Planning Commission on 2023-08-02 9:00 AM

Good morning. It is now 9 o'clock. We're going to call the meeting to order. First roll of business, roll call for determination of quorum, please. Becky Troutman. Here. Rennie Heath. Here. David Dalton, I am present. Tommy Addison. Here. Robert Beltran. Here. Brooke Agnini. Here. And Sean Harper. Here. Madam Chair, we have a quorum. Thank you very much. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, Board, you have been provided the minutes from our last meeting. We need to make a motion or discussion about the adoption of those minutes. Madam Chair, move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Any opposed? All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Next on the agenda is the changes to the agenda. Yes, ma'am. Only one change today. That's number 8, LDCU 2023-19, the mine and mill aggregate case that is being continued to September 6th. Okay. We need a motion or a discussion. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. The, um, so again, if you are here to be part of case number 8 that is on the board, mine and mill aggregate, that is moved to September the 6th. So if you are here for that case, it will not be heard today. All right. And I will turn it over to Ms. Voss to explain our general procedures, please. Good morning. I'm going to read the general procedures and then go over quasi-judicial procedures. So if you'll just bear with me, it'll take a few minutes. All right. General procedures, the Office of Planning and Development will introduce the case and disclose any responses to the notification which were not already provided to the Planning Commission in their packets. The Office of Planning and Development will present their staff report and recommendation. Anyone in the audience who wishes to speak and present testimony on a case will be sworn in. The applicant and others in support or opposition of the case will be given the opportunity to speak. The applicant will be given the opportunity to respond to any opposition testimony. The commission will discuss the case and vote on the matter. Expedited hearing procedures. Expedited hearing procedures may be used by the Planning Commission under the following circumstances. There is no opposition to the case present at the hearing, and the recommendation of the Office of Planning and Development is for approval, and all of the commission members present wish to use this procedure. Level 3 reviews. Pursuant to Section 906 of the Polk County Land Development Code, on Level 3 reviews, the Planning Commission may approve the applicant's request, deny the applicant's request, or approve the request with additional conditions. Pursuant to Section 921 of the Land Development Code, the applicant or any substantially affected interest may appeal the final decision of the Planning Commission to the Board of County Commissioners by filing a formal application with the Land Development Division and paying the application fee. The appeal must be filed with the Land Development Division within seven calendar days of the Planning Commission hearing. The Board of County Commissioners shall set a date and time for a de novo hearing. If a party decides to appeal a decision made by the Planning Commission with respect to any Level 3 review, he or she will need a record and may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made. The record includes all testimony and evidence given at the hearing. Each person or party that qualifies to file such an appeal must independently exercise their right of appeal in order to preserve that right. A party cannot and should not rely on their right to appeal being preserved by someone else filing an appeal on the same matter. Please be advised that a party may withdraw their appeal to the Board of County Commissioners prior to that de novo hearing. If one party withdraws their appeal and another party fail to file an appeal, there will be no appeal or hearing on the matter before the Board of County Commissioners. The application fee will not necessarily be refunded for such a withdrawal. Please also be advised that if a de novo application is filed with the Board of County Commissioners to be recognized during that de novo hearing as organized opposition, you must either file the application for de novo hearing or receive written authorization from at least five entities or individuals to speak on their behalf against the application. And they have agreed to waive the ability to speak during the public comment portion of the de novo hearing. Level 4 reviews. Pursuant to Section 907 of the Land Development Code, the Planning Commission's decision on a Level 4 review is a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners, and the Board of County Commissioners will ultimately decide the matter. Madam Chair, would you like for me to swear on the witnesses for the cases today? Yes, please. So if you're going to address the Planning Commission on any case, please go ahead, stand up, raise your right hand, and answer out loud to the following question. This includes anyone in the audience that plans to speak for or against a case. We need you to be sworn in, please. If you have any inclinations that you're going to speak, you need to go ahead and do it now. Okay. Do you swear or affirm the testimony and evidence you provide today is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And then our housekeeping item, we need to admit the county land planners as expert witnesses. We've done this in all the prior meetings, but if you want to ask any of them as to their background or expertise, please feel free to do so at this time. I'm not seeing any. If we could just have a motion to accept staff as expert witnesses in the field of land planning. So moved. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? They are considered experts. Okay. And then if we have any experts of applicants, land planning, engineers, or otherwise, you can tender them at this time or wait until your case is called. Okay. Lastly, let me go through the quasi-judicial proceedings because we have some quasi-judicial land use hearings today. Today's agenda includes quasi-judicial land use hearings, which means the action entails applying land development policies to a specific land development application in a fair and impartial manner. The commission's review is limited to two areas, consistency and compatibility. Regarding consistency, the commission must determine whether the application is consistent with both the comprehensive plan and the land development code. And the staff report and presentation provide you with expert analysis and opinion regarding the application criteria and a recommendation as to whether the application is consistent with those criteria. Regarding compatibility, the commission must determine whether the application is compatible with the surrounding area. The commission will be presented with testimony and evidence at the hearing, both written and oral. By law, the only evidence the commission can consider is competent substantial evidence, which means evidence that is sufficiently relevant and material that a reasonable mind would accept is adequate to support a conclusion. The following items are competent substantial evidence, evidence that is fact-based and relevant to the applicable criteria, staff reports and staff presentations. Citizen testimony can be competent substantial evidence so long as it is fact-based. And can include testimony regarding subjective matters that do not require expertise, such as aesthetic incompatibility of a project with the surrounding neighborhood. However, popularity polls, petitions, testimony that is hypothetical, speculative, based on fear, or consists of generalized statements that do not address the land development code criteria are not competent substantial evidence. For example, fear that the project will cause increased traffic and crime is not competent substantial evidence. When expertise is required for technical issues like traffic, engineering, drainage, wetland impacts, school and utility capacity, light and noise pollution, or the application's impact on property values, citizen testimony is not competent substantial evidence unless the witness is qualified as an expert in that area. Lastly, please be advised the board is experienced in these matters and is able to discern what is legally relevant to an issue and what is not. Information that is irrelevant or repetitive only serves to frustrate and unnecessarily 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, disrespectful sounds or utterances while another is speaking are unacceptable and you will be asked to leave the chambers for the remainder of the day. And that's it. All right. So first and foremost, thank you all for coming. There is audio and visual out in the lobby. So if you are here to speak to a case that is later on down the agenda, please, if you want to make yourself comfortable, go into the lobby. You can hear and see everything that is going to be said. But if I were you standing back there for a few hours would not be very desirable. But of course, that is your choice. So she went over the legal information to kind of give you a flow of how today will go. For each case, first staff will come up and present the case. After staff has presented the case, we will then open it to the applicant. The applicant will present their case. Once the applicant has presented their case, then we'll open the public portion of the meeting. If you would like to speak for or against a case, again, you need to be sworn in. You will have to state your name and address for the record, and you will be given three minutes to speak. We will adhere to that three minutes. Obviously, if we do not, you could see that we could be here for well over a day. So I just ask that everyone be respectful in that. Again, this is about civility. This is a public meeting. If you want to get into cheering and booing or anything like that, that will delay the meeting. We may have to stop, and then you will have to ask to be leave. We ask that everyone be respectful. These can get emotional, but again, we ask that you be respectful to one another. Please make sure that your cell phones are turned off. And as we get to a case, I can imagine that in reviewing this case, we know that the majority of the people here are here for one case in particular. And before we start that case, we will go over some logistics so that we can try to cue people up so that we can move along in a timely manner. So with that, I do believe we are ready for our first case. Good morning. The first case is LDCPA S 2023-5. It's a small-scale conference of plan amendment called the Nichols PM to ARR case. It's 19.32 plus minus acres. It's going from phosphate mining to agriculture residential rule. The property is on the north side of Nichols Road, east of Honors Road, west of Mount Carmel Church Road, and south of Highway 60, south of Mulberry, in sections 8, 9, Township 30, and Range 23. It includes several different parcels by various property owners. It's in the rural development area. Robert Bolton is the case planner. And in terms of the advertisement, 43 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. Seven signs were posted to the property on July 14th. And the legal advertisement was published in the ledger on July 14th. And no responses were received. Madam Chair, I'd like to move to expedite this case. We have a motion to expedite. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Is there anyone in the audience that is here to speak for or against this case? Okay. Seeing none, we have a motion and a second to expedite. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Please expedite. Good morning. Robert Bolton with land development. Like Shonda said, this is a LDCPA S 2023-5 nickels phosphate mining to ARR. It's a small scale future land use change on approximately 19.32 acres. It is located in the rural development area. It consists of 29 individual parcels. 21 are currently improved, 19 with single family or mobile homes, one with a U.S. post office, one with a church. The other eight are currently vacant. This site has historically been residentials with some of the houses dating back to the 1920s. It has never been owned or in a phosphate mining plan. The subject site meets the criteria of policy 2.114, allowing for the requested change from PM to ARR. The former zoning of the site was R3 and a section of it was C4 prior to the adoption of the land development code and comp plan. This change allows for the existing nickels community to become a conforming use because residential single family is not permitted within PM. The impact of the requested land use change would not significantly impact any public services. It is consistent with comprehensive plan and land development code. And again, staff recommends approval. With this, I'll stand up for questions. Any questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant, which is also the county one in the same. So we are back to the public portion of the meeting. We are under expedited procedures, but is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, the public portion is open and closed. And we're back to the board for discussion and our motion. Chair, move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. Becky Troutman. For the motion. Bernie Heath. For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Agnini. And Sean Harper. For the motion. Madam Chair, I'm unanimous. All right. Thank you very much. Next case, please. Good morning. Shonda Bennett with the Land Development Division. The next case is LDCPA S 2023-6. It's another small-scale comprehensive plan amendment on approximately 1.06 acres. The request is to change convenience center and residential low to office center. It's east of Old Lake Wilson Road, northeast of Ronald Reagan Parkway, west of Old Kissimmee Road, south of Florida Avenue, north of the city of Davenport, and south of Osceola County in Section 12, Township 26, Range 27. It's also in the Transit Supportive Development Area, and it does have some floodplains and wetlands on site. And in terms of the advertisement, 25 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. One sign was posted on the property on July 14th, and the legal advertisement was published in the Lakeland Ledger on July 14th, and no responses were received. This shows the general location of the subject site in the northeast part of the county in the Ronald Reagan Selected Area Plan. It's north of Ronald Reagan Parkway between Old Kissimmee, I'm sorry, Old Lake Wilson Road and Old Kissimmee Road, not too far from the Fantasy Island conditional use case you heard a little bit ago. It's also in the historic area of Loughman, so there are some older structures in the community. Dollar General, Frontier Communications Facility, old fire station that the county doesn't use as a fire station anymore to the southeast of the site. The fire station's been moved to U.S. 1792. There's a post office as well directly south of the site. There's some older homes going back, obviously, several decades. The original and old, over 100-year-old schoolhouse for Loughman is not too far from the site, but it's now used as a civic center. This is the current land use. You can see the majority of the land use is residential low or residential medium. Right around the subject site is Convenience Center at the intersection of Old Lake Wilson Road and Ronald Reagan Parkway, and then, of course, Office Center. So this is really an extension of the Office Center, and there's just a little corner there of Convenience Center, so most of the property is residential low. And then if it's adopted, of course, the Office Center. In terms of the impacts, schools are Loughman, Shelley, Boone Middle School, Davenport. Those have some capacity, although residential really isn't permitted in Office Center. The nearest park is Loughman. The sheriff, fire, and EMS have standard response times and distances to the subject site. The utility provider is Polk County. Level of service for Ronald Reagan Parkway is level of service C. It's projected to be that way. However, certainly I'm sure many of you know that this area of the county has got lots of traffic, and I did these two photographs show a very disparaging type of transportation situation. On the right, there was no traffic, but on the lower left, it's backed up. So, but it's expected in an urban area like this, so staff doesn't expect the Office Center to degrade the level any significant than it currently is today. This is standing on the site looking east. The power pole is basically the western edge of the site. The driveway would be further beyond that pole, and you can see there's sidewalks along the roadway. This is looking south. The property owner currently owns the parcels to the west and to the east of the site, so there's no direct residential on either side of it, and the property owner would have to access Ronald Reagan through the square that I've outlined in red. There are a significant amount of wetlands on this particular property, which is one of the major reasons why it's not developed yet, and Dollar General had some issues with that in terms of you can see how their building has been squeezed to the far west of the site. But the property owner took the time to delineate the wetlands and talk to the Water Management District, and you can see how he's designated that here. So without the expansion of the Office Center, there really is not much room for much of any kind of office, so the expansion allows the applicant to have a more developable area and have a significant useful office there. The other concern is with connection to sewer. The sewer connection is actually in the middle of the right-of-way, so it's very difficult for this kind of intensity to connect to it. The closest is to the Dollar General, but we'll have to work that out with the applicant when we get with Level 2 review, the engineering site plan, and work with our utilities division on that particular issue. But other than that, staff does recommend approval. It's consistent with the Office Center criteria, which allows it to be in an isolated area or adjacent to an activity center, and it meets those criteria here. It's consistent with the Conference of Plan and Land Development Code and compatible with the surrounding area, and I'll stand for any questions. Madam Chair, I have a question, staff. Shonda, on this site plan that you're showing for the proposed future land use, there's a little piece that's outside of the site area that you're showing there that's highlighted in yellow. Is that still going to be part of this comp plan amendment? Sir, I'm not exactly understanding what you're talking about. Okay, the slide that you got up there where your cursor is right there, there's a little sliver of land that's going to, is that going to stay residential? That would stay residential. Are you going to have a little piece in the middle of everything that's going to be residential? Yeah, normally we certainly do not like that. No. But the applicant, the property owner owns that, and it's wetlands. Okay. So, managing the pluses and minuses of the case, it made more sense to allow the office center to be expanded. Plus, and it's got proper frontage on Ronald Reddick Parkway as well. Okay, thank you. Any other questions of staff at this time? Okay, seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. While he's walking forward, I also, I forgot to mention, my apologies, Mr. Ziskell brought this up. You do not have to fill out a form to speak today, so if you are looking for that, please note that that is not required. Anyone can speak, and we'll just, again, name and address for the record at that time. Hi. Good morning. Name and address. I bought this piece of property. I have to stop you, sir. Name and address for the record, please. Thank you. My name is Zach Syed. I own this piece of parcel. My address is 8358 Lower Perth Circle, Orlando, Florida. I bought this piece of property when I moved to Florida, and at that time, I didn't know there are good land, bad land, and wet land. So, I bought that, and I became very good in buying bad lands. I have other lands that are also like this because I was looking for a deal. So, finally, once I bought this, then I end up with it, can't sell it. So, I have to go through delineation, plus then I went to Southwest Florida Water Management District. I got it project area approved, sealed on the delineation lines and everything. So, what my plan is to build an animal hospital clinic, vet clinic, because that area is growing so fast. There are 350 apartments a quarter mile from here. Then Providence is also going to build 550 apartments. They applied for it. So, and there is Publix now, O'Reilly, Auto Parts coming, Duncan Donate, 7-Eleven. So, but in that area, around five miles area, there's no wet services. And by having this, I will serve the community for their pets. They are part of everybody's home. So, that's the plan. So, if you look at this, the yellow is, yeah, the pink one, the yellow is the 20-foot buffer. And, yeah, 20-foot buffer. So, I consider everything, like, how much the buffer is. And this building, the 3,600 square foot building, is off of wetland and flood zone. So, I think by having this in the community, that would be a really good addition to that area, because that area is growing so fast, and it's going to be gateway to Orlando, the Davenport area, to Disney World and everything, and the developments going on, that we, I think that we need this office there. All right. Thank you, sir. Any questions of the applicant? Okay. Seeing none, thank you. At this time, we'll open the public portion of the meeting. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? We have our very own Vanna today. Seeing none, we'll close the public portion of the meeting and bring it back to the board for a motion and or discussion. Madam Chair, move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. Robert Beltran. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. Sean Harper. Ronnie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Troutman. For the motion. Madam Chair, unanimous. All right. Thank you very much, and I wish you better luck in your land buying. Welcome to Florida. The next case is LDCPA S2023-7 Caspian Road. The future, it's a future land use designation change from development regional impact to residential low. It's a small-scale conference plan amendment. The partial is north of Marigold Avenue, east of Lake Miriam Creek Drive, south and west of Caspian Road in Point Siena, and east of the city of Haines City in Section 33, Township 27, and Range 28. The property owner's Paul Hogan's site is about 1.05 acres. It's also in the utility enclave area. The case planner is Mark Bennett, and in terms of the advertisement, 75 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. One sign was posted to the property on July 1st. A legal advertisement was published in the Lakeland Ledger on July 14th, and no responses were received. And we also, Mr. Bennett may go into this, but the applicant, the property owner, his contact was unexpectedly unable to be here today. But he submitted a letter asking that the Planning Commission continue to hear the case and take action on it today. Okay, and again, there's been no opposition that's been received, is that correct? Correct. Okay, let me just check. Is there anyone in the audience that is here today to speak for or against this case? Okay. Madam Chair, move to expedite. All right, well, let me just check with Ms. Voss as far as the legal proceeding. Yeah, I'm okay with you all going forward with it. Okay, so we're cleared legally since the applicant is not here. We have a motion to expedite. Do we have a second? Second. We do have a second. So, again, just to be under expedited procedures, is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, we have a motion and a second for expedited procedures. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please expedite. Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Mark Matt, Land Development Division. As Shonda mentioned, this is a request from, it's a requested small-scale comp plan amendment from DRI to residential low. It's located in Point Siena. Next couple slides will show the location. This is a good slide that shows the location of the site. The reason for the request is that in the Point Siena master plan, the property is designated as a church. However, the applicant wishes to use it for a single-family residential, the anticipated development proposal will be one house there. As you can see by the map, adjacent properties are platted with the intent of single-family residential. The adjoining properties are designated for residential uses. It's mostly undeveloped. There are a couple houses that are occurring in the area, and this area will show it here. So, to summarize, staff finds it consistent with the comp plan, consistent with land development code. It's considered compatible based on existing and proposed uses, and we recommend approval. And I'll stand for any questions. Thank you. Any questions of staff? Okay, seeing none, we also know that the applicant is not here, so we will waive the applicant presentation. Again, we are under expedited procedures, but is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, the public portion is open and closed. Back to the board for discussion and or motion. Madam Chair, move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Agnini. Sean Harper. For the motion. Rennie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it passes 6-1. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next case is LDCPAS 2023-9, Jameson North, Conference of Plan Amendment for a Small Scale. It's a future land use designation change from phosphate mining to industrial and business park in the rural development area. The subject site is located south of 60, east of Highway 37, north of Jameson Road, and west of Old Highway 37, and south of the city of Mulberry, in Section 35, Township 30, Range 23. Property owner is Mims Hammocks, LLC. The parcel is approximately 49.08 acres, and in terms of the advertisement, 52 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. Three signs were posted on the property on July 14th. A legal advertisement was published in the Lakeland Ledger on July 14th. No responses were received. We have received several phone calls about the case, and we do anticipate that there are some property owners and residents in the audience today for the case, and J.P. Sims is the case planner. All right. Seeing no motion to expedite. Just to confirm, is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Okay. All right. Then we will call you when the time comes. Thank you. Good morning. J.P. Sims of Land Development. The request, Old Highway 37, Jameson Road North Comprehensive Plan Amendment, is asking to change 49.0 acres of phosphate mining into industrial and business park center. 39.08 acres would be towards the industrial, and 10 acres would be for the business park center. The subject site is located north of Jameson Road, west of Old Highway 37, south of County Road 640, east of State Road 37, and it is south of the city of Mulberry. Staff does recommend approval. So you can see the location. This is the city of Mulberry right here, County Road 640, and Bradley Junction is to the south of this. So this is a 2022 aerial showing the context of the area. So this is part of the old Pebbledale Mine. State Road 37 runs right here. This is Jameson Road with Old Highway 37. Tico has built Substantio Solar Farms out here in the vicinity, and this is the Rolling Hill subdivision, and Transfoss is to the north on Old Highway 37. There is a CSX rail yard that is right here on the west side of the subject site, and the rail line does continue to move south, so it does directly abut the parcel. Pebbledale Road runs from the north. As a closer look, you can see that the subject site sits in an undeveloped parcel of land that used to be part of the Pebbledale Mine, as mentioned before. It has finished the reclamation process, and there is the Transfoss company that's still active to the northeast of the site. And the CSX rail yard, as I mentioned before, does run along the west side of the site. The current future land use is phosphate mining, and as mentioned before, the reclamation process was completed for this site, which makes it adequate for future development of other uses. The intended industrial usage is actually a fairly similar intensity to what the phosphate mining would be, and the Business Park Center is there as a way of buffering from the residential use to the east, so it allows for the industrial to be there, but the Business Park Center would face old 37, so that way that you're not seeing the industrial from the residential area. So this is a 1994 aerial that I pulled showing that the land had been churned up at one time to show the mining. You can see all the different mining in the areas surrounding it, and this is looking east down Jamieson Road when I went out there to post the signs. The site is over here to my left, and you can see that there's the vegetation along Jamieson Road, and then this is looking northwest, so you have State Road 37 in the distance. This is the actual site, and then you can see from where I was the CSX rail yard from where I was standing. Looking west down Jamieson, this is the CSX rail line, so the actual railroad crossing is right here. The current road is sitting at about 20 feet, and the site is over here to my right, and it was recently redesignated as a local commercial road, which is appropriate usage for commercial or industrial purposes. And then looking down North Old Highway 37, the residential area is over here to my right, and then the subject site is over here to the left, and you can see the dense vegetation that has grown up over this site over time. So as far as impacts go, there is no anticipated usage of any residential on the site, so the schools will not be impacted. The closest park is .14 miles east from the site at the south end of the Rolling Hills neighborhood. There is sheriff, fire, and EMS available for this site. The water and sewer is, like I said, equivalent to what it would have been for the phosphate mining, so it's not really any more intense than it was. And there is available capacity in the surrounding roads for PM peak hours. The closest wetlands to the east of the subject site, so there are no wetlands that would be impacted on this parcel. So the staff recommends approval based on the fact that, like I said, Jameson Road was recently classified as a local commercial road, which is appropriate for this usage. The business park center on the southeast corner of the subject site acts as a step down in intensity to buffer the residential uses to the east, and industrial uses are nearby, so it is not out of context. So it's not the only industrial that will be in the area. Phosphate mining does allow for the transition of industrial and business park center per our LDC policy, and the usage is consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code. And with that, I will stand for questions. Any questions of staff at this time? Madam Chair, quick question for staff. The business park center, that defaults to BPC1, correct? The lowest intensity? Yes. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant at this time. Oh, mine? Good morning, Madam Chair, Planning Commission members. My name is Dave Carter. I'm a professional engineer. Address is 137 5th Street, Northwest, Winter Haven. Both Tom and Patrick Mims are here today. They're the owners of the property. Just want to give you some background of sort of why we're here and what the request is about. They've owned this property for about 13 years. Back about 10 years ago, Mims approached us. They owned, as you can imagine, a number of properties in this area, most of it phosphate mining, land use, and indicated that they wanted to try to do some industrial development. And we did a land use change on seven or eight parcels back about 10 years ago. So the parcels, northwest of us is industrial and southwest of us, both were changed from phosphate to industrial during that time, among another four or five or six parcels. Mr. Mims indicates that those parcels, the lion's share of them are either spoken for or we've got uses that we're doing on them. And so he's running out of land, industrial area. There is a need for it in this area. You may recall a couple of months ago the governor came down and looked at the new hydrogen facility that's being planted, and that's just northeast of us on this other parcel up here in the north. So we've seen a lot of industrial development in the area. We initially looked at this site. You'll note that on the west side there is a rail yard, and so the odd shape, as you see kind of that tail going up, enables us to place a spur line should we have a user that wants rail access. We have the ability to do that. So that's why that odd shape on there. But we initially looked at the entire site for industrial, but we recognized that, you know, with rolling hills right next door that a step down would be appropriate. I think it was mentioned if the land use is approved today, it goes to BPC, BPC-1. BPC-1 is the lightest industrial the county has. Any activity occurring in a BPC-1 district has to occur within the building itself other than just loading or unloading, you know, in a dock. Any manufacturing, anything that's occurring, fabrication, anything like that has to occur inside the building. What that does is cuts down on noise, it cuts down on dust, it cuts down on the visual effects of having, you know, materials and things going on outside in like a lay-down yard. And so it's a very light, it is industrial types, warehousing type facilities. But, again, those uses that typically would be offensive to residences are done indoors. And so we looked at the rolling hills, and we looked at a strip that we could fully buffer those folks from the industrial use as a step down, as staff indicated. I've got some photos. Okay, good. This is a photo, and this is looking at the northeast corner of the BPC looking south. On the aerial, you may have noted there's about a 200-foot strip of heavily wooded area that when you come out of the Rolling Hills subdivision, this is what you're going to see. This is on the north point looking back. If you come out of – Williams Road is the road that if you were to exit that development, what would you, you know, what would you see? And this is sitting back on that road, I don't know, 50 or 75 feet. You know, and we often indicate that we're going to create buffers, and that's a viable separation between different intensity uses. And as you're all aware, oftentimes that buffer is brand new, has to be planted. In this case, we've got a very substantial buffer existing between the BPC and the residential to the east. And so we felt that made this site opportune for what we're proposing. Just as a matter of form, Madam Chair, we agree with staff's review that the sites meet both the development and the location criteria. Again, we're – the industrial on the west is a bordering on a rail yard, and we have the ability to do some activity with that rail system should the person developing want to get rail access. The road to our south is – Jameson Road, it's about 1,000 feet from there, from our corner to 37. So we've got very good access to an arterial road that's a state-maintained highway. We've got good access for trucks leaving the site. There are some wetlands – or excuse me, there are some floodplain – no wetlands. There's some floodplain on the site. It's a zone A, undetermined. And so the detailed engineering on that will have to be done at level 2, and, of course, we'll have to abide by whatever rules Swift-Munday County has in terms of floodplain management at that time. That's all I have today for you on this case. I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have. Excuse me. Any questions of the applicant? Madam Chair. So, Dave, you've got this site just under 50 acres, so it's a small-scale comp plan amendment. Yes, that was strategically done. I'm sure it was. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not so much avoiding review, to be honest. It's just a process and time involved. Right. I mean, you understand the development, what several – two, three months added on does to you. And so it was a strategic move to avoid the additional time, basically. Right. And I just want to clarify the piece. If you could go back – I know it was in the staff report. The one little piece that would buffer industrial along to the ARR, that is the piece that would be just left as the buffer. Is that correct? Okay. On the map in front of you, it says VPC. That strip is, oh, I'm guessing about 500 feet wide. The buffer is on the east side of that right next to the road. So those folks coming out of the subdivision in the morning going to work or whatever, they've got a strong existing buffer they're going to see that we're going to maintain. And we have to, by code, have a buffer. And what I'm just simply relaying is there's already a great buffer already there. We don't have to put small trees in and wait five years for it to grow. It's already there. So that's what I was pointing out. That VPC is not entirely buffer. The buffer would be up next to the road. Right. Okay. And, again, you would benefit from leaving the buffer as is because it's much more substantial than if you were to come in and plant new stuff. Right. We don't have to plant trees. We don't have to go to that expense. And the neighborhood benefits from the existing trees remaining. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Any other questions of staff? Just one more for Dave. Can you just kind of put the mouse on where you were standing looking at the buffer? Sure. Can you see my mouse move? Yeah. Okay. I was standing in this corner of VPC looking southwest. That was just sort of the first picture. Whoops. Help me out. I've messed it up. Thank you. Do you want to get that? Well, that kind of helped right there. That's fine. That's fine. That view. And then Williams Road, just so you know, where Williams Road comes out, I think right about here. Okay. So the second picture where the stop sign and that was about right there. So I was trying to give you kind of the whole frontage there, what you're looking at. The buffer's not just one spot. It's pretty much that whole frontage. Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Seeing none at this time, we'll open the public portion of the meeting. Anyone who would like to speak for or against this case, please make your way to the podium here in the middle. Name an address for the record, and if you have anything that you need to use as far as technology, we'll have a staff person assist you. Madam Chairman, if I may, I just wanted to make a point that the code doesn't require them to keep that buffer. Correct. Okay. So you know. Okay. Thank you. Good morning, sir. Name an address for the record. Larry Patterson. I stay on Patterson Street, 40 Patterson Street, in the Rolling Hills subdivision. And I just got a question or two. You're talking about a buffer. You got a few oak trees right there. It's not completely buffered because most of the area across from Mr. K's house is just open past the land. It's not oak trees. It's not a buffer. And when you say buffer, you're talking about a visual buffer, a buffer for noise. You know, explain that to me. And just so that you know, the applicant will come back and address any issues if he would so want to do that. So you can ask the questions to us. We won't necessarily have the answer, but we're listening to the questions, and then we can interact. Yeah. It seems like everything they want to dump on our community. You tried to get a landfill. You got the hydrogen fuel plant less than a half a mile as the crow flies. You know, we don't know what's going to come of that about emissions. You know, you got transverse. You get very little access. The road, oh, Highway 37, it stays muddy when it rains because of the stuff the trucks dump out. Jameson Road needs to be paved real bad. It's full of potholes. So, you know, it's for commercial use. But the trucks ruined Jameson Road. It just seems like they want to dump everything on our community. Why? Why is that? You know, we value our property just like you guys value yours, you know? All right. Anything else, sir? That'll be it. You know, I'm just putting it out there. Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else in the audience? Again, if you're going to speak, go ahead and cue yourself. There's a few seats here in the front, and then that way we can make the best use of time. Name and address for the record. And, again, there will be a timer up there at the front to kind of help assist you with the use of time. Good morning. You can adjust that mic as needed so we can hear you better. My name is Brenda Nichols. I live at 6680 Old Highway 37. I heard the gentleman mention the trucks that's going to be coming in the area. The trucks are killing our roads. We have a railroad track there on Old Highway 37 right near my house. The trucks have killed that crossing. The railroad has been messed up now for two years. We've been calling the county. No one has came there to do anything about it. The trucks from Transfoss, they're ruining our roads. They're not supposed to come through our community. This is what's going to happen. The trucks are going to be coming through our community, tearing up our roads, tearing up our streets. And that's my feeling of whatever you guys got coming into our community. We don't want it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Again, feel free to pull that mic down so that we can hear you. Thank you. My name is Susan McDuffie. My address is 95 Bruton Street, Mulberry, 33860. I live in Rolling Hills. Some of my neighbors and community members have asked me to express their concerns. And naturally, I'm also here as a resident to express my own. Some of us are here today because the property being proposed for future land use designation change to industrial is located very close to our homes. In the case of Rolling Hills, a substantial portion of the proposed industrial sites would be directly across the street from our homes. We are reasonable people, but some things cut too close. We are not just talking about industries being down the road from our homes or around the bend. We are also talking about right across the street. The proposed buffers are insufficient to make up for the disruption and all of the other problems that this development would cause. Rolling Hills is on the east side of the narrow two-lane country road that is Old 37. The property at issue is on the west side of Old 37. Old Highway 37, that narrow two-lane road, would be the primary line between our homes and the proposed industrial site. Any industrial development on the proposed site would literally be right up on top of our neighborhood. Since any industrial development would, in effect, also become a part of our neighborhood, for us as residents, that's too close. We know that the proposed change covers a lot of acreage, including land on both sides of Jamison Road, which also substantially impacts Bradley. For both Rolling Hills and Bradley, Jamison Road is a primary access road to our homes. Jamison Road... I'm going to have to ask you to wrap it up, ma'am. Okay, Jamison Road also is a narrow two-lane road. All right, thank you. We are asking that you vote to deny the requested change. Thank you, ma'am. And I appreciate the residents for this case queuing yourself. It does help with the use of time. So make your way forward, please. Good morning. My name is Cassandra... I need you now to pull that mic back up so we can hear you. Thank you. Hey, good morning. My name is Cassandra Howard. I live at 155 Roberts Avenue in Bradley Junction. In addition to the concerns about the damage to the roads and the railroads there, I heard the applicants say that the closest park is 21 miles away. That's not true. There is a small community park in Bradley Junction that's within three miles of Jamison Road. Also, he said that the buildings would contain the noise and the sight of whatever industry is coming into that area. I'm concerned about any air emissions, whether there will be toxic emissions and whether there will be smells. I'm also concerned about what type of things will seep into the soil, if we should be concerned about that, what things will be dumped into that soil in terms of, I don't know what type of industry it will be, but I do know that there will be some type of runoff, and those things are concerning me, and I just, I forget the lady who spoke in front of me, but I do urge you to say no, because it does seem that you want to bring whatever is dangerous, whatever is unpleasant into this area. I was offended when it said it's sparsely populated. It may be sparsely populated, but it's populated by people, and we want to live. We want to live healthily. We want, we value our property value. We value our lives, and I would like you to take that into consideration when you're considering this project. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. You're up. My name is Eugene Kendrick. My address is 10 Williams Street, Mulberry, Florida, which is right across the street from the proposed location. I remember when they were mining that area, they put up buffers, and my kids stayed awake all night long. Had to go to school. Even though I'm retired, I still work. I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go to work. And I don't want to be disturbed, and I don't want my neighbors to be disturbed. And I noticed that in the area, well, not the area view, the road view, you showed a fence there. That fence that is there is actually a house there. My house is directly across the street from there. Nobody's considering the feelings of the residents. And I want to reference something real quickly because I'm upset with Governor DeSantis because he also did something with the hydrogen plant without even consulting the residents there. Don't you know that we are people? We pay good money for the property and the homes that we had built there. And we expect for our elected officials to keep us covered because you're not elected by your party, even though you may be, but you are elected to consider the concerns of all of the people. And we are people just like anybody else. And let me say this to you all. Put it in your community. This is not a sporting event. And if we start this, I will ask that we will have to remove people. Just for clarification, no one on this board is elected. They all serve here as volunteers to this community and as a nonpartisan serving that we all do. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak for? Come on up. Adjust the microphone as needed, please. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Luella Gardner. I live 300 William Street in Mulberry, Florida, considered as the Rolling Hills subdivision. And I just like, I just have a question and a comment to make. Okay. When CCC come into our neighborhood to, with those trucks, I'm very asthmatic. I have a lung disease. I have lupus. I am sickly with a lot of immune diseases. So, I know for a fact that the CCC plant that is there, I don't know if it's the, what kind of chemical it is that they dumps in those trucks. But whatever it is, it's yellow. And when you pass through on 037 going into Mulberry, I almost passed out when it was, they used to bring that stuff into farmland. And when I go through there now, it takes my breath away. And another thing, when you're talking about building all those industrial plants, I live on William Street. I have to come down William Street most of the time. And I don't really think that it's a wise idea for them to build industrial plants in our neighborhood. We really do value our neighborhoods. And most of us keep our neighborhoods very nice. Some people have moved in our communities that don't care. But we care about our community. And we try to value our property. So, I would ask you all to please deny this for us. Please, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? The public portion is closed. There will be no further public input. And we will allow the applicant and our staff to come back up and address the concerns as needed. Thank you. Shonda Bennett with Land Development Division. And I just feel it's appropriate, considering the residents that have been there for so long, just to offer what has happened with planning in this community for quite a long time. I could talk about it for hours. But briefly, more than 10 years ago, staff did do an effort of land use planning, went through some existing conditions analysis, and went through different stakeholder input meetings. And it's been certainly a struggle with trying to balance the railroads in the area. And I know we talk about the planners are experts. But what I haven't been able to figure out is with the history of the phosphate mining area, where they placed the mining companies, placed the railroads, and then allowed their towns, the people that worked there, to be next to all of that, which decades down the road generates the desire to have the industrial there. I don't know the answer to that. And when the applicant came in to us, to me, about it, we talked to him about having the building setback as far as he could do that. We even were going to initiate, started to initiate a text amendment to land development code to have more restrictions with warehouses next to residential or any kind of large buildings. And you've heard me say, with many cases over the last year, our concerns with that. But the state decided to change and prevent us from doing that when they passed the law that we can't adopt or propose anything that's more restrictive or further burdensome. So we were not able to process that amendment until the end of next year. So I certainly think it's appropriate to let the planning commission know, the residents, and the applicant, that the impacts of this certainly isn't forgotten on us. Part of the factor with industrial and business park center is the location criteria. And one of the most worst uses that we use, considering what's the significant distance of industrial to residential, as it states in the comp plan, is a use called construction aggregate processing. And in the code, the distance from residential is 200 feet. So considering that, if I could separate this more, I would like to do that if I was, you know, God for the day. But I just thought it's appropriate to give you some of that background. And when you say separate that, are you talking the industrial against residential or BPC against residential? The construction aggregate is only allowed in industrial. It's not allowed in the park center. So that would not be any use that could be used in BPC? Correct. All right. Thank you for that. And again, Ms. Bennett, you definitely have the history of probably any parcel in the county, so we appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity to have some more input. Just to clarify, the plan is correct. There's nothing in the code that says we have to keep a tree, but there is code that says we have to have a buffer along that highway. It doesn't make any sense for us to tear down existing trees and pay good money to put smaller trees in their place, and I just can't imagine doing that. It makes no sense. So we fully intend to keep the existing trees there along that buffer. But correct, code-wise, you could do that if you just decided to, but we're not in that mode. Jameson Road, just to give you an idea on the photo, it's about 1,000 feet from our corner here out to 37. It's on Jameson Road. At level 2, county engineering will look at that road, look if any upgrades are needed. As you heard, there's a large percentage of truck traffic on that road already. There is some damage to the road those trucks have caused, and so we've got to evaluate that as part of the level 2 process. The residential area is to our east, and I just want to let you know, just because the land use is separate between the BPC and the industrial, we're allowed to have cross-traffic within that area. In other words, you could develop it as a unified development. It's just that over in the east side, you can only have a certain amount of uses that are different from the west side. But our expectation is we would exit to the south. I get my – oh, there it goes. Exit to the south and then run west out to 37. That would be a logical truck path. So we don't foresee having trucks running by the residential area. They would use the same road at some time, but, again, there's existing traffic out there. Reference to railroad crossing, we've got to deal with that. You know, the railroad yard is along – on this graphic, it's right along here, and so we hope to have the ability to tie into there if a user needs that kind of thing. You mentioned air emissions. The BPC is a light industrial, and I don't have the list of allowed uses in there, but I would – I'm not going to just guess on that. But as you know, DEP and EPA regulate emissions, and so we've got to deal with that in a proper manner. The hydrogen plant was mentioned that Mr. Mims had something to do with that. He did not. He owned that property at one time, I believe, but there was no activity or no interaction between himself and that use to the north, although we do view it as a positive use. I just wanted to clarify for the record that he wasn't involved in that particular development. Madam Chair, that's all I have for rebuttal. I appreciate your attention today, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Okay, I think we have a couple of questions. Mr. Addison? Yes, sir. Dave, put your cursor up on the AR, please, where the industrial comes out and touches the AR, which is old. Oh, right here, right here. Yes, got you. Getting all of the majority of that land east of Highway 37 in that wetland. Can you pull an aerial up? It might be easier. I think I know what he's asking, but an aerial might be easier. Yeah, there you go. So down here is the closest wetland. Yes, and I just wanted to point out, we cut off the BPC. There's a little bit of industrial on that corner that you're referring to. The reason we did that is the residential area is well to the north of that, and so we felt like we had created enough buffer, you know, between the industrial that even though that little corner is touching the road here, we're well away from the residential area. There is some wetland to the southeast. I believe Mosaic owns the land to the west between us and 37, and that, I think, is a wetland as well. It's on the other side of the tracks. We own the land south of us. So when you look at the property, you've got Mosaic on one side. You've got a huge wetland area to the north. You've got railroad, you have our property to the south, and then you've got the rolling hills directly to the east. That's kind of the general layout. Mosaic owns the strip right on the east side of 37, and then Polk County owns the larger parcel in wetland to the right. That's my understanding, yes. Any other questions of the applicant? Just for clarification, if you would go back, I think, one slide, and let's just clarify with this buffering situation. So, Mr. Carter, you stated that you're not going to remove those trees. So am I correct to make the assumption that those trees would meet the criteria of a buffer that you would plant as well? The county may plant. The county code, as you're aware, has certain criteria, number of trees, number of bushes. They will allow us to use existing vegetation to meet that criteria should that vegetation be there already. So if there's holes in the buffer, we would have to plant. If there's hole sections, you know, which in this case you can see from the aerial, it's pretty thick through there. So if the existing trees meet code, we don't have to do any more. If they're less than code, we have to plant. And they will allow us to count, which makes sense. Why not count an existing tree if it's already there? And our commitment is to meet the code buffering, and we will do that with existing trees to the extent we can that they're there. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Did you have a question, Mr. He? I do not. All right. So at this point, we are back to the board for discussion and or motion. Madam Chair, I'll move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. Brooke Ignini. Sean Harper. Rennie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it passes 6-1. All right. Thank you very much. And with that, we are ready for our next case, please. The next case is LDCPA-S 2023-10. It's the same area, just on the south side of Jameson Road. It's a future language designation change from phosphate mining to industrial in the rural development area. The site is located south of Highway 60, east of U.S. Highway 37, south of Jameson Road, and west of Old Highway 37, and south of the city of Mulberry in Section 35, Township 30, Range 23. Property owner is Mims Hammocks, LLC. This parcel is 22.26 acres, versus the other was 49. In terms of advertisement, 54 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. Three signs were posted to the property on July 14th. A legal advertisement was published in Lakeland Ledger on July 14th, and no responses were received. And J.P. Simms is the app. Madam Chair, move to expedite. We have a motion to expedite. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second to expedite. Is there anyone in the audience that is here to speak for or against this case? Okay. I'm assuming you're here in opposition. Okay. So we are here. We have opposition present, so we're unable to expedite. So please continue with normal procedures. Good morning. J.P. Simms with Land Development. So the LDC-PAS-2023-10 is for the Old Highway 37, Jameson Road South Comprehensive Plan Amendment. So we are in the same area as before, south of the Jameson Road. We are changing 22.26 acres of phosphate mining into industrial. It is located south of Jameson Road, west of Old 37, south of County Road 640, and east of State Road 37, south of the City of Mulberry. And staff does recommend approval. So, like I mentioned before, we're in the same area as before. So this is the outline of the site in question. And as you can see, the site we were just talking about is directly to the north across Jameson Road. There is the rail line that runs directly to the west of the site, as with the north parcel. And we have the Tico Solar Farms over here. And this is Old 37 that runs along the east side of it. So a close-up of the site does show the Jameson Road to the north, the Tico Solar Farms over here to the right. And there is one residential development right here. The current future land use is phosphate mining, just like in the previous case. It is surrounded with industrial to the west and to the south. So this request would fill in the gap between those two uses. So as I said before, like, it would just fill in the spot. Now, something I forgot to mention before was that there actually was a study done out here in July of 2012 by the county called the Bone Valley Selected Area Study. And it does recommend that industrial is actually the most logical use of former phosphate mining areas because it does already have the infrastructure in place to handle that type of usage. So this is the 1994 aerial from before, except now we have the new site outlined where, again, you can see the land was churned up from the mining. And it has finished the reclamation process, so it is suitable to be switched to other uses. Looking north down Old 37, you can see the residential development over here to the right. And then you can see Jameson Road over here to the north where all the power lines are. And then the subject site is over here to the left where the grass is. Looking south down Old 37, you can see the solar panels in the distance from the Tico Solar Farm. And, again, you have the subject site over here to the right. You have a lot more, I'm sorry, a lot less buffering right here along Old 37. And then the same photo as before because you're looking west down Jameson. Again, you have the rail line right here that runs across both sites. And this is the subject site on the south side of Jameson. And then looking at the site from Jameson, there is the just open flat land from the reclamation process. So, as before, the impact will be negligible against any schools because of the fact that there is no residential. It's allowed in industrial land use. The closest park is .15 miles east from the site at the south end of the Rolling Hills neighborhood. There is a share of fire and EMS available in the area. The water and sewer will be equivalent to what the phosphate mining would have used in that area. And there is available capacity on the surrounding roads. Closest wetland is to the east of the site. So, staff's recommendation is based on the fact that Jameson is recently reclassified as a local commercial. The subject site is abutting industrial to the west and the south. And there is the rail line running along the west side of it. So, other uses would not be ideal. So, industrial would be the most logical use of the land with the rail running through it. And the phosphate mining reclamation process does allow for industrial per LDC policy. And with that, I'll stand for question. Okay. Thank you. Any questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. Madam Chair, I'll try to make this brief. I realize you probably heard some of this or most of this already. But just for the record, I'll go ahead and get started. My name is David Carter, professional engineer, 137 5th Street, Northwest Winter Haven. Again, Mr. Mims has owned this land for about 10 to 15 years now. Could you, again, the zoning map would be helpful. The future land use? No, yeah, just, yeah, that one. That's good, yeah. Just to give you some history, the area to the east shows PM over here. Mr. Mims owned that at one time. He actually sold the property to Tico for their solar farm, which is over there. And we've got the land over here to the west between this property and State Road 37. Once again, he sees a need for industrial land to be developed in this area. They're running out of spots to show future developers. And so he's owned this land and wanted to, obviously, the phosphate mining has been built and complete. And so looking at a redirection of use on the property. Graphic-wise, we don't want to improve this road out here to our east. It's not in great shape. Our plan would be, again, to come out on Jameson, turn west, and go down to Highway 37. So in terms of this side road, I just, county engineering, if we wanted to come out there, would make us improve it. And there's a cost factor there. So I think our looking at development, we would exit cleanly onto Jameson Road with the appropriate driveway aprons and so forth, and then drive west across the tracks to 37. That's how we'd get in and out. The odd shape, if you saw on the aerial, there's a wetland in the center there. And so we just avoided that as part of the discussion. That's what created the odd shape. Madam Chair, I think some of the issues that we talked about earlier are in play here. And so we are much further away from the Rolling Hills. We're well south of there. There's one home to our east. Mr. Mims sold that gentleman at home with the expectation there would be development here recently. And so just to let you know, our surrounding property is largely vacant with the exception of TECO and the one house that's on the east side of the road. And I'll stop there because I think you've heard a lot of this already. Any questions of the applicant? Thank you. So at this time, I'll open the public portion of the meeting. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case, please make your way to the podium. And again, we ask that you attend to your electronic devices so they do not cause a disruption to the meeting or the people around you. My name is Susan McDuffie. I live at 95 Bruton Street, Mulberry, Florida, 33860. Industries often bring all the things that many of us live out in the country to avoid. We want to preserve the peace and quiet that we have. We don't want to have to worry about new industry potentially bringing something that could negatively impact our families right to our front doors. Because the requested future land use designation changes are incompatible with our nearby residential neighborhoods, would cause major disruption and congestion and substantially undermine and alter our quality of life. We are asking that you vote to deny the requested change. The overall impact would be negative. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? My name is Eugene Kendrick. I live at 10 Williams Street, Mulberry, Florida. Now I'm speaking on behalf of Bradley because I'm also the pastor of a church in Bradley. We already have a problem, and it's already been talked about with the traffic that transforms. It's already brought into our community, and they're not supposed to be coming through there. We only have three accesses to get out and in of our communities. Now we only have one because now you've taken away Jamison Road. The other road is to go straight down old Highway 37 to Pebbledale to get out of the community. Well, Transfoss has messed that up because our roads are completely contaminated with mud and dust every day. If you take away Jamison, now we have to go back down to Bradley to get out if we want to get out safely without being held up by some of the trucks that's coming through our communities again. And I will say this again. Please, if this were you living in these communities, would you want this? No. Thank you, sir. Anyone else in the audience? Again, my name is Brenda Nichols. I live at 6680 Old Highway 37. I just want to keep in mind, let you guys know that those trucks that you're talking about coming into that industry, they're not going to do what's right and go out of Jamison Road down south to north 37. They come through our resident. They hit the track like they're on international speedway. I have reported, I have called safety managers, nothing is done. Our community is very peaceful. If you want to come spend the night with me, I'll let you see how peaceful it is. We don't need this. Please vote no. Please. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next speaker, please. Again, my name is Luella Gardner, and I reside at 300 William Street, Mulberry, 33860. I've already said what I wanted to say, but I do need to say something else. We have a nice, beautiful golf course below us in Bradley. It's right out of Bradley, but they say it's for it need, and it's a lot of traffic that's in and out, in and out. If they're going to come up into the community and build industrial buildings, why is it that they can't put a nice 7-11, something that's going to enhance some stores or something? We have enough industrial buildings around us now. We really don't need any more. And my concern is really that CCC plant, too, up there in our community. That stuff, I call it, it's some kind of, like, I don't know what it is. I call it sephiric acid, sephiric something. Anyway, I know they used to make it in the mines because my husband used to work in the mines, and he died from some of the chemicals and all that stuff with cancer. And that was enough for me when he passed away from the chemicals. And I know what the chemicals do to me. I cannot take it. Please, please, ma'am and sir, please vote no on this particular propose. Thank you, ma'am. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, the public portion is closed. We'll allow the applicant to come back. If I may, real quickly, Shonda Bennett with Land Development Division again. Certainly I incorporated the comments from the last case. But I forgot to mention the last case that Mr. Sims and I were chatting that we're going to get in contact with roads and drainage about the comments we're hearing today about the roadways and see if we can't have some better information by the board hearing. Okay. I think that would be helpful for the next level as well to understand the roads there. Madam Chair, there was comments about truck traffic through the neighborhood, and I can certainly understand I wouldn't want to have trucks going in front of my house or close to my house. But just to give you an idea, once again, Jameson Road, both sites, the prior case in this site, front on Jameson Road, one north, one in the south. We're about 1,000 feet from this corner out to State Road 37. Looking at the maps, and we try to pull it up for you, but we can't restrict, you know, in America we can't tell people they can't go on a public road. You're not allowed to drive here, although they do have no truck signs. I know they do that. But our goal would be to minimize our cost in gaining access to these properties. The way to do that is to come straight down Jameson Road and enter into both sites as quickly as possible. So I can't tell a truck driver he can't drive on a road, but if I'm sitting here and I want to get up or down 37 in that direction of Lakeland or south, my closest deal is to come 1,000 feet out here and get on a state road that's a straight shot road. So the thought of coming out here and just gratuitously driving along here, which would be beside the Rolling Hill, the likelihood of that is very low. You can't prohibit it, but it's very low. I think that was the main concern about this is an old phosphate site. The county in their locational criteria views industrial future land use as an appropriate land use in the RDA. We have railroad to our west. We've respected the wetlands that are on the property we own. And so I would just leave you with those thoughts and stand for any questions. Madam Chair, I have a question. Dave, are you going to have to improve anything on Jameson Road as far as site access? As you know, we have to go through a level two review with county engineering. We will certainly make the argument that we did not tear up Jameson Road that exists today. So there will be a discussion about what's it going to take to bring Jameson up the road and how much of that is our cost versus the county. Given that the road is existing. So you haven't done a traffic study yet to verify? No, sir. But we know that Jameson Road is in poor condition. The PCI list is poor condition. And you've heard testimony, and I would agree. It's not in great shape. The trucks that are existing trucks using it are tearing the road up. So we're going to have to look at that in level two. If anything, I think you might look at this project as an ability to improve Jameson. Right. Okay. Thank you, Dave. Any other questions from the board? Madam Chair, one quick question for staff. Just to clarify, the request today is completely compatible and consistent with the Polk County Comp Plan and Land Development Code, correct? Yeah, one of the things that we had looked at was any potential less intense uses in the area, just to kind of, you know, see what might better buffer against the ARR. But the problem is that because it's former phosphate mining land and there's the rail line that runs through it, your options of what you can use on that site are very limited. So everything that we've presented is just based on findings of fact of what could be used on that site. Right. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We are at the board for a motion and or discussion. Madam Chair, I'll move to approve LDC-PAS 2023-10. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalt and I am for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Agnini. Sean Harper. Running Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it passes 6-1. Thank you very much. And with that, we are ready for our next case. Good morning. Ian Nance, Land Development. Staff recommends approval of LDCU 2023-15, a request for short-term rental on property located at 3150 Cypress Gardens Road, east of Lake Dexter Circle, west of Dexter Dell Southeast, north of Lake Dexter, east and north of Winter Haven, and section 2, township 29, range 26. For the record, 97 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. One sign was posted on July 6th. An illegal ad was published on July 14th. Staff has logged no responses. Madam Chair, move to expedite. Second. We have a motion and a second to expedite. Is there anyone in the audience that is here to speak for or against this case? Okay. Seeing none, we have a motion and a second to expedite. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Please expedite. All right. Two homes on this individual parcel, implanted parcel, built in the 1940s. The applicant wishes to use this one here on the east for short-term rental. The site's well buffered from the subdivision here to the west by what would exceed a type B landscaping buffer, which is required by code. Have self-storage on the east and offices up to the north. It's on the north side of Lake Dexter, less than a mile from Legoland. It's consistent with the comprehensive plan, the land development code, and compatible surrounded uses. Stand for questions. Any questions of staff? So I have a question. When it comes to the short-term rental in the county code, could you refresh my memory on if one is approved? Does it have to be if it was in a platted? As far as then it would, in essence... That's what kind of makes this one unique. We get quite a few short-term rental requests in Winter Haven and subdivisions, but if you approve one lot within a subdivision, it has to apply for all of it, and they get to be controversial. This is an unplatted lot. It's been there for, like I said, the 40s. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. All right. So with that, thank you, staff. We'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. Name and address for the record, sir. Robert Niemeyer, 3150 Cypress Gardens Road. I don't know if there's really much to say. It previously has been like a mother-in-law's quarters or an apartment, and we decided to use it with our proximity from Legoland as a short-term rental. Thank you very much. Any questions of the applicant? Okay. Seeing none, we are under expedited procedures, but again, is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, the public portion is open and closed. We bring it back to the board for discussion and our motion. Madam Chair, move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Ignini. Sean Harper. Ronny Heath. For the motion. And Becky Troutman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Ian Nance again for the record. Staff is recommending approval of LDCU 2023-18, a request for a religious institution and agricultural residential rural land use district, a property located at 3010 Adair Road, east of Huckleberry Road, south of Rooks Road, west of the Osceola County line, and south of Davenport, and section 12, township 27, range 27. For the record, 25 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. One sign was posted on July 6th, and a legal ad was published on July 14th. Staff has logged two letters in opposition and one petition with eight signatures in support of this application. Subject site has access to a privately owned section of Adair Road. The plan is to host church services in a 1,500-square-foot accessory structure on site. Though the request is unique, there's nothing in the code that prevents this in the ARR district with planning commission approval. The structure is well-screened from off-site by existing vegetation, and the accessory structure is over 120 feet from the nearest resident to the north. The plan is to hold services on Sunday mornings, and no accessory schools or child care facilities are planned. As you can see from my site visit pictures, the structure has already been built, with paved ADA parking has been provided. Another picture of the site, and another one from the road. We're not a church of this size. There's not much to review for compliance with the LDC. The structure meets the 50-foot compatibility buffering requirements between residential and non-residential uses. A waiver to paved access will be required if this is approved, but the number of annual average daily trips falls well below the requirements of even a minor traffic study. There are no impacts on utilities or schools, and staff finds the request compatible with surrounding uses and consistent with the Land Development Code and Comprehensive Plan. I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? Okay, seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant. While he's making his way up, any ex-party communications or site visits? None. Thanks. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to stop you real quick. Name and address for the record, please. Shane Tyler, 3010 8 Air Road. I'm also the pastor. So we, prior to this, did have a church here, and I read the opposition, which was from the same person. It's two different letters, but it's the same person. Anyways, we had a church here. We actually originally started out in Hange City, and they sold the property, so we had to move. And I looked and looked and couldn't have found a place. So the first building they showed a picture of, we were holding services there for about two years. Then COVID hit, okay? So all her complaints happened when we moved outside, okay? She never complained, not one time when we were inside, and then she started complaining because, of course, it was loud. But we were trying to be in compliance, so we moved outside, and that's when all the issues happened. I started this process back then, in 2019, and got very discouraged when I heard about all these things that we're going to get done, okay? So we withdraw, okay? And we moved to Hange City. I own an auction there, so we moved there and started having services outdoors. This is Florida. It's hot, okay? So anyways, to make a long story short, we went ahead and built another building. The road that comes down there, about a year ago, I placed millings on the whole road, not just to us, but all the way down, including all the neighbors. There's a lot of people here that we brought with us today that are not against it, that are for it. Some of them went to our church before, and some attend to come this time. And most of them are local neighbors. Throwing this out there, the right-hand side of me is my father-in-law's property. Next to me is my brother-in-law's property. So my father-in-law's five acres, and then this way, my brother-in-law's 15 acres. So it's all local people. And I grew up approximately a mile from there on Rooks Road, so literally lived there my basically whole life. I have three children, and one of them is autistic. And so, I mean, you know, we love to do stuff like that. In the complaints that one of the people made, she based a thing that all the hours of the night, I'm in bed by 9 o'clock, okay? So that's not happening, okay? I used to make fun of Granny for that. But anyways, you get older, you get three kids, you go to bed. So anyways, I'm in bed early every night, so that isn't true. We do, like, service will be on Sunday morning from 10.30 to 11.30, and then it's over. We may have a Wednesday night Bible study, stuff like that. But that's it. I mean, that's all it's going to do. Traffic-wise, it's a private road. The person that did go against it, she lives behind us, so she doesn't even use our private road. And every person that is on our road signed that paper. So, I mean, that's pretty much it. And like I said, there's a lot of people here that's going to say yes. So I just want to, you know, bring that to y'all guys. Do you have any questions? Thank you. No, thank you for coming back and enjoying the process. Thank y'all guys. Is there anyone else in, sorry, so that was the applicant. So we will open the public portion. If there's anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case, please make your way to the podium. Name and address for the record. And you will have a timing device in front of you to use as needed. My name's Terry Scott Smedley, 3225 8A Road, Davenport. I've been living there over 30 years, my wife and I, and my daughter. All of our neighbors in our neighborhood are very close. We help one another. Everyone there is for the church except this, God bless her, this one neighbor. Forgive me with the way I understand it from people who've lived there 40, 50 years. If Jesus Christ himself was out there building a church, she'd have something to say about it. I'm for the church. We want the church, me and my wife, my daughter, enjoy being able to walk a few hundred feet and worship God as we see fit. Pastor Shane even shares the pulpit with me sometimes. So I would ask that you would please allow this to go through. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker. And again, please try to make your comments. Keep it less personal as possible. My name is Mark Bittner. I live at 3010 A. Deer Road. I'm probably the closest person to the church. And it's a nice place. We don't make a bunch of noise or anything. Like you said, when we were doing it outside, it made a little more noise. But we went through a lot of stuff to get this church going. We had to go through Duke Energy and get a lot of stuff approved and through you all also. And like I said, the road improvement has been tremendous. You used to be able to, when it rained a lot, you couldn't even get out a lot from that road. It was so much water on it. And I'd just like to say that, you know, have everybody come out there and check it out if they'd like to. And we invite everybody to the church. We invite the lady to the church also. And that's all pretty much I have to say. I'd like to thank you all for listening to me. And God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hi. My name is Brenda Bittner. And I live at 2719 Rooks Road, Davenport, Florida. I've lived there since 1971. My parents built a house out there. And I moved there since I was six. And I built a house right next door. So I live in that community. And I would like to attend that church, too. I hope you guys approve it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Didn't even get to sit down. Hi. My name is Ken David. I live on 1022 Huckleberry Road. And I have the five acres. It is connected to Shane's property there. All I'm going to say is that he's done a lot of work out there. He's fixed everything up. He's made it so much better and easier for us to live out there. And I've been going to his church when he had it last time. And we all enjoyed it. And it's been great. So, I mean, all the neighbors out there that I know really like it. And they even go. But we do have the one problem. But I don't know what's going on there. But, you know, everything else has been great. I'm just glad they did put it out there because he's really made the whole place a lot better for all of us. I just want to say that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Adjust that mic as needed. Yeah. Good morning. I'm Keith David. And I've been going to church. I need your address, please, for the record. 302 80 Road, Davenport, Florida. Thank you. I'm not far from the church. I'm right close to it. I'm probably closer than the lady that's complaining. But they do it on Sunday at 12 o'clock, you know. They don't have the night church. They only have a morning church. And we go in. And it's in the morning. So, and like I said, I don't hear much noise there. You know, I hear this complaint about that. You know, but I just want to say that it's a great church, you know. And this preacher, Shane Tyler, he helps everybody. And he's helped me. And he's helped communities around there and the people that live there. So, you know, he's a good man. And I think that they should give it a chance. This church is awesome. Thank you, sir. Thank you for y'all to come. And since you're inside in the air, that's a possibility. But outside? Maybe not right now. Not right now. Right. See you in December. Next speaker, please. Name and address for the record. Hi. My name is Jackie Pye. I live at 1008 Peninsula Drive in Haynes City. So I'm not a neighbor of his. I attended his church last time. I'd like to attend church this time. When we did have it outside, it was because of COVID. So we were following all the restrictions. And for 45 minutes to an hour, we sang. If that disturbs anybody because we're praising God, I'm sorry about that. I believe that it's a good thing that we, as the church there, and that it should be approved. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Ravina McPherson. I live at 2827 Rooks Road. And I am a member of the church. And I do appreciate if you would consider keeping the church open because there just isn't that many other places for us to go and worship that's nearby. It's difficult for us to travel. And thank you for your consideration. Thank you, ma'am. Good morning. All right. I need you to get a little bit closer so that we can. A little better? Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. Darren Freeman, 3545 Lake Alfred Road. I own several businesses here, and I've been a business acquaintance with Mr. Tyler about 16 years. I got a call yesterday afternoon about this, and I figured he'd be coming for the board anyway. So I decided to come out myself and speak this morning referencing to the church. Just so you know, as of 430 yesterday afternoon, there's not been one complaint to the Polk County Sheriff's Office for any type of noise coming from his property whatsoever, even when they're outside preaching and singing and everything else like that. For the most part, it's a great facility. He spent a lot of money on it, and he cares about the community. So that's why I'm up here right now, supporting him 100%, and it's also a big add to the community. It can't hurt to have the church he has out there right now and the roadways. It's very open to the public as in a sense of easy in and easy out, but it is a private road. So parking out there is not an issue. You can see the pictures on its face value, but it's great having the community over there. I'm really not a big church person, but I'm just going to start going to his church now. So I appreciate you taking the time, and hopefully you guys approve it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else from the public that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, the public portion is closed. We'll bring it back. If the applicant would have liked to address anything, I don't think there were any concerns. Thank you. So we're back at the board for discussion and our motion. Chair, move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Ignini. Sean Harper. Bernie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it's unanimous. Thank you very much. All right. For the record, Ian Nance with land development. Staff recommends approval of LDCU 2023-23, a request for a sand mine to support the construction of the Central Polk Parkway. Subject site is located south of Thornhill Road, west of Spirit Lake Road, north of U.S. 17, and north of the city of Bartow in sections 3, 9, 10, Township 29, Range 25. For the record, 40 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 13th. Four signs were posted July 6th. An illegal ad was published July 14th. Staff has logged no responses. To the right is the route of the Central Polk Parkway. The first stretch of this roadway will start at the intersection of the Polk Parkway and Winter Lake Road and will connect with the U.S. 17 to the south. An additional phase will connect 17 and State Road 60. Its right-of-way bisects the subject parcels, and the applicant intends to use the sand and fill material on site for roadway construction rather than hauling it in from elsewhere. Here's an aerial, and you can see the FDOT right-of-way in the middle of the subject parcels. The mining will take place to the west of this right-of-way on approximately 96.4 acres. The entrance to the mine will be from a driveway on Thornhill Road already permitted for the road construction. No access to the site for mining purposes will be allowed from elsewhere. Again, the need for this is for the on-site development of the roadway. Once machinery and equipment are staged on the property, it will be used for hauling material within, so impacts to Thornhill Road will be restricted to employee traffic. The mine is going to be active for four to five years and reach a mining depth of 30 feet. No blasting will occur, and batch plants are not needed. The applicant has presented a plan to reduce dust through spray trucks and other control strategies. A noise study was included in the application packet, which demonstrates limited impacts on surrounding properties by the mining activity. The LDC allows a reduction from 100 feet to 25 feet for mining activity adjacent to non-residential uses, which the applicant is requesting from the parkway right-of-way and Swift Mud property to the south and west. Otherwise, setbacks from rural and residential properties are 100 feet, and mining activity must be a minimum of 200 feet from residential structures. This is a quick look at the nearest homes and the setbacks on an overlay of the mine plan on the subject site. The existing wetlands will be preserved and will serve the screen and buffer mining activity from off-site. When all this is finished, the mine areas will remain as ponds and lakes, with the uplands re-graded and re-vegetated to connect with the wetlands. The Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code do allow mining activities to impact wetlands, but again, there are no plans to do so. The standards on the right are to be used when evaluating non-phosphate mines in relation to environmental impacts, in addition to impacts on the surrounding community. Staff finds it meets these standards and other relevant standards in the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code. Mining on-site places far less stress on the local roadways and communities than if the projected 3.7 million cubic yards of material had to be hauled in from off-site for road construction. The level of traffic created by the employees is anticipated to fall below the standards for a minor traffic study. There will be no impacts on utilities, and given the attention paid to maintaining the wetlands, noise and dust control, and a one-access point off Thornhill Road, staff finds this request compatible with surrounding uses and recommends approval. I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Nice to be here this morning. My name is James Golden. I'm with Grove Scientific and Engineering in Orlando, Florida, 6140 Edgewater Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32810. I'm also here with Kent Seltzer, the applicant, and a project engineer, David Bieben, is also. I'd like to say that it was great to work with your staff. They're very professional, and everything went along smoothly, and we accept the conditions of approval of the staff report. Also wanted to mention that one of the residents, or a couple of the residents that are up to the northeast of the pit were here this morning, and we met with them outside, and I wanted to go over five voluntary conditions that we're willing to accept to further buffer their property from the mine. Okay. Give us just a minute, staff. Are you aware of this? Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. No, it just popped up. Just so that we have it. And we can add these to our level, too. I'll get to that. But first, although we did a noise study, there's still concern about visual impacts and noise, so we agreed to put about a 10 to 15-foot berm along that northern boundary adjacent to their properties, that we would not park any trucks or equipment adjacent to their properties. We would continue dust control. We do have a water truck, but we would make sure that we would take the water truck up past their property if the access road goes that way. We would add a water level well, which we have water level wells already between the pit and the wetlands for the water management district monitoring. Our hydrogeological studies showed that we weren't going to draw down the water from the pit on the impact, the adjacent properties from any drawdown, because we're recharging the water around the entire pit, mostly to protect the wetland water levels. But they were concerned about their private wells, so we're going to put a water level monitoring well between the pit and their properties up in that northeastern corner. And then finally, we were going to make sure that there's a 50-foot easement or a narrow piece of property that the owners, the stewards own, that go from the pit up to Thornhill Road, and it's going to be our access to our employees. They wanted to make sure that we didn't clear that land, because there are some existing trees that go along a funnel lane there, and so we agreed not to do any clearing. We don't have any plans to do any clearing on that part of the property. And we can add these to our plans in level two. That's our plan. Okay, thank you. I'm here for questions. Okay, I just want to clarify with staff. Is that an appropriate time and process for you? I can amend the staff report for the final copy and the final order. Okay. All right, thank you. Any questions of the applicant? Okay. I'm not following that. You mean you're going to add the conditions in the staff report? Yes, ma'am, for the final. Okay, we'll just need to make sure that the board's okay with that first. Yes, ma'am. So if we get to the point where we're making a motion, that we would add in the conditions that were stated by the applicant as agreement? Correct. As... Yeah, if the commission wants to add them, yes. So just know that the commissioner is going forward. So at this point, we'll open the meeting to the public. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Okay. Please make your way to the front. Name and address for the record. Timing device for your aid will be in front of you. My name is Steve Grubel. I live at 4316 Thornhill Road. I have a couple questions. The gentleman said that he'd put in a monitoring well to save our wells. So what happens if something goes wrong? Who's going to be responsible for that? I mean, if they draw down our wells and a lot of people out there have wells and they go dry, who's going to be responsible for that? Who's going to help us? The county has county water out there available on Thornhill Road, but it costs so much to hook to it that a lot of us can't afford to hook to it. It's around probably close to $4,000 to $5,000 to hook up to that water if we had a problem. My second question is, has anybody thought about sinkholes? You know, Florida's fabulous for sinkholes. Would this cause any problems in our area for sinkholes? That's the two questions I have. Okay. And again, in the process, if the applicant would like to address the concerns, they will. I have the same concerns that this gentleman had. I need your name and address for the record, sir. It's Daniel Bentz, 1630 Beth Lane. And my property butts right up to where they showed on the map. It would have been good if you all would have sent the property owners information about what all you intend to do. Sir, I'm going to ask you to please address the board, and then they will address the concerns. I'm just saying that it would be better if we were informed of what their intentions were. Like, I guess, after they get the road built, it's not going to continue to be a sand mine, right? Is that what it is? The applicant, again, will address, or staff will address those questions. You can pose the questions. That's one of my questions. Okay. Because I don't want to continue sand mine from now to forever. And then my thing was the well and sinkholes. My well is literally 50 foot from the edge of the property that they're going to be digging up. So those are my concerns. Okay. All right. And like the other gentleman, I can't afford to hook the city water. And if the sinkhole opens up, who's paying for my property? Okay. Thank you, sir. Hi, my name is Brittany Bandy of 4371 Fussell Lane. Of our many concerns, the largest are the adverse impacts to our community, including noise, visual, and airborne. We have discussed mitigation plans and received verbal agreement from the engineers, including the increased soil berm height to 15 feet and the perimeter, around the perimeter of phase four residential property lines, the addition of water level monitoring well at the phase four property lines, increased watering as needed to mitigate the dust, and clearing of the, non-clearing of the roadway. So how do we make sure that these voluntary concessions are entered into the plan before approval? That's my question. We'll answer that question. We've also requested for consideration decreased working hours and no mining on Saturday during phase four. As per the DRC findings recommendation report on page seven, that defines noise mitigation plans. And the proposed report as to operate during normal working hours, which are not 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday. So we also have concerns about that. All right. That's it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience? My name is Justin McGee. I live at 5209 Thornhill Road. Could they pull up the map where they showed the overhead? Yeah. Of the houses, the satellite view? Yes. I don't know if you can zoom in at the top right-hand corner. Correct. Over there? Yes, ma'am. Okay. They may not be able to zoom in, but if you're in that area, that gives us an idea. That's my house. It butts up to that blue line there where those three houses are in the ponds. Okay. I mean, we didn't build a house. We live in this rural area. We don't want a sand mine there either. I work in the mining industry so I know what the noise is, the equipment impacts bring, the dust control. I mean, we do all that stuff too. But it's not around these houses. It's not a mining area. You know, everybody has these nice houses with kids. And just from them cutting sod the last couple weeks, they were out there at 8, 9 o'clock at night cutting sod. You can hear just the farm tractor running. And you start bringing in mining equipment, trucks, excavators, pumps. That's a lot. You know, we definitely don't want this in our neighborhood. And everybody else is concerned with the wells. You know, I don't want city water. We put in a well for a reason. You know, and we definitely don't want this at our house. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else that would like to speak for or against this case? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the public portion of the meeting. We'll bring it back for the applicant and staff as needed to address these concerns, please. Okay, thank you. Yes, I can address their concerns. We also have filed for a water use permit that is going to require us to monitor the water levels in these water level wells or monitoring wells around the pit weekly. And we would submit that monthly or quarterly to the water management district depending on what our permit says. So if those water levels show a significant drop of water levels adjacent to the pit way before that impact would get to any private wells, the water management district would require us to either shut down our pumps to do something that would mitigate, put more recharge water into that trench to prevent that drawdown. So there is safeguards in place to protect their water levels in the private wells. Our hydrogeological study also showed that there's no drawdown impacts off our site because we are recharging the dewatering water into recharge trenches around the pit. So we also are adding that water level well up adjacent or between the pit and those properties that these people live at to the northeast. So that will also protect their wells because we'll be monitoring that water level in that well weekly. Sinkhole issues, we conducted 19 borings to 30 feet across the entire mining area, and the borings found only stable soils. There were no loose soils, no void, something that would indicate a potential sinkhole in the pit area. We were going to a 30-foot depth. We didn't find any kind of confining layer. We didn't hit rock or anything like that that could make you have a concern that it could increase sinkhole activity. So we didn't see any indications of sinkhole activity on the site. It is not in a sinkhole-prone area necessarily. This is a fairly stable area. So we don't think there should be any sinkhole concerns. Just about having the mine there and the noise and the operation, it's going to be a very short-lived mine of four to five years because all the material we expect will go to the Central Polk Parkway construction. And we're not going on local roads. We're not going adjacent to these properties with our heavy-duty trucks. They're going to go right from the pit to the east and on to the right-of-way of Central Polk Parkway. So these will be off-road trucks. We won't have any dump trucks going on Thornhill Road, and we don't expect any because we understand that the DOT will give us direct access to the right-of-way of Central Polk Parkway. So I think that will go a long way of mitigating any local concerns about truck noise or traffic or just equipment noise will be all in the center of the pit, hundreds of feet away from these properties. So that's what I'd like to put on the record, and I'll be here for any questions from the commission. I just want to iterate one of the questions about how the conditions that were agreed to today would be put into the record and have a record of accountability. And again, that will be put into the final orders added into this report. And I do want to clarify, I believe I heard two different heights for the berm that was agreed to with the residents. We'll go with the 15-foot. Okay. I was going to say that I heard 10 and 15, so you are in agreement with the 15. Okay. Madam Chair, just a quick question. Absolutely. Obviously, the adjacent area to your west is a very environmentally sensitive area owned by the Water Management District. Have you guys coordinated with them on these activities at all or met with them on this? Yes, we have a water use permit in with the Water Management District and an environmental resource permit. We made special concessions to floodwaters going. Of course, the floodwaters in a 100-year storm would all go towards the lake, and our pit would be between the DOT road and the lake. So we made special concessions to allow that water to flow through the site, through the berms and all that, to the lake. So they're keeping an eye on our operation, yeah. Just as a comment, down the line, once the mining is complete, there should be an enhancement to the environmental ecology of the area. So congrats. Yeah, yeah, because we have to make shallow zone or littoral zones all the way around the pits, so they would act like a natural lake when they come back. To provide additional treatment to the water. Thank you. Yes. And I think just in stating that, again, Mr. Beltran, your qualifications to make such statements are based upon what? I'm also a professional engineer, and I'm the former executive director of Swift Mudd. Okay. Well, you know what you're talking about. I remember this area very – we did a lot of work in this area at the district. My question is for staff. As far as the concern, if approved, depending upon what the board wants to do, this is a conditional use and time frames and the expiration or need to, again, ask for this conditional use as far as the resident's concern for an ongoing process into a few decades. So are you asking what happens after this if this is approved? The applicant will submit a Level 2 review with the mine plans and go for an operating permit. So this is when we'll enforce these conditions that were in the staff report and then proposed today. Okay. And, again, those timelines that are in the staff report, again, it's not binding but an expectation. Basically, probably in 27-28, you would be looking at the stage where you would enter into the reclamation phase. Yes, ma'am. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, then we're back at the board for further discussion or motion. Madam Chair, move approval of LDCU 2023-23. Second. Additional conditions as proposed by the applicant. I apologize for the interruption. Second. Second. So we have a motion and a second for approval, including the verbal conditions that were added by the applicant that would be part of it, and that would go forward. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Ignini. Sean Harper. For the motion. Bernie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Troutman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it passes 6-1. Glad to see some road work being discussed. Next up is LDPD 2023-11. The applicant is requesting a planned development to construct a 15-unit townhome development with five units attached in the RL3 land use district. The subject property is located west of Lake Summit Drive West, east of 9th Street Southeast, north of Eloise Loop Road, south of Cypress Gardens Boulevard, east of Winter Haven, and section 34, township 28, and range 26. On July 13th, 71 mailers are sent to area property owners. One sign was posted on July 18th, and a legal ad was published in the ledger on July 14th. Staff has received no responses, and Melissa Celestine is your planner. Good morning. Madam Chair, move to expedite. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second to expedite. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Are you speaking in opposition, sir? Yes. Okay. All right. We have opposition present, so we're unable to expedite. Please proceed. Good morning. For the record, Melissa Celestine presenting LDPD 2023-11. Staff recommends approval of the applicant's request for a 15-unit multifamily townhome development with five units attached. This case is unique because plan development requests are typically for higher density setback reductions in smaller lot sizes. The request before you is due to the conditional requirements outlined in Chapter 3, Section 303 for multifamily, which states a plan development is necessary for more than four units attached. The subject site is located south of Cypress Gardens Boulevard and east of Snively Avenue. The site has a future land use district of residential low three, and it's also located in the transit supportive development area. The site is entitled to seven dwelling units per acre without a planned development approval per policy 2.104-A7 and table 2.104-1 of the comprehensive plan. The proposed density is approximately 6.64 dwelling units per acre. Here is the site's location and the surrounding area. I also included an overlay of the site plan to show what the development would look like once the, I'm sorry, what the surrounding area would look like once the development is completed. Here is the site plan. As part of staff's conditions of approval, we are requiring the applicant to provide two parking spaces per unit, excluding garages. On-street or parallel parking may be located alongside of the parking lot or drive-outs or on private local roads. However, no on-street spaces may be located within 25 feet of an intersection, stop-bar, pedestrian crossing, or drive-out intersection. We're also asking that a type C landscaping buffer be provided along the stormwater ponds. This is a site photo. As you can see here, the sidewalks are already along the road frontage of the proposed development. With that, staff does recommend approval. The site plan does demonstrate compatibility with the surrounding area. The project does meet the requirements outlined in Section 303, and it is consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code. With that, I thank you, and I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? Thank you. Seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. Good afternoon, board. Or morning still, I guess. Dave Holden, 600 North Broadway, Bartow, Florida. So, as staff stated, they've added some conditions to the project, and we're in acceptance to that. As was stated, this is an RL3 land use, but because we're in a transit-supported development area, that allows up to seven units per acre. So, that is what we're proposing with these townhomes. We're putting, what is it, five-unit townhomes on the property. We will be in service by the City of Winter Havens, water and sewer. We will be required to put a lift station in there. The access off of the roadway, we are about 500 feet from a stopping condition to this property, so the speeds will be slow. So, the other unique thing to this property is between our site and the property to the, let me get my bearings straight here, east. Yeah, let me, okay, did I mess it up? Sound as bad as Dave Carter. Yeah, there we go. That's good. So, along this portion of the property right here, there's an existing, I want to say it's an easement, there's a gap between us and those neighbors of 10 feet already, and then we have our 10-foot buffer there. I think that's an old access for utilities to the homes in the back. I'm not 100% sure, but we're not, and I believe it is a right-of-way, I'm sorry, not an easement, and I believe it's a right-of-way, and we're not proposing to do anything with that. So, that gives us an additional buffer from all these neighbors. Let me see if we have any, so the property is, has no wetlands, has no 100-year flood, and if you look at the aerial that we have up here, you can see it's consistent. So, within 500 feet, you have another townhome community, and then you have, I believe it's, some people say it's a condo community and a townhome right at the 90-degree turn. So, you have the multifamily in the area. Directly across the street is a, I think it's a quadruplex. It could be a three-unit town, yeah, I don't know what you call a townhome. Then there is another development, which is the old Rainbow Boat Basin, which they've just redone, and it's a small mobile home or park model mobile homes. So, we are consistent with the area, and, you know, it's been a long morning for you guys, so I will be brief, and I will stand for any questions and any comments from the audience. All right. Any questions of the applicant at this time? Okay. Seeing none, we'll open the public portion of the meeting. Please make your way to the podium. Name and address for the record. Good morning. It's Jerome Braddock, 2592 Helms Road. Can you help orient me on the map for Helms Road? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Never mind. I can see it now. We are the first house on the corner. Please speak into the microphone. Sorry about that. You can pull it up. There you go. Thank you. Okay. So, we're the first house on the corner of this parcel that they're planning to put this into, and just when you look at this, it kind of gives you an idea of the scope that they're planning, and which is one of our major concerns. I don't know exactly what a townhome consists of, what's the definition, but is it two-story? Are they big? Are they wide? Because if you look at that parcel, and you look at the four properties next to it, those are single-owner parcels. So, they want to put 15 homes in the space where other homeowners have, you know, just single property. That's a lot. We do have a lot of concern about, like, runoff water mitigation, you know, because that's a lot in one small area. And being right, you know, adjacent to that, how is that going to affect our property? Because we haven't seen any information on this before today. So, I'm here, information gathering as much as anything. But on a personal level, when we bought the home in 2016, when we looked out our backyard, all we see is trees. Okay, I know this is personal, and you said not personal. I don't have any real facts, but I'm concerned about, you know, they talk a lot about buffer today. You know, when I look out, and we're in our swimming pool that we paid a lot of money for, by the way. But, you know, is there going to be some guy up in the second floor with a pair of binoculars, if you know what I mean, to try and put it in a personal context? We do have some palm trees that we grew. They've been there established. They're very tall. So, my question to them would be, you know, are they, would they put some kind of, and I'm not talking about, you know, little seedlings, but can you put something well established that's going to go up over our six-foot fence that would help reduce, or help enhance our privacy that we enjoy at this time? Thank you for hearing me. Perfect timing. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the public portion. Bring it back to the applicant if you would like to address any of the concerns. Thank you, Board. Dave Holden again. So, as far as the runoff, we are going to have to meet all swift mud requirements. So, and the map, it's hard to see on this one, but the pond, there is a pond located up in the front, which is adjacent. If I understood his location, I think his house was located right here. I believe is what he was. Yes. So, that's adjacent to the pond. So, there is no home right behind his unit. So, no one's going to be looking over into his yard in that section. We are required to put a landscape buffer. So, it's going to be 10 feet away. I believe it's 10 feet. It may be 8 feet, but because we can't go into that ease or that right-of-way. So, he'll have that as grass and then our buffer between that and the units, which is, I think, is a type A buffer, and don't quote me on that. But in level two, we will be going through their process of what is required for that. And part of the buffer, you know, we can reduce the buffer and put a fence in their entries, but that's the process we look at at our level two. All right. Any questions of the applicant? Okay. Seeing none, staff, did you have anything to add? No, I didn't. Okay. So, then we're back at the board for discussion and our motion. Madam Chair, I move to approve. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Ignini. Sean Harper. For the motion. Brenny Heath. For the motion. And Becky Troutman. For the motion. Madam Chair, it's unanimous. All right. Thank you. And, sir, if you maybe want to reach out to him, he may be able to give you the information kind of that you're looking for. All right. So, we are going to take a 10-minute break before we start this next case. So, we are. We are. We're going to take a break. So, please, board. We're going to be here for a while. So, time for public testimony. Again, you can see a lot of time can kind of be wasted as we transition between people. So, I'm going to ask if we could kind of cue ourselves down this side and then staff that is here, and I see our interns are still here with us, if y'all would maybe move to the second, just when it comes time for public testimony and move to the second row so we can use this front row as a way to kind of stack people in, that will help tremendously for everyone. And if you are seen as being disruptive in any manner, whether that's comments or visual obstructions or anything like that, again, we will have to be, you'll have to be removed so that we can continue this as a professional public meeting. And with that, we will turn it over to staff to present the case, I think. No, you're not on. No, you're still not on. Maybe see if Sean does this on. Nope. Maybe in the back room, or do you want to go stand with? I can take it. Oh, thank you. Good morning, Planning Commission members. Eric Peterson for the Land Development Division. This is LDPD 2023-12. It is the Creek Ranch case. It is an 1,876-unit single-family residential development with approximately 12.31 acres of retail office personal services and or community facilities on 1,269 acres in the agricultural residential, rural development. This is part of a rural mixed-use development. It is allowable use in the agricultural residential rural area. And one of the minimum requirements is a 50% set-aside. So we will be talking about a gross density and a net density throughout this. The net density wouldn't include the conservation areas. The gross will. Submitted for the record is a staff report, site plan, application, impact assessment from the applicant. They're addressing the RMD criteria, plus some ownership information that might become pertinent later in the applicant's presentation. The site is located north of Lake Hatchinahaw Road, west of Perch Street, east of Marigold Avenue, south of Bayberry Street, east of the city of Dundee, in sections 23 and 24 of Township 28, Range 28, and section 19 of Township 28, Range 29. On July 13th, 134 mailers were sent to nearby property owners. Eleven signs were posted on the property on July 13th. And a legal ad was published in the Lakeland Ledger on July 14th. We have nine official responses in opposition received. And I will present this case. As I said, the location is in an area we call Point Siena. Point Siena, I'll go into greater depth, but it's not a city, contrary to popular belief. It does have its own zip code. It's a rather large plan unit development that was approved in 1971. The site is at the very south end. It is, as I mentioned, it is a good distance away from Dundee, Lake Hamilton, and Haines City, as you can see. Looking a little closer at the site, I'll just orient you to some of the features around it. There is, this is one of the closest phases of Point Siena. I'll go into greater depth as to its build-out. There are 567 units in the abutting Lake Deer Lake or Lake Deer Estates. We have a fire and EMS station. There's also a sheriff's regional headquarters plan to go at that location in the future. We have a regional park nearby. Lake Marion Middle School is to the north. This is the area proposed for conservation. This is where the site plan or the site development will occur. This is Port Hatchinahaw, or we refer to as Port Hatchinahaw. On Lake Hatchinahaw, there is approximately 279 units currently in that Port Hatchinahaw area. The land uses, as we scroll in, are mostly agricultural, residential, rural. The Deer Lake is RL4 that was changed about five years ago. The rest of it is this nebulous category called pre-DRI number one. This came before developments of regional impact. It is a very large plan unit development. Little by little, we have gone in and changed the land use from pre-DRI number one to something in our comp plan. But until the applicant requests a different use than what's permitted in the PUD, it remains under that pre-DRI category with vested rights for development. Not only vested by our former zoning ordinance, the comp plan and the land development code, but also by the state of Florida. Thus, the pre-DRI designation. The Point Hatchinah plan development spans two counties. A good portion of it is in Osceola County. That portion is fairly developed. And then another portion, obviously, is in Polk County. In all, there's approximately 28,000 units approved in this development, as well as commercial, office, industrial. And they even cited schools and churches within the development in certain places. So, looking a little closer, you see how Creek Ranch is in relation to the Point Hatchinah pre-DRI. That Deer Lake was a change in the PUD. It was originally to be office and industrial on this site. And the purchaser decided they wanted to build lots of homes. So, they changed the land use to RL4. However, this, as we hone in a little closer, the Deer Lake development is a little more intense than the applicant's proposed development. The applicant, in net density terms, is just a little over three units to the acre. The Lake Deer project, four units per acre. Some of the lots are 40 feet wide. Most are 50s. We have the fire station. You see the proximity of the fire station. Now, to the north is an undeveloped but platted portion of Point Hatchinah that has development entitlements. Single-family detached directly to the north. There's also a phase that's approved for duplexes. And there's two sites that are approved for multifamily. There is an open right-of-way corridor here in which, you know, could one day be the main thoroughfare into that phase of the development. Or the applicant will have the opportunity in the future as needed to build because it is offered to the public. So, anyone can build a road in there to county standards to connect here to Bayberry for a north entrance. And we might talk about that a little later. Overall, you see some other features. I mentioned the various uses, the infrastructure invested by the county in this future possible connection. One of the problems we struggle with in this area, and as I tell you about the amazing rate of growth that we've had in the last three years, but right now there is not enough commercial development. Not even for the existing population, but well into the future, commercial development is going to be a concern. So, the commercial area proposed within this development is very well needed. What they are proposing is the limit that that development would need, but it would also serve the greater area, and we'll go into a little more depth. For now, the only portion here that the closest commercial is Dollar General. Up the street, there is a 7-Eleven, CVS, Family Dollar, one of those, and soon to be an advanced auto parts. I believe you've spoken of your desire to have some pizza in this area. Yes, I will go into that in just a minute. However, one of the things, you know, I admitted from the adjacent uses was this phase, which is a single-family portion of that phase of the Poinciana development. This would be ideal in the future, though, to change land uses from being residences to commercial. It's a good location relative to the surrounding population and the traffic flow. So, that's why I kind of left that out as a non-issue, because the Dollar General has cut into it, and it's been very successful, and it will be likely that more commercial will come there. One of the issues that we're dealing with here in development of this Poinciana area is the balance of growth versus habitat presentation. On your right, you see all the government-owned lands that are preserved for conservation, and you see how the conservation area proposed in this development ties into that. It provides a well-over-a-mile corridor, you know, less the other property owners here, but for the migration of species up and down the Hatchinaha-Kissimi Basin. I won't get into too much about how would species migrate through there, but it is important that there be some type of corridor that maintains for habitat preservation. And you can see how the area around the Poinciana side has developed. I want to point out that it's only at 60% developed. This is south of the Bend. We often call this the Elbow or the Bend, where Marigold was supposed to continue on into Osceola County. That hasn't happened yet. So, there's an abrupt right turn here as you're coming south. All of these properties are south of the Bend, and they equate to approximately 9,941 lots. 60% is developed. 