Planning Commission on 2024-08-07 9:00 AM

Forum. Okay, thank you. At this time, if we could stand in for the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, at this time, we've got to adopt the minutes. I believe we've got to do it for June and July. Did I hear that correctly? Yes, sir. Okay, at this time, I'd like to adopt the minutes for the June meeting. So moved. Second. We've got a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we need to adopt the minutes for the July meeting. So moved. Second. Motion is second. All in favor, say aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Okay, thank you. Any changes on the agenda? Yes, sir. There's been a request from a member of the public to move number seven on the published agenda, LDCPA-S 2024-10, the Shepard Road RHCPA, from its current spot to be heard second. I'm not sure if the applicant is here or not. Maybe wait to determine either now or after the first case has been heard to see if he's arrived. Okay. We need to vote on that. Any other changes? No, sir. Except for case five and six will be heard together? Correct. Correct? Okay. Do I have a motion to accept moving LDCPA-S 2024-10 to the second case? Is the applicant here? I'm sorry? Okay, then after the first case, we'll take—never mind. Okay. I'm a little slow this morning. Okay. If you could explain the general procedures to the audience, please. Good morning. The Office of Land 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, and 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 Review. 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 Polk County Land Development Code, the applicant, or any substantially affected interest, may appeal the final decision of the Planning Commission to the Polk County 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, then he or she will need a record and may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings has been made. The record includes all testimony and evidence given at the hearing. Each person or party who 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 failed 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 to be recognized during the de novo hearing as organized opposition, you must either file the application for a 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 their right to speak on the public comment portion of the public hearing. Level four reviews pursuant to section 907 of the Polk County Land Development Code, the Planning Commission's decision on a level four review is a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners. The Board of County Commissioners will ultimately decide the matter. Would you like me to swear in the witnesses? Yes, please. If you're going to address the Planning Commission on any case today, then please stand up, raise your right hand and answer out loud to the following question. This applies in all cases. So if you believe you're going to be speaking today, please stand up to be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony and evidence you provide today is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Okay. So there are a few more items I need to get through before we can get started. First, we need to admit the county's land planners as expert witnesses. They have all been accepted as experts in the past. However, if you would like to voir dire any of them as to their background or expertise, then you may do so at this time. Move approval of county staff as expert. Second. Motion is second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Motion carries. Secondly, if any applicants have expert witnesses, then you can swear them in or tender them at this time, or we can wait until your case is called. Okay. And because we have a few quasi-judicial cases, we're going to review that really fast. Quasi-judicial cases mean the action entails applying land development policies to a specific development application in a fair and impartial manner. The Commission's review is limited to two areas. First, consistency, and second, compatibility. Regarding consistency, the Commission must determine whether the application is consistent with both the comp plan and the land development code. The staff report and presentation will provide expert analysis and opinion regarding the applicable criteria, as well as a recommendation on 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 may consider is competent substantial evidence. This means evidence that is sufficiently relevant and material that a reasonable mind would accept as 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 may 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 and compatibility 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 a project will cause increased traffic or crime is not competent substantial evidence. Lastly, when expertise is required on technical issues like traffic, engineering, drainage, wetlands impact, school, and utility capacity, light and noise pollution, or the applicant's impact on property values, citizen testimony is not competent substantial evidence unless the witness is qualified as an expert in that area. That concludes my comments. Thank you. Okay, thank you. We're ready to begin. And before we get started, if I can remind everybody, there is a three-minute time limit on your presentation, not your presentation, but if you come up and speak for or against the case, there's a three-minute time limit. There's a clock that you can see above you. Also, if you could put your cell phones on vibrate or turn them off so we don't get disturbed during the meeting, I would appreciate it. And we can start with the first case, please. Good morning. The first case is LDCPAL 2024-2, the Juanita Main Street Commercial Overlay. It's a change to Section 2.134A of the Juanita Neighborhood Plan in the Comprehensive Plan to allow for the establishment of the Main Street Commercial Overlay by adding new policies and mapping the overlay on the future land use map. The location is along Raffle Range Road from Eagle Lake Loop Road to 17th Street, west of the city of Winter Haven and east of the city of Eagle Lake in Section 16, 17, 20, and 21, Township 29, Range 26. There are a variety of property owners. The area for the Main Street is approximately 110 acres. The development area includes both the neighborhood utility service area, which is only in the 180 neighborhood plan, and the suburban development area. Staff does recommend approval. In terms of the advertisement, 556 mailers were sent to area property owners on June 20th. No response by the public was received. Seven signs posted on July 22nd and a legal ad published in the ledger on July 24th. And Mark Bennett is the case planner, and then Brenda Torres with the Regional Planning Council will also be a co-presenter this morning. Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Mark Bennett, Land Development Division. And Shonda provided a good overview of what we're proposing here today. The map up here on the screen shows the area along Raffle Range Road that's proposed for change. I show that to emphasize the point that we're not looking at doing the whole corridor, excuse me, all the way down to State Road 60. As far as documents submitted into record, you can see what the bullets there. This is a level four review, and the County Commission will hear this case on September 3rd. The map shows the general study area. This map shows the area that's part of what is known as the Juanita Neighborhood Plan. As you can see, generally, it goes up north to Eagle Lake, west along Balmer Road, south down to State Road 60, and west towards City Winter Haven. This slide contains the excerpt from our comprehensive plan, specifically the Juanita Neighborhood Plan, with the introductory paragraph. The last sentence sort of, I highlighted it, underlined it, italicized it to emphasize what the plan's all about. It's a plan to assist in the revitalization of the area. Next slide here is out of the land development code that also refers to the Juanita Neighborhood Plan. While we're not talking about land development code or changes to the code today, I put this in here because it better describes what the goal or the purpose of intent of the neighborhood plan. Key words here are assist in redevelopment of existing residential commercial uses, encourage development of vacant properties, and create a pedestrian-oriented community with a mix of residential and commercial uses. This plan was first adopted in 2003, with some changes since then. There's been some successes and some shortcomings. A couple examples of successes are this property. In the background here, you can see a convenience store. It's right at the intersection of Balmer Road and Rifle Range Road. This was taken in 06 from Google Maps. And you can see there's no sidewalks, no enclosure for the dumpster, excessively wide driveway, which is a problem because it addresses – it's a problem with traffic control. No landscaping, no buffering, no place for the stormwater to go. In contrast, today the site's been redeveloped, sidewalk along Rifle Range Road, landscaping, enclosed dumpster, buffering, and a place for stormwater to go. So that's an example of a redevelopment of a property. Another really good example of redevelopment that's occurred in the area is this apartment complex, known as Juanita Palms. Very nice product. Been around, I think, for about a decade now. And what's nice about this project also is not only it provides a need for housing, it's located next to a family dollar. And you don't have to get in your car and drive out on the Rifle Range Road to get to the family dollar because there's cross-access here. I'm sure you all have heard that term quite a bit. It's something we have emphasized in our site design. And literally someone that lives here can walk over here to do shopping. So an example of that pedestrian-oriented focus that we're trying to achieve here. I mentioned there's some shortcomings that have occurred. This is an example of a half-built building that's just sitting there. Can't be used. I don't want to go into specifics or details, but long and short of it is someone tried to do an auto-oriented use, but it was zone residential, RL3 specifically. So they can't do it there. But yet we have an empty building that sits there with nothing being accomplished, no good coming out of it. And then just up the road across the street, we have the ice cream shop. And similar situation, property owner developed the property, did site improvements, painted the building. Unfortunately, no permits were obtained, no project approval. So sure enough, eventually code enforcement got involved. Here's another view of the site. You'll see some chairs out there. What's currently going on is we've allowed a temporary use of the trailer that's out there. Thanks. I was going to bring that up. Yeah, just, yeah, bad example. You know, you don't put a power pole in the middle of a driveway. Just an example of how, you know, this hasn't gone through the regulatory process to protect the public interest. So, you know, looked at the site. Well, it's in a residential area. You can't do commercial uses in residential areas. It doesn't comply with site development requirements. According to our current rules and our comp plan, you can't change the land use. It doesn't meet the criteria for an activity center, which are generally supposed to be at intersections. Our comp plan restricts linear commercial corridors, strip commercial, because that's one of the indicators of urban sprawl. And our comp plan is designed and oriented towards controlling urban sprawl. I couldn't call it a mapping area because it was never zoned commercial. Now, I wasn't in the meeting, but the property owner basically raised the question of staff. Well, is there anything that can be done? So, you know, as a staff, we went back to the drawing board and took a look at the area. And Ben came up with a good description of this, and that looks like a rainbow. Is that the term you used? You know, and the point being, there's all sorts of different colors to regulate what you can and can't do along the corridor. You can see the ice cream shop there. So, we came up with a proposed solution. Designate certain properties along Rifle Range Road is what we call a main street. Main street being a term used to describe a center of a community, a focus, the main center of activity for, you know, shopping needs, things like that. So, we're proposing to