take your seat please welcome to the september 19 2023 regular session of board of county commissioners at this time i'd like to call in chaplain handley to give the invocation invite you to stand and remain standing for the pledge good morning please pray with me heavenly father in our hearts we plan our course but we pray that you establish our steps i pray that as we seek you for advice let us not lean on our own understanding but act based upon your wisdom please guide us lord we place this meeting in your hands we place our hearts and our minds in your hands so that you may direct us and i ask this prayer in jesus name amen our first order of business this morning is employee recognition and commission will go down in the well and employees will come up as they're called good morning commissioners i'm jeff foley public and media relations officer for communications today we are recognizing five employees for their service to pulp county i'd like to invite the employees to come to the front as their names are called and then if the honorees will remain standing at the front while the commissioners return to the dais behind them we will take a group photo at the end first lissy joseph lissy has served pulp county's residents by working for the county's health and human services division for the past 30 years currently the director of nursing at the roar home she has previously worked as an rn floor supervisor and an assistant director of nursing under lissy's leadership the roar home has maintained a five-star rating from the centers for medicare and medicaid lizzie who has been married for 34 years is a member of the saint thomas aquinas catholic church lizzie plans to retire in october and to travel to new places grayson whitlow grayson started his pulp county career 30 years ago working at the landfill he transferred to parks and recreation as a service worker in 1996 and he is currently a caretaker one during his time with parks and recreation grayson has done fence work ball field training and mowing and he has completed multiple educational trainings he is affectionately referred to as the trash pickup master because he has trained more than 50 employees in operating the trash truck outside of work grayson enjoys fishing and being around his family and friends he looks forward to retiring eventually lisa harris lisa has worked in pulp county's code enforcement division for 25 years she started as an office personnel employee and she was promoted in 2005 to code enforcement officer currently lisa works as a code enforcement professional before beginning her pulp county service lisa worked alongside her father painting new construction homes in pulp in osceola osceola counties lisa enjoys taking office of talent development classes and other trainings to enhance her knowledge and skills lisa desires to make a difference for pulp county's residents lawrence burrell levi has been a member of the pulp county fire rescue for 20 years he now works as a battalion lead and he has previously worked as a firefighter engineer captain and battalion chief levi who has degrees in fire science and ems was named fire officer of the year in 2020 he's a member of the crystal lake united methodist church and he enjoys working out and being a part of the firefighter challenge levi also enjoys watching his children participate in sports activities christopher alan cook chris has worked for pulp county fire rescue since 2003 he previously served as a pcfr volunteer beginning in 1998 chris started his employment as a firefighter and he worked as a driver engineer for 14 years currently he is a captain emt chris's father charles cook senior was one of pulp county's original fire district one firemen a member of eagle lake baptist church chris enjoys kayaking fishing vacationing and spending time with his family he hopes to teach new fire cadets when he retires goodness gracious like a biden press conference those are the folks that make things work we have some requests from the general audience to speak this morning while the room is being cleared did miss joanne pazini come this morning have you heard from miss pazini bill jennifer wilks is wilks in the room i have some other speaker cards for the public hearings later today but i think there was a couple of early ones let me pull through here terry jones back again come on down too much good morning commissioners uh ladies and gentlemen uh this is from my community in arbondale uh and they would like to personally thank uh our commissioner mr bill braswell as well as uh mr taylor uh for their efforts in uh getting out of the street reopening and uh we'd like to thank you all very much it's made a big difference well thank you for bringing it to our attention and it worked things worked out well i have another off agenda request uh miss jill bryan regarding camp gilead drive good morning good morning i ought to do a magic trick for you guys well tell us your name and address of the record and then you put chaplain jill bryan and camp gilead drive p.o box 98 so you guys can see too as a chaplain everybody has a heart we all have a heart but sometimes that heart gets broken i was awful sad when i had cancer i was awful sad when my heart was torn apart and because i lost my house in polk city i wasn't able to stay there because the government doesn't pay me social security and i said god what should i do what should i do and you know what he said he said give me your heart and i'll put it back together so the next time you're suffering congratulations god will put it back together i did that just to say thank you and also even though i don't live on camp gilead drive oh wait a minute can you guys keep a secret you're probably wondering how that works can you keep a secret so can i i worked hard on getting all of the signatures on polk city camp gilead drive i was going to mail this in and i came here to deliver it but i don't know where it went or if anybody ever got it so i just wanted to say thank you this is not goodbye but i am the chaplain trainer for the federal association of christian counselors and therapists in grove city i'm not homeless i'm renting a room for 400 bucks and i'm not worried because i know my mobile chaplain trailer will help me to get back on the road and keep on doing what i do best in training chaplains and helping our public safety officers so thank you thank you deputies that came out after all my calls on dumping and they dumped so much on that drive and then as they took the speed as bikers are zipping through and almost running over campers and me and i just want to thank polk county and all the deputies because yeah it was awesome so i'm going to hand this to jeff and uh hopefully i'll get to come back but we're we have been offered to house sits in myrtle beach south carolina we'll be back and forth because i still believe in polk county and i believe in god guns and grady judd so so thanks and i know i'll be volunteering out of camp gilead once in a while with the ventriloquism and the illusions and and if you guys want to get online it's chaplainjillbryan.org and you can get a good laugh thank you ma'am thank you polk city best wishes for you polk county um sharon garrett have got three submissions here uh the hatch in the hall project comments will be under the regular public hearing section you've also for the mother-in-law apartment section that's under the public hearing also was there some other off agenda item miss garrett want to speak to my name is sharon garrett i live off carl boozer road east of haynes city i would like to give special thanks to ron taylor for cleaning up a pile of garbage that was alongside of the road that carl boozer road that spills out in the road and i started first with codes i think it was in july and then i after i reported it i then called back and i had the dates written down at the office i forgot to bring them and i called back and they said well we need to hire an officer they looked at two of the other complaints i had about garbage piled up uh and um you know we lost an officer we need to hire more okay so i called back an office in august and they still haven't hired somebody and the pile of garbage is still there and still falling out on the side of the road and i would get out with it and pick up stuff and throw it back on there because it was in the road um so you know after the third call i called mr taylor and i talked up to him and asked him is there something he can do because i'd also talked to the county uh guy and rose and uh so when i got home and before i got home my husband called me and said i don't know what you did but it's gone so he did an excellent job and you guys should commend him but your new trash policy is the pits because you know when you first required people to start paying for garbage my parents paid a private agency to come pick their garbage up then you decided the whole county should have garbage service because we don't want it look like a dump well what exactly does this county look like but a dump people put all these piles of stuff out they don't care they don't call they don't know who to call they don't know what length to cut their limbs in so forth and so on it sits there and sits there and forever and people are afraid to call codes because you've got to leave your name now thanks to the legislator uh legislation you don't know if some idiot is going to come hunt you down or what whatever but this is ridiculous we used to have in the past uh garbage service pick up twice a week at one time they picked up four eight tires because i had tire problems throughout the county on properties we're on they said well why don't you just you know people can put some out and it'll be picked up well they did away with that now we're down to once a week you raised our garbage fees last last year i don't do the recycling because i think it's kind of ridiculous you don't make money on that stuff and i think that was a good idea to go get rid of it but i think you should put more into bulk pickup because this county looks bad because if they can't get it picked up they're going to go dump it on bird road they're going to dump it on lee jackson or the lake alford haynes city road right behind the new courthouse and as fast as you guys pick it up they're back out there doing it again and so you you need to do something about a little bit more bulk pickup and all thank you so much for letting me vent my problem thank you ma'am i think uh refuge collection is still a work in progress mr chairman yep yes sir one other thing uh chair uh one thing we're going to do we've discussed and it's going to be on our legislative wish list is the uh reporting of codes uh trying to see if we can get it back to where you don't have to give your name it doesn't work very well um don't know how far we'll get with it but we've talked about it i think it'll be on our list yeah i'm not surprised that you left your name did miss bozzini or miss miss wilts come in since we started um anyone else wish to speak on the general items not on a public uh hearing item all right we will close that part of the agenda move to consent agenda entertain a motion um mr chair i like time for discussion sure okay i would like us to pull r47 r4 and that's the one ordinance number 2023 that's in reference to the smoking um i agree with with wanting to stop smoking and vaping in public places and i think we've done a very very good job but i think we need to revisit this um ordinance especially section four where it deals with compliance and enforcement so i would like this to be pulled so that we can have further discussion on this item okay mr chair yes sir yesterday i mentioned r46 and i don't want to pull it i do want to make a comment because making a comment outside of this meeting will do me absolutely no good i'm not sure it's going to do me any good making a comment at this meeting but it's uh i think the best chance to get people to understand and when i uh brought up 46 yesterday there's one firm that is not on this list we've got 12 firms uh there were 15 that applied the one that i know of that is absolutely home-based and they didn't they didn't tell me about this i just happened to know it and figured out on my own that they didn't make the cut uh for the continuing contract there's no nothing that says we would have to give them work but we don't even have enough respect for local people that will put them on the dang list and just have them there just in case i mean we're a county of 800 000 people and i don't know what kind of signal that sends to the people men and women that operate businesses in this county when we say we can't find somebody in this county to do these jobs even small jobs for us that are not qualified they're not worthy uh it's just a complete and total insult and i've said it before and and i just i don't know how else to say it other than mr beasley can you please talk to people about when we're looking at folks especially in a situation like this where it's just putting you on a list where you'd be eligible that we put them on the list doesn't mean we have to give them a job but just to just to completely throw them out uh to me is just just a major insult to everybody in this county that works and pays taxes so can we just remove these two items from them i don't care about removing it i mean it's just but i i'm trying to send a message probably worth talking about yeah i got mad about it when i got up this morning i i think i think removing both items would be good and we could further discuss considering the length of our agenda let's uh defer these to our next meeting okay okay both items both items all right uh he made a motion to include to move 46 and 47 do that but i'm going to say i'll make a motion uh on the agenda consent agenda but removing 46 and what was the other 47 47 to the next meeting in the next meeting okay all right uh any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries thank you for bringing that to our attention all other items on the consent agenda entertain a motion to approve so move second motion to second on the balance of the consent agenda any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries good morning good morning thank you mr chairman good morning commissioners we have for you this morning to approve and ratify payroll checks number zero two three two six through zero two three six four in the amount of thirty seven thousand four and thirty dollars and eighty three cent two thousand five hundred ninety three direct deposits in the amount of three million eight hundred thirty eight thousand four hundred seventy seven dollars and eighty three cent dated september eighth 2023 wire and electronic funds transfers in the amount of twenty one million eight hundred fifty one thousand one hundred forty nine dollars and six cent dated september 5th through september 18th 2023 invoice checks numbered four four four four nine seven through four four five four six three in the amount of twelve million three hundred thirty six thousand four hundred dollars and ninety nine cent dated september 5th through september 18th move approval second motion in the second discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries anything else thank you that's all i have today thank you madam mr chair i do have one item g1 which normally would be on your consent agenda but it's placed on the regular agenda allow a commissioner recuse himself i'll be madam clerk noted i'll recuse on g1 as i have a business relationship with the applicant this item is to approve the release of a warranty and surety in the amount of one hundred thirty five thousand eighty four dollars and nineteen cents in the form of maintenance bond number one one five or one one five six five seven nine for solitaire phase two c dash one is recommended for approval approval motion to second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries thank you mr. chair mr. beasley mr. chair members of the board their manager's office will have three items for board consideration this morning item number h1 is to request the board approve an agreement with the zimmerman agency in connection with the polk county tourism development council advertising and related marketing services this will be a five-year term agreement with estimated annual expenses not to exceed three million four hundred ninety thousand five hundred dollars in the spring of this year polk county solicited proposals from firms intended to provide marketing services to include research and development of national and international tourism strategies and promotions that would stimulate the polk county and central florida tourism industries the selected firm would be required to attend tourism development council and central florida's polk county and convention bureau meetings as well as other marketing meetings needed to assist with strategy development request for proposal 23-295 was issued and seven firms submitted proposals in july of 2023 the board approved the selection committee's recommendation and authorized staff to enter into negotiations with all proposers interviewed starting with the highest ranked proposer being the zimmerman agency who also is the incumbent service provider the negotiated annual costs include month a monthly fat flat fee of forty three thousand dollars to continually develop advertising campaigns in concert with the tourism development council along with website hosting design and maintenance the remaining two million nine hundred and seventy four thousand five hundred dollars is anticipated to be expended on a media advertising promotional campaigns and billboards both nationally and internationally these advert these advertisements feature polk county attractions accommodations restaurants arts and cultural venues in order to promote polk county as a tourism destination as a result of these advertisements more than 1.5 million people visited polk county tourism's website last year in prior agreements for these services media advertising was coordinated by both the county and the vendor resulting in media in media invoices being handled through the tourism and sports marketing division this proposed agreement allows for the invoicing to be coordinated and paid by the vendor directly and the county would reimburse the vendor for the actual cost on a monthly basis this change was made to leverage zimmerman's agency's large portfolio of climate clients contract funding for this agreement has been approved by the tourism development council as part of its annual marketing plan these advertised this advertisement budget represents about a 9.3 percentage of the total tourism and sports marketing annual budget funding is available within the tourism tax fund for these designated services so mr chair members of the board i would request the board approve that the proposed agreement with the zimmerman agency in connection with rfp 23 295 for the provision of tourism and related marketing services with an estimated annual reoccurring expense not to exceed three million four hundred and ninety thousand five hundred dollars big question to staff mr santiago this is your committee your it's your recommendation yes sir the board entertain a motion second the motion is second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries mr chair members of the board item number h2 is to request the board approve a contract with cove behavioral health incorporated for providing behavioral health services within polk county the total program costs are not to exceed eight hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars through september 30th of 2025. polk county is proposing to expand contracting with cove behavioral health for increased access to outpatient behavioral health services for polk county residents cove will provide these services in an office setting via telehealth which increases reach to more residents and creates a continuum of care for high need high utilizers of behavioral health services qualified polk county residents who are not polk health care polk health care plan members will be eligible for these services the overall term of this agreement will become effective approval with the board's approval today and will conclude in september 30th of 2025. the initial funding allocation of two hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars and will be designated for the procurement of a mobile services unit deemed critical for community outreach year two funding totals three hundred thousand dollars and will become available effective october 1st 2023 and will be used to provide behavioral health outpatient services support supplies equipment and furnishings year three services will total three hundred thousand dollars and become available on october 1st 2024 intended to continue delivering outpatient behavioral health services this agreement was recently presented to the citizens health care oversight committee and is being submitted with their endorsement funds are available and budgeted in the indigent health care fund for this designated purpose so mr chair members of the board in the interest of providing these sorely needed community services i would request the board approve the proposed contract with core behavioral health for those identified behavioral health services any questions of staff motion for approval second motion the second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries is it core or cove did i say core yeah c-o-v-e my apologies my company's core that's right yes just kidding but behavior is not in yours no bad behavior reply mr chairman of the board final item item number h3 is to request the board approve and ratify a letter of agreement and an intergovernmental transfer provider questionnaire as requested by the state of florida agency for health care administration all in connection with the public emergency medical transportation medicaid managed care supplement payment program this is a one-time expense not to exceed three million nine hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred twenty seven dollars and five cents polk county fire rescue continues to participate in the public emergency medical transportation medicaid fee for service program and the managed care supplement payment program the managed care program works through the existing managed care organizations polk county fire rescue already has current contracts with some of these managed care organizations within our region this these state contracted insurance companies will report the total number of qualified patient transport performed by polk county fire rescue quarterly to the agency for health care administration akka will then determine the state funding amount that will be distributed to each of these managed care organizations and ultimately pay to polk county fire rescue on a quarterly basis akka requires these governmental transfer funds only to be used for the public emergency medical transportation program the agency for health care administration will invoice polk county fire rescue and amount not to exceed the three million nine hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred twenty seven dollars and five cents that will generate a net return of approximately 5.5 million for a total return back to polk county of approximately 9.4 million in medicaid reimbursement revenue for qualified emergency medical services transports funds are available in a general fund emergency medical services budget for this designated program so mr chair members of the board as this program is a significant element of our ems revenues i would strongly request that the board approve and ratify the letter of agreement and the intergovernmental transfer provider questionnaire all as requested by the agency for health care administration any second motion the second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries anything else no sir mr wilson mr braswell yeah one thing um i meant to bring it up yesterday i forgot uh at the last meeting i don't think we really finished the discussion regarding the legal ads i would like to bring that up again to make sure we're all on the same page and understand i don't want to do it this meeting i'm not going to be here at the next meeting so at the agenda review for the second meeting in october i'd like to discuss it yes sir all right anything else no miss santiago yeah i just want to say thank you to parks and recreation department they got the juanita baseball park ready for the fall for eagle lake to use it's amazing to see how many kids are playing baseball this fall which i think is awesome and to be able to have a park in juanita that has not been in use and now they can use it i think it's great so kudos to the parks and department recreation and a special thank you thank you ma'am mr combi yes if you want to see a phenomenal three-year-old play his first t-ball game tonight come to north lakeland you won't believe your eyes this kid can hit it over the fence with somebody pitching to he didn't want to hit off a tee so i hope the park looks good because i'm gonna be there uh and tell whoever's that yeah okay i'm gonna be out of the park this afternoon the uh the legal ads uh thank you bill i was going to bring it up but we kind of got thrown out of balance with the uh agenda meeting yesterday so there's a couple things i wanted to talk about that i didn't because of the budget coming up and we were going a little bit long on the on our wastewater issue or septage issue so i didn't want to do that but uh i look forward to it i've talked to randy about it about you know what i want to do because i thought we might get a little further last week but we'll we'll get there uh or two weeks ago when we were here the other thing i do want to mention and i didn't want to do it a minute ago uh was about h1 uh there's three and a half million dollars that's going you know to tallahassee uh and maybe we don't have anybody in this county that's qualified but maybe maybe we should and i've done this before years ago did it and this board probably did it you all probably done at some point in time talked about the interest in having uh local folks considered for work and maybe there's nobody in the county qualified to do this work but three and a half million dollars uh is not an insignificant amount of money if it was staying here in polk county it would help benefit us in a variety of ways so maybe what the cfdc needs to do is look at some of our folks that we're contracting with on these big dollar amounts and try to cultivate some people here encourage some people to respond or at least attempt to to get in position to get some of the work that we're doing but i cannot emphasize enough my interest in seeing this board uh to the extent possible when and where to work with local folks uh with our contracting and i'll i'll leave it at that or we can take it up or we can you know adopt a board policy and put it on the back of the wall here if that's what it takes to get people to understand that uh we're interested in doing that thank you mr uh miss santiago had her hand up first thank you for your comments um commissioner but i'm serving on that board and meeting the chairperson of that board i see firsthand what simmerman agency does for a county and i think we could not ask for anything better or better agency that could not promote the goals of of this organization for the county so they go beyond the call of duty in fact what we're paying them it's not even doesn't even come close to what they do they have they had the big picture because we're not competing just within polka and we're competing with the state of florida as well as with the nation as well as globally so we need people with those kind of views so that's that's my comment but we could discuss this a little bit later on if we want to i think we've got two issues here zimmerman's one thing and and they've they've shown their worth and we stay with zimmerman the other thing is encouraging local enterprise to to be part of it and i know through our procurement there's an outreach for small and minority businesses to be engaged in and orientations on how they do that but let's review the procurement process so that we make it as all inclusive for big companies little companies and all kind of companies mr wilson i think i think you pretty much said what i wanted to say i mean there's a time and point we want the best people the best companies to do the best job for the people of this county and sometimes they're not here and you can't make them be here but we want to make sure that we try to get them to come to the table and talk to us and try to get involved in it but i understand when you look at some of these lists and some of these companies are out of out of county out of state well it's just not because our staff didn't trying to hire the people out of poke county it's the ones that they didn't come through the door and do the paperwork so we got to find a way to get them through the door if there's qualified people here to do the job i think we're all on the same page yep mr chairman yes let me say i wasn't saying anything about the zimmerman the firm the quality of their work or the work that you all did thank you for doing that work but the fact of the matter is uh if we don't encourage and we don't cultivate some of these folks uh we will continue to send these dollars outside of polk county when in fact we could keep them here but uh you know there's probably better commissioners outside of polk county but they're left with us and uh i know there's some better than me out there that could do this better up north thank you mr chairman okay that's enough um we got some lay board appointments i entertain a motion from mr claire toomey affordable housing advisory committee i moved to appoint claire toomey to the affordable housing advisory committee for a three-year term motion to second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sound motion carries uh mr motion make a motion to appoint nicole redmond to the affordable housing committee advisory committee who will fulfill the remaining term of a member who resigned motion to second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye those like sound most carried our expedited public hearing process thank you mr chair prior to going to expedited um procedures i'll go over the public hearing general procedures we ask that you please turn off your cell phones or other devices that may distract from the public hearings please adjust the microphone and state your full name and address for the record before you begin speaking on a topic individual speaking during the public comments section of a matter will be strictly limited to three minutes the board is is experiencing these matters and is able to discern what is legally relevant