Special Planning & Zoning Board — May 20, 2025

Alright, it's now 6 o'clock and I'm gonna call this May 20th Special Planning and Zoning Board meeting to order. Can I get a roll call, please? Ms. Gelfand? Mr. McIntosh? Yes. Ms. Peacock? Here. Mr. O'Brien? Here. Mr. Freeman? Yes. Mr. Goldstein? Here. Mr. Della Grange? Here. Alright, we have a quorum. And we're gonna move straight to our first item, which is a public hearing, PP24-0028 Parking and Zoning Ordinance. Do we have a staff presentation? Just a tiny one. Michael Alper, Assistant Director, Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development. So we've been discussing these topics for a while and we'd like to thank you for your feedback and direction. Note that the exhibits were the same that you saw last time, but they include draft text with new language that's underlined and removed language that's stricken through in red. So the changes from what you saw in April, the new language is in red, so it's easier to find. With a few exceptions, most of the revisions deal with corrections and reformatting of language, not major policy changes. Some of the aims of the update include ensuring that the language is alphabetical, for ease of discovery and reading, to be gender neutral, to be positive language, simplified language, and to be streamlined. Tables were added to supplement and replace or replace lengthy text, and then keep in mind as new federal and state statutes are adopted, we have continually, we have to continually modify our ordinances. For example, electric vehicle charging stations, cities are no longer allowed to regulate those per the state statute, so we actually struck through that language. So we will provide an overview of the major themes of policy changes, which I promise is shorter than the last presentation. So just a reminder, most of the changes affect the areas that are highlighted in red, which we have defined as priority redevelopment areas. So, starting with affordable housing incentives, reduces the minimum amount of parking by 25% for dwelling units that are committed to long-term affordability criteria, increases allowable heights in certain gateway districts to allow for denser compact buildings that are able to incorporate parking, provides for minimum setback reductions of 25% for housing that is at least 50% up to 100% workforce housing, and incentivizes affordable housing within TOD districts. For parking. For parking. For parking. For parking. Reduces the minimum amount of parking and institutes a maximum amount for certain uses within midtown. Eliminates the minimum amount of parking and institutes a maximum amount for certain uses within the gateway overlay district. And the same for areas that we designated as a transit-oriented corridor within the city, which would be located along arterial roadways such as Sunrise Boulevard and Broward Boulevard. These are all areas that have current and future transit potential and the most significant economic development and redevelopment activity. Maintains requirements generally for the rest of the city outside of the defined priority redevelopment areas, including existing single and multifamily residential subdivisions, commercial centers, office buildings, and so forth. Amends certain drive-thru vehicular stacking and loading requirements. Addresses reserved parking policies. Removes the requirement for electric vehicle charging stations, which is preempted to the state of Florida in terms of regulation. And addresses bicycle parking policies. Example, you've seen this before of a table. This one focuses on required parking for residential uses. So no change to single family. Accessory dwelling units. Home-based businesses do not require an extra parking. Mobile homes, no changes there. Duplex. Now, there's different categories, as you see in the columns, for gateway, midtown, TOD, and other areas means every other part of the city. So very minimal changes in these tables to the other areas of the city. Mostly it's focusing on those three other categories. And then specifically for higher, high and mid-rise apartments, we have lowered those requirements where there is a requirement. But one change that was highlighted in red in the exhibits was the change to having a, not needing to have a maximum for other parts of the city for those particular things. The main difference for that being a garden apartment, three-story building, built in the 80s. They definitely do need the parking. Whereas the type of product that's being built today is a different type of animal. So that's why we decided to lower those requirements. And then central Midtown Village, which is the Broward Mall area. So in addition to our online notification of the proposed ordinance, we mailed out 1,316 notices to all property owners within and adjacent to, that is a thousand foot radius, of this designated area. There was a plan adopted in 2016, which was called the Plantation Midtown District Urbanizing Vision 2023 plan. I know you can't read this, but this kind of shows the Midtown District and some other policies, which I have enlarged, to show some of the objectives that were recommended. And one of them was actually to increase the density, residential density, from baseline of 25 units per acre to 50 units per acre. And we have incorporated that into this ordinance. It also designates the different urban villages, the northern, the central, and the southern part, as having some distinct characteristics, calls for entertainment areas, pedestrian connections, and so forth. So some of the specific regulations with respect to this area. We want to promote walkable, pedestrian-oriented redevelopment with open space plazas. We want to prohibit automobile-oriented uses, such as drive-throughs, self-storage and storage and distribution, and big box retailers in this area. We want buildings to be located closer to the street when they're rebuilt, 100 foot maximum, with most of the parking to be hidden from view. And parking shall not be constructed closer than 125 feet from these boundaries, except for a small area of parking, a maximum of 50 spaces. So again, large areas of parking shall be prohibited. Integrated buildings and parking structures are encouraged. Single-use out-parcel development shall be prohibited. Parking shall be shared by all uses. Pedestrian connectivity and open pedestrian plazas shall be integral and inherent to the master plan. And, of course, to not just wall signs. I think we also need to talk about directional signs to help with wayfinding and business identification. That's important to the success of this type of development. And the final topic is transit-oriented development. Why have TODs? You've seen this before, but I'll go over it again. Walkable tree-lined streets that produce shade for pedestrians. More housing options. Easier access and support for existing and future high-quality transit. Complete streets that accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, motor vehicles, and public and private transit options. Reducing parking demand. Better streets, pathways, parks, and open spaces. Support for local businesses and jobs. Reduced carbon footprint. And, sorry, I went ahead of myself. There was one other bullet that I failed to read. But, basically, a sense of place and community. So, some of the TOD requirements, including more restrictive uses than the Midtown District in general, in order to encourage uses that are more pedestrian and cyclist-oriented and less automobile-oriented, and that are conducive to a mixed-use environment where parking is shared by all users. So, this would have no minimum parking requirement with a maximum amount for certain uses provided an applicant for rezoning provides a qualified parking study. A minimum of 10% of the units shall meet affordability criteria. And, through some of the other regulations, it helps to encourage diversity of uses, of diversity of housing types and income levels for future residents, employees, and patrons. And, of course, to encourage a sustainable design. So, these are areas, we've seen this map before, but these are areas that also could potentially be rezoned to TOD. And, of course, those are the Midtown, the Gateway, and areas along the arterial roadways, particularly Sunrise Boulevard and Broward Boulevard. And, I just wanted to dedicate this to somebody that was revolutionary. He's an economist, but he was also a student and teacher about parking issues around the world. I actually communicated with him and got some suggestions from him, and he passed away earlier this year. So, this is partially dedicated to him. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Michael. Before we move on to public comment, does anybody on the dais have any questions or comments? Okay. Josh? This is a very nitpicky type issue, but I just, so I was looking through the exhibits in the Midtown District. I, you know, I generally agree with everything you're trying to accomplish. And, so I was looking at the permitted, conditional, and prohibited use table. And, just like, a couple of things stood out to me as not making a ton of sense. So, I just was trying to understand what the rationale was. For instance, like, under the food and beverage category, it says, you know, I noticed there's several categories which are without drive-through. Without drive-through service, which were conditional uses. And, I was just wondering why those would not be, you know, permitted uses versus conditional, what the rationale was for that. Because it doesn't help foster a pedestrian kind of environment. So, those uses are focused on vehicular stacking, parking. It's, there's other places in the city that could be built. So, I don't, yeah, so I thought that, but I just, I disagree, I guess. So, like, for instance, I think, when I think of mixed-use places that have walkability, I think they have all kinds of restaurants. Not just necessarily, like, expensive sit-down restaurants, but, like, a fast casual, not with a drive-through, without a drive-through, right? But, if you want someone to live, like, they're not going to eat at, like, you know, sit-down dinner every night. So, I just think it makes sense to have different types of food and beverage within that walk-a-mole neighborhood. It's really the ones that have the drive-through that we're prohibiting. So, fast casuals would be permitted. Right, right, but it's a conditional use. Right. I didn't understand why, like, why are we, why is a restaurant a permitted use, but a fast casual restaurant without a drive-through a conditional use? Okay, we could take a look at that. I was just thinking about this as, like, I'm picturing in my mind, like, the other places in South Florida that have walk-a-mole neighborhoods. Like, they have, those are the type of things they have. That's all. Sure. Okay. Anyone else? All right. I have one quick comment. So, we have the minimum unit sizes on, I think it's page 13 of Exhibit K. It's page 141 in the big agenda backup file. Okay. Our minimum unit sizes here in Plantation are very large. So, like, for example, Broward County now has an incentive and we're, it's in our comp plan update, an incentive to encourage, you know, studios of smaller than 500 square feet. But in this Exhibit K, the minimum unit size for an efficiency is 600 square feet. So, we technically wouldn't allow it. So, I think that we should, before sending it to City Council, just take a look at this table and try to orient it more towards Broward County's minimum sizes for these types of units. Okay. And that's it for me. Okay. Daniel. Thank you. I'm generally, yeah, in support of eliminating the minimum parking requirements. But I just want to make sure that, you know, if this is to get passed by the Council that maybe we're tracking the effects. I don't know if there's any indicators that the city is going to, you know, assess, making sure this is successful, like spillover complaints, you know, that kind of thing. So, I don't know if, are we going to be monitoring the effect of, you know, these ordinances if they were to take effect? I'm not sure I understand, like, okay. As you know, construction takes a long time. So, it may, it would take a long time to assess, you know, businesses coming in after the construction and so forth. So, I'm not sure what kind of monitoring you're referring to. I just want to make sure that it's, you know, it's success. But, yeah, obviously development would take a long time, so. Okay. So, if I could, for the record, Dan Holmes, Planning, Zoning, Economic Development Director. I think I know where you're coming from. A lot of cities, once they sort of implement some of the parking changes in particular, and with any type of ordinance that you modify things, there is a time period in which you may have some unintended consequences and you go back and adjust the ordinance. So, there will get feedback and there may be a need to kind of adjust the numbers a little bit. So, that's something that anytime we have a text change of this sort that we do, and if necessary, we come back and we do adjustments. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. And barring any other questions from the dais, we're going to move to public comment. I want to start by just mentioning that we have this printout packet that was in front of all of us when we sat down. It's just a bunch of emails that the city's gotten either in support or against this ordinance. So, if you want to take the time to read it, you know, feel free. But barring that, we're going to move to actual public comment. We're going to start with an online comment. I believe we have someone waiting on Zoom. So, we'll open up the floor to him and just make sure to please state your name and address. And you've got three minutes. Yes. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm with Florida Zoning Law, PA, representing Midtown Plantation, LLC, the new owners of this year's at Broward Mall. And we appreciate the opportunity tonight. Address is 321 Suite 3212 South University Drive. Our concern, and we did provide some written comments in the form of a letter and some other that we had attached letter comments that we had uh sent over to uh planning and zoning department last week we appreciate some consideration of those our concern at the moment is that there are and some of the topics were just touched on uh in the uh in the commentary that there are uses that are changing from from permitted to conditional and conditional to prohibited that we think you know could be integrated well within a mixed-use project as the one we'll be proposing and bringing forward shortly we've been working on a very exciting mixed-use uh concept for the site and as we're looking through an active planning exercise we look at some of the design criteria as well as the uses and what their impact can be on the ability to deliver you know both a functional project and one that will stand the test of time and and the board member touched on it in terms of a large scale project you do need to have you know a mix of type of food and beverage operators for example um you're not going to get all upscale restaurants although we intend to to bring some and we're working actively with some but the ability to have fast casual and some fast casual with drive through frankly that you know what if cited appropriately within the project and the circulation patterns you know won't necessarily make it an unwalkable pedestrian friendly environment um and so as we're in an active planning exercise we're seeing these criteria like can't have parking within 120 see some some changes were made to allow a limited amount again whether that's enough will need to be studied our desire would be to prefer to see these provisions as they pertain to midtown be deferred for further evaluation i think you're probably hearing from other property owners who share some of the same concerns um out in las vegas i did the shopping center conference and visited with macy's and billard's and jc penny out here i think not speaking for them but there's some general uh concern that that this kind of came on in terms of the provisions relative to midtown i'm fairly quick and went beyond what started our understanding with the zoning of progress was to prevent you know 100 000 square foot plus wholesale club type use landing on the sears site and became one now where you know tenants as small as 40 000 feet you get restricted out through this big box definition that there could very well be tenants of that size and and caliber that may be a great fit in the redevelopment just speaking for the mall size all right the three minutes are up so can you please wrap it up a little bit more quickly yes sir so we would respectfully request deferral of these sections of the ordinance as they pertain to midtown for further evaluation in in context of the comments you're hearing from other property owners and their impacts all right thank you so much for your comments before opening up public comment for the floor do we have anybody else that's on zoom wanting to speak no okay so we're going to open up the floor to public comments now uh when you come up please state your name and address and you've got three minutes yeah feel free to come up annette gaddis 261 southwest 87th terrace plantation i didn't hear anything about the t-word tonight are we dealing with traffic at all regarding your plan right now from about six o'clock in the morning to 7 30 and around five o'clock to 6 30 you cannot get down pine island from 595 to brow boulevard i have seen ambulances police vehicles try to get down people do not pull over for them it's just a wait and see do we have any statistics on traffic on what you're going to do i know mr holmes you have said numerous times in the past you're working on a plan so what is the plan if you build all these other residents is the idea that you want pedestrian walkways because you want everybody to walk there because they can't drive because they can't get down the street but why wasn't the t-word at all mentioned thank you thank you would anybody else like to give a comment good evening you guys are probably having a flashback right now right it'll be much briefer uh jan aloda i'm going to give my personal address of 621 southwest 74th terrace plantation florida because i'm actually in the radius of the thousand feet for the mail notice for plantation midtown um i do represent various property owners within um the plantation midtown district that you see they're depicted and i would echo mr durelli's comments and requesting a deferral of the items regarding that particular area and anything regarding the development standards associated with midtown thank you anybody else right we won't fight about it uh my name is robert deutch i am a resident of el dorado state estates uh 7410 southwest fourth street did i hear the word urbanization mentioned in your presentation that concerns me a lot as a private residence owner in a fairly upscale neighborhood as our neighborhoods both on the west northeast and where i live in the east portion just east of university boulevard i'm kind of concerned that this plan will result in a higher density occupation of the area an area as the lady who spoke just before me said is already plagued with bad traffic and what she said about pine island applies at least as much if not more to university drive both north and south university drive in our area i think this would have a very deleterious effect on traffic and worst of all property values we have invested lots of money money in our homes and keep them up and very concerned that anything that resembles urbanization is anathema to the maintenance of good property values in the area and unless these concerns are met and i don't think they can be with the higher density mixed use development of this sort in which 10 i thought i heard is used for low income housing the factor of both the density and the possibility of higher crime rates concerns me greatly and i hope it does everybody else who's here tonight i think that's all i need to say thank you good evening still working through some congestion joanne 944 northwest 92nd terrace i'm also the chair of the sustainability board here in the city i'm not speaking on their behalf but i come with that mindset to you this from a environmental standpoint is probably one of the most impactful things that the city could do from my board perspective i couldn't even get something this effective most likely uh through so i appreciate you guys making this effort um but people in the the day is the audience you don't want to hear about urban heating and the benefits of you know parking reductions and carbon footprints and everything that's that's for my group uh to to geek out over and you know debate on uh what everybody here i think really wants to focus on and understand is as has been mentioned um traffic affordability values and ease of access and to some extent character so i want to tell a little story about j alexander's who here likes j alexander's i i actually do as a vegetarian they have a fantastic veggie burger it's the only item they eat there but it's still a very good restaurant and so there are a lot of people here who live and work in this city some of the people who work in the city can't afford to live here uh by virtue of there not being enough housing uh which brings down the prices of that housing does not bring down the quality of the people just the prices to live here so they may live in fort lauderdale in hollywood uh coral springs any number of places but they still have their friends they still have their family they still have their work here so they're driving in to the city and then driving back out of the city they're creating that traffic along all of these roads that we're already concerned about having that excess traffic now they're also going to come when those friends and family who live here say hey let's go to j alexander's for a little after work snack maybe a adult beverage of some kind that's cool hopefully you stay long enough that you don't drive after that but if they do that that's now more traffic back and forth for this if we were able to allow them to live in that midtown area we create a wonderful space there that they can walk scooter bicycle microtransit uber or yes drive if they want to their own vehicle they're not adding to the traffic both for our city on our roads that concern the people here or the other cities that they have to pass through they're not contributing to that traffic obviously from an environmental standpoint they're also not contributing to the carbon footprint the emissions the air quality all those things as well it's cheaper for them to go and come back it's more accessible they're going to spend more time doing that we want people to be here in our city spending money on amenities here in the city businesses and other things this is what allows that and just to the point of affordable when