create what's known as an overlay district. And without getting too deep in planning jargon, an overlay district is basically an additional set of rules or requirements or specifics for a certain area. Above and beyond the usual rules. Here's our rationale. Rifle Range Road functions as a main street. If you've never been out there on a Saturday morning, there's garage sales all along the place. So, it really functions as a center of the community. Our comp plan has policies regarding revitalization, redevelopment, those recognized main streets. And the thought here is that it would promote infill of vacant parcels along the corridor. Let me look at my notes here, make sure I'm covering everything. As part of this process, we realize there's a need to update the neighborhood plan. We initially thought about, well, why don't we just change the whole color on the map? But that's something we'll look at in the next year or two to see about redoing the whole plan. One, it's 20 years old. Secondly, Thompson Nursery Road will be coming in there some way in some fashion. That needs to be considered in future planning. So, this is the map. It's in your packet. I wanted to show this map because the intent was to catch the existing non-residential areas to promote infill. Likewise, as you go further south down the rifle range, it's predominantly residential. So, we felt that it was more appropriate to keep that residential but to promote infill in those areas where there's already a mixture of commercial, institutional, office uses, et cetera. The policies in the plan, you can see the different bullet points here. I'll focus on the conditional uses. What the overlay district would allow is within that area, if you have a residential or institutional designation, you could do either multifamily or offices or neighborhood commercial or cultural, like community centers, institutional uses, et cetera. So, what we're trying to do is promote the allowance of more uses to promote redevelopment in the area, sort of exactly what happened with the ice cream shop and the vacant building that I showed you earlier. Excuse me. Part of the urban planning process is the community input, community feedback. Good urban planning isn't done by staff sitting around a conference table and figuring out what's right. That's why we have public hearings and planning commissions and what have you. So, as part of this process, we did do an aggressive outreach effort. You heard Shonda say 566 mailers, and those went out more than once. I placed the seven signs along the rifle range road. We also sought the services of the Central Florida Regional Planning Council. We have a consulting agreement with them, and they led our engagement efforts. And, at this point, I'm going to ask Brenda Torres with the Regional Planning Council to come on up. She's prepared some slides. I also believe you have her resume. And, counsel, if you wouldn't mind swearing her in as an expert witness. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? All right. Good morning. For the record, I'm Brenda Torres with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council. And, the CFRPC was asked to facilitate the community outreach efforts for the Juanita Main Street Commercial Overlay. And, so, we held a meeting on May 7th. And, we branded this meeting called the Juanita Neighborhood Vision because we wanted to get community input, not just on the commercial overlay, the Main Street Commercial Overlay that was being proposed, but also what the community's challenges, needs, and opportunities were, and what they envisioned Juanita in 5, 10, and 15 years, so that our planning efforts could align with the community's vision for their area. So, in the PowerPoint, you can see the flyer that was created for this event. And, the purpose of the meeting was to inform the community on updates to the Juanita Neighborhood Plan, as well as introduce the Juanita Main Street Commercial Overlay, and what that meant for property owners and business owners along Rifle Range Road, as well as gather community feedback on ATSA's challenges and opportunities regarding their community. and then also share what the next steps were for this process and to keep them informed of what the final decisions were. In total, 38 people attended the event, and I believe there are some people that attended that meeting that are also here showing their approval for this. So, regarding our outreach and notification efforts, we wanted to make sure that community members, residents, business owners, and organizations that worked or lived within the Juanita area were notified. So, we sent over 900 property owners were notified by mail with the flyer. Physical copies of the flyer were delivered to Plaza Mexico, which is the local grocery store, and they were distributed to their customers. We also had meeting flyers delivered to RCMA, which is the local daycare assistance center there, and they were distributed to parents. We also delivered the flyer to the Mission of Guadalupe Catholic Church, and they were distributed to their attendees at their Sunday Mass. And Polk Vision also distributed it electronically to their Juanita database and partners. So, the meeting was conducted in a very semi-formal workshop where the Juanita Main Street commercial overlay concepts were provided to attendees, and they were shown the concept map as well as what it meant for their property and their businesses. So, the proposed Juanita Main Street commercial overlay does encourage the development of a community strategy to encourage beautification and further define a sense of place. It does allow for the flexibility for development of small businesses and community service providers to meet the needs of the community. It also encourages the development of diverse employment opportunities to attract new businesses and encourage a pedestrian-friendly community along Rifle Range Road and Bomber Road corridors. The community meeting was conducted both in English and Spanish, and it was facilitated by Polk County staff and CFRPC staff. An overview was given at the beginning of the meeting, and then participants were asked to go into breakout groups, depending on if they were Spanish-speaking only. That