to an issue and what is not information that is relevant or repetitive only serves to frustrate and necessarily prolong the day's business the commission expects civility at all times during all public hearings speaking out of turn shouting out from the audience with disrespectful sounds or utterances while another is speaking or unacceptable and you will be asked to leave the chambers for the remainder of the day if any person decides to appeal any decision made by the board with respect to any matter considered here today you will need a record of proceedings and that for such purposes you may need to ensure that verbatim record of proceedings is made which the record includes the testimony evidence upon which the appeal is to be based which you must gather at your own expense anyone in the audience who wishes to speak and present testimony today must be sworn in all testimony given during public hearings shall be deemed to be sworn at this time if you're going to address the commission or speak on any case today please stand raise your right hand and answer out loud the following question do you swear or affirm that the testimony or evidence you provide to the commission today is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you mr chair at this time before going into the expedited hearings i will go over the expedited hearing procedures expedited hearings are held pursuant to resolution number 2022-089 expedited hearings are used when no opposition was present at the planning commission hearing the applicant agrees to expedited hearings and the recommendation of the development review committee is for approval expedited procedures are falling after staff briefly introduces the case the hearing will be open for the public comment if anyone speaks during public comment the applicant will be given the opportunity to respond at the public comment the board will consider the land use case at any time full presentation from staff can be requested from a commissioner the applicant or a member of the public all documents attached to the agenda item are deemed part of the record of the land use case unless removed from the list of experts by motion of the board all individuals on the list of experts attached to the agenda items are deemed experts for the purpose of the land use cases at this time i'll turn over mr cisco to present the expedited hearings thank you mr mink for the record ben zisco land development director mr chairman we have five items on your expedited public hearing agenda today item number 01 is an expedited public hearing for case ldc pas 2023-5 nickels pm to arr for consideration of a small-scale comprehensive plan map amendment to change land use designation on 19.32 acres from phosphate mining to agricultural residential rural the subject site is located on the north side of nickels road directly south and adjacent to the city of mulberry this particular piece of land has never been owned by a phosphate company and has never been used for phosphate mining it therefore qualifies for this land use designation change to agricultural residential rural this is an adoption hearing and following any public comments staff recommends approval ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter only please come forward at this time see now we will close the public hearing and entertain a motion motion in the second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those likes on motion carries mr chairman item number 02 is an expedited public hearing for case ldc pas 2023-6 rr rlx and ccx to ocx to consider a small-scale comprehensive plan map amendment to change the future land use designation on 1.06 acres from convenience center and residential low to office center in the transit supportive development area you can see the subject site located here on the north side of ronald reagan parkway east of old lake wilson road subject site is bound by residential to the north and there is an existing wetland providing a natural buffer to the existing residential the request is to change the property designation to office center which is compatible with the existing adjacent commercial properties this is a small sale comprehensive plan amendment and an adoption hearing and following any public comment today staff recommends approval any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter only please come forward at this time seeing them we'll close the public hearing entertain a motion motion for approval second the motion to second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries mr chairman item number 03 is an expedited public hearing for case ldc pas 2023-7 caspian road cpa to consider the adoption of a comprehensive plan map amendment to change the future land use designation on 1.05 acres from development of regional impact to residential low the subject site is located within the poinciana planned unit development an existing dri that was approved back in 1971 the subject site is specifically designated as a church on that in that pud and the request is to change that designation to residential low to build one single family home on the subject site this is a small scale comprehensive plan amendment and an adoption hearing and following any public comment today staff recommends approval of this item any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter please come forward at this time seeing them we'll close the public area and entertain a motion motion for approval second have a motion to second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries mr chairman item number 04 is an expedited public hearing for case ldc pal 2023-7 cie annual update to consider the adoption of the annual update to the capital improvements element as required by florida statute this is a large-scale comprehensive plan amendment but specifically requires one adoption hearing as required by florida statute and following any public comment on this item staff recommends approval any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter please come forward at this time seeing them we'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion move adoption second the motion the second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries this next item is first reading only no action yes sir mr chairman item number 05 is an expedited public hearing for case ldct 2023-13 accessory dwelling units to consider a text amendment to the land development code to consolidate and streamline land development code regulations regarding accessory dwelling units in particular the text amendment will consolidate the terms accessory apartments garage apartments guest houses and mother-in-law suites and instead use one consistent term accessory dwelling units the text amendment will clarify setback requirements it will also provide the opportunity for an accessory accessory dwelling unit to locate on lots that have mobile homes as primary structures specifically will prohibit the use of an accessory dwelling unit for short term or vacation rentals will clarify that the excessive accessory dwelling units may be rented or leased but may not be sold separately from the primary structure and will clarify that accessory dwelling units do not count towards density calculations it will also provide specific regulations allowing a a shipping container to be converted to a residential uh accessory dwelling unit if it complies with the florida building code as you mentioned mr chairman this is first reading of a text amendment and no action is required by the board today any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter please come forward at this time ms garrett my name is sharon garrett i live uh off of carl boozy road east of haynes city i talked to the person that was instrumental in designing this mr peterson and i expressed my concerns which i'm also going to express to you the particular house that i'm in a mobile home that i mentioned to you that had the garbage piled up this high um they came in with a big front end loader and dug a big hole and put something in that hole which my husband said when he went by it looked like a septic tank i mean there was already one septic tank there then they came back and put in these little travel trailers and the awnings out so usually when the awnings out somebody's in it so there's a mobile home and two of these travel trailers one with a privacy fence in between it what worries me is people are going to assume that they can have a mini mobile home park and rent rent this stuff out um mr peterson said it had to have a concrete floor meet building requirements and with a single wide mobile home on the property he said uh that wouldn't fly because all the mobile homes have to be double wide now due to hurricanes um and he said my issue with this should be a codes problem which i already reported that so nothing's been done on um the area where i live i we used to be the only family that lives out there a certain person mike calagrist did sort of ticky tacky trailer parks the demographics have changed out there and if you went to the country the where the majority of those people that live in the travel in the trailer parks live out there i've been there i've traveled to a third world country the people i traveled with believed you saw the better neighborhoods the in between and the low neighborhoods i've seen people living in a house that was not much not much bigger than the women's bathroom in there with no toilet the toilet was the backyard and uh so people are used to living like that and they'll live in travel trailers which that is not zoned for that area like that and this is on a downhill slope the second travel trailer how i don't know how they pump the stuff up to the septic tank because it's on the downhill run usually all that stuff is gravity fed fed unless it's going downhill which could then eventually rolls into a slough that rolls through our property uh so i really hope that you look into being sure that you tighten stuff up to where this does not happen because it is happening thank you very much thank you ma'am mr chairman i will just add for in the definition of of accessory dwelling unit the language before you today specifically prohibits a mobile home or a recreational vehicle as being an allowable accessory dwelling unit so that that is in the definition uh that you are not allowed to use a a travel trailer recreational vehicle as a accessory dwelling unit mr chairman yes sir i gotta tell you this uh 30 years ago john vizzini came wanted to meet with me and merle bishop and he had some paperwork with him and he thought we should consider allowing shipping containers for residential units uh so 30 years later and i understand there's going to be some serious problems but i would hope that there's going to be some serious problems but i would hope that there's going to be a lot of time here here we are at the same time we're talking about sludge dumping and yeah yeah uh any we don't want to move too fast here people this public hearing is still open on this matter does anyone else would you speak on this matter seeing them we'll close the public yes you got one yes ma'am on 05 name and address for the record please hey my name is debra lawson i live at 200 penny lane in haynes city and i i i totally agree with the lady okay i understand there's going to be some serious problems but i would hope that there's going to be a lot of serious problems but i would hope that the rules and regulations um are tight enough and it's going to be you know you're going to monitor it but i have to tell you that i as turning 65 this year and both of my children have moved to acreage out of town i have one that has moved to frost proof and one that has moved to east i mean to lakeland and she works at public's corporate office so i have to tell you that i would be for this because i am downsizing and i am literally considering doing such a thing and i would love to be able to put some kind of little home on one of their properties that i could live in because they could then take care of me because i've had several accidents you know over the past three years and it's like i would just love to be there so that my daughter doesn't worry about me like she's seriously like mom i got to get you closer to me so i i would love to do it but i would definitely want it strictly monitored so that that kind of trash doesn't go on and that's just my opinion of that thank you thank you ma'am mr chairman there were a number of people outside when we did the swearing in and and the clerk has pointed out that deborah lawson was one of those but that's okay but but we may have to go through the the swearing in process again for folks you're okay we're going to do it again probably because there's a bunch of them to come in no okay dd's dd wants to make sure they're sworn in over here anyone else on this item 05 we will close the public hearing there's no action required on today there will be action on the subsequent meeting and now we move into the regular public hearings thank you mr chair the first item will be um presented by miss um sandy howard deputy county attorney good morning sandy howard for the county attorney's office this is a public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution setting the rate of collection and approving the non ad valorem assessment rule for the 2023 local provider participation fund special assessment under ordinance 22-29 the board may annually adopt an assessment resolution setting the assessment amounts that in the aggregate will generate sufficient revenue to fund the non-federal share of medicaid payments associated with local hospital services to be funded by the assessment each of the five local hospitals those being lakeland regional health winter haven hospital bartow regional medical center lake wales hospital and the heart of central heart of florida regional medical center provide medical care to uninsured residents and those who qualify for medicaid on average medicaid covers only 60 of the costs of these health care services with federal authority the state of florida established the statewide medicaid managed care hospital directed payment program to offset the hospital's uncompensated medicaid costs in order for the county to impose and collect the special assessment from each of the five hospitals the board must adopt an assessment resolution and non-ad valorem assessment role each year the proposed resolution sets the rate of collection for the 2023 fund at 2.28 percent of net patient revenues for each hospital this equates to a total assessment amount to be collected this year in the amount of 37 million nine hundred and thirty thousand four hundred and sixty four dollars assessment funds collected by the county from the hospitals will be submitted to the state's agency for health care administration through intergovernment intergovernmental transfer upon the agency's request so the county attorney's office along with the health and human services division recommends the board take action on two items following today's public hearing the first to approve and adopt the assessment resolution and non-ad valorem assessment role setting the rate of collection for the 2023 local provider participation fund special assessment and second to authorize the county manager to execute the hospital directed payment program letter of agreement with the state of florida agency for health care administration on or before the deadline of october 1st 2023 thank you all stand for any questions any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you would speak on this matter please come for it this time and miss garrett has given me another slip for the sharon garrett show come on down that's okay come on down i know you you chose not to check the box whether you were for it or against it you're not sure so yes ma'am first before i start how long has this been going on i think you're you're now in the second or third year okay uh my name is sharon garrett i live off carl blues road east of hanes city um i basically i'm i'm against it and the reason why i'm against it is on our ad valorem taxes you have a certain assessment where we contribute to a fund that is for people that don't have insurance our federal taxes also take money out of our taxes for for that every time you increase this amount on the hospitals they then turn around and raise the rates on the rest of us and it gets to where you for some people you can't hardly afford insurance so you're helping price everybody out of the insurance by adopting this percentage my husband had a certain procedure up in orlando and if i hadn't had health insurance that that procedure cost twenty thousand dollars it really didn't cost me anything because this hospital was under a certain area and i was surprised that i didn't have have to do a copay but it just increases all the costs for everybody else when you raise it i'm sure that each one of these hospitals in their avalorum taxes i'm sure you're taxing them avalorum wise unless they're a religious facility of some sort um they're they're paying like twice because you've got that percentage in there that you have on all our properties uh to go to the internet care thank you miss garrett would it change your mind if i told you none of this money comes out of any ad valorem of any other taxpayers it is a contribution to another state or federal agency that results in grants coming back to the hospital which helps keep their cost down okay yes or no it still causes the prices to go up for the rest no it doesn't it isn't it's an opportunity for them to make available grants to them if it's price neutral for the public that attends the hospitals that's already covered by insurance to where these people don't raise for each procedure then i have no problem with it if it influences the prices somehow i do have a problem influences the price by bringing them down allowing them to qualify for grants i mean the prices for the people that have insurance and mr chair i think it's important to point out that the hospitals actually came to us to work this program out in order to work with the federal government in order to bring more money back into polk county so this is actually something that the hospitals as polk county look into to help with their pricing grants probably the wrong word but it provides additional revenue to keep their costs down right there's no revenues it was requested by the the hospitals to help us general public doesn't pay a dime thank you thank you miss garrett for seeking that clarification uh this public hearing item is uh still open anyone else wish to speak on this item p1 good morning i probably bungled that explanation but yes ma'am name and address of the record good morning my name is danielle drummond i'm the president and ceo at lakeland regional health our address is 1324 lakeland hills boulevard and i appreciate the opportunity to speak this morning and express our support for the local provider participation fund again this year as you said it allows us to have an assessment that provides matching funds to provide health care services for some of the most vulnerable and underserved in our community our organization and the other hospitals that are here this morning greatly appreciate the partnership and working with the county on this much needed program thank you ma'am yeah it's kind of complicated but maybe you and miss garrett could talk and you could explain to her how it allows us to draw down dollars that we would not otherwise have available to us and and it's a little counterintuitive and complicated and but it in the end it all makes sense when they send the check absolutely no it's complex you know medicaid funding does not cover the cost of that care and these dollars allow us to continue to grow and expand the services that we provide to that population give her a call thank you thanks anyone else wish to speak on this matter yes sir good morning tim clark address 4100 us highway 27 davenport florida good morning chairman lindsay and the honorable commission my name is tim clark i'm the president ceo of the advent health polk market which includes lake wales hospital heart of florida hospital and the soon to be advent health winter haven and i'm here today in support of the director payment program and the rate resolution you are considering today private hospitals and health care systems in polk county provide vital health care services crucial to local communities the program generates critically needed funds to support hospitals in polk county enable continued positive economic impact in the region and at no cost to residents or businesses as we've mentioned this is more medicaid shortfall funding and at no cost to our residents and businesses the funding has provided advent health heart of florida and advent health lake wales the ability to meet growing needs in our underserved community and to burn continue to provide high quality care to our patients in polk county thank you for your continued support of this important program thank you sir anyone else wish to speak on this matter good morning commissioners i am karen kerr i'm president at bartow regional medical center addresses 2200 osprey boulevard i am here representing baycare health services with hospitals in winter haven as as well as bartow as my colleagues have already expressed we are also supportive of your support of this of this ad valorem tax it does help us provide care to to uh ever increasing indigent population in our areas and in our hospitals thank you for your support thank you ma'am anyone else on this matter move adoption the resolution we close the public hearing and entertain the motion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries next item good morning this is wade allen your real estate services administrator the first item we have here is a petition from hunter reynolds to vacate a portion of a planted drainage easement aligned within the plat of rainbow ridge number five subject easement located within section 21 township 28 range 25 east the plat recorded in 2001 dedicated all the rights way and easements to use of the public the petitioner is the owner of lot one that's in the process of constructing a single-family home on the lot it was discovered during the planning process that the proposed home would increase encroach into a 30-foot platted drainage easement along the western boundary of the property petitioner is requesting to vacate the east 10 foot of the easement will accommodate which will accommodate the construction of the new residence roads and drainage in the office of planning development county engineer have reviewed and have no objection to the vacation staff recommends the board adopt a resolution to vacate a portion of the platted public drainage easement as shown on the plat of rainbow ridge five as fully described in the legal description attached to the petition along with what's attached to the resolution and i'll stand for any questions you might have any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter if you wish to speak on this matter please come forward at this time saying that we'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion move adoption the resolution discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries next item we have is uh i'm asking for uh a petition to vacate excuse me on board's own motion a portion of a platted unmaintained right-of-way is shown on the map of juanita farms the subject right-of-way is located in section 16 township 29 range 26 east the county purchased parcels to the south of the subject right-of-way and adjacent to it in conjunction with a road improvement project for thompson nursery road vacating the subject portion of the right-of-way will remove the public interest in the subject and allow the county to use the areas needed for the project the appropriate county divisions and utility providers have reviewed the request and have no objection to the proposed vacation staff recommends the board adopt a resolution to vacate a portion of the platted and unmaintained right-of-way as shown on the map of juanita farms as fully described in the legal description attached to the resolution and also within this agenda package and i'll remain standing for any questions you might have any questions of staff ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on the matter described if you wish to speak on this matter please come forward at this time saying that we'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion motion for approval motion the second any discussion on the motion all those in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries commissioners shonda bennett with the land development division i'll be presenting the next two cases they are related however they're different but they're related because they're on two separate sides of the road one presentation two votes two presentations actually okay because they're somewhat different from each other but i will reference quick i'll be quicker with the second one the first case is ldcpas 2023-9 it is a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment from phosphate mining to business park center and industrial in terms of the advertisement for the case 53 mailers were sent on august 18th no response was received three boards were posted on july 14th and a legal ad was published in the lakeland ledger on september 1st there was however opposition at the planning commission the site is located in the southwest part of the county south of pebbledale or southwest of pebbledale road between state road 37 and old highway 37 this particular case is north of jameson road the other case that you'll hear today is south of jameson road the surrounding area has some other non-residential uses to the north on old highway 37 is transphos of course the hydrogen plant just north of that to the east is a construction maintenance company here overall this property is all part of the old pebbledale mine it's been incorporated into the northern phosphory mine however these these pieces have been released from reclamation of course the biggest concern from staff is the rolling hill subdivision that you see here to the east of the subject site and surrounding the site certainly there's some wetter areas directly north certainly to the west that the solar farm did not build on construct their solar panels on so really looking toward the west is where additional development is more likely to occur in this case that's the request the business park center is about 10 acres the whole site's about 49 acres the idea for this business park center is that this is less impactful than the industrial and that's being adjacent to the rolling hill subdivision so that it's more of a step down than what industrial would provide at that particular location this is looking further in to the property you'll notice that there is a railroad on the west side of the property and more than that it's also a railroad yard so it's difficult to see that residential would be more likely here going from phosphate mining so that's part of the location criteria for industrial and business park center allows it to be adjacent to railroads in addition to being along collector roads and old highway 37 is a collector as well as state road 37. jameson road is actually designated a local commercial road it was just changed earlier this year from a local residential road it is however in poor condition and you can see that um i'm sorry um i'm sorry i'm going ahead of myself sorry i'll show you that in some of the the site photos uh however um part of what staff will work out during the level two review is that the access points cut does come off jameson road however the land development code does not require the entire length of jameson road to be improved by either of the developments that's just basically along their frontage and also included in what kind of intersection they're going to have a driveway access they're going to have into their site this is the surrounding land use map that you can see some of the industrial air surrounding the area phosphate mining and then rolling hills within the agriculture residential rural land use classification and then this is what it would look like if it was industrial and i'm certainly you're curious probably why this little fish hook here to the north and that has to do with the railroad yard and and how there could be maneuvering around that railroad yard but i'm sure the applicant can provide more detail this is a slide that shows an arrow photograph from 1994 on the left and then a current aerial of last year on the right you can see the phosphate mining that has occurred in the area and the site had been previously mined along with what the solar farm is on the history of rolling hills the didn't have a subdivision here several decades ago there were some residential communities further north the phosphate mining companies removed that and then rolling hills developed but it doesn't certainly detract from the concern of having a lot of the industrial uses around it and at the planning commission hearing i'm sure you'll hear that today about the truck traffic that comes from the north on old highway 37 uh and staff had mentioned at that planning commission hearing that we would try to contact roads and drainage division and discuss what options there are in terms of that roadway the pavement width is is pretty consistent with collector roadway standards standards however the right of way width varies somewhat but it's it's not necessarily a narrow road jameson is more of the concern and certainly we'll do what we can to ensure the driveways access jameson and then in 2012 we also did an existing conditions study regarding the bone valley area and what could be done in terms of land use changes as development further occurs and i think some as i'm sure many of you already know that some of some there's some thought process that is phosphate mining changes over that it should just be industrial i think our the county's atv park and the stream song development demonstrate that that's not necessarily the end result as the purpose for reclamation is to bring it back to its pre-mining state which is open space and then it just develops from there the biggest hindrance in terms of development other than industrial is really water and sewer but that is changing over time we do expect other developments to occur in the broader phosphate mining phosphate mining area uh so certainly uh we have paid attention to the concern of the traffic of the truck traffic and roads and drainage did an analysis in 2020 and found that 15 percent of uh the traffic on old 37 from the north coming south 15 of that is trucks and going north is seven percent and the request at that time was made to