24% of the 9,941 lots came in the last eight years, the majority of that in the last three. So, since COVID, my aerial photos, aside from the ones we just flown, do not do this area justice, because our aerial photos are three and a half years old at best. Even Google Earth does not have the most latest areas of all of this in Poinciana, where you could see the actual going from totally vacant trees to houses from end to end in some of these phases. So, since COVID, there's been a large amount of residential development, and there's various reasons. If you want me to go into depth why it's occurring, I can bore you for another half an hour to 45 minutes. But moving on, as you see the balance between this property and the habitat corridor that there's been so many efforts to preserve, is that this property is in line with all the entitled Poinciana phases, the one to the north that's developed rather significantly in the last three years, and the ones that have yet to plant but are owned by companies that, based on their corporate history, are prone to go into investment and into residential development. So, more than likely, we are to see these two phases here develop in the future. You also have a substantial amount of infrastructure investment in the area as well. I mentioned the regional park, which is in walking distance to this development. The fire station, there's another fire station, Watkins Road, to give even better coverage that's under construction. There are schools. The school board is looking at a high school site in this area. There's numerous sidewalk projects throughout. We're trying to put in sidewalks. One of the things that Poinciana lacked was sidewalks and getting residents to the park and to the schools and things of that nature. Looking closer at the site, the design is appropriate for this location. It is a step down from the neighboring intensities and the other developments, Lake Deer and the phase of Poinciana to the north. There is a plethora of parks and recreation amenities. There is a walking trail system that surrounds it. That's this red line here. This is the commercial area down here. In the staff report, we go back and forth between saying that there's three and four access points. There's two main access points to the residential area on Lake Hatchenaha Road. The commercial has not yet formed. There could be two. There could be one. It all depends on the mixture of uses or the types of uses that go in there. If it is a large shopping plaza, it'll probably just have one main entrance. If it is a group of shops and out parcels, there will probably be two. We're not so concerned with that. With a development this size, we want as many access points as possible for various reasons. And that's one of the issues with the RMD I'll get to in a minute. This is the commercial area, as I mentioned. There is relief being requested to the setback. That brings the commercial buildings closer to the road. It also keeps them in view of the intersection of Marigold and Lake Hatchenaha Road, which has a lot of traffic that flows through it. And that will draw attention to this commercial in the future. The details in the site plan, they are not asking for any setback relief. They're asking for the RL4 standards, exactly what is adjacent to them in the Lake Deer development. The side setbacks will be seven feet. Front setbacks, they're actually going to improve on Lake Deer, and they'll have 25 feet for both building and garage, which is very important in getting the vehicles out of the way of the sidewalks. The development has sidewalks internally on both sides of the street. The lot sizes range from 55 feet wide to 65 feet wide. As far as the RMD standards, these are the primary standards within an RMD. Be at least 160 acres, met that. I'm going to ask real quick, would you just actually use the full word since we have a large audience here? They may not speak planning language. Residential mixed-use development, or rural mixed-use development, sorry. RMD is the acronym. Rural mixed-use development. Be at least 60 acres. They got that. Toho Pico-Liga Water Authority will be, or better known as Toho, will be providing them service. They have service agreements and contracts with Toho to be provided. They are within Toho's utility service area. The county has looked into this area for future service, and we are in the development right now of planning a system that would serve more over to the Watkins Road area and the gap between Dundee and Poinciana. That is in current analysis, and I can go into depth in a little bit, but I just want to check off the boxes here. Of course, they front on a collector road. They are reserving 50% or more of the property and conservation. There's a large chunk, and then there's small pieces of preservation around Lake Deer and in the corner that abuts the conservation to equal a 51.3% set-aside. They're providing non-residential uses to support internal capture. There's really about only 9.4 acres that are usable, but that acreage, the wetland and preservation area on that corner will provide a good buffer between the single-family residence in Lake Deer project and the commercial areas in the future. Restricting access, four entrances, three entrances, the point of that condition is not to limit them to one access. We would never want 1,876 units on one access. That's not the point. It's intended so that you don't have lots that front the collector road that would be backing out onto Lake Hatchnaha Road in the future. That's the point of that requirement. So we have no lots that are backing out onto Lake Hatchnaha Road. Lastly, demonstrate the commercial office and office uses are in demand. I think I've, in my history recently, I have expressed how much commercial is needed. I won't go into any more of that, but they did provide a brief market study to show that it met the demonstrated need. Infrastructure. One of the things that is going to change a lot in this area is the road plans. There are two road projects that are going to begin construction in 2024. That's the four-laning of Marigold to Palmetto Street, and then the widening of Cypress Parkway to four lanes from the Poinciana Parkway on to where it's four-lane going into Osceola County and the City of Kissimmee. There is also another project that is in the conceptual phase that may one day connect the turnpike to this area. So the Cypress Parkway project would have moved sooner, but they're kind of holding off for that study to be completed because it might affect how they widen Cypress Parkway. Moving on, you know, shortly after the Marigold widening, it'll continue down to the bend and eventually be four-laned all the way down to Lake Hatchnaha. In the staff report, you see the rate of growth on some of these roads. Hatchnaha Road has had the most growth on it in the last five years, so it is anticipated that Hatchnaha Road will need improvements in the future, though it is well above capacity right now. There is a new road that is proposed that is under development. It's called the Powerline Road Extension. Some of this is being built by private entities. Some of this will be built with county funds and possibly other state and federal funds in the future. So there's a lot of road planning going around. Also, Lake Marion Creek, there is a portion of Lake Marion Creek Road that is a little substandard that we will look to improve in the future because that will be a road that gives this area a lot of relief versus Marigold and Lake Hatchnaha Roads being the primary arterials in and out of the development. Looking at our site, you can see the amount of rooftops that have formed here in this area and this area that, if you were looking at other aerial photos, just wouldn't be apparent. Here's the Deer Lake Estates development. Most of the development or the development itself versus the set-aside will sit a good 20 to 30 feet. I think I have the specifics in the staff report. Most of it will sit above much higher. As you're traveling down Lake Hatchnaha Road, you notice that it starts to go downhill after the development area of this site. It drops down 20, 30 feet down to the Port Hatchnaha area. This is the abutting Deer Lake Estates project. They are building the first homes in there today. This is, you can see the proximity from the development site to the water treatment plant or the wastewater treatment plant that will serve it. One of the problems, one of the reasons why we don't have the commercial acreage that we need to support this development in Poinciana is that they put the sewage treatment plant on top of the major shopping plaza that was planned. So we've got to find another site for that. This is looking from the Lake Deer Estates project at the site and down at Hatchnaha Road. Looking down south, the Lake Deer, the horizon, this is Fire Tower Road. Fire Tower Road will line up with one of the access points to the commercial. This is looking back, this is the conservation set-aside area in relation to where the development site is, and here is the Port Hatchnaha area. So these are good references that we might want to return to in the future. In summation, this rural mixed-use development meets all the policies of the Land Development Code and Comprehensive Plan. It checks off every box, every requirement. Staff, in our analysis, believe that where the development is placed versus where the set-aside is placed is in the most appropriate location. It provides a well-over-a-mile wildlife corridor connecting state and federal-owned lands to the north and south. And there has been a substantial amount of infrastructure investment into growth planning in this area, and it will continue on into the future. With that, I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff at this time? Yeah, I have a couple. I don't know any new aerials, Eric. I have taken you fine with me last Saturday. One staff report indicates high school capacity at 88.1% in Haines City. I think everybody in here knows that Haines City did not take any students last year and said they would not take any more students until a new high school was built. Is that correct? I don't know that for certain. Too bad we don't have our school board member here today. I was going to say, I think that concurrency, we have to go off what the school students provide. Yeah, we have the information they provide us on the enrollment, and that was based on the March count. Also, if I may interject, if there is not school capacity, that they would have to mitigate for that shortfall. Well, that's one of the reasons why they're looking in this area for a high school site in the future. I also want to point out, when it comes to school capacity, all 1,876 units are not going to have families in them tomorrow. This development will take many years. The current Poinciana development has taken 50 years, over 50 years, to get to this point. And while the growth has been phenomenal in the last three years, it's still going to take a long time. So, you know, these things will play out as this development is building out. It will likely come in phases. I can't speak for the applicant, but platting 1,876 units is a lot to bond for. You know, probably the gross domestic product of Italy. But the phases will more likely come incrementally. They will have to meet concurrency, both traffic. We're going to look to have a major traffic study for the whole development, and then we'll monitor phase by phase how it plays out with those traffic studies. When it comes to schools, school concurrency will have to be met. When it comes to public safety, this area is well-planned for public safety. As I mentioned, the fire station and the sheriff's office will be very close to the property. Parks, recreation, we have a community park here. They have a lot of recreation amenities planned for the development, so we should cover all of those bases. I have two more questions. Mr. Addison, if you could just move your mic a little bit for us. I said, isn't it true that Toho Water has some concerns about supplying this development as well as what they are already obligated to provide in Poinciana? I think one exhibit we had in our packet, I think Poinciana is around 64% of the lots are actually developed at this point. Yes, as you see, they're around 60% of just the south side. I don't know if Poinciana as a whole. Toho has a very large area. They've recently expanded some of their service area as well. The applicant can speak to their contract with Toho and the details that that will incur. However, in the event that this development could not be served by Toho, the county is in the planning phases of a new urban services area, utility services area, to the west of this project. So, you know, if there's the opportunity there, we have another backup plan. But from what I understand, Toho is very much wanting to serve this area. Some of the weaknesses in the Toho system currently have to do with the old lines that are in the Poinciana development and having to replace those lines. That's one of their struggles, at least according to their various reports. The other question I have is Jeremy Knowles sent an email to all of the planning commissioners that cited sovereign lands elevation in this area being raised from 52.5, I think, to 54. And my question is this, is for this to be an RMD, 50% of the land has to be set aside as conservation. And my question is this, is if that letter is accurate as to what is considered sovereign lands at 54, is there a sufficient amount of land in the conservation area if you took that area out in order to meet the 50% threshold for the RMD? What we actually have as an attachment to in your record is the DEP's determination and a quick claim deed on claiming that land is sovereign in your packet. And I'll let the applicant, they have many more slides dedicated to that, I'm sure, discussing that issue. So from our point of view, I believe that they have satisfied that this is their land and this is not state sovereign land that they're offering for that set aside. Any other questions at this time? Eric, just really quickly, on the conservation area, are there other details or plans on what they plan on doing that or is preserving and perpetuate? With the conservation, it is not for development. Agricultural uses can continue. Existing residences, if they are in part of that, they can remain. It would be treated. There's three levels of how we would set aside that conservation area. It could be by conservation easement, it could be by a plat, and it could be by condition of approval with this development, which we do have as a condition of approval. Appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions at this time? Okay. Seeing none, we'll turn it over to the applicant to present their case. Really quickly, before we get started, ex-party communications, site visits. It sounds like you received an email. I was going to say, I've had conversations with opposing landowners as well as conversations with the developer that do not impact the way that I will vote one way or the other. Same. I second that as well. Same. 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, and I am here on behalf of the property owners and the applicants for this rural mixed-use development, Creek Ranch LLC, Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank LLC. With me this morning, Creek, those two entities are Mr. Reggie Baxter, and he is here this morning, and Mr. Bob Adams, who unfortunately could not be here today. Before I get into the presentation, and I may just kind of skip around a little bit and jump right into some of Commissioner Addison's comments and questions, but I would like to introduce the rest of my team because I would like to also get them introduced as expert witnesses. Working on this project with me, and me with them probably is a better way to say it, for civil engineering and site planning, Hunter Engineering, and I have Brian Hunter here today. He is a professional engineer with civil engineering since 1993. He's been registered with the state of Florida, and I believe he has been admitted as an expert in front of this board on prior occasions. I have copies of his resume, and we'll make that available, and he is available for any questions should you have any, but I would request he be made an expert. I also have Mr. Jay Dayball. He is a senior transportation engineer with the Traffic Planning and Design Incorporated. He is also a professional engineer and has well over 30 years of experience in transportation planning and design and these types of things. He's, interestingly enough, and I did not know this until I read his resume, he actually served as a planning director for several years in various municipalities through our state, so I think that's also extremely impressive. Finally, I also have Mr. Perry Horner from Horner Environmental Professionals, Inc. He has been the environmental scientist on this project, is very familiar with the site, has been on it numerous times. I would like to note that in my presentation I made him a professional engineer. That is an error. I told, Perry pointed it out to me while we were in the prior hearings, and I told him I was not paying for that degree. Perry, so he is an environmental scientist. I would like to make all three of them experts, and I would look for a motion to approve, and they are available for any questions, should there be any from y'all or the audience. Okay, we have a motion, or we need to have a motion or discussion on Mr. Hunter, Mr. Doval, and Mr. Horner all being approved as experts in their areas. I'll make that motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, they are deemed as experts. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will just kind of just real high level, because it's important to make sure that the record is clear. This is the Creek Ranch Project. It is a rural mixed-use development, LDPD 2023-12. It is on 1,269 acres. We are asking for 1,876 units on a gross density of 1.48 dwelling units per acre. The property is designated as ARR and is within the rural development area. Mr. Peterson did a wonderful job with his presentation as it relates to orienting everybody to the site. This is an aerial, again, just kind of outlining the overall property. Now, the conversation related to sovereign land, what is sovereign, what is sovereign, has already has been well decided. It is, in my opinion, of no debate. The 52 1⁄2 was judicially determined to be the ordinary high water line of Lake Hatchinaw. That was done in prior caseload, and that is who makes those determinations. It is a very fact-based determination. The 54 that has been referenced relates to Everglades restoration, the Kissimmee-Chana Lake projects, and those efforts. This property has not been affected by that project. In fact, we, let me back up, the 52 1⁄2 was determined in 1994. In 1995, predecessor and interest to this property, the exposition company, who owned it prior to Asana, received quick claim deeds for any of the areas that may have been potentially considered as sovereign lands. That was conveyed by the trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund via quick claim deed and further disclaimed by additional public records. So, the area in question, in this general vicinity here, is owned by Creek Branch Mitigation Bank, LLC. As part of your record, we have submitted a title opinion by the applicant's attorney, who is not me on this issue, Ms. Tula Heff, indicating the same. Based off of title work, surveys, prior deeds, and conveyances, that area is vested solely in Creek Branch Mitigation Bank, LLC. And that is of no dispute, and that is a part of your record and already included as part of your package. Talking about process, another thing that is important to talk about is a process. The R&D was submitted in May of this year. It came in with a full application package that meets all of your comprehensive plan requirements, all of your land development code requirements. It came with impact assessment statements, all the necessary maps and exhibits and analysis. The binding site plan that we will talk about a little bit in a moment, as well as the development criteria evaluation for what an R&D is, how they work, and how they're put together. So, all of that information was submitted as part of that application. As required by this process, this did go to DRC. It went to DRC on May 25th of this year. And on July 25th of this year, staff issued their recommendation, findings of facts, and conclusions of law and recommended approval of this project and finding it consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code. But let's talk a little bit more about history. We talked about the title a little bit, but I want to talk a little bit more about history. This property, or Polk County, I should say, prior to 1991, operated under the old zoning codes, just the standard zoning codes. In the 70s, the state mandated the Growth Management Act, where all of the jurisdictions within the state had to move to comprehensive planning in that structure, in that hierarchy, in how we review our projects. Prior to the adoption of the comprehensive plan, prior to 1991, this property was designated as rural conservation. Rural conservation allowed up to one dwelling unit per acre on the property. It encouraged low-density residential agricultural activities and the creation of open space. And that is directly out of the zoning ordinances, specifically zoning ordinance 83-2, which was the last version of the zoning ordinances that were in place prior to the adoption of the comprehensive plan and the future land use maps. This is a copy with an aerial underlay of the old zoning maps. So, again, you can see the RC, the rural conservation, covers all of this area. Now, when the changes started to occur in the 90s and going into the comprehensive planning, RC areas, rural conservation, were going to be designated as agricultural, rural, residential under the comprehensive plan. That reduced the allowable densities from one dwelling unit an acre to one dwelling unit per five acres. So it's a substantial deviation from what was previously vested within these properties, our rural conservation. As part of a negotiated process with the county, the agricultural community, particularly in this county, and the Department of Community Affairs, there was a tiered system that was adopted in the original Polk County Conference of Plan. And that was the RRD, the Rural Residential Development, which is a separate animal from what we're talking about today, and the rural mixed-use development. Distinction primarily being by size, 160 acres or more was RRD, which is where we are, 160 acres and less was RRD, and some of the development criteria and densities were different. This was incorporated into the original comprehensive plan as a permitted use. When you look at your comprehensive plan and you go through the policies, it says permitted use of an RRD. Now, you have to go get a binding site plan because we'll talk about why you have to do that in just a second, but you have to get a binding site plan to get to those densities, but it was a permitted use. It wasn't just listed, as other uses are in the county's comprehensive plan and land development code, as conditional. That permitted word means something. It means that they have the right to do it. So the RRD is absolutely a vested right under the Agricultural Rural Residential. You have to get a binding site plan, and you have to go through the review process, and you have to come to public hearings to get your project approved. But the ability to utilize an RRD was vested in the original comprehensive plan for this county. So that's going by 30-some-odd years as a vested right. And the purpose of it, and when doing research for this project, I went back and I actually found the original submittals to DCA, the old DCA, DEO now, right, where this county submitted their conference plan. And there is an entire section on the Agricultural Rural Residential, the RRMD allowance within that designation, and the fact that it provides a balance between protecting agricultural activities, agricultural land values, and to reduce urban sprawl. Because at that time, what they did not want was one-acre and five-acre lots popping up all over and creating that urban sprawl. So they encouraged the clustering, they encouraged everything that this project and this binding site plan and this RMD does. And that goes all the way back to the original. This is the land use map. We've been over this already. You can see the ARR on the property now, previously RC. And again, adjacent, I think important, you can see the pre-DRI. Mr. Peterson's presentation, he has some tools that I don't have. But you could see how it lays out very nicely with the development, the pre-DRI. But also this RL4, the Deer Lake project, immediately adjacent to the west with the RL4 land use designation. Again, an important point to note as we walked through. So what is an RMD? This is straight out of the Polk County Conference of Plan. This is where it was laying out what agricultural rural residential was intended to do. It was to recognize the importance and vest at one dwelling unit per five acre. It also provides for the continued viability of agriculture and developments, blah, blah, blah, to require clustering. Not optional. Requires clustering by a mandatory of a 50% land reservation program, thus discouraging sprawl. So everything that we are doing in this, and if you think back to the images from Mr. Peterson's presentation, is discouraging sprawl. We are immediately adjacent to the entitled and under construction development while leaving the wildlife corridor and the protected areas to the east in perpetuity where they cannot be developed. So that discourages sprawl. RMD. I don't know if there's 20-plus pages of comprehensive plan policy and land development code. I have really tried to narrow this down, so I am scared of doing a few things. RMD. One dwelling unit allows single-family duplex and limited multifamily from one dwelling unit to two dwelling units per acre. So we are right in the middle of that allowance, entirely consistent with the comprehensive plan. How do you calculate it? It's on the entire site. And what's interesting about this is not only does it say you look at the entire site, it specifically says it shall not be affected by wetlands. I think that's important because oftentimes when we look at other projects, we look at the wetlands and we pull out less units because there's some policies on that. We can't do any of those kinds of things. We can't get into transfers of density. We can't do TDRs. We have to do it on this structure. So you look at the gross area of the project. In other words, the entire 1,269 acres. Mr. Peterson went through these. These are just the development criteria within the Polk County comprehensive plan and land development code related to an RMD. 160 acres, the utilities, site plan, connectivity, internal capture, things of that nature. And we'll come back to those issues. The binding site plan is probably the first piece of these criteria that I think is important to talk about because it really ties in all the other things as well. I want to touch on it. And Mr. Hunter will come up in just a second. But while I have this slide, must be served by public sewer and water. Commissioner Addison, you raised a question about Toho and their ability to serve. Not only have they expressed the ability to serve, but we have our master utility plan already approved. It's a 148, 150-page document with design drawings that the Toho Water Authority has signed off on indicating that they can and will serve the project. So those plans, those utility plans, are in place and approved already. So they have the ability to serve it. This is, again, out of the comprehensive plan and land development code. You have to go through the development review process for the binding site plan. And the first piece of the binding site plan is reserve the environmentally sensitive lands. That's straight out of the comprehensive plan, right? So that's an important piece of this to talk about. When you look at our 50% set aside, this is one of the exhibits out of our binding site plan. But it's been highlighted so you can see the preservation area versus the development area. All this green, owned by the Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank, LLC, is currently being reviewed for a mitigation bank for wetlands and other protected species. I have Mr. Horner here. He is happy to talk about all of those processes and the status of that. That 586 acres will be set aside for those purposes. Internally to the site, we are also setting aside almost 65 acres of wetlands and protected area within the site to get a total of 651.47 acres of preservation. And, again, that is 51.3% of the site meeting the 50% requirement within the RMD. I would also like to point out, and this will play into the next slide just a little bit, on the north end, not part of this RMD, not part of this request, not part of the ordinances that are pending. You have 47 acres that has been acquired by Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank, LLC, as well. That provides additional connectivity to the state lands to the north. This has easements. And that was intentional. The intentionality behind it was to make sure that the environmental corridor, the wildlife corridor that's important in this area, and Mr. Baxter and Mr. Adams recognize the importance of it, is protected and stays in place. And as you can see, and Mr. Peterson pointed out, this is providing a mile width of additional connectivity for that area. This is an overall map of Lake Hatchinahaw into the south, and you kind of see Lake Kissimmee down on the south end. The state of Florida, South Florida Water Management District, state of Florida, Nature Conservancy, you can see this blue and this red all just winds its way right up to the south end of the Creek Ranch, where we have set aside this nearly 600 acres just on the east side to enhance the wildlife corridor and enhance the wildlife activity with, as it moves on and around, even onto the north side of Lake Hatchinahaw, northeast side of Lake Hatchinahaw, where you have additional nature conservancy. Again, this project, demonstrating how this project fits in with the goals and the objectives and the policies of the Polk County Comprehensive Plan. I'm going to ask Mr. Hunter, not Horner, I'm going to ask Mr. Hunter to come up. He's the expert on, he did the site plan. I'm going to ask him to kind of come up and talk about the key ingredients of the site plan, just for a couple minutes. Good afternoon. It is afternoon now, I think. My name is Brian Hunter, and I am a professional engineer and the civil engineer of record for this project. My address for the record is 4900 Dundee Road, Winter Haven, Florida. Before I get started, I want to clarify one thing Bart said. Can I see the tow? We do indeed have approval from the Toho Water Authority for a preliminary master utility plan, and it's a large document, and we've worked on it for a long time back and forth with the evaluators and engineers at Toho. We are not to the point, and this is what I wanted to clarify, where we have design drawings and plans. The preliminary MUP is where we estimate our units and our demand based on those units for water, wastewater, reuse. We estimate and do project the extensions of lines and sizes and routes and paths. We go through lift station calculations, force main calculations, all that stuff. So there is some definitely technicality there. It is about a 180-page document, and it was hard to get, but they definitely have expressed not only a willingness to serve, but they've approved our master utility plan, so it's a bigger confidence. No design plans yet, though, and that's what I wanted to clarify. As a project engineer, our primary task at this point, as it relates to Creek Ranch RMD, is to develop the binding site plan. All future development of this site is going to be based off of this plan, and not only must the plan meet our clients, the developer's goals, and visions, but it also has to satisfy a very long list, as you guys know, of other important design considerations. And I've got a little bit of a little time slot here, and that works. Well, is that one page or two? That'll work for now. I want to touch on just a few pertinent and relevant site plan elements, and I do apologize if too much of this is redundant because Eric's touched on it well, Bart's touched on it, and I'll try to be concise. So here's the site plan, and I apologize for the scale, but it is a large project. As has been mentioned, 876, 1,876 new residential lots, approximately 9.4 acres, usable 9.4 acres of commercial is proposed, all of that on 1,269 acres. 617 acres are proposed for development, and over 51% or 651 acres is proposed for preservation, as you've heard. The minimum residential lot size is 55 feet wide by 115 feet deep, and that's detailed in the top right corner of the site plan. And the lot setbacks are 25 feet for the front, 10 foot for the rear, and 7 feet for the side yards. And those dimensions, I think Eric mentioned this, they're kind of patterned after the lots requirement for the RL4 land use district. But we do, however, have slightly larger front setbacks. We have 25-foot front setbacks, and RL4 allows for 20-foot front yard setbacks. The site plan does show four access points on the Lake Hatchinall Road. There are two primary entrances to the residential development and two entrances shown for the commercial development. The commercial area will also have two internal connections to the residential development in place, as shown on the site plan there, in order to reduce traffic from the community onto Lake Hatchinall Road. The details needed for roadway improvements will certainly be finalized as design moves forward, and certainly prior to Level 2 approval. But right now it's anticipated that each of the primary residential entrances, as well as the primary commercial entrance, will require left turn lanes and improvements similar to Type 4 intersections as defined in the county's LDC. It's also anticipated that the section of Lake Hatchinall Road, from our primary or westernmost residential entrance all the way back to Marigold, will have to be four-laned. And it's probably inevitable at some point that that intersection will be signalized as well. The proposed internal rights-of-way are 50 feet wide, and we have 80-foot-wide right-of-ways along the main boulevards that go into the residential development. Internal streets are 20-foot wide and asphalt with curb and gutter. There are five-feet concrete sidewalks along both sides of the roads throughout the community. The roadway network that we show on the site plan includes two large roundabouts, one central off the main residential entrance south of the park, and one up in the northeast corner. And also we have traffic-calming devices at certain locations within the development, as a means to lower speeds and improve safety. The site plan identifies approximately 131 acres of open space. That's a lot of open space. And that's just within the residential development. That certainly doesn't include the set-aside for conservation. The open space represents 21% of the development area, and that exceeds the 20% requirement for PDs. And I'll also note that the calculated open space that we did doesn't include, of course, any preserved wetlands, and it doesn't include any of our stormwater ponds, which we could do under certain provisions under the code. Of the dedicated open space, just over 23 acres is being established as recreational space for the use of the residence. And this exceeds the requirement of 500 square feet per lot, which is in the code. That totals just over 21 acres or 21 1⁄2 acres. So we provide over 23. We're required to have 21. And the recreational space provided includes, in the center of development, a central park. The park's about seven acres in size. And there's a clubhouse, pool, playground, tot lot, that sort of thing. And there are other recreational areas that are distributed elsewhere on the site, and they include, at a minimum, dog parks, picnic pavilions, playgrounds, extensive walking trails. I don't know if it's been mentioned, but the site plan does call it out. There's approximately six miles of walking trails throughout the site. And I'll note that there are more recreational facilities shown on the site plan that are accounted for in the table that's on the site plan. The purpose of the table was simply to demonstrate that the proposed site plan meets and exceeds the minimum requirements for recreational space. The site plan relative to stormwater and drainage, the site plan depicts 11 stormwater ponds. The ponds are sized and positioned to provide stormwater treatment, attenuation, and wetland hydrology. In order to meet or exceed the prevailing requirements of the South Florida Water Management District, this is in their jurisdiction, and Polk County as well. The existing topography, it slopes generally from the west-central portion. This is about the high side here. And the slopes are generally some to the north, predominantly to the east. The highest elevations reach approximately 100 feet above sea level, with the lowest elevations along the eastern side of the development project being approximately 65 feet above sea level. So that's a 35-foot drop, but it's over about a mile. There are multiple herbaceous and forested wetlands within the proposed development, and we've done our very best to avoid these areas or to minimize the impact where avoidance was not possible. As design and permitting efforts continue, guys, as you know, the wetland boundaries will be confirmed. And I think the rules of the permitting agency should serve as assurance that our impacts on the site will be avoided or certainly minimized. So by necessity, the bulk of our application that we submitted, it was structured to provide assurance that this RMD meets or exceeds the applicable requirements of the land development code comp plan at the time when we applied for MADAR submittal. We know, however, that planning staff for some time now have been developing updates and revisions to the plan development requirements of the code. And I don't, they haven't been adopted. I think they've been postponed. But we, when we started this process, we were anticipating those things. We've been provided a draft of the proposed code changes, I'm sure as you have, and we've incorporated those applicable revisions into design of this site plan. The material revisions in the proposed code language consist of primarily three things, as I recall. Locational scoring for the project that would help establish potential densities, amenity plan requirements, and additional parking requirements. So all of those are beyond the requirements of the current adopted code. And regarding locational scoring, the first one, the newly proposed PD rules, if adopted, established that density and design of these new plan developments are a function of the location and the internal and external design. And the new application requirements, including for RMDs, this type of project, set the maximum residential densities. They kind of apply science to this. They set the densities based on a series of locational criteria. We had, we provided a locational points table in our application based on that new draft language of the PD code. And it's based, it's based on a scoring system provided in the draft rules. And that table identifies the potential points that could be available for the Creek Ranch plan development. And so if we apply the point system in the draft PD rules to this site plan, that's what I'm getting at with all this talk. If we apply that, then this, we score approximately 30 points. And so it takes 25 points on that, on the proposed PD language to max out the density at two units an acre. Because of some of the things Eric mentioned about how well positioned the site is for growth, and it scored 30 points. And so that'd be, obviously make us eligible for the max density of two units per acre. We're asking for 1.48. So, so that's, I wanted to let you guys know that we're not only trying to meet the current code, but even the proposed code that hasn't even been adopted yet. The next part of that was the amenity plan. The PD rules also define the new ones, the potential ones, define various categories of amenities, and they assign certain points to those amenity types. Under the proposed rules, the number of amenity points in the community, they must meet or exceed the number of dwelling units. The location and details of all the proposed amenities for this site plan, they're shown and categorized on here. In our case, the system of amenities proposed on the site plan, as categorized in the proposed rules, will get us 1,975 points, according to those rules, which exceeds the number of residential unit counts in the 1,876, and that's the point, I guess. Lastly, the thing about the new rules, the new proposed PD rules set forth additional parking requirements for any community seeking a PD with residential lot widths less than 65 feet in width. And since our lots, the minimum lot width in this RMD is 55 feet, we're going to need additional parking spaces if we wanted to meet that benchmark. The rate of additional parking required under the new code is one space for every 10 residential units. So on the site plan, we show the location, the details, and at this scale, it's going to be hard to see, but they're scattered throughout the development, mostly concentrated at the amenity centers. But we show 215 additional off-street parking spaces in the community, and that exceeds the requirement of 188 off-street parking spaces. All that's to say that the site plan depicts and summarizes the amenities and additional parking allocations that would be necessary to meet the future PD requirements that, as we're told, are desired, but just not yet adopted yet. A lot's been said about the preservation component of the site plan. It is my favorite part of the whole project, personally. The total land area encompassed by the RMD has been said is 1,269 acres. 651 acres is going to be set aside, preserved, and not developed. This land not only includes wetlands, but there's mostly uplands. It includes a lot of developable uplands. And by virtue of the set aside, the total gross density, as we've mentioned, is only 1.48 units per acre gross density. Environmentally speaking, the preserved area represents this important strategic element within the Kissimmee River watershed, and we're connecting that corridor from the conservative lands to the north, as Eric said, and places a mile wide to the conservation lands to the south. Lastly, I'll just say that I personally believe it's a very good project. We've done our best on the site plan and believe the project meets or exceeds the requirements of the LDC and the comp plan, and we think it's compatible with the surrounding land uses. Any questions to Mr. Hunter while he's up here, or do you want to save questions until later? I'll allow Mr. Beltran as one quick question, but I think if we kind of keep him later, that will help everyone. Go ahead, Mr. Beltran. Just for point of clarification, you said that all these units will be water sewer and reclaimed water serviced. Okay, thank you. All right. I just want to make also just one comment for the public. I see it looks like somebody in the back is recording. Just so that you're aware, this is made available on PGTV as well, and it will be up usually by the end of the day, so I don't know if that will save your arm. Okay. Thank you. Just quickly, Mr. Hunter went through all of this already. I'm not going to go back over those, but I do think it's important just to reiterate that this site is being designed basically to the R04 standards, which is effectively what's immediately adjacent to the west of this particular project and to the north. This is just instead of the commercial. This is a depiction of just what the anticipated transportation, where the anticipated transportation improvements, the purple highlighted areas, again, where we did have initially in February of 23 a traffic preliminary analysis done on the traffic generated from this project. It's actually overestimated the project because at that time, this site was also contemplating a school, but the school is now no longer being contemplated for this site. But this shows what that preliminary analysis looks like. Obviously, at level two, when the full major traffic study is required that addresses phasing and all the different concepts that Mr. Peterson talked about, that will be done at that time, and those plans put in place then. But this is effectively what the anticipation was depicted, was a four-laning from here to here, which is consistent with what you saw from Mr. Peterson's presentation on what the county was anticipating for Lake Hatchinor Hall Road even further west. So, again, anticipating the existing growth, the vested growth, and future growth. These kinds of improvements are necessary and appropriate. Recognizing the different types of intersections, again, those are level two details, but we wanted to at least depict where we are anticipating those improvements to be located. School capacity, Mr. Addison, Commissioner Addison, I should say, sorry, requested that, actually made a comment about school capacity. Again, the prior iteration of this project, when it was going through a selected area plan, contemplated more dwelling units and a multifamily component as part of this. So, this non-binding school capacity letter was from May of 2022, and when you look at the zone schools and the adjacent districts, there was capacity for the entire project, and at that time it was over 2,000 single-family dwelling units and 340 multifamily dwelling units, and we're obviously well under those numbers at this point. School concurrency, again, another level two issue, but something that's been on the forefront of our mind. Those types of issues, you don't want to wait to find out bad news after you've gotten to that point. So, we, along the way, are checking in to make sure to see how our concurrency looks, and that's indicative of a good, responsible developer. From compatibility, a lot of always these things come back to compatibility, and you've heard me talk about what compatibility is. Compatibility is how the two different uses coexist with each other over a period of time. That's a, you know, kind of a simpler, shorter version of what the conference plan says. It does not require that everything be the same. It does not require that everything immediately adjacent to each other has to be identical. However, in this instance, to the west, you've got RO4. Our project is designed at RO4. On the gross, we are at 1.48 dwelling units an acre. They are at 3.4, 6.3 immediately to our north. Again, vested, developable lots. All they need to do is go in and plait on the north side. Right away is already there. If you look at it on the net, only on the development footprint, our density is 3.04 dwelling units an acre. Again, comparable to immediately what's adjacent to our west and to our north. Less dense, and as Mr. Peterson pointed out as well, a nice transition from the existing development invested entitlements to our north and our west to this site, and then with a mile of width and places of separation between this project and the port hatch property to the east. All going into preservation, looking at mitigation banks, and going through those processes, being reserved as part of a condition of approval. Again, compatibility on the macro scale is here. We are absolutely compatible with the surrounding developments in the surrounding area. Looking at it a little bit more on the micro scale, let's look at it up close. Looking along the frontage of Lake Hatchenaw Road, as you can see, we have limited, again, as the RMD requires, limited the number of access points onto the Collector Road. There's a lot of significant natural vegetation in this area. You'll note that here, just by way of an example, this is the closest residential lot to Lake Hatchenaw. That's approximately 95 feet of separation. That's an entire lot worth of separation. The intent here is to maintain all of that natural vegetation along Lake Hatchenaw Road to keep that drive to look the same way and to look rural as it exists today. Because as you heard in some of your other cases earlier today, ironically, natural vegetation and natural trees and maintaining that existing vegetation is better than coming in and replanting with new trees. So, again, based on the binding site plan, this is what the intent is here. Looking on the east side, this is to the adjacent parcel. You've got 250 feet of physical separation from the rear of the lot line to the property boundary. Again, maintaining natural vegetation to the greatest extent practical on the eastern side, putting in stormwater ponds. You've got the walking trails, again, highlighted there, showing the buffering. That's a substantial separation. That's more than what we typically require between commercial and residential, four times more, as a matter of fact. So I think that's a very good buffer between the eastern boundaries. So I'm going to sum up. We've been up here a little while, and I know there's a lot of people in the room, but I do think just for purposes of the record, I'm going to run through what the RMD development requirement are. Mr. Peterson did the same thing. It has to be 160 acres. We obviously meet or exceed that. Served by public water and sewer. We've got Toho sewer. We've got our master preliminary plan approved. I'm going to make sure that I'm clear on that. Access to a collector road. The binding site plan's in. We exceed the 50% set aside, and that does not include that extra area, that 47 acres to the north. That is exclusive of that. We are providing for the internal capture with the commercial, and we have met the marketing requirements for the size of commercial that we've had. And not only have we met it, it sounds like the demand is out there today. When you think about how much development has occurred moving south along Marigold and how quickly that area has developed over the past few years, absolutely providing some commercial down here makes a lot of sense. But it also makes a lot of sense that this project get approved now because as that development continues to move forward, this project will continue that and connect into those existing developments. And it's unusual that you find a project like this where we are within a mile of a fire station, within a mile of a sheriff's substation, future sheriff's substation, walking distance of a regional park, schools within walking distance, and new schools being planned. And with the infrastructure and the forward thinking of the county, as you heard, where the Board of County Commissioners has indicated, hey, guys, go out there and figure out what infrastructure needs to come into place to serve this growing area of our county. And we are following in lockstep with all of those policies of your comprehensive plan from even 30 years ago. So with that, we believe this project is compatible. It's compatible with the development west to the north, provides 600 acres, almost 600 acres to the east buffer from the lake. We have concurrency available for all infrastructure. We will be going through formal concurrency review as we get into level twos. And this project is consistent with your comprehensive plan. It meets all of the requirements of the rural mixed-use development within the ARR land use classification and an RDA. It meets all of your current land development codes. And as Mr. Hunter indicated, we are also striving to meet the future land development code provisions related to plan developments. And that is all entirely voluntary. And the developer is welcome to do that. So with that, we'll stand for any questions you may have. We would request maybe more than a couple minutes of rebuttal. It kind of depends on what all needs to be addressed. But I will do my best to keep that short, Commissioner. Any questions before we open the public portion? I just want to make a comment to Mr. Allen, because I'm sure you work also with your applicant on this. And just for the information for the public, what they are alluding to is standards that the county spent nine months working on, I would guess, maybe a little bit longer, looking at, some would say, improving the development standards for PDs in the county. Sadly, the state preempted us in setting those forward. And they put a halt on it for all counties within 100 miles of the impact of Hurricane Ian. But I do applaud this developer at this point for coming in, showing their willingness to know that we are asking for different standards and that they have taken that into consideration. So as a person looking at those standard changes, I'm appreciative that those were considered, even though they are not required at this time. And with that, we are going to open the public portion of the meeting. It is obvious we have a lot of people here that want to speak. Every person, again, by our policies and procedures, we have three minutes. I do not like to have to cut people off. But again, we have a policy and a procedure that we are set forth here to implement and maintain. So we are going to go as organized as we can with this. I do not know if there are certain groups or people that have an organized presentation. But if you do and you are speaking in a certain order, if you would cue yourself in that order, that would help tremendously as far as time. As everyone has seen, you are going to be asked to give your name and address for the record. You absolutely can adjust the microphone to best meet your needs. If you have needs that have to do with technology, I will go ahead and let you know staff will help you with that. If there is something that you want to put up, they have the old school overhead projector that you can lay anything under as far as to get it up on the screens that everyone can see. I cannot impress upon you the need to be respectful that this is a public hearing. And we will enforce that just for the sake of everyone. We understand this is emotional. And we are here to serve and to make the best recommendations based upon facts of this case and, again, our comprehensive code. And with that, I would ask that the first person would like to come forward, please make your way. And, again, if you're going to need some stuff by staff presented and all that, if you want to tend to that, that would be helpful for everyone's sake. Yes, absolutely. The more you can be organized, it's helpful to everyone. All right. Glenn Lawhorn, 11,000, Jim Edwards Road. I want to introduce everybody, if everybody would stand that's here in opposition. Okay. Thank you. I want to start with a little bit on the traffic, trying to paraphrase this. The Hatchinah Road is already a D road, so it's just a little bit shy of failing already. They're going to try to put all these cars on the Hatchinah Road. Right now it's at 7,300 average annual daily trips. That's probably not accurate because that was done almost two years ago. So according to the Polk County Transportation, that number is probably going to be considerably higher if the road hasn't failed already. So 2006, Tommy Addison and I and four other people did a de novo hearing on the Lake Hatchinah Road development that was directly across the street from this, which we subsequently won. And this is really not any different than that. This property is conservationary, should be conservationary. It's an entire wetland when it's raining, and we need to treat it as that. But the biggest thing about this project is Eric alluded to this, that it's part of the Poinciana area. It's not. This property is completely cut out from the Poinciana pre-DRI. So taking those rights and entitlements and stuff and trying to push it over onto this project is absolutely wrong. It's the headwaters to the Everglades, as you can see in the picture. Will that show this up here? Okay. I can't really tell what it's doing. Let me do this. Okay. All right. That's the headwaters to the Everglades. That's right across the street, literally. Okay. This picture is an aerial looking to the east, and you can see at the bottom left corner right here, that is Deer Lake. That's Deer Lake, the new subdivision going in. That's what Deer Lake looks like from the air. And you're saying that this is compatible? This developer is saying this is compatible, putting this kind of density over into this area? That's absurd looking to me. I mean, I don't know how you can even possibly think that that's correct to do something like that. But I digress a little bit. The Transportation Board says that there's no imminent plans whatsoever to do any road improvements to Lake Hatchinahal Road or to Marigold anytime in the next, since 2027. Wow, that was quick. The traffic studies kind of speak for themselves. I'm going to go ahead. If you have something that you want somebody else to pick up, they can pick up if you all kind of work together. Can I buy their time? No. Listen, here's where we're going to go with this. If you all want to give him 30 minutes and the group sits back, I'm fine with that. But I'm not going to get in here to count in people and all that. But if the will of your group, the will of the group is that he's, first I have to, one second please, I'm going to confer with our legal if that is an appropriate concession to make. If the board wants to do that, if you want to give one person, a spokesperson, all of their time, but the others need to concede their time so they don't get to double dip. Right. I wouldn't want to take everybody's time. I just need like another three minutes and I'm done. Maybe less than that. Okay. I will allow this once. We are not going to get into this time and time again. You've been here all morning. Again, I have to maintain policy and procedure for the sake of everyone here. So I appreciate that, sir. I will not see you double dipping. I appreciate that. Go ahead, sir. We're going to do three minutes, but this is not going to be repeated. It may not take three minutes. Thank you. You have three minutes. Okay. On the traffic study, you can see it over there. It shows that the information that I give is true and correct. It came from Polk County Planning Traffic Division this morning. The level of service on the road is D. Let me get back to the Lakes of Lake Hatchnall project. The Department of Community Affairs wrote us a letter. I don't remember exactly how it was stated to kind of corroborate this, Mr. Addison, that the Poinciana pre-DRI was not to extend beyond its boundaries, period, end of story. And that tells us right there that they realized that the Poinciana pre-DRI was a huge, huge land use mistake, probably one of the biggest ever in the country. So I don't think that this Poinciana needs to run over the rest of us. Poinciana has to stop where it's at. This Deer Lake subdivision that went in, I didn't catch it when it was posted, but a lot of people didn't catch it when it was posted. But now looking at that, what that looks like, that's just crazy. This is the headwaters of the Everglades right here. We've got to stop this. You know, this is absolutely the wrong place, the wrong time. There's never a good time to go out there and take this piece of property over like this and absolutely destroy it because that's what's going to happen. You're going to put, I don't know, how many thousands of people out there and how many thousands of cars a day. And then when you go in four-lane Hatchnohal Road from their last entrance to the east to Marigold Avenue, then that's where the four-lane stops. Where does it go from there? We go back to two lanes and all the people that drive like idiots out there. So that's all I've got to say for now. There's a lot more coming. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Again, next speaker. Let's try to move this timely. Tom, I need you to pull that microphone down, please. I don't think it's on. Try again. No. No. No, sir. No. If that'll work. Just get real close and see. If you'd go over to the other podium, please. We know that one's working. Here comes the technology savior. Okay, that's working. Perfect. All right, good afternoon. I'm Tom Palmer. I'm chair of the Ancient Islands Group of Sierra Club of Florida. My address is 1805 26th Street, Northwest Winter Haven. We have a number of questions about this project. I guess the first one is, what authorizes the use of land owned by a separate entity to be used to mitigate? I mean, I couldn't find anything in the cove. I could have overlooked it. But you've got two separate ownerships on this property. One's the Creek Ranch LLC, and other's the Creek Ranch Mitigation Bank. So, anyway. We also, you know, wonder about the retention, you know, the adequacy of retention. This place has got a lot worse soils than adjacent Poinciana. And judging from the aerials, a lot denser development proposed. And I guess from the experience last year with Ian, a lot of places, a lot of houses that weren't in the flood map zone got flooded anyway, including my nieces over in the Orlando area. So, I just wonder whether they need to take into account climate change when they're planning their retention. The traffic's already been addressed, but it's just there's a lot of really vague plans. A lot of these roads aren't funded. So, I don't know how much you can anticipate that. But, okay, there is going to be a model, a buffer, which I like. But we just worry about the edge effect because the housing movement, you've got domestic pets, you've got all kinds of stuff that could still affect that as a conservation area. Also, the applicant has applied to the Florida Forever Program for conservation easement. And I wonder whether it's premature to consider as approval when that's still pending, one or the other. And finally, the fact is this sits in the middle of a wildlife corridor. If the board decides to go ahead and recommend approval for this, I'd like to deal with the outdoor lighting so it doesn't destroy the night sky, which is really an important issue for especially for migrating birds. This is a migratory bird pathway. It doesn't affect land animals as much, but it does affect birds. So, that's something to keep in mind. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker. Guys, again, I'm going to ask that we keep a queue of people over here so that each time, and we're working back in the middle, I think. I think we're up and going. Awesome. All right. Outstanding. My name is Lamar Quinn. I'm right at 22 Lakeview Drive, behind the city of Florida. I rise to be heard on behalf of the Land Conservation and Wildlife Corridor, a voice for the voiceless. The ridge is a habitat of three ecosystems, uniquely converged years ago, and sea levels were much different long before the Florida Peninsula was mature. The ridge was prominent. Extreme elevation by Florida standards, 35 feet, previously noted. Rapid descent on the east side of this ridge of the elevation allows this unique ecosystems to merge together in harmony. The hammock oaks, the pines, the scrubs, and, of course, the wetlands. Buck Tower, built on the highest point on this ridge, extends north from Claremont down to Lake Placid. 1961, our family moved from the hustle and muscle of Orlando to the developing new community in rural Florida called Lake Ensenah Estates. My father wanted to get his family away from the rapid expansion of Orlando, a thing called Disney. Two small fish camps and a lake access, that was the place to be. A few permanent residents, but most were weekend and fishing homes. The irony of that is that Lake Ensenah Estates today could not be recreated. The Quinns, we are the senior residents of this community, 62 years, proudly so. Realizing long-term damage to these kinds of developments in environment and ecosystem, citizens really have done a good job in establishing more government oversight commissions like this one to monitor development and do the right thing for the future, the generations, and, of course, the voice for the voiceless, all of our wildlife. Citizens, we're not against growth. We want to grow and secure preservation of the land the future generations and wildlife can both enjoy. Urban growth is important, but not at the expense of land, pristine and ecologically sensitive to the balance of nature along what is known as the ridge. Again, it extends from Claremont to Lake Placid. Local landowners share the goal in preserving land. I knew Mr. Cox, an original owner of Creek Ranch. I spent many nights camping with his family as a youngster. He, too, was a man of preservation. Glenn previously noted a lakes of Lake Hatchinette Hall, which was thwarted, due diligence with Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society marshaled awesome defense to Mother Nature, a place called Everglades Headwater. That is a multi-mile corridor protected. In presentations here earlier, while 50% of what is left to be a two-mile corridor is taken away from this migration, 5,000 feet is somehow determined to be accessible and adequate. We disagree. Let's protect Mother Nature Museum and the natural beauty for all generations to come and endangered species. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Guys, we must refrain from clapping. We've explained the procedures, and I just hope that you honor the process as well. I'm Kim Ashburn. My address is 124 Brim Street, and the end of that is Haynes City, not Poinciana. We're at the dead end, and it's kind of hard to see on the map that that road actually does dead end. That doesn't go on. We already have an issue with furniture, mattresses, you name it, being dumped at the end of that street from the Poinciana residents. And I've heard a lot of buzzwords today, like future and proposed, just like the proposed conservation area now. My concern is several years from now, we're going to be back here with a different panel where we're wanting to propose now land or homes in addition to. This is obviously overkill. This is obviously overkill. 1,800 homes, that's times two the vehicles for the entrances out onto Lake Hatchna Hall, which is already so very congested. This is clearly overkill. You have to look at this and see for a dead end community of 275 folks to have to get past this. 1,800 homes, in addition to the homes that they're building at Lake Deer now, is just ridiculous. I don't see how you can approve this. Thank you. Thank you. My name's Jim Fletcher. I live at 13561 Hatchna Hall Road, and I've lived there for 34 years. The one thing I want to say is what she was talking about, what you people should do, y'all should go out to Hatchna Hall about 3.34 o'clock this afternoon, and you'd see what we were talking about. And there, Pontianna's building, about 1,600 more homes right up there at the west end of this property. And it's just miserable, and what I was concerned about is for the wildlife and the turtles and the deer and the panthers. We have a couple panthers that come up through that area every year, and I guess eventually if they get cut off, they won't be coming up there anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Jeremy Knowles, 355 West Lake Marion Road, Hank City, Florida. You were presented with a staff report just seven days ago on a planned development that is the size of a small city. Considering the size and underlying issues such as the fragile ecosystem, drainage concerns into the headwaters of the Everglades, the disruption of the Florida Wildlife Corps, and the list goes on. The fact that the county staff expects you to make a sound vote on a development of this size in just seven days' notice of the information is absurd. Not to mention the staff report is full of assumptions, and the information provided is from consultants from the developer he hired. Let's get to the reality of some of the points left out on the staff report. First, there is the mention of the opposition against this development. Thousands of people, environmental groups, and others have been opposing this development for 12 months now. Countless hours, time off work, and even time off during vacations have been sacrificed to make emails, face-to-face meetings, and phone calls to county staff, county commissioners, and planning commission. This system is supposed to be designed in favor of the power of the people. Well, we're here, and we are here, and we have done our due diligence. Please make the right decision in your vote. Please consider the thousands of people that already live in rural East Polk County and how this development will create a disaster on their quality of life. Second, what about the conservation area? There is no mention or documentation of what type of conservation this will be. Will it be a temporary conservation easement that will allow the developer to come back in 10 years from now and do as he pleases on the other half of this property? Because that is a possibility. How can you make a sound vote without this type of information? Third, Toho Water Authority, is Toho Water really capable of providing services development? The reports say they are. Reality is, Poinciana is a felling disaster already. Manholes overflowing with raw sewage within 1,000 feet of Lake Marion Creek Middle School. Constant transfer pumps being set up in random places because of the failing infrastructure. Not to mention, Toho already has an obligation with the Poinciana area. Poinciana is already at about 60% build out. So how is Toho going to supply Poinciana and new developments? The numbers do not add up in the staff report. There are many other concerns and questions about this staff report, and its development seems to be a rushed project that needs to be stopped and analyzed closer for development of this size. Again, please consider all concerns before making a vote. Good afternoon, folks. My name is Danny Brantley. I live at 2605 Hidden Hammock Road. Not only am I a Florida native, I'm a Pope County native. I am a past president of the largest sportsman's club here in Central Florida called the Kissimmee River Valley Sportsman Association. In 1994, we took a guy named Roger Mattenamere to court over the Hyde Watermark. At that time, the Hyde Watermark was established at 52-5 and had since then been moved to the 54-foot. All this conservation area is 90% of it from the maps I've gotten from water management is underneath the 54-foot. They are trying to use that as conservation easement, and Mr. Baxter is a member of the KRVSA Club and a friend, maybe not after today, but has been in the past. But this is not their land to use for mitigation for all these homes. This water, everything below the 54-foot high watermark, or up to, excuse me, the 54-foot mark, belongs to the citizens of the Pope County, United States of the world. They do not own that marsh, folks. And, you know, it's real easy. You can get maps from water management and everything that shows that all that conservation, the majority, not I won't say all of it, the majority of that conservation area is below the 54-foot, and they should not be allowed to use that as mitigation credits. I'm here to fight for the people of the state. We don't need this crowd. We don't need all this traffic. And we, I'm sure, don't need the animals runoff. There is some from, I can't say I've seen it, but I've been told that there's two Indian mounds there. There's a guy here in the audience that knows about those Indian mounds, and there's also two eagles' nests on there, which if you pit homes like that, eagles' nests, you're required to stay back, I think, a minimum of 500 feet, right, 500 feet almost across that whole thing. So I am highly against this. You know, I feel I have that right to say that. I'm a native and like, you know, preserve what part of Florida we still can. And we hope you all would vote no on this development. Thank you very much. Thank you. Again, guys, I'm going to ask that you cue yourself in a line down this. Let's go down the middle and cue yourself. Let's stop. Hold on. Let's cue up some speakers because we're continuing to wait. Yeah. It just helps for everyone's sake. Maybe we need to take a lunch so they can explain. All right, sir. Thank you. Apparently we don't understand something. I don't know. Red McTeer, 9025 Whippoorwill Lane, Haines City, Florida, 33844. If you look up at the map that they've got drawn out, the little part on the right, that little stair step, that happens to be my family, my property. I'd like to address to the engineer, I know he knows what he's doing, but I've been a resident and been out there for quite a few years and also the planter coming down Hatchney Hall Road from where the Baragold Road is now, put in the ballpark and amusement park. We've got a water problem there, and it's not with swift mud. It's not drinking water. It's water flowing down this hill from, he said, something like, I think, 15, 18-foot drop going down through there. Down this line where they've got the retention pond is great, but there's about two or three entrances are going in. The water comes down that road, which they may want to address later with the county because the county can't dump their water off on an individual. When they dump it off on him, it's going to be dumped off on me. My daughter's already had to reset before this the blocks on her mobile home because it washed out going down through there. The previous owners, Cox and the Exposition Ranch with Creek Ranch, they allowed me to go in there with a plow and plow down the road to throw up a berm to stop some of the water from going through there. Engineers are not always right. You know, a lot of times we draw up a plan on something to build something and we find out it didn't work out, and I think you all have all been through that. The engineer that wrote up on the homes that are up above now that are being built in there, before they could get the retention pond on Marigold built by the fire department, the water was overflowing, the retention pond going into the ditch in Marigold, traveling through an underground culvert, going back into Lake Marion. That's going back to the west. I'm concerned about now with the water problem we've already had, the water impact off of that where it's going to start turning south, coming down the road and going into an entrance. They've got plan there, and it goes up about, you can see it vaguely on there, but there's a real light washway where it has washed and washed into the edge of my property. And from there, it goes back north and runs into a deep canal, which takes off the majority of the water. And at that point in time, it's blown out a couple of culverts. I would like for them to be sure that they know what they've got going on the water. Thank you. My name is Debra Lawson. I live at 200 Penny Lane in Haines City. I live off of Tyner Road. I live in front of Sand Hill Elementary School. I am an expert in traffic problems because 10 months out of the year, two hours in the morning and two hours at night, sometimes I can't pull out of my private drive on the Hatchnall Road, okay, because the traffic is backed up. All of our public opinions resulted in us getting a 20-foot turning lane headed west on Hatchnall Road, west. How about for the traffic that's headed east on Hatchnall Road? How about for the traffic that can't get in a 20-foot turning lane, okay? It's nightmare traffic. Hatchnall Road, how about detour road that intersects? How about HL Smith Road that intersects? How about a bus accident that happens once a week, if not twice a week? No injuries yet, but I say yet, not if it comes, when it comes. That's going to be on you. Everybody knows it's the headwaters to the Florida Everglades, and that sign, ladies and gentlemen, is not past where Mr. Baxter plans on developing. It is before Mr. Baxter plans on developing, okay? Mr. Peterson stated our case and made it to you really, really plain. Mr. Peterson said, Marigold's going to be improved. The next road over is going to be improved, but Hatchnall Road is not on that list. Maybe in the near future, there's your case right there, ladies and gentlemen. Hatchnall Road is not going to be improved. What are they going to do? Oh, yes, they're going to put four entrances into this little thing. Four entrances that are going to be 20 foot long. Where does that put the rest of the traffic? This Hatchnall Road dead ends into Port Hatchnall. When you do this, those people have to get out, just like I have to get out of my road. How are they going to get out, okay? 1,800 homes? Oh, not all those are going to be kids that go to school. Are you kidding me? Yes, they are. Inside the development, we're going to put some speed bumps. We don't need your speed bumps inside the development. Where we need your speed control is on Hatchnall Road. Where we need all of the traffic to be stopped from is on Hatchnall Road. Your speed bumps and your little accident preventive maintenance things inside of a development is not where we need them. We need help on Hatchnall Road. So let me just say, possible, preliminary, pending, maybe, and in the future is for you to determine that this development stops right here and is only put on future and maybe books. Please, not now. Thanks for your time. My name is Frankie Miller. I live at 13950 Hatchnall Road. And I'm opposed to the Creek Ranch development. I feel it's incompatible with the surrounding area. There are large tracts of land protected, crucial to our survival, as well as rare species that inhabit the area. This decision that's made today is going to be a chance to make a difference. You know, I would appreciate a no vote on that. They referenced 1,200 and something acres. I'm in two-tenths of a mile of that. And the importance of not allowing this development was recognized no more, I mean, by me, than Mr. Eric Peterson over there. And he brought it to my attention April 9, 2020, when I applied for a variance for a freestanding carport. This was in the denial report summary. I got the case number and everything. He said in 2020, today it's in an urban oasis amongst the sea of conservation land, is what he said in my denial. So that's about all I have, you know, other than, you know, I would appreciate a no vote. And also, too, I don't believe the public signs were posted properly the way they did it. They didn't post it. They sent 134 mailers for 1,876 homes. I was going to put a carport up. They sent out 52 mailers. So something's wrong with the system. But I've got copies of this from 2020, and I've got enough for all of you guys. So he recognized it was a sea of conservation then, but now he doesn't. So thank you. 5720 Water Tank Road, Hange City, Florida. Just pull that down so we can hear you better. Sorry, I'm short. Hello? Does that work? Yes, much better. I just want to put this on record because I want to know what you guys are going to do. Looking back, please don't take this personally, anybody. But you see most of the people here that are from the port, they are seniors. Okay? They're living off a fixed income usually. Some of them might have a good retirement. Some of them might be living off the pathetic thing that Social Security gives us. Okay? What I want to know is what you guys are going to put into place to protect them from being flooded out of their homes. Okay? Because when the storm came, this property that they're talking about developing, all the way to the driveway that, from what I believe is the entryway to this gentleman's home, was completely underwater. All the way from Lake Hatchnahall. Now, everything was flooded up there because that has always been the flood area. That's where that lake has always flooded off into. All the way around that lake, it has flooded off into those lands. Now, when they raised that up like they did Charles Cove over off of Massey Road in Hange City, and some people sitting on your board know about this situation, and this is where it gets dirty because they pushed in that property of Charles Cove into the city of Hange City. They lifted it 20, 25, 30 feet, which now caused existing elderly residents to be flooding out of their homes, that they have paperwork since back in the 80s that said they've never been in a floodplain. They've never flooded before, ever. They cannot sell their property. They cannot live in their home. Now, the county says that it's Hange City's problem because Hange City's the one that built up and flooded them. All right? But their property sits county because they've never sold over and been annexed into the city. So the buck keeps getting passed back and forth. Well, the county's going to approve or not approve this today, and the county is where those folks at Hatchinahaw live. Now, everybody said it, including their people, that that land slopes that way. So when that water all starts coming, what's going to happen when it rains? That lake's going to back up, and it's going to flood all that water off on them people into the port that has been existing and living there for eons. And you're going to allow that to happen. So I just want it to be on record because, I mean, it's common sense. If you build it up, we've seen it on Charles Cove and Hange City. And what did Hange City's commission board sit right there and say to those poor elderly people? Well, we didn't know that would happen. So like Mr. Knowles said, let's take a little time. Let's put this on hold. Let's do a little more research and see what's actually going to happen because I want to know at the end of the day who's going to take care of these people that live off of fixed income when you put their house underwater. Wayne Wilkinson, 78 Perk Street. I've been out there since the mid-'70s. I've seen this place flood numerous times. Water runs down the side of the road, looks like a river, looks like white water. You could run a kicker boat down the side of Mr. Mac Tears' driveway. I've seen it wash out. Come on, people. Everything runs downhill to hatch now. What about when it floods? What about the animals? What little bit of dry there is is up there by Mr. Mac Tears. That's the only place the deer have to go. This year, when the water was high, Creek Ranch had a diesel pump running a 12-inch pipe, 24-7 pumping water out of the ranch into the lake. You tell me they don't have a problem? They do have a problem, and they're putting it all on us. Appreciate a no vote, y'all. All right, it looks like no one else is going to speak. Well, guys, let's go ahead and start that clock, please. I haven't been spoken. I want my five seconds back. Then I'll just run over it. Anyway, my name is Thomas Gill. I live at 108 Brim Street, which is out there at the lake, and I am here to talk about today. Hold on just a second. Go ahead and stop the clock. Let's make this clear. There are rules and procedures here for everyone, and if not, then we have to abide. We have asked that you people cue yourself for the sake of everyone sitting here. I do not like to ask adults to follow directions, but something is not occurring. So this is for everyone's benefit that we move along timely. So I ask that you abide by the timer that's going to be used. Thank you. And for everyone else, if you could please abide by this. This is for everyone's sake. On your screen up there, you have an email from the Tallahassee, Florida DOT. It doesn't get a whole lot taller than that. And they say that they were not requested to do a traffic study. So whatever traffic study they have had done has been funded by the developer. Now, I'm not really an expert on conflict of interest. I know you have a developer on your board. But anyway, that is not right. The Florida DOT is not biased for developments, and they're not biased for the people like us that have to deal with this mess that you guys create, and we're stuck with it. Anyway, some other things I'd like to talk about. We have the traffic issue. And, I mean, you can run all day on stuff. There's no compatibility with this development with the surrounding landscape. Glenn said it himself, Poinciana is not in our area. I have a Haines City address. I don't want to be associated with Poinciana. When I leave my house at 5 in the morning and I get to the intersection of Marigold, I've been almost T-boned three times in two weeks because people run that stop sign. There's two sheriffs that sit in this deer lake or lake deer, whatever you want to call that development, that sit there in the morning. They don't do anything. They don't pull the people over. They're sitting in the development not doing anything. Once again, let's talk about cleaning up the road. My family cleans up the road. Mattresses, tires, all this other stuff, beer cans, you name it. All of that comes from Poinciana. We do not do any of that. We take care of it. And you're just going to have all this. What's going to happen? I want to, here's a big question. I want to know what's going to happen when there's a fatal wreck on that road because somebody pulls out in front of somebody and I can't get to my house at the end. That's a one way in, one way out. Better yet, I can't get out of my house. What do you want me to do then? Have you guys given any forethought to this? There's been no thought done to this. Reggie's lived at the lake. He knows. And I don't, I have no personal issue with Reggie. I don't dislike him or anything. I am just not simply for this. We have packed this room out today. If you vote yes on this, that is horrible. That shows you have no respect for all of us taking time out of our day. I've been here since 830 this morning and it's now 120. You want to talk about saving time? I've wasted a day. Terry Dobbins, I live at 13939 Hatch and Hall Road. I would have the same concerns everyone else does. And that's basically the water. The water comes up. I don't know how many of you in here actually know, keep up with the weather. We're probably about 20 inches below normal rainfall right now. This ranch, whatever you want to call it, I don't know this guy. I'm a Polk County resident, been here all my life, been going down to this lake all my life. It floods, it dries up, it floods again. This is not the place to be building this. I hope you all would take everybody in here's word for that and look at that. You had a lot of cases before us. People in here for the same reason. There's a time and place for this. They keep saying, oh, there's parks here, lots of parks. There's a couple of soccer fields, softball diamond. Y'all get in your cars, ride out there like the last guy said. Check the place out. That's what needs to happen. Look around. There's a lot of wildlife out there you're fixing to disturb. Put it out of any place to go that we'll never see again. All I ask is you give it good consideration. Good afternoon. My name is Misty McTeer. I reside at 12274 Lake Hatchinahall Road. I think I'm the closest person that this will affect for this development. If you look to the right of the picture where there's like the little retention pond that's closest towards the conservation, you can't see it because it's not zoomed in, but I have the little single-wide mobile home that's right there. We've lived out there. I'm third generation. My grandparents, my parents, now myself reside there. We knew the cocks. I've been a part of that family and been friends with them for years. I've ridden horses, worked cows, rode four-wheelers, hog hunting, you name it. It was a way of life. It's the way I grew up. I hate to see things like that go, but I'm also a real estate broker in the state of Florida. I am licensed. That's what I do for a living. As far as my concerns for us is what is this going to do to our piece of property in the future? How is it going to affect us? The flooding. I can't tell you how many times I've reset my mobile home. Three times. We had to literally take an airboat to get from the road from the entrance of my driveway to get to my house after the hurricanes came through. It literally runs like a river. My dad's been down to the county office, I guess you could say, there in Dundee, several times trying to get them to come out and dig the ditches along the side of the road because along there, it also goes up to the front part of our property by our cow pens and floods all of that where my uncle lives. So I just ask you to take into consideration all the different variables as well as the flooding and the wildlife, et cetera, and the citizens that reside in the area. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no other speakers. Once the public portion of the meeting is closed, it is closed. Okay. Seeing no other speakers, the public portion of the meeting is closed. We will turn it back over to the applicant if they would like to address any of the concerns that have been raised. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, we will be concise in our comments, but there was a number of things we need to touch on. I'm going to ask Mr. Hunter to come up and talk about drainage first off, and then I've got a couple of other issues that I want to address as well. Obviously, we're taking note of the comments regarding, I in particular as a civil engineer, taking notes of the comments regarding existing flooding and the drainage. I actually think that's very helpful for me to do my job. As you guys know, there's a lot of engineering left to do on a job like this. We're just scratching the surface. A lot of engineering. I could tell you that, as you know, we're going to, and I mentioned this earlier, we're going to have to meet or exceed all the prevailing stormwater requirements for all the districts, but that doesn't always satisfy people, and it's understandable. But I'll tell you this in addition to that. But the best thing we can do as engineers, and when I hear Mr. McTeer talking about giving the lay of the land and what floods, and this is good stuff, and it'd be my goal to go out there, not by myself, but get as much feedback from the residents as possible, because this is not an opportunity. I guess if it's done wrong, you can make things worse, but it won't be done wrong. The reality is, and this happens all the time, and I could give you examples. This is an opportunity to do thorough analysis on existing problems and make them better. This is when the engineering can greatly help. What I heard was, it's flooding in places now, right? So this is the time to make things better, and there'll be nobody that's more responsible professionally than the engineer of record to make sure that's right, and we take this stuff very, very seriously, and we have a good direct record. I, too, used to work at the Water Management District as an engineer, so we've got some experience with designing surface water management systems. Excuse me, Mr. Hunter, can I make a comment? Don't you, as an engineer, have to design your stormwater retainage on the property to match what it is today? To not exceed what it is today. Rate and volume, and it goes beyond that point and manner of discharge. So there's an... So, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, that's right. That's good. So if anything, you'll make it better? I think so. If we do our job right in the agencies... Okay. Thank you. I mean, I would be encouraged. Which I feel like we will, and there's lots of examples that we could point to. We don't have the time. Right. But we dig... Things flood out there right now. Guess whose fault it is if it floods after we're done? It's my fault. Mr. Hunter. Right? Thank you. All right. A couple other things. There was a reference to Hatch and Hall Road being at a level of service D today. That was one of the initial conversations. That is, according to your staff report, according to the county's best data, it is operating at a level of service C today. That is on table six of your staff report. It is... It can go to a level of service D. That is what the adopted level of service is, but it is currently at a level of service C. That means that there's additional capacity available. That being said, there will still be traffic studies. The formal traffic study will occur concurrently with the level two process in advance of to make sure that any improvements that are required, and we've already identified what we believe, at this point, what we think they will be, which will be four-laning, respectively, from our primary entrance, including dedicated left turns into the site. So there will be queuing for cars going into the site, four-lane improvement out to Marigold. When we were talking about compatibility earlier and what our request is, our request has nothing to do with expanding Poinciana pre-DRI number one. We are utilizing the RMD process that exists under the county's comprehensive plan that has been on this property since the day this comprehensive plan was adopted, since 1991, since the original comprehensive plan. We are utilizing property rights that have been vested in this piece of property and any ARR piece of property that is over 160 acres and utilizing them for the property owner, which is the property owner's absolute right. Those provisions don't suggest, they don't hint toward clustering the development. It requires clustering development. It requires the set-aside. It requires everything that's been done in this binding site plan for this RMD. So I think that that's important to point out. This has nothing to do with expanding the DRI or the pre-DRI, I'm sorry, the pre-DRI and the PUD that was entitled back in the 70s. So it shows, I mean, there's even further evidence that shows that all of this land was contemplated for development 60 years ago. I mean, 50 years ago. I mean, I can't do my math while I'm standing here at the dais. I was thinking I was older than I am. So that's an important point of this. And I'm going to touch on a couple other things. There is no, as it related to the ownership, there was a comment related to the bifurcated ownership between the mitigation bank and the development footprint. There's nothing in the code that says you can't. These are combined applicants. They are both signed. They are both advertised. They are all part of the same application. They are here walking in unison. And it is common, if not the majority of the time that I am in front of this board or any of the, or any of these, the board of county commissioners, where we have, where we have multiple owners asking and working under one application for one use. I think we had one with nine owners this morning. One with nine owners. There you go. So that, that is, that, that was, um, um, um, one point that I wanted to talk about. And, and even if it was an issue, the principles behind both the LLCs are the exact same people. So they are, you know, it is a, it is a unified application. Um, lighting. That's a, uh, I want to talk about the wildlife corridor just generally. And then I'll also talk about, um, lighting within that. When you look at this, when you look at this site and there was a comment made about wildlife corridor, a diesel pump, uh, pumping water into Lake Hashten Hall and protecting this entire area. If you just looking at the aerial, that's on the screen, you can, one, you can see that this property has been ditched and drained for, for decades. You can see all of those ditches and drains and that have been put into that site in 1970. Oh goodness. In 1975, August 12th, to be exact, the South Florida water management district permitted the diesel pump that was referenced earlier, because there is a dike that had been constructed to allow the agricultural activities that you see where all the diking and ditching, where the cattle operation had gone, that has been in, that permit has been in place and a benefit to this property since 1975 that allows, because there is a dike along, basically along that yellow line, more or less, uh, that at the time, 1975, prevented the lake from coming onto the site. And it does that for agricultural purposes. That is why in 1995, the deed for the trustees of the internal improvement trust fund was given to the exposition company for this entire area. And it is very specifically dedicated. dedicated and, and by, and when you look at the laws related to ordinary high water lines and, and how they're established and ownership of land around lakes, particularly flat, you know, where they flatten, they're not a steep, sharp lake that was done intentionally to give them this land, to give the exposition company, this land. And I want to read just one sentence for Ms. Heff's, um, title, title opinion. That was dated July 28th, 2023, based on the research of the public records review, the property appraiser records, a current, uh, ALTA survey and a title search. And the title search is in here somewhere. Um, or was