceeds the capacity of the site and does not fit with the residential character of the surrounding single-family neighborhood. As for buffering, the property location in the middle of an established neighborhood means that buffering is needed to offset visual and or noise impacts. There is currently no screening or buffering in place as well as no separation from the outdoor uses from the adjacent residential home. The applicant has not demonstrated how the outdoor activities can be adequately buffered from the adjacent residential homes. As to criteria C about adequate drives, walkways, and parking available, they are not in place. Most of the parking for this use occurs in the right-of-way, some in marked parking spaces that were a remnant from the previous fire station use, and some in areas not designated for parking. Loading and unloading occurs mostly on the site. However, this has also occurred in the right-of-way. Additionally, there are no sidewalks in front of this property. The applicant has indicated in their submittal that a significant portion of their customers walk to the site for services. We find that this configuration of parking, loading, and pedestrian traffic is not adequate, and changes are needed to create a safe traffic and pedestrian interaction. And to the proposed use will not create excessive vehicular traffic or other traffic problems. The use as submitted produces traffic in excess than what can be accommodated on the site, requiring vehicles to use the adjacent residential streets to park. So recommending conditional approvals, appropriate site plan review, which would require that traffic be assessed. Drainage problems, we don't find that there's any drainage issues being created, as there's no new structures or impervious surface being proposed. And all provision requirements applicable to the zoning district will be met. No new structures being added, which there will be no need for variant standards. That's based on our review of their submittal and our requests, our recommendation of denial. The staff has also come back with an alternative approval. So we recognize that the 2018 Type 2 use approval for community service use established that this use is appropriate for this location. And staff agrees that the use can continue on this site, just at an appropriate scale that fits into the character and scale of the surrounding residential neighborhood, which, while still being able to provide services that are spelled out in the deed restrictions. So we're looking at just finding the right size that fits in with this property and having uses on there, so they're compatible with the surrounding uses. And there's an outline list of conditions that we reviewed it by and recommend. And you'll see with those conditions, we look at which criteria those would be applied to, appropriate site plan review, moving all parking and loading to be provided on the site in designated spaces, installing sidewalk along both frontages and removing of the marked parking spaces in the adjacent right-of-way, no outdoor activities, including the training that utilized construction equipment, so keeping all activities inside, hours of operation, limiting them from Monday to Saturday, 7 to 5, all permits and fees, resolve all code enforcement violations, meet screening and buffering requirements of Section 138-3361, all zoning district setbacks shall be met, except for the original buildings as they are, and then the applicant to apply with our county noise ordinance, and with that we can remove the conditions from the original VA and apply these new conditions. Now I'll answer any questions you have once I catch my breath. Are there any questions first before I get the applicant up here? Let me just clarify one thing. One of your conditions was to remove all the parking on the 56th Avenue side, so where would they park? In the back parking lot. In the parking lot. There's a, well throughout the, down into the package, there's a proposed parking plan. Okay. Yes, they did provide a proposed plan that shows they can accommodate 17 parking spaces in that back area. The parking that's in the front, it currently backs out into the right-of-way. We do have public works staff here who can address if you wanted to go into any details on that. Okay. Mr. McIntyre, can you just review the time, allowed time for speakers, because I see we have a lot of people here. Well, it's basically my concern was the applicant's block and has their time, like staff does. But then obviously if we, in that previous case, I noticed there were a lot of people here that I assumed were for this case, and I was like, okay, that person might have run a little bit over the three minutes. So it's a three-minute time block. Now, if the board has questions, if they bring up a unique issue and the board has questions as a dialogue, that's a different question. But if it's just a statement again and again and again of the same thing, then we're on a timer. That's the only thing that's fair. For those of you who are here to speak, and I see there's a bunch of you, I don't mean to take you. Oh, go right ahead. Just know that you have three minutes to say something cogent. So keep that in mind because we don't want to have to cut you off. And if there's somebody, you know, one speaker for a bunch of people, that would be even better. Yes. So in that case, if there's a representative speaking on behalf of all of the objectives, they get more time. If they're going to have a group of people as a block assign a speaker, I would ask that each of those people give their name to the clerk for the record so that they say they're giving their time to that person so we have a detailed record of it. That's the way it's really supposed to be done, rather than just people just standing up and holding up their hands. The record doesn't catch that. And they've been sworn in. Yeah. The applicant, please come up. Good morning, Madam Chair, board members. Katie Cole with the law firm of Hillward Henderson, representing the Florida Dream Center with respect to this type 2 use request. Our associate's handing out some evidence finders. Much of this is what you've already received, but there are a few additional things. But your whole packet we don't get a copy of, so we just want to make sure you have everything for the record. So this, and I'll refer to a few things in here, but generally it's what you've already seen, so I don't want you to be too afraid of that. So with respect to the applicant's time period, well, we will, I have a PowerPoint that includes a video. I do believe we would like to have a bit more time than the seven minutes that we would normally get, probably 15 would, if that's okay, Madam Chair. Go ahead. I think so. Okay. And finally, I don't think all the people in the audience are speaking. I think they're here for support. I figured that. We'll keep it moving along. Thank you. Appreciate that. With that, we'll go ahead and get started on the PowerPoint. So as you heard the staff indicate, this is a request to modify a previously approved type 2 approval. And the applicant, I think there's some nuances that have been very difficult to work through at DRC and with staff because it is the question of the variety of uses because the 2018 approval was specific and is not reflective of both the county's intent to place this facility in the layman area or the actual operations. And so in going through this process with staff, the applicant worked through exactly what are the operational plans, what are the services provided by the Florida Dream Center. And we hope by the end of today we can get to a point where we agree that the variety of services are all appropriate at this location. And what we also agree with staff is there needs to be an appropriate size of those operations. But we hope that you all will agree that it's not necessarily the board's job to specify the specific hours of each program that's happening and how many people can participate in those programs, but rather create the box in which this organization can successfully operate. And that's our goal here today. I believe we have a video that's teed up in here, and I don't know how to run it. You can see that this is some of the food distribution services that was contemplated here. 180,000 pounds of food per month, including the Saturday morning Adopt-a-Block outreach program. You received some correspondence about the Saturday programming and how it did overflow into the community. And because of that, Florida Dream Center has been responsive, relocated its Saturday distribution to a church nearby in an attempt to accommodate the neighbor's concerns there. These food programs are important with respect to the comprehensive plan, which states that the county should provide options for food sensitivity and in food deserts. There is not a grocery store in the Laylman area, and there is also a high population of homebound or elderly people in this area who rely upon their food distribution. Adopt-a-Block program also helps with cleanup and code violation, attempting to keep the entirety of the area clean. This is the forklift, and while, yes, there are some prospective trainees who ride it, it's also used for regular operations. So that is a condition that we'd like to discuss. But this is some of the workforce training that has been going on here during the day with the forklift. Here is an aerial of the subject property. It is an institutional zoning, and as was discussed, it was previously the Laylman Fire Station. It's about just over a half-acre property. To the north here on the map, you can see is a newly approved Habitat for Humanity project that's under construction there, too. The history of the property is interesting, and the county approvals included a deed restriction, specifically the Declaration of Restrictive Covenants is in your packet, as well as the approvals. This property was conveyed to the Florida Dreams Center by the county commission, specifically to provide for public and social services to the Laylman community in support of the community. In backing that up, the county has also provided over $2 million of funding in the past five years for the operations at the Florida Dreams Center, including operations for the acquisition of the forklift, for the acquisition of the walk-in freezer that is used to store the food that is now in violation of the previously approved Type 2 use. So these $2 million, including ARPA funds, are generally held by the Tampa Bay Community Foundation and utilized to reinvest in the Laylman community and in Pinellas County. This is an illustrative map of the households served, not the homeless population. You can see where these folks are located. About 70 percent of the clients have permanent addresses in the community. It is generally clustered in Laylman, but obviously it does go further than that, some of the clients. So the current request is to approve of the Type 2 use modification, specifically to remove the restriction on the types of uses available here, and depending on the board, to agree on the conceptual plan of what's appropriate from a parking and operation standpoint, or parking and site plan standpoint here. We disagree, obviously, with the staff's assessment of whether this meets the Type 2 use. It is consistent with the comprehensive plan, as we've already talked about, the food desert, about providing social services, about assisting the elderly with respect to home maintenance and care and home ownership. All of these things are articulated in the comprehensive plan. It was specifically determined that this location was a location of need in the community, and the County Commission decided to convey this property to the Dream Center accordingly. This is part of the Laylman CRA and has operated within it. There's no new construction or site operations. You'll also see in the packet, LMA and John Landon is here who can introduce himself and his qualifications, did conduct a parking and traffic analysis, including videos, to show exactly what was happening in the community and on the street and help aid the Florida Dream Center in adjusting its expectations and plans with respect to what's appropriate on the property. These are additional comprehensive plan goals. These were also cited in your packet. This is, as the staff said, through the DRC process, the applicant worked with staff in regards to the operations plans. And at this point, I would like to introduce John Landon, and who can introduce himself and his qualifications. He worked closely with the operational staff to look at what the parking demand was for each one of the uses as compared to what's available on the site. So... That's all right. John Landon. I am a professional engineer with about 50 years experience, a lot of it in this county. Processing site plans may be similar to this and dealing with staff quite a bit. I don't know if you can see this on your screen. If you put it here. Right there, okay. And we would like to proffer Mr. Landon as an expert, you might need to... Yeah, I've got a resume I can give you to put it for the record. And you've been sworn in, right, Mr. Landon? I have not been sworn in. Oh, we definitely need to work for that. Do we need to do that now? Yes, please. Yeah. All right, sorry about that. That's quick. All right, so we were called into a couple things. One is kind of a traffic study to see what's going on out there. We videoed the site twice. We had a camera glitch the first run, but pretty much we replicated the peak times they've got. Tuesday, I think we got a video that we uploaded to show basically they're using all the parking spaces. I think there's 11 on... Get these roads mixed up. 11 on 40th and... There's a total of 18, but I think it's 7-11. They're using every one of them. I think some of that's going to be medicated, as Katie will go over in her presentation. Staff was adamant that we eliminate all parking in the right-of-way, even though it's been there for at least 20 years from what I could see on Google Earth. Not only the fire station used it, but some of the other uses before and after. So the staff asked us to, you know, mitigate the traffic, get it out of the right-of-way. We were able to squeeze that in this area in the back. And unfortunately, what that does, it totally wipes... I don't know if you can make that out. Try one without the aerial. But we squeezed all the parking back in this fenced-in area. What they're doing now just gets wiped out. So they could operate, but I think, as they will elaborate on later, it would significantly diminish their operation. So it's really, to us, down to the parking in the right-of-way or not. I don't believe this board has authority to grant us rights to park in the right-of-way. I think that can only be done by the Director of Public Works. And it's our intent to go there and ask for a waiver. We've talked to staff. We've actually drafted a waiver. We're kind of waiting to see what this board decided and how to proceed. I would point out that not all the parking spaces are in the right-of-way. You know, probably a third are on the property. So it's the rear end of the cars that stick out into the right-of-way. Again, as they have for at least 20 years. I didn't go back any further. Yeah, the entrance to the building is also right here. There's a handicapped space in that area. If we put everything in the back, the handicapped space, which is going to be difficult to design with the slopes, will end up being right in the middle and kind of hard to get to. So this would work. We can cram 18 spaces in there, but it's tight, and it blows out everything they're doing. And then would they have to walk around to the front of the building? Yeah. And then there's the issue of sidewalks. You know, the staff wants sidewalks in there. There's no room to put sidewalks and parking. But even if you put these out further toward the right-of-way, there's no room for that. So as far as access, I mean, there's plenty of paved area, just as there's been for years. The unfortunate condition is you've got cars possibly backing into pedestrians. But again, that's been over 20 years. How many employees at the Dream Center are on a daily basis, approximately? It depends. Less, yes. If you look, if we have, are you all seeing the PowerPoint? Mm-hmm, yeah. Okay. You can see on the PowerPoint here, parking demand shows staff. I got you. So at the highest capacity, it's 20 people in the morning, and then it goes down from there. Great, thanks. And so to Mr. Landon's point, that is one of the things that we would request is an adjustment of the conditions of approval for the alternative conditions of approval that staff has recommended. Your parking loading plan that you just referred to right there, yep. That does not include any people coming to site. They'd have to come through the fence. This does not, this is not the customer, the clients served, correct? So we're already at max capacity of just the volunteers, and then there's no parking in addition for customers. This is the current parking demand for services. There are clients, like you can see Saturday, the client list is listed there, and that includes all the clients. But there's no way for somebody to pull up to the front door anymore. Right. If the parking lot, if the parking's removed on the right of way along 40th Street, it really is problematic because not only is that the front door where the clients do come in, but if they were to enter in the back door, they're walking through the warehouse space and kind of the heavy food distribution areas. So is Saturday the only day when clients come in? No, there are clients that come other, yes. Saturday's the big day. And you can see the number of participants, staff and volunteers, the walk-in services that are available Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. 70% of clients arrive without vehicles. Class sizes depend on how many are there. So there's not a specified number. But Saturday is the largest, and those services were relocated to the church recently. That's not even there anymore. Okay. So this is option B, which limits operations. And again, our request of you is hopefully not to limit operations, but to deal with this through the site constraints as the staff has recommended in its alternative. We appreciate that the staff is going to need to develop an operations plan that is commensurate with the site plan approval process. And we'd like the opportunity to go through that process and not have it limited here. This is, as Mr. Landon spoke, historical aerials showing parking in the right-of-way going back all to 2007, 2013. There was an interim use between Fire Station and Dream Center. There's 2014. So this is just an existing condition. This is some pre- and post-changes conditions. You know, through this process, the Dream Center has made significant efforts in response to community concerns, which they have heard loud and clear and are working to modify. This is the plan Mr. Landon just showed that does limit the 18 spaces in the back of the parking lot. Again, it gives no access to the front door, limits the handicap access. So what we would like the board to do is amend the condition, the recommended alternative condition that prohibits parking in the right-of-way and mandate sidewalks to allow the applicant to proceed with a waiver request and work with the Public Works Department on both of those issues. We appreciate that many of the customers are pedestrians or clients are pedestrians, and so sidewalks are advantageous. And so we'd like the opportunity to work with the Public Works staff on that waiver request. With that, I'd like to introduce Mr. Greg Schaefer, who is the interim and acting president and CEO of the Florida Dream Center, to discuss some of the ways that they have adjusted over the past several months and since the storms to the community needs. Good morning. Greg Schaefer, volunteer interim CEO of the Florida Dream Center. And you've been sworn in, right? Yes, I've been sworn in. Thank you. So a couple of ethos that we have is find a need, fill a need. So one misconception is all of our clients come to our facility. We pride ourselves on going out into the community. And so Saturday looks like two mobile, three mobile teams, three pickup spots that are not the Florida Dream Center. So we're a mobilization. We have a mobile food bank versus a food bank or a pantry that people come to. Less than 25% of our food would be handed out at our facility. So when you see that scatterplot, we're trying to keep people in their homes. The prayers look like, the summary of the prayers, one we just got was, please help me, I'm about to lose everything. And so if you look at our ability to bring in food for 25 cents, this is food near expiration, so it's helping with the comprehensive plan of keeping food out of our solid waste. And we're putting it back in the community where people can be fed. And so the retail value of that is over $250 a pound. And so if you add it all up, we're dropping over $3.5 million of food to residents that would otherwise not be able to afford it, otherwise not go hungry, or not be able to afford other things to keep them in their home. And so over 70% of our clients do have homes. And so we do take pride in, another ethos, neighbors helping neighbors. And so when a neighbor comes with feedback, we address it. And we keep a list of everything that neighborhood is saying, and we're quick to respond. We do work closely with the sheriff's department. We have a deputy on our executive committee or our advisory committee. We meet with her regularly. There is a no trespassing order on our facility. We are part of their daily route. And anything they bring to us, we meet with them in our facility, and we address any need. And we don't have any outstanding needs. Nothing's been addressed between us and the sheriff's office of anything that we need to jump on. So that speaks to our commitment to safety. We work closely with the sheriff's department. We did adjust Saturday, so no more vehicle pickup of food on Saturdays. That's a big shift for us. Now, that's going to create density in other parts of the community, but it's not going to create density at our facility because the need does not change. It's only increasing. Any noise complaints? We've isolated some noise complaints to a waste management truck that we're going to deal with. We work closely with the Lealman Elementary School. We adopt over 35 families from that elementary school, and there's been no issues reported whatsoever from the principal. And that speaks to our commitment to working with local leadership. On one of the slides, it talks about our letters of support. You can see this is top-level leadership of the local community, and if there was an issue, the leadership of that community would know about it, and that means we would know about it. There's no outstanding issues right now outside of some of the neighbors do not want to see our clients. They do not want to see someone who's about to lose everything walk through their community and knock on our door. Parking is important because the door to knock on for case management during specified hours during the week, these people knock on the door, and they give us whatever issue that they have, and we get them plugged in with the programs that are going to lead to transformation. And so this is very hard work to do. If they don't have a door to knock on, where are they going to go? They're pedestrians. These people are walking from their residence. These are neighbors of the Lillman community walking to us, and a lot of them are elderly. They have no other place to go. We help people with code enforcement, but again, we're trying to keep people in their homes. If someone has a code enforcement against them and they're elderly or a widow and they have a walker, how are they going to mow their yard? They don't have money to pay for these services, so they call us and we take care of it. That's part of our Saturday Adopt-the-Block. So this is important stuff here, guys. People on the streets, these are not represented here, but you're going to hear from a lot of stories that you definitely need to hear if we're going to lead this community with over a billion dollars taken away from the USDA. The food stamps are going to change. The community is going to have to step up more in the 10 years than it ever has to address the most vulnerable in our community. And this is a community asset, so please help us. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. So with that, we will wrap up. There are speakers, but we would respectfully request your approval of the staff's alternative approval with changes to conditions 2, 3, and 4. We'd ask that condition 2 be modified to allow for the applicant to request a waiver through the land development code process to retain the historic parking within the right-of-way. Condition 3, we'd request to be modified that during site plan approval, sidewalks be considered as a result of the waiver because if the waiver is received for parking, there would not be a specific location for sidewalk, or there might be an opportunity for some compromise there for sidewalk on one side, not the other, those types of things that we'd like to work through with public works. And condition 4, no outdoor activities, including training that utilizes construction equipment and heavy equipment, we're a little confused generally about this specific condition. We do have the forklift that is utilized for services, meaning unloading the truck, loading the truck, warehousing the way any forklift would be. For the workforce training, that forklift is used on occasion for training. So, but there aren't other, and then outdoor activities, for example, during food distribution, people aren't required to walk in. They walk up to the back area or there's a tent where they receive their box of food. And is that considered an outdoor activity? You know, how do we mitigate that? So, and there's just, there's just one forklift. I mean, there's not, because it seemed like, and I think, I'm sure people are going to talk about that, that they were doing it early in the morning and the thing was beeping and doing, you know, I think that was one of the issues, I believe. The time constraints are perfectly fine from a training standpoint. We do think that some of the beeping noise was the waste management truck that is not only this facility, but others in the area. But yes, I think from a noise standpoint in the time of the training, absolutely during the hours of operation, we're fine with those. Because it looked like there was more construction equipment in there too. And I guess, I mean, that's all gone, it seems like. That it's just, it's just the one forklift. Okay. Yes. I can clarify the outdoor activities comment, which does not include the loading and unloading. That's, that's something that, that comes in and is needed for the truck. So that would not be included. But yes, any of the outdoor training, forklift construction, having people, you know, lined up, getting food and stuff outdoors instead of inside the facility, those are included in it. Yeah. So we would request that that be amended. I mean, I can, I can appreciate the county's concern if there's a line out the front door or in the right-of-way, but why wouldn't clients be able to stand in line in the parking lot, I guess is, right. So. So you're going to have parking in the parking lot. You're going to have loading and unloading in the parking lot. Now you're going to have lines in the parking lot. There, there are already. I mean, that, that's why the parking in the right-of-way is important. But I think to, I think what we need to do is create the box in which they can operate and then have them figure out how to best facilitate those operations. But currently, we do have over 70% of the clients are walk up and therefore there's a line that forms and they receive their food. One other thing that I think somebody else, somebody's going to bring up too is, but I think now that there's different leadership, there were people like sleeping in the back or in the dump store. I mean, there were different pictures of different things. And I believe that maybe has ended. It's our, that would be our hope that it's ended. And you certainly heard from Mr. Schaefer that the board and the current leadership is dedicated to being good neighbors, to working through these processes, to working through these concerns and to ensuring that appropriate operations are in the community. It is in the community. There's a brand new neighborhood being constructed adjacent to it by Habitat, which is a wonderful compliment to the fact of what these services are and why they are in this location. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So, um... Are there supporters? Are there, I know there are. Are there supporters or one or two people that want to speak on behalf of the Florida Dream Center? Come on up. How would you like to, how would you like to proceed? I think there are six or eight registered people who have turned in cards to speak. I didn't know if you were going to call them or if you'd just like for them to line up. They can line up, yeah. If you all would just, whoever wants to go first. And you have... I forgot my question. Oh, no problem. And you have three minutes. And your name and address, please. Hello, my name is Shelly Kirstead. I live on 50th Avenue. I'm a longtime resident of Lelman. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on behalf of my neighborhood most valuable outreach center. For more than a decade, the Dream Center has been a positive part of our Lelman community. The volunteers are active presence up and down our street, checking on elderly, disabled, and needing families in our area and providing help as needed. This is not just available anywhere else in our community. For my personal, the Dream Center was there for me in 2019 after the sudden death of my husband that left me a single mother of two adopted little kids. I was lost. I went to the office and the girls helped me with my finances, my insurance papers that he always handled. They also saved my holiday. Without their compassion, there would not have been Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas that year as my head was just not straight. Since then, I know that any time I'm in extra hands and need, the Dream Center does their best. The hurricane hit me pretty hard. It made entering my house unsafe. Code enforcement insisted on costly modifications, and the Dream Center helped me navigate the process and do the work required at no cost. So, many of my other needs and improvements. My neighborhood has always been low income, but the current economic downfall and the board's decision to make Lelman 60% low income-based housing, the services and compassion offered at the Florida Dream Center is needed now more than ever. I hope you will hear the needs of Lelman and vote to keep the Dream Center an active part of my community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Come on up. I'm sorry. Your name and address, please. Hi, my name is Ron DaCosta, and my address is 2700 52nd Avenue North. I just wanted to first say that I'm grateful and thankful to the Dream Center. I am a nana. I raised my grandbaby. I've raised her since she was born. My daughter just up and left. I am disabled. I am on a fixed income. So, to say all that is to say that Dream Center is such a helping blessing to me. It helps me with food put on my table. Of course, I don't, you know, get enough of food stamps, so they always, always help me. And I think of them as a hand up, not a hand down. They help me with Christmas every year. I think I've been going there for maybe since the pandemic finished, finished, and they help me with a ham for Thanksgiving, which I can't afford, and turkey for Christmas with Christmas toys. I mean, now that my grandbaby is older, she's 13 now, she's no longer eligible for the Christmas part. So, now I just recently volunteered to help them. I want to give back. This Dream Center is a blessing in my community. I know it's not just for me, but for a lot of people who's struggling, and I would really, really hate for it to leave my neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good morning. Your name and address, please. My name is Beverly Bishop. My address is 13948-105th Terrace in Largo, and thank you for this morning's opportunity. I've been a volunteer with the Florida Dream Center since they started. It was before they had this facility. It was in November of 2014. I've been asked to come speak today of my experiences as a volunteer. Local law enforcement and community leaders especially asked the Dream Center to come into the Lelman community as they were aware that this area was desperately in need of any help available. So, the Dream Center began by clearing an alley that was so overgrown, and a vehicle could not access it. It was well known that drug deals and prostitution were taking place in this hidden area. Another project was to inform the local homeowners that this community had been adopted and that we were going to be there every Saturday to help in any way needed. At first, the residents were very weary and would not open their doors. A few were brave enough to crack their doors a couple inches and with very mistrustful eyes refused any help, stating that they were fine. It was apparent that the yards were sadly neglected and that many of the residents were disabled or economically unable to keep up their property. The fact was, they had never received help before and they were very weary of our intentions. We continued to faithfully arrive every Saturday and after a while, a few reached out and received our help. One that I recall very vividly was a young man that was much in need of a plumbing repair. The volunteers at the Dream Center answered the call and the plumbing issue was resolved. During this repair, the young man had a very frank conversation with the local pastor who was working with the Dream Center. The young man ended up committing his life to Christ and in short time had his children restored to his care. Just one miracle. I could tell you dozens more. Three stories, these stories show the human value that the Dream Center brings to the residents. However, there's another value that is found by the people who come to volunteer their time to help in this community. They are sometimes those who owe community service and come as part of their restitution. Many go on to volunteer long after their hours are met. They have gained worth and self-esteem through the opportunity of being a helper instead of being helpless. Many come as part of a team from local churches. They too are changed as they move from poverty being an abstract, faceless idea to a real human being. Relationships develop, trust is built, and something larger develops. Community. Christmas is a special time for families. We are all caught up in the excitement and the glitter of that happy season. Some families in the moment are missing members. Some are incarcerated. Others may just be gone. The financial need increases, but the money does not. The Dream Center holds a Christmas festival that makes sure families have gifts under the tree. Gifts that are personally chosen by the caregivers and lovingly wrapped by volunteers. At the festival, children find cookies, cocoa, and of course Santa. Families go home with the wrapped gifts secreted in their trunk to be opened on Christmas Day. The excitement is contagious. I can tell you that the Dream Center has changed my life. It is a beacon of hope and a powerful agent for change. It helps in times of desperation and makes this all a little more human just because it exists. If anyone feels uncertain about this organization, I would encourage you to come and spend a Saturday at the food pantry. Ride in the van that delivers life-saving food to those too disabled to come and pick up their box. Your heart will be changed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your words. Hi there. Your name and address, please. Yes. I'm Chuck O'Nanny. I live at 11692 Parkview Lane in Seminole, Florida. I'm Chuck O'Nanny again with the Seminole Lake Rotary Club. It has truly been a privilege to partner with the Florida Dream Center over the years. Each month, six to ten of our Rotarians come together on the third Saturday to serve alongside the Adopt-a-Block program. We help pack boxes of food, load up vehicles, and prepare everything to be delivered to families who otherwise might go without its humbling experience and inspiring work. Every time we are there, we see firsthand the compassion and the commitment the Dream Center pours into the community. Our partnership has gone beyond food distribution. Together, we have helped clean alleys in Lealman, making the neighborhood safer and giving families peace of mind. These may seem like small tasks, but they make a huge difference in people's everyday lives. What I admire about the Dream Center is their heart. They never stop showing up for people, whether it's for food or resources or other kindness and encouragement. The impact they've had on the community is nothing short of remarkable, and it's an honor for Seminole Lake Rotary to stand alongside them. We're proud to serve with the Dream Center, and we're grateful for the love and hope that they continue to give the community of Lealman. Thank you. Thank you for your service from Rotary. Good morning. Your name and address, please. I'm Tara Howitt, 8501 52nd Street North in Pinellas Park. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Tara Howitt, and I've had the honor of working with the Florida Dream Center now for almost four years. Today, I'm here to represent our staff, but also as someone whose life was changed because of this organization. When I first came to Pinellas County, I carried the weight of a felony background. I thought my future was limited, that I would always be judged by my past and never seen for anything more than my mistakes. Then Florida Dream Center gave me a chance. They hired me, they believed in me, and they gave me hope. Because of the Florida Dream Center, I'm not just striving, surviving, I'm thriving. Sorry. I've learned about nonprofit work, discovered a passion for serving others, and rebuilt relationships I thought I lost forever. My mom often tells me that she believes in the Florida Dream Center because she sees how they've helped me to become accountable, stay on track, and continue to grow. But not just my story. Every day, we welcome people who walk through our doors in need of hope, encouragement, love. And that starts with the basics. Food, clothing, hygiene, and getting plugged into services that will be transforming. That moment when someone realizes that they are capable of life change, that is what makes the Florida Dream Center so unique. We don't just provide services, we provide dignity, hope, and community. I know you've seen the numbers. Thousands of meals distributed, hundreds of clients served, and countless people have been given a second chance. But I want you to know that behind every one of those numbers is a story like mine. Someone who was written off and is now writing a new chapter. Distribute, distribu- Distribution? Sorry. Disrupting any services currently provided by the Florida Dream Center would not just affect an organization, it would affect every client, family, volunteer, and staff member who has found purpose here. We are not just a non-profit, we are part of the community. I stand here today as proof as the Florida Dream Center works. Without it, countless others may not get the chance to turn their lives around. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing that. Good morning. How are you? My name is Rosie. My address is 2624, 46th Avenue North, St. Petersburg, Florida, 33714. I'd like to start with the before and after picture. Excuse me, but I'm sure can we, would the speakers please state their last name? Did you not say your last name? I'm sorry. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. We bought our home and built our life here in Lelman back in 2010 after moving here from Romania. We are proud to call this neighborhood home. After the hurricanes last year, five large trees came down in our backyard and into the lake. They blocked everything. We couldn't even see the beautiful pond behind our house anymore. It was overwhelming. We called FEMA and they said volunteers from crisis clean up, but once they saw the job, they said it was too big. We were told we need heavy equipment and a private tree company, so we went to the county, but because it was private property, they couldn't help either. They told us, ask friends and neighbors. We did everything we could think of. We called several companies and we were quoted between $7,900 and $613,000. We live on a fixed income. There was no way we could afford that. We felt completely stuck. That's when Gary from the Florida Dream Center showed up one day and took a look. He was honest. He said, this is probably too big for us, and we understood, but I was desperate. Some branches had fallen over our neighbor's fence and she'd been quoted $2,000 in damage, so I called Gary again, just hoping they could at least help her. That Saturday, the Dream Center crew came and took care of her problem. It gave me hope. A few weeks later, I reached out again. I told Gary, call me shameless, but we are out of options. I asked if they could help in any way. He said he would send Mike out to take a look. That Saturday, they showed up. No dumpster, no big equipment, just people willing to try. They started clearing what they could and said they keep coming back whenever they had time, and they did. Bid by bid, piece by piece, the Florida Dream Center came back with different volunteers and chipped away at it. My husband and son helped every time. They weren't going to let the crew do it alone, and I made sure no one left hungry. They were always fed well. It took months, but eventually, they gave us our yard back, our view back, and our peace of mind. They have three families on our street with hurricane degrees. No one else could help, but they did. The Florida Dream Center was the only one who said yes, not because they had everything, but because they cared enough to show up and try, and that matters. They have been an incredible blessing. I'm sorry, I'm so emotional. We are forever grateful, not just for what they did for us, but what they've done for our whole neighborhood. A million wars will not be enough to thank them for stepping in when we needed help. Their willingness and generosity made such a difference. We will always remember that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Good morning. My name is Jen Post. I'm a 22-year resident of Lowman. I also serve as vice president of the Lowman Community Association, vice chair of the Lowman CRA, and I also serve on the board for the Lowman Community District Services. So all things Lowman, right? But today I'm speaking as a resident. But looking back here today, what more of a sense of community can you see than this? And Florida Dream Center is an integral part of that. For those of you that may have ever spent any time in Lowman, Lowman is a special place. Florida Dream Center is one of the reasons why. I had a whole statement prepared, but so much has been said already. So one of the things that I would like to state is that there is a misconception that the Florida Dream Center only helps the homeless. And that's kind of rumored going through, and most of you have heard today that contrary. That is not correct. Some of the people that they do support are families facing food insecurities, and we did hear that we do live in a food desert. Seniors on fixed incomes, single parents juggling multiple jobs, veterans seeking dignity and stability, neighbors in temporary crisis who may just need a hand up and not a hand out. And the Florida Dream Center is there, no questions asked. And beyond meeting urgent needs, the Dream Center is helping people actually build futures. In 2017, after speaking with local businesses that were struggling to find reliable workers, the Florida Dream Center created what's called the Work Readiness Program, which the forklift in the activities outside that are so important to the Dream Center. And what this training program does is it builds work skills, communication, job etiquette. They help them with resume and interview training. They're also a candidate for the NCCER accreditation, which is the construction and carpentry certifications. They partner with veteran services, ex-offender re-entry correlations in local employers. They address barriers with child care, transportation, and health care. They create pathways from unemployment to stability and then growth. This building is not just bricks and mortars. It's a hub of hope, dignity, and opportunity. The Dream Center is helping families, veterans, children, workers, and employers right here in Leumann, right in our community. This is what the sense of community is and what we should all stand for. And I hope that you approve what the Dream Center is asking for today. It would be a big day for Leumann. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Laura Simcanich, 5252, 48th Terrace North. Thank you. Good morning. More afternoon. My name is Laura Simcanich. I was born here in 1954 and have lived in Leumann all my life. Sorry. 70 years in the same community. My parents raised us here. My daughters were born here and I still live a block away from Kansas City. I have seen Leumann change in many ways many people cannot imagine. When I was a child, our neighborhood streets were dirt roads. Our fire department was all volunteer when they heard the siren and they left. I went to Leumann Elementary, Leumann Junior High. When I went to Northeast, I was bullied because I was from Leumann. My parents were Abbott kids and they worked with Ray Neary. Since 2014, my husband and I have been at the Dream Center and we have watched them become one of the most consistent, reliable partners in a fight. Over the last decade, they have served our low-income families and seniors with food, case management, job training, community cleanup. He helped Rosie. She's a good cook. She can cook for me anytime. I have seen them walk behind law enforcement, not in conflict, but in collaboration, helping neighbors navigate tough situations. As president of the LCA, I want to be clear, we have never received a single complaint about the Florida Dream Center. What we have seen is the opposite, neighbors helping neighbors, families getting support. I also want to point to you the letter of support from Lombin Elementary School, which was written by the principal. I know her personally. She speaks clearly about how we help their low-income students and has no issues with us. So I ask the board today to look at the people who live here and to listen to us and to support us. The Florida Dream Center is part of the solution and we stand with them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Hi, good morning. I'm Sharon Barber, 4061 58th Avenue North in St. Petersburg, Florida. Thank you. It's an honor to meet each of you. Thank you for all the work that you do and thank you to the Dream Center who invited me to share briefly this morning. From what I've heard so far as you were doing your presentation, there really are some challenges to making this work and so I just want to encourage you and thank you for being creative in your solutions to make this work. As you can see, the need is there and the response is there as well, not only from the staff, from the volunteers. So my hope is that you would be creative in the solutions that you find to the challenges and the barriers for the Dream Center to continue its operation. As you heard from my address, I do live like a block from the Dream Center and prior to that I lived in St. Pete Beach but when I was called to pastor the little church on the corner of 35th Avenue and 55th Way, my desire was to live in the neighborhood and have the felt need of the community and so I moved into Tropical Gardens and so the same people who come to the Dream Center, some of them, are the ones who also attend the church that I pastor there. So thank you. I just wish you well in all that you do. I do want to say that diversity we've had with us since the beginning. You know, when we look in the sky, they're not all stars or all moons. You know, it's diverse up there and it's beautiful. I enjoy looking up at the sky and so in this Lealman community, there's lots of diversity and which includes people who are in-house and who are struggling and who are vulnerable. So the Dream Center is there meeting those needs and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Michelle Schaefer. Sorry, it was a last-minute decision to come up here. Michelle Schaefer, 3219, Clearwater, San Bernardino Street. I actually came here to support my husband, Greg Schaefer. He spoke earlier. I had no intention of speaking, but one thing I wanted to address, Ms. Whitehead, or someone had mentioned it being in new hands and if anybody's ever been down the street and you've seen a restaurant and it says like under new management, you're like, okay, maybe I'll go back there and try it because it's, you know, hopefully in better hands. I wanted to let you know, it is, the Florida Dream Center is in amazing hands. My husband believes three things. You put God first, then family, then others and he takes ethics and he takes the responsibility of the community like very seriously when he told me that this was something he was considering and I was like, what are you talking about? We don't have time for this and then when he shared some of the stories because he'd been involved with the board and what he wanted to do, I thought, okay, you know, go for it. That's what you want to do and then I watched his transformation of how just him participating and working to lead this group, what it's done for him, what it's done for our family and then to go and I've worked with him on site and to see the impact that it has for the community, I was like, I get it. I see why you're doing what you do because it has such a great impact. So I just want to let you know that the Florida Dream Center is in great hands now and he's a very, very committed and ethical and he has the whole community, the whole community's interest at heart. So that's all I want to share. Thank you for your words. Okay. Anybody else in support? We're good. Okay. The opposition, you guys want to line up? Yeah. I just have a few technical points and then there's one other person that's just going to speak on the number one community concern related to this. Okay. And Madam Chair, just like kind of... Please say your name and address. Sorry. David Lee, 4425 46th Avenue. I live in Lillman. If the objections just could be recorded to the case record that I had submitted, is that possible? I would say... Okay. Which is... The objections that were sent, yeah. The objections to the hearing of the case. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes, we do. Okay. Yeah, we have received. Yeah, and this is strictly related to criteria. I agree with everything that you just heard. The issue that we have is the moving of all these services into the neighborhood location. And that's what I'm going to talk about. And this is kind of a unique case because you're being asked to approve a broad expansion of new uses. This is a major intensification but it's not hypothetical. So you're not guessing what might happen in the neighborhood. It's not like that Airbnb that wanted to be a wedding venue where you're guessing that maybe it will impact the neighbor or the family down the street or the people over there. We already know and we've documented the effects of adding the new services to the location in the neighborhood. It's been documented on TV several times. It's been documented in the newspaper. And it's been documented by me in the packet that I've just given you organized by the criteria for approval. So that is kind of unique. With the parking, the issue that I've pointed out, I think you can see it right here in the room. And with this group of people, if they show up to help, which they do, there's nowhere to park. And so we've had the benefit for a long time of empty lots in the neighborhood. And so that was used at peak parking demand to park the volunteers. And that situation wasn't great, but it worked. It was tolerable. Those lots are now being developed, and so the parking is now spilling out into the right-of-way. One of the major things that we've captured is pedestrians being forced out into the road. And lots and lots and lots and lots of parking and loading happening in the right-of-way, in the road, on the side, just everywhere. Parking and loading is a really big thing because people are coming to get stuff and leaving. I think it's important to understand the 2018 approval. this organization did and still does have a reputation of kind of just going and doing it. And that can be good, but it can also be bad. Renee Vincent said it best, if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. And so that's where these restrictions came from. In 2018, you have to understand all the freight trucking activity, all the forklifts, all the loud clickety-clack refrigerated trucks, 5.30 a.m., the video that Katie showed you, it was dark. All that stuff happened in an industrial park. The coolers were inside, so the coolers were not bothering all the neighbors. You can hear those coolers from across the street. So all that activity was occurring in an industrial park where it belongs, and that made sense. And so this building in the neighborhood, you'll see in this 2018 approval, it was in support of the mission. And that's what's been great about the Dream Center. You've heard it from a lot of people, including the person I know that they helped. They come to you and fix whatever you need, help you out in times of need when nobody else will, and that's a really great thing. That was the whole idea. It's been adding all these new things and becoming basically a public building there. And there's no way around it. That's a 13,000-square-foot building with 15 off-street parking spots. Eliminating the parking in the right-of-way, first of all, that parking was abandoned. That's long gone. There has to be sidewalks there, and the reason is the reverse-out-parking danger, which I captured in a video that I hope that you saw entitled Count the Conflict Points. You can see it for yourself. We've almost had very serious reverse-out accidents. That is where the kids from elementary school go. And actually, it's already almost happened. There was a kid on the screen on the desk in front of you. It's already almost happened at that intersection. The kid was on his way to school, and there was an accident. Towards you? Towards you? Nope, towards you? The other way. There's a little line that says right here. There you go. So that's FLDC. So it's already happened. It's not hypothetical, and I think John will tell you reverse-out parking is super dangerous. It's usually kids that, you know, it's old person versus kid most typically. And finally, just, I have an issue with putting the deed in there, and the reason why I have an issue with that is because there's kind of like an implication that, oh, this is what the commissioners want. Just look at that. There's a commissioner's signature, and this is what they want. But thankfully, you don't have to wonder what the commissioners want because they were asked the exact question. If you were given all the information and you were told the truth, what would you have done? And all the commissioners said they would not have voted for this. That's what they said. Now, there was one commissioner who said if he had all the information that he still would have voted for it, and that commissioner was voted out of office. So I just want to make that clear. Finally, I would point you to this page on the building footprint. The building footprint here has been substantially altered in five different locations, and it meets all the criteria for having altered the footprint, having altered the flow of drainage. And the reason I even know about this is because the county has been really strict about this exact activity to other business owners very nearby. And what happens is they shut you down and you're going to full site plan review. And to me, that's what makes sense is to put this into full site plan review with a strict timeline. That will tell us what can be done there. But we all know there's only 15 off-street parking spots. That's it. And then you're talking about trying to do big trucks, pedestrian walkways, there's no traffic circulation. It's just not going to work. Now, some component of the operation could work and has in the past. But trying to do all this stuff, it's just not going to happen. So I'd encourage you. Final thing, you know, I heard Katie Cole say that, oh, we're not going to do food distribution there. That's what she told DRC. In every single picture that you see in here with all these cars, that was taken after Katie Cole made that statement to DRC where supposedly all that stuff was moved off-site. And I just want to make that clear. And if you look, we have very similar operations within walking distance. They all have 50-plus parking spots. And that's appropriate because as you can see, there's a big demand in our community and basically all communities. And so we just want to work something out, but we have to be practical and realistic. We're really proud of what's about to happen in that neighborhood. I'm telling you, we're going to get a serious return on investment with all the new homes and owners and mixed income. It's really exciting. We just want to get this right. And a full site plan review I think is the most appropriate way to go and absolutely no expansion and no more intensification on this property. If there's any questions or anything, we really want to come up with a practical solution. This isn't, I know Laura, I know Jen. She already promised to forgive me. That's how good she is, how awesome she is. We really want to keep these services, but yeah, there is a mistake and I think Katie Cole has a really good case in civil court to say, hey, the deed says this, but the county said you're supposed to be doing this in support of. Because that made sense. But this isn't civil court, this is BOA. And so if there's any questions, I spend a lot of time out there trying to come up with solutions. Appreciate it, David. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Jeremy Heath, 56747, 35th Way North. I'm also a member of the Wellman CRA Advisory Committee, but I'm again coming as a private citizen. So David hit the nail right on the head. It's fantastic that we are getting this level of community involvement and input on something that we can all universally agree is a good thing. Myself personally, I have voted to use county money to fund their Adopt-A-Block program as well as different festivals and activities that they held host. So in many ways, I am myself a supporter of the Dream Center. However, there are a couple misconceptions that have been made. We have talked about the Adopt-A-Block program. This is an organization that historically has not lived up to the contracts that they have signed. The county rescinded their contract with the Adopt-A-Block program for not living up to the terms of the contract. Additionally, it's also worth mentioning that included in your packet that David referenced about the county commissioners not being fully aware of the sale. The sale of the property itself came under great controversy. I believe our county attorney sitting here today was the first person in a county meeting who brought up a need to put this property out to a 30-day bid because the property falls within a CRA district. That bid did not occur and there's issues with that and there's very much a world where the property if there was a lawsuit pursuant to a 2020 Hillsborough County case they would lose the property entirely which I don't think any of us want to see happen. With that being said I came before you guys I believe it was in June where Habitat amended their zoning within the Lowman Heights development when the county purchased that property in 2016 it was made very clear both the county the Lowman CRA and the comprehensive plan this site is to be used for affordable housing and the Dream Center was put in that site and it was made very clear that this was supposed to be temporary. As David pointed out in 2018 the planning director Renee Vincent did say give them an inch they will take a mile and that was with so many of these activities being off site. they have now brought these activities on site and has brought in significantly more impact to the neighborhoods. This impact is leading to increased crime to a point where I myself has been a victim of it twice and it was so much that we actually decided to leave Lowman. Now I am not by any means saying that the Dream Center is solely responsible for that that would be completely unfactual however bringing these individuals into the neighborhood expanding further and further is increasing crime. In your packet I believe you will see the number of sheriff office calls since 2021. It is rather significant. Mentally unwell people suicidal individuals obviously these people need help and they deserve help. My request today is that we would be respectful and take many of these activities that are intrusive and take them off site. My specific requests for this distinguished committee today is number one that we remove the shipping containers from an R4 district number two that this property cannot operate under its current use without sidewalks or significantly increasing the non-right-of-way parking a full not approved a full site plan review with a deadline of completion within six months not submittal. I would also ask that I would also point out that code enforcement was made aware multiple times multiple times in their complaint that there were permanent structures added to this building. Katie even mentioned that in her presentation. The reefer units did not receive proper permitting for their electrical or plumbing work and this altered the building's footprint. That was conveniently left out by code enforcement for whatever reason. I would love to get an answer on that. I have asked directly why that wasn't included but the alteration to the building's footprint is very important information that this board knows today. I would like to just close with no walk-up services no food distribution whatsoever and finally I would just like to say you know hopefully the Dream Center can also forgive me as I do I do recognize the good work that they do but with that being said I think that there is a path forward to a healthy compromise. Oh and the last thing this has nothing to do with anything but I would like to thank county staff. I am the neophyte when it comes to this stuff and over the last few months not the least of which Mr. Schotterbach but multiple members of county staff have really kind of educated me and so I would like to say a kudos job well done by themselves under very difficult circumstances and because we tried to get legal representation and they didn't want to represent us due to the controversy of this property so thank you very much I appreciate it. Thank you for your comments. Anybody else? Pretty much thank you though. Our applicant. 12 seconds to request. You've obviously heard the impact positive and admittedly in the past some negative in the community and what we're here today is to establish the uses that the county has requested be provided from this location and that this property is restricted to provide. The property shall be used as a public facility providing services to residents in the Laelman Community Redevelopment Area to address immediate and long-term needs in the areas of homelessness hunger poverty addiction and community outreach. The declaration of restrictive covenants that was placed on this property by the county asks the Florida Dream Center to provide a wide variety of services recognizing that it is in a neighborhood that needs these services. Because it's in a neighborhood there are appropriate controls that should be provided and the Dream Center appreciates that and we're here today to discuss those controls. As we've discussed the conditions of approval for the alternate recommendation of the board we are fine with the exception of a couple things because the Dream Center feels like it should be availed the process that every other property owner has to go through a site plan approval and request a waiver for right-of-way parking a waiver for both sidewalks if necessary or one or neither depending on how the parking works out and the right to request variances or waivers as appropriate for the screening and buffering requirements. On one hand and I didn't mention that before so I do want to call that out because that's a different condition that I hadn't called out before there is a condition of approval saying that all screening and buffering shall be met. The site plan that was provided with the parking spots that was shown to you does not include that significant buffering today but obviously the Dream Center recognizes that something needs to happen there to buffer its uses. By approving the type 2 use and allowing the site plan the facilities and the structures and the buildings will get cleaned up it will be organized and it will in essence be better. Just by allowing this process to move forward but the Dream Center should have the opportunity to go through that site plan process with the staff to discuss where a sidewalk is necessary. Is it necessary on both streets or only to the front door? Is right-of-way parking that's been there in essence forever appropriate on both streets or one street or a portion of one or both streets? Those are discussions that can be intimately or had specifically between the engineering departments and the engineers and that we would respectfully request this board give that opportunity. And are you saying similarly for the buffering and screening? Yes. Because candidly with that requirement the operational plans that are provided would be completely different because this parking plan that was provided did not accommodate that. So with that said Mr. Baumstein an appropriate condition might be that the site plan include appropriate screening and buffering as provided for in the code but not shall be the code requirement because all other property owners would have that opportunity for the balance between what their site can accommodate and what's appropriate in the neighborhood. This is an extremely important use in this area. The Dream Center recognizes that there are impacts that they want to mitigate and deserve to be mitigated and all of the residents who are here that spoke in favor of this project also live there and recognize that there are some spillover impacts that should be mitigated. And as the pastor said we appreciate and hope for the creativity and the process to achieve these goals to support the community to provide these services and to be respectful of the uses and the neighbors with an appropriate site plan approval. Any questions for the applicant? How important is it that you have the ability to use the exterior for training on the operation of construction equipment specifically the forklift? Can you all live without that element? I'm looking at the operations person. I don't know the answer to that question. I think... Good morning. My name is Andrew O'Connell. I'm with the Florida Dream Center. I'm the forklift instructor and I work with homeless folks, ex-offenders that are in the work release program as well as, oh my gosh, West Care which is formerly drug addicted and they're all looking to improve their lives. So my mission is to help them get the skills to go out there and find gainful employment. Luckily in our area we've been able to work with quite a few different organizations to come out and check our guys out and basically give a vet. I'm sort of vetting them at the same time so I can go to these companies and say, hey, this guy learns really well or he's not quite set yet for this particular job as a forklift driver but they'll come out and they've hired quite a few of our trainees that come out of the class. I'm quite proud of all the guys that go through the course. They take an OSHA course with me for six hours and we call it OSHA 10 and then I get to spend two and a half hours walking next to them in the seat and coaching them on the tricks and tips and here's how you use it, here's the specifics, here's how you drive the thing, right? And so the people coming out of our class are very knowledgeable in what they're doing. As far as the construction side, I think the only other tools that are used that are like saws maybe at the loudest for the corp when they go through the NCCER class. How often is the training conducted, forklift training? Is that a daily activity? No, no. We just had a three-week class which is unusual and then there's usually about two weeks off and then another class which is a week long. We have a three-week class that's every day? How often are they physically outside driving the forklift and for how many hours a day? Oh, during the day when there is the class? They're out there about six to seven hours on the weeks that they're trained and it's only Tuesday through Friday. And the power system for the forklift is propane? Is it electric? Yeah, it's propane. Propane. So it's not an engine running, so to speak. It is. Well, it's a combustion engine, yeah. No, it's propane. It's propane. It's an engine plus a backup alarm. I think the backup alarm is probably a backup alarm. And I do teach them how to drive it and there is about 40% of the time backwards driving just to teach them how because that's a difficult part of learning the forklift. But we begin at 9 o'clock in the morning and we end our training most of the days at 3 o'clock. Sometimes it does run a little longer. Some students need a little extra time learning it. But the length of which would be at the max 4.30. But nothing before 7 or whatever. I mean, you're not going to do that anyways. I'm retired Air Force. I try not to wake up before 7. All right, thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions for the applicant? A couple questions. I'm trying to understand this. So what are the square footage that's listed? It's 11,856 under air. In the tables that you've provided based on your breakout, general office 2,400 and some change, 4,000 program event. That only adds up to 8,500. And so I'm just trying to look at like on a load, for a parking load chart, I don't, I'm not sure where the balance is. And, you know, I'm trying to be kind of respective of how much is like a warehouse area that you have listed as 4,000 square feet. So if I take that out and I kind of go backwards math and then, you know, I'm just saying like the way I'm looking at it, I'm not even seeing how even with the 18 parking spaces on the approved plan or your proposed plan where all the parking is internal, how that would even meet just the existing building structure as itself. We provided what exists and what could fit on the property. Correct. So I'm going based on, you know, you provided, there's 11,856 square feet of air conditioned space. Right. So, but when I add up your totals of the requirements of the parking, it only comes up to 8,500 square feet. So we've got a balance of about 3,000 square feet. I don't have the form, whatever you're looking for. Well, it's just what you provided me this morning. Yeah. Oh, the parking setting. Yeah. So I'm just trying to figure out, this is like, you know, just based on a, you know, without even asking for anything else of like what's going to happen in the future, but even based on right now, I don't even see how the parking load works. So that's why a parking demand study was done because there are code requirements and then there's the reality of the parking demand study. And so that's why LMA actually conducted a real-time parking demand study, which is shown in that study as well to reflect exactly what is used and how many spaces were used at different periods of time in the day. So it's a methodology that was conferred with city staff to do a parking demand study to show the difference between what a code may require versus what in reality would be required. Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Anything else? Okay. I'll close the public hearing. Thank you. Discussion? Are there any existing and outstanding code violations currently? We took the property before special magistrate and one of the things that we've been working with their attorney and the management there to try and come up with a solution and this is, you know, part of the solution. So yes, we have open violations on the property. We did take it before the special magistrate and part of the special magistrate's order was basically we've agreed to work with them to try and get them into compliance. Technically right now we still have a violation on the property. Can you give us a brief summary of those code violations? Well, basically the officers right here, this is Officer Hughes. She's a special magistrate officer. We had a housing issue. I mean, I haven't been out there. That's my officer that works in the field and then they had, again, like we've been talking about all morning, they had things that they were agreed to doing and then now they're trying to basically, you know, change that up. So we wrote them up for that. Is that, I forgot. I don't have the code right in front of me, but, and that's kind of why we're here to get the solution for, you know, this. Your name and address, please. My name is Officer Hughes with Pinellas County Code Enforcement, Special Magistrate Division. And yes, Officer Vargas was correct. The, they were found in violation during the magistrate hearing for 22-231, which is the minimum housing violations that they had and also for 138-179, which is not adhering to the site plan. So we were told by the magistrate to work with them so that they could get, come into compliance compliance as we do with every property owner. And part of that process was coming to get clarification of their 2018 approval and the deed and to get clarification of what they can and cannot do before they can move forward to get a site plan, a change to their site plan or to adhere to the original one. Has there been any address, or has anything been addressed about like temporary structures and like I see a lot of pictures of like shipping containers and like the... That's all adhering to the site plan. The coolers to the site plan. Okay. So, so it's not an adherence to the site plan. They've been found in violation that would include the intermodal containers, that would include all of those items. So once they get clarification from the board today, they'll know how they need to move forward with getting that site plan into compliance, whether it's getting a revised site plan or adhering to the original. Yeah, there's that's part of, you know, what we have is staff can come in with that section of the code that allows if they have, if this is an avenue for compliance compliance with that. So, you know, there's two things. One is take it back to what it looked like in 2018, what the uses were in 2018. So completely go back to what was approved then or to seek a type to use modification through this process. with that so that there's the two avenues they chose to come this route. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. Anything else? I'll give us a whirl. I share the concerns of the neighbors as it relates to traffic and considerations and noise and overcrowding. And to a certain extent, some of these are hard to easily solve and still maintain the mission that's trying to be accomplished here by the Florida Dream Center, which I believe in the mission. I think it's important and I think they do a good job. I would move to approve the staff's alternate recommendation that they outlined in their type 2 approval arguments with the following exceptions. There are 11 conditions cited by the staff in their recommendation. and I would ask that condition 2, 3, and 8 be dealt with at the Public Works Department level and be worked out with staff. Is that possible, Michael? Through the site plan process? Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, an administrative waiver to ask for anything in the right-of-way is typically handled as part of a site plan review process. So, as opposed to the parking loading requirement, the sidewalk requirement, and the buffering requirement being mandated by this board, I would allow, I would exclude those to the extent that they could be. I would include those in concept, but allowing the waiver request to proceed at staff level of Public Works to resolve those issues in the best interest of the county and the citizens. And as pertains to item 4, the outdoor concerns, I would agree to allow that to continue with the limitations that it is only for forklift training, only during the hours of 9 to 3, Monday through Friday. So, I would put that additional consideration in. So, in summation, basically accepting the county's alternative recommendation, allowing the applicant to apply for a waiver with the appropriate county staff for items 2, 3, and 8, and modifying item 4 to limit that to only forklift training during Monday to Friday, 9 to 3. Mr. Mopsey, I just need to clarify, because there are criteria in 138-241 for approval of type 2 use, item C in the staff report is adequate drives, walkways, and parking are available or proposed so that no vehicular circulation or parking problems are created. If I understand your motion correctly, you're eliminating these criteria or eliminating these considerations of these criteria. No, I don't want to eliminate it. I want to allow the applicant to work with staff to get a waiver on those requirements as opposed to mandating it here. We would have to approve it here to allow them to get a variance and a waiver. And I disagree with that. I mean, they state that 70% of their clients that they serve are a walking client. And so now we're saying that we're just going to continue to use the 18 spaces that are available that have back-out only parking that's going to effectively drive over the pedestrian walkway if it was designated on the street side. So I think that's what you're saying. Well, I'm not getting that granular, but what I'm just saying is that there are a list of criteria for a type 2 use that this board has to consider and determine here if they're satisfied. Number two. We can't eliminate C. We can't eliminate D. And not, you have to go A through, you know, A through F. And for a approval from this board, they have to meet A through F. So the board can't delegate C to a future process completely. I was trying to offload some of this. I can't. It's on the back of the board. Okay, Andrew. Item two says all parking and loading to be provided on the site in the designated spaces. So that's using the backyard. Correct. Then again, we go back to, you know, the feasibility of if they're constrained to the backside and they remove the right-of-way parking, then they were saying that their mission can't be accomplished. It's a practicality issue. They can't accomplish their mission. Right. So that makes it practically difficult to do what they're trying to do, which is why I was incorporating the language to allow for them to work with staff to achieve a waiver on that. So does that... Say, having in there the requiring the parking on-site, allow them the ability to apply for a waiver to keep the parking Do I even need to say that or is that not... Does not... Does... Do they not always have that right to apply for a waiver? Well, if we... If the condition stands, number two, about providing it on-site... Yeah. And, you know, removing it, putting in... Sidewalk in, number three, and removing... We have in there removing the marked spaces. That negates the waiver process. Okay. So number three, yes, does negate the ability to apply for a waiver. Two and three. So, yeah. Where my concern lies is that I feel like we're jumping ahead of the criteria for a type 2 use, which is where we start. Yeah. Does it meet the criteria? You got yes or no. It's got to meet all of them. Right. And then we can get into the granular aspect of the conditions. But if I understand, again, your motion, then you're delegating out item C under the criteria for a type 2 use, which it's my advice to the board not do that. Yeah, do that. I hear you. I hear you. So, excuse me, I have a council here who would like to chirp in. Are you suggesting that if the Public Works Department grants a waiver, the criteria C would be met? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're incorporating it with the provision that the applicant can still achieve a waiver on these items through staff. The condition would be upon approval of a waiver by, I mean, it's just the language is important, that somehow there's some sort of criteria. You can have a condition that satisfies the criteria as long as there's an endpoint. And if it's a successful if they successfully obtain the waiver, well, okay. But there has to be some sort of satisfaction of the criteria first that they're all met through some sort of factor. Okay. Let's try this. Scratch the oval. Start over. I'll move to approve the type 2 use in accordance with the alternate, the staff's alternate approval recommendation, conditional approval recommendation, meeting the requirements as outlined in the staff report and the findings effect of the criteria for granting a type 2 use. And furthermore, adding the condition that the applicant may seek a waiver adjustment for items 2, 3, and 8, and that item 4 be limited to forklift usage and training between the hours of 9 to 3, Monday through Friday. That's it. Mr. McAtee, you're not allowed to comment any further. As long as the approval of the waiver is part of the condition. Yes. Yes, it is. Don't ask me to repeat that. I hope you typed it some way. A second. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Any more discussion? Oh, there's a motion by Mr. Bousting. Sorry, I forgot that part. And a second by Mr. Holloway. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Nay. Two nays. So it's 5 to 2. Passes 5 to 2. Yeah. Is there an A on that? No. There's seven of us. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 5 to 2. All right. Passes on 5 to 2. Passes on 5 to 2. Okay. We probably have to approve some minutes, I believe. Did we have minutes in here? Yeah. You all don't mind your notebooks. Okay. Thank you, Katie. Move to. There's minutes. Two sets, I think. Is there two sets or one set? No, I think there's only one set. On September 3rd. Yes. Move to approve the minutes of the September 3rd meeting. Second. Second, Mr. Holloway. All in favor, say aye. Aye. I'll vote to go away. You don't need to. It's adjourned. Okay, we're good. We're adjourned. We're adjourned. We're adjourned. We're adjourned. We're adjourned. We're adjourned. We're adjourned.