collect to restrict old highway 37 to truck traffic and the decision was due to that amount of truck traffic that the county couldn't really realistically do that mr chairman question here is is that coming out of the transphos facility and headed down to mining areas or i mean because they're not going back north they're hitting 37 or something else i'm assuming that as well as the other construction company that's further to the east off of pebbledale but the expectation with this property here transphos is in the trucking business ccc group's not in the trucking business so they may have some truck traffic but the most of traffic is going to be transphos most of the truck traffic's there truck traffic from transphos they're not there all the time yeah i mean it depends on where they're hauling and where they're loading and hauling out but they're coming in and out of there on a regular basis probably not a lot more than some of the c and c grid i mean the ccc grid but well it sounds like they go south but once they head and get a load they go and you know they don't bring another way back there yeah and if you remember mr zisco presented a month or so ago about our initiatives for looking at affordable housing infill projects in areas where there is in census tracts that that are eligible for community development block grant funds and this area is in one of those census tracts so i think one of the things we'll do with staff is look at that in terms of if there's any kind of funding we can find for improvements to jameson or anything in the area that we can do in collaboration with the applicant for this particular case so some of the site photos this is standing on jameson road looking to the east north is to the left you can see the site on the left and of course the other site would be on the right this is looking northeast you can see the csx railroad yard sort of in the background this is standing on state road 37 this is looking on jameson road and you can see the quality of that road is pretty poor so again that's why staff mentioned the concern about working with the applicant to see what we can do to upgrade that roadway this is standing on the highway 37 you can see the site on the left that would be the area of the business park center and then you can see the homes there on the right hand side in terms of impact assessment this is a rural area but we do have pretty decent response times from sheriff fire and ems it actually is in the southwest regional utility service area there are water lines on old highway 37 that serve rolling hills any sewer service would be septic and it's not breaking any concurrency thresholds in terms of transportation staff does recommend approval that is as it is consistent with the policies and the comprehensive plan in terms of the location criteria the business park center does serve to provide a better step down from the residential than industrial would provide on the east side of the site and the policy 2.114 a3 which is our phosphate mining policy does state that industrial and business park center on one of the categories of land uses to transition from when moving from phosphate mining and i'll stand for any questions question to staff mr bees roswell i did um the change in the road from local or go back to the slide you were on what was what drove that decision to change the classification of the road i mean was the road change to accommodate something that was in the future or was there another reason there was more than one reason i noticed at the pre-application for the land use change with the applicant that um or sometime in the process that jameson was a local road local residential road which on the surface didn't make sense going between two collectors when there's no residential off of that road specifically that didn't seem like appropriate designation um but also to accommodate the industrial it needed to be local commercial or a collector and so we met with the roadway committee which is uh hosted by our polk tpo organization and that committee which is tpo staff mr ziskell myself uh as a committee decided that it needed to be changed from local residential to local commercial how much general leeway would we have in this case to work with a developer and say hey this needs to go all the way out to hole 37 it needs to be redone i mean do we have the ability to say that um no no the code does not provide for that but there are cases where if there's funds uh either general funds or cdbg funds to work with the applicant to enter into an infrastructure agreement where the applicant goes ahead and paves the road but we give them money to do the whole segment we that's not an uncommon thing that we do has the applicant indicated what they intend to do there um the mr carter will present some thoughts about that and he and i did talk earlier this morning about the possibility of an infrastructure agreement but but again we won't know until we know what the specific development is going to be any other questions the staff and the applicant is going to present right yes yes sir it's carter uh good morning mr chairman uh dave carter professional engineer carter k engineering 137 fifth street northwest winter haven uh with me this morning is mr tom mims who's the owner of the property um just to give you a little background um they've owned that the property there since 2010 it has been mined and reclaimed as you saw from the earlier photos that you were shown this general area mr mims owns other properties around this general area south of mulberry about 10 years ago he approached us that he had inquiries on industrial availability of industrial property we did land use changes on about a half a dozen parcels between where we are here and some of the parcels you saw uh marked on the map earlier and up towards mulberry those land use changes were successful and uh turn the page it's now 2023 and many of those parcels have been either sold or spoken for and so individuals and businesses are looking for other developable areas uh developable sites in this area and so that caused us to look at this site as a possible uh possible development area for the record we do agree with staff that the uh the uh land use change does meet the location and development criteria in your comp plan and land development code i just want to expand on some of the uh description of the area can you see my cursor move good okay yeah the uh the clean hydrogen plant as was mentioned was the north at i think a hundred million dollar facility um the ccc electric is here and then the transphos which is you you all mentioned is a trucking company servicing the the phosphate industry to the question of which way those trucks go i noted that the uh dirt on the road as you come out of their entrance goes both north and south so i'm assuming those vehicles would go north or south depending upon their ultimate uh destination the rolling hills uh residential area to our east here as was mentioned there's a rail crossing of jameson road right here that railroad goes north and then further it goes extends much further north but there's a rail yard that adjoins our property the uh explanation was accurate as to the shape of the property as as if you're familiar with rail spur lines the distances you've got to have for the the train to come over and then line up is significant and so that was the reason for the sort of the tail on the on the site over here south of us um give a very brief presentation on the uh second case that is is to come up before you that area is down here but some most of my comments frankly will cover both uh both cases uh jameson road as was mentioned was changed to a um commercial designation recently part of that discussion as as uh miss bennett indicated there's a variety of reasons why that was done one of them is the the industrial area that we own uh over here next to 37 is is being uh uh engineered and developed at this point so that area is is industrial and the idea was to come off of jameson for that as well so there's increased development along along the jameson road route south of us is the um the edge and the extension then of the tico solar farm which is down in this area down here uh mr mims owns property and you'll see it on the second case it runs down along old 37 here there's a wetland in the middle um just just give you some idea what's around us um go ahead and flip this this this map i wanted to point some things out um again the site was challenging a railroad yard on one side and a residential development on the other so how do you handle that and we proposed and staff felt was reasonable to earmark a 10 acre area this is a little bit less than 500 feet wide off of old 37 as bpc as they indicated the bpc is the lightest industrial uh uses that you have in your in your classification code there's an existing um oak and and and brush um i'll call it a buffer but it's a forested area along the edge of that bbc i've got some photos of that i'll show you in a little bit but that that area is naturally vegetated as you know any development you've got to put buffers with different uses uh we've got a mature buffer in that area already in existence we're not going to tear that down and put small trees and we're going to leave that in there to meet our buffer requirements on this drawing also um our plan is to to exit both properties uh on jameson uh not right on top of the railroad crossing but near it probably five or six hundred feet to the east and then our trucks and traffic would run out west to 37 which is a state road or excuse me to 60 uh 37 which goes to 60 ultimately um we we are happy to work with staff as you as you're well aware anytime you have a truck entrance on a road you've got certain improvements you've got to make perhaps turn lanes and so forth and we're happy to work with staff in some manner to upgrade that section jameson road it currently is 20 feet wide it has a significant amount of truck traffic already which i think you'll the residents will undoubtedly uh relay to you so we're hoping that development of the property will help alleviate some of that existing problem would indicate also that we're planning on running water lines down to the industrial to our west the site here the that water line would be available and we're going to run it down ultimately jameson road to this side as well so that would bring water in close to the site and and be able to loop with the the county system in rolling hills and so just give you some general information there this is a buffer that they're talking about when you come out williams road which is one of the main entrances into rolling hills this is what you see looking straight ahead and looking up and down that segment uh there's a fairly good stand of forest along there this is at the this picture was taken at the north end of the bpc looking sort of southerly and that just gives you the extent of that existing vegetation along there i'm going to go ahead the county as you know in order to put a development on a piece of property the first thing you typically look at is the is the use tables that's in the code and that those use tables tell you on a particular uh property of a particular land use what can i do what kinds of uses can i do on on that property and what we what we did was we listed down again there's like 120 or so possible land uses we we kind of paired that down to about 20 that we felt were uh one they would be changing and two they would be at least something that's a somewhat likely use um the the column on the left is the is the pm the existing uses the column on the right is industrial uh the the bpc is is very similar but i just thought i would give you this to give you an idea what we did was go down and compare what's allowable today in the phosphate mining the pm with what would be allowable under the industrial now i will caveat it that most of the uses that are allowed under pm have to be allied with the phosphate industry in other words a business that either services or works in some fashion with the phosphate industry uh that causes a little bit of difficulty with marketing we prefer to have the flexibility of not having that requirement and so that really is what precipitates going from pm to industrial but just to show you that many of these check marks are are types of businesses that are that would be allowed in the industrial but frankly would not uh just from the location would probably not you'd not see them being put in there a residential retail perhaps some self-storage um gas stations banks those kind of things would be allowed in industrial but frankly would would likely not go in this particular site but if you look at the scent the center area here there's a number of the manufacturing light manufacturing general uh motor motor freight terminal um the heavy machine equipment sales those uses are already allowed on this property with the lane use that's there but again the the the caveat being that they would have to be allied with the phosphate industry they're listed as a p which is permitted use under uh industrial uh not to hide the ball from you a a land use that is not allowed under phosphate is warehousing distribution it would be allowed under industrial but frankly given this location the distance south of i4 we really don't see this as particularly a warehouse or distribution area it's just not to us it's just not set up for that given the the the distance you'd have to drive to i4 and go through lakeland it's it's probably going to go and develop as more of a manufacturing or light manufacturing or general manufacturing development mr chairman that's all i had this morning again i have some comments on the southern when i will make those very brief that will come up before you shortly but i'll be happy to stand for any questions you might have question mr chairman uh dave you talk about the buffer there on the bpc where it comes out yeah where it comes out of the subdivision uh yeah are you all i mean you're saying that that will remain completely intact as it exists today no sir it's it's about 130 feet deep in some of the deepest point uh but we will we will maintain the required buffer along the edge and we feel like that that is pretty significant as you know on any any project on the top it starts getting wider up there yeah it's it's about 130 on average is what i measured it it's probably a little wider at the top but i didn't mean to to say every that's why i'm trying to get a good what are you leaving a clarification on it and all just what's what's the i think the buffer is 20 feet i'm not i don't remember the exact this is a type a buffer so it's it's 10 feet wide well we we can commit to going wider than that along that edge there i mean i don't think 10 feet is sufficient actually so but we can commit to going wider than that so okay anything else no broswell on the uh east side of old 37 where rolling hills is uh like where the p for project was right there is that your property too on on the east side are you guys just on the west side of about down here yeah that's owned by mosaic i believe is that a wetland is that usable what is that no man's land i think it's no man's land i'm not sure it'd be it looks it looks wet from the aerials but i didn't look at look at the nwi maps to tell you know mosaic owns out here we own this corner here we also own this area in here which again goes to southern piece but that's a huge wetland i failed to mention where there's no wetlands uh in on any of the area that we're proposed to develop there is some flood plain that we'll have to analyze but there's no wetlands in the area and on the north side of the industrial land the bpc that's wetlands right clearly wetlands yes sir any other questions uh dave uh basically this property the north and the south end the other one we hadn't talked about i mean it's you're just basically have you got any potential uh prospects going in there or just getting it ready and build it and they will come i'm told there's no specific user uh mr mims has industrial users coming in looking for property every day as you can imagine nothing specific for this site because it it you know with the with the pm on it it does restrict it doesn't you know uh folks might think and i i don't know but folks might think well it's it says phosphate mining and they're not going to mine anymore so gee it's going to stay a pasture forever i don't think that's realistic i think 10 years or 15 years from now we're going to look back there'll be some development on here i think this we view it it gives us the flexibility to put other types of unit of development that would be similar to what's allowed today but just not allied with the phosphate industry thank you mr chairman yes good clarification on that that property and it could be incorrect but on my earth plat it shows that polk county owns that 44.21 acres on the south end of the subdivision all along along here yeah that's what it shows here i'm looking and says polk county 44.21 acres commissioner you may be correct my memory may have failed me i thought mosaic owned it but but you're seeing is probably correct was it related to any of our utility stuff or why in the world would we have i'll put a rock crusher there yeah mr carter the someone in the community had uh speculated that a paint manufacturing company has committed to be part of this project is that just speculation and that's not mr mims has indicated to me there is no specific users have contacted him on this site so i would have to assume that speculation very good okay any other questions of mr carter well one other comment i believe for staff though bpc does not allow outside storage correct business park center one does not allow outdoor storage but business park center two does but this site would just be business park center one they have not requested for a sub-district to two okay i thought that was correct thank you ma'am thank you mr okay uh ladies and gentlemen we're open the public hearing on item p4 i have uh two cards here for speaker's request mr kendrick uh invited to come forward first and uh mr randy ables would follow mr kendrick good morning my name is eugene kendrick my address is 10 williams street mulberry florida i'm one of the ones uh who owns the property directly across the street from the proposed site uh our main concern is that we already have enough traffic coming through there if you go back and look at your records uh those 18 wheelers that's coming through there from trans foss were forbidden years ago and all of a sudden they just started coming back again we're also concerned about what's going out there because it's not really defined we have most of the people that live out there are senior citizens we don't want anything that's impacting the environment that will affect them most of those people drive to the post office which is about to close now that's about it we only have two access roads we go south to pebbledale we can't use that road anymore because trans foss has literally almost destroyed it the other access road is jameson trans foss is using that to exit so in the mornings when i get ready to go to work most of the time i have to stop and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for them to pull out if they're in front of me so if you're going to bring in more traffic like that we don't need it the letters that we receive were only sent to the people who were directly affected by proximity to the adjacent property but the entire community will be affected by this not just us so we are asking you as types paying citizens because we know that this would directly impact the land value of our property we're asking you to consider us we were there first we moved there because we didn't want this that's why we're there i raised my family out there that's why i moved there that's why just about everybody that's out there moved there they wanted peace they wanted calm they wanted serene think about it if you were related to the people that lived out there would you want that in your community thank you mr kendrick mr ables while while he's coming up just to clarify on the east side of old 37 mosaic's got 165 foot strip down there till you get to mount olive and then the county owns basically everything across the south end of rolling hills which is related to the water plant yeah is that what it is it looks like it i see it in the middle of the right on mount oliver mosaic has a kind of a a jog back and forth across the road with little strips of land uh mr ables uh name and address for the record please yes good morning my name is randy ables i live at 60 williams street in the uh rolling hills division um i love the community there i moved here uh specifically because i found that place uh and it's in a rural location which i truly enjoy um and so when i started hearing from my community that we were getting some rezoning directly across the street from us i started thinking about the impact that's already there trans foss moved from bonnie mine road which had no impact to us over to old 37 and that immediately increased our roads uh with 18 wheelers to 50 to 100 travels per day i immediately noticed that on my vehicle uh that i started seeing a lot more road dust collecting on my property and on the things around me and i've had to power wash and and treat that and i'm i'm a couple hundred feet back from the road so i can imagine uh what eugene experiencing directly next to old 37 uh in this specific uh area here that i want to speak to uh this location and putting this property on jamison road and putting access to jamison road will directly impact everybody in our community and i and i really struggle to believe how it's not going to impact everyone who uses 37 with the increased amount of traffic from an industrial complex and trans foss at that intersection i have to believe that will have to become a controlled intersection in order to prevent loss of life and that's for this specific one and i do have more for the the next one thank you sir anyone else wish to speak on this matter p4 carter you had any rebuttal comments mr chair mr mims and i uh had a little discussion while the opposition came up um you know we tried to um be respectful of rolling hills we recognize they're over there they've been there for a number of years back in the 50s i think it was platted the inclusion of bpc was as you can imagine an effort to try to step down from the industrial next to the railroad yard with the residential in the east um given the concerns of the neighborhood we would be uh we're requesting to withdraw the bpc uh land use change on that area and uh wish to withdraw that portion of the request to be the 10 acres of bpc uh just leave that area the existing land use would you show the cursor your modification you're lessing out that piece yes yes sir we mr mims has requested that this piece be withdrawn from the application and it remained what it is today phosphate yes sir then the balance of the site request would go forward the balance of the industrial would go forward yes sir okay mr chairman i would offer you a motion that we uh let's have more discussion please we have a question i mean dave just just to point out not just for my sake but for everyone's sake and in these cases you know seeing a lot of these over the years it's easy to sit here and talk about what we're talking about today but nobody knows what's going to go on this piece of property that's the that's the the real issue if we knew it'd be an easier decision but by doing that it somewhat leaves a higher well i don't know of higher but a more industrial use for the land that may be less appealing than bpc um and and and you know i i think the residents need to understand that you know this what can go there right now is not something they're going to want uh or could be something they're not going to want what you had proposed originally could be could not be um in in withdrawing this i don't you know i'm not gonna uh oppose it but i think um you know it's it's it's important that the residents understand what what what could go on there right now uh is i hate to say it but probably worse than what you're going to get um and and you know you just got to be careful what you wish for here that's that's my only comment mr chairman yes obviously i think what uh the afghan is trying to do is to you know give some assurance and comfort to the neighbors but i think commissioner broswell makes an excellent point because it is phosphate mining and there are permitted uses there uh as dave pointed out there uh and supposed to be somehow some way allied affiliated with the industry but that's not that hard to do but i understand what commissioner broswell's saying and i don't know and i understand that the applicant's saying we'll just leave it as it is for the time being which is which is probably fine now dave's coming back to the microphone hole on everybody well we're trying to work with the neighbors and work with the commission on what's best for the neighborhood right if and i you make good points and we we've we've been discussing this the last three days is you know whether you take it out or leave it in there's pluses and minuses to it either way but uh whatever makes the commission more comfortable for the neighborhood if keeping it back in if you all feel that provides them with better protections we're happy to do that we just felt like if that was something that the neighbors were concerned about we're willing to go back it makes it harder for us to do anything with it you're actually correct we can still do other uh uses it just makes it harder to market it leaving it with the pm yeah we would be happy either way as our opinion it's kind of a toss-up well that could that be part of the either retention mitigation parking for the remainder the mr mr commissioner the the use is although it's a block out on the plans as as you mentioned before some of the uses are very similar and we're having we're proposing one entrance on jameson so the traffic circulation would go into both areas there's no there's no dividing line in terms of roadways driveways things like that so yes that would be possible if you kept it any other comments from the board and if i can just make clear mr carter just for the record at this time you're withdrawing you're withdrawing the bpc and leaving it up to the commission the board to determine whether or not to leave it at pm or bpc i guess if we leave it in they can always vote that part of it down right but you're in agreement if if they decide not to go with pp b bpc that's that's accurate okay and that's a that is a unsolicited offer on your part okay that makes it easier mr chairman i would offer you a motion to adopt the small-scale comprehensive plan amendment as uh presented to us to include the 10 acres of bpc and i do that knowing that uh again as mr carter's pointed out in the phosphate uh mining area there are permitted uses uh that uh and and i don't know what kind of test there is for allied but i imagine that's a hole you could drive 100 trucks through uh i would think and uh so i think there's probably better protection with the bpc and the uh the buffer at this point so that's the motion the most i'll second that uh basically for the same reasons okay we have a motion and a second uh any discussion on the motion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye opposed motion carries p5 good morning again shonda bennett with the land development division this is a small-scale conference plan amendment ldcpas 2023-10 on about 22 acres on the south side of jameson road for the record in terms of advertisement 53 mailers were sent on august 18th new response was received three boards were posted on july 14th and a legal ad was published in the lakeland ledger on september 1st so again though this particular property is still in the southwest portion of the county between state road 37 and old highway 37 south of jameson road you can see the aerial photograph here i will incorporate all of my comments from the previous case into this case rather than restating them all but you can see rolling hills in the middle and the solar farms there on the right hand side here's more zoomed in aerial photograph you can see the railroad on the west here's the land use map you can see this this particular site is adjacent other than the railroad to industrial on the west and then some industrial on the south side and of course what's intervening is is an old phosphate lake you can see this area here that was mined and again i incorporate my comments about the bone valley existing conditions review that we did more than 10 years ago now here's some site photos standing on old highway 37 looking north you can see the site on the left jameson road in the middle of the screen this is looking at south standing on on old highway 37 jameson road would be behind the photographer here's again standing on jameson road looking into the site and getting incorporating comments on the impact assessment statement from the previous case case it's a rural area but there are no deficiencies in in concurrency and staff recommends approval as the location criteria is consistent with this location for industrial and staff recommends approval and i'll stand for any questions any questions yes sir so going back hearing the two residents talk traffic's the concern um transpos i guess you would say is most of the problem is there is there any opportunity to do anything to remedy that uh uh traffic i mean with transpos i know they're there already they're driving down the road um whether they're loaded or unloaded i don't i don't think that really matters it's just the numbers is there any any weight for the county to deal with that in a positive manner the only item mr kendrick who lives out there said there was a time when the trucks were prohibited from going down through there i would think there would be somebody from transportation maybe that could maybe enlighten us on that win and what if it did go away but that was i heard you say that didn't mr yeah go ahead well considering commissioner cumby said that i can certainly reach back out to roads and drainage on that comment i hadn't realized it was restricted until i heard that from the public but certainly i can reach out to trans foss myself talk to them and see what can be done and i could if i can say i'm calling them on behalf of the board's direction i mean it looks like it looks like the plan here the trucks come in jameson they go out jameson they don't get on all 37 they don't really i mean they will mingle with the traffic as it comes out on the 37 but that's going to fix a lot of it by not going any further to the east i think that's part of it i think the other part which requires always requires money it's bringing roads up to standard that's becoming to develop and and there is the responsibility of jameson road is the entire road is not the developer of the applicant's responsibility it's yeah and that's not what i'm saying if you bring it up to standards it's just going to bring more trucks you know so yes no there's another issue with uh trans fog and that is dust control i don't know what influence we have over that but i'm a frequent rider of that road and you can follow that trail of dust for miles in both directions that certainly aggravates situation not as related to this application but it aggravates the situation for the neighborhood so i'll let it move on i just want to point that out and ask you to look into that i will yes thank you any other comments from the board for the staff mr carter any further comments chairman i'll be i'll be very brief i just wanted to point out that the uh property to the west of here yeah my cursor's working as uh mr mims owns controls industrial we're developing that the solar farm is to our east we've got wetlands and some mosaic land to our south this uh southern parcel we envision using the same entrance which would which would uh require us to spend money to improve the county road and we're happy to work with the county or the federal money to um maybe a joint project to try to fix at least widen some of jameson road uh perhaps not the whole length but at least get our traffic out on 37 in a safe manner that's the extent of my comments mr chair i'll be happy to answer any questions mr carter just to make sure you're incorporating your comments from p4 into p5 also yes sir thank you okay ladies and gentlemen this is a public hearing on this matter p5 if you wish to speak on this matter come forward same mr kendrick and mr ables had registered to speak on both of this one also uh my name is eugene kendrick 10 william street mulberry florida uh we have no problem um with the building what we would like for you to consider if they're going to continue with this to move to the west side of the railroad crossing that will put less impact on the community and as we forestated we already have a problem with 18 wheelers coming through that that area we have a lot of senior citizens who travel up and down that road between bradley and pierce going back and forth and i can just see multiple accidents as a matter of fact the uh the entryway from new 37 to um jameson road at night is horrendous there's no light there you can't even see uh so i'm i'm just looking at we've already we've lost one man who was going to work just recently at that intersection uh somebody hit him as he was turning uh so uh we're just concerned about the traffic and the impact that will have on our senior citizens thanks sir mr abels thank you my name is randy abels i live at 60 williams street in the rolling hills subdivision and i didn't say before but i want to say now i'd like to thank this commission uh for your choice to serve our community uh and to hear our public comments uh when things that impact us directly and even indirectly i'd like to thank mr mims also for considering changing part of this proposal to isolate our community and the uh the uh the other um issue with us with the traffic and the development of the area this specific area again is borderline on jameson road which is under repaired i'll use that term right terminology and then over utilized i have direct concerns for my safety and my wife's safety whenever i go out to 37 on jameson road due to the amount of traffic there there's no turning lanes there's no way to get off the road and i have seen many people when i'm coming south on 37 to turn on jameson to come home i've seen many people who have absolutely had to immediately take an emergency around me and go off into the dirt because they didn't see me stopping or didn't see my turn signal because of the speeds on that road so i would recommend i would actually suggest and implore everyone involved in this development that state route 37 becomes a controlled intersection with a light and turning lanes in order to provide access for anyone in this area it'll help us currently but it'd also help any future development in this area too as an environmental professional retired i look at the immediate uh wetlands that's that's right behind this proposal and i'm concerned that this could be uh damaged by any industrial development thank you anyone else wish to speak on this matter we'll close the public hearing on p5 and bring it back to the board i want to echo mr abel's comments regarding southbound 37 and turning east on uh jameson that is a i would urge staff and the applicant to work with dot to to get a turn lane holding lane there and in some kind of um it'll never warrant a traffic light but it certainly begs for street lighting for that intersection uh and the notice of when the the road is coming up for the turn needs to be enhanced so mr chairman yes sir we've had multiple fatalities at moore road and dean still road over the years and recently i guess jay and transportation folks put a street light up on moore road and a street light up on dean still road and it has absolutely changed uh everything about that intersection i couldn't believe it when i came through there usually in bed but it gets dark but i happened to be out the other night and i'm like holy moly look at this so it uh it it really has improved it significantly i called him and thanked him and he said he didn't know anything about it uh he probably should have acted like he knew something about it but that's the kind of thing that would really do a lot of good there as far as the signal again it would probably be a long time before other than just safety as the factor before there would be a you know enough traffic to warrant a signal there but uh anyway uh with that in mind i uh i think the board what i hear the board saying is we would like to have our folks look at uh old 37 uh coming down toward jameson and mount olive and see if there's something that that can be done if trans foss is going down to pick up material from south uh it sure would be a hardship on them it looks like to go back some way north to get back on 37 to go south but maybe there's something that can be done working with the county transportation folks and the folks that are out there but meanwhile i will go ahead and give you a motion for the adoption of small scale comprehensive plan amendment on p5 the 22.26 acres second a motion a second any further discussion on that motion yes yes ma'am i just want to i also want to echo the comments about looking at the safety of this area we know that development is going to continue whether it's industrial or whatever and i think jameson and um the intersection of jameson and 37 needs some kind of some kind of if it's not a signalization uh lighting uh a stop sign with lights whatever it is so that we can prevent um or we can help with the safety issue staff has got that message yes sir mr wilson you know i listen to everybody and i understand that used to be pretty much my old stomping grounds down there because i went to phosphate mines american cyanamide agroco back in the day every day and then roads were you know where where ccnc is i mean ccc and transphosphate was phosphate mine uh i don't and they had right close to there had all their washers and everything else and a lot of things changed now was there more traffic there now than there was back in the day when these people were you know were building this community there's a lot of traffic everywhere down there that was phosphate related semis low boys you know it's a tough situation you know roads get out of disrepair the county comes in behind and we stay on jay all the time about and our people about getting roads paid well we got a lot of roads in this county to get paid but i understand both sides of this very much is industrial uh industrial going to change this the overall look at this whole part of the county when you don't know what's coming in there i don't know yeah you know we'll see we definitely want to do the right thing i think the the applicant is taking what taking out that uh what we talked about earlier is great but like say what they could already do there i can move a bunch of heavy equipment down there and put a four sale sign up and start running and do an undercarriage in there i get it so i mean are you going to get trans foster maybe change their mind and go down another road doubtful no not doubtful no because they're going to go the shortest distance and like i say most of the time they're going out they're unloaded but it's still a lot of trucks there's no doubt about it so you know i'm i think that you know that no good thing or is going to come any worse than it already is or any better out of this so i mean i will be for this so i just wanted to state that i just want to encourage the applicant considering his ownership on the south side and the west of the tray of the track to work with the transportation department and do what we can to improve jameson as well as staff work with dot to improve that intersection identifying is that you come south where the road is because you come up on it much too fast see there's an opportunity for a holding turn lane to the east and some street lighting in that area for at least bring that to their attention okay any further discussion all those in favor of the motion say aye aye those likes and motion carries we are going to take a 10 minute break and be back here with our final agenda item final agenda item underway mr mink has some ground rules for our de novo process and i think we have some folks who have joined us since we had the swearing in earlier so we'll do that also mr mink yes sir this this is item p6 i would ask individuals who have came later who have happened to be outside during the swearing in and have not been sworn in if you would just stand at this time to be sworn in all right come on down now wait a couple seconds to allow is it is the outer chamber about cleared okay all right if you would please raise your right hand and answer out loud to the following question do you swear or affirm that testimony or evidence you provide to the commission today is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you and i'll just remind the audience if you speak today you are deemed to be sworn in during your testimony uh at this time i'll go over the uh rules of procedure for de novo hearings that were adopted pursuant to resolution 2022-090 procedures first staff will present the staff report and recommendation after staff presents the staff report and recommendation the applicant will have 30 minutes to present the applicant's case after the applicant's presentation any organized opposition will have 30 minutes total to present their case if more than one person or entity qualifies as organized opposition the 30 minutes is split equally amongst them for for example if three individuals qualify as an organized opposition then each will have 10 minutes present their case organized opposition shall consist of any entity or individual that has filed an application for a de novo hearing or which has received written authorization from at least five entities or individuals speak on their behalf and those entities and individuals have agreed to waive the ability to speak during the public comment portion of the public hearing after the organized opposition opposition opposition's presentation the public comment portion of the public hearing will be open each speaker during the public comment will be allotted three minutes individuals whom are present are represented by the organized opposition will not be allotted three minutes during the public comment once public comments has been closed the applicant will have five minutes and any time reserved from the applicant's case presentation to respond to the organized opposition and public comment after the applicant's response the chair will close the public hearing and the board will discuss and vote on the matter the de novo hearing record all documents attached to the agenda and presentations given shall be deemed part of the record unless removed from the record by motion of the board county staff submit and the staff report shall be deemed experts in land planning unless disqualified by motion of the board applicants organized opposition the public may request documents to be entered into the record during their presentation applicants organized opposition public may request a witness to be recognized as an expert during their presentation applicants in organized opposition and their witnesses are subject to cross-examination by the other party ex parte communications the board members receive numerous communications from the public unless otherwise stated it should be presumed that the ex parte communications have been made to the members of the board regarding the matter during the hearing the applicant organized opposition in the public request the board disclosing any ex parte communications or site visits they have had regarding the matter and question the board regarding the communications or site business unless a board member recuses himself they have determined that he or she is able to hear the case and fairly and partially make a decision on the matter based on the substantial competent evidence in the record the quorum just a reminder the commission expects civility at all times the commission's review is limited to determine whether the applicant is consistent the application is consistent with the polk county comprehensive plan and land development code and determine whether the application is compatible with the surrounding area therefore the evidence and testimony you give must be relevant to whether the application is consistent with the polk county comprehensive plan and the land development code and whether the application is compatible with the surrounding area information is irrelevant or repetitive only serves to frustrate and necessarily prolong the business at this time mr chair we have uh two that have qualified as organized opposite opposition One is Mr. Carl Thomas, and under Mr. Carl Thomas, he's representing Jeremy Knowles, Thomas Gill, Deborah Lawson, Robert Quinn, Clint Lawson, and Carolyn Davis. And then we also have Mr. Frankie Miller. At this time, based on having two organized opposition groups, each will have 15 minutes. Thank you. Madam Clerk, I'll be recusing on this matter as I have a business relationship with the applicants. I will be conducting the meeting, and while the law does allow me to participate in discussion, I will not do so. But I will run the meeting in the order to conduct business. So, staff, proceed. Good morning. Good morning, Eric Peterson for the Land Development Division. This case is LPD 2023-12, Creek Ranch Rural Mixed-Use Development De Novo Hearing. On August 22nd, 130 mailers were sent to area property owners. Eleven boards were posted on the property September 1st, 2023, and a legal ad was published in the Lakeland Ledger on September 1st, 2023. So far, we have received 16 emails in opposition, three letters with a total of four signatures in opposition. The request is for 1,876 single-family residences on 1,269 acres with 12.31 acres of retail office professional services and or community facilities. This is in the Agricultural Residential Rural District. The RMD requirements require a minimum set-aside of 50% or more of the development. There are 651.5 acres approximately set aside for conservation as part of this request. Submitted into the record is the staff report, site plan, application, impact assessment, and the RMD criteria. There is also ownership information. The Planning Commission voted 4-3 for approval. This is the location of the site in relation to the nearest cities, the county line, and you see the Poinciana development, which is a large development in unincorporated Polk County. This is a close-up of the site or a context of the site, and you see it in relation to parts of Poinciana. The area has seen a substantial amount of growth in the last three to five years. We will go into more information about that. Other features around the area, the county has a regional park. There's a fire and EMS station. Right now, Lake Deer is a development that's under construction for 567 units. The site of the fire and EMS station will also be a sheriff's regional headquarters in the future. Port Hatchnaha is approximately 279 units currently is a development that began back in the 60s prior to the county having zoning. The wastewater treatment plant and the water treatment plants for this site are to the north. There are schools in the area, Lake Marion Middle. There's elementary schools to the north and to the west. The school board has been looking in this area for a future high school. The land use is ARR. Under ARR, you're, by right, allowed one unit per five acres. There's two processes that you can go through to increase the development density. There's the rural residential development that, with a number of factors and connection to public water, you can reach one unit per acre. The other is this one, the rural mixed-use development, where you can get up to two acres. One of the minimum infrastructure requirements is connection to both water and sewer. Fifty percent of the development has to be set aside for conservation, thereby putting all two units to the acre gross density on half or less of the site. The Poinciana development immediately to the north and to the west began in 1971. It was one of the first planned unit developments approved in Polk County. It was newly after our first zoning ordinance was adopted in November 4th, 1970. There are approximately 28,000 residential units, a few less since the county just purchased a large piece of property along Lake Marion. This spans both Polk and Osceola County. There's also a portion, a large portion of the development in Osceola County. The land uses in there are residential, ranging from single-family mobile home to duplex multifamily and high, residential high multifamily, upwards of 20 units to the acre. There is also commercial office and industrial sites set aside, and there are churches and school sites set aside. One of the things I wanted to point out is immediately to the west of this project, which is now Deer Creek, was supposed to be an office in industrial park. The ownership changed hands. They desired to do residential there, and thus the Lake Deer Estates development, which is under construction right now, changed the land use of the property to RL4 and is developing just around four to four and a half units to the acre. This is the approved development on a close-up view and where the proposed development abuts the property. This is a phase of Point Siena. This is Village 8, Neighborhood 3. These are the uses that are approved on this development. To the west is Lake Deer Estates. They are between 40 and 50-foot wide lots, also five-foot setbacks. Just, we'll get into development standards in a minute. There is an open right-of-way on this portion of the property through the Village 8, Neighborhood 3, that the applicant can actually develop if needed in the future or may develop and connect to the development. That's available. That's why the site plan shows an access to the north. This is an open, unmaintained right-of-way up until this point on Bayberry. This is a layout of the area with some of the features. There is a Dollar General at this intersection. These parcels here are designated for commercial development at the corner, the intersection of Bayberry and Marigold. The applicant's commercial is proposed right here around the intersection of Fire Tower Road and Hatchnaha. This would meet the spacing criteria for commercial nodes of a convenience center, both of these convenience centers. You see the proximity to the park. There is a sidewalk that runs along Hatchnaha Road that would connect this property to the park. The growth that we've been experiencing in this area, we have brought to you in past agenda review and workshops. This section of Poinciana has seen exceptional growth in the last three years. We started seeing it five years ago, but in the last three years, these phases, neighborhood, actually Village 8, neighborhood 2, have fully built out. But prior to 2015, there might have been a half dozen homes at best. The, once again, the sites in comparison, this, over the last eight years, 24% of this area has become developed. That rate of growth is the equivalent of adding the city of Mulberry. The current development that's out there as of 2022 exceeds the population of Lake Wales, just to put all that into perspective. And this is all the phases that are south of the Bend and Marigold at this point. So this is the south half of Polk County's half of the Poinciana PUD, just to put that in perspective. There have been conservation acquisitions in the area to the east of the site and south. These are properties that have collectively been acquired by government agencies for conservation. The applicant's conservation area fits in between these two sites. This is under private ownership currently. This is the site plan. It is a single-family development. Lot sizes are below the, are in the RL4 range. Setbacks are to the RL4 standards. The commercial is connected. In this corner, there will be a main entrance on Hatchinaha and another entrance on Hatchinaha for a total of three to four entrances on Hatchinaha Road. There is a mixture of parks and amenities and trails throughout the development. This development as proposed would meet our new plan development standards that you haven't seen yet that due to Senate Bill 250 are on hold. But they would meet that higher standard of development and exceed it if they were to come in after our proposed ordinances were adopted. This is the commercial area, and it shows how it interacts with the residential to the north. It's a small village. The commercial properties will be towards the front closer to Lake Hatchinaha Road. This will make them more visible from the intersection of Marigold and Hatchinaha, making them a much more functional commercial development, separating the single-family from the commercial activity by the parking lots and landscaping and all the things that would go in between that. So that forms a good buffer between the proposed single-family and the commercial. The standards, as I mentioned before, are to the RL4 standards, 6,000-square-foot lots, minimum 7-foot side setbacks. They're not asking for the five like in Lake Deer Estates. They're coming in with the full seven. The RMD requirements, and I'll go through. This is what the comprehensive plan requires if you're proposing a rural mixed-use development. It has to be at least 160 acres. They will exceed that. It has to be served by public water and wastewater. We have a commitment from Toho to serve this site. It has to front on a collector road. Lake Hatchinaha Road, of course, is a collector road. Reserve 50% or more. Their reservation is approximately 51.3%. They need to provide non-residential development for internal capture. They have accomplished that by the commercial that I just showed you. They need to restrict access. And, you know, typically, yes, we want to limit access. However, with a development this large, it's kind of in the other direction. We would like as many access points as possible with 1,800 units. So the three to four access points on Lake Hatchinaha are perfectly in line with that. And, of course, there's the additional access to the north that could tie into Bayberry if it was necessary in the future. Demonstrate that the commercial or office uses meet the demand. I have to say that has clearly been demonstrated in our analysis as well as the applicant's analysis. This area is greatly in need of commercial. Like I said, it's grown by the city of Mulberry in the last three years. We've got a couple of dollar generals, a 7-Eleven, and an auto zone we approved. I think we'll be under construction. But there's not grocery for 10 miles. The commercial market has not caught up with the residential development that's occurred in this area. So in the future, our planning staff's only concern is that we preserve as much potential commercial sites as possible. The applicant has met us in their request to allocate as much commercial as could be supported based on their population. This area is planned for a lot of improvements to services. Roadways are one of them. In three years, Marigold will be widened to four lanes. We're also looking at the second phase of Marigold up to Palmetto to go to four lanes in the future as well. Hatchinaha is being studied. The Powerline Road extension is in the planning stages, and some of the first phases are coming through. Also in the 10-year plan is to widen Johnson Avenue or Cypress Parkway to four lanes. Cypress Parkway is going to be four-lane in this section between Poinciana Parkway and Marigold within the next three years. We are also looking at improving the traffic flow on Lake Marion. There are some problem areas towards the north end. This will eventually allow for better traffic alternatives in the area. I have some aerial photos of the site. You can see how close the urban development is in this area to the site. Looking to the north here, this is Lake Deer Estates under construction. The wastewater treatment plant and water treatment plants are very close by. This is Lake Deer Estates. It will back right up. It will be, this development will actually be a step down from Lake Deer. Lake Deer is a little more intense than what's being proposed in this development. And then to the west, or the east of this development, is conservation set aside. This is looking south towards Fire Tower Road and Lake Pierce. And this is looking at the amount of conservation set aside between Port Hatchnaha and the development that the applicant is going to be bound to by this approval, if granted. With that, I'll summarize the, it meets the policies of the rural mixed-use development that were laid out in the comprehensive plan. It does provide a step down from the intensities to the north. To the north is approved for duplex and multifamily. To the west is approved for much higher intensity of residential development. It also preserves over a mile corridor, a wildlife corridor, with the designation of the conservation area. And there's a substantial amount of infrastructure and investment in this area, new sheriff's facility, high school roadway improvements to come as just a few of the many improvements to infrastructure to serve growth in this area. And with that, I'll stand for questions. Mr. Cottenberg. Thank you. You just said, Eric, that Lake Deer is more intense. And then in the summary, just then, you restated that it's much more intense than what's proposed here. What is the difference in intensity between this and Deer Lake? Deer Lake has 40-foot wide lots, about a half unit per acre or increase in density. This development, with the larger lot sizes and the greater setbacks, also has more open space. They're meeting a 20% open space plan, whereas Lake Deer did not. So, yes, from, you know, this is going to be more of what Polk County is used to in the past with residential single-family development versus, like, there is the very project you've been telling us that is a little bit too intense in certain areas, the smaller lot widths and the five-foot setbacks. You said groceries 10 miles away. Would that be in Dundee or? There's a Publix and a Walmart on Cypress Parkway at the north end of Marigold. It's about 10 and a half miles. There's a Winn-Dixie on 27. Dundee. In Dundee, yes. But that's over, that's 10 and a half miles and fewer choices, fewer choices at that plaza than there are at the Walmart and the Publix. And there's other things. There's a McDonald's and a hospital. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Wilson. What you're saying is, on this development, I think this is what he was getting at. I mean, this development is going toward what we've been trying to get done for two years. But is your mic on? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Is it on now? Okay. So what, I'm just asking, so what you meant by that, and I think that's what Neil was asking, this development is going, is moving more toward what we've been asking for for two years, trying to get through our land development, but then Bill 250 basically kind of shut us down. Okay. Yes, sir. That is true. Okay. That's Santiago. Could you go back to the map where it showed the whole area? I want to get clarification, and maybe this will come back up later on. What exactly is to the west of that, what is that, who owns that, and what's that going to be? Oh, that is Lake Deer Estates. Is that the one you were just talking about with the houses? Okay. I thought that was going to be towards the back of. That is another phase of Poinciana to the north. It's owned by a development company. We have various phases of the Poinciana Platte coming in for development now. We have one coming in in November. So, you're saying we're going to have development to the north of that, development to the west of that. What is going to be in the area where it says proposed conservation in that little area below that? Oh, this property here? This is under private ownership? Oh, it's not, so we don't know what's going to go there? No, we don't. Okay. That's what I needed to know. Thank you. Mr. Braswell. Can you go back to the slide that showed, I guess I wasn't aware. There's a right-of-way, did you say, or an easement coming out of the north side? Yes. And is that a right-of-way or is that an easement? It's a right-of-way, platted right-of-way public. And with the intent, everything north of this property is part of the DRI, the Poinciana DRI? Yes, sir. Yes. So, it's already programmed. Yeah. And then one more on the entrances on Ahasnahal Road. The slide said four, you said three, but it's going to be three, right? It all depends on the commercial development. Right now, we're seeing two entrances on the commercial development. It may only, depending on who goes there, it may end up being one. It may... And the idea there is multiple entrances because it's large and they won't require signalization, right? That is true, yeah. Signalization, just running preliminary traffic numbers, signalization would be called for at Marigold and Hatchnahal in the early phases of this development, based on all the other development growth that's going on in the area. Any other questions of staff? Invite the applicant to come forward. Good morning, commissioners. For the record, Bart Allen. I'm a land use attorney with the Peterson & Myers Law Firm. My address is 225 East Lemon Street, Lakeland, Florida. I'm here this morning on behalf of the property owner and applicant, Creek Ranch LLC and Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank LLC. Before I get going into my presentation, I'd like just real quickly to introduce a few of my experts, if that's okay with you, Mr. Mink. Time to do it. Thank you. For purposes of today's hearing, I do have three experts who, while may not speak in my case-in-chief, have prepared the applications and the documents supporting these applications and may speak on rebuttal. First, I have Mr. Brian Hunter. He is a professional engineer, civil engineer with Hunter Engineering, Inc. He has prepared the civil site plan as well as address compatibility. I would ask that he be admitted as an expert. I also have Mr. Jay Daval, who is a professional engineer and a senior transportation engineer with the Transportation Planning and Design, Incorporated Company. They prepared the preliminary transportation analysis for the project. He is here. Also, I have Mr. Perry Horner. Perry Horner is with Horner Environmental Professionals, Incorporated. He is an environmental scientist and has prepared the environmental analysis for this project to date. I would request all three of those individuals be admitted as experts. I have copies of their resume for purposes of the record. Motion to second. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Moves, like, sign. Motion carries. If anybody in the organized opposition would like a copy of their resumes, I also have those available. So, with that, I will get going into this presentation. All right. Good morning again. Again, just going over real quickly what I just addressed as it relates to the experts that have been involved in this project. Mr. Hunter at Hunter Engineering, Traffic Planning and Design, Incorporated, Jay Daval, and Perry Horner with me this morning on behalf of the ownership group with Creek Ranch LLC and Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank. I have Mr. Reggie Baxter and Mr. Bob Adams in the audience with me today as well. The property, Mr. Peterson, has given you an excellent overview. So, I'm going to skip through a lot of the technical aspects of what Mr. Peterson went through. But, again, this property is 1,269 acres. It's ARR. It is in the rural development area. And we are asking for an RMD with a gross density of 1.48 dwelling units an acre. And if you only look at the developable footprint outside the conservation, we are at 3.04 dwelling units per acre. This is just an aerial, the subject property. Again, orienting everybody to the site. One of the conversation points that has come up during this process has been the ownership of portions of the property, generally this area here on the east side. There was some assertions that that was owned by the state of Florida. What I have for you here is we submitted a letter from Tula Half. Tula is the lawyer transactional attorney for the applicant and the property owners. The title is vested. The fee simple title of this area in red is vested in the ownership of Creek Ranch Mitigation LLC. It was conveyed by quick claim deed from the trustees of the Paternal Improvement Trust Fund. And I just have a cover sheet from that quick claim deed here. Back in the 90s, that ownership was conveyed to the predecessor and interest, the exposition company. That is unique. It's not something we often see in real estate development, but that has been done. Therefore, there is no sovereign land within this red boundary. The sovereign land starts on the other side. There is a dike, and there's actually a diesel pump that's been permitted since the mid-70s to allow for drainage on the site. So anything lakeward of this red line is sovereign land. Anything landward of this red line is owned by Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank or Creek Ranch LLC. This application was submitted just going through for purposes of documenting compliance with Chapter 9 of the Land Development Code. It was submitted in May of this year. It went through a DRC meeting in the same month. There was a staff recommendation in July of this year with findings of fact and conclusions of law. And we have moved through the process. There was a planning commission hearing on August 2nd with a recommendation of approval 4 to 3, as Mr. Peterson has indicated. A little bit of history. Outside of the ownership and the uniqueness of the permitting of the original agricultural operation on the site, prior to 1991, the county operated under the old zoning ordinances that was originally adopted in the early 70s, amended in 1983, this property was designated at that time, rural conservation. Rural conservation allowed one dwelling unit per acre by right on the property at that time. It was not until 1991 when the Growth Management Act and the Growth Management Statutes of the State of Florida came through with a comprehensive plan where we became designated ARR. And that turned the base allowed density from one dwelling unit per acre to one per five. This is the old zoning map from 1983, again, showing the entire site as rural conservation. So at that time, under those rules, we could have had nearly 1,300 homes on this piece of property without any public hearing. So moving into the comprehensive plan, going from one dwelling unit per acre on all the agricultural land to one dwelling unit per five acres is a substantial reduction in value, effectively. So there was a negotiated agreement with the Department of Community Affairs that was incorporated into this comprehensive plan, and that's that two-tiered system that Mr. Peterson talked about. That was the RRD, which does not apply to this site because it's 160 acres or less, or the RMD, which we are operating in. That was included in the initial comprehensive plan of this county. It was supported, and I have, just to read quickly, out of sub-appendix BE, support documentation for the agricultural rural land use that was submitted to DCA at the time, the Department of Community Affairs. And it states, the ARR land use category provides a tiered density to rural development, recognizing the primacy of agricultural activities in this county. The mechanisms used to control density and location of development in the ARR are consistent with the DCA technical memos of March 1990 and July 1990, which are attached. And I have copies of all this for purposes of the record. Significant, I just don't want to read that. The development plan, the RRD allows or provides a base density of one dwelling unit per five, in addition to types of rural clusters are permitted. The RRD, which allowed one to 2.5, one dwelling unit per 2.5 gross acres. The second type is the RMD, which permits gross densities of up to two dwelling units an acre, because they are, and they're designed to be more self-sufficient. They also provide 50% land reservation. RMDs must be a minimum of 160 acres to provide enough density to support neighborhood commercial development within the RMD and provide potable water and public sanitary sewer. These policies, these programs were put in place to protect the land values of the agricultural community, but also encourage the protection of agricultural and environmentally sensitive areas of the land, which is exactly what this project has done. Since 1991, this county has put forth the R&D as the way to protect agriculture, to protect environmentally sensitive lands, yet at the same time provide for the development in the appropriate locations where public services and utilities are available. So this has been something that has been inherent in this property for 22 years at this point. It is an important property right, and being able to go through this process and pursue these entitlements is a fundamental property right that flows with this property. This is the existing future land use map. Again, Mr. Peterson touched on all these again. Showing ARR. I'm going to walk through just a few of the policies. This is Section 2.101 out of your comprehensive plan. Again, showing that one dwelling unit per 5 acres is the base residential density, but also showing that it provides for the provision of the continued viability of agriculture and appropriate quantities and distribution of residential development within the RDAs. When there's support services, you require mandatory clustering, and then this is accomplished through the permitted uses of RRD and RMD. Permitted uses is a key term that is not often used in our comprehensive plan. Again, showing compliance with the comprehensive plan. Again, the RMD allows, according to Section 2.121C, from one dwelling unit per acre to two dwelling units per acre. We are at 1.48. This is on the gross density. I'm doing it that way because that is by the comprehensive plan, by the standards, by the regulations that we have to abide by. Further, when you look at how you calculate density, you look on the entire site, including the reservation area. This is specifically out of your comprehensive plan. RMDs, the densities shall not be affected by wetlands. That's a uniqueness, again, related to R&Ds and these types of projects, different than the way we treat many other projects in this county. So, again, we don't count the wetlands. We do count the wetlands as part of the gross density for calculating it. We don't exclude it like we do in others. Mr. Peterson went through, these are the eight criteria listed in your comprehensive plan, again, out of Section 2.101, related to what is required in order to establish the permitted use of RMD. And I'm not going to go through all those again. One of the most critical aspects of this is the binding site plan. The binding site plan is evaluated and must first include the reservation of sensitive lands, wetlands, scrub, things of that nature. That's exactly, again, exactly what's been done here. We look at the overall site plan. We have moved the development away from the protected areas, away from the environmentally sensitive areas where we can establish that wildlife corridor that Mr. Peterson referenced, locate the residential development adjacent to more intense residential development on our west, more intense residential development to our north, and then have conservation on the south side of Lake Hashtenahal Road, conservation to our east, and then conservation further north. So this all makes sense. This is exactly what the RMD says. This is exactly what the policies that have been in place since 1991 want us to accomplish. Specifics in the binding site plan relate to them designing this to meet the RL4 standard with no variances, no requests for variations from side yard setbacks. We are, in fact, meeting the PD requirements, all of the PD requirements within your land development code, as well as all of the prospective PD requirements within the future amendments. We have provided over six miles of walking trails, clubhouses, pavilions, totlots, dog parks, all kinds of amenities for the residents within this project. In addition, 12 acres of commercial along the frontage, which, as Mr. Peterson indicated, is sorely needed in this area. This is just an exhibit very similar to what Mr. Peterson indicated showed. Talking about the set-aside, that's another key aspect of the R&D policies. This exhibit demonstrates that the overall site is 1,269 acres. To the east, there is a preservation of 586 acres that is completely excluded from the site. Within the development, there's an additional 65 acres of preservation of wetlands and open space that's being provided, and, again, showing that when you look at the site as a whole, we're preserving 51.3%. That is 650 acres of wetlands and conservation and open space that is being preserved and will not be touched. And for the overall benefit of the picture, you know, as we look at this on a grander scale, I want to point out that there's a 47-acre parcel that is not included within the R&D. It's not a part of this request, but it is owned by Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank, LLC, and is set aside to help us continue to establish the wildlife corridor as you move further north. And this shows exactly what we're talking about here. This is an exhibit that I pulled off of the – let me make sure I get the Florida Nature Area's website – Nature Area Inventory Map. This is their GIS data. What this shows, this shows all of the areas surrounding this piece of property that are set aside for conservation. The tan is federal. Blue is private. Mitigation banks and conservation easements, state-owned land. The green is a state-owned land. And what you see here is that by setting aside this 586 acres on the east side is that it is facilitating a 1.25-mile-wide corridor to allow wildlife to move north and south through this area. And when you – and that makes sense, right? Because when you look at where we have our development footprint, this whole purple is all proposed, either active development, proposed development, or coming-soon development. As you heard, Mr. Peterson, there's even a new plat coming in in November. That was news to me. So this is the wildlife corridor. The wildlife corridor is not going to move through the existing residential development pattern of Point Siena. Transportation, not necessarily a level three issue, a planning commission requirement. However, we did have Mr. Daval and TPD do a preliminary transportation analysis. This was completed in February of this year. Just a couple highlights of this. We anticipate four-laning Lake Hatchenahaw from Marigold to the primary project entrance. You do have type 3, type 4 intersections that will be required along this road. So you will have turn lanes. You will not have – likely have a right turn into the site on the east side because there's just not that much traffic coming from the east. It's a dead-end road at the end of Port Hatch. But you will have type 3 and type 4 intersections at the primary access points. This Marigold does require some sort of signalization or other type of control at some point in the future. We've heard stoplights is a possibility. We will not know exactly what that looks like or the timing of that until the final traffic study is completed, which would come in at level 2. But it's also possible that that could be considered a roundabout that would slow traffic down. So there's a multitude of options that could occur at Marigold and Lake Hatchenahaw. Again, those details get sorted out at level 2. School concurrency. And in 22, we did have a non-binding letter of school concurrency indicating that there is capacity for this project. At that time, we were actually substantially higher in intensity. We were well over 2,000 units, including multifamily and single-family. However, we're substantially less than that now. We will have to go through the school capacity and concurrency issues at a later date. Other level 2 issues, and again, I have truncated a lot of information given my time constraints. Potable water, sanitary sewer, and reclaimed service will come from Toho Water Authority. They have approved the preliminary master utility plan for this project in July of this year. Earlier this morning, we received a letter indicating that Toho has the ability and intends to serve this project. So we do have an intend-to-serve letter from the Toho Water Authority dated this morning. Stormwater and drainage. Mr. Hunter can give you all the details you want about stormwater and drainage. We will have to go through the ERP process through the South Florida Water Management District. We have done a tremendous amount of geotechnical analysis on this site already. The soils are primarily sandy soils based on the results of that geotechnical analysis. We have done preliminary review of the environmental, the species and protected species types analysis. There were some gopher tortoises identified on the site. Outside of that, there's no bald eagle on the property. There are other issues that you will have to go through at Level 2. I will note that in one of the de novo applications that was filed, there was an assertion that there were sand skinks that were relocated from another part of the county onto this particular site. We have verified with the fish and wildlife that no sand skinks have ever been relocated onto this particular piece of property, nor have any gopher tortoises been relocated to this particular piece of property as part of a gopher tortoise relocation program. And we have email confirmation of that from fish and wildlife for purposes of the record. Moving into Level 2, we will finalize our traffic study. We will also obtain a binding letter of concurrency. And if you can't get those documents, we can't move forward, right? I mean, that's the important part that we think we need to keep considering is if we can't get a school concurrency capacity letter, we're limited in our development. It doesn't matter what our RMD might say. I don't anticipate that being an issue, but for purposes of controlling growth, there are plenty of mechanisms in place. Compatibility and density, always a topic of discussion, again, from a macro scale. To the north, you have 6.3 dwelling units an acre immediately on the north side of this property. Immediately to the west, they're at 3.4 dwelling units an acre, and as you heard, 40-foot lots. We are proposing 55-foot lots, and we are at, on the gross, 1.48 dwelling units an acre. That's the entire 1,300 acres. But within the footprint of the development, within this purple boundary, we are 3.04 dwelling units per acre. Moving into micro scale compatibility, the south boundary, again, most of the residential units are pulled off Lake Cashin Hall Road. That's going to allow the opportunity to leave the natural vegetation in place, so the feel of Lake Cashin Hall Road won't change as much visually. The closest residential lot off of that is 100 feet, so that's a tremendous amount of natural vegetation that can remain in place. The best comparison I have of that that we all see on a regular basis is the areas along 540A where Allen Preserve is, where they have maintained the existing natural vegetation, with the exception of that one point where it looks like a contractor may have gotten a little aggressive on the east-west side. But the natural buffer maintains the screening of all those homes from 540A. And again, on the east side, 250 feet of separation. You can see the stormwater ponds and natural vegetation. That will remain on the east side, providing compatibility and buffering from the adjacent property owner. So, in summary, again, going back to what are we looking at, what are the standards that we are required to meet, these are the very specific standards located in Section 2.121 of your Polk County Comprehensive Plan, as well as Chapter 303 of your Land Development Code. And we meet or exceed every single one of those. We're over 160 acres. We have all the utilities available with the intent to serve. We have access to a collector road. We know we will be making some improvements to that, but we will evaluate that at level two. We have a binding site plan. We are exceeding the 50% set aside. We have the commercial activity for internal capture, as Mr. Peterson pointed out. And we have limited the access points and meet the market demand requirements. So, within this staff report, there are five cited individual conference of plan policies, which is referencing the timing and the location and compatibility and the distribution of this project. And we meet all of those criteria. And that is your expert, that is your senior staff planner, drawing these conclusions. Our team drew similar conclusions. We have 19 individual criteria in Chapter 303 of the Land Development Code that we meet that are cited in your staff report. And then the four individual factors for consideration by the Planning Commission. Again, it was a Level 3 review on DeNovo, so really substitute Planning Commission for this board now. And I'll go through those in just a second. On top of all those policies, we also meet your future plan development standards. And I think it's also noteworthy that there's not one criteria in your staff report that is cited that we don't meet. There's not one negative on there. So, I think it's extremely important that we evaluate the evidence and the expert report prepared by your staff and by our team. And then looking at the kind of the final, the compatibility, this is straight out of your staff report. The project is compatible with the surrounding development on a micro and macro level. That's on page nine of the staff report. So, there is findings of compatibility and consistency with your comprehensive plan. And with that, we will stand for any questions that this board may have. And I note I've got seven minutes and 15 extra seconds that I would like to retain for rebuttal. So, I apologize for moving through that so fastly. Any questions of Mr. Allen at this time? Okay. Yeah, let me ask one. And maybe I was just looking at it wrong, but about the school concurrency. Go back to, whoop, right there. Currently, okay, I was reading it right. I don't know if it was typo or I just wasn't paying attention. Currently, there is insufficient capacity at the zoned elementary, middle, and high school. However, we're going to get around the bill. Is that what it says? Yeah. It says we have available capacity. And if we were asking for a binding letter, we would have that at that time. Wait a minute. Help me. It says it's insufficient, but you're saying that they're saying it is sufficient? It is sufficient. We meet concurrency at that time. Is that just written wrong then? It says currently there is insufficient capacity. Currently, there is insufficient capacity at the zoned elementary, middle, and high schools. However, between the available capacity at the zoned, there is available capacity at the zone. It's just not enough. And then you can look at adjacent schools. By law, we get to look at the adjacent school districts. And between those two, there is available capacity within the elementary, middle, and high schools. Hence, we do have concurrency at that time. And that was for 500 more units. Well, if somebody's going to ride a bus, how does that work? Do different buses have to go to different schools with different students? I do not operate the school board. You didn't ask them? But they're... I mean, seriously, though, it seemed like it's important to... Yes. Yes, you're right. It is important. And the concurrency ordinance in partnership with the school board will be binding at that time on you. We will meet all of them. You will have to meet those criteria or you don't go forward. That's exactly right. Well, that's kind of not my question, though. My question is, if you were going to solve this problem with schools and other parts of the county, how would that actually, in actual practice, what would kids do? Again, I am not here on behalf of the school board. I do not represent the school board. I will not speculate on how they don't operate. But I will say that at the time we come forward with development, we will have to meet concurrency. We will pay impact fees. And those issues are addressed at the school board level. If the school board doesn't have the capacity, the project cannot go forward. That's correct. But they're saying they have the capacity if you put them in a car or on a bus or a truck and you go there. I'm really not seeing this before. This is kind of new to me, and I think I heard it mentioned one time before, but it's just not something that I have run into or had to think much about. But anyway, maybe is anybody here from the school board? Anybody know? No. Mr. Chair? Yes, ma'am. Usually what happens, because I worked for the school board, is the buses are rerouted to accommodate neighborhoods that are going to be using the schools. So, for example, I'm thinking of a school in the vicinity in the area, Dundee Elementary. So, if Dundee Elementary has capacity, then they can use those students in that area can go to Dundee Elementary, and the buses will bus them to Dundee Elementary. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Brownsville, anybody else? Okay. Would those who have filed the de novo, identify them and give them their opportunity? Right. The first one is Mr. Carl Thomas, who is representing himself, Jeremy Knowles, Thomas Gill, Diverd Lawson, Robert Quinn, Glenn Lawson, and Carolyn Davis. And he will have 15 minutes, and then we have Mr. Frankie Miller will have his 15 minutes. These three gentlemen, and who else? There's five of us. Five of you? Okay. Yes. And what we'd like to ask is, can we just do this concurrently, because we all have something to say. So, if Mr. Miller agrees to give his 15 minutes, or y'all combine your 15 minutes, then y'all get 30 minutes altogether. Is that what you're asking, Mr. Miller? All right. For the record, Mr. Miller agrees to it. Thank you. Y'all have 30 minutes. And the folks are standing in the back. Were you part of this group? Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Okay. So, the four amigos and the lady are going to be the presenters under this first application, Mr. Mink? Yes. I understand. So, they'll have a combined 30 minutes. Correct. Okay. Yes. I'm going to introduce everybody so you know, and then you can get the time, I guess. Yes, sir. Good morning, or good afternoon. That's still morning, isn't it? We are the organized opposition. I want to introduce everybody. Carl Thomas, Jeremy Knowles, Mark Quinn, Carolyn Davis, Glenn Lawhorn, and Deborah Lawson and Thomas Gill. So, my name was incorrect on the thing, but they're not going to be speaking in this. Let me introduce the constituency that came with us today. If everybody here in opposition for this will stand up, please. I'll give you a little idea. Let me start by bringing, it was a PD that I sent to y'all. We sent it to you in the, in email form. PD 0603 came up way back in December of 06. And it was a piece of property that was directly across the street from this, and it was Lakes of Lake Hatchinahaw, and they tried to go in and develop it. Tommy Addison, myself, and several others de novoed that process and beat that development. A lot of that same stuff is compiled on this development, what these people are proposing. So, one of the things that we gained from that was the Department of Community Affairs wrote a letter to the county that said, Poinciana was the worst land use operation ever in the history of the United States, or one of the worst. So, it was a pre-DRI. So, when you take all that and read that staff report that I sent you, hopefully you got to read some of it, or Wales has sent you a video. It doesn't allow for Poinciana to come outside its boundaries. And it also does not allow for Poinciana to be used in consideration for capacities or intensities and densities beyond its boundaries. And that was found in PD 0603. So, the map of the proposed development, can you get that up there, Jeremy? Sorry. We don't get so much time, but there you go. Okay. All right. I'll just stop. Okay. The map of the proposed development, when you look at this, if you can see that cursor, here's the proposed site, and then this is the Poinciana pre-DRI property. This is all wetlands now. This area that they showed on their map right here that is slated for development, there's no way you're going to develop there. It's in the 100-year floodplain, and it's mostly underwater 99% of the time. So, that's just going to be properties that they're going to transfer over into more densities for inside of Poinciana. That's how they operate. That's why it's a really bad project. That whole Poinciana thing was terrible. So, Poinciana doesn't come outside of its boundaries. So, when you look at all these properties here, this is all ARR property, all around this property. So, in my eyes, and I think in the eyes of what y'all should be looking at, is this does not exist when it comes to compatibility. This project is not compatible with that area at all. Poinciana was meant to be stopped by the DCA. I know we don't have a DCA anymore, but they said stop Poinciana at its boundary. And that's about all I've got to tell you until rebuttal. Let me get back to the beginning. Yeah. Good afternoon. My name, good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Jeremy Knowles. I am here in opposition of the Creek Ranch Development. I will be speaking on the issues that are incompatible with this project. The factors include incompatibility with surrounding lands, density, inefficient utility services, and lack of urban services. First thing I want to touch on is Florida Statute 163.3164, Section 51, about urban sprawl. It means a development pattern characterized by automobile-dependent development requiring the extension of public facilities and services in an inefficient manner and failing to provide a clear separation between urban and rural uses. Some of the automobile-dependent issues this project has is the closest transit stop is seven and a half miles away. So closest school, 3.6, farthest to 11. So no walkability to schools. Near cities that provide employment opportunities are 10 to 30 miles away. On page 17 of the applicant, the app of the staff report, applicant states, census data shows that Poitiana residents travel greater distances to work than county, state, and national averages. It also says the same for average persons per household. These are indications that single-family units may be producing higher traffic volumes than the ones predicted in Table 5, which is 17,000 average annual daily trips and 2,100 during peak hour. And then another issue is the inefficiency of the wastewater capacity issues. Using this map in the staff report, if you take all of the, if you add the total number of undeveloped lots in Poitiana plus Lake Deer states and a proposed creek ranch lots, then multiply by 270, which is the gallons per day of wastewater produced per home, you will be at 673,000 gallons per day overcapacity at build-out. This one, the main point I want to point out is in the policy 2.102-81. It states, to prevent development patterns where tracts of land are bypassed in favor of development more distant from services and existing communities. Then this one here, I just wanted to point out the actual lot density. The actual lot density is actually 6.89 lots per acre when you calculate the square footage. Then here, I'm going to talk about compatibility of surrounding lands. Six of the eight sides are federal and state conservation land, ag-improved pasture, and undeveloped parts of Poitiana that are primarily in the 100-year flood zone A. Of those six sides, the highest density is one house per 80 acres. How are 6.89 houses per acre compatible? And to go with that, in policy 2.125H on section A, it says, Appropriate mixes of housing type shall be permitted where such mixes will be compatible with immediate adjacent existing residential development. So the point is, there's six of eight sides that it's not compatible with. Then, they keep, they're referring, the applicant's referring to the land to the north and northwest of the project. The land to the north side of Creek Ranch is deemed buildable by the applicant, but has also been on the list of the Florida Forever Bought project since 2002. In addition, the land, the land to the northwest and north are consumed in the 100-year flood zone. With these two factors, there is a high probability this land will not be developed. And then, one more thing here. This is Lake Deer Estates, which is an engineered stormwater pond breached its banks due to an engineering failure, causing water to leave the site down Marigold, eventually to Lake Marion. This occurred at the Hurricane Inn, but more importantly, the location of this stormwater pond is located at the highest elevation of the area, approximately 95 feet. And this is a quick video to show the, where it breached its banks and flowed over. This is Marigold Avenue, which goes under the road and goes to Lake Marion. So anyways, I just wanted to show that real quick of a failure on an engineered stormwater pond already on a development that doesn't, it didn't even have a house on it at the time. Um, then I also want to read this, that this development would be incompatible with the surrounding land uses and infrastructure, both on a micro and macro level. The land proposed for development is environmentally sensitive, old forest style ranch on a micro level. It is surrounded by six of eight sides by ag rural land, undeveloped land that lies in a flood zone and conservation land. Other characteristics that make it not compatible are the density of homes, intensity of the development, increased traffic and appearance. On a macro level, it is essentially the missing block in connecting crucial conservation lands from north to south. State and federal agencies have been working for decades to link large parcels of land in and around the Kissimmee River Basin. This area has been identified as the headwaters of the Everglades in combination with the Florida Wildlife Corridor. This property is crucial for recharging the groundwater, protecting surface water from pollutants, and most importantly, storing water in the aid of the restoration of the Everglades. As for the Florida Wildlife Corridor, if this development passes, it will narrow the southern boundary to just three-tenths of a mile, all but choking the corridor and destroying the efforts of so many within the state. Hi, my name is Carl Thomas with Carl Thomas Grading. I am a site developer in central Florida. I'm going to go over what I see out in the field with the Toho Water Authority, that they're saying that this project is compatible with it. The Toho Water Authority took over water and wastewater utilities in 2007. I've got to get my glasses. The Polk County Planning Administrator told the Planning Commission that Toho Water Authority had only minor pipe issues due to older lines. The fact is that the lines do not exist. 