that she did read, she, she got the public records from the title search is my opinion that any previous ownership rights to the reference land as listed in the Tiffin disclaimer by right of sovereignty were transferred and otherwise disclaimed by the state of Florida in favor of the private owner. And that's, that's by virtue of those deeds that occurred in 1995. And that date of 1995 is important because the McNamara case that was referenced earlier, which I have read and reviewed occurred in 1994. And in 1994, the circuit court for this district recognized prior judicial determinations that indicated that the ordinary high water line was 52 and a half. And that is what I said in my case in chief. So that area while at that elevation was disclaimed and conveyed by the state of Florida, it is no longer never, it has no longer have any public rights in it. So I have to just vehemently object to any testimony to the otherwise, uh, otherwise it would be a cloud on my client's title. Um, and I believe that's extremely important to point out. Um, and that is all part of your record already. Um, protecting the wildlife corridor is, is, is, is important. It's something that has been taken into account very, uh, diligently by this applicant. And one thing that I want to point out, and I'm just going to continue to use this slide. There is no corridor on this side. This is under development here. This is proposed for development here. This is, as we saw from the aerials already developed, this is not a desired corridor. And I can have Mr. Horner come up and indicate that as well. The proposed development where we have limited our boundary of development lines up with additional approved development to the north and protects this entire mile worth of swath here that does connect to state lands that does provide the wildlife corridor and the connectivity. And as you saw from my slide connects all the way down almost to the south end of, uh, Lake Hatch toward Lake Kissimmee and all the way around the north and the northeast side of, of Lake Hatch and all. So that wildlife corridor is being protected absolutely by this set aside and, um, conservation area. Um, and the lighting, uh, comment when you, when you look at the, when you look at this site plan and you look at the wildlife corridor, you have a major forested slough all along the east side of this boundary. That is naturally vegetated. That is a heavily vegetated slough. Um, there will be no light spillage over there that would prevent any, um, wildlife. And Mr. Horner and I discussed that as well while we were sitting there, but in a, in the respect of your time, um, I do think it's important just again, to kind of recap, um, we are asking for this rural mixed use development on 1269 acres. We are asking for the binding site plan to be approved and recommend approved today. It is, as we've demonstrated both by your staff analysis, by Mr. Hunter's analysis is entirely, entirely consistent with all of your comprehensive plan policies, all of your development criteria within your comprehensive plan, as well as meets or exceeds all of your criteria within your land development code. It is compatible with surrounding property. It is immediately compatible with the property that is currently under development to the property to our west that is adjacent on that entire side. It is, it is consistent with the development standards on that piece of property, as well as the development standards to the north. So with that, we would, um, request a favorable vote on LDPD 2023-12. We'll stand for any questions. Any questions of the applicant? I don't, I don't have any questions for the applicant, but I'd like to make a couple of comments if I could. Absolutely. I've been up here on this board for years, probably too long. And, and I've seen a tremendous amount of development cases come through. And I have not seen one like this ever. And I've been in the business for longer than I even want to admit to that, that has, they've taken so much time and effort to cross every T and dot every I. Everything is, is, is adhered to by what the county requires through the comprehensive plan and the land development code. But you also got to remember one thing also, uh, a person, uh, an entity that has a piece of property in their name has property rights. And those property rights are, are spelled out in the comprehensive plan and the land development code. Then we have a, uh, we have a professional staff here that reviews all of those documents. And trust me, they review them and they come out with a recommendation on, on based on the criteria that the developer has to adhere to. And in this particular case, they say it's consistent and incompatible with the surrounding area. Um, so it's, it's, it's, I, I know it's an emotional thing for most people out there. I get that, but you also got to remember too, they could take this piece of property and chop it up into small parcels and sell it off to other builders or developers. And they, you wouldn't get the type of development that they're going to do. You heard Mr. Hunter, and I've never heard this stated by an engineer either. You heard Mr. Hunter. He said, it's bad now, but if it's bad after they develop, then it's their fault. So, uh, you got, you got to, you got to take, you got to take that into consideration as well. They, they've done everything and they've gone over and above the, the, the current land development code that we have in place right now. They took, they took the new provisions that, that, that hopefully Eric one day will be adopted and incorporated that into their plan. They didn't have to do that. They got over six miles of walking path. They didn't have to do that. They got, they got over and they don't. This is, this is not rebuttal. Please be respectful. Mr. Heath. We closed the public hearing. And Mr. Heath did not talk over any of you when you gave your input. So please be respectful. They've gone over and above what is required to be done today in this development. It's, it's just, it's, you've done a great job. And then for that reason, I'm going to have to tell you that I'm going to vote for this case. I have some, I have some comments. Chairman, um, before we have any comments, I think that, um, it's important for the public to understand this process and understanding of the process and being informed helps everyone. We, the people up here sitting on this board are tasked with the facts of this case against our comprehensive code. It is against our commitment to Polk County and every one of you to sit in here and take this as an emotional vote. We have to look at the case. We have to look at our comprehensive code. We are bound not to say, do we like it or do we not like it? We are bound to follow our comprehensive code and our land development code. And as Mr. Heath alluded to that, we also have to understand what vested property rights are. And that then works into numbers. As you've heard about density and all of that, we don't get to make us a, a subjective vote on that. That is not what this entire board is bound to. Again, you heard Ms. Voss in the beginning say we are a quasi judicial board. And if we just arbitrarily, I like to say, lick your finger and stick it in the wind. And if that's how we vote, we're not serving anyone. And I think it's important to understand what our role in this is and how we have to consider facts and expert testimony. At some point, somebody along the line said that, you know, that our staff is making assumptions. The staff of our county planning department, their wealth of knowledge and information on every parcel of land in this county is, is expert in my opinion. And, you know, Mr. Peterson, obviously this is nothing personal to him. Um, but obviously there's some direct comments towards him. And I value his opinion as an expert in his time that has been spent on this. Um, and we are here again to look at the facts of this case. And I understand the emotional aspects. I live in the city of Lakeland, but I'm tired of my neighbors throwing their flooding problems on me. I understand that, but I have to follow and bound to look at the facts of the case and our comprehensive plan. And in that consider compatibility and consistency. And if I look at the pictures that we've seen here, that again, there's, there's some that's not even depicted. It is the same pattern of development. If we encourage it to, to not be in this area, we are encouraging sprawl because then it's going to jump over this and go to the next place. And that's exactly what we are tasked with not doing for our county. And when it comes to the conservation piece, um, it's important to consider that you will have experts in the area of conservation speak, pull up some stuff from conservation, Florida, or UF, and they speak that density is part of the answer. Because if we increase this density on pieces of land, then it protects and draws away from putting on 100 acres, what we can put on 10. And, you know, we are seeing that this wildlife corridor is being protected and the, the resource itself of the land. We're putting that on a piece of it. And again, that goes above and beyond, um, what our standards are asking for. And I can only defer to the legal experts as far as when it comes to the sovereign land and assume that, again, that they are experts and they have done their due diligence with this. But I think it's important as this board considers this, that we understand the role of our comprehensive plan, land use rights, and consistency and compatibility. And that's what we have to make our decisions based upon. Mr. Addison, did you have some comments? Yes, I do. My primary concern with this development is drainage and the lack of commercial in this area. And I'm going to qualify my, my ability to comment on this. I live about two miles to the west of here, on the south end of Lake Marion. And my family and I farmed, ranched, and hunted, uh, the land points from Poinciana, originally from Avatar. We started in 1976. Of course, we couldn't farm it today the way we did back in those days. But this land's really unique in that it has very little capacity to hold water. This whole area, you've got to take a pair of post hole diggers if you want to. And what you'll find is that there's a photic layer. Some people refer to that as a hard pen. And it's extremely dense. And water does not permeate it. And in fact, Lake Deer development, and had I been sitting on this board at the time, I would not have supported the Lake Deer development that by the Poinciana plan didn't make any sense, but it was designated as industrial. It should have been, but most people thought that ultimately it would be commercial. Uh, but when they did that development to overcome the issue that I'm talking about, what they did is they put, uh, under drain pipe under that entire site. They had to permeate that spotic layer in order to get water to flow. And that's my primary concern with this. It's, um, and I, and I'm, and I'm, I'm gonna back up on that a minute. I'm gonna quote, uh, Commissioner Cumbie in the hearing on the decent road, um, development when they were talking about it, it was permitted for a mobile home park for years and never got developed. And as Commissioner Cumbie said, he said, you know, there's certain reason that some properties shouldn't be developed or have not been developed. And in this area here, I've seen water physically stand in oak scrub because of that spotic layer. The water's got no place to go. It has to sheet flow. And a little bit further down our agenda today, we're reviewing the CIP. Commissioner Braswell was very vocal on Imperial Lakes and additional development in Imperial Lakes. There's a $15 million phase one expenditure in the CIP right now to fix drainage issues in Imperial Lakes. That's county dollars for those risks. That's two cases that we're talking about here. And also the county has been very clear that those were, um, if developed in standards today, that it would have been done differently. Well, and to that point, Point Siena, you couldn't develop Point Siena today the way it's developed because it has a series of greenway ditches, uh, to get the water to the wetlands. The problem you've got is, is once the water gets to the wetlands, it can't get out far enough, fast enough. So then the water backs up into Point Siena, because what it did during the last hurricane. That's why it was so bad. Um, I just know this land. And the other thing I'll say is, is my nephew's a professional engineer and he specializes in, uh, stormwater retention, multiple conversations with him. And he'll tell them, he tells me straight out. He said, we don't always get it right. Now to commissioner, he's comment that you have to match pre and post, post conditions with preconditions. And if it's already flooding, that's your only requirement. But whatever residents would be in this development afterwards, they're not going to look at the developer to fix it. They're going to look at the county to fix it. Any other questions, comments? Madam Chair, I have a question for staff. Mr. Peterson, did you hear anything within the public testimony that changes your opinion on this case? No, sir. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I can make a comment as well. Absolutely. So as, as an engineer and a person that's practiced a lot of engineering throughout the entire state, I look at this development, understand there are existing conditions here that probably have concerns and probably have some issues that need to be addressed, but those are existing conditions. And I balance that with our charge on this board of following the land development codes, balancing property rights with that, and understanding that overall, at the end of the day, these folks are going to probably develop this system and go to the level two review and the swift mud reviews to enhance the stormwater elements in this area. It's an absolute requirement of them. They'll have to do at least the minimum, as been discussed earlier, but more than often, and as part of a standard of care as an engineer, you also then go a little bit beyond and provide freeboard on all your ponds, which gives you extra storage that's above and beyond. That's typically what's called for or required by code. In addition to that, I look at the preservation area on the, on the right side of this development, and I know it's an old ditch-drained agricultural land. And so there's a big opportunity here for these folks as a mitigation to go ahead and enhance that and possibly further enhance the stormwater runoff that's going to happen in this area. They'll be motivated to do that because of the mitigation elements that they'll have to come up with as they create their bank. So overall, is it the perfect solution for this area? No, but I think it's a very good solution overall for this area, and I appreciate your time. Any other questions, comments? I just got one comment. I think when you hear a lot about technical stuff, and I'm not technical, I'm a developer, so I know about water drainage, things like that. We are charged on this board with, compatibility is one of the main things we're charged with, and to me, from the perspective of the development and looking north, it looks pretty compatible to me. You zoom out a little bit, you look south, and that gets a little bit more challenging. And so that's kind of where I'm kind of weighing in the middle of this is we have a compatibility issue to the south, and it looks like it meets to the north. I'm just going to put that out there because that's kind of where I'm at in my mind is it's compatible. My question to you is when we consider that and we are looking at sprawl, you know, and I think in a lot of our cases, as we've seen, we have to look at is that compatibility in our growth patterns coming from all areas or because I think if you went south and jumped, what would we be doing? Well, we've talked a lot on this board about transitioning and things like that, and there's, I mean, Hatch and Hall Road to me is a stopping point. It's a stopping point. So I'm just, I'm just having a challenging time with that in my head as a developer, as a real estate broker, as a professional. I think a lot of that land to the south, the reason why there's not much there is a lot of conservation. I agree. Yeah. All right. So if that's the case, we're have further discussion or a motion. I'll make a motion to approve this, this case as presented today in its entirety. We have, um, Mr. Heath, would you like to address that comment or would you just like to leave it? It's not worth it. I will second that motion. We have a motion and a second for approval. Roll call, please. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Booking Nini. Sean Harper. Yes, motion. Renny Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. Did I call Tommy Addison there? Yeah, you did. Okay. Can you remove that person, please? So what is it? One, two, three. Madam Chair passes four to three. Four to three. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time. We understand frustration and thank you for participating in the process. It should. Take her out, please. We can find her way out of the building. Yeah, let's go. Can you expedite those? Two o'clock in the afternoon. Get back on the plane and go back down. Guys, a couple of you guys, if you wouldn't mind at least making it to the doorway so we can finish up. Thank you all very much. Next case, please. All right. Next up is LDCT 2023-13. This is an LDC text amendment to Chapter 2, Section 206, Accessory Apartments, Garage Apartments, and Guest Houses to reduce permitting barriers and enable broader use of accessory dwelling units in an effort to increase the amount of affordable housing stock. It's also amend Section 206-K, Cargo Containers for Permanent Storage to allow cargo containers to be converted to habitable structures. It's also amend Chapter 10 to add definitions for accessory dwelling unit and delete definitions for garage apartment, guest house, and mother-in-law suites. On July 14th, legal ad was published in a ledger, no response, and Eric Peterson is your planner. I'll be brief. Move to expedite. Second. Very brief. The reason behind this, we have an issue in this county. Housing costs, as you see in the staff report, have gone up greatly in the last three years. Staff is looking at ways in which the only way to influence costs is to increase supply, if you study economics, because the problem is there's an increase in demand and supply is not keeping up with it. This is one element. It's not the only tool in our quiver, but the changes here will enable a lot more opportunities for property owners to add and accessory dwelling unit to their home to house family members to even get a source of rental income. And with that, I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none. Staff and applicant are the staff report and the applicant are the one in the same county. And so any questions in any way? Is there anyone hiding in the audience seats that would like to speak for or against this case? Madam Chair, I move to approve. Seeing none, we're back. We have a motion for approval. Is there a second? Second. We have a motion and two seconds. Roll call, please. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Tommy Addison. Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke McNini. Sean Harper. For the motion. Bernie Heath. For the motion. And Becky Chapman. For the motion. For the motion. Judge unanimous. All right. Last case on the agenda. All right. Last up is LDCPAL 2023-7. This is a county-initiated text amendment to the Polk County Comprehensive Plan to review the capital improvements element and reference the adopted five-year schedule of capital improvements. On July 14th, the legal ad was published in the ledger with no response. And Shonda Bennett is your planner. Good afternoon. Shonda Bennett, Glen Development Division. Guys are troopers. You don't have to expedite because I only have one slide. So I call it a text amendment because it's usually been a text amendment because we've updated dates, et cetera. But our major function really is to obviously review the capital improvements element. And Mr. Addison, I give you kudos. He talked about the CIE. So right, right. I'm sure you all read all the documents attached to this case. So I just listed the sections of the capital improvements element that you see on the screen in terms of doing some kind of real review that requires an annual or an overhaul of it that we need to do with our next update to the comp plan. And I'm sure we'll do that. But basically, this leads into all of the things that you've talked about all day long in terms of our capital improvements and concurrency. And we referenced three big documents, the transportation improvement program from TPO, which is different than their five year long range transportation plan. It's a yearly thing for them, the school boards plan, and of course, the county's plan. And we used to update the CIE with the dates of those every year. But this time, a few years ago, we amended a policy in there to state that we're just going to reference them and adopt them by reference. And that's what part of the other part of this action is to adopt an ordinance that references those documents. So I'll stand for questions. And we recommend approval. Any questions of staff? Which is the applicant? Okay, seeing none. Anyone in the public? Speak for or against? Okay, we're back to the board for discussion and our motion. I'll move to approve LDC-PAL 2023-7. We have a motion and a second roll call, please. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison, Robert Beltran. For the motion. Brooke Agnini, Sean Harper, Renny Heath. For the motion. Becky Chapman. For the motion. And I'm checking the animus. All right, so we have a little bit of business still in front of us. But before we get to that, and before Shonda leaves, you know, this is my last meeting. I have been here six years. I had no idea what I didn't even know when I got here. And I just want to say I am thoroughly impressed and thankful for the knowledge and the time that y'all give to this county. I've told people time and time again between Peterson and Bennett not to overlook Bodie or the people that have retired since I've been here. You know the history of this county and you know it well. And I think that goes into the decisions and obviously does qualify you as experts. And I thank you all for helping me learn how important and vital this comprehensive plan and land planning is to this community. And the votes that we take up here don't necessarily make us popular. But if you're called to do the right thing and you're not just sticking your finger in the wind and going well I'm going to do what's popular. Then I think our county um develops according to the codes that we have set forth and I'm glad that you guys are here in doing this. Ian you know you've over the six years I've seen you grow. I really have. But it truly has been my pleasure to serve in this capacity. So thank you. Thank you very much to all of you. And I believe then we have some Ian I'll let you take over because you are Ben whichever one wants to do it. We'll queue it up for Ben here. Yeah it's going to be me. I don't present to you often and I've got an empty room the first time I do it. So you know looking at at the world today you know whether you read the news or interact with people or read the paper you know there it's easy to think that people are are bad. But we know people are good and I believe that people are good. And there are a lot of people that get into professions simply to serve. Police and fire, teachers, doctors and nurses, our military, government workers, even lawyers want to uphold the good in people. But you know the the most important way of serving or the most important way of doing good is volunteering. And I think it's often understated that you all are volunteers. You can volunteer for PTA, you can volunteer at the SPCA or an animal clinic, you can volunteer to coach your kids soccer, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, whatever. You can volunteer at your church and you don't get backlash because you're a volunteer. You are praised, you get the attaboy, the attagirl, handshakes because you're volunteering to do something. But volunteers in government don't get the same respect. I believe, and maybe I'm biased because this is my profession, I believe volunteering to serve on a planning commission is the hardest volunteer position you can do in today's society. Whether it's comments that you hear from public hearings, whether it's what you see on the news or the paper or social media, volunteering your time and commitment to your government, to your community is not praised enough. And I think all of you you need to be commended for for being willing to step up to sit in those chairs and to take the comments that you take month in month out. We have a meeting that's here till two o'clock that yes, you got stuff from us seven days ago and you've had seven days of cramming and seven days of preparing and seven days of reading and talking to either applicants or neighbors or doing your research. Seven days to get ready for a hearing, which is contentious and unlike volunteering at an animal clinic or at cub scouts, you have to make very, very important decisions that are lasting for decades. And I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, from what we do, this is the system. This is government at its finest. We have paid staff members, we have members of the public giving testimony, we have volunteers, and then we have elected officials. That's what makes this county run. That's what makes Florida, Florida. That's what makes America, America. This process that we saw play out for the last six hours is what America is about. Today, we have two of you that this is your last meeting that you have committed to enduring this process to reading back up to sitting here till who knows what time of the day, month in and month out for 72 times, six years. Six years is longer than high school. It's longer than college. It's longer than a military enlistment. It's longer than some jobs. It's longer than some marriages. And you all have committed to do this for six years. So we certainly want to recognize both of you. Sean Harper, thank you for your commitment and to excellence in this process that we go through on a daily basis. Thank you for giving us your time for six years. And Becky Troutman, thank you for your commitment, not only as a member, but as the chair, trying to maintain decorum, trying to keep law in order, trying to keep the facts, the facts and the emotion at bay. Thank you for your leadership and what you've done. I can tell you as a staff, we are grateful for your leadership and we enjoy and appreciate everything all of you do. But Sean and Becky, thank you so much for the last six years. It was a pleasure. I'll speak and then then you can say welcome. I want to echo Becky's words that we do have one of the most professional staff members out here. It's just y'all are excellent. I really appreciate working with you guys. It's been very informative, very enjoyable. I love it. I get the thumb beat of what Polk County is going on and I love that. So just appreciate all the help and all the advice you guys have given to me along the way. And I was proud to serve. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. It's definitely been a pleasure. And again, I am confident and and feel good knowing the people that are involved in this as staff. And when you issue a report that that can be considered and is expert testimony. My first month, I remember I went down to Staples and I printed out the whole report and I was highlighting everything. And then I just had this realization, these people do this day in and day out. And the appreciation for what you do and what this planning department does for our county is immense. And you you guide and develop this county. And it's important more so in the last few years than ever. And I really do appreciate all of you. So thanks for having me. It's not a popular place to be, but it's important. And with that, I think we have to do some reorganization them. Eric, did you want to address the Angela and I had a thought, you know, this is kind of difficult that we're going to have actually three new members. There's going to be one new alternate that maybe we wait. And since Mr. Heath is vice vice chair, be the chair of the next meeting, and then have a vote to appoint new officers with the new members present of the commission. And I float that out there as a suggestion. Ms. Voss, is there a requirement? There isn't. I mean, we just have the requirement in the fall, I guess. But since we do have you leaving, it would make sense to wait until they have the new members on to do a new election, I think. So I think it's at the pleasure of the board that sits here if they want to wait or if they want to act. So yeah, I mean, my only thought on all of that would be that this board knows who we have and new members are going to be new members. They'll be learning as they go, having sat in your side of the fence for many years of the district and educating new board members, bringing them up to speed and having them learn sometimes. Sometimes maybe decisions are made better with people that have been here for a while. So that would be my only advice. I agree with you. I agree with you. I think that it sounds like we might have some discussion about, let's use the people that we have here, knowing each other and knowing the qualifications that they have. If they would like to do reorganization, we just need a motion. No, but Robert will make a motion. I'd like to make a motion, make Mr. Heath our chair moving forward. I think he's got a lot of experience. He's obviously has a lot of know-how and you got big shoes to fill, even though they're high heels, but I'd like to support Mr. Heath as our chairman. I would second that motion. So we have a motion and a second to elect, appoint Mr. Heath to be the chairman effective next meeting in September. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. If that's the case, then I would like to make Robert Beltran the vice president, vice chairman. No good deed and goes on. So you could wear my shoes. Okay. Do we have a second? I would second that motion as well. All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations, Mr. Beltran. Great. And then we also have another role that I think has been filled well. I'm going to stay there, I think. I'd like to make that motion that you stay as secretary. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. So we do have a reorganization done. And with that, is there any further business? Eric, we had to go against you because we hadn't gone against anything all day from here. We just threw that up there as an option because it often gets a little funky. Yeah, I'm just team. You know I'm just team. Yeah. I just have one request. I'll have to sit where Ms. Voss sits so I can hear the chairman because I only hear it on my left ear if I'm going to move. So I give that to Ms. Simms for consideration. I think that could happen. If that's okay with Ms. Voss. And I think Rennie's left-handed too. I am left. So he can look, you know. Yeah. Okay, perfect. All right, move to adjourn. Move to adjourn. All in favor? Second. Aye. Aye. All right. All right.