was one group, and then we had English in another group. And so, in the breakout groups, we asked the community for them to describe Juanita, and we have in your packet a full summary of that meeting, but these are just some of the highlights of the feedback we received. And so, the community did describe Juanita as an easily accessible, multicultural, close-knit community that feels very hometown, and people are very accepting. Regarding needs, they did see that amenities needed to be updated, as well as there was a lot of traffic along Rifle Range Road that needed to be regulated, or maybe some more traffic lights needed to be installed. They would like to see more parking for some of the businesses all along Rifle Range Road, as well as improvements to the infrastructure, such as drainage and water. They would like to see some type of community organization to move things forward, as well as public transportation that stops along Rifle Range Road. Lightning on streets, especially those small streets. They would like to see more street lighting, and more sidewalks, and well-lit-labeled crosswalks. They also proposed maybe an alternate route for freight trucks along to move that type of traffic away from Rifle Range Road. And then some of the businesses that they identified that needed to be in the area are a laundromat, hotel, child care, a community center, and maybe more nonprofits. Here we have our challenges. So, challenges identified include flooding in parking lots and streets, as well as they seem that the bus stops are unsafe for children due to heavy traffic on Rifle Range homelessness. It was also a challenge in the area, as well as recreational park lighting residents. And then there's some type of just some crime issues. And then taxes have increased sustainably in the last five years, and no investments have been made in the area. Lack of bicycle safety, traffic on Rifle Range Road. They would like to see more investments in schools, which is something that's actually happening. They will be improving Juanita Elementary here soon. They believe there's no infrastructure to support new houses. Many fatalities on Rifle Range Road, high truck traffic, more road improvements. They would like to see updates to Rifle Range Road. That way, the business owners could also feel like they should update their business to reflect the area and make it more aesthetic. They would love to live and work in the area. A lot of times they live there, but they have to work somewhere else. And they also would like to improve the aesthetic along the commercial corridor. We did ask for big ideas and their vision for this area. And they would like to see more multifamily housing, such as apartments. They would like to see a plaza, like a mall concept for entertainment, clothing stores, and youth activities or activities for families. A library for students to do homework. Some type of inside mall. More landscaping and wayfinding. A cultural center to celebrate Latino culture and heritage. And then they would like to see Juanita become more beautiful through organization and road improvements and proper signage and maintenance of county infrastructure. They would like bigger, better schools in 15 years and for more money to be invested in education for students to be able to compete with other students in bigger municipalities. Overall, the Juanita Main Street commercial overlay was well received and supported by the community. And as this initiative moves forward, we do plan to continue to share next steps with the community, as well as hold additional community meetings in case there are certain changes in the LDRs. We would like for the community to see what those proposed changes may be so that we can get their input on that as well. At this time, I can take any questions or? Any questions? Okay, thank you. At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anybody? I'm sorry. Are you still? Got a couple more slides. Darn. I'm going to wrap it up. I'm trying to be brief, be brilliant, and be gone, so bear with me here. Here's the summary slide. The so what of all this is that we're trying to promote redevelopment by allowing some multifamily neighborhood commercial, and we're going to try and set the stage for some more flexible land development regulations. Always got to have a justification for what we're doing. This is it here. And two finishing comments. This is sort of a paradigm shift in terms of what we do in the land development office. Our focus primarily is on regulation. Can't do this. Can't do that. Got to put it there. Can't put it there. Et cetera, et cetera. It's a little different because we're actually trying to facilitate development opportunity, more specifically redevelopment. So I wanted to throw that out. This is something a little different from what we do. And lastly, to me, this is what urban planning is all about as a profession, coming up with programs, plans, projects, activities that affect the natural or the built environment to help improve the community and help promote a better quality of life. So I know it's a little long presentation, but a lot to put out. And I'm ready for questions now. And, of course, if you have any questions with Brenda also, we'll go from there. I know where the Thompson Nursery Road extension is at, but it might be helpful for some of the other board members if they don't know where it's at to know where it's at. If you could speak into the microphone a little bit. People can't hear you out there. Well, we didn't show a slide because we're not 100% sure where it's going to go either, to be honest, because the alignment, the exact alignment hasn't been set. Yeah. I can give you a general location in that it's going to go somewhere around here, but I don't, like we just said, the exact alignment hasn't been set. And the reason why I would mention that is, you know, if Thompson Nursery Road comes through here, then it stands to reason that more people might use Rifle Range Roads. And then what are the impacts of that? What are the impacts of the community? Something to be looked at as part of the neighborhood plan update. If I may, Shonda Bennett, Jay Jarvis, I'd called Jay Jarvis a few weeks ago, Transportation Director, and he mentioned