we talk about affordable this isn't slums this isn't section eight type housing this is a close average to the meat the median income of an area which essentially creates a tier slightly below the median which i think in this county is about 70 or 80 000. um so these are not quote poor people um but it does enable more people to have that access uh and it's still just a portion and it's creating that better area for people who want and can go to g alexander's or chipotle both of which are totally fine options uh to swing your your taste buds around to at some point so once again i obviously support this measure i think that it would be a boon to plantation both for the people who would be able to now live here and for those who already live here the thing is is multi-use type environments within an area don't tend to reduce property values for those existing ones as well so all of that said i appreciate the time thank you again and thank you everybody else for joining as well thank you hello sarah clark 10 451 west broward boulevard so i hear a lot of concerns and i think they are all like pretty reasonable given the environment that we are used to in south florida like we're all used to driving places a lot of us have never lived in a situation where you don't need to drive places um but there is a really big takeaway that i want to share today and that is that design influences human behavior we i think we have a way of thinking that we build car infrastructure because people want to drive it's it's actually the exact opposite and i say this as someone who designs things for a living i see it time and time again design influences human behavior i watch it i test the things that i design it always influences their behavior the way i've designed it so it's not that we're building car infrastructure because people want to drive it's people are driving because car infrastructure is the infrastructure that's available to them so if we're creating a mix of uses if we're creating higher density if we are allowing safe places for pedestrians to walk where there aren't cars whizzing by them at 50 miles per hour um if it's if we're using shade to mitigate the fact that it's like miserably hot a lot of the time um if we're making it safe to bike if we're giving people options for transit and places that they can go on transit and making the transit clean and affordable more affordable than having a car people are going to do that because that is design and that design is influencing people's behavior so if you are tired of the south florida traffic this is for you if you live in a low density neighborhood and don't want your neighborhood to be up zoned this is still for you if you yeah i think that those are the two big ones that i really want to drive home like if you live in a low density neighborhood and you're tired of traffic then give people an alternative and and i speak as one of those people i um have been looking at apartments one of them was in davie and i'm really close to closing on that one because i can ride my bike to the grocery store i tried it i did it it's four minutes i never had to be on the road and i'm the kind of person you don't want me on the road okay last time you were cursing in your car because south florida traffic sucks that was me you don't want me there you don't want me anywhere and i don't want to be on the road any more than you want me on the road so give me an option so that i don't feel like i have to get in my car every time um the less time people spend on the road the less traffic there's going to be so this is as much a traffic policy the t word right this is michael and danny's traffic policy as much as it is anything else and we know this because it's very well researched right like i think there is a lot of attitude and suicide that goes into um uh thinking that like oh gee like we're going to mitigate traffic by adding more lanes and that's just not the case right because then then it just becomes more dangerous because not only is there now induced demand google it induce demand if you don't know what it is that's fine if you don't feel like googling it that's fine but that does not make it not exist okay please google induced demand the way to reduce traffic and stop inducing demand for traffic is to induce demand for other types of transportation i want to walk i want to take transit i want to bike desperately so please give me the opportunity to do that thank you monica de ambra 245 southwest 87 terrace i just wanted clarification i think i heard that the residential dwelling was increasing the density from 25 to 50. yeah the baseline density will increase from 25 to 50 in the in midtown and i think the toda areas okay so does the city have the infrastructure schools etc to accommodate all these new residences yes i don't know if we should make this a back and forth uh maybe you just want to ask all your comments or make your complete uh comment and then we can discuss as the day is afterwards okay that was my main question then a comment is um i think it's unrealistic to think that all these people aren't going to have cars and aren't going to be driving on the roads that's my two cents all right anybody else my name is kathy bowers 67 55 west broward boulevard plantation i live one mile from broward mall and i'm very much in favor of anything that's going to bring in some affordable housing to our area i'm in a complex plantation club which is not over 55 and i see with with all the challenges of the 50 year 40 year certifications uh the rent that i or the maintenance that i've had coupled with my assessments is more than tripled and could have quadrupled but at the end of the day i'm still in a good environment for now and what i see moving into our affordable housing even in my community are young adults who um don't have a down payment for whatever the median income is 650 700 000 so it we're affordable where i live and then i see individuals um that may be looking to sell and move into some affordable housing and stay within the neighborhood so i'm a proponent of this proposal going once going twice okay public comment is now closed does anybody on the dais have any further comments or discussion they want to matt hi um so appreciate everybody coming out uh uh speak for myself i work at nine to five so just coming on here i know it's a lot to take on so thank you for coming out um for those are concerned concerned about like what this tod means it means transit oriented development the idea with this development these sort of developments is so that it makes it so you take public transportation to get to where you need to go rather than driving a car so if your concern is kind of pine island boulevard and university those people are driving because it's really the only way to get around um from the county and the reason why we've been paying like a one percent like sales tax since 2018 it's because we're the county's accumulating the money to greatly expand the public transportation uh throughout broward county like specifically like university and broward boulevard so i know it might not seem realistic now for someone to take the bus to get somewhere um i personally have taken bus and can verify that people do take the bus despite how part of the service is it if this broward premium plan goes the way it should it will greatly increase the amount of people that'll be taking the public transit and getting people off the road so that there's less cars so it's easier to drive and that's uh what i mainly wanted to point out when i moved to florida the sales tax was four percent university drive ended i mean i'm sorry oakland park boulevard ended at university drive i live inside i live off sunrise boulevard one block off and a quarter mile away from pine island road i'm in all in agreement with all of you with with the amount of traffic on both sunrise broward university drive pine island road knob hill road it's horrible the only time that it's not horrible is 11 30 on a saturday night there's maybe four or five cars however i've also lived here over 50 years i've never been on a bus and i'm from a city that the only way i got around was on a bus and the transportation was amazing we took the bus we took the subway we took the elevated train so i totally understand however i'm in my 70s the people on this con and this hair that are following us are in their 30s and 40s so we have to look towards the future not towards the past i mean i i have to go to north miami beach usually twice a week there's no way i'd ever get there on a bus so i have to suffer with the traffic but if bus if the bus system changes and we get rapid transit and things like that i'll go on i mean i'll live with it and i believe that instead of saying it's um low income it's affordable housing and those those uh figures are given to us by the county and affordable housing uh i believe that the minimum is yeah the annual um rate is 70 000 and approximately 70 000 and you have to pay and i forget how what the percentage is michael how much 30 of 70 000 is what affordable housing would be so it's not like you're getting low income you're getting people that work in the city they're going to be they could be our police officers they could be our volunteer firefighters with another job and also the firefighting job so we have to look towards the future me i'd rather be back in the 50s and the 60s but it's not going to happen unless i click my heels and go back to oz so thank you anybody else if not can i get a motion i'll move approval i second all right motion by josh second by matt can we get a vote miss gelfand mr mcintosh yes miss peacock yes mr o'brien no mr freeman yes mr goldstein yes mr delgar uh delagrange yes all right so the motion passes thank you everyone for your time for your comments we're going to move on to the next item in the agenda which is the proposed 2045 comprehensive plan do we have a presentation good afternoon mr chair members of the board for their record dan holmes planning zoning economic development director i'm happy this evening i would should say because we've been working on trying to get you uh an updated comprehensive plan to sort of guide the growth of this city it's been taking a while we've been working with a a consultant which we had a very long time frame we kind of regrouped and we decided to try to do more uh in-house and so we have what i would call kind of like a first preliminary draft there's still a long way to go uh with us working on this plan it's gonna we're gonna get it before several boards to get feedback um i still have to work with uh different department heads to uh to get their feedback and still work with the council or what have you but we're coming tonight just sort of with the with the first step so what i'd kind of like to do is just uh particularly for members of the public not everybody really knows or understands what a comprehensive plan is why we adopt a comprehensive plan and exactly how the city utilizes the comprehensive plan and then i want to kind of talk about as we kind of go through some of the slides um what's different about the 2045 comprehensive plan we're trying to build on our old plan and we're trying to move the city forward we've already talked about you know you had a the item uh before you uh where we talked about parking and some other things staff we're already trying to move uh i guess toward the the future and the things that we need to change our comprehensive plan this is kind of behind