44 roads in Polk County area and Point Siena have no underground water or wastewater. 11 home builders were affected by giving building permits to build on these roads. 59 homes are in various stages of completion on these roads with no utilities. Most are 90% completed, waiting for underground utilities. You need to put pictures up. The median home price in Point Siena is $312,000. This equates to $18,408,000 in inventory that builders are paying on. Every year, they have to pay to extend this building permit, waiting on utilities. The Polk County staff report, page 13, admitted that the area where Legacy Creek Ranch project was to be built already has 60% full capacity in 2020. It did not add the 567 homes for the Deer Lake Estates subdivision. This takes up 10% more of that capacity, putting the capacity at 70%. It has been three years and more houses have been built, bringing those percentages of capacity usage up. Toho Water Authority either doesn't have updated data or they will not give it to the general public. So, by the staff report numbers, when all the actual building of the villages of Point Siena is complete, Toho will be beyond their 100% capacity by 10%. If Creek Legacy is put on the system, Toho's capacity will be at 139%. The staff report, page 13, states that there are three water treatment facilities. They are all on the same property. It states that Toho has the capability to expand their systems there. After talking with the workers at the port of Hatch and Hall Spill, September 12th of this year, they told me that there is no more room for capacity at that property than what has already been calculated for Point Siena. They absolutely told me that the Creek Legacy project would overwhelm their system. Toho only gave the Creek Legacy development a preliminary agreement to bring them online as of today. Whatever he said earlier, I don't have. They have a desire to increase capacity, but they have no engineered plans and no property bought to put another plan on. When asked what they have in process to mitigate the overcapacity that will happen if Creek Legacy passes, Toho said that they will address that when the time comes. Toho Water Authority hasn't addressed the issues on Pacific Road. Next one. On Pacific Road, for the past 16 months, there have been two temporary pumps pumping sewage over land for two city blocks into two open manholes. The picture is right there. Polk County, in the last couple of months, has started to recognize that there's a problem with Toho Water Authority. Polk County has been issuing septic and well permits. It sounds like a good fix. However, now there is an added expense to the homebuyer that the homeowners that are already there won't incur with Toho Service. Not only do they have to pay for the septic, it's also an ATU system. It's a drip system. It requires a one-year maintenance program. Toho Water Authority's answer to getting services to homebuilders is the kayak program. The chart. Oh, you got the chart. Got it. It is an infrastructure reimbursement program. Basically, the builder puts in the underground utilities, and Toho gives the builder a break monetarily to connecting to the service. Instead of charging the builder $18,000 to connect, they pay $4,000. But the builder must incur the entire amount for the project on roads with lots that they may or may not own. Toho said that they would reimburse the builder only when each lot was built upon. In other words, if a lot wasn't built on, Toho gives the builders nothing. The kayak program also is a slow process, and many builders have gotten fed up with Toho not giving certifications for work months after completion. Builders then end up losing prospective homebuyers. To summarize, Toho Water Authority will not and has proven that they cannot supply and is not compatible for 1,876 homes in the southern portion of Pound Siena. The Polk County staff report misled the Planning Commission. Toho Water Authority needs to update and literally fix the problems in this area before giving any preliminary agreements to developers with this much impact on their system. If this project passes, Toho Water Authority will be at 100% capacity without regard to the 44 other roads with no service yet. Many of the 11 builders that will be affected by this development have been contacted by my office. With $18 million in inventory sitting and waiting for water service, those builders would most likely have legal action they could bring to Polk County and Toho Water Authority. Let's say the taxpayers undo litigation. Don't let this development be a catalyst to an already toxic situation with Toho Water Authority. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Carolyn Davis, and I'm going to address some of the traffic concerns that I have. Lake Hatchton Hall is a 10-mile road, two lanes, mostly double or single yellow lined. There is only two left-hand turning lanes on the road, and that's at Lake Pound Siena. There are 90 private driveways on that road. This area that you see, go ahead, this area right here is just before you get to Lake H.L. Smith Road. It is double-laned all the way to the next top of the hill. If a school is built on this area, this will be a racetrack for teenage drivers. Now, hardly any driver pays attention to the double yellow lines. Let's get that right over the next. This is one incident that happened at Sand Hill Elementary School, trying to get people around. There is no left-hand turning lane there, and this will happen more often if we have more traffic on this road. That's a sheriff's car they are trying to get around to either an accident or some emergency. The developer shows improvements in four-lanning. According to the FDOT, Polk County Five-Year Plan and Future Plans for Amy Gregory, Traffic Manager, and Ryan Kordak, Transportation Planning Administrator, says there is no plans for improvements or four-lanning on that road. According to the FDOT crash report, there was 46 reported crashes in 2022. There have been 22 from January of this year to June of this year accidents on that road. There are two future developments plus a 232 apartment complex with a total of approximately 909 dwellings. This does not include Creek Ranch, Cardwell Ridge Flume, or a middle or high school. All of these added will be added traffic problems. The developer chart shows 17,153 AADT. This is nearly 10,000 more cars than the traffic count of 2021, which was 7,300. The developer proposes, says that the commercial area will not add extra traffic. How can it not add extra traffic if you've got commercial area? In the staff report, the infrastructure weakness is addressed eight different paragraphs. I realize the developer will have answers for all these concerns, but sometimes what looks good on paper does not work in real life. Yeah, there you go. Thank you. My name is Lamar Quinn. I'm the senior motion resident of Lake Hatchenaw State for 60 years and a lot of change. I rise to give voice to the wildlife and the ecosystems, save our wildlife corridor, dangerous species, the panther, black bear, gopher, sands kinks, scrub jays of flight, insects like the Florida blue bee, and fish species yet to be named regarding contamination of water. We are pro-growth, just not at the expense of an ecosystem. Protecting Florida's natural resources forever, supported as high-level Governor DeSantis just two years ago, right here on this very property, signs Wildlife Corridor Act with $300 million additional funding. Awesome. Our job, taskable as it is, managing the harmony of growth between development needs and wildlife protecting forever. This from the Wildlife Corridor Foundation or Critical Connection Points, H, here on this slide, is us. This is who we're speaking about today. A micro-snap of that particular area by Mr. Carl Ward, Jr., world-renowned National Geographic. He plotted the corridor. And the area here to the right notes Creek Ranch. Whoop, my bad. Right here, Creek Ranch, stepping on the wildlife corridor. Preserving Wildlife Corridor is an omens task and credits to many bodies, citizenry as well. The Disney properties, Lake Marion, Reedy Creek, Huckleberry, Catfish, Hatchin' Hall, mitigation banks twice. Everglades Headwaters right across the street from this. And Lake Marion, thank you, board. The 600 acres just purchased. Outstanding. Three Lakes Wildlife. Tiger Creek, again, 5,000 acres. Wow. Everybody give a hoot. Archibald Easements and I believe the board from Dr. Daskin received a letter from him on this project in our favor. This body, this commission on the corridor, Polk County, largest county, we have the largest responsibility in protecting that corridor. Sure, do counties north and counties south, absolutely. But we bear the large burden. A lot of talk about this corridor and enough. The average, this area here, is protected. The average is three miles. Hatchin' Hall Conservation Easements to the north. Kissimmee Lake Chains, you've heard these comments. Catfish Creek Preserve. Hatchin' Hall Mitigation Bank. Tiger Creek. Lake Marion just mentioned. But this area, in proposal, will literally shut down our corridor. And I'll speak to specifics of how the presenter is petitioning. But who's going to direct that wildlife to this small 300-some-odd feet that might be left to navigate over here? Creek Ranch property is not compatible for development. In the wildlife position, it would literally close the corridor. You've seen this slide presented and used a couple of times already. On the north, you've heard 6,000 feet of wildlife corridor. But let's be clear. The 100-year floodplain is roughly this line. That's where your tall timbers are. This is underwater. This is not accessible for our wildlife to navigate to and from. So this 6,000 feet is again compromised by 1,000 feet on its west border, which will be challenged from the domestic animals. Cats will devastate the scrub jay. Scrub jays nest in the lower branches of the scrub. Won't exist. They'll be gone. And looking to the south of this property, here is three-tenths of a mile, 1,584 feet, to navigate. Let's send all of our wildlife to this one small corridor, about as wide, to walk across this compound here in Bartow today. We expect the hundreds of thousands of years of wildlife to find its way. Respectfully, we don't think it's enough. The average, again, is three miles. Here's the western half of the proposal. Police noted in the report, 15%, 100 acres of the 650 acres is wetlands. Now, granted, there are 10 retention ponds planned to counter that. Got it. But please note, right here in the southwest quarter, three days ago, with a light rain, three inches, Deer Lake current retention pond had crested. And we are 15 inches today below normal rainfall. Wow. Here on the 650 acres, again, previously noted, the other's been diligence in sand studies, et cetera. But the groundwater level in what is determined as buildable is eight inches below the surface. Wow. In order to try to put perspective to this ridge, and again, this body has done a lot of good work to this, The ridge and its ecosystem, because of its elevation, unlike any other place in the state of Florida, provides the harmony of the three principal ecosystems, the wetlands, the cypress hammocks, the mighty oak hammocks, the pines, the tall pines, and, of course, the scrubs. They come in harmony together nowhere else in the state of Florida because of this elevation change. This chart, which shows an elevation at Marigold, 134 feet, 132 feet, my apologies. The proposal is approximately here, two here. But let's, the topo map doesn't show that, but the property is sloped drastically. Water flow is going in one direction, and you will not stop it without severe, as noted in the report, retention ponds. With probably berms that will require extreme elevations if you're going to retain that water, as designed, on this property. Noting this little flat spot right here is actually the grade of State Road 542, the highway. And in that grade, because that particular part of the roadway goes across that 100-year floodplain, it was raised almost six feet, the roadbed was raised almost six feet to prevent it from flooding, safe travel for the citizens. As a 60-year resident there, I have seen that road breach its crest during flooding multiple times. Here's a photo of just last year at Hurricane Ian. This is the gate to the entrance of this proposed property. There's about two feet of water flowing there. There's been also some very good data. Mr. Peterson, congratulations. Thank you. There's 17 municipalities, 24 unincorporated areas right off the Polk County website, to the point that Poinciana has been extreme in impacting the eastern part of Polk County. All you folks are completely aware. In 2000, last data, 1374 population. About 5,000. It's noted this number's a little hard to find. So if you just extrapolate that percentage, that means there's something upward of 20,000 people in that area today, if you're using the 778,000 estimated population for just last year. Extreme growth, we've already heard that. That's 17, 18 percent. Wow. Full stop. Let's assess what the impact of this corporation development might be. Again, those are just those numbers off of the comprehensive plan currently on file. You saw this forever cost chart noted earlier. A little explanation of the city where revenues are very different. Green is income. Red is expense. Those balance rather well. But as you get to the rural America, the rural Polk County, you see the expenses, the forever cost, highway maintenance, utilities, et cetera, the cost far out exceed the revenues as you get into these type of developments. Unintended consequences. I'll give you two more minutes to wrap up. Excellent. That's perfect. Thank you very much, Chair. Unintended consequences. Poinciana has noted 60 percent of capacity failing, and we have to react to that today. Decisions made two decades ago, none with malice, but we have to deal with those today. Water management challenges, not compatible for growth, sewage overflow, construction issues, Toho Water Authority, disruption of Everglade headwaters, and the current ecosystem that forever costs. The Lake Marion purchase was partly due to a solution of retention pond and water flow in the Poinciana area. Whatever that number actually was, those are unintended consequences. Full stop. Let's reassess what is before us today. Florida Forever Wildlife Corridor averages three miles wide, protecting land wildlife from north, Orlando, extending south well beyond Lake Placid. Our thanks to the collective energy of engaged citizens and many elected officials, certainly including this board. Our greatest progress has been in the last decade, preserving the corridor, including the help of Governor Rogers DeSantis, as mentioned. Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, again, hooray. Florida, these 1,269 acres, known as Creek Ranch, if approved, would generate unintended consequences, decimating numerous species of wildlife currently protected by this corridor. This body seeks your support of an O vote on this development proposal. It is not compatible. Thank you very much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to break here, but I'm not sure at what point. Do we have one more de novo applicant, and what is the time allowed for that? No, sir, they combined it so you can all vote into the public comment. Okay, so we're all blended. Yes, sir. So the remaining, then, is the applicant's response and the general public's comments. We're going to break now in 20 minutes. 20 minutes. That puts us back here at 1 o'clock, okay? And we'll go into public comment section. Yes. So we are in recess until 1 o'clock. All right, it's 1 o'clock. We'll come back to session. I think, Mr. Allen, you wanted your rebuttal after all public comment. All right, I'm going to go through the cards that I have and probably close to the order that we received them. I'll call two or three names. If you'll come forward, give your name and address, of course, for the record. Keep your comments to three minutes. It would be helpful to avoid repetition. As I call one name, the next one gets in line in the staging area. We can move through a little quicker. And most of the penmanship is better than mine, but a few are not. I think it's Ms. Vicki Jarrell, 34 Bay Street. Yes, ma'am. And then behind her, Annie Wood. And behind Ms. Wood is Kim Holly Ashburn. So if you ladies would stage, and then we'll keep it going. Yes, ma'am. My name's Vicki Jarrell, 34 Bass Street, Haines City, Florida. And I just want to talk about the school, the Sand Hill Elementary. I have pictures here. I don't know if y'all want to see them, but it's twice a day. I mean, cars, it's just chaos, and there's wrecks, and I do have pictures. You want to leave them with us? Okay, this is of the school, and the residents around there, they can't even get in and out. And it's police officers can't even go by. And the road, if there's a wreck out there, the road just gets totally blocked. They won't even let people go around. And the thing about this, I've been going out to Hatchnall since. It's just emotional for me because I grew up out there. And I can't help it, but I wish I could have bought that land. I looked at it, but I couldn't afford to get it. And I wouldn't have bought that pick one up for sale because it's just heartbreaking to know that's the end of the line. And that's the end of everything. And like that gentleman was saying, well, there's no grocery stores out there. We didn't move out there because we're glad there's not a grocery store out there. That's why we wanted to go out there. It don't bother us to get in the car. We even get home delivery. Now you don't even have to have, you know, a grocery store around. But it's just heartbreaking to know that this is the end of old Florida. And I grew up and born and raised in Polk County. I just hate to see it go. And I don't mean to get up here and cry, but I can't help it. It just has a piece of my heart. And you're the panel. You're the only ones that can stop this from happening. And because I want you to know this is the end of a beautiful piece of property that Mr. Baxter owns. And it's going to be gone. And I know the animals, they don't have anywhere to go. They're going to have a little space. But just like that bear that got out and went to Disney, if this happened, there's going to be more animals visiting Disney World. Because they're not going to have anywhere to go. And this is pictures of H.L. Smith Road, Detour Road, of all the bus accidents that are going on right now. That's not even up there at the school. And I got pictures of these. They were up to. Okay. But that's all I got to say. And I just hope that y'all really consider this and not put this through. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Ms. Annie Wood. And behind Ms. Wood and Ms. Ashburn. While you stage, let's hear from Ms. Ashburn. Jim Holly Ashburn, 124 Brim Street. First, Ms. Santiago, I just want to thank you for the comments about the Juanita ball field. I grew up in Juanita, and I still have family and nieces and nephews that enjoy that field today. So thank you for that. I'm kind of ignorant to this process. This is the first time I've been through this process. So the comments that I had, the notes that I had brought with me, was for the previous group. I thought we were going back before them again. And the confusing part for me was that I didn't understand, in the first process, Ms. Troutman explained that, you know, you look at the applicant, what they've applied for, do they meet these criteria, you know, and if that's the case, then you vote. And I was kind of confused on what you're voting for. They either do or they don't. It's pretty black and white for what they do. But in listening to the comments earlier before about, yeah, we meet these, you know, I think you said we actually over-exceed the requirements of this project. Does that include the fact that this is a dead-end road? This is 300, our 300 homes at the Port Hatchner Hall where I live that's going to be filtering out. I see it much like a garden hose that then feeds a big fire hose that then goes down into a straw to get our 300 residents, another 1,900 residents, the 600 that they're now currently building at the corner of Marigold and Hatchner Hall on this road. And they proposed that they are going to widen one mile. Well, one mile in front of this project, you've got our 300 homes, you know, times two vehicles. The new homes coming into this widened four lane that's proposed, it's not even going to happen, but this proposed widening down into this narrow straw, it needs to be widened all the way out to 17 for traffic to go anywhere. We have furniture currently being dumped along the road from these Poinciana residents, you know, coming out to dump their, this morning I noticed tires, mattresses, everything along that road. If there is a project, and I know you don't have the time to do this, but if there's a project that deserves a field trip to go see with your own eyes what this is all about, this is the project for that. To come out and see this area, start at the port and work your way back and see exactly what we're talking about, especially when you go up Marigold. You know, we talked about a roundabout. People coming out of Poinciana on Marigold blow the stop sign. They don't even stop at that. We constantly, at Marigold and at Allegheny, we have to slam on our brakes for people pulling out in front of us now. And I agree with the last lady. You know, I moved out there. I lived in Brandon. I lived in Tampa. I moved out there because I don't mind a 15 or 20 mile hike to the grocery store. I don't want that in my area. So I ask you, just take the time to go out there. I noticed both in the last commission and in this one, the body language speaks volumes for how you intend to vote. So we already know this sitting here watching. Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Wood, are you ready? Yes, sir. Go ahead. Hello. My name is Annie Wood. My address is 7 North Lakeview Drive, Haynes City, Florida, 33844. Hello, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to allow us to speak today. I just wanted to show you a sign of the headwaters out where it's at on. How's it? It's not going. Can you stop me? Oh, there it is. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Can we just start over? You want to play with that and we'll call? No, we got it. You got it? Yes, sir. All right. Okay. Okay. So here's the sign in reference. That's where the sign is to the headwaters of the Everglades sign. Please take note of that on the other photos as I have. Um, this is the view that's non-compatible to the southeast. Uh, the westward is crazy. Um, non-compatible from the southward view. And then another picture out towards the lake that is non-compatible on the southeast view. To the south and the east is not compatible. In the red box is the property that is the headwaters of the Everglades with only a 25 feet dividing asphalt road. An extraordinarily thin barrier, if you call that one, to 2,000 homes in the yellow box. What makes it okay for 2,000 homes to be built only 25 feet away from the protected area? The density is a major problem with this development. Compatibility. Compatibility. This is not compatible with the land to the south or the east. We are against the density of this development and it is not. This is the last piece of property that is being utilized as a wildlife corridor to protect our Everglades and it does not need to be developed. You want to take this beautifully untouched property and use it as a filter for fertilizer, pollution, sewage, all the things that pollute our Everglades that causes red tide. Let's try to stop this before we ruin our whole ecosystem. Are you going to be okay as Polk County commissioners approving something that could ultimately be the downfall of our beautiful Everglades and sleeping soundly at night knowing that this decision today could forever cripple our ecosystem that makes Florida what it is? Are you okay with your children or your grandchildren not being able to enjoy taking their families camping and catching and eating fish right on the riverbank? One day, 20 years from now, you will look back at yourself in the mirror, at the ruins that this has caused and think, you know what? I should have done my part. I should have tried to help protect these precious Florida waters, but I didn't. Do you want to look back and say that or do you want to look back and say, I took a stand and I did what was right? You can develop Polk County through and through, but why not be wise to the decisions of the areas that you would want to develop and not contaminate? This, my friend, is not the area to approve. This needs to be denied. Polk County, we ask that you please work with the state of Florida to keep this land pure and clean. The state of Florida has funds set aside to protect our conservations. Do your part as our trusted Polk County commissioners, please, so that it will not destroy the Florida that we all know and love. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Deborah Lawson. And behind Ms. Lawson, Mr. Gill. You can use the middle unless you have exhibits. Good morning. Good afternoon. My name is Deborah Lawson. I live at 200 Penny Lane in Haynes City. I actually live across the street from Sand Hill Elementary. So, I did some research on the wastewater treatment facilities that Toho owns. Toho Utilities has eight wastewater treatment facilities in Polk and Osceola County. These eight facilities have failed. I have copies of incident or malfunctions, a total of 277 for the year 2022 and just the section of 2023. There is what DEP sent me of the facility ID numbers that's on your overhead. I had a lady that was working with me to get me the ID number so that I would actually have proof of the failures. Every one of them I printed off for you. St. Cloud was just added to that. Other than the eight, you'll see on the bottom, she told me, she called me back to tell me that St. Cloud was just bought and added to that. It's called St. Cloud Southside Facility. 2023 alone has seen 24 incidents, malfunctions. 48 was reported in 2022. Brings the total of that facility alone to 72. Once again, let me reiterate, 277 incidents and malfunctions of Toho's solid waste treatment facilities. That, gentleman, is sewage. The pictures that he presented over there, I took those pictures just Tuesday. I had already done them when I did a video and Carl Thomas touched on it to prove to you that the wastewater facilities of Toho are failing. Those right there, okay, one of the, I can't see what he's putting up so I can explain it to you. Will you do it again? Those right there, these pictures were taken Tuesday. There are two bypass pumps sitting on Pacific. Gentlemen, 1,500 feet from Lake Marion Creek Middle School. Those children right there are walking by those. I question DEP. Why are you allowing this to go on? That's an open manhole. That's an open manhole. Two bypass pumps sitting there. You see those other pipes? Will you put the other picture up, please, of the pipe that looks like it's running along the sidewalk? Okay, that one there is a lift station. You see that pipe right there in the picture? That is a pipe that is literally partly on top of the ground. Some of it's buried. That is a sewer pipe that is helping transfer sewage from one manhole to the other. I promise you. The picture to the top that he just moved with his hand, that is the lift station that is right before Pacific Road that has failed. They have a bypass pump sitting there to help it. The manhole is open with sewage lines running out of it. Right there, you see the picture on the top up there of the manhole? That is 900 feet from Sand Hill Elementary. I mean, from Lake Marion Creek Middle School. That blew, the sewer lines blew on Pacific Road. The sewage, raw sewage, was coming out of that manhole right there, and they did not finish cleaning it up, but they brought trucks in to help gather the sewage. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Gill. Behind Mr. Gill is Mr. George Miller. Thank you, Thomas Gill, 108 Brim Street, Haines City, Florida. Thank you, Chairman Lindsey, for allowing me to speak along with the rest of the commissioners. In front of me, I have a part from your land development code, Section 303, their plan development. The site shall be suitable or it shall be possible to make the site suitable for development in the manner proposed without negative impact to persons or property on or off the property. Conditions of soil, groundwater, level, drainage, and topography shall all be appropriate to both type and pattern of use intended. Erosion, flood hazard, and damage to natural resources shall be avoided. All of this land is on hard pan that water does not permeate through. I'm not a geologist. Hydrologist maybe would be the right term. I'm not one of those. I can't give you the exact reason, but the dirt is tight enough that the water does not permeate, and that is why you get the water sitting on it. That entire, once you pass marigold, it starts sloping down towards the lake. You can actually see it if you drive down, but everything's on a slope and water flows downhill, and it won't soak into the hard pan. It just runs into the lake. Another thing I have, Lake Hatchenhall Road is county road. 542 is under county maintenance and rated in good condition along the frontage of the subject site according to the pavement surface evaluation and rating method established by the Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is a paved two-lane road that is 24 feet in width for much of the road's length. The conditions of the road decline to fare westward of Marigold Avenue and are considered in poor condition westwards of Watkins Road. Marigold Avenue is rated very good, but prior to Marigold, it's rated in very good condition. The road can't handle it. It is a very poor road, and they're talking about four-laning it just in front of their subdivision. And you're going to have to funnel that right back down in front of Marigold and carry it all the way down to 17 for the remainder of the road. My short time I have left, I'd like to say the stormwater pond situation. I mean, you guys have seen some very good drawings, I'm assuming, and I'm also sure you've seen some good drawings that look really good on paper but flooded. I'm sure the retention pond at Deer Lake looked good on paper. It is busted, and all of that ran into Lake Marion. I'm not going to touch my other topic because I'm running out of time, but I would like for you to consider the evidence that we have showed you, and we would like a no vote in terms of this. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Miller, and behind Mr. Miller is Beth Clifford. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is George Millar. I live at one. I'm sorry. That's fine. No worries. Everybody messes it up anyway. My name is George Millar. I live at 126 Brim Street, Haines City, Florida, 33844. First of all, I'd like to say I'm opposed to this development. This high-density development while making huge profits for the developers could cost the residents of our community thousands and possibly tens of thousands of dollars. While many of us are on wells, the effect of the construction to the water quality of the area or might even collapse our wells could cause us to have water in our homes. It might devastate the water quality of the homes where we couldn't have potable water in our homes. You say, well, that's okay because we'll bring in Toho water. Well, then, that costs us the assessments of getting the water, hooking up to the water, and also the reoccurring cost of monthly water bills that would quadruple the cost of what I'm currently paying. By stripping the land of all the mature and young trees and the vegetation and by covering it by the majority of the land with concrete, asphalt, asphalt, shingles, and roofs, you eliminate the majority of the land for percolating the rain and stormwater, which would be running into Lake Hatchnahal, further polluting the lake and promoting flooding in our area. The removal of the aggressive removal of wildlife in the area like deer, bobcats, a fox squirrel, which I've seen, I think stands about this tall, on several occasions, and many varieties of birds which have the habitat by promoting and by continuing to develop or removing their habitat, where will they go for the major density of developments continue if approved? Further, the additional estimate of 4,000 to 5,000 vehicles on a two-lane road will prevent emergency response teams' access to the port area, especially during high traffic periods. And they're speaking about putting a school out there, a shopping center, or possibly a middle school near the property or on the property, which will add an additional 4,000 to 5,000 cars when you're talking about students, parents, employees, creating further traffic congestion. And I find it real humorous that they say, well, up to Marigold, we're going to make it four-lane, but then we're going to reduce it down. You have the funnel effect, and you know that's a disaster waiting to happen. The planning board and board of county commissioners, if you continually approve these developments and lack of providing or improving infrastructure prior to these developments created, you're hurting the residents and taxpayers of Polk County. While these developers are profiting millions of dollars, I'm almost finished, approve this plan. You're costing the people that elected you thousands of dollars unnecessarily. Remember, you're elected representatives. Please remember, you're elected representatives and supposed to represent the people and not necessarily special interests or developers. Thank you very much for your time and your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Millar. Ms. Clifford, and behind Ms. Clifford is Mr. Fred McTeer. Yes, ma'am. Name and address, please. Hi there. My name is Beth Clifford. I'm at 126 Brim Street in Haines City, Florida, 33844. I am a registered voter. Thank you for being here. And the decisions that you have are certainly going to affect many. I also oppose the Creek Ranch development for several reasons. First, it is incompatible, as we have already heard. 800 acres to the north of the Vickers Trust is the state-protected land. To the east is a 250-acre farm with one home. Another farm, 50 acres with one home. Port Hatchnaha Village, we've heard all this. To the south is the Headwaters to the Everglades with thousands of acres state-protected. The Jonna Farm on the opposite side is 416 acres with one home, surrounded by thousands of acres. So when you look to the west, 1,876 homes seems a bit excessive and incompatible with the existing properties. If mentioned earlier, if Jamison Road is considered poor, then Lake Hatchnaha Road is considered worse. It's outdated. There's drainage dishes on both sides, which I ended up in because a tractor-trailer didn't stop for a stop sign. It had my elderly mother with me, and it was almost a disaster. So please consider infrastructure before you approve big projects such as this. We already heard that this area has a history of flooding. And then the second thing that I am opposed to that I learned from the planning meeting back in August, that the applicant had mentioned a request of approval of 40-foot lots, 40 feet. A modern-day school bus is 41 feet. Tell your kids and grandkids to run 40 feet and stop. A lot at 40 feet is incompatible. Now you're going to put 1,876 homes on that property along with the Deer Lake of 600 other homes. Well, I have to say that I'm happy to see that the developer has gifted seven acres of that land, seven acres for open space. That's seven football fields for 2,000 homes. That's going to be overcrowded in five years if a school ever goes in. It's a danger. It's a fire danger, 40-foot to go from house to house. Fires will spread rapidly. There's two fire stations. One isn't even built yet. Okay, so the next reason I oppose is the potential well. My well is going to get contaminated. Again, when these trees are taken out, everything is ruined, there will be more flooding. My well will be contaminated. And then I'm going to have to hook up to Toho, and my water is going to quadruple. Think about that. The decision is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McTeer. And behind Mr. McTeer is my good friend Sharon Garrett. Fred McTeer, 9025 Whippoorwill Lane, Haines City, Florida, 33844. And I'd like to thank Ms. Sandiago for even noticing that guy that had that little bitty piece of property right in between all this. But my concern here today is not the development of it, but the water issue. I met with Brian, their engineer, last Friday. We went over all of it. And I think that he realizes, and I realize, that there is a problem. And it hasn't just started. It's been there for years. The elevation from Marigold, where the county has the ballpark and all, it just falls off that hill. There's a big ditch on the right-hand side, and it's probably four or five foot and gets up to seven or eight foot before it gets down to the lake. From that hill down to the first culvert crossing, probably about two miles from Marigold, there's finally a culvert to defer the overflow of water. But the water comes down Hashtey Hall Road, and there's a couple of bay heads right there next to their entrances from what I could see. And the water is deferred right on down, and it turns and goes in their property and then turns back out, which he and I discussed. And his plan is going to take care of that. But when it turns, when they stop it from turning in, it's going to go right on down the road like it's been going for years, and it floods my pasture. There's a swell there, but there's no ditch, and there's no way for the water, so it just rolls off to the north. So everything from there, even around Deer Lake, east of Deer Lake, it flows back towards Hashtey Hall. But the Deer Lake flows back towards Lake Marion. So that's going to create a lot of water going towards Lake Hashtey Hall. So if you all look at that, and, of course, I like her idea of some of you all coming out. My daughter sent emails, but I didn't get any response from anybody but Brian. But I would like for you all to look at that and consider the water flow, the storm water coming down that way and flooding my pasture, because it's only going to get worse. I mean, it can't get better. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Garrett, behind Ms. Garrett, Blair Quinn. Hi, my name is Sharon Garrett. I live off Carl Boozer Road, as you previously heard. Actually, the headwaters of Lake Okeechobee start around Reedy Creek, and in some cases, they're considered to come from Orlando, where they dug ditches to channel all the water. And it comes behind where I live. I live a little bit up further, and there's a whole bunch of conservation land behind me. I live down in the valley, and we have this unusual architecture in the state of Florida, the ridge, like they were talking about. And it comes about from the state of Florida being underwater five or six times. Okay, that was climate change a long time ago. And so the sand hills percolate the water, and the water comes out to the side, what they call karst springs, because there's several of those on my property that just flow all the time. And that's where your water's going from the ridge down to the low area. These guys keep talking about, and it has to come out somewhere. We're all the time hearing about climate change, and I think the massive amount of development we have here in the state of Florida is going to influence it, because what you get is a lot of rooftops. You've got a lot of pavement. If you develop or cover 75% or more of a lot in concrete or paving stones or whatever, all it does is absorb heat. Inside the cities, it's documented fact that they're at least 10 degrees warmer than out in the countryside. There's really not the trees and the vegetation that mitigate the environment around them. Yes, the developer says he'll put a tree out in front of a house, but if you've got 40-foot lots, an insurance company is not going to let that tree get big enough to hang over that house or have any cooling effect in the area. What we're doing to our area and this county by cramming so many people into this area is we are creating a climate problem. I'm not a climate freak, but it's a lot of heat retention. You get around any parking lot, it's hot. You're not going to walk across that in your bare feet. So I'm kind of against any more intensive development. We've got plenty of it as it is. If there was a way to preserve this, I think it would be really nice. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Blair Quinn? I'm sorry, Ms. Blair Quinn. I'm Blair Quinn, 22 Lakeview Drive South, Haynes City, Florida. I would just like to say there are so many unintended consequences of this development. I mean, the size of this development is just unbelievable. Like, it does not belong in this place. I'm not against development. Just not right here. The watershed, you remove all of the trees, you remove all of the green, everything that drinks the water that we are already sitting in. You're going to remove all that and replace it with concrete, and then you're going to let it all trickle down to the lake. That is never going to work. That is never going to work. So, I'm just, I'm not going to repeat everything that everyone else has said. There are forever costs, and I'm just begging you to please reconsider that this should not happen. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Quinn. Adam Bass, and behind Mr. Bass is Ms. Jean Reed. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you for letting me speak to you today. I'm just here to speak on behalf of the conservation values of this property and the surrounding investment. I apologize. I live at 6352 Rocky Point Road. I'm here in a private capacity today, but most of you know I work with federal, state, and local governments to work with private landowners on conservation outcomes for their property. I am also speaking on behalf of Charles Buck McLaughlin, who couldn't make it here today from the U.S. Air Force, to weigh in on the fact of the impact this will have on the millions of dollars that have been spent on local properties and also properties downstream of this project site. As it's been shown, I won't beat a dead horse, but it is not compatible with the surrounding properties, and it will have impacts on those properties from both a management standpoint and a travel of wildlife. This property is a functioning corridor as it sits today. FWC has telemetry data of panthers utilizing the property to be developed. It will restrict that movement, and it will have a negative impact on the surrounding lands, which are fire-dependent landscapes. We, as a county, have invested heavily in surrounding conservation lands, and it will impact those as well. Again, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I wanted to give you that. I'm going to use the last few minutes here to just touch on you need another tool in your toolbox here, and I just wanted to point out it is time for a comprehensive plan update, and that's where I'll leave it. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Thank you. Ms. Jean Reed, and behind Ms. Reed is Ms. Nelda Dotson. Good afternoon. I'm Jean Reed, 27 Lake Eloways Lane, Winter Haven, Florida. I do have a question for the presenters, and maybe you would ask the same question. On this conservation land, there are three areas with hatch marks on it, on the map. I hope it's showing through. It says not included, and I don't know why it's not included, what they are. Mr. McTeer, who spoke a minute ago on the largest part of that, I think, is what he was just talking about. So there's some private ownership there. But I'm wondering how then you would get to it. How would it be conservation area if there are properties that other people would want to get into and out of for whatever reason? So I'd like a little further explanation for that, and I'm sure you would, too. Poinciana Village was permitted, as you know, by Polk County. I don't know what commission approved it, but back in the 70s. And we don't know who the members of the board were, but they sure created a problem that Polk County has been trying to solve for 50 or 60 years now. I know without a city center, the county has had to provide a lot of community center services, fire and police stations, schools, parks, road, intersection improvements. And now your commission is having to four-lane some of the roads and improve some of the roads and even create roads through the area. It's an effort to accommodate the people that live there, I know. And at 2006 and 2008, I was sitting in your chairs, and proposals came up both on this property and across the street on this property, on opposing property across the street, very similar to these. And at the time, we were so in need of servicing what we already had up in Poinciana, trying to figure out how to bring services up there, that we realized we could not afford to bring a four-lane Hatchnaha Road. At the time, it was $10 million per mile. I don't know what the cost is to increase a lane on a road now, but I'm sure it's more than it was then. And we realized we did not have an extra $300 million, $400 million at that time. I don't know what the total cost is providing the services at Poinciana, but it's a lot. And I'm afraid that if this is approved, the subject property that Commissioner Santiago pointed out and property across the street and property leapfrogging down Hatchnaha Road will want the same type of services and the same type of development. So what I suggest to you is we don't know who created the problem in Poinciana, but we do know that this commission, our commissioners right now today, can say no to this project. We don't need this kind of development to continue on Hatchnaha Road. The geography and geology is not right. The roads are not there. We cannot construct more roads. It is not compatible. So just say no, and please deny this project. Thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Nilda Dotson, and behind Ms. Dotson, I think it's Mike Jewell, 34 Bass Street, after Ms. Dotson. Pull the mic down, please, ma'am. There you go. Can you hear me now? Is that... My name is Nilda Dotson. There you go. I live at 13727 Hatchnaha Road, and I moved out there. Tomorrow will be 20 years ago, and I moved out there because it was country living, nice country. Now it was 20 years ago, and you could go down the road with no trouble. Now you can't. I left work the other day heading to a night job. I worked two jobs. I worked going to Disney, and I left my house at 915 to head, go past Point Sienna Road to the first curb, and I almost got hit on. Four headlights were coming at me because one person wanted to pass another on a curb road with a double yellow line. This was at night. Another time, I was going down the road, same thing. They pass me like you're sitting still. They pass you on a solid yellow line. They don't care, and they do not stop at Point Sienna Road. Coming here this morning, I had four or five people pull out in front of me before I got there because they don't stop. The water, if you see up here at the ranch, I took these pictures Sunday. The flood is there. We had no rain. That is in front of the creek, and on the other side is across the street. That's flood water. It's been sitting there. We don't know how long. The curve here is an accident. If you push the pole up, there was an accident at the end of August, the last weekend of August. You can see the trail marks going off the road, and he hit that pole. There was a power pole. He cut it in half, the car. There was three, I believe three teenagers stole the car. 5.30 in the morning. We had no power for six hours. Two hours we could not get by. So, we have the port. Hatch and Hall Road is 11 miles long. No red light. No overhead light except on Allegheny, and it is back on Allegheny Road. When you pass the park, you have no lights down Hatch and Hall Road. Road does go downhill. At the end of the port is the lake. You can see the airboat. This was 8.30, or between 8 and 8.30 Sunday morning. They were already out. There's an airboat. If you go to the next one, there's campers there. We have campers. We have plenty of people. There's the port where they dock their boat out. Campers there with the boats out already. This was before 8 o'clock in the morning. So, we have plenty of people. There's your bear witness. This was the man across the street from me. We had a bear walk down, walk down Hatch and Hall Road, got in my sister's trash can. I got home at 2 o'clock in the morning. I did not know it was a bear that got in her trash can. I could have been attacked by the bear. I didn't know a bear was there. Thank you, ma'am. But from all this, from the Point Ciena project is where the bear came from. And I also saw a bobcat in my backyard. So, we really don't need any more of this construction going on. Thank you, Mike. And thank you for your time, gentlemen and ladies. Yes, ma'am. Mike at 34 Bass Street. Good afternoon. I'm Mike Gerald. Gerald, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have a house at 34 Bass Street. I also have a home at 108 Quillwood Drive in Winter Haven. And I guess my concern is really for the board itself as far as this development. And, I mean, I even had a meeting recently with Mr. Breswell about some drainage problems we have at 108. And in that meeting, he stated that, you know, that y'all are having problems, you know, getting, you know, drainage problems in our neighborhood fixed. It's been going on for years in Winter Haven because he's got homes that are underwater. And so, I guess I can't understand us as the committee or, you know, the commissioner's board and us allowing more building and more stuff to come in to make, you know, a more financial burden on the county and the taxpayers of this county. I mean, when we can't keep up with simple digging out a ditch for someone that, you know, we just don't have the, we don't have the people to do it. We don't have, you know, the ability to do it. You can't hire people. Every county, city truck that you see right now has got help on it on the back of it. So, you all need help, but you're going to add more work by adding more communities in this. It's ridiculous. You got to, at some point in time, you got to say, look, guys, we got to slow down until we can get caught up. Just this past week, our neighbor in Winter Haven was attacked by five English bulls, or not English, but pit bulls, called 911, stayed on the phone for a minute and a half, and finally hung up. Finally, 911 called back, did not send a police officer out for two days. A week later, the dog came across their yard again, got out. Four of the pit bulls came out. One of them bit me on the back of the leg. Two days later, no animal control on the weekend. So, you call a police officer out. They come out, and it's two days later before you get anybody to come out to check on it. So, it's just, you know, it's just a dog bite, you know. But it's four pit bulls comes out and attacks you. But, you know, we don't have enough, you know, y'all don't have enough workers to keep up with what we've got here now. And this is just one community in Polk County, you know, in the county. It's not, you know, the ones in Lakeland, the ones in Davenport, you know, it's not the ones everywhere else, you know, could send me. Everywhere else, it's in Polk County, you know. It's all of them is y'all's responsibility. And you can't keep up with what we've got, much less what's going on and what's coming. So, I'm going to say, you know, you need to not just say no to this community. You need to slow down on all of them. It's too much, too fast. Thank you, sir. Ms. Pam Luce. And behind Ms. Luce is Tom Palmer. Mr. Chair, since I was part of the team that wrote the interlocal agreement and it was my job at the school board to do that, may I answer Mr. Cumby's question about the busing? Before your time starts. Yes, please. I appreciate that. What happens is those students go to the zoned school. They don't go to those adjacent schools that have space. The reason the legislature said that the school district needed to check the adjacent capacities was to put the school district in the position of, if you've got extra capacity in this area, you need to do a rezoning. But they are going to go to the zoned school, if that helps. Okay. While you're, with your expertise, would you give a little background on the concurrency, school concurrency ordinance, which I think you may have had a role in back in the day? Yes, sir. As far as? How does the school concurrency funding work? The joint agreement between the school board and the county has a school concurrency ordinance with a funding formula? The funding formula for the school concurrency? The formula that we use, it comes from the impact fee study that is done every five years by the county. And we did provide information to help to come up with that funding calculation or that calculation. And the funding as far as the impact fee goes, and it's divided up at elementary, middle, and high. And each number is a little different because that's the way it comes out. Not every household provides the same number of elementary, middle, and high schools. Okay. Thank you. And now your clock starts. All right. Thank you. I want to tell you that the Port Hatchinall folks are absolutely right, not only about the road and sewer problems for this development, but also about school capacity in the Northeast. I recently sent public records requests to the city of Davenport, Haines City, and to the county for school concurrency determination letters. I have all the evidence here that anyone needs to prove that without a doubt the school board is manipulating and omitting data to allow developers to get through the concurrency process as far as school capacity is concerned without entering into a proportionate share mitigation agreement. And I didn't even print half the letters. I knew this was happening or assumed it was happening because when I was in the position, I was told to manipulate the data, and I refused to do it. And I was also told by the same administrator that the reason was because there was a meeting, now I was not in this meeting, with a county commissioner, a board member, and a developer, where they advised her that there could not be any mitigation agreements because it could cause a moratorium on growth in the county. I did confirm that there was a meeting of that such on her calendar. I provided a package for you, which you should have in front of you, which I want to help to explain this with. If you'll look at the first determination letter for four-star development, you will see on that page, you will see a column that says committed capacity. Part of the interlocal agreement requires that when these school determination letters are doing, those developers who came before, get reserved seats. Those reserved seats are to be part of the calculation to show whether there is capacity or not. You will see that on this one, and you will also notice that it is not in the northeast. The second letter is legacy at Davenport. You will notice that that column is not there. There are no reserved seating in this, so you are not getting the full picture here. You're not getting what the capacity is because you're not getting the seats that have already been reserved by the development. The last one is the non-binding letter for Creek Ranch subdivision. You will notice I wrote in there what those reserved capacities should be. Now, if you'll see the very last document, it is a development review summary that has those vested demands in it. This may not be totally accurate at this time because this is a very fluid document, but you will certainly see that information is being left out, and there is not capacity for this development out in the Hatchinahaw area. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Palmer. And behind Mr. Palmer, Robin Fox. Tom Palmer, 1805 26th Street, Northwest, Winter Haven. I'm chair of Asian Islands Group of Florida Sierra. We oppose the project. The idea that you can measure compatibility just based on the adjacent developments and not the adjacent conservation land is just hard to understand. That's a misguided concept. I noticed on the applicant's slideshow, he talked about the RMD being designed to prevent urban sprawl. This project enables urban sprawl. I don't think the rural MD was ever, ever meant to do something like this. The road situation, they've only mentioned Hatchinahaw Road, but the applicant is talking about, you know, we're going to have homes for people who are job centers in Kissimmee and Orlando. They don't talk about the road network beyond Polk County. I mean, you ever been on Pleasant Hill Road at 5 o'clock in Osceola County? It's an experience. There's just things that are beyond your control, but it's part of the network. It needs to be considered. Another thing, if you decide to consider this for approval, I would advocate that the conservation land be put under a permanent conservation easement. I say that because as time goes by, you know, did we say 50%? Well, maybe we just mean 40% or 30%. Things change, and a permanent conservation easement will prevent that from eroding. Thank you. Thank you. Robin Fox. And behind Mr. Fox is Stu Nelson. My name is Robin Fox, and I live on eight acres just south of this subdivision plan. And I've been out there since about 1960 and have enjoyed the wooded area. As I came here today, I saw two deer in the drive coming up here. But I'd like to say thank you for your decisions on what's going to happen out there, and it's going to impact me and many, many others. Thank you for just listening. I'd like you to say no, but a lot of people's minds are already made up, and I can't change them. But I'd like to say thank you. You're part of my life, and you're affecting a lot of people out here. Thank you, Mr. Fox. This is Sue Nelson. This is the last sheet I have. If there are any others, bring them forward. Are we good? Now I'll click it. Is it there? What did you do? Just that. What did you do? No, don't even need that. Just that. Okay. Okay. My name is Sue Nelson. I live at 2920 Cruise Lake Drive. I'm a former Polk County Planning Commissioner. I served from 2006 to 2011. I'm a member of the American Planning Association. This proposal before you today is not consistent with several policies in your comprehensive plan and land development code. This application is inconsistent with Policy 2.102-A2 compatibility. Land shall be developed so that adjacent uses are compatible with each other. Looking south of the property, is this proposed development compatible with the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge? Compatibility involves more than just examining density. You also take into account traffic, height of buildings, noise, and appearance long before you get to level two. This proposed development will generate over 17,000 vehicles per day. Currently, Lake Hatchnohal Road sees about 7,300 vehicles. This one development alone will generate more than two times the amount of traffic this road currently sees. Two words. Not compatible. The commercial and residential buildings in this proposal can be as high as 50 feet, and the commercial portion can be as large as 102,000 square feet. Just for reference, that's the size of Wachula's Walmart. Looking east, the proposed development's net density is 3.04 dwelling units per acre. As depicted within the red arrow, this adjacent property owner has two homes on 250 acres. That's 0.008 dwelling units per acre. That's a 37,900 percent increase in density. No transitioning here. Not compatible. The forested property to the north of the proposal is the Old Point Siena DRI. This property was literally platted when I was in the fifth grade. Will it ever be developed? According to a Mancuso appraisal report hired by the school board dated August of 2021, the majority of this property is in flood zone A, which is considered high risk for flooding. To the west is Deer Lake. It was part of the Old Point Siena DRI. No words. A site visit tells it all. Please don't repeat it. RMD development shall comply with the following. The total permitted dwelling units are to be clustered on the non-reservation portion of the site. Development should be on the left side. On the right side is the conservation. The 50 percent conservation held in perpetuity. In this case, the applicant is counting 65 acres. Please let me finish. I only got a few more minutes. Okay. The applicant is counting 65 acres towards their 50 percent commitment within their cluster development. It's disingenuous to count the wetland habitats as your 50 percent preservation portions. Portions that are paved over by roads, homes, and commercial parking lots. As you know, today you would be voting on a binding site plan. I understand that compatibility doesn't mean the same as, but nothing in this proposal even comes close. I respectfully ask for a denial. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Anyone else wish to address the board? We will now close the public hearing and write the applicant for response. Thank you, commission. And what did we shake out with on our time there? You should have at least 10 minutes. Okay. I will do my best. A couple of things that I want to point out before I ask Mr. Horner and Mr. Hunter to respond to some specific issues. I want to clear the record. We are not asking for 40-foot lots. There's no 40-foot lots on this site plan. I just want to be eminently clear on that. And the out parcels that former Commissioner Reid requested the information about, that is Creek Legacy Ranch LLC. That is Mr. Baxter. He is retaining ownership of those parcels. And those are not included as part of the RMD process or counted into the preservation areas for purposes of set aside. And then I'm going to ask Brian, or Perry, you go first. Talk about the species and the wildlife corridor real quick. Let's see. Yeah. This one good? Mm-hmm. Good afternoon. Perry Horner, Horner Environmental, 28536 Walker Drive, Wesley Chapel. I just wanted to kind of go over a few points regarding the environmental aspects. We've been involved in reviewing the property for about the last two years. We've certainly looked at the entire property. We did a preliminary review of the development side and then started to focus our efforts on the eastern half. We have really good preliminary knowledge on listed species, their occurrence, what habitat's been mapped, what species may or may not occur on the property. There are a lot of detailed studies that will be forthcoming when we engage the regulatory community. So it's kind of a continuous process. I wanted to focus just very briefly on the issue of the corridor. We really focused our efforts on what was our ability to actually tie into controlled land to land that was protected in perpetuity. And the only way we can do that is by focusing on the eastern half of the property. We have open marsh, we have forested uplands, we have forested wetlands, and we have a continuum from north to south through our property. I understand the concerns about the Poinciana development to the north and whether that would ever be developed or not, but the point is that's in private ownership, and the public doesn't control that, whereas the eastern half, we have that assurance that a corridor will actually be a corridor in perpetuity. I think that's the main thing I wanted to get across. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to address them. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Horner, can we pull up the site planner and the floodplain map? While you're doing that, Mr. Horner, Tom Palmer raised a question about putting a permanent easement over the conservation area. Is that the intent of the applicant? Okay. We have a brink between, Mr. Chair. I did mess up on the time. He actually should have at least 12 minutes, not 10. Okay. Mr. Chair? Not 12 more. He started the clock at 12. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Hunter with Hunter Engineering. My address is 4900 Dundee Road in Winter Haven. I am a civil engineer and the civil engineer for this project, and I have almost 30 years of relevant experience in civil engineering, all that based here in Polk County. As you know, we're only in the planning stages from a civil engineering standpoint on this project. But a lot of this, you've heard, we've engaged in significant activities relative to investigating all aspects of the site from a suitability standpoint, from an engineering suitability standpoint. And just a general comment is that we found no unusual or significant impediments that we found to development. Those investigations include geotechnical explorations and reports, obviously, wetland and listed species investigations. We've got a preliminary traffic study that was mentioned. We looked at the floodplain, the accuracy of the map floodplain and concepts for floodplain management. And stormwater planning, even though it's early, when we put the stormwater ponds where we put them, we have to know that they're going to work. And we've looked at the topo and the wetland boundaries and so forth, how the basin boundaries and the post-development are going to work. I say all that to say that there's a lot of thought that's gone into this. And we've developed and engineered a lot of sites. And just so you know, there's just nothing. We're sensitive. We know what the needs are, the uniqueness, and we're aware of the issues. But there's nothing unique or insurmountable. On the hard pan issue that was mentioned, maybe there are some portions of the site that could have hard pan. But we have a geotechnical report with 23 borings, and none of them, not one, reveal the presence of hard pan. Seasonal high water table is estimated between 1.5 feet and then deeper than 3 feet predominantly throughout the site. So certainly nothing we can't manage. I want to speak, Toho. So much has been mentioned about the Toho Water Authority and their ability to serve our project. I can tell you that I have worked on an extensive master utility plan with Toho. Excuse me. Started that about a year ago. Finished it up in July. It's about a 180-page document that's full of drawings, preliminary designs, calculations, and modeling for water, sewer, and reuse throughout to serve this project. The plan that has been approved involved extending, oversizing lines down Marigold, looping. It also includes ultimately a loop down Bayberry to the north to serve the project. Toho has given us the will to serve, intent to serve letter. They approved the M.U.P. after a lot of work and scrutiny. And the lines that were planned to be upsized for this development are in and down Marigold. Stormwater ponds. There are 11 proposed stormwater management ponds on the site, and they're positioned all around to provide stormwater treatment and attenuation and wetland hydration sufficient to meet the needs of the property of the development and the prevailing permitting requirements. The topography generally slopes a little bit to the north and to the west, but predominantly, as you've heard, it slopes to the east. And with the highest elevation, it's about 100, but it gets down about 65 feet. So the point there is there's lots of fall. And when you're considering stormwater problems, the biggest thing that concerns us is if we have a closed basin with no outlet. We don't have a closed basin. It's all open basin. So here's the point that I would make. If we're paying attention, and I assure you, as the engineers here, we're paying attention, we look at these designs as an opportunity to fix problems that exist today, and we run into this a lot. So we have open basins. We have existing situations where I honestly, as a professional, can tell you that we will make the situation better from a stormwater standpoint, because if we're aware of the problems, we can redirect the point and manner of the discharge. Anything else? Any questions of Mr. Hunter? We're going to take your mind. Mr. Hunter. Yes. Pause it. Yeah. That's not a good map, but I don't know where the map is. Is there a map that would include Port Ashnaha? Yes. It's an overall map. So the concern is a lot of flooding to the west of Port Ashnaha, right? That seems to be what I'm hearing. Is Port Ashnaha on the floodplain? Of course it is. Well... I mean, how is it not flooded? Well, it appears to me that years ago when it was built, those canals were dredged out and used to build up the house pads. Just ditching and... Dredging and filling. Yeah. Okay. Start... But those are elevations in the mid-50s, and we're in, you know, just south of 100 up where our property is. But there's... Is that much drop across the property? There is. And don't get me wrong now. There's water to manage. Right. I get it. One of the things I'll mention... Because I'm asking a question. That's why I ask a question. I want an answer. So I'll point out real quick since I'm not on the clock. But on the east side of our project is a very large retention pond. And because, as I mentioned, most of the stormwater, the dominance of stormwater drains nicely from the center and western parts to the east where it's low. So all of this property where this stormwater pond will discharge is applicant-owned in a wetland slough down below elevation 60. So I had a delightful meeting with the Lanier's out there last Friday. We talked about what they've experienced in terms of drainage with water flowing over their property. You know, their property is immediately... It's kind of the cutout down there on the... McTeer. Did I... What did I say? You said Lanier. I'm so sorry. It's McTeer. My apologies. All right. But I think, and he kind of, Mr. McTeer acknowledged this, we have provisions. This is an example of making a bad problem worse if we intercept that water and can discharge it at a more agreeable location. It's a very valid engineering solution to a problem they have today. You're through for now? For now. Okay. All right. And I'm going to do my level best to wrap up. There were a lot of really good points made, and probably most particularly, Mr. Palmer made an excellent point regarding the perpetual nature of the conservation area. And we certainly would be agreeable to a condition on the R&D that would require that area to be dedicated in perpetuity at the time of level two, if and when development moves forward. We certainly would be agreeable to that condition because that is the intent of the applicant and the property owner, Mr. Baxter. And as I mentioned right at the beginning, he lives out there and will continue to own that property and will continue to live in the Creek Legacy Ranch area. The biggest issues that I kind of want to talk about is the protection of the wildlife corridor is of utmost priority. You've heard from Mr. Horner, what we have done with this 586 acres on the east side is an important asset that does not exist but for this approval. This approval will lock that in place if this property develops. It will put that in place. And I think that's an incredibly important piece of this project. And it goes directly to why the R&D process was put in place by this county in 1991 when they set aside the comprehensive plan that was specifically discussed as part of this process. So the rules, the regulations that we're talking about here today in this quasi-judicial hearing is where we are, right? We are applying the policies at this comprehensive plan. We're applying the land development code. We're applying the land development regulations to this particular piece of property. And Mr. Mink hit on this early on in his presentation. We're here to determine if we are consistent with the comprehensive plan, the land development code, and if we're compatible with the surrounding development. And I would ask Mr. Peterson in a moment, if he would be so kind, if he's heard anything here today that changes his opinion in his staff report regarding the consistency and the compatibility of this project, I asked my own expert the same as we were sitting in the audience. And the answer was no, nothing has changed. The site is still suitable. And you just heard him say that at this dais. The evidence that's been presented today is lay testimony with maybe the exception of Ms. Luce, who does have some significant expertise related to certain areas. That evidence, that testimony for purposes of competent, substantial evidence just has to be fact-based. And there was a lot of emotion, a lot of fear, and a lot of concern that was not, in my legal opinion, competent, substantial evidence. I believe that the competent, substantial evidence that's in the record today shows that this project is consistent with all of your policies of your comprehensive plan. It meets or exceeds all of your land development code provisions and is compatible with the area. The residents would like us to only look at the conservation areas. But, however, we can't ignore the development that's immediately adjacent on our west side, and we cannot ignore the potential development immediately on our north side with the connectivity that we are being requested to provide for roads. Extending utilities that are near our project that have concurrency, we will have to go through that process. We cannot move forward with turning an ounce of dirt until we can satisfy all of the concurrency requirements, and that's roads, utilities, schools. Every ounce of it has to be satisfied before we get a single solitary development permit. So I would respectfully suggest that this project meets all the comprehensive plan, it meets your land development code, and we would request a favorable vote to uphold LDPD 2023-12. And before I sit down, all of the documents that are not otherwise already in the record related to applications, things like that, I do have a packet of information. This includes our title opinion, traffic impact analysis, compatibility analysis from Mr. Hunter, master utility plan approval letter from Toho, school concurrency determinations, listed species review by Horner, wildlife corridor analysis by Horner, or sand scheme consultation correspondence from Horner, the geotechnical report, and a copy of my presentation. Thank you. That concludes the public hearing part from the applicant and the staff. Does staff have any closing comments? No, sir, unless you have any questions. Okay. Open up to the board for discussion. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. I'm actually getting through here earlier than I expected, and everybody was pretty well behaved. So I know on behalf of the board, we all appreciate that. Just remain that way until it's all over and we get out the door. But I had the pleasure of going out two weeks ago tomorrow with Mr. Baxter, and he took me from the southeast corner to the southwest corner to the northwest corner to the northeast corner and back to the southeast corner. And so I toured the entire piece of property, and I will tell you there are parts of it that are just breathtakingly beautiful. Couldn't believe it. I probably should have. I've seen some beautiful property in my life, but it is right there. It ranks near the top when you look at some of those old cammocks and the old sable palms in there. One thing I did notice about it, and I don't have a good understanding of this, and let me full disclosure, yeah, I've had plenty of ex parte communications on this one, and I'm sure everybody else has too. But Brian Hunter and I have been great friends for right at 20 years, 19 years, and I trust Brian implicitly when it comes to engineering. You know, it's hard to find a finer guy than Brian Hunter, and I don't need to lose any friends. I need all of them I got, but, you know, I'm at risk of losing one here, and I'll tell you why. Because this project, you know, I don't think it's compatible. I think timing is terrible, and the reason I say that is when you look at the project, and Reggie and I have been friends for a long time, too, and I understand and I believe. I know that he wants the best for that property, the conservation property. I mean, I could hear it in his voice. I could see it in his eyes, and I hope that we develop a plan for, you know, really putting all that in conservation, even that up to Deer Lake. But, you know, the problem I have with it out there is the 10 miles back to U.S. 27, State Road, U.S. Highway. But there's 17, if you want to call them cities, 17 cities in the county. This property, if developed using 3.2 people in those 1,876 homes, would be larger than eight of our cities in Polk County. And, again, that's calling Highland Park and Hillcrest Heights a city, which that's kind of a stretch. But it would really be right there with Lake Alford and probably a tie for 9th or 10th place in terms of size. The difference is that those cities have developed over a century or over a century and a quarter developing, and they've developed on U.S. highways. They've developed on state roads. You look at U.S. 17, 92. You look at 27. They go through those towns. Because out here, if you live out here, you've got to drive 10 miles to get back to U.S. 27. And you get to cross 17 State Road, but that's also a two-lane as well. So the road system out there is terribly inadequate. Had we had a traffic study today done in advance of this meeting, you know, maybe we'd have different information. Maybe we'd say that there's some kind of something magical is going to happen, and this is all going to be taken care of. But sitting up here for the last few years, and really more like 20 years, but over a 30-year period, I understand how long it takes us to improve roads. The kind of funding and the engineering and the land acquisition that it takes to get the property, to do the engineering, to collect the funds, to build it, it's years and years and years. When I talk about those cities developing over 100 or 120 years, there's a reason for that, because it takes a long time to make those improvements and pay for those improvements, so that's why they've done that. But I'm all for trying to figure out how to get this into, you know, a conservation program with a less than fee. I mean, I know Reggie wants to stay out there, and I don't blame him. If I own that, I'd want to stay there too. When I looked at that, I don't know how that works with the dike and the ditch. If the dike wasn't there and the ditches weren't there, this would mostly be – the east half would mostly be lake bottom. I mean, at times it would be seasonally underwater. That's the whole reason you put in a system like they have there with all the ditches that cover hundreds of acres with a lift pump that, you know, takes that water off when it gets underwater. But I kind of agree with Tom Palmer, and it's not the first time Tom and I have agreed, and it may not be the last. But when you talk about the compatibility, well, it's compatible because this is, you know, over here on the west side. Well, you could use that same argument that now if this gets approved, the property that is the headwaters for the Everglades is now compatible because it's 50 feet away from, you know, 1,879 units. So at some point that just becomes silly, and it's actually nonsensical to think that everything – I think Sue Nelson said that, you know, compatible doesn't mean the same. I guess that's the planning thing. But as much as I hate to upset my friends, Brian and Reggie, I'm not going to support the project because I think the timing is terrible on it. And I think that, you know, it's just a nightmare waiting to happen in terms of traffic down there. And much less the schools. And schools aren't our business, you know. But I think it really should be up to us to be concerned about it and me getting in the middle of trying to figure out how that's going to work or how it should work or if those kids should be put on a bus and go to a school where there's actually room. Or they just say, okay, you're going to go to school here. Even though we're over capacity, that's where you'll go. And it sounds like that's what happens. They pull up another chair or pull up a portable. But anyway, Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to be able to support the application as it exists today. Other conversation? Mr. Braswell. Before I talk about this, back to the school. Pam, back to you. This keeps coming up in our hearings. Mr. Beasley, I would like at some point for us to have a conversation, maybe bring some of these school board people in, maybe bring Pam. It comes up every time now. I hear it constantly. And we need to get the answer right. We need to find out, are we doing this right? Because one thing I'm proud about in Polk County, we don't embarrass ourselves by doing stupid stuff a lot of times, and I want to keep it that way. Be glad to schedule work session. Let's get that done. One thing that has been talked about endlessly in Florida for the last couple of years, Wildlife Corridor came up here, I don't know how many times. When I look at land in Florida, every bit of it's got some value. It may not be that great right now, but I look at phosphate land 10 years ago, 15 years ago, nobody thought Mosaic could give land away, and they're selling it for quite a bit of money right now. So this land is going to be valuable to someone, maybe much more valuable than it is today. We don't know if we deny this. We don't know who that's going to be, what that value is going to be, and what they're going to do with it. Putting that together with the fact, the Wildlife Corridor, you know, I'm interested in it. I think we all are. I think it's an important asset to our state. If this is approved, it certainly does add to the corridor. It guarantees a corridor. Maybe it's not as wide as you want it to be. Maybe it's a mile and a half. You want three miles, whatever. 300 feet under I-4 seems to be adequate for the DOT, but I think, you know, just that fact alone that you are locking that in, you're preserving it. When you look at this land, the east side, I would say the less desirable side, where you want a wildlife corridor is what they're preserving. The potential developable side is what they're going to develop. It works out together. It attaches to wildlife corridor land north, south, and east. If there's an impediment to the wildlife corridor, it's Port Ashnaha right here. I mean, it's in the way. But I think it's a good idea, you know, putting this land in the easement, perpetual easement, it's going to be there forever. We'll know forever that this wildlife corridor exists. I think of all the things I've heard today, that's one of the most important aspects of it. But not knowing what it could be someday in the future is a risk I don't think we should take, and I'm going to vote for it. Anybody else, Mr. Wilson? Yes, I'm going to, you know, I've got to go along with a lot of what everybody's even near and what Bill said here, and, you know, there's a lot of good points. But let me, I'm going to touch on the side that you really don't want to hear about. I mean, this development is probably something that we, how it's laid out, how it's designed, what the, not the 40-foot lots, not with the, with the more setbacks. Everything inside this development is something we've been trying to get done for two years. Just, and just so happened was this one. But this is what we're trying to look at to try to slow down some of this, you know, over, overabundance of growth. But being it's a great development, it still creates a lot of, a lot of different stuff here. You know, Bill hit on the conservation easement on, on the corridor. Yeah, that is, and I heard somebody earlier say, well, we're only going to cut it down so far. Well, that's not true. Somebody said that the, you know, this is wet and they won't be able to, the animals won't be able to use that. Hey, I've been a cowboy, I've been in all this my life. I run cows. That conservation deal across the street that the Nature Conservatives had, I had when the Stokes had it. So I know this property up here. It's all, it's all going to get used. I promise you. Just like Bill just said, Port Hatchney Hall is the one that's kind of in the way. But this, this here development is probably one of the best. Now, you cannot deny, okay, I'm going to go with the what's on south of the road, all conservation. The Nature Conservatives has got all that, I believe. Conservation, that's what they're trying to put in there. You say you cannot put the, you cannot, on the compatibility, you can't go north because it's not tied into it. It is. There's over, there's over 9,000 lots, homes that are being built or going to be built north and west of that. So if you want to say what's compatible, this is probably one of the most compatible things I've ever seen. You've got, you've got growth on both sides of it. And then you've got conservation, you've got conservation on the south. I'm just saying overall. Hey, I'm not a guy that wants to build it. But overall, proposed units on all the sides are the same on the north and west side. Okay, on the east side you have conservation. Everything else is conservation. You might not, I might not like it, you might not like it, but I'm going to tell you the truth. That is the truth. So you look at it and see what it is. So I will be for this, and I will be voting yes for it. Ms. Santiago. Thank you. First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone that came out today and to speak either for or against this. I don't remember who it was, but someone said that we had already made up our minds in your statement. And I just want to say that that's far from the truth, because I met with both parties, and I read the county's statement or report. And then I come in today waiting to hear what I see or waiting to hear what I hear from both the applicant, the opposition, and then each one of you that spoke today. So making a statement like that is really disappointing, because that's not basically the way that I function as a county commissioner. The couple of things that I heard today were, and I tallied the comments, so I'm just going to say the top four or five that I heard. First of all was the Toho water situation. Second of all was the traffic, and I think mostly dealing with safety. Third is the wildlife corridor, and then the fourth was the non-compatible. Of course, I've heard other ones, but these are the top ones, and I'm glad we're going to visit with the school system so that we can get some clearance on this concurrency. I think that's very important, and I'm glad that it was mentioned that we do not move forward with any kind of development unless we get clearance from all these people. Am I correct, Mr. Allen, including the school system, water, everything, okay? So that's a given, so whether we agree to it or not today, if we don't get these documents stating that we can move forward, we don't move forward. I want to say about the traffic and the safety, I agree with you. It's, I think, as somebody said, 11 miles of traffic. Like, the problem not only here in Hatchinor Road but throughout Pro County is people drive too fast. I mean, there is no respect for speed limits or for other people, so what you're experiencing on Lake Hatchinor Road, we're hearing it from other parts of the county, so that deals with the safety. The wildlife corridor with the conservation, and someone mentioned that it's not enough for the conservation, for the movement of wildlife. I heard that, but I'm looking at it, and I'm saying it's pretty good. It's better than not having it at all, so I'm glad that we're going to have some conservation area in this side, and therefore keep the wildlife going from north to south. Someone said not compatible, and I'm glad that it was brought up. It's not compatible to the south, but you cannot ignore the development that's taken place in Poinciana, especially when I'm looking at the map as I speak, especially when I'm looking to the left, to the west of the proposed unit, and we have houses that are going to be built there. That's the Lake Deer to the north of this property, I hear that probably won't be built on because it's wetland. I've heard that before, and actually it has taken place. So all throughout Poinciana, we have development, so when I look at compatibility, I'm thinking I can't say that this is not compatible in this area because there are subdivisions. I'm even looking at Poinciana Neighborhood Village 7 that has 1,589 lots, so the compatibility doesn't even play a role in this area for me. So with all that being said, I'm going to have to approve this development. Any other comments? We have a motion for consideration. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed, like sign. No. Three to one. Thank you. Any more business, officer? Sure. Any other business? We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.