that the PD&E is being finalized, and they expect to have that later this fall in some kind of community meeting by the end of the year. So we don't know. Yeah, Mark pointed that out. So, yeah. Definitely somewhere around here. Any other questions of staff? Other than having the ability to obviously allow different types of uses, what does this do from an infrastructure perspective? Does that mean that we're looking at trying to help support water, sewer, more roads? Is this a commitment of any sorts? Or, like, typically when we do urban growth areas, it's surrounded by other infrastructure projects and things like that. We're supporting that kind of growth, that density. Yeah, let me try and answer the question as best I can. One of the things that I foresee as part of the neighborhood plan update is finalizing who's going to ultimately provide water and sewer out here. There's a water franchise, Juanita Water, that's out here. I believe City of Winter Haven provides water and sewer for Juanita Palms. Eagle Ridge, I'm sorry, not Eagle Ridge, Eagle Lake. You know, this project's in the city of Eagle Lake. You saw on the map earlier, Bartow's close by. The county, I believe, has a packaged sewer plant just south. So, the best answer I can give you about infrastructure water and sewer is I envision that being something that gets figured out. Now, the Juanita Plan speaks to the need of cross-access corridors, emphasis on sidewalks. So, by promoting, if not even mandating, that type of site development, that will help infrastructure to some degree by taking trips off a rifle range. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? Thank you. All right. Thanks for your time. At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to come up and speak for or against this case? Seeing none, I'm going to close the public portion and bring it back to the board for discussion and a warm motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC PAL 2024-2. Second. Got a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. Mike Hickman. For the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 7-0 unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your time. At this time, is the applicant for LDC PAS-2024-10 here, which was originally the seventh case? Yes. Okay. There's been a request from the public to move that case up to this point now. Are you okay with that? Okay. Do I have a motion to move LDC PAS-2024-10 to the second case? So moved. Second. Motion is second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. We'll move that case up. Next case, LDC PAS-2024-10. It's a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment from residential low to residential high on approximately 1.7 acres. It's located south of Yule Road, east of Lund Road, west of State Road 37, and north of Shepard Road, northwest of this Mulberry City Limits in sections 23, Township 29, and Range 23. It's in the transit supportive development area. Staff is recommending approval. And for the advertisements, 34 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 15th. No response by the public was received. One sign posted on June 6th, an illegal ad published in the ledger on July 24th. And J.P. Sims is the case planner. Good morning. J.P. Sims of Land Development. So, this case is turning a residential low into a residential high in the transit supportive area, transit supportive development area, sorry, off of Shepard Road. And that's close to the Mulberry City Limits. So, this is location criteria that we've discussed before. So, we're looking down here south of Lakeland, north of Mulberry, right off of Shepard Road. So, Shepard Road right here, as you can see from the context, there is already pretty much fully built out, completely surrounding the site. There's commercial to the west. There's apartments to the north and the east. There's a Publix to the southwest. And there is a little bit of like a slattering of multifamily to the south across the water. If you look closer to the site, you'll see that there is the commercial to the west. You have apartments, like I mentioned, to the east. And the access for the site actually runs directly through this parcel. So, one of the documents I did submit with the packet was the access agreement showing that this site can access that road as part of a prior arrangement from the original PUD from 1983. Shepard Road is to the south. And this little notch right here is actually, per roads and drainage, part of a drainage process that's there. If you go look at the street level, you might be able to see it in one of my pictures later on, there is like a drainage wall right there that you can see. So, I did get that notification from roads and drainage because it just seemed like a very weird little notch to me to be part of the land. So, we are going from residential low. You can see there is commercial usage over here to the west. Like I said, it does have apartments to the north and the east. And there is the multifamily down here to the south as part of the Imperial Lakes. And then we would be looking to switch it to residential high, which would be more in line with what is currently developed around the site. So, looking west down Shepard Road, you can see that there is nothing currently developed on the site to my right. You can kind of see through the trees where they're building the commercial development that's going to the west of the site. You're looking directly at the site. As I mentioned, nothing developed there. There's some heavy vegetation. One of the things that we did require for the site, because originally our GIS has showed that the site had predominantly wetland on the site. So, we required a wetland delineation. And the wetland delineation did show that there's only wetland, particularly in the northwest corner of the site. So, it doesn't cover the entirety of the site like we originally thought. And it's just another side of the same site. Again, you can see the heavy vegetation. And then looking east down Shepard Road, one of the things I tried to get was the picture showing the apartments that are just across the driveway access from the site. But there was a lot of vegetation right there. So, you couldn't really see the buildings