City Council - Roundtable — Aug 3, 2023

Erik Anderson: present · Timothy J. Fadgen: present · Denise Horland: present · Louis Reinstein: present · Nick Sortal: present

Good evening. Welcome to the City Council Comprehensive Planning Roundtable on August 3rd, 2023. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the final Comprehensive Planning Roundtable guided discussion. We're in the process of updating our Comprehensive Plan. Our Comprehensive Plan serves as a guide for the city's future growth and development, which includes economic development, housing, infrastructure, parks, recreation, and open space, public safety, and transportation. The plan will establish planning horizon for 10 and 20 years from now, prepare a vision statement, assess the city's current status and needs, and identify goals, policies, and objectives. As a public meeting, we are soliciting input from residents, business owners, and interested parties. The process includes having roundtable guided discussions with some of the various boards and committees to assist in developing these policies. This is the sixth and final roundtable. Tonight, we will follow the following procedures. The consultant will present a series of topics, and the council will have a dialogue about each of those topics, which will include the mayor, staff, and the consultant. After consulting that portion of the agenda, council will open the discussion to general public. We have reserved a maximum of 30 minutes for the public. Those who have signed ahead of time will get first priority. You will have a maximum of 12, I'm sorry, a maximum of, a maximum of two or three minutes to speak. If you heard someone before you say essentially the same thing, then please don't repeat what has already been said, been stated before. Limit your comments to whatever or not you agree with a previously expressed sentiment. If you are, sorry, if you are an appointed member of one of the city boards and committees, please identify yourself as such. Note that any e-comments or e-mail comments received before and during the hearing will become part of the public record. Now I'd like to introduce Director of Planning and Zoning and Economic Development, Mr. Danny Holmes. Let's do a roll call. Thank you.

Council Member Anderson.

Here.

Council Member Andreu. Council Member Fajan.

Here.

Council Member Horland. Here. Council Member Reinstein. Here. Mayor Sortle. Here. City Attorney Absarol.

Here.

Thank you.

Okay. All right. So thank you, Mr. Chair. So the city contracted with Trans Systems, as you know, some time ago to complete an update to the city's comprehensive plan, which I think we all agree has been much needed. And we really need some more guiding principles to sort of guide our 10-, 20-year planning horizon. We've held these roundtables with several of the city's boards. We've met already with the Midtown Advisory Board, the Gateway Advisory Board. We met last month with the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. And we've also met with the Development Review Committee and the city's Planning and Zoning Board. So this is sort of the last step with the council to sort of get input from the boards. We've also, at each of those junctures, we've been able to get feedback and input from the public as well to help sort of guide where we're going here. So what I'd like to do, if I can, as I said, we have Trans Systems here tonight. I'd like to introduce the team that will be leading the discussions. We have with us tonight, Caitlin Forbes and Jeff Kadems from Trans Systems. And they're going to kind of run things from this point forward. So I'll turn it over to Caitlin and Jeff.

Thanks so much, Danny. And thank you to the council and the city for having us here tonight. As Danny said, my name is Caitlin Forbes, and with me is Jeff Kadems. Together we represent the planning team from Trans Systems for this very exciting project. We were here a couple months ago, as you remember, for what we call our Phase 1 amendments that will bring us into compliance with Florida State statute. And so tonight we're going to be talking about some of what we've coined the optional updates, which represents Phase 2 of this effort. And so later this fall and winter we'll be coming back with more formalized recommendations based on our discussion here tonight. So if you're familiar with the format of the roundtables that we've had previously with the other groups, we're going to run through our agenda here and talk about five very high-level but very important topics that will impact the updates coming forward later this fall and winter, as I noted. And then we'll look for feedback on each of these five topics in an open forum discussion. Happy to have back-and-forth conversation with the council or feel free to have conversation amongst yourselves as well. And then, of course, we'll hear from the public on these same five topics. So to get started, we're going to move into the first agenda topic item, which will be the hierarchy of the commercial and mixed-use centers, talk about affordable housing, transportation, the flex zones, and the concept of establishing an activity center in Midtown. So the first topic here that we're going to pose for this open discussion is the role of these various commercial centers throughout the city. And so you'll see four main ones that we identify on the slide here, two being within Midtown, the Broward Mall, and the Plantation Walk area, as well as the Gateway and Plantation Point. We did have two roundtables, one with Midtown and one with the Gateway group. So we had a lot of great information out of those folks and the public that was able to join us there. So what we're looking for out of this discussion is an understanding of how all of these nodes and districts come together, their hierarchy throughout the city, perhaps some discussion about the types of uses and the character that should be allowed or promoted in each of these, and how they work together rather than compete throughout the city. So that will be discussion topic one. The second topic is the concept of affordable and attainable housing throughout the city. Again, we had a very good roundtable meeting with the AHAC group a couple months back. We got a lot of really good information about some of the challenges and hurdles facing developers in the city in general when it comes to affordable housing. So out of this discussion, we'd like to focus on, if appropriate, the type of affordable and attainable housing in the city and the location that that should be concentrated in, as well as the concept of whether we require or incentivize affordable and attainable housing. So that's the second concept there. The next conversation topic is a big one, of course, transportation. Specifically as it relates to multimodal transportation and some of the other route improvements and other improvements posed by the county and others. So we're going to be talking about planning for future improvements, how we mitigate obstacles, whether it's Broward Boulevard in Midtown or other existing obstacles, and how we anticipate the future needs for the city through this comprehensive planning process. So Michael was able to share a couple slides with us here that we wanted to add, in addition to what we shared at the P&Z roundtable. So here you'll see some of the networks that are proposed at a county level and then specifically within plantation. You can see a variety of really interesting new types of transit that are being proposed. For example, the Broward Boulevard light rail transit, BRT bus rapid transit along 441 and State Road 7, as well as along University Drive and Sunrise Boulevard, bus rapid transit as well. The next big topic that we want to focus on is how we address flexibility units within the city. As we know currently, we have four different flex zones, as we call them, and the flex zones limit where those flex units can be used. So flex units are assigned by zone. A lot of other cities have what we call collapsed their flex zones. So they've unified all the zones or several zones. So there's a couple ways that we've contemplated addressing flexibility units going forward within the city. And that's one, to unify all of the flex zones in the city, but include an excluded area so that the area generally shown in purple there would not be eligible for flexibility units. The units could be used throughout the remainder of the city, though. And those units would then be shifted out of that flex zone into the larger collapse zone. The second way that we could address this is basically identifying priority areas throughout the city. So we've identified a handful of potential areas. We could adjust these, of course, but we put a couple out as contemplated option two areas here. So you can see Midtown, another one of the commercial corridor areas here at one of the primary intersections. And then we have the city hall area and along the gateway corridor. With this, with the priority areas, we also contemplated perhaps having the concept of minimum requirements for eligibility for flex. So that would include requiring a minimum density, some sort of affordable or attainable housing requirement, as well as a sustainable design requirement. And shifting off of that would be the concept of establishing the activity center. This would help us not necessarily have to use our flex units. Also eliminate some development hurdles by eliminating that parcel-by-parcel need to come through for land use plan amendments and other entitlements by creating one pool or basket of rights for all of Midtown. And that is something that the Midtown plan has contemplated for quite some time and was actually a recommendation in addition to contemplating increasing the maximum density. Both of those were part of the recommendations out of the Midtown master plan. So to summarize, the five topics are shown here on the screen. Before we turn it over for discussion, I do want to note that the city does have a comprehensive plan website dedicated to just this project. So for everyone that's here with us tonight or perhaps joining virtually, there's the website link at the bottom, planplantation.org, and you can follow along with project updates as well as importantly, please take the time. It should take 10 minutes to take the survey. Different types of questions are involved with the survey there, and it would greatly help with wrapping up the public participation portion of this project. So I'll leave this screen up so that we can remember the five topics, and I'll turn it over to the council for discussion, questions, and happy to have any conversation back and forth. Or like I noted earlier, also please feel free to have conversation amongst yourselves.

Thank you very much, Caitlin. So any comments, questions regarding the hierarchy of commercial and mixed-use centers? Mr. Holmes, anything? I think we're going to probably spend most of our time on two through five, but if you want to add anything on item number one.

Well, I think what we're really looking for here is you look at each of those different, you know, the gateway. We look at Midtown. What, you know, in terms of how things are developing thus far in those areas, are you satisfied with the way things are moving? Do you think we need to go a different direction with those centers? Or, you know, just how do you feel about the way we're moving forward at this time? We're trying to kind of look for it, as we said, 10 to 20 years to kind of get a vision for what we'd like to see 10, 20 years out.

Councilmember Horland?

Thank you, Madam President. Mr. Holmes, were the conversations that arose out of our strategic planning session in March shared with Caitlin and Jeff?

We did go over some of that early on with them when we first met with the-

Okay, so I'm going to reiterate, not really for you, but those conversations that we've had in depth as council, but for Caitlin and Jeff. And I don't want to speak for the council, but I think that we all felt coming out of that meeting, Broward Mall is absolutely a priority. That is the middle. We're dead in the middle of the county with access to highways. We all know that it's been an eyesore, but, I mean, some of the discussions that came out of the strategic planning session were obviously keeping our main anchors there. And I look to, and I think we've discussed it a little bit, Torburn Partners, who's developed Plantation Point, they've been a great partner with the city. They've done a great job with that campus. And I believe it's Sarasota Square that they're developing in Sarasota and creating more of that center square, city square. And I think that was something that I heard we were all interested in pursuing. Keeping, obviously, I know the Macy's is a high-producing store there. Keeping the retail, I think they're doing 500,000 square feet of retail at Sarasota Square with high-density residential. And then we had talked about the fact that we would like to incorporate some fee-simple townhomes. So I think that Broward Mall, for me personally, needs to be number one in the priority list. We're making some inroads on the gateway. I'm assuming that you are familiar with the ULI study that was done, which has really been instrumental for us moving forward in the gateway area, perhaps creating more of a medical district over there with some housing for the new emergency room and medical offices that are going in, really rebranding that area. Plantation Point, I know I heard some mention about possibly adding some residential there. I don't know how I feel about that because we have residential going across the street. I really would like to see us concentrate on the Midtown area with the density so that we do create and maintain those three distinct districts in our city. I think that Plantation, one of the things we talked about was we want to be an inclusive city. We want to be welcoming to everyone. We want to make sure that we have that vibrant economy, attracting new business like the FAA is moving their southern headquarters into Plantation, continue to attract those businesses into the Midtown while maintaining our rural district in the Acres and our residential neighborhoods. So for me, Broward Mall is a priority of these.

Seeing no further discussion, I think we can go forward to item number two.

Yeah. And let me just add something to that, Madam Chair, with the Broward Mall. As you know, we've been meeting with Broward Mall as well, and they are kind of on board in working with the city with the vision that you identified. So we've had several meetings with the mayor and St. Neunamaker and staff, and, you know, we're looking and we're excited about kind of working on that project in the coming year.

Mr. Holmes, understanding, I'm sorry, Madam President, that we have the five distinct leaseholders there, and I believe that's expiring that agreement in about six years, five or six years?

I think it expires prior to that. Is it 2029? Okay, so that's about right.

Do you see that as a barrier if they're willing to talk to us about a holistic plan there? Do you think that's something that we could start working on ahead of that 2029 expiration?

Absolutely. Yeah, and they're in agreement. Broward Mall has even indicated that they're willing to, you know, participate, you know, even, you know, with us working on the plan financially and, you know, kind of develop that vision together. So that's a good thing.

Thank you. So before we move on, I'll just add to what Council Member Horland said in the sense of gateway. We are very pleased with the progress being made in the gateway corridor. I know that it keeps, there's been a delay. It keeps getting delayed with the closure of Plantation Inn. And then any update on when that facility will. Right.

So, yeah, so I just had, I got an update from Mr. Hall. He's been our primary contact with the group. There were some issues that still, there's small issues that continue to come up. We are making progress. As you know, the, it's no longer operational. It's kind of been fenced off or what have you. Mr. Hall said based upon his last discussion with him, we think in the next three weeks or so that we should be, I'm crossing my fingers, that we'll get that done. Okay. So, so we're, we're very close. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And I know that Council Member Horland mentioned that area being really, you know, a premier kind of medical plaza. But in addition to that, we also, part of that study, I'm sure you're aware, included maybe a very nice brand of a hotel in that area and as well as a supermarket. So, we're looking forward to really seeing all of that development on the gateway come to fruition.

Right. And, and as you know, with the hospital, they, they actually, did they submit? Yeah. So, we have, we have the submittal. We just recently got the submittal. From HCA. Yeah, from HCA with regard to the emergency room. So, that's a good thing. And, of course, you know, we're kind of working on a project right now that's been very challenging with the, the Florida-based grocer. I'll put it that way. But we're trying to make progress on that. So, that will be coming before you soon.

Okay. Great. So, moving forward to item number two. If you go back to our agenda, because I'm sorry, I don't have a copy of that.

Yep. So, just as a refresher here, looking for input and feedback about various types of affordable and attainable housing in terms of the differing typologies, as well as perhaps preferred locations, if we can incentivize redevelopment of certain areas throughout the city. And then, as well, the last topic being the discussion of requiring versus incentivizing.

And I'm sorry, can you, I'm not sure who's controlling the slideshow. Can you go back to the agenda that you had? It's a little different from the summary that we have. That's all.

Exactly.

Thank you. I'm just going to, that way you don't have to keep toggling.

Perfect. So, affordable housing, which I like to refer to as workforce housing.

Affordable and attainable housing. And just as a reminder that the topics are the types, the location, and requiring versus incentivizing.

Is that the mayor? Okay. You're registered as the clerk. You're switching it up on me today.

I'll be whatever you want me to be, but I'm over here trying to stay healthy. I'm normally going to sit back quite a bit in this because I've had the opportunity to talk to them at affordable housing, at Midtown, and many things. But I'm the chair of the Affordable Housing Committee, so I think I should give you bullet points of things that I told them, and you could work off of them. First off, I want to compliment the board members that are here, Maude, Maggie, and Mr. Cordova. Thank you for your service. They are bright, and they have a varied background, and we're having good discussions about affordable housing. The determination is that not only is affordable housing a problem, all housing is a problem. All housing is expensive, no matter what you are. And so this is a problem beyond no matter what your, well, almost no matter what your income is. But so far we've built zero. We don't have anything to show for it. And that's a little frustrating, but we're going to keep trying. And it is not just on the developers for this to happen. We can't just say developers build something affordable. It's going to take more than everybody. We've had many ways to help expediting permitting, financial incentives, and those kind of things. And it's going to take a lot of us for this to work. And my final thought is I know that some people have talked about affordable housing at Broward Mall. I don't see how that works because Broward Mall is $5 million an acre. I don't see roughly $5 million an acre. I don't see a way a developer could make that math work, just my opinion. And so if we want to build affordable housing, really want to do it, but I don't think Broward Mall is going to happen. Those are my thoughts. If you've got questions, ask me. Otherwise, I kind of want it to be y'all's meeting.

Thank you, Mayor Sorghal. Council Member Fadgen?

Thank you. I attend these affordable housing meetings because I find it's a very difficult topic. It would have been a different conversation if we had it 30 years ago. We're in a redevelopment stage. Our land value is very expensive, as the mayor just pointed out. You know, kind of not about affordable housing. The exclusion area for flex is a good thing. And I think that the ownership is the key to getting us out of the housing crisis. It's not going to be rental properties. Not to say that we shouldn't have more rental properties in the city, but we should try to encourage ownership in the city. And if we can utilize flex units to encourage a developer to want to build condos or townhouses, I don't know the terminology. I know there's a legal difference between those two. I think that should be the carrot that we should be putting in front of the developers. And what's good about that, with that type of ownership, it would be an association type of ownership where the association documents would be able to restrict the Airbnb, which is a problem. One of the meetings of affordable housing, they had a presentation from, I forget the organization, but they were from FIU. And I had to leave the meeting before it was ended, after they did the presentation, and I actually saw them in the parking lot. And I had a brief conversation with them, and I asked them, what's the effect of the Airbnb properties on affordable housing? And they said, it is an effect, because people are going into our residential communities, and they're turning them to resorts or hotels, and they're taking housing out of the supply. So I would really like to, when we get to the flex conversation, because I do think it has to do with affordable housing, to use that as a carrot to try to encourage. They're very resistant, you know. So that's one thing. The other thing is, and I've been to several of the board meetings where they've had the roundtables for, like, Gateway and Midtown, and I've kind of stated this at those meetings, is that we have a volunteer fire department, and renters are not going to be feeding us volunteers, because renting is a commodity. If you're renting in plantation, and then next year they raise it 10% or 15%, you're going to go look to see, can I get something else in plantation? Can I go somewhere else? Go to Tamarack? Can I go to Sunrise? Because you're going to go where you can get the next best deal to reset your clock. So I think it's critical that we encourage, with all means possible, particularly in Midtown, to encourage ownership. And that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Fadgen. Council Member Horland?

Thank you, Madam President. I think Council Member Fadgen made a lot of good points, and these are also some things that we had discussed at our strategic planning session. I think that while we all want to encourage fee simple, the building of generational wealth, we also have to understand that there are a lot of various people with different needs out there. So I think that we had all raised the concern about the volunteer fire department, and I think that it's incumbent upon us that I do believe we can get volunteers out of the apartments, but I know that the chief has worked with some of the developers to give discounted rent, as they've done with the police department in the past, because it is important, especially when we're building in Midtown, that our firefighters are living near their station. So I think that it's not an either-or. I think that we have to look at many different facets. Caitlin's original question was, do we want to incentivize or require? I'm concerned about requiring, because I think that we need to look at the financial barriers. We talk about building condos and townhomes, and I think that we're all proponents of that, but we also have to understand that it's very difficult for applicants to get financing for condos right now. So what are we going to do as a city? There needs to be incentivization from the city. There are opportunities working with housing finance, spoken to Ralph Stone, tax-based incentives, utilizing bonus density units. If we are building in Midtown, that might mean that some of those units, that the floors go up a little bit higher so that we can get that blend of affordability. So to the mayor's point, I don't believe that we can do all affordable or attainable housing at the mall, but I certainly think that we can be a blend and do a blend. Where we start to, but we're going to have to give back a little bit to the applicants, because it does have to be a partnership. Where we want to build it, I believe it has to be on our transit corridors, absolutely, if we want people to be able to get to their place of work. So I also know that we've talked about ADUs, and that's something that we've been exploring in the city. I don't know what the city attorney, because I have looked at Florida State statute, are a big concern with ADUs, and I think it's a great way for people to increase the wealth of their homes when it is appropriate, and we have the appropriate space. Because we've had this discussion when we talk about short-term rentals and having somebody there on the property, I think that we find a lot of people that are coming back. I know my three children are now graduated from college and grad school. Where are they going to live? We've got in-laws. So we've had applicants come before us before. We need to take that into consideration. But my question to the city attorney, we're concerned about the proliferation of short-term rentals. And I know that Jacksonville, the city of Jacksonville is allowing it in ADUs, but Miami Beach prohibited it. So do we, I don't want to open that door to ADUs if it's going to create another problem for us and not solve enough of the affordable housing issue.

I haven't specifically looked at either Miami or Jacksonville. It is something that we did recently start discussing with the presentation of the ADU discussion here. But again, you know, we're preempted. So if a unit exists, I think it's going to be difficult to prohibit a unit from being used as a vacation rental because, again, we are preempted from prohibiting them. So that's the challenge. And there are other challenges associated with ADUs, especially if you're going to focus them to satisfy, to a certain extent, affordable housing requirements. I mean, the statute talks about an affidavit being required, but it does not allow you to record a restrictive covenant and limit it to 30 years like you could otherwise for some of these other affordable housing units. So it's something that we'd have to look at more carefully.

And it's going to have to be a much more nuanced discussion because I don't want to open a Pandora's box. We're trying to fight the short-term rental issue. My last point on that, and again, it was something that we had discussed previously, but I'd really like to see us embrace, search out more of those three P's partnerships with Habitat for Humanity and things like that so that we can get people into ownership, and that's a great way to do it. Habitat's built some phenomenal developments, one up in Pompano that I had visited. So I think, again, it's not an either-or. I think that this council, in many respects, I said it to Mr. Nunamaker, has been put in a little more of a difficult position because there were, what, 3,600 units approved, multifamily, before we started this job in 2018, and no thought really was given to affordable housing at that point. So now we're at the point there's not a lot of parcels left. We're looking at adaptive reuse and redevelopment, and now we have to make much more thoughtful discussions. And so I think that while we have to be careful in becoming obstructionist and saying no more new apartments, we have to make sure that we're being inclusive, we maintain that economic vibrancy, and we're putting the projects in the right places.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Council Member Horland. It is. It's a balancing act, and we need a hybrid approach is what I really hear you saying. And that was in my notes as well. I said joint ventures. I know when I met with one of the developers, I think he's here recently, I said I'd really like to see more creativity. And so I think we need to partner with, whether it be HCA or Broward County Schools, and do some type of workforce housing with some of the bigger entities in our city. And we haven't even begun having that discussion. Well, tonight we did, obviously, at our strategic planning. But about, you know, I guess it will be part of the traffic portion, but transportation piece. But having that in close proximity to a school or the hospital so that we can also have residents that are going to walk or bike to their work and back and forth from home to work. I, too, agree with Council Member Fadgen, and I've been voicing that frequently and loudly, that I would like to see more home ownership. I do believe that we need both in the city, it's a hybrid approach, but home ownership is the real path to generational wealth. And so I would like to see more home ownership as well in that midtown area, because it has, up until now, all been rental properties for the most part. But really, to answer the question, I think it is about incentivizing. So having those joint ventures to incentivize the developers to build, whether it be townhomes or condos, I think that's the way I would like to see us go in the future. Council Member Fadgen, no, I'm sorry, Council Member Reinstein.

Yeah, thank you. First, I'd answer that I do think it is about incentivizing. I do want to hear what some of the options are and how other cities have been successful with incentivizing what the type of, you know, what we can look at and what are some of the options we can present out there and consider. In talking about the affordable housing, I think it has to be tied in with the transportation as well, and I think it needs to be talked about really at the same time. You know, we've been talking a lot about the different multimodal projects and different ways to encourage more walkability and encourage more bike use and bicycle lanes and such. And, you know, I think that if when talking about attainable housing, workforce housing, people that we want to actually live, work, and play in plantation, that part of the consideration at the same exact time has to be where are they traveling and how can we make it as easy as possible for them to get to and from where they're working to where they're living, possibly by walking or bicycle usage. We all hear, we all see it. We feel the complaints of traffic and, you know, by, I think that, you know, these are considerations that are not, we have them on an agenda on different numbers, but they really need to be talked about at the same time. And that's my thoughts for now. Thanks.

Seeing no other.

So, Madam Chair, let me just add something, Madam Chair. As you know, we talked about the affordable housing advisory committee that we've put in place and staff. We've been really working, I think, very diligently with that committee. And we've began to really look at our zoning code, looking at some zoning reform, particularly with parking and setbacks. We've been discussing, you know, transit-oriented development, which we can talk about, I guess, in the next segment. We talk about transportation because we've seen what Broward County is proposing with maybe some light rail coming through the city, which kind of changes some of the things that we may want to do along those corridors as well with regard to transit-oriented type development. You know, we've looked at ADUs, you know, with the Live Local Act. There's the tax incentives and things of this sort. So this is kind of the things that we've started to focus on. I just want to make sure that as we're working on this, that the council is comfortable with this kind of being the direction, some of the tools that we'd like to utilize to, you know, to impact affordable housing.

If I may, Danny, as well, just to pose one more conversation topic on this issue, just going back to the different typologies. I know that the city has had some initial discussion about ADUs. Other methods to contemplate would be the concept of allowing townhomes in traditionally single-family zoning districts and then looking at other different typologies that perhaps haven't been contemplated, whether those are triplexes, quadplexes, duplexes. So I just wanted to see if there's any initial thought first on, you know, looking at allowing different types of uses in traditionally single-family neighborhoods, whether those are townhomes or other uses, and then whether the city has any interest in looking at, again, some different types of typologies, whether those are triplexes, quadplexes, things like that, that haven't been contemplated in the zoning district to date.

Council Member Horland.

Thank you, Madam President. So Caitlin, when you bring that up, are you referring to the movement in some communities to do away with, inclusionary zoning?

Yeah, so we've seen a trend in the planning world to kind of move away from single-family-only zoning districts. So one of the ways that we can promote affordable, attainable workforce housing is by allowing these mixes of uses. I'm sure that you've heard the concept of missing middle housing, those ranges of typologies where traditionally we may see townhomes and single-families apartments, you know, a very standard mix. But there's quite a range of typologies that, as you're visiting other cities, you might notice. And so the question would be, do we have a desire to explore some of those concepts of allowing different typologies within single-family districts, or is the city comfortable at this point with the types of housing units that are allowed within the various land use and zoning designations?

Thank you for that answer. So my initial reaction is, I think that, again, I don't want to repeat myself, we can't remain stagnant. And, but my biggest concern, and we can't go backwards, it's, you know, 2023, but I want plantation to retain its sense of place, and that's very important to me. So while I think that we need a hybrid approach when we're talking about what types of things that we're building, I don't believe removing inclusionary zoning, I'm not in favor, personally, and I don't want to speak for the Council, of building triplexes and duplexes in a residential neighborhood. I do believe that we have, again, our three distinct districts. I think the rural area should remain rural. We have our residential neighborhoods, and we have that urban core, where I think we have a little more flexibility, and along the 441 corridor. But I think that we should attract, we should have something to attract everyone. And for those that wish to live primarily in a residential neighborhood, then they should just live in a single-family residential neighborhood, if that's what they desire. And I don't want to, again, speaking for myself, start to play with that when we do have these distinct areas. So that would be my concern. And we talk about, we're not getting into transportation yet, but when we talk about where we want to build some affordable, attainable housing. I think it's important that you put the proposed maps up there from Broward County. I think that we've heard presentations come before the Council that the light rail is something that may or may not happen. I don't think at this point that we should be planning for that, because if we look at what is proposed, and it's changed, the map has changed.

Yes.

Then we're going to be looking at putting some density along Sunrise. Now, as we're approaching, you've got Fox Run, you've got the Acres. So if you really start to follow where they'd like to put that right rail, I'd rather focus on the corridors where the buses, and I know there are buses going down there as well, but when we start to think about Sunrise Boulevard, east of University, 441 corridor. So I think that we're running into an issue in the Acres right now, and I'll use that as an example, where it cannot entirely remain the horse community that it was when it was envisioned, simply because of the development around that. We can't control that with Sunrise and Sawgrass Mall, but we have a lot of horse boarding facilities that are moving, and they're leaving that area because of the incidents that have happened recently. So I think that to add to that, I think that would be irresponsible for the city of Plantation. So I'd rather leave that kind of alone and leave that single family. So thank you for the expansion of time.

Council Member Horland, let me just ask you a question before I go to Council Member Fadgen. Explain a little bit more about the residential area mixed-use concept that you just mentioned, that you are not necessarily supportive of that, because I think about this area that we're sitting in right now, right, and there are condos, apartments, duplexes, single-family homes, right here within a two-mile radius of where we are right now. So I don't think I quite understood.

And we certainly see that in areas, say we'll take Jack Randall Lakes area, and so you've got Central Park Elementary there. There are condos in the area, but what has happened in, and I don't know if this is what Caitlin was referring to, but when you remove exclusionary zoning, so a single-family neighborhood, so now you can, say, go into Westport, or you can go into Jack Randall Lakes and start to build triplexes and duplexes. So I don't know if that's something that the council wants to entertain, but within a single-family residential neighborhood.

Right, but those are HOA, right, deed-restricted areas.

But some aren't. Royal Palma State is not.

Okay.

So am I correct in the assertion? Because that's what we've seen in other communities, where they've gone into what had been single-family residential communities and then started to build triplexes and duplexes. Am I correct?

Yes, your understanding is correct.

But if you have a vacant lot within that area, I don't know if I would necessarily be against having, you know, I think you have to look at each individual like we do when we have a quasi-judicial hearing, right? We look at each individual project and at the merits of that project. So I think that there are a lot of those mixed areas, and they're not just single-family homes. Obviously, it's not deed-restricted either, but there is some mixed housing that works.

But would you be okay with that in a currently planned community? So say...

Right, because there probably... Jack Randall Lakes has an empty...

Right, we just use a neighborhood, or Fox Run has an empty lot. Would you be okay with a duplex or a triplex going in there when it's surrounded by single-family homes?

No, but those, again, are all deed-restricted. So I think that's the difference. But I just wasn't sure. Just I think about this area we're in, and it is very mixed, if you will, and it works. So I would be interested in seeing what that would look like in an area that's not deed-restricted, especially if it can lead to more affordable housing and more units. But I don't want to belabor that, but I think it's a good conversation to have. Council Member Fadgen.

Thank you. My interpretation is redevelopment effort for going into a single-family home like Royal Palm Estates and turning that into a multi... I would be totally for protecting the integrity of our single-family neighborhoods. If there's an empty lot in there, I would not be for turning that into an island of a multi thing. Those are just individual communities that you're pointing out as opposed to being in the middle of a single-family neighborhood and then someone buying a couple lots and then wanting to put in row houses or whatever the terminology would be. So I would be totally for protecting the integrity of a single-family neighborhoods in the city. And if there's an empty lot or a rebuild like in Victoria Park out east, that would have to be a single-family home, in my opinion.

Mr. Holmes, any further discussion regarding item number two?

We've got the typologies we've talked about. I think bonus... Did we touch bonus density at all as like an incentive?

No, we did not.

Because that's another one of the incentives. In fact, we were just talking about that at the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee as one of the incentives to explore. That's something that, you know... In fact, I just got a call from Commissioner Geller's office to see if we'd made any progress on yesterday with regard to that. And I told them we were still working our way through the Affordable Housing... I'm sorry, the Comprehensive Plan. And, you know, we were still probably some months away from deciding what we would do at this time. But I know that that's what some cities are doing. And, you know, and I'm asking these questions because, as you guys, as you know, we've had several developments that have come in within the Midtown area where we have been encouraging the developers to kind of implement at least a percentage of affordable housing within their development. Right now, we're kind of moving forward without any, you know, criteria or any, you know, codes in place to kind of guide that. So we're kind of shooting from the hip right now. And this is one of the concepts that we are kind of looking at, I guess, bonus density. And so I just want to see if that's something that the council has any objections to.

Bonus density as an incentive.

Right.

I think, again, I would have to look at it in regards to the merit of the project itself. I think it's hard to just kind of have a blanket statement.

But... I'm not clicking. I'm sorry.

Council Member Horland, please.

Again, when we talk about taking a hybrid approach, I do believe that bonus density units needs to be on the table. It's something, you know, because I think that the council has taken, again, a more thoughtful approach in some of the developments that have come before us. I personally don't want to obstruct. But, again, it's got to be the right project. And I think it's got to be in a give and take. This is always about compromise. The residents are going to not get everything they want. We're not going to get everything they want, nor it's the developer. But there has got to be some incentive there. So, again, I think it's going to be the project based on the merits of the project. But I would definitely not take bonus density units off the table. I think it's another tool that we need to have at our disposal. Because, you know, if we start to look at the cost of putting up a project, cost of materials have gone up, and then I think that we need to, again, have to get out of this mindset of putting everything on the developer. It's if we want to provide these affordable housing units for our residents, our potential residents, then there's got to be, we've got to bring something to the table.

It's got to be cost feasible. Exactly. Yes, I understand.

So let's move on to item number three, transportation. I think Council Member Reinstead said it best. This is definitely not in order of importance, right? All of these kind of intersect. But this has been a topic, a hot topic, that we have been discussing, particularly at our strategic planning meeting. Recommendations or?

So just some guidance in the discussion points. Go back to our slide here. So we saw several proposed projects. So looking at how proactive versus reactive we should be in terms of addressing from a land use and zoning perspective some of these potential projects. So I know that there was some discussion about concentrating housing housing and affordable housing along transit-oriented corridors and around transit development paths. So that would be one topic. How proactive versus reactive are we going to be based on some of the proposed projects that the county has brought forward? Also addressing and identifying some of the key obstacles that we've noted throughout the city. Of course, Broward Boulevard in Midtown has been a big topic of how do we address unifying Midtown with Broward Boulevard and cutting right through the middle there. So that along with any other obstacles that we should be focusing on, options to mitigate, as well as talking about some of the future needs, whether that's multimodal needs or others. So I put those three concepts out as guiding discussion points.

Thank you. Council Member Fatchin?

You had a graphic, I thought, showing the light rail path. So tell me what the dotted, where's that dotted line going? I see State Road 7. Okay. All right. So this was up to commercial. Okay, so this was like in line with what I remember from the presentation that I saw. I mean, we had it here and there was one at MPO where they were talking, coming down Broward Boulevard and then heading north on sunrise and either going up to Oakland or commercial because there were some commercial core that would really drive that economic thing there. To me, it's like if it went down sunrise, basically from 441 to, I don't know, 65th.

I don't know. 136. I think it's 136 that it's showing that it would, you're right at Sawgrass.

I'm looking at the south border. Is that on sunrise?

Yes.

See, I don't look at, there's just too many chunks that I don't think that it would be beneficial to have that light rail on sunrise because there's just too many areas where there's not a business core to support it, where you could put housing. You know, our part of it would be, and I think Council Member Horland said that, you know, we don't want to get too far ahead because this is years and years. I forget the timetable for the light rail to go on the place. But when it came, what's that? Yeah, I mean, we might not even be here by then. It's just like, to me, it's like sunrise. It doesn't make any sense. There's things we could do with 441, but I don't know. I thought I misread that, but this is what I remember from the presentation. So, all right, thank you.

Council Member Horland.

Thank you, Madam President. We talk about transportation. We have had some great presentations about improvements from the NPO and things that we're doing internally with our plans. I really, when we start to talk about walkability and connectivity, again, I think the focus should be on the Midtown area. We've talked about the proposed pedestrian bridge across Broward Boulevard. I believe that will be one of the main components, if we get funding for that, to really connect the area, connecting the Spine Road, getting more people to utilize that. A lot of people talk about getting everybody out of their cars. People in South Florida are not going to get out of their cars. We talked about it with Plantation Walk, and when we approved them going forward with more parking, as opposed to the fountain, we all wanted the fountain. But if you go out there now, as businesses are opening, it was an important decision to allow more parking there. So while I think that we can encourage people within the district to walk and ride their bikes, I think anybody from outside the district, even if you live east or west of there, are taking their cars over there. So I think that it's going to be very important as we're approving projects, and we talk about mobility. We also need to talk about heat islands and how we're developing. Palm trees are lovely, but they don't provide shade. And so I think that's got to be an important component when we're talking about transportation and mobility within that area. I know that we're exploring microtransit units. I think that will be very important if we can get a circulator in that area. When we get to the point that we're talking about recreation and entertainment in the district, I had a conversation with one of our city employees recently who said, I'd like to be able to go to dinner and then do something else, but there's nothing else to do. So whether we have like a putt shack or something that you start to have that entertainment, and you can go to Kalud's and have dinner and have a couple of drinks and then maybe go over to the putt shack mini golf and take the circuit, you know, like a circuit or a freebie. So I think that's going to be really important to be able to move people around the district. Thank you.

Council Member Horland, I think that you must have been privy to the conversation that I had with Mr. Goldstein because that was actually our conversation a few weeks back. There's a perception in South Florida that, you know, public transportation, my conversation with him is it's almost like a class system. And so we have to move away from that. And I believe for this transit system to work, some major marketing and rebranding and shifting of mindsets for us as Floridians has to change because we do not take public transportation. We don't. And even when I look at the ridership being 3 million, like I question that because I see I'm on the road probably more than most, and I see the people taking public transportation all over Broward and from Broward today, and I don't see the numbers in the ridership. If you go by it, there's a beautiful, I think, three-story garage for you to park and take public transportation, and most of that garage is empty. So we, before we, I mean, it won't obviously be our decision to make this investment, but there definitely has to be a shift in mindset with people being more open to taking public transportation before we can really get cars off the road. And as Councilmembers Hoyland mentioned, with the increase in heat, and I don't think that's going to change. I think that's only going to get worse. So that's cutting down on people wanting to walk and spend more time outdoors, and so even navigating that so we get people out of their cars. I love the suggestion of reducing the parking spaces. I actually, in our conversation, he definitely gave me a different kind of take on the parking situation and reducing those spaces, and one that I honestly hadn't considered before. So, but I'm still very just concerned that this, it's a great plan. I don't know if it's really going to come to fruition. And 2035 sounds far away, but we might not be sitting here, but we'll absolutely be here. You know, it's only 12 years. It's not, and we have to really think forward, you know, 12 years from now, no matter where we're sitting, there or here. And I worry about the financial investment piece of this, and I too wouldn't want to plan with just having this in mind. I think staying on that Broward Boulevard corridor is probably a smarter way to plan for the future because I don't know if I have a lot of faith in this particular process. Any other council members that want to chime in?

I want to say one thing with regard to that. So we kind of have to look at our development patterns as well because, I mean, transportation and development go hand in hand. And I know we hear a lot of complaints about people complaining about transit. On the other hand, we really haven't built the transit-oriented type developments that's really going to support our transit network as well. So we still largely have this suburban-type development pattern, which is not going to lend itself to further developing our transit network. And so I think as local governments within Broward County, we're going to have to do our part in creating these nodes and these centers of density where transit can appropriately connect and become more efficient, increase the headway, or what have you. So, you know, part of it is also our development pattern. And I think as we look ahead 10, 20 years, we've got to start changing the way we kind of see development in the city and start developing in such a manner that's going to support future transit. So that's something we've got to think about. And I know you talked about the Sunrise Boulevard. I mean, I would have preferred for them to kind of kick it out at least further to Broward and maybe go up Broward if they were going to cut over, maybe even to Pine Island. I think with the library and all the courthouse and all those centers there, that it may have been better coming a little further down Broward and then going up and then over to Sunrise, getting out to another kind of density node, which would be the Sawgrass.

Can I make a comment on that? Sure. When you're talking about the density that you need to support that light rail, I mean, basically from 441 to University Drive, there's just not that kind of development. You're passing single-family homes. Some of the driveways are right on Broward Boulevard there. I just don't see how that would support it. So I think it does need to take a right-hand turn at 441 because I don't think that corridor could support it. So, I mean, that's just my opinion.

Yeah, you're going to have similar issues as Councilman Mulholland said. Once you get west of Pine Island, you know, you've got, you know.

Commercial and Oakland are totally different than I've got to think about. Well, whatever. I mean, I understand what you're saying. But I'm looking at this and I've listened to these presentations and I'm just thinking, like, you know, when I saw this presentation for the first time at the MPO, I'm just thinking to myself, just like, I don't see how Plantation could support it just because of what's lining Broward Boulevard in big chunks of Sunrise Boulevard, you know, before we actually get to, you know, that urban core, like the Broward Mall and the Plantation Walk and stuff like that. I mean, there's just a big chunk that could not help sustain it and get to that 3 million per year user. So, I don't know.

I'm just a humble CPA. But I did want to address, I think, something like, even looking at Sunrise, for example, if you look around the Plantation Point area, maybe up to, like, Pine Island, I think you do have a strip there that could be very supportive of transit-oriented type development. I agree with you. I think it's when they're coming further west that's my concern.

And to Councilmember Fajan's point, again, we have to think that, yes, it's going to travel along the commercial corridors, but the whole point of that is to get ridership from the residential areas. Right. But I don't know if somebody, if it goes down Sunrise, someone from Fox Run is going to walk from the interior of their neighborhood to pick up the light rail.

And we're focused kind of on the light rail, but, you know, they have that express, I forget the terminology, the express buses. And so there's a whole bunch of layers to this. It's really just to make it, they're trying to make it so people would consider it because it's not an inconvenient, you're not sitting out in the 100-degree sun and waiting for this bus that's taking 45 minutes to get there or whatever, so.

Well, and I think that's something that we've discussed when we've talked about some of these transportation proposals is if we are going to encourage people to use transportation, then those bus stops need to vastly improve because you're really exposed to the elements.

Well, along that line, you know, I remember when I first got in the office, someone said, who the heck designed our bus stops? Because they're like a 15-foot, like, ceiling that basically just blows right in. It's sort of like some of our shape and structure is, you know, too high, not creating any shade, so.

Council Member Reinstein.

When talking about the bus usage, is the, you know, normally I would look at the light rail and the express buses and think that we want to encourage it down Broward where it reaches West Regional Library and where it reaches the bus terminal, but is that really a false sense of need there? I mean, is it not being as utilized as well as would necessitate the bringing it all the way down Broward to reach that terminal? Because normally, you know, you'd want to look at where the infrastructure already exists in terms of the terminals and help us bring it down to that and make it easier for the riders, for new usage, current usage, but is maybe that in the wrong place altogether? And that's a different issue, but maybe we shouldn't be looking at that as a need. I don't know, I'm raising the question. I don't know what the numbers are. Right.

Yeah, I think, you know, they're kind of looking at the current ridership and they're trying to kind of fit, make the network kind of work with that current ridership, but I think, as I said, I think as local governments, we've got to start doing our part in creating these nodes that's going to help the system improve as well.

I mean, because it would seem that that location otherwise would be the right location if we're going to try and encourage, you know, public transportation. And, you know, when we talk about, we talk about the center of plantation, we talk about Midtown, we talk about, you know, trying to bring people into, you know, utilize that transportation, that would seem like the right spot, but...

I agree with you.

Okay.

Well, and I think to your point, wouldn't you agree, that's why that redevelopment of the Broward Mall is so important, not only to keep those anchors and that retail there, but to have the residential and to be able to get that connectivity with the bridge and the spine roof, to be able to really utilize that transportation hub the way that it was intended to be, you know? But we've got to do, as you said, our part to be able to bridge that connectivity, and that's where you need to put some of that density. Right. And again, also to attract the businesses like the FAA who want to come in.

And maybe just as a, as a further follow-up, is that I guess also the question to Caitlin and Jeff is that does this take into consideration all the presentations that we've had from MPO in terms of Broward Boulevard and Cleary and some of the things that they want to do? Are you, is that something that you're aware of, familiar with, what they've been presenting to us as projects?

Yeah. MMPP.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what he's referring to. Yes. So the planning department has shared your previous presentations that have been made to the city with us, so we're familiar with what's been contemplated at the county level and elsewhere. To Danny's point, just one addition, and we don't have to really belabor the point now or make a decision, but at some point, the city may contemplate making land use decisions around creating these supportive nodes through the establishment of transit-oriented corridor. Land use are similar, so that may be something down the line in addition to establishing an activity center in Midtown that we may contemplate down the road as maybe some of these plans are more finalized and the city has a little bit more information.

Okay. May I? Can you maybe follow up with just the supportive nodes that we're talking about? Can you describe what that would look like?

So typically, from a best practice standpoint, the transit-oriented corridors and transit-oriented development has these concepts of nodes that are focused around stops and transfer stations, and that's where the most intense development and highest mix of uses would be allowed, and that's really supporting the ridership of those established lines or future lines. So it's kind of a chicken-and-the-egg type of thing to some degree, but that's usually where you're seeing, if you're to look at it on like a graph, a peak in intensity, and then as you move away from those nodes, you see a little bit of a dip, and then you get closer to a bus stop and another transfer station, maybe it peaks again, mostly again, in terms of density types of uses. That's where you're really encouraging a lot of the walkability, the multimodal between stations as well, and then the concept of the last mile also comes into play.

Yeah, I think your comment regarding the chicken-and-egg is exactly what I hear when, you know, Council Member Hortland talking about that, you know, people drive, and we're so accustomed to the driving, and that's why we have so many parking spots that are required, because everybody's driving and everybody wants a parking spot, and, you know, if you reduce the parking spots, will you reduce people driving or just cause more headache for everybody? But at the same time, if we're not also looking at increasing the bike lane and safer bike lanes and more sidewalk space, I mean, to me, this all has to be looked at at the same time, because you're not going to, you're not going to get people out of their cars if there's no better options for them, and it may not be us, because we're so tied into our car, but it may be my kids, it may be, you know, the next generation that we're also planning for right now.

And, and...

Madam President, may I follow up on that? Please. I think, to your point, we may not be able to get everybody out of their cars, but if we can get a lot of the people out of their cars within that district, you know, and I think we've got a real opportunity within the Midtown District, again, and that comes with the development choices that we make with, you know, avoiding those heat islands, making sure there's shade, making sure there's wider sidewalks so that people will walk within, because you may not choose to walk over there or bike from your home, but I think that if we can reduce, and again, we have to talk about the fact that there's so much pass-through traffic within that district that we cannot control, so if we can encourage the residents that are living in there to walk more, then I think that we can have some reduction in traffic.

And I think the transit-oriented development will also kind of help civilize you're saying the way we design our bus shelters and stuff, I mean, it's going to kind of civilize that node or that stop there to give people more options as they're waiting, you know, for the bus or light rail as well, so there's some things to think about as well.

They want to put a ceiling fan in the bus area, Councilmember Fatchett, and so if our other sustainability advisory committee can get that going, at least that might help with a little bit of breeze in those bus waiting areas. Seeing no additional comments, I think we're ready to go to flex zones, item number four. In terms of flex zones, so I will start with just saying I've been against the idea of unified flex zones. I still don't know after talking to several people. Do you have a thing for me to talk? I'm sorry?

You had a thing for me. I wanted to give you a quick update first. Oh, yes. Did you see it on your notes there?

Go ahead. Sorry, Mayor Sartle.

Yeah. I wanted to update you all because administration has been working even in a more accelerated pace the past two or three weeks. And we think it's best to carve out flex from the acres and we believe it's time we put this whole issue to bed. We asked the city attorney to make sure our proposal would be defensible and he has indicated it is even if you take into account entitlements and the Burt-Harris Act. So we're ready to propose it. It's in line with how other cities are operating. Like she pointed out, they're going to a more unified approach. which is what everybody's doing and that pinpoints areas where flex is not appropriate and this is something we've been working on in admin and we're ready to send it to you. We would like to codify no flex in the acres and we will also be very stringent about its application in any single family home neighborhood. And so we're looking to codify that and it will be coming to you all pretty soon. So with that in mind, I don't know if that affects the conversation or not but I thought I would share that before the discussion began.

Thank you.

I think it would, yeah. That's kind of an understatement there.

No, it absolutely

Yeah, so that's yeah, we've been working on that

and I think that was it's not there now but that was one of the slides to

We didn't want to put it out to you all until we were very comfortable with the city attorney's opinion which we got yesterday.

So thank you, Mayor Soto. And I think that definitely will help the conversation and I'm in agreement with having the special interest district I guess you know as noted there having that separated out or bifurcated and excluded but I'm still not sold on unifying all of the other flex zones. So those zones have flex units and I guess for me I'm having a hard time as to why we haven't put this to bed and we keep having this conversation because if somebody wants to utilize flex zones they can come here and they have their proposal right and they present it to the council to use flex zones and how many they want to use in the zones that currently still have units allotted and I wish we would have put that slide up that we've seen in the past because it shows each zone and how many are left in each zone but I still don't see the benefit of having unified flex. I don't know Mr. Holmes maybe you can shed some light but I'm not seeing the benefit.

Well let me say this using the example that you just gave if we look at I think it's flex zone 68 which is the acres area so if we left things kind of status quo then there are flex units that are stuck in flex zone 68 that can't go anywhere and so essentially they're going to sit there I mean someone can come in and request to use them in flex zone 68 you're not carving them out of flex zone 68 because they're stuck there and can only be used in flex zone 68 so if part of the goal is sort of to free up some of the areas that we have not already utilized the units in and we don't really think that it's feasible for us to allocate the units in those zones then creating a unified flex zone that we could kind of create our own rules in terms of how they can be utilized will actually move those flex units out of flex zone 68 or enable them to be I mean because it's unified they still could be used there but if we carve it out then it exempts that that zone from accepting any units and it creates other areas may now receive these flex zones which may be more appropriate like for example you may more appropriately want to use them within the local activity center which is a redevelopment area or you know within even within Midtown or other areas that would be more appropriate so that was kind of the purpose behind kind of looking at a more unified zone I think that's that's why most cities have kind of opted to unify the flex zones and kind of get them to where they think that they would be most appropriately allocated

I guess where I still am having a problem accepting that is if we were not to do option I guess one in the essence that we unify all flex zones right but we still carved out the acres for exclusion what would happen to their what would happen to their zones

well there would be one zone so we would so there's one the city is now one zone so flex zone 68 technically no longer exists there's one zone for the city so those units that were stuck there and if we add as part of our rules as to how the flex zones will be allocated that they can't be used let's say west of you know hiatus or what have you then you know someone that was coming in wanting to utilize the city's flex zones our rules would say they cannot be allocated west of hiatus

maybe I didn't state the question well

I'm sorry

if we did not have unified flex

okay

but I'm proposing option 1.a right so if we did not have unified flex that we still

don't want to use

excluded the acres what happens to their flex zones

well they're just going to sit there correct

they're just they're exactly right they're in essence they're dead correct

right

so that's why

I'm sorry I know I'm not next but that's why we'd want to make it unified so that we can use it to try to incentivize in an area maybe midtown maybe gateway to get to use them up so then we're done with using them but I mean

you're right I mean there's

nothing to prevent

that anyway because you can always request additional flex units so if you wanted to use them in the activity center right however many is allotted for that area you could use and if you needed more than what's currently allotted you can make a request

we could make a request to the planning council to increase

I must be missing something because I still am not seeing the benefit of having unified but I can see the harm but I'm not seeing the benefit so

let me ask what's the harm

because I can see it being abused in other areas so what's to say when you unify unify it because I believe and I didn't bring that it's on my I don't have the screen in front of me how many units I won't hold you to the exact but oddly do we have for the whole city

for some reason

I have like 300 Dennis will know

do you know Dennis 1,500 I was thinking around 1,600 1,600

1,600

where's mine yeah

okay so how do you you've exempted the acres and now everywhere else I guess in the city is free gain

well that's kind of my thought process but you write the rules to go so if you don't want every other area in the city to be free gain then you exempt the acres is not the only area that we can exclude but that's

I think why originally before any of us sat here each area had a certain allotment to have kind of those guardrails in place

that's true but because they're sitting there you know and if we decided that we definitely don't want to utilize them there but they may be a benefit you know somewhere else I mean and the council still has a discretion no one has any you know rights to our flex units no one can come in and ask for them we can say no and we can send them on their merry way so the council still exercises complete control over when and how they get allocated so if like for example we're looking at affordable housing we can say that look if you want to come into the city you want to utilize our flex units these are our rules they can't be used here here here you must use it for affordable housing we can write the rules that we want for flex units and then we can direct them and target them to where we think they will be most appropriately applied and that's what you see most cities have actually done

councilmember Horland

thank you madam president we have respectfully disagreed on that first I want to thank administration for your work on that I have always been in favor of unified flux and while I agree that the acres need to be carved out I have been very specific that I thought that that belonged in the comp plan which is what we're doing I never thought it belonged in a policy I thought that was the wrong way to govern and I was especially concerned with potential litigation with Bert Harris so I'm glad we're in the place we are I believe that we need to protect that rural district however with the unified flex I think again it gives us the flexibility and that's exactly what it's there for I think that we need to plan for the future growth of the city where we're at now I don't think anybody could have envisioned 10-20 years ago when we looked at these flex zones so I think again to Mr. Holmes point the ultimate discretion is still with the council so I understand your concerns about it being abused but I think again we've got the guardrails and we can write the rules I think the unified flex just makes so much sense so that we this council or future councils can really decide what areas of the city it's going to change might need those units so again I'm glad we're going to protect our rural area but I am in favor of the unified flex so that the council has the flexibility to apply them where they see fit thank you madam president

thank you council member Horland council member Fadgen

if we don't go unified like Danny said they get they just get left in that with a restriction that they can't be used future council could change the rules so even if we go unified I think it's all about the rules that we're going to create you know you want to use our flex this is what our expectation is of being able to get the benefit of those flex and obviously I think the best probably use for those is to help create these activity center items and particularly the affordable housing so I think that that process is just going to be all about creating our rules and then I think your concerns are going to be alleviated based on how we come up with those rules because anything you know like if we leave it that can be just changed by another council somewhere down the road anyway so thank you Mayor Sartle

thank you two quick comments number one this is America anybody can propose anything they can bring it here and if they want to build they still can go through the loop around for you know other other developments so we're not totally shutting the door but we're making it dang hard and the flex being a hot topic as it is like I said I'm eager to put it to bed but I also want to point out that and I'm curious what the council thinks about this regarding flex in other single family whole neighborhoods I think would mean the same thing I don't think it's part of the comp plan but I don't see many situations Eldorado would we use flex you know Jack Granite Lakes any of those would flex get applied and I'm curious what you all think about that

yeah

okay yeah I'm just curious if that's what all five of you believe or whatever I mean internally that's what I believe not just the acres but any single family home yeah it's back to what you said the first comment you made yeah

help me out

agree

councilmember Reinstein

if there was a unified flex would we still be able to use flex as an incentive for developers yes yeah I mean so we're still we still have that same tool even in the unified and if you know even if the flex numbers that are in the acres are no longer usable if that it's excluded somebody can still come before us even the unified if they want more than would otherwise be allotted and we could provide more

we can ask the we can ask the Broward county planning council for more of their analysis and things that they have to do I think we do we actually have the director here we do tonight but yeah so that option is available there are some steps there that you know we'd have to go through but I think what we need to look at like what we're doing tonight with the comp plan we're years out where do we want to go what do we want to do and how can we utilize flex units to further or advance that vision and so I think right now they're just sitting there they're not doing anything you know for us they're not working you know in terms of where we want to go how we want to grow in that manner we determined that we don't want them in the acres but they're sitting there so if that's not what we want to do let's get them out of there and put them you know to where they can I think be of best use to our future vision

so let me just play devil's advocate for a second and so one of the criticisms that we've all heard before is that the council lives out west right and it's true all of the council is west of university so what is to if we went with unified flex and then someone wants to come and do 2,000 units over in the park east area

okay

that's kind of why I made the comment earlier about having some guardrails in place because yes the council that's sitting here at the time votes on that but it wouldn't even be an option if we didn't have unified flex because there's a set number whatever that number is 300 odd units that are left in park east and then they could not go over that number so I think that's where for me I still am not 100% comfortable with the unified flex

so here so if the issue was you want to look at park east in the same manner that we look at the acres then park east can be carved out as well I mean I'm just

using that as an example it could be I don't know it could be anywhere historic plantation whatever using that as an example then you can you have the possibility of overburdening if you will that's probably not the right word to use but a different community in the city and that's why I think still having the zones and having that density or that number per zone is a little bit more equitable than having the unified so what

if we identified acceptable parcels that we are willing to have greater density I mean we need to recognize already we have the live local act that's already identified several parcels that can have greater density on them but if we identify those parcels that we find acceptable to have where we want our more multifamily or more density on then those are the receiving parcels that we allow and you know so no matter who came in they can only if they want to utilize them these are our rules so if they own this parcel that's acceptable then they can apply to have flex units allocated for their project and Danny that's what's

presented as option two so identifying priority areas where essentially you are eliminating the existing flex zone lines but then you're recreating new boundaries so we came up with a couple just for contemplation the state road 7 corridor and some of the other major arterials within the city those would now be the areas that would be allowed to have that pool of flex assigned one of the other things in terms of your guard rail concern is that the flex gets you around the land use issue but you do still have your zoning in place I think the city's maximum zoning is 25 units an acre so you still have to address the density at a zoning level as well so you couldn't ever get to something at least as the zoning regs are written now above 25 units an acre so that that's one guard rail but I do want to get the council's input on this option too and we have some other areas that we had preliminarily identified as maybe potentially good priority areas if you were to go that route instead of if we aren't all comfortable just creating one zone creating these priority areas that would then be eligible after collapsing

I think option two I guess maybe it was assumed but it didn't blatantly state that the acres would be exempt did it

yes so the acres would remain exempt and we would identify key areas like along Sunrise Boulevard Midtown some of the other main commercial arterials in State Road 7 would potentially be we don't have to decide the exact boundaries now if Route 2 was the way we were going to go but that's one other way to address this instead of just going the cleanest route of collapsing everything we create these on top of that you

could contemplate the

concept of these conditions for issuing flex and as stated earlier I want to protect the integrity of our single family homes where you put any density in that area so I think option two priority areas with stringent requirements what we want

to

get out of it is the way the single family home neighborhoods I think the acres got it started but I don't think let's

just protect the integrity that would would you be comfortable with unified flex with priority area requirements from a planning perspective what what makes

more sense I

would like to

see priority areas identified that's more targeted as we develop our vision we can craft something to see it as we work on the goals objectives policies within the

comp plan we can put

something together that I

think I

think everybody would be happy with quite frankly comments so item five I believe

was Midtown activity center yes so one of the primary concepts that we would like to bring forward as part of the comprehensive plan update in phase two specifically is establishing an activity center on the future lane use map specifically for the area of Midtown and as I noted I would like to formalize that recommendation and ensure that that is established in the comprehensive plan as direction for the city to move forward with at a later date looking for feedback on whether overall the council supports establishing that new lane use designation any questions regarding that

I'm in support

yes

can you go into a little more detail because I think it's important to talk about the density that that entails so it's not just creating an entertainment and everybody has a good understanding about that because the density increases

correct well it depends depends on your ask it doesn't get

essentially what your

residential density so you're essentially creating a pool of rights and one of the recommendations out of the master plan was I believe and Danny and Michael can correct me because I can't read that far was to increase the maximum density to 50 dwelling units an acre

within the Midtown that that's what was in the when we did the back in 2016 when we completed updated the Midtown master plan that was what was recommended and remember we actually right now we do have a local activity center within the city which is basically along the state road 7 corridor regional activity center is very similar it's you know greater density and intensity than a local activity center so we essentially be doing the same thing for for Midtown and as developers would come in they would request allocation of our you know what however many units they wanted up for different parcels or whatever but we could look at you know ultimately how many units you know we'd like to see there over time we would have the ability again to go back to the planning council and have them take a look at if we thought that we needed to increase those you know those minimum or maximum numbers I should say within the regional activity center one of the things you know I want to point out is that we've kind of been doing everything in Midtown on a case by case basis so every time someone's come in they've had to go to the the you know amend the the comp plan to do a land use plan a loop a land use plan amendment drawing out you know more time and everything so if we had these regional activity if we had a regional activity center in place you know years ago then as those projects came in they would have just been requesting okay you've got you know you know so many you know mid-rise high-rise you know whatever whatever we want to call it a unit yeah we have our road map and they'd say we'd like to use two hundred and forty of those for this project council would allocate it much the same way we do in the LAC or along the state road seven corridor and we move along the projects can move along much faster as you know as with projects sit out there time is money to these developers and so it's just a I think it's just a more efficient way of us doing things and we can look at ultimately that maximum density intensity we can do our analysis on that to see what you know where we want to be with that but yeah that fifty dwelling units overall is what was recommended at that time and you know I'm not saying that that's what we have to you know that we have to follow that recommendation but I can tell you right now I think at per that plan I think where we were overall in midtown we're at about five point seven dwelling units per acre that's a low very low density that's akin to almost our single-family neighborhoods in terms of overall density and we're not going to build the type of urban center that we're looking at with that with that level of density thank you for the

explanation and I think we've said that with with this rework of the comp plan and with the strategic plan if we want that investment in the community and we're not just talking about development coming with with multifamily but business investment we need to have a roadmap and a plan and your department has been hamstrung in many cases because we did not have a set of rules right I'm absolutely fine with implementing the regional activity center

there. Councilmember Reinstein.

Just wanted to voice also support for that I think the regional activity center makes sense we've seen it very successful in other cities and it allows for some predictability so that we're when new businesses are coming in they can come in quicker more efficiently and provide what they're intending to bring in sooner rather than later for everyone here so it's a it seems positive thank you.

So I think you have some consistency there too. We have a consensus on that. Absolutely a consensus there as well. So final thoughts before we go to public comments any and we can come back at the end after you hear you might want to wait until you hear some public comments to get final thoughts.

I think I'd like to hear public comments and I think we have some of our advisory board members here I'd really like to hear. We do. I don't know if you're going to take them first Madam President.

Thank you.

Are we hearing from the advisory board members first Madam President or.

Um I believe they signed up if they wanted to speak so I'm just going to go in order of of the speakers so if we do have any advisory board members and you haven't signed up please please do so so that we can make sure that they signed it and they just

didn't turn it into the clerk. They were several on the table in the back and Ms. Gelfand brought them up front and I believe Mr. Duke was one of them.

Thank you Ms. Gelfand we want to make sure everybody has an opportunity who wishes to. So if you left your slip on the

back and you didn't want to speak you're on the file.

No we have we have more if.

So I would like to publicly thank Council member Fajan for chairing and and presiding over our last Council meeting in my absence so thank you and even getting started today so thank you very much I know he already stated it earlier but I'll restate it if you heard someone else say the exact same thing you are going to say you don't have to just because you filled out the form necessarily come to restate it we do want to hear from everybody so thank you so that's why we're here we want to hear from the public but we don't want to necessarily be repetitive so just keep that in mind as well. So first we'll have Ms. Ewers. I'm sorry Ms. Bigwell you need them to state their name and address as well for the record.

I was Nancy Ewers 317 Northwest 43rd Avenue that's in Park East that's east of the Turnpike. I've been appearing before the City Council for 11 months addressing an issue that has existed for six plus years. I do want to thank the mayor for addressing the issue of the furniture and the empty pool. However the property conditions have not improved. I recall several years ago when the City of Plantation declined to incorporate Broadview Park. Are we now creating our own Broadview Park on the higher property taxes in Park East? I yield back my time. Thank you Nancy.