and so you'll notice uh as i kind of go through some of the the things here that um the ordinances that we're passing will be kind of uh compatible in compliance with uh where the comprehensive plan uh is going um so we're gonna and i'll talk at the very end i'll kind of summarize uh where um or the steps the next steps for us and kind of how uh this thing will will play out um but as we uh over the next uh couple of months i'm gonna be uh you know if you have feedback and stuff we'll talk uh of course at this board uh and then i'm also open uh via email or if you want to come in sit down and discuss the policies but what you see tonight is just preliminary there are several things in there that you know we put some stuff in there to kind of get people going a little bit to start thinking some of those things will come out as we sort of flesh those out between the different boards some new policies that are not even in there will be added and some will be modified uh a great deal so i just kind of want to preface uh you know where we're going with with that so um what is a comprehensive plan so just so you know those who are not planners uh you know we're kind of steeped in this but so people understand it comprehensive plan is basically a state required long-range policy document guiding the physical the economic and the social development for the city there's usually uh like a short-term and a long-term planning horizon that is identified within the comprehensive plan the short-term planning horizon is about 10 years the long-term planning horizon is 20 years so you'll notice we kind of call it our 2045 comprehensive plan which sort of takes us 20 years uh into the future and one of the the important things is that the comprehensive plan also establishes a vision for the city where are we going based upon the issues and the challenges that we face right now where are we going and how do we get there so sort of a visionary document and so the policies that are within there are going to kind of help us achieve or get to that vision there are several elements that are typically within a comprehensive plan some of them are in the state of florida some of them are required under the the state statutes some of them are not required but a lot of cities opt to add some additional elements that they find appropriate for their local government so our comprehensive plan has future land use element transportation and mobility element housing element we also have what's typically known as an infrastructure element i've kind of in this plan i've kind of broken down the infrastructure element into what i'll call sub elements so if you've kind of looked through the plan i think it's a lot easier to kind of navigate and follow the plan with those those sub elements instead of having one big infrastructure element that that you try to navigate so when you look through there you'll see like a sewer potable water storm water and a solid waste sub element but if you look at some local government you'll probably see that it referred to as an infrastructure element with all of those items under that one element we have a conservation element a recreation and open space element intergovernmental coordination capital improvements element public schools element neighborhood design property rights and resiliency and sustainability this is a new element something that we've got to start giving a lot of thought to as we start planning for the future and how we're going to move toward a more sustainable and resilient future resources are not unlimited and we've got to uh we're having much more severe nobody likes the term uh climate change i know we've uh some spaces it's uh prohibited to even use that term uh so if you use it or not but we notice that we're having much more severe uh storm water and rain events or what have you the city is is even noticing that we're even trying to make some changes to our infrastructure to accommodate this so call it what you like but we we have some issues uh that we have to deal with in in that regard um so those are those are the elements that are uh identified within the the comprehensive plan um why is the comprehensive plan important it supports uh land use decisions that we have to make um so a lot of times you'll notice people come in they'll ask us to modify our plan uh can you change the rezoning or land use or what have you uh so once we have uh policies objectives and that vision we know where we're going we can identify whether those changes are consistent with our vision with where we're going and we can determine whether it's appropriate to really give that uh that request you know some consideration or not or whether it is totally incompatible with where the city is going it helps with sort of budget planning uh every year we do a budget we have to identify set aside money for different projects and stuff uh and so one of the things that we like to look at is whether the things that we're identifying uh and and uh setting aside within the budget if is it is consistent with the comprehensive plan with where we're going um infrastructure we talked about infrastructure uh as i indicated uh we look at uh there's a question that was asked earlier do we have the infrastructure to uh entertain the development and that's what the comprehensive plan uh is all about looking at the density and where we're going and what infrastructure will be needed for us to to to get there so uh infrastructure is a very important component of that again it will guide what type of infrastructure improvements that we make as we move forward as well and then finally it ensures that consistent and sustainable growth so as we continue to grow and we continue to go back look at our plan look at our vision make sure that we sort of stay on track with where we're trying to go with the future development of the city so this this is a very important document for the city is going to touch uh many hands it's gonna you know we'll have different department heads uh review it uh different aspects that's why we're going to different boards we're going to have to go to sustainability board we'll be talking to the um you know to our to our gateway and to our midtown boards made up of uh business owners uh within the city go to our affordable housing board so there's a lot of people uh even internally we have to take it before our development review committee to get input and you know so there's a there's still a lot of things to sort of be done uh to ensure that that we get to where we need to be so why update the comprehensive plan uh because our population and demographics change for one and so we have to figure out how are we going to address these changes in the population and demographic where are we going to allow uh this population to grow what's the most feasible way for us to accommodate uh growth because we're going to grow as you said you uh i forget which year you said you came here and how long you've been uh here in plantation but plantation does not look like uh what it looked like when you came here it's grown it's changed the demographics the population everything has changed and we've had to accommodate that growth uh over time also the comprehensive plan uh needs to be updated to ensure that we comply with state and county policy changes things change over time policy changes at the state level state mandates that we change things we're going through uh one of the big changes that the state has made is with the live local act that's upset the apple cart for many local governments we've had to really look within and change the way that we do things i call it live in la vita loca because it's kind of crazy for some of us the way we're having to all of a sudden you know make these uh changes uh county policies have changed in the county in terms of how we accommodate growth uh there's bonus density and all this there's all new policies and stuff that we have to look at how we're going to accommodate those changes uh within our city's comprehensive plan so we're gonna this plan will look at all of this stuff the other thing is again address emerging priorities a lot again a lot changes over time uh housing affordability we were not dealing with housing affordability issues 20 or 30 years ago so the comprehensive plan that we have back then the plan we have right now does not do a lot to really accommodate housing affordability so you know this plan is sort of rich in that area again sustainability issues climate resilience uh equity issues that we need to deal with food desert there's there's all sorts of things that we have to uh consider as we move forward and so again this is something that this comprehensive plan will consider the update as you say to this comprehensive plan will consider and finally guide responsible growth over the planning horizon uh so that's that's why we update and that's even why the state mandates that local governments update their comprehensive plan uh over time and again just so how the city uses it so i'll say it's a planning department it helps guide our development review again we go back as we're looking at uh as we're reviewing plans or what have you we have to go back and look at our comprehensive plan there's a policy document that helps guide growth uh again finally it informs infrastructure investment how we're going to invest and then it guides zoning and long-term planning strategies so just a little bit of the background in terms of what the comprehensive plan is why it's an important document uh to the local government and why it needs to even be updated every so many years because as i look at our current plan it is woefully inadequate to get us where we need to be over the next 20-year planning horizon so what's changed what what did so as we went through and updated this plan what do we change first of all just some some minor things we kind of change and refine the structure and organization of the plan our current plan is not that user friendly to follow um if you go in there just as an example in existing format you'll see there are future land use transportation mobility element you'll see goal objective policy you'll see the same numbering system for both the future land use element and transportation mobility element i have people that come to me sometimes and they say hey can you take a look at policy 1.1.1 well which element you know because we get every element has policy 1.1.1 so it gets confusing uh sometimes to figure out which element and you know so i make you know staff has to be very clear uh but members of the public a lot of times they they don't know and they're trying to tell us 1.1.1 well we have to go through the whole comprehensive plan to make sure we find that policy that that they're looking for so we've sort of changed that format so each element has its own numbering system so goal one sort of relates to the future land use element sometimes within uh element itself we may have a number of goals so that's where you see o1a you'll see o1b if there's another goal but o1 basically will refer uh that goal will refer to one element the objective as you see we'll just build upon that o1a and then objective 0.01 okay and then as we get into the policy uh we build upon that a goal o1a objective o1 and then policy o1 so that numbering system is pretty consistent throughout we've also added sort of acronyms uh to each element so you know if someone says can you take a look at uh future land use element uh o1a 0.01.01 i know exactly