through the tree. Now, as far as impact assessment is concerned, even built out at its max, it's only 1.7 acres. So, the amount of impact to any water, sewer, traffic, schools, emergency services, anything like that would be fairly minimal. There are parks nearby. And there is ample capacity in the southwest utility service area for water and sewer. There's also a reclaimed water line that runs along Shepard Road that the site could connect to if it needed to. And our traffic database does show that there is capacity available on Shepard Road at this time. And with that, I will stand for questions. Any questions, staff? The, you didn't show it here, but there was an original site plan. Yes. Apparently from when? 1983. And is that what they're planning to do? So, the, what's actually going on the site, what has been mentioned to me, and you can speak to the applicant more about this, is like a potential mix of office use and apartments, because they do want to put like a small office on the site and then put in some residential dwellings as well. Now, whereas office would not be allowed within residential high, the original PUD for the site from 1983 does show that that site was designated for institutional or community facilities. So, that would give them the entitlement to do like a small office or something on the site. And then the residential high would give them the ability to do any residential dwellings. Randy. But that's not necessarily what they're proposing. No. Mike. So, that parcel, I had looked at it a while ago, and it was over 50% wetlands. What percentage is now being reflected as wetlands for that? I don't remember the percentage per se, but if you look at the wetland delineation study, it's something like 15%. I mean, it's not as much as I originally thought. I thought there were two areas. From what I saw, it was only the northwest corner. Up front. I don't remember seeing that one up front. Because originally on our GIS, the whole site looked like it was almost wetland. And then when we got the wetland delineation study, it looked like it was just the northwest corner. Any other questions? Is this any sort of set aside for the rest of the development or anything? Well, that's what I mean. So, originally it was slated for like institutional and community developments as part of the original PUD. It just never got built out. But not a set aside, environmental set aside or anything like that. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Thank you. At this time, I'm going to open it. Are the applicants available to like to present their case? Good morning, members of the Planning Commission. For the record, Tom Woodridge, TDW Land Planning. I'm here to just address questions that I've heard come up and some of the complications of a very unique site in that we have a lot of challenges on here to make something happen. It's no question why this is the last remaining site and why it's sat here. It's a challenging site to develop. As was presented to you, we have wetland issues. We have a cutout on the site that pinches any development proposal around. In addition, when you look at the gross acreage of 1.7 acres, there's a lot being cut out of that. I just want to make that clear. If you look at the site outline in front of you on the screen, that's the 1.7 acre outline. Clearly, with the boulevard entrance and some of the entrance features, et cetera, we're going to lose almost 20% to 25% right there off our site. To address the question on what the percentage is, we have done our wetland delineation, where approximately, believe it or not, the map is quite different that you see in the GIS system is quite different from what has been delineated by our environmental scientist. It's about 0.27 acres. That's been submitted to SWIFT MUD to get a formal opinion on that delineation and will be handled in the August-September timeframe to amend the maps and get that changed as such. We've done a lot of work on the front end here. We've also submitted our school concurrency application. We're aware, as staff presented in the report, that there are some limitations in this area. There have been for, as far back as I can remember, maybe 20 years. It's been a challenge keeping up with the growth in South Lakeland. And so we'll be playing the chess game and waiting in line, as we will have to when we come to our formal application standpoint. So that kind of addresses some of the things I heard. Were there other questions that I can answer from the commission? Is that access, then, off to Le Mans Road that's currently there? Will that property be accessed off of that entranceway? Yes, that's our proposal, is to utilize the boulevard access, which is why we provided the access easement information to staff. Any other questions of the applicant? Seeing none, okay, thank you. At this time, I'm going to open it up with the public. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to come up and speak for or against this case? Seeing none, make sure you name and address for the record and a three-minute time limit. They didn't have a three-minute time limit. Okay, well, you do. Trudy Bezzera, I live at 6858 Palomino Drive in the South Point subdivision. I've been living there since 2003. My parents bought their property in that area and lived next door to me since 1995. I am totally opposed to this. We have wetlands on the east side. On the Palomino Drive in our subdivision is all wetlands behind us, and they're supposed to be protected. There's a huge culvert on this property where the overflow from the Imperial Lakes Lake in the front comes through there and goes all the way through the properties down to a pond at the very end of the east section of the subdivision. They built salon suites, which we thought that was going to be the end of it. They put it in another building now and building it. We have water issues already in our development. I have pictures here because I'm not as savvy with PowerPoints, but I have pictures here of the water that is standing in people's yards and is standing in people's ditches because of the fact that this property, the salon suites are already in there, and we have a lot of concerns about what's going to happen with the water that comes