Rob Corman.

Rob Corman, 11095 White Hawk Street. I'm also the chair of the planning and zoning board currently. As I used to tell my students, ATFQ answer the question. And I say that because as has been recognized here, y'all are not going to necessarily be in office 10, 15, 20 years down the road. So what we're doing right now is we're looking to determine what we want for the various parts of our city moving forward. So that's what the purpose of the comp plan is. And to that point, some of the questions that were put up on the screen there as far as priority goes, obviously the Broward Mall becomes a priority because it's the biggest eyesore that's there. But it's also a huge parcel of land. Which relates somewhat to the flex discussion because you all have it in your power to carve out and create a certain amount of density per area. So we can exempt certain areas from the level of density that we're looking at. Which leads me to my next point, which is that we have to be very careful about giving the thumbs up to an activity district in Midtown. Because while there should be an activity district, if you looked at that map that's up there, that activity district encompassed the only office park that we have in the city. Now OPP is the zoning designation in the southern part of that particular picture. And it's the only class A office space that really we have in the city. And overall, everybody two years ago declared that offices were dead, offices are coming back. So we do need a place that is in this city designated for that level of class A office space so that folks who live in a given walking distance could actually work there. Yes, we're talking about transportation quarters. The transportation quarters in essence will take care of themselves because most of those are county level roads. We can decide how we want to build within the city to create additional density in the affordable housing lane. And that's all going to happen as with most of what we're discussing here today, zoning. The zoning that we're talking about currently in the acres in the eastern part of plantation, several of it are very large lots. You're pushing acre lots. An acre lot can handle a duplex no problem if you create the correct rules associated with building a duplex. If a one acre lot comes available east of University, east of University Drive to put a 3,000 foot duplex which has two 1,500 foot parcels, two separate driveways, two separate garages, in essence on that plot of land does nothing to change the character of the neighborhood because you still have a 3,000 foot structure there. The only thing you have are two driveways. And we have several places that have circular driveways that in essence connect to two roads with two pieces of concrete. So what we need are creative solutions to what's going on to solve the affordable housing crisis. When it comes to issues of higher density structures, going to 50 units per acre in that activity district will have unintended consequences. Currently we have 25 per acre but some of the properties that have already been built and accepted, I'm just going to take a little bit more time from Dennis. If we allow that density of 50 per acre, currently with the dashed line zoning we have densities that push 70 per acre already. Yes, the entirety of the plot of land is less dense which is what you were talking about with 5 plus per acre over the entirety of the midtown district. You have to look at the residential footprint part of the district. So if you start carving out pieces of those land, that number actually goes up. And as that number goes up, if you create an activity district with 50 per acre, yes you will get more density but you're also going to get hyper density in some cases which means you have to find a way to prioritize ownership for some of those particular properties because with ownership comes a responsibility and ownership in essence of sense of place which is what you were talking about. And you have to be clear that because this idea of shifted mindset that you talked about with regards to transportation applies to the notion of residential districts as well. Thank you. Single family is important but you can have single family with in addition. Thank you, Mr. Corman. Joe Nguyen.

Hi council, thanks for all the

presenting. Joe Nguyen, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. Thank you again for all of this. And thank you again planners for sharing. I would hope continuously and ongoing that we get a little more of your expert insights on this so that we understand how other communities have applied these rules, have applied these situations. There's a lot. Let me see how we can narrow this down a bit. All right. So we want to think first big picture and we need to think of the idea that like has been said we're building for a completely new generation. These projects, even if the whole comp plan is approved, these projects won't happen or be lived in or worked in for years and years down the line. I'd love for them to be tomorrow but we all know that's not going to happen. So first, we need to look at the idea of the single family areas, primarily acres but otherwise, exclude them. Density in those areas is never going to work. It's going to create more traffic. People are going to hate it. Nobody's going to be happy. Just leave it out. So excluding that is fantastic. Second, those aren't rural spaces. Those are suburban. They're rural spaces that suburbia crept up on. So now they're not rural anymore. So again, leave them alone. We've got, there's a lot here. There's a lot here in how to keep it. I know. So let's see. So we want to think of midtown and our connected spaces. So we need to think of the idea that our urbanized areas, and I know we have the four that we're looking to, we have to think of them both independently as developed urban spaces that are exciting and engaging to be in and to go to. Live, work, play, whatever. But also to connect to each other. And if we don't have good connectivity and we just say, you know, jump in your car, that defeats the whole purpose. That's not going to make anything any better. If we continually think of everything in the sense of how to, how to manage cars. Because the, we need to be developing for people. And I know that we, everybody has a car that has one. And we all use them to get everywhere. But we need to be considering what if you didn't need to. And looking at transit from the perspective of it's not great, so not many people use it. Yes. The only people who use transit are the ones who have no other option. And that's how it's designed. And that's who's going to use it. So coming through, we want to think of the idea of everything cohesive, everything connected. Think long term, keep the ideas of climate change in mind. Urban heating, sea level rise, extreme weather events, covered spaces, cooler areas, places to be, places you would want to go to, places you would pay to come on vacation here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wynn.

Mr. Conklin.

Dennis, Rob needs some of your time, so.

Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest 6th

Court. Heavenly hosts protect you and your families. I think Nancy yielded her time to me. No, just a tease. Just a tease. The original agenda basically was broken down into ten items and they were basically two for transit and the rest was density, more or less. And introduction. The transit, the light rail that they're projecting in the future, if you remember, because a lot of the staff wasn't here back then, but we defeated that because they wanted to come right along Bower Boulevard. And that was brought up tonight. And that's what I was afraid of. Now why would you come along Bower Boulevard? Because it doesn't have the overpasses. Okay, I'm from a railroad town. Freight rail is a 2% grade. Amtrak will take a 4% grade if it's absolutely necessary. Light rail is a 2% grade. What does that mean? For a mile, you can only go up 110 feet. We got Sunrise Boulevard overpass. We got Turnpike overpass. We've got, and Sunrise at 441. I'm sorry, I didn't disclose. So that shoots that down again. Light rail is out of the question. It costs too doggone much. And what was brought up before, and I thought we had it, I thought we really had it, was the BRT. That's the bus rapid transit, and increase those routes. Because it doesn't matter what the doggone grade is for them. Now for the affordable housing, and the housing in particular, the problem is, everything is talked about government and stuff like that. What's lacking is family formation. The generations now, and we had a young man introduce himself, they're not forming families. Now why aren't they forming families? I brought this up before. By the time the country was founded, until basically World War I, gold cost about $18, $19 an ounce. And then after World War I, it went to $20 an ounce. And it stayed that way until FDR came in, and then he made gold impossible to be owned by Americans. And he devalued the dollar by 75% and took gold to $35 an ounce. Now, by the time I reached majority, because that's what you had to be, $21 to vote. Lyndon Baines Johnson wrecked the economy, so that by the time Nixon took place, he had to close the gold window, which meant all the countries with all our worthless dollars were sucking all the gold bullion out of America. So, my dad raised a family with a wife that didn't work, a mom stayed home, and four kids. We had a home and a car, and he made $300 a month. That's $3,600 bucks. If you take a look at the price of gold today at $2,000 an ounce, you're looking at a wage for that $180,000 to $200,000. That isn't occurred. It was mentioned before, it's $79,000.

Mr. Conklin, bring it to us.

You're basically, you're shoveling against a tide that you cannot defeat because the problem is the federal government. It was just reduced from triple-A bond rating to double-A plus. Thank you. And that's because of the debt that we have put on that generation. And that's why you have to focus on family formation. Thank you. I'll yield back my time from Nancy.

Mr. McIntosh.

Hi, Matthew McIntosh, 601 Northwest 82nd Avenue, apartment 531. I'm on the Planning and Zoning Advisory Board as an alternate. So, lots to discuss, but first off, I want to thank the planners for sharing their expertise. With the council and with the city. The point of the comprehensive plan is to plan for the future. So, it was a bit disturbing to me when it was mentioned that the county has already planned for the light rail. And rather than use this time to make sure our plan lines up with their plan, we're just going to say, no, we're going to ignore that and act like it's not going to happen. Which kind of is how you plan for failure. Kind of like how we were talking about with the Bride Mall. And it's too expensive now. Maybe the discussion would have been different if it's happened 30 years ago. Well, it's 30 years ago from the future right now. And it's like, well, right now we're planning to make sure this transit fails. Which will be a failure not only on my generation and millennial, but also generation Z. A study by Green Car Congress that in 2018, approximately 61% of 18 year olds in the US had a driver's license, which is down from 80% in 1983. So, from 1983 to 2018, there's already been a 19% decrease in the amount of young people getting a driver's license. Now, that's before COVID-19. So, with the rise of remote work, I work remotely. There is a lot more flexibility of how you work and how you can get around to places where needing a car isn't going to be as needed now, as it was even just a few years ago, and how it will be in the future. Now, you're saying it seems like no one's using transit because the parking garage is empty. But, if I'm taking a train somewhere like Brightline, when I was living in downtown Fort Lauderdale, I wasn't going to drive my car and park in the parking garage. I'm going to take an Uber, go on the train, get to the airport, and there's not going to be a car there for the couple of, like, days away. So, it's the same concept. You can't judge public transit by how many cars are parked there. You wouldn't take a car to drive to a parking garage to take another car to drive somewhere else. So, why is there that expectation that, you know, if people are using public transit, the parking garage for cars is going to be full? Now, that doesn't mean the parking garage isn't a waste of money, time, and resources. Instead of putting a parking garage by the public transit, put a mall there with no parking. So, that way, when you're taking public transit, you're not taking public transit. This would have to Uber somewhere. You're taking public transit to go to the mall. That's it. Just put the housing, put the commercial spaces, all in walking distance.

Thank you, Mr. McIntosh. Ms. Clark? Sarah Clark?

Hello. Sarah Clark, 10451 West Broward Boulevard. I feel like you guys need a transit pep talk, man. I feel like you guys are really giving up on it, and there's just no room for that here. Yeah, if nobody uses transit, it's because transit sucks. Have you ever tried to do it? I tried to get to the bus stop from my house yesterday, and there was no sidewalk for me to get there. I had to climb over a guardrail, and I hurt my knee, and it hurts very much. So, please don't give up on transit. There is proof that it works, and if it can work in other places, it can work here. We're not that special. So, you know, take inspiration from places where it does work. Basically, all of Western Europe has, like, thriving public transit systems. What are they doing that we don't? Yes, their cities are very different, but they built them, and we built ours. If we built our way into it, we can build our way out of it. So, please don't give up on that. Regarding pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, I know that there is kind of a chicken-and-the-egg situation there with that and also parking minimums. And I was thinking today, and please, I want to hear your opinion on this. If it were safer for me to walk places, even if, because of the sprawl, I had to walk a really long ways to get there, I would still do it if it were safer. Then you've removed a barrier. There's still the barrier of the sprawl of the needing to walk the longer distance, but there's one less barrier, and I would do the distance because then I'm getting exercise, and I don't need a gym membership. It's the gym of life. So, I think safety before density could be a way of going around things, and then once the safety is there, the density can follow. Please don't be scared of the word density. It doesn't mean there are skyscrapers everywhere on every block. I know that some people are afraid of that word. Density just means you don't have to get in your car to go everywhere. I just want to make that very clear to everyone. And the last thing is adding lanes for cars does not reduce congestion. Please, if you don't know what induced demand is, please, please, please, please, please look it up. It is hard to understand. You're going to have to read several articles, probably four or five at least. Even if you choose not to understand it and not to put in the time, you don't have to understand it to acknowledge that it has been proven time and time again. Like, adding lanes has never reduced congestion in the long term. What we need are road diets because adding more lanes is like trying to fix obesity with bigger pants. It's not going to work. So, go on a road diet, take that space, take that extra right away, give it to the pedestrians. You can induce demand for walking just like you can reduce, induce demand for driving. And these things just, you know, these things don't happen in a vacuum. We need the ecosystem, which is why we're going to need that mixed-use density, like I mentioned earlier. I yield my whatever that was.

Thank you very much. Paul Calvarese. Hi.

Paul Calvarese, 940 Southwest 52nd Avenue.

He likes transportation.

Yes. Thank you. And I've presented to you professionally. As you can tell today, I'm not doing that. So, I want to commend everyone up here for taking on this challenge because you're fighting the fight today so that your successors can take pictures of the ribbon cuttings you're going to create. And I want to commend you for that. So, a lot's been said, pretty much in no particular order. So, I heard a lot of great talk about walkability. I want to let you know that walkability equals more money. Okay. It's not against parking. If you have to park on one end and walk three blocks someplace else, studies show that you're more likely to spend money in those three blocks as opposed to just walking in front. There is an economic purpose for that on the story of economics. So, I know there's a lot of chicken and egg as far as transit and what do you do first. You're in the driver's seat. Everything you saw were lines on a map. It is so far from any of the details. The stops have been laid out. Okay. I know some people want to know like what's the stitching on the buses. They don't even know where they're going to stop. And this counsels in the driver's seat on where they can. Okay. Buses are on tires. They can turn. So, just because it may not be the exact route, you can give them a reason to stop. And even if they don't, okay, the worst case scenario, they don't stop. You have still engaged in economic development. The city is still better off. So, even if you fail, you win. I'd also like to point out, I heard something about duplexes and triplexes and this is kind of personal to me. I live in an area that doesn't have an HOA. So, it would be ripe for this. And I welcome it. Okay. Circular driveways. I can fit, for every bedroom, I can fit two cars on my property. So, they planned for traffic. They expected more cars to be there. Okay. And I'll tell you personally, please, do it. You will double my resale value. Okay. Once again, an economic benefit to these decisions. And I know this has been said and I don't really want to repeat, but I have not heard enough talk about the work from home model and how that's changed. And it may not, and if you look at the downtowns, we've seen a lot of changes. When you're looking at where people are going to spend money and what that walkability can take them to. Instead of that office building empty and going to the sandwich shop on the corner. Well, now it's no longer in downtown Fort Lauderdale. It's in our neighborhoods. It's in where we live. And that's a walkable option. Believe me, I would love to be able to escape my living room, walk away from my desk and go do something else. But we just don't have that option yet. And it's these decisions that are going to lead to those changes. So I want to thank you for the hard work you're doing for the work of the planners and have a good night. Thank you. Sarah Fine.

Sarah Fine.

I live at 243 Northwest 100th Avenue here in Plantation. As you know, Plantation started out as a neighborhood of single family homes where homeowners were usually long-term residents. People are more involved in community affairs when they are homeowners and have more of a vested interest in their property and neighborhoods than do transient renters. One of the goals of Plantation Walk, as I understand it, was that people would walk and drive less, which in reality is actually not the case, judging by all of the traffic coming from Plantation Walk, as I have seen, and other plantation rentals, as well as all the cars in the Plantation Walk parking lot. As of today, there's more traffic than ever, which is exacerbated in part due to the increase of high rental apartments. Adding more high volume rentals of any type of any income group would further increase already overcrowded plantation roadways and decrease community involvement in plantation affairs. In my opinion, the answer is not less cars but less high-rise rentals. I yield my time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hickey Gelfin. Hickey Gelfin, 9381 Northwest 18th Place. Let's see. Do you all know, thank you for all you nice people showing up tonight. This is very exciting for someone that shows here every two weeks. Does the council and the mayor's office, everybody gets a utility bill every month in the city of Plantation. Wouldn't it be a great idea if, I mean, we all know that we have great water, Danny is back there very happy, and we have really great people in the utilities department. And why can't we put in, or you folks put in the next couple of months in the bills, what the council is doing tonight. There are so many people in this city that have no clue of what's going to happen, and when it does happen, they're going to come down on you like the rainstorm we had tonight. Sharing information is a way to make yourselves be reelected and make our city more comfortable. With regards to transportation, somebody said the Broward Mall. Broward Mall opened 45 years ago. I worked there 45 years ago. Transportation. I come from a city which has absolutely probably the best transportation around. And plantation, if we're going to get transportation, the county is going to have to give us more money to be able to get better transportation for ourselves. Walking to the store to get something, great idea. Taking a bus, wonderful idea. Going to get a half gallon of ice cream, which is what I said to Rob Korman. So I walk out my door, I go to Publix, and I get on a bus, and I go buy my half gallon of ice cream and my other groceries, and I have to wait for the bus. When I come home, I have ice cream soup. So that will have to be corrected. Overcrowding of the population 20 years ago, we had 82,000. Today, as of today, I think it's between 92,000 and 96,000. We're not getting smaller, we're getting bigger because we are a city people want to live in. Not because we're building new apartments. Not because we have great transportation. It's a great little city. We don't need to be a major metropolitan area. That's all I have to say. I yield back my 32 seconds.

Thank you, Ms. Gelfin. John Auerbach, also one of our advisory committee members.

My family was returning from summer camp, so I forgot to pick them up. Sorry, Mayor. John Auerbach, 6201, Almond Terrace. I'm east of university, since people are telling me where they live. First of all, thank you so much for re-envisioning Midtown. I think it's a long time coming when I was on the Midtown board that we talked extensively about increasing the density in Midtown. There's also, as Danny had mentioned, a Midtown study that was done in 2016 that was an update. The recommendations that were given then, I believe, still hold true in terms of continued growth in the Midtown district. With continued growth through additional apartment density, condo density, just continues to help the retail and the office products that are also in the district. Office that is next to thriving retail and residential yields higher rents and better tenants than office that does not have those amenities close by. So continuing to give the development community a clear path and understanding as to what the city is looking for, I believe, is paramount to continue to see growth in the Midtown district. It's also important to note that when you have people living and working and playing, and I know that phrase is used way too often, but adjacent to each other, that they don't get in their car. They walk next door. The people who live in Midtown 24, when they want to go to the fountains, which is right next door, they wouldn't dream of driving. They walk. They walk. And if we have those type of facilities adjacent to each other in the Midtown district and continue to grow along that path, that's the kind of traffic that you will see in the increase in the district. So thank you very much, and I hope you continue to let the development community know exactly what you want in Midtown. I yield my 45 seconds. Thank you.

Mark Weinthal.

My name is Mark Weinthal, 11900 Northwest 4th Street, Plantation Acres. Plantation Acres has been a one unit per acre since I moved out here more than 30 years ago. Flex space is not a given. It is a privilege. The density and plantation acres must stay one unit per acre, not only for flex space, but for all other projects that come before this council as far as the acres is concerned. Do not open Pandora's box. As the commissioner said, let's put this to bed as far as plantation acres is concerned. No flex space. Keep it one acre minimum. I got here late and did hear the discussion about transportation, but what needs to say about transportation in most of this country is it's substandard. Hard decisions need to be made. We need to get off our wallets. We need to make something happen. Look at Europe. Transportation there is unbelievable. We need to watch what we're doing. This country is becoming a third world country. We need to do what's right. Make it happen. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

Mitch Rosenstein. Hi there. Mitch Rosenstein.

My company is Green Mills Group. We're at 3323 West Commercial Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale 33309. I grew up in Broward County. I'm a proud product of Broward County's public schools. But today I'm speaking with a developer's hat on. My company develops affordable and workforce housing throughout Florida, including in Broward County. I applaud the city's efforts, both elected officials and staff, for acknowledging the crisis we have. And it is a crisis. And proactively addressing it. When it comes to development, there were questions and there was discussion about what it's going to take to create more affordable and attainable housing. Let me be clear. We take a kitchen sink approach. It is literally all of the above. Density boosts, expedited permitting, setback reductions, appropriate rezonings, money. It is all of the above. Construction costs are outrageous right now. Land costs are outrageous right now. And we need every tool in the toolkit. We should not be afraid of reasonable density. Reasonable density. Nobody is talking about putting a 20-something story tower in the city of Plantation. But reasonable density in commercial areas and commercial districts and along transit corridors should not be something that the city shies away from. We literally can't attract teachers. We can't keep teachers in Broward County. We can't keep hospital workers in Broward County. Right? We have a crisis and the cities in Broward County need to act accordingly. The fears of traffic and density are understandable. But at what cost? Right? We literally can't find teachers to teach in our public schools. I want to speak very briefly about the discussion of homeownership versus rental. I'm fortunate enough to be a homeowner. I'm grateful for that opportunity. But I'm going to make some possibly unpopular statements. First of all, homeownership is not for everyone. It's not. Not everyone is meant to be a homeowner. And by the way, I include my senior parents in that group, too. There's something to be said for on-site professional management. It's easier to maintain long term affordability restrictions and affordability covenants that are recorded into title with commercially owned rental properties than it is for smaller scale single family or town home properties. And again, I am supportive of affordable homeownership. I'm just making some points. Unfortunately, there are no dedicated federal subsidies for affordable homeownership, whereas there are for rental. And lastly, affordable rental tends to have more economy of scale, both in terms of construction costs and in terms of operation. We lose that economy of scale when we build low density, affordable homeownership. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mr. Carl Buehler.

Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street. I want to thank our younger generation for showing up here at these meetings. Joe Wynn, Matthew McIntosh, Sarah Clark. This is our future. And I'm glad they're participating. This is really important. I would have to ask Sarah Clark. I wonder how a handicapped person would be able to make it to that bus stop that she had to crawl over a barricade to get to. I also think we've got some older gentlemen here. I spoke with Mr. Duke. He's a retired developer. And he came before the AHAC committee and gave us some really good comments. And he mentioned cost. You know, we have to consider what the developer costs are in terms of whether or not they're going to build affordable housing or condos. And actually, I was surprised for what he said, and I confirmed it with Mr. Holmes, that regarding the Broward Mall, once you get these five divisions together on ownership, that they actually can build there. Developers would build there. There's no problem there with making a profit on the $5 million an acre property. It's just a matter of their density, again, that if they were to build 2,400 units there, they could go out 12 stories now because of the Living Local Act that says you can build a 12-story building within a mile of plantation one. That they could build these projects. It's not a question of financing, except in the case if you want to build owner-occupied condos, in which case developers do need assistance. And that could be done through social bonds or public bonds. That's something that we need to consider down the road here. Basically, I think the ideas about walkability and improving public transit are also very important. And I think, again, I mean, I'm not wild about increasing the population of plantation, but as a reality in order to we have to maintain affordable housing. And, again, another thing is we don't have to call it workforce housing. We could call it community housing, education and medical service housing, hero housing. These are just different options for making it more palatable to the public. And that's the problem with, again, educating the public to the importance and benefit of doing this for everybody and also involving local businesses in supporting this. Because businesses benefit. It's important to acknowledge the benefit to everybody in order to make this more palatable. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Buehler. Owen Duke?

I'm Owen Duke, and I am on the Midtown Board. And I just wanted to recap what I've gotten out of this long session on what to do with Midtown. My idea, my thoughts for developing the Midtown area is to do it in two corridors, to do the Peters Road corridor and the Broward corridor. And let the developments sort of blend together as they match. Start basically with Peters Road because almost everything is there at Peters Road. We have restaurants. We need more. We need more density so they can stay open more. We have grocery stores. We have office space. We have some retail. It just needs to be developed more. And it needs also the arts. And it needs to have more than that. We can do something like, if you've ever been to the Biltmore in Carl Gables, they have a theater. And the theater is not as big as this space and it could be part of a garage in a new building. And they could put that in. It's a wonderful idea. People flock to it and they go to dinner after it and they love it. And we could also have, we could get developers to give us 400 square feet on the first floor of a property for no rent. So we could have an art gallery and it could be run by people who know what they're doing with arts so they could keep going. The music, there's a piece of land that has the cell phone tower that's on the lake. It could be landscaped and we could have loud music every Friday afternoon or every Friday at noon from 1130 to 1 o'clock. And the restaurants can, the restaurants can sell brown bag lunches. They could even be in the afternoons. And so it needs to bring people in. So it's, the pieces are there. It needs to go. It needs, it needs, it needs apartments because we need the density. But they need to be placed strategically and to perform that density. And with that going, you know, it moves on up. When you get to the Broward market, the Broward, excuse me, the Broward corridor, it's a little more difficult because it's already started in a different direction. Plus, we don't really know what's going to happen with the, with the mall. And, you know, we can, we can know what we kind of want to do and we have to let it see where it's going. But it has, it has retail, it has shopping centers, it has, and it has grocery stores. It has offices and so forth. But it has the hospital. It has the medical thing. That is a big, big thing for plantation. Right now where I did a little study on the, the, the medical office market. And the medical office market is amazing. It has a 2% vacancy rate, 2%, 98%. That's amazing. And it's big. And the thing, and it, and we need to sort of capitalize on that now. Office market, I mean, medical office is a difficult thing because, oh, I'm sorry. Go, go, go ahead and please. It's a difficult thing because you can't just build a medical office building because doctors don't move. And so the only way you fill it up is when new doctors come in. But Barbara is, Barbara Simmons is bringing us new doctors every day. And so it can do that. And there's a lot of stuff there. So that needs to be blended in with that, that, the, the balance of that. So it's a little calmer than it is on Peter's Road. But Peter's Road can handle the traffic. You just get off there and it's there, you know, and it is, it doesn't create a thing. And we're doing that. I don't think that midtown should have any home ownership at all. It should all be rental. Home ownership and condominiums are really a good idea. The downside is that they attract part-time residents and they're just there for the winter. And also when condominium owners get ready to get tired of it, they don't really sell, they rent it. And so you end up with sort of a mishmash of things. We need, we need the people that are living in, of the living in the midtown area to be people who are there spending money and, and, and furnish the whole thing. And, and renters do that. If they're gone in two years, hell with it. There's another one coming right behind it. And they're there and they've got more money, they've got fresher money. So that's kind of basically where I see the, the whole thing going.

Thank you, Mr. Duke. Okay. I'm going to call you. I need you in my life. You're welcome.

Ms. Carol Sword. I don't know. To share. To share.

Carol Sword, 1621 Northwest 82nd Avenue. I am a resident of Lauderdale West. Our community consists of both condominiums and single family homes. We're being surrounded by high density rentals and we don't want any more in our area. They will create traffic and destroy the ambiance of our neighborhood. We want to do everything possible to protect our property values and the character of our neighborhood. Also, I'm against any light rail because it will limit our use. Light rail transport can only go where the tracks are laid. Buses can go anywhere as long as there's a road. And buses are more economical since no tracks have to be laid. Also, the tracks will take up a lane and cause more traffic congestion. Since we already have a bus system, let's improve it instead. Thank you. I yield my time. Thank you. Barry Lethbridge.

Barry Lethbridge, 11252 Northwest 9th Street and Plantation. Just to summarize, I won't say what everybody else has said. But I have been a member of the Midtown Board since the 80s or maybe 90. And we've been looking for a regional activity center for the ease of development. And also, it doesn't take away the control of the council to, you know, oversee and work with what's there. It doesn't do that at all. As far as the transportation, I think it is important, you know, that we do need some help with that. But if we bring the density into the Midtown area, you're going to reduce some of your congestion. And we've always talked also about developing a spine road down Midtown to take the traffic off of Pine Island and University. So I think that's something that, you know, while you're doing this, if there's a way to do that, that's something to look at. Very important. And putting the bridge across 84 is going to do a good thing. And to connect that into the spine road is going to help alleviate that traffic. And then you can afford to have more density, but it will keep the people there. And it's going to be just a nice thing, especially for the future. Thank you.

Thank you. And last, but certainly not least, Mishka Ahmad. Hello, I'm Mishka.

I'm here on 681 Northwest 78th Avenue. I guess east of university since that matters. But I'm going to cut a bunch of stuff because my residents here said very, very good points. But I want to say I love the growth of the young people in our city, our engaged elected officials. Thank you so much for taking all of our input, no matter our age. I moved here. It's a very central area. I stayed here. My family was here. I got my own separate condo here. I love this city. And, you know, when they were explaining the map about where the light rail would be straight down sunrise, that would be epic. We could get to downtown. You know, until we develop this to have more lively entertainment and such. But I want to emphasize on a point that you made, Jennifer, that about it seems like the bus system is like a class system. And I don't think we need like a slick marketing campaign. I think to change the minds, we have to fix the system. We have to, you know, make our areas more walkable, make space for bikers, make safe roads. The buses don't have to take hours to get anywhere. I also had a similar experience where I have a car. And I, you know, typically take my car, but my keys, my phone, everything got stolen one day. Couldn't take an Uber. I had to walk to the fountains from where I live in Omega. And it was like the scariest journey of my life. Like some places, like I had to hop around these construction things. And I was just like, I just need a phone. I don't know how to get here, but it was not safe, not walkable areas in plantation. I want to throw another idea maybe that nobody's mentioned that I thought of. Our neighboring city of Sunrise has local bus systems, additional like cars that take people places. So maybe that can reduce the parking problem, even if we leave our cars at home. And just within the city of plantation, that system could happen. And that encourages, you know, economic growth, going to plantation businesses and such. So I thought that was a very good idea. And Sunrise, you know, even that made me consider moving to Sunrise. Like I was like, that's, I was like, wow, like you can get anywhere free. It's like a free Uber. We should, we should get on that same program. And you're. We are. And you guys mentioned some programs. Denise mentioned have debt for humanity. You mentioned AF. Have we reached out? Has, has those relationships been made? There's similar programs. I proposed it to the mayor the other day. Like we're closing the old plantation in. Davey had an old hotel. They turned it into affordable housing units. And they're all brand spanking new. And they, it was the AHF foundation that you mentioned that did that. Privately owned if either the city or we let some foundation do that. Instead of, you know, another mall, another whatever. Like that's, I'm not, we, we don't think outside of the box. It doesn't, we don't have to change, you know, people think affordable housing. The, we don't, we can think outside of the box auctions as well. And I just want to end by saying thank you, Lewis, for your comments. You said we have to think of transportation and housing in the same breath. Like we, we have to grow our transportation as we grow our housing. It has to be hand in hand. And I'm excited for the growth of this. And hopefully I'll stay here for a nice long time.

Thank you. Thank you so much. That concludes. Yes. But that concludes our public comments. And now we're going to have some final thoughts from the mayor and from the council. So Mayor Sordal is eagerly.

Oh, my comment was related to the public comment. That's why, that's why I punched. Mishka, we are working on a very similar thing to what Sunrise has. When we have it, I'm inviting you to be the first passenger. Bring your scissors. You're going to cut the rib. Bring your scissors. You're going to cut the ribbon and then we're on our way. That's all I got. Thank you all. Thank you.

Any other final thoughts from the council? I want to just, I guess, maybe clarify. When I was talking about the public transportation, I don't mean just marketing. I said, it has to be a mindset shift. Because in South Florida, we are programmed to, if we're going five steps to get in our car and drive there. Me included. That is how we have been operating as a community. So it's really a change in mindset, similar to as many people stated tonight, you know, how it is in Europe. And in other large, New York and Chicago and other cities where public transportation works well. So I don't mean just like marketing flashy signs. It really has to be a mindset shift. And that obviously goes along with having better transportation and along those busy corridors. But I still have concerns because I'm worried about the budget. But that's, like I said, outside of our purview. But I obviously do still have some concerns about all of that coming to fruition. Council member Fadgen and then Council member Reinstein.

I don't have many comments. Just sort of summary comments. I think it's important that we protect the single family homes. I think it was started with the acres wanting to protect the zoning there. Minimum of one house per acre. Or no more than one house per acre. I forget who said it. I'm sorry. I'm going to steal it. I think it was from Gross Mills, Mr. Rosenstein. Reasonable density. I think that will need to be a detailed conversation we're going to have, particularly when it comes to Midtown. And then it seems like a lot of everything seems to be going on Peters Road right now when it comes to proposals of these apartment buildings and stuff like that. And I think we need to have close vicinity to the amenities in the area, the restaurants, possibly the entertainment things that Mr. Duke was talking about. You know, we have an office building, maybe it probably makes sense to have the apartment building there. But that's not enough. I think it also, you also have to, we have to have like the restaurants, coffee shops and all that stuff to create that. And where is that going to go? And where is that going to go? Is it all just going to go on Peters Road? But then that disconnects you from the north side of Midtown. So those are the things I think that we need to really figure out, like what's the, what are the residential units we're going to put in there? What kind of residential units? What kind of incentives that we want to provide to incubate what we're trying to create in that Midtown? And we're on the cusp of it taking off, in my opinion. A lot, it's been a long time coming and a lot of dedication by long time board members with Owen and Barry, et cetera. So, but we got to make people want to get out of the car. And that was an interesting comment regarding, you know, if we get them walking three blocks, it's going to, it's going to be an economic driver. So I think that's sort of like part of the consideration that we should be doing. So I think this is a great session. I appreciate everyone coming out here. We're only better when everyone comes out and they participate like they did tonight. So tell your friends next time. We do this twice a month and we'd love to hear from you. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Batch and Council Member Horland.

I think Council Member Weinstein was next.

Ladies first, go ahead. It's fine.

I'm going to, I'll, I'll keep it brief. I too, I want to thank Caitlin and Jeff and planning staff and administration for all your hard work on this. It's really important as this council has gone to strategic planning and working with staff to really try to compete, you know, create a vision for where we want to see the city go. And I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I just want to reiterate that we need to embrace the growth. We want the economic vitality in the city. We don't want to become stagnant, but we still need to work hard to retain plantation sense of place. We want people to drive through here and know that they're in plantation and they're not in Sunrise or Davie or anywhere else. And I just want to, I think it was very successful evening. So thank you everyone. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Council Member Horland. I'm so sorry, Council Member Weinstein. It was not, it's not been functioning well today. So please go ahead and then we will go to Council Member Anderson. No, it's fine.

Thank you. I just want to also express my gratitude. It's wonderful to hear so many residents today. Residents, Mr. Lethbridge and Mr. Owen Duke, who have been serving on our advisory boards for so many years and so many new members of our advisory boards. It's important that we empower those boards in hearing from you. We do listen. We do take notes. We heard a lot of great comments from all of our residents. Mr. Calvarici, I know you made a comment also about walkability and a lot of people did. And it's exactly what I think our city is moving towards. And so thank you everybody for your participation. I also want to thank all the people that sent in comments. We probably got 10, 15 or maybe more comments regarding FLEX, regarding the acres, and regarding other issues. And we read them all. Even if they're not here in person, we do take those into consideration as part of our discussion. And I also wanted to acknowledge that I appreciate that the administration jumped in with the comments regarding FLEX and the acres because it seemed that there was, you know, sometimes we wait to hear that until the end and then it's like, why didn't you just tell us that from the beginning? And we've seen that in other places. And so that's appreciated. And just want to, again, tell the public that, you know, that's part of what I think makes plantations so great is that, you know, we're still trying to balance our growth with controlled growth, smart growth. And we realize that some of it's natural, some of it's not. And we're listening and we appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Reinstein. Councilmember Anderson.

Thank you. I also want to really just, I think we're all really, really similar on our thoughts. I know I didn't talk a lot tonight, but I've been listening to this for several years. And just to hear some of my comments, I, again, appreciate staff and appreciate our Caitlin and Jeff administration. And, of course, the residents. It was a great turnout, great comments, great energy from across generations. I really love the energy we had here. I definitely want to protect the acres and limit that just to have it on record. I definitely want to protect our single family homes. I definitely want to lean towards encouraging home ownership over rentals. However, I would make exceptions in the Midtown area for those reasons. We do need density there. We do want vibrancy. And a lot of people who want that, I think Mr. Duke really expressed it. The turnover is actually okay there because you want people who want that density and want that. And they might not want that over the arc of their life. And they want it when they want it. And that's why you probably do need rentals there over ownership. So thank you, Mr. Duke, for those comments. And I am leery of the light rail. I guess I'm open because I might need more education on it. But the light rail, taking a lane and an old technology, we're probably going to have more and more technologies that will make our buses more efficient, better batteries and so forth. And batteries can be nimble and turn on a dime to wherever we build stops or build malls and build things in the future. So I'm leery of the light rail and would lean more towards the rapid transit with our buses and things like that because they can be flexible and change over the future for the next 30 years. So, again, thank you to everybody for coming out. Thanks for your comments, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Anderson. And again, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Alpert, thank you all for the presentation tonight, for the hard work that went into all of this in preparation for this meeting. We truly appreciate all of you who are in attendance and those of you who sent in your e-comments. And we ask that you continue to stay engaged in this process. It's not over. They mentioned having it on the screen. But in case you haven't gotten a chance to fill out the comments, please make sure that you do go to, and I'm trying to bring it up. Yes, thankyouplanplantation.org so that you can also have your comments and your input known. And we want to thank Caitlin and Jeff for their hard work and your time this evening. We think it was a very informative and engaging conversation and just appreciate the time that you all have spent with us. And on that note, go ahead, Councilmember Fadgen. I was trying to adjourn.

Go ahead. Off-topic. But Monday was the mayor's birthday. So happy birthday, Mayor. Happy, happy belated birthday, Mayor Sorlo. Thankyou, Councilmember Fadgen.

And on that note, it is now 9-12 meeting. We're the mayor of South Media.

We're here with us. We're here with the mayor of South Media.