where to find that it's easy to navigate and to sort of get there so those are uh one of the changes that we made in terms of refining the structure and organization uh of the plan another thing we did to sort of strengthen uh the usability of the plan was that the under each objective the goals now are sort of uh thematic you know so if you if you've had a chance to take a look at it i know it's a large document you've got a very large download of information uh you know as you started preparing for this meeting because we had the the large uh text amendment and then you have this large comprehensive plan uh document but if you had a chance to start looking at it you'll notice that within each element each of the objectives um have a certain theme to it so multimodal transportation might be the the name of one of the objectives and under that you'll find all the policies that are related to that objective right now our plan is not uh it's not that great and it's hard also to kind of find what you're looking for a lot of times when we go in there we're looking and we're reviewing uh different development proposals that we get we kind of have to to do a very exhaustive review of the plan whereas now what we adopt is we'll be able we know what we're looking for pretty much policies related to to which uh issue or which item and we can easily go in the plan and sort of find what we're looking for so that's another sort of uh improvement that we've we've looked at uh in terms of this plan overall again because as i said for the comprehensive plan we update it because uh we face different issues over time so one of the things you'll notice new focus areas throughout this updated plan we uh kind of uh there's a large emphasis on smart growth related principles like transit oriented development we just kind of talked about transit oriented development activity centers or what have you so as you go through each of the different policies you're going to see a lot more policies related to these subject matters sustainability and resilience as you go throughout the plan each element you're going to see uh sustainability and resilience sort of referred to in each of the elements because they're they're pertinent to each of the elements within the plan housing affordability this is another big issue so again as you go through there you're going to find that the plan talks about housing affordability uh a great bit as you sort of navigate through the different elements equity environmental justice we've tried to pay much more attention uh to that as well and then infill and redevelopment so sort of just at a glance those are the new focus areas that you're going to find uh this plan uh heavily focuses on uh as as you go through the different elements again uh the other thing that we we've done here as i've talked about touched based on a little earlier is uh what's new is we have stronger alignment with state of florida and broward county uh policies i talked about you know living the live local act so for example um we deleted or revised some policies in our current plan prohibiting residential development on properties with industrial or community facility land uses the live local act says this is permitted if someone comes in they can build residential on industrial our old plans it's inconceivable under our old plan that that would happen so we've had to make changes there some other examples we something that we talked about already that we've had to update although we did some of these changes uh before this large update because it was necessary for us but we also are trying to comport with some of the county's language uh within their future land use element all local governments the county sort of adopts a future land use element uh you know which is done by the broward county planning council each local government uh within the county has to adopt a future land use element which is consistent with the broward county planning council's land use element so you know we we use that land use element as a sort of guiding document they have sort of uh one of the in terms of nomenclature they've gotten rid of uh certain land use categories like office park commercial industrial and they just call it commerce now and so our new plan uh is going to drop some of that terminology and we're proposing to just utilize the commerce land use category so a lot of people say well how are you going to control uh you know what happens within the commerce uh land use category we'll do that through zoning so that's typically what what most governments are doing and not all cities are here yet there's a you know they're sort of catching up as they update their plans um we've talked about flex zones as you know uh we had most cities uh over time had several flex zones with uh with flex units kind of trapped within each of those zones and could only be utilized within those zones we found that that was a very inefficient way to kind of promote growth and development for example we don't want much growth and development uh within the plantation acres area but there were literally flex units that were trapped there that probably never would have been used and so now we can take those flex units out because we've created a unified flex zone which is something that the county allows and we can put those or place those where they need to be in an area that we're promoting more dense development we've adopted um the broward county uh density bonus program this is going to help with affordable housing you know we can require developers and when they come in we tell them hey we want you to help us address uh our housing affordability issue but we have to provide some type of framework for them to uh be able to build the affordable units that we want uh within the city it's not sufficient enough it's also not consistent with state statute that we just tell them you you know we need you to provide 20 percent uh of your units uh you know to be affordable units well we need to help them financially figure out how they're going to get there and then this plan also uh as we get into it there are lots of uh policies in there that we sort of begin to look at how we will help them uh you know reach that goal so future land use element i'm going to talk about today as i said we're going to kind of break this up because i don't want this is it's a long plan there's 15 elements uh we could be here to midnight if we talked about you know all of those plans so uh we're going to kind of break this up over uh several uh you know meetings uh you know so we can have time to really talk about each of the different elements so i'm just going to talk about the future land use element the transportation mobility element and the housing element i'm just going to touch on those uh very briefly and kind of just kind of hone in on uh some of the changes that that have taken place under those elements so as you continue to go through and kind of try to digest the plan uh you have a better feel for what's what's going on so future land use element remember i told you there's several elements uh within comprehensive plans so the future land use elements the purpose of future land use elements are really to establish a long-term vision for the physical development of the community it sort of guides where and how different types of land uses residential commercial industrial open space should occur to promote orderly growth preserve community character and ensure compatibility among uses so within the future land use elements there are key themes uh that are that have been uh introduced and i kind of touched upon those so you're going to see climate resilience and sustainability policies uh within there these policies will kind of emphasize or there'll be a new emphasis on climate adaptation sea level rise energy resilience and green infrastructure also uh elevation standards uh will kind of be looked at as well kind of raising uh you know units so that uh we can accommodate any uh flood uh issues solar ready infrastructure resilient utility planning is also included in there so you'll you're going to see these these policies uh within this section equity and inclusiveness the full objective is has been added within the future land use element focusing on fair access to services education healthy foods and infrastructure smart growth and redevelopment you'll see detailed support for mixed use and infield development particularly along our corridors integration of smart strategies september sustainable urban design again flood and environmental protection policies transit-oriented development kind of encouraging vertical mixed use reduced parking standards which we just talked about a while ago and transit accessibility improvements so those are some of the uh the key uh themes that you'll see introduced uh within that element and these are just some of the policies i'm not going to really go through all all of these but just highlight a couple of them again you know this is something new uh where we talked about studio or efficiencies of 500 square feet or less may be counted as 0.5 dwelling units for density purposes this is a big change uh for us to try to help uh affordable housing uh developers or developers period uh you know uh try to provide affordable units uh within the city to help us deal with the density issue uh so this we think that this may be a big help um we already talked about and this is something we're already doing in terms of reducing minimum parking requirements um we're looking at and we've already started work on the uh density bonuses flex and redevelopment units so those are things that although we're kind of ahead of the plan the we know that uh based upon some of the workshops that we had a little over a year ago that these were things that we were going to update uh with within the plan um again adus is something we started earlier through our affordable housing action committee we knew that was sort of some of the low-hanging fruit and some of the things that we could implement very quickly uh with with uh within the land development regulations um and uh you know so there's there's other i'm not gonna it's it's pretty detailed i just kind of wanted to give you uh an idea of some of the new policies that that you're going to see uh with within this plan transportation mobility element so the purpose here for the transportation mobility element uh plans for a safe efficient and interconnected transportation system it addresses roads public transit bicycles pedestrian and emerging mobility options to support access reduce congestion we talked about congestion a little bit so it's on everybody's mind and promote multimodal travel okay um again in terms of the transportation mobility elements some of the key things that you'll see them policies focus on complete streets and context sensitive design this is something that our old plan did not heavily uh talk about but it's very necessary as we move forward if we're going to move away from just our uh uh you know auto dependent mindset you know within the city and start moving more to multimodal mindset transit oriented development again uh there you know uh focuses uh on on transit as well so you'll see this both in the land land use element and in the transportation and mobility element micro transit is something that we're we're looking at uh again we've already advanced some of these policies uh we're going to be implementing a micro transit program uh in the coming weeks here in