through that culvert that flows back into the hot or wetlands behind there and what's going to do to our neighborhood. There are animals in there. There are frogs, snakes, lizards, hawks, raccoons, possums, you name it, we have it back in there, and this water flow is going to make a big problem with the water flow in our community, and I know that a lot of us can't be here today from our community. But we are very upset about it, and we don't like the fact that they're going to be coming in there and making worse water problems for us. To move the culvert is not an option because, like I said, that culvert, we have that water flow from Imperial Lakes back through, and it is a big, most of it is wetlands where they're trying to say that they can build. I have put in a complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency in Tampa. He submitted that and forwarded it to Swift Mudd on May the 9th. A person from Swift Mudd by the name of Will called me up and discussed it with me and told me he would be checking into it further. I've also filed a complaint to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, have not heard from them yet. This is a problem to us. I have pictures and photos here if you would like to look at it. Here's Shepherd Road. There's the culvert. The culvert puts water all the way through the back, including their property that they want to build on. It's going to be a problem for us. Here is pictures of both of ours subdivisions. If you want to pass it around, that'd be appreciated. I'm going to ask that you wrap it up. This is property sold. It's been a problem. Like I said, it's for wetlands. In back there, we were told it was protected wetlands. We were not even able to cut down the tree because of the fact that it was protected. And now, like I said, they're going to go ahead and have problems with the water flow in our district, in our area, in our subdivision. And many of our neighbors were going to have to be flooded out. Remember when we had the three hurricanes? I never saw water like this. Okay. Never. All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the audience? Again, name and address for the record and a three-minute time limit. Good morning. My name's David Jennings. I live at 6918 Palomino Drive. I've lived there for about 30 years. I've seen, she was talking about animals coming through there. I've seen otters and the hawks and the owls and stuff like that are back there. We've already got a problem with the flooding. And if you look at the picture that the man showed up there, if you look at Shepard Road and you look down to the bottom of that, that's got to be at least a minimum of 10 feet. If you're going to build that property up 10 feet, you're going to flood everybody in that neighborhood on the side right now. Excuse me. So we're just asking you all to look at the issues that we're already having. Like I said, we just got the storm the other day and everything's flooded right now. So that's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else in the audience that would like to come up and speak for or against this case? Okay, I'm going to close the public portion, bring it back to the applicant to address any of the concerns of the citizens. Yes, hi. Again, Tom Woodridge, TW Land Planning. I appreciate the concerns of the residents, especially with all the flooding that's been on over the past weekend. It's definitely exacerbated everything. I'm sure it's made it stressful. Imperial Lakes has a history of flooding. We know that goes way back as well, where they weren't even able to get to the south portion of Imperial Lakes from the flooding of the boulevard. So I understand the sensitivity of development in and around this area. From this picture, which I asked JP to put up, you can see the size of the retention pond for the commercial development to the west, which is the top left corner of the screen, and how large it is relative to the commercial development site that's there. So there will be a requirement by our engineer. We've been already engineering the site to capture the stormwater to ensure that, and I know you all are familiar with this, but just so the audience can understand that there's a pre-post-match, it's called, which means basically we can't make things worse, and we will design it to ensure that the existing amount of water that comes on the site and exits the site is calculated to be the same. That will require retention ponds such as this, and the calculations will be made so that we assure that any impervious and building area that we provide and driveway access, anything that the rain can't go through, that calculation will be made, and we will capture and store that water, and it's required by the code. The wetland area does require a 25-foot wetland buffer. We are already accounting for that, so you'll have a distance from the wetland area to protect those sensitive areas of the site, and we will be engineering this to meet the Land Development Code standards so that it's consistent with what's required to make these protections assured. Tom, is that a closed basin? This, I don't have an answer to that. You don't know if it's going to be a 25- or 100-year storm pond? Okay. I can get an answer for that by the board hearing, but I don't have that today. Okay. Tom, the culvert that's shown there and the cutout you have on the site, is the purpose of that culvert to drain towards the south or to the north? The site drains from south to north, so that's why you have that. It's going from this to the wetland, so they'll be able to- So is it overflow for the pond to the south, or is it not? It looks like an outfall from the road system. I don't know if they're interconnected. Okay. To the lake across the street. That's the reason. Correct. I'm not sure if that's interconnected or not. I think it's at a lower elevation, but I think this outfall is part of the drainage system. You see there's culverts and things like that along Shepherd Road, and so we'll have to account for that and capture that in our conveyance and properly design the site so that it continues to convey that. We're not going to be blocking anything or stopping anything to make the flooding worse. Our responsibility as developers is to assure that what is going to be constructed will be constructed so that it maintains the current system and hopefully improves it a bit. It was just odd that the cutout's so large beyond the end of the pipe. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Yeah. I think it's before the plume that's there, like beyond the pipe opening. There's a little bit of that kind of a ditch, if you will. A ditch or something. So I think it's just been a long time there. When we first saw the site, this is, like I mentioned at the beginning of this, this is a very unique site with a lot of different environmental and engineering challenges. That's why I say when you look at the pure numbers, I think RH, while it is the higher density, it allows us to cluster the development intensity and push it around in bigger buildings rather than RL, which has more limited use, especially since we have the loss of what is private, but right-of-way to the east, on the east side of our site, and this drainage issue in the wetlands to the north. So there's a lot yet still to be done in terms of the engineering and overall design of the site, but the density that we're talking about today is to get us to a point where we know we can cluster the intensity at the appropriate locations where it's most suitable on the site. Tom, do you have a slide showing the wetlands delineation? We submitted that to staff. I'm not sure if that was included, but is that part of it? Okay, I think it's in the packet, which is with our Swift Mud permit, but I don't see it here. There was something in the packet. I can, yes, and I can kind of outline that on the site. Just, it's really kind of like this. Can everybody see that area? Mm-hmm. It's about like that, 0.27 acres approximately. So that's what I mentioned with the pinch point here between this cutout and the wetlands really makes it challenging. We'll put maybe a small building there, but really our buildable area of sight is here and here to the east and west of this culvert cutout because of the way that wetland pinches down. But absent that, this site really becomes challenging to develop because the density doesn't allow you to really move things around in an RL fashion. Does that continue on to the north? The wetland? Yes. Yes, it does. It's part of a larger overall wetland and I'll show you that. You can kind of see some of, I know the apartments, you can see the buildings, the brown dots into this aerial photo, but that wetland kind of goes up through here like this. So it's kind of a circle about this. Is it a ditch or what is it? No, it's actually a low-lying wetland. Does it continue on as outfall? The system here I think connects through a system perhaps of culvert. I don't have the full engineering information available at this scale, but that's what we're applying for the permitting agencies with mud to assure that what we're delineating and showing is truly where the boundary is. So we're still in the process of determining the overall wetland area. But we anticipate with our wetland delineation study and the permit that we've submitted to Swift Mud that the boundary I just highlighted to you, the 2.27 acres, is accurate for our site. Any other questions? Just real quick. With the district, you said you've submitted, are you just asking for right away, I mean, sorry, for wetland delineation confirmation or are you in for a full ERP right now? We're in for the MAP amendment as well. So we've got both going on simultaneously to make sure we're doing this correctly. And I think we're set to have that prior to the board hearing, I believe. So hopefully that information will be available for the commission for them to make the final decision based upon more secure facts. And this is honestly a lot farther than probably a lot of the land use changes you had before you go. But we want it to really be able to be forthright with the information, show you we're on top of it and with school concurrency, anything else that's affecting us in terms of staff concerns and community concerns on the development of the site. Mr. Chair, a quick question for staff. Mr. Sims, did you hear anything in the public testimony that changes your view on the case? No, because like I said, it is a transit supportive development area. So higher density development is suitable for this area. And as Mr. Tom Woodridge mentioned, if the wetland delineation is accurate, then the site shouldn't have as much issues with being a higher density. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. At this time, I'm going to bring it back to the board for discussion into our motion, unless staff has any other concerns or questions. No, sir. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC PAS 2024-10. Second. I had a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. Mike Hickman. The motion. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. Against the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 5-2. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next case, please. All right. All right. Next up is LDCU-2023-53. Where are you going? I'm going to get my picture. All right. Yeah, you submitted them for the record. Sorry. I was the one giving them back. My bad. All right. Next up is LDCU-2023-53. The applicant is requesting conditional use approval for an event facility and outdoor concert venue in an agricultural residential rural land use district. The subject site is located at 4581 Dove Meadow Court, south of Dove Meadow Lane, and east of, I'm sorry, northwest of the city of Lakeland, and section 18, township 27, range 23. On July 15th, 25 mailers were sent to area property owners. One sign was posted on July 5th, and a legal ad was published on July 24th. Staff has received no responses, and Aaliyah Ngleema is your planner. Good morning. Aaliyah Ngleema with Land Development presenting LDCU-2023-53, the Dove Meadow event facility. The applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for an event facility and outdoor concert venue and an agricultural residential rural land use district. The subject site is located at 4581 Dove Meadow Court, south of Dove Meadow Lane, east of Dove Meadow Court, north of 1st Street, northwest, northwest of the city of Lakeland, