Good morning and welcome to the May meeting of the Local Planning Agency for Pinellas County, Florida. I'm Matt Tenaijohn. The Local Planning Agency, or today's public hearing by the Local Planning Agency is being held to review proposed amendments to the Pinellas County Future Land Use Map and Zoning Atlas and other items relative to the county's planning and growth management program. The Local Planning Agency is an independent advisory board charged with reviewing and making recommendation to the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners on cases to be heard today. The Board of County Commissioners will make the final decisions on each item at a separate public hearing currently scheduled to be held on June 16, 2026 at 9 30 a.m. The Board of County Commissioners meeting will be held at 333 Chestnut Street in the Palm Room. The procedure for today will be as follows. First, staff will make a brief presentation, not to exceed 20 minutes. After that, the applicant will present their case, again, not to exceed 20 minutes. We will then hear from opponents who will be given three minutes each, unless representing a group of five or more, in which case they'll be given 10 minutes. Non-speakers must be present and waive their time. We will then hear from opponents who will be given three minutes each, unless representing a group of five or more, in which case they will be given 10 minutes. Likewise, non-speakers must be present to waive their time. Finally, the applicant will be given an opportunity to close, answer questions, or respond to any concerns raised by the proponents or opponents for a period of time not to exceed five minutes. Before your presentation, please give your name and address for the record. All testimony needs to be under oath, so if you've not been sworn in already and you plan to testify, please rise now and be sworn. Also, please fill out the slip on the table and present it to the clerk before you speak. There will not be continuing rebuttal, so please try to present all information and concerns while you're at the podium. If you plan to provide letters, written comments, studies, or other documents in response to the LPA's findings and recommendations, those must be received by the zoning section seven days prior to the Board of County Commissioners meeting, in order to be included in the record that will be transmitted to the Board of County Commissioners. With that, we'll move into the agenda. And that should bring us to item two, our quasi-judicial statement. Council. Thank you. Kirby Kreider, Assistant County Attorney. Please note that the zoning matters heard by the local planning agencies 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. Peer speculation or opinion not based on competent facts cannot be legally considered by the Board. Lay testimony supported by, excuse me, 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, Council. We will now move to item three, approval of the minutes for the April 8th, 2026 LPA hearing. Do I have any questions? Do I have any comments or questions on the minutes? All right. Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. Move approval as submitted. Motion by Hoyt and Hamilton. Second. Second by Laurie Johnson. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion passes unanimously. That brings us to item 4A1, FLU 26-01. And both these cases are going to be presented together, FLU 26-01 and ZON 2603 is there, both on the same property. So Scott's going to present both items. But since they are separate, we would need two votes on them. Perfect. Staff, will you be requiring a 40-minute presentation or just the customary 20? The customary 20. All right. And is the applicant okay with this arrangement as well? All right. We've got a yes from the applicant. Staff, please proceed when ready. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the local planning agency. I'm Scott Swearingen. I'm the long-range planning manager for Pinellas County. It's a pleasure to be before you again. I appreciate your time. So let me jump right in. As Mr. Schoderbach mentioned, we have two companion cases, a land use change and a zoning atlas amendment as well. The subject property is approximately 2.69 acres and it's located at 2577 Keystone Road in East Lake Tarpon. The first request is a future land use map amendment from the current category on the property of residential rural and the change would take it to institutional. And the companion zoning atlas item is a change from residential agricultural to limited institutional with a conditional overlay. And that's an important component of this case that I'll get into a little more as we go along. Your notepad is on the camera. Thank you. I appreciate that. The current use of the property is as the uses as we define them in zoning is a community assembly facility and it has storage, accessory storage as well. More specifically, it's a religious institution organization and the applicant has an express desire to demolish the current building, which I believe initially was a single family home, and then to build a slightly larger community assembly facility, full site plan with associated parking, stormwater drainage, access, landscaping, all those things. So that is the express desire for the proposed change on the property subsequent to approvals. As I mentioned, the conditional overlay, an important component of this request, because what that does is it just, it kind of takes that box of permissibility as well as requirements and it adds to them. So it makes it much more specific in an understanding of what can possibly happen on the subject property. So the parameters of that conditional overlay in this case, that overlay, it limits the allowable uses to only a community assembly facility with accessory storage. So you're about to hear me go into a description of the land use categories, current proposed, zoning current proposed, litany of uses that could be there, understanding that per this conditional overlay, the only thing that could be built in that property is a community assembly facility with accessory storage. Likewise, that overlay limits the maximum floor area ratio to 0.3 and impervious service ratio to 0.6, impervious surface, not service ratio, and increases the primary building setbacks to 15 feet for the front, rear, and side yards. It also restricts vehicular access to East Lake Drive only. Currently, there is a curb cut on Keystone Road. Keystone Road is designated by our comprehensive plan as a scenic non-commercial corridor. And so what we like to see, and we have requirements as well in the countywide plan as well, that limit the type of uses that could be on a scenic non-commercial corridor. So keeping kind of more heavy retail, restaurants, industrial, keeping that off the corridor in lieu of other less intense uses, but it also looks to limit the number of access points on the road. So per this conditional overlay, they would remove their current access from Keystone Road and just use the lake, I'm sorry, and just use the East Lake Drive frontage. There are also some additional landscape buffers that are brought into by this conditional overlay. So five feet landscape buffer along East Lake Drive, and then a 10-foot landscape buffer dedicated along that scenic non-commercial corridor of Keystone Road. Subject property is outlined in red. It's at the northwest intersection of Keystone Road and East Lake Drive. Not to be confused at the East Lake Road. I might do this in the presentation, so forgive me, but this is clearly not East Lake Drive. And so you can make out Lake Tarpon Air to sort of the bottom left of that photograph. So this is in the East Lake Tarpon area. Zooming in a little bit, so in this photo, west is to the top of the photo and north is to the right of the photo. So you can see on the far left side, you can see Keystone Road. You can see that drive that would be removed if this would be approved. And then you can see at the bottom running from, you know, left to right, you can see East Lake Drive. And that's the subject property. Future land use map on your left is the current condition. So residential rules and land use is the predominant land use in the area, but we also have institutional land uses directly adjacent to the west and to the right across the street. You have a residential office, an office complex over there. And then moving more toward East Lake Road, you get a little more of a mix, commercial neighborhood, residential low meaning towards the lake. And then the map on the right of the slide, you can see where that change would occur, changing the land use to the institutional. Very similar in the zoning, the majority of the area, including the subject property, is residential agricultural. And you can see some limited institutional there, just kind of to the northwest and then general office across the street, across the East Lake Drive. You get a little more variety and intensity as you move west toward Lake Turpin. This is a photograph of the subject property. So it's looking north, kind of north, northeast. You can see the existing building. And this is from Keystone Road. So this is a view from Keystone Road. And if you flip that view, looking from the subject property, this is Keystone Road looking to the south. And then this is the subject property again. You can see the existing building. This is from East Lake Drive. So you're looking kind of west, southwest here at this point. And that existing drive on East Lake Drive, existing curb cut. So the current land use of residential rural, residential agricultural uses primarily. Now it does allow a limited amount of institutional, kind of like an ancillary, non-residential uses, transportation utility. Important to note, so per land use, the use on the property and the use as proposed or as desired by the appellate, especially desired, is for an institutional type use. We have in our conference a plan and also in the countywide plan, there is a limitation on the amount of contiguous acres of a particular type of use that you could have in a residential rural category. And in this case, it's five acres. So next to directly adjacent, contiguous to the subject property to the west, you have other institutional type uses. When added up together, they would exceed five acres. So complete redevelopment of the property would not be permitted per the land use for an institutional use because it would exceed that five acre threshold. Thus, while institutional is a type of use that is, could be potentially permitted in residential rural, in this case, it would not be. That's a long-winded way of saying I'll answer any questions if you haven't, at least try to when I conclude. So per our comprehensive plan, residential rural land use is generally appropriate in areas where use and development characteristics are rural nature and in areas where environmental features are linked to the protection of natural resources, such as aquifer recharge areas, groundwater resources, and the 100-year floodplain. Residential densities, a half unit per acre is what's permitted, and a 0.3 FAR for non-residential uses, and then the proposed change to institutional, pretty much what you'd expect in an institutional category, institutional type uses. So schools, medical, community assembly, daycare, government, civic organizations, that kind of thing also allows residential and recreation, generally appropriate for areas, for uses that can help serve the community, and to recognize the special needs of these uses relative to their relationship with the surrounding use of transportation and that kind of thing. 12.5 residential units per acre is generally what is permitted in the institutionally, and 0.65 FAR for non-residential uses. And then real quick to the zoning, as one would imagine, residential agriculture, so more large lot residential and ancillary agricultural activities are permitted. Maximum building height of 35 feet and previous service ratio limited to 0.6. And also to note community assembly facilities are permitted in this category, but they're permitted as a type 2 use, which means outright you could not build a community assembly facility. You'd have to apply and go to the Board of Adjustment Appeals in a public hearing and ask for permission to be able to build that type of use. So it's not a permitted use by right in the zone, in the current zoning. And then to change the limited institutional. So as one would expect, institutional uses, but with more limitations, education, public, semi-public uses, schools, assembly, civic, ALFs. And the purpose of that zoning is to designate, develop, and accommodate public uses that serve the needs and interests of the surrounding community. Again, I told you I was going to take a few minutes of your time to go through the litany of uses and the FAR and the densities, but to keep in mind that what rides with the zoning per this proposal is a conditional overlay that limits the property to that one primary use of community assembly facility with an accessory storage. It limits the FAR to 0.3 and the ISR to 0.6. There are increases in building setbacks that have been added to that overlay, restricted access to East Lake Drive. So that curb cut on Keystone, as I mentioned, goes away, building heights limited to 35 feet maximum, and then the landscape buffers that have been added as well. So that's pretty much the box that this property would live in if this were approved. When it comes to traffic impacts, there's, so from a future land use perspective, I explained this before, we kind of take that like, you know, 20,000 foot level look at traffic, which is, it's very rudimentary. We know that we have traffic analysis that comes later during site plan, and it just looks at here's the land use category today, and here's the land use category tomorrow, and what's the delta of impact. And per that delta of impact, it'd be about 266 additional daily trips. Now, what we have the benefit of knowing in this case, one, we have the conditional overlay that already says, this is all you can do on the property, but we also have the existing use that is the same as the proposed future use, but with a little more square footage. And so our analysis would, when we kind of drill down to a little more direct, kind of a more realistic analysis of traffic, traffic impacts are determined to be very minimal. It's a like-for-like use, a little more square footage. So the impact from what's today to what would be tomorrow would be much more minimal. For what it's worth, Keystone Road operates at a level of service C and has a volume to capacity ratio of 0.54, which essentially means that this segment of Keystone Road in the PM peak hour of traffic is about 54% occupied. So it's got about another 46% of capacity before it becomes, before it would be thrown into like a deficient roadway status. So the traffic on Keystone Road appears to be well suited as well on the property. So let me close by saying that staff finds the proposed request it's appropriate for Keystone Road and the subject property is generally compatible with the immediate area. The conditional overlay as a part of this, it places those additional conditions that I went through and limitations on the property to further protect the surrounding neighbor. The proposed use as expressly desired by the applicant, because there's no site plan before us, right? That use is the same as the current use. What the county, what staff often likes to see is that the redevelopment of the property would bring the property through the site plan review process, okay? So now whatever was there before that may not be permitted by our current code or maybe before our code, the property must go through our code and meet our code requirement. And so we always like to see that, you know, to meet our sort of modern 2026 standards that we have in place. And so the redevelopment of this property as expressly desired would do just that. And then finally we find a proposal consistent with our comprehensive plan, which includes, um, our, um, East Lake Tarpon community overlay. Staff recommends approval in summary and the board of county commissioners is scheduled to hear this in a public hearing on June 16th at their, at their 9 30 a.m. hearing. They usually hear things at six o'clock. Um, so they'll hear this one in the morning at 9 30 a.m. on the 16th. That concludes my presentation. I thank you for your time and if I can try to answer any questions you may have, um, that would be great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, board members, do you have any questions for staff at this time? I have one. Um, the 0.6 ISR, is that for the structure only or does that include parking, paved parking areas and everything? It includes parking areas as well. Okay. Paved parking areas. Yes. It would include sidewalk areas, any hearts, any impervious surface. Okay. Not just rooftop. The adequate retention areas would also be required on site plans. Absolutely. Okay. They would need to meet our stormwater requirements as currently in place. Board members, any other questions for staff? Um, I just have a follow-up question. Um, when I was reading the staff report, I believe it said that we, this site was in the flood zone, but as I recall correctly from just my familiarity with the county, that's like halfway up a hill, isn't it? So where's the flood zone? The flood zone is, um, in the northern portion of the property. Like the northwest portion of the property. So the building is not proposed in the flood zone. So up where the old cow pond is? Yeah. And we can, yeah, there we go, to show them. I can show you the, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's up where the little pond is. We might need to zoom in on that a little bit. Um, so up in this area. Got it. Um, and there's, um, again, obviously we're not in site plan, but from the concepts that we've seen, um, well, one, the applicant is aware of that area and there's no expressed desire to build, uh, within that area as well. Yeah. It's kind of strange because it does go up and then it's. Yeah, no. So I was just wanting to see this from the perspective of just making sure that the majority of the site was out of that. Okay, cool. Thank you. All right. I don't think the board members have any other questions for staff at this time. So with that, we will hear from the applicant. Please state your name and address. Uh, Diego Rodriguez with Infinity Engineering, 702C workplace, Tampa. Um, I just want to thank all of you for hearing us here and for staff for helping us through this process. Um, we come in as, you know, good neighbors to bring this property to the standard, to the latest standard, latest codes, and I'd leave it open to comments or questions if you may have any. Board members, any, any questions for the applicant at this time? Yes. Yes, Madam Chair. All right, John. Good morning. Thank you very much for being here. So is your intent to, uh, take down the building that's there now and replace it or just to remodel it? Uh, take it down. Take it down and bring up a new building. Approximately the same size. Uh, we don't have architectural drawings yet. Uh, once we go through the whole printing process, we'll see what staff has to say, but the intention is to take it down and rebuild one. Thank you. Board members, any other questions for the applicant? All right. Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. At this time, we will hear from any members of the public in the room who wish to speak in support of application FLU 26-01 or ZON 26-03. I am not seeing any. Is there anybody online who wishes to speak in support of application FLU 26-01 or ZON 26-03? Good morning, Madam Chair. There are no participants online. All right. And at this time, is there anyone in the room who wishes to speak in opposition to applications FLU 26-01 or ZON 26-03? Again, seeing none. And eye in the sky, I assume nobody's popped in online since the last time I asked? That would be correct. All right. Applicant, you do have five minutes to speak, if you wish, um, for closing remarks. He's shaking his head no. It comes back to the board. So, uh, board members, do we have any final questions or remarks before we start our motion practice? All right. Seeing none. Uh, I will entertain a motion on application FLU 26-01. I move to approve it as, as is. Motion by Brito. Second. Second by Larry Johnson. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion passes unanimously. I will now entertain a motion on application ZON 26-03. Motion to approve as is. Motion by Brito. Second. Second by, second by Hamilton. Uh, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Uh, motion passes unanimously. All right. Good luck at board of county commissioners. Uh, staff, do we have any final remarks before we adjourn? I do have a couple of items. Okay. First, I, I'd, uh, like to share we are in the process as part of our department work plan. Uh, we, looking for initiatives to be more cost effective, more efficient. Uh, so one of the items we've been looking at this year is doing away with paper agendas and going to, uh, you know, tablets for the, the board members. Uh, so that's in, in process right now. Um, it's part of our budget package for this year for our, for our department. Um, you know, we've looked at the staff time, the paper costs, mailing, et cetera, the, the, you know, the waste of the paper and, you know, determined that switching to the electronic is, is a lot more efficient, more cost effective. So that's something that, uh, we're hoping, uh, by the end of the year we will have in, in place. Um, if that goes forward, we would still be providing you the electronic, the PDF agenda ahead of time. And then at the meeting we would have tablets with the agendas, everything on there, um, you know, bookmarked and everything. So you could jump around to the agenda items and pages as, as needed. So, uh, that's, uh, something we're, we're hoping to get to. I've been wanting to do that for a long time and, uh, uh, uh, you know, glad we can finally move in that direction. I'll take anybody's got any questions on, on that. Um, it's 2026. Let's do it. Racing into the 21st century. I've got a hardback book on my nightstand about this thick. I enjoy reading from paper and I'm here to serve, but I'm here to serve at the efficiency of our people. So I just had, I'm sorry. I had one question. What about the parking pass? How will we work that out? We, we will, we will still get that to you. So you will still have that. So yeah, we'll, uh, we're working on that. We, we know there's still one tree to get the parking. There's still some, you know, we, we, we try to go as, as paperless as possible, but, uh, you know, still in government, we, there's things that have to be, and, uh, you know, it's, it's hard to be completely. So, uh, you know, we, we understand there's certain things that, uh, won't have to change. Uh, I think we're all looking forward to the shift. Yep. And, uh, my other announcement is that there is no meeting next month in, in June. Uh, we had a conflict. The board accounting commissioner is holding budget work sessions. And, uh, so our normal meeting time fell into that. Uh, there was no other dates that, uh, were feasibly possible. So we had to cancel the, the June meeting. So we will see you in July. We will have cases because they're still coming in. So we, we will have items that'll come before you in July. So enjoy your month off. She said, we look forward to serving in July. Thank you. All right. Board members, any questions, remarks, anything? Um, I did notice. And maybe it's just the fact that I haven't been all that alert lately, but, um, that there's been some changes in the presentation package and I appreciate them because I, I see some things that just make it much clearer to me. For example, having the photograph on the page, same page and, um, and your, your, um, comments, uh, the comments from the various members of the planning board and other boards, um, are noted out separately from just being in the verbiage. So I appreciate that. Yeah, we, we had in, we, we had, um, feedback from, um, some of our, uh, our, uh, frequent flyers, our attorneys and engineers that present to us, uh, that were asking, uh, you know, when we, they go to the DRC meeting, is there a way to get staff comments ahead of time? So we, we tested it out and had a pre-meeting set up stuff for where, uh, you know, county staff can then provide their comments ahead of time written. So the applicant has it, uh, it's, it's worked. The DRC meetings run a lot smoother because now they, they have that information ahead of time. And now we have that backup information instead of trying to summarize it as part of the staff report. We have the comments in there for, for everyone to see. So you can refer to as well. Thank you. All board members, um, unless there's any other questions or discussion, uh, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion by Larry Johnson. I'll second. Second by Brito. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. The motion passes. See you all in July.