the city um and you know we're still emphasizing again multimodal connections uh in terms of uh bike racks and shuttles and other things so you're going to see more of this stuff over the next 10 to 20 years introduced uh as options for mobility within the city technology integration again we're trying to create a a a smart city um you know there are concepts out there that we'll continue to take a look at not quite sure i mean i know that there are some autonomous vehicles on the road already um it's kind of scary uh you know we have uh trucks that are driving on the florida turnpike already but it's here that's the future that's that's where we are and so we're looking to figure out how as we move forward how we embrace those technologies um although again i think michael indicated in his presentation we're no we had to pull out the regulations that we had in the city that uh sort of mandated um uh electric vehicle charging is still something that we want to promote uh within our code although so we're no longer mandating it but it's something that any and even from the city's perspective something that we need to look at uh for our own infrastructure so there's equity and safety issues so we're focusing on all ages incomes uh and abilities within the city um again looking at safe routes to school ada compliance vision zero style crash prevention this is something uh the broward county is starting to take a look at uh we're starting to realize that a lot of crashes and stuff that we have uh can be prevented through changes in design and so uh you know we want to make sure and and we're working with broward county our engineering department is uh doing some studies uh with consultants right now we're looking at different roadways and crash data and stuff and trying to figure out how we can uh reduce that um climate resilience so we want to make sure even as we do infrastructure improvements as well we're looking at green infrastructure flood mitigation sustainability metrics uh and the like and then these are just uh some mobility element over uh this just an overview of some of the high level changes that that we're making so we're trying to promote again high density residential development along major corridors trying to utilize the city's adopted traffic coming procedures so another thing that the uh engineering department has already uh began to do is we're studying different neighborhoods and looking at speeding and other issues and we're going to be implementing um turnabouts or roundabouts or whatever a lot of people are very much opposed to those but and and and i will tell you i was skeptical at first but i have a personal story that i can tell you sometimes that i'll share uh in my own community where i love it because now that the traffic keeps moving there is a there's there's a roadway that i take every morning as i come in and one intersection is a four-way stop sign the next intersection they built a roundabout four-way stop sign has traffic that is is backed up and as you go to the roundabout it just keeps moving there's no traffic does not back up it's the same roadway same traffic so very very very very interesting so those are some of the things that we'll be looking at i know these it's changed so people are skeptical about change is this really something we should be doing we're looking at and trying to analyze things that work we're looking at other communities these are options and things that are viable they they they work and it's time for us to start taking a look at some of those changes um you know again we're trying to adopt and apply context sensitive traffic calming and speed management uh strategies within the city uh to make sure we're accommodating uh everyone pedestrians cyclists transit riders uh partner with broward county to do our safe streets for broward again that's something that we're looking at with the the crash data to make it safer for even pedestrians to cross the street and really analyzing uh traffic movements as we look at site plans and stuff we want to make sure we're incorporating sidewalks bicycle facilities uh you know what have you uh in in plans as as they come in so these are i'm just kind of highlighting some of the highlights of that so it's a very big element i'm not going to go through all of it uh like i said this is stuff uh it excites me but i know i talk to my wife it puts her to sleep so uh so sometimes it's like enough honey so uh yeah so you know mobility element so you know as you go through there make sure you're just kind of looking at all that stuff if you have questions or feedback uh we're here to to help you understand uh some of the some of the concepts that are there and then finally the the housing element so the purpose of the housing element is uh identifies current and future housing needs and promotes a variety of housing types and price ranges it aims to ensure access to safe affordable and suitable housing for all community members including special populations again this is a very very big issue not just for the city of plantation but i go to my national planning conference and trust me every city in the nation is dealing with housing affordability issues it's nothing that's new to us some cities have been dealing with it a lot longer than we have your larger cities like your san francisco's and your new york's and stuff they've been grappling with this issue a lot longer but it's now landing on the footsteps of smaller cities sunbelt cities so we're all no one's immune to housing affordability so it's something that we're all trying to take a look at and come up with strategies to to deal with so within this element you know some of the key themes uh that's sort of different than our previous uh code it uh it's very heavy in looking at equity and inclusive housing so specific goals and policies to the constant to concentrate poverty support for special needs populations recovery communities transitional housing something else that we had to put in this plan was uh just a policy to deal with recovery communities uh something that under the fair housing act that we needed to look at our our previous plan did not look at that uh at all and it was something that was necessary for us to to address again resilience and sustainability uh is something that we looked at here innovation and housing delivery so in terms of different types of housing we looked at adus for example as something that uh you know uh before the last couple of years was not on our radar but it's something that uh for certain uh developments or neighborhoods it is a very feasible option we've implemented an ordinance but there's still more that we need to do to develop uh you know that policy uh and again incentives like uh you know incentive zoning reduced parking and affordable units so uh this this uh element is pretty rich with uh introducing some of these new concepts um displacement prevention so a lot of times uh what some communities are going through as they redevelop uh gentrify or whatever we want to try to take measures if we can to ensure that some of the the individuals that reside in the neighborhood that may be gentrified that they have an option that's available for them affordable options within that community so that they can stay in that community and not be displaced from those communities and then we we didn't really have much that dealt with emergency housing uh so you know we need to develop uh some strategies moving forward in terms of how if we have a post disaster situation we've been fortunate but a lot of other cities in florida especially on the west coast they've been hit pretty hard uh you know it's not gonna we're not gonna be spared uh forever so we've got these are things that we've got to really start taking a look at too and figure out how we how we deal with those post-disaster uh situations and again some of the policies uh they are um you know just saying that you know the city will promote affordable housing that equitably serves all community groups um you know i know some of the terminology when we say affordable housing what some people kind of conjure up in their mind but um affordable housing you know as we've been educating people uh is for uh teachers it's for there there are we talked with uh we met recently with um the hospital and there are interns that are working at the hospital these are future doctors who cannot afford to live in our community and so we you know we don't have adequate housing based upon the salaries that they have so this affordable housing we these are your kids coming home from college i still got my you know living with me i keep hoping and praying that maybe one day he'll find it but right now with this uh economy uh i keep telling my wife he's he's here for a while so we might as well uh get used to it so uh you know so these these are some of the policies or things that we're we're really uh taking a look at as uh within this housing element um so again i'm not gonna bore you with with with all this stuff you have the the plan before you i just kind of wanted to give you an introduction and just kind of give an overview of what we're trying to do what's new with this plan the new direction uh that that we're going and over the next several meetings uh you know we'll have an opportunity to uh to get some input from you and to receive from some feedback from you one other thing um in the memo that you got i did try to outline you know what some of the next steps in terms of where we are and where we're going so right now we're you know we're meeting today obviously with the planning and zoning board um and we will have several couple other meetings with the planning and zoning board but as we move from here again we'll engage with other boards to get their feedback and their input um after that we will take feedback and we'll do some plan refinement staff will revise a preliminary draft based on board and public feedback and then uh we hope to move to uh the formal adoption at that point the plan will come back here for uh recommendation to the uh to the city council and the city council of course in accordance with uh state statutes would would take action to adopt the updated comprehensive plan so just want everybody to understand what we're doing this is this is big uh for us we need to get this right we need to take the appropriate time that uh is necessary to implement the policies that are appropriate for for this community and with that if you have any questions i will finish uh and i'll answer any questions that you might have all right thank you danny so there's no item to vote on so this is just just going to be kind of a workshop where you can give your thoughts and feedback to danny and no worries if you don't have anything to say right now because like danny said earlier you can always send him an email or call him at a future date after you've read that 150 page document and we'll also open up the florida public comment for the vicky counted so we'll also open up the florida public comment uh after the day it speaks just in case members of the public has something to say as well so does anybody have matt thank you danny for the presentation um i just think it's a bit disappointing though that there was a lot of comments concerns about traffic you've clearly have done the research about how the city wants to tackle traffic but as soon as you started doing it the people that were complaining about the traffic just up and left um we definitely need more forward thinking uh for our city so it's like we gotta focus on getting that tod done even the people that decide to show up for a bit decide to leave when their concerns are getting addressed but thank you for uh for doing the presentation thank you yeah i under the future land use element um you know i know we can't require it but you know you talked about promoting electric vehicle charging networks so what kind of incentives does the city provide for for those charging networks well as i said it we had in our plan when we were requiring uh it right now we're just uh as developers come in um you know we're talking to them some of them uh understand the importance and you realize that uh you know their uh residents who will you know reside at their complexes um many of them will have electric vehicles so some of them understand the importance uh but we just make sure we're keeping it on the radar that this is something that you know they need to consider some of the although this is an auto-oriented use believe it or not but uh um what's the i keep thinking um gas station uh wawa wawa is even uh you know even though their primary business is gas they realize that you know they're putting in electric vehicle charging stations at a lot of their new stations as well because they want to bring people in primarily so they can go inside and spend money you know their concessions or you know what have you but um we're just trying to make sure that we uh keep it on the radar also as i said it's a it's a planning document for the city as well and so the city has infrastructure one of the things we're we're implementing the freebie um micro transit program we're going to be building a couple of um you know charging stations here on the city hall complex uh but at some point in the future you know we need to think about our fleet do we need to start moving some of our vehicles to electric vehicles or you know uh we have you know you know there's still a lot of debate that's that's going on right now but uh that's that's what i mean by you know keep it in the forefront do you think that there's maybe like an opportunity when we do make that transition for the city fleet that maybe some of the charging infrastructure could be used by the public or is that yeah so so the freebie just uh one other thing because i've been attending the meetings so i'm even though i'm not heading up that that project the the freebie the electric charging stations that will be here they will be available during certain hours for the public to utilize however under the micro transit program um and they'll put the hours up there but i know uh you know at night when it's uh when they're no longer running that uh they will be utilizing the freebie vehicles uh to recharge in those locations so there's certain hours that it's open uh to the public uh to to utilize great thank you in regards to the uh you know the central midtown village area you guys are talking about yes can you tell me are you guys anticipating um um condo condos apartments or townhouses or all three and what's again what's kind of the height restriction they're thinking about so basically um yes so we we would anticipate i would say definitely um rentals and uh maybe even some um you know townhome type uh development could you know over time could be accommodated uh at that location in terms of height i know we we've taught we have a developer that has that we're starting to to work with i'm trying to remember what the height was i don't really um it wasn't it wasn't uh yeah it was about eight what eight to ten yeah eight stories is what was was proposed to us is that pretty much the same height as some of the new stuff that's been put in like over there at uh plantation walk i don't even know what height that those are plantation walk is a little is a little higher um and as you go through the midtown district you'll you'll find uh varying heights i think the the tallest building we have is uh one plantation i think um and i'm trying to remember how many stories that is 12 yes so and you know you'll find 12 10 8 you know even as you go north toward um um sunrise boulevard um you know you've got buildings at six stories there so it it varies in terms um in the yeah we have we we will have certain regulations uh that will govern that however one of the things that the comprehensive plan is looking at is something that the midtown master plan does call for and uh is changing that area possibly into an activity center an activity center kind of operates a little differently we do have one activity center in place now along the state row seven coin which we call our gateway district where essentially what you would do is approve a set number of units uh to go uh not just units but also uh the amount of retail and other stuff that would be permissible overall and there's really not per se a height limit uh you know within uh you know your activity centers uh but the city still has the ability as plans come in to determine uh what's appropriate there because the city has to allocate uh the activity center units to the project well correct me if i'm wrong danny but uh so the actual the building form is usually covered by zoning and not by the comprehensive plan right there are other elements that can control building form yes like the four floor area ratios setbacks and things of that sort so yes thank you for all your work thank you michael for for uh helping me he's all 200 we went through all 295 pages on the phone yesterday um i know how hard it is to make it all work and i appreciate it and i appreciate that our city is doing such a good job of it so one block north let's say three blocks north of sunrise boulevard is the city of sunrise are they doing the same thing as we are right now in terms of the comprehensive 20-year plan they did adopt a comprehensive plan their long-term plan a couple of years ago so but yes every city so every city is anybody else doing it i mean north of us is sunrise south of us is damarack is uh in the process of updating theirs i think uh as we speak um okay yeah yeah yes hollywood is doing it um fort lauderdale just did it a couple of years ago pompano did it kind of recently as well but yeah every every city is in the you know at some point um and well here's basically what the state statutes will require that you have to uh every so many years you have to go in and take a look and update that at least the data within your plan you don't necessarily always have to do a large um revision of the entire plan but over time it's going to be necessary to to do that because so much changes okay and the only thing that i hear when somebody says uh where are you going going to a planning and zoning board meeting um how much green space do we have left in the city i don't know that off the top of my head that's something uh for a gis want to know i can't answer it to put our gis system somebody can you you know this off the top of your head i'll be impressed okay not the not the exact percentage of open space but we our comp plan actually requires a certain amount of parkland based on the number of residents we well exceed that even with just with central park but all the other parks um our landscaping code is actually one of the most restrictive in brower county so even though it's not easy to see sometimes we we do require a lot in terms of of landscaping and some of the things that we talked about in the comp plan and in the code amendment also we're trying to um give more opportunities for open space whether it's hardscape plazas or landscaped areas passive areas and so forth so as we look at each property we have to maintain the amount of pervious surface and impervious surface it's very important to all of us on the development review committee staff and the city correct and that also helps control the bulk and height and other uh issues as well but the other thing to just to to point out there in terms of our recreation and open space requirement is four acres per thousand that's required uh the the county only requires three acres per per thousand as a minimum so we do exceed we do exceed that uh plantation so we have more parks based in in many cities all right uh i don't think anybody else has any comments so i'm gonna i have three quick questions the first is um related to the future land use plan because we want to allow well with the tod zoning we want to allow residential on some of these right now 100 commercial properties like on soutner's boulevard on on brown boulevard and the land use plan currently doesn't allow that so they have to apply for lupa and go through that whole process when concurring with the rezoning when we do the future land use plan do we also want to look at those commercial corridors and and change the land use from commerce to a mixed use or make a separate activity center for the wall or are we allowed to entitle entitle residential units in a commerce land use so that's something that we're going to sit with the council and determine how we're going to approach it i know what many i've talked to some council members and i know i've talked with members particularly of the midtown board i know one of the things that they are very much interested in is at least with midtown they at least want to start by adopting an activity center for midtown um but you know we can take a look at whether the city uh is you know makes the move in terms of rezoning some of these places uh we're gonna have to sit down and talk with property owners as well some property owners don't really understand you know what you know uh what that type of rezoning means a lot of times you know once you sit down with them and you explain to them a lot of them excited after that because they're like whoa you've just increased my value significantly right you know in terms of what i can you know develop on the property yeah so so suffice it to say i don't know if we're going to try to go do all of that if uh you know we're going to try to talk to some of the property owners the property owners will come in that's that's something that we can discuss as a strategy yeah the reason why so gateway is already an activity center i i think the council wants to make midtown an activity center as well but then you have you know the sunrise boulevard you have the area here on city hall that they're smaller they're probably not going to be activity centers just wondering how we can make tod possible there without making the developer go through the loop of process in addition to the rezoning yeah yeah i i mean my preference is you know along with the activity center is the first area that i think we really need to take a look at is sunrise uh boulevard just based on the you know the activity and the you know plantation point and other things that's happening are within that corridor right so the second question is actually it's it's kind of a utilities question but i think it's related to the the housing land use elements because right now you know we have to replace a lot of those older pipes and and stuff in in the midtown area especially because they were built for office parks you know 60 years ago and number one who knows if they've been maintained and number two is it's probably not enough capacity in the pipes themselves so is there i would like to see some sort of master plan that the city has for replacing and creating a sufficient network of pipes for water and sewage in in midtown but citywide because you know all these developers are coming in and one of the conditions is you have to replace all the pipes and install new lift station and it makes sense to make the developer do it to mitigate the impact of their development but because it's all being done on an ad hoc basis with no central plan you know they're kind of what's it called like like repeating infrastructure like each building is building its own pipe and its own lift station and its own and it's kind of it's too much right so that kind of dovetails into your previous question so let's take midtown for example if we adopt an activity center in midtown we're going to pretty much have a pretty good idea of the density intensity of uses and we'll know a little more affirmatively what type of capacity you know we we need for those areas we know that we need more obviously and again as i said the comprehensive plan will sort of guide some of those infrastructure decisions so as we're looking at our uh capital improvements program and plan we're going to realize hey we need to start you know setting aside um you know dollars and money to improve the infrastructure here another thing that we're kind of looking at right now as well is that we have an impact fee ordinance that is very much outdated so we're in the process right now the study's actually taking place now because we do need to update um what we're assessing uh developers uh that that are coming into the city to build like i know i've talked to the fire department the fire chief is saying hey we're going to need some different fire apparatus at least for the midtown area so you know there's a lot that's going to to change so we need to change the structure uh the fee structure of our impact fee ordinance so that's something that we're doing too which will help us address some of the infrastructure cost as well because we got to find the funding right i'm just worried you know if we continue with the ad hoc basis eventually that infrastructure is going to be turned over to the city and we're going to have to maintain all those pipes you're absolutely right and that's our issue so i know there was a question earlier do we have the infrastructure so just as an example our water plant our sewer plant has a capacity you know but it's getting it there that we're going to have to put in some new infrastructure right yes and my last question is actually related to vicky's question uh so i don't remember what the county decided to do with their broward next update but they were looking at allowing like rooftop gardens and that kind of stuff to count as your open space and recreation your park space would the city plantation be interested in doing that as well or if the county does it like we do it automatically i don't know how that's counted so in terms of open space or in terms of pervious input because in terms of open space okay yeah that's i think that's something that uh we definitely uh could could take a look at um now pervious impervious those are things that we're going to have to and as i as i said we're going to sit down with the um engineering department because you know obviously i you know i'm not an engineer i don't profess to be one as i tell people so i i'm going to defer to them in terms of uh whether that's something that's feasible in terms of capturing you know how much you know of uh storm water you know those type of systems or capture or what have you so i'm gonna have to rely on their expertise but you know in terms of open space i think it's something that we can definitely look at but these are the this is the input that i'm looking for uh you know uh from you know this board and from other boards and from the from the public as well all right thank you if nobody else has anything to ask actually just one more one more question i'm sorry um just because of the recency of it and i know we didn't cover it tonight but um are there any policies in the solid waste element that would need to be updated um the solid waste authorities meeting tomorrow to review their draft master plan i know we're a member of the authority so just didn't know if yeah sorry yeah i didn't could you repeat so the solid waste authority is meeting tomorrow to review their draft master plan is there any portion of the plan the comprehensive plan that we need to update if that were to actually pass again as i said pretty much what i've talked to utilities director about with regard to um oh you said i'm sorry you said solid waste it's always yeah um not that i know of uh in with regard to solid waste okay all right if no one has anything else to say then i want to open up the floor to public comment if anybody wants yeah again name address and you have three minutes i'll be quick i'll be quick actually there's literally timing joanne 944 northwest 92nd terrace uh thank you again to the staff uh for putting this together i've had an opportunity to review some of it uh with in front of my board as well where they've presented and sit down with them uh this is one of those very big picture type of things that also it's like one of those um like mega shots of the universe or something on your computer where you're like oh it's one image and then you zoom in you're like oh i zoomed in and then you zoom in and it goes and then you zoom in and it renders i guess kind of like google earth or whatever too you just keep going and it just keeps getting finer and finer and finer uh so there's there's an incredible amount of depth and complexity in this um and we want to make sure that we're keeping in mind and considering for it is that a comprehensive plan everything connects together like every one thing affects the next thing and that's having that a good plan is how you don't end up with a city that's kind of disjointed as well where you end up with a random drive-through over here and a apartment building here and a mall over here and just it feels like you're just it doesn't feel like a place this is partially how you create a place by having a plan that says okay what do we want the city to become uh and respecting what's already there that makes sense to keep um and just to keep in mind the idea that that housing and transportation are intricately connected uh when we talk transportation we just discuss the parking ordinance uh that induces the use of cars and driving and the space you need for them housing is directly impacted by the amount of parking you provide because of the cost of it and the walkability of the area because if you have all that parking it's going to be a pain to walk anywhere so you're not going to so you're going to have a car which is going to make it more expensive for you to live there which is going to make it more expensive for them to build there which as you see keeps cycling back around uh so just keeping in mind as you go through the documents and and i'll be looking through and he'll be coming i'm sure daniel will be coming to uh our board as well with some of the updates again uh the whole idea is that everything jumps from one to the next to the next and it's it's a big plan and we're looking not for what we have now you're looking like what miss gelfand mentioned earlier what it could be and that's what this is it's almost a vision plan made specific and that's really all i've got thank you again for putting all that together all right anybody else so remember that your comment is going to be directed to city staff not necessarily to the board okay kathy bowers 67 55 westbound boulevard and plantation i'm really delighted to hear one of the housing elements um equity and inclusive support for special needs population recovery communities and i didn't get the last disability one but in the work that i do as an advocate i am continually challenged with older adults and the silver tsunami is here a lot of us have stayed i've been in plantation since 1996 so i'm quote aging in place as you might think and the very fact that we can maybe help keep people out of um the overcrowdedness of nursing homes assisted living co-housing is a big issue where um i know that's a national program and it's going on where people are trying to figure out how could you and i put our resources together to live so i'm just very impressed and looking forward to uh hearing and about these uh special needs and just and uh recovery communities all right going once going twice okay i'm going to close the floor for public comment and that's the last item on the agenda so the city staff have anything else for us to talk about today i guess going back to the comprehensive plan um we're trying to sort of on an aggressive time schedule i i would say um and i wanted to break up the presentation to you in bite sizes um and so we need to look at i guess over june and july i think we need at least two more sessions we could do this at a regular meeting as well but we may require like a one additional special meeting as well and so i just wanted to know what your schedules are like in june and july if we needed to do a special meeting kind of like we did today where we can just discuss um the comprehensive plan uh either in june or july that's if that's uh something that's available to you for you guys to do yeah would you rather talk about it now or do you want us to send emails to you with our availability if you know now i will accept that if you want to send me information it's it's it's your pleasure you want to talk about it now real quick i i just think that if i mean i don't have a problem doing a special meeting but if you add it on to a regular meeting and there's four or five things on the agenda we'll be doing something like those long city hall meetings city council meeting i agree which is why we didn't at the last meeting if you recall we had the racetrack thing you know we had initially scheduled to do it then and we're like oh gosh we can't add this to that uh to that meeting which is why we decided to uh to to have this meeting uh today so yeah that's one of the concerns for june 10th we think we're going to have at least four items not including this so and in july i think potentially at least two right now maybe more well i already told michael but i'm going to be out of town from june 24th to july 6th okay end of june early july i'm not here i don't know what uh rob's schedule is but you're gonna you know hopefully one of us would be here but just letting you know okay i'm i'll be gone that tuesday the june 24th other than that i'm open all summer okay so the last june yeah that last about june 17th for a special meeting works for me anybody available huh i'm an alternate so i don't know if i matter in this regard yes kind of clay should be the person that's there but i'm here um i can work with june 17th yes it definitely matter because if the appointment can't make it then it's june 17th june 17 17 looks like a a good uh date okay all right so i tell you what we'll do june 17th and then we'll look at july um after that works okay another 295 pages or is this the same 295 it's the same too oh good you have you have everything you need right now to uh to uh to uh kind of start your review and reading it uh at your leisure and like i said if you like the leisure thing before i think before you can and johnny may know but he might have to check the availability of the room so yes we'll do that i i know typically um the third week the third tuesday generally works for for this board because that's when we've had most of our special but we will check to see if anybody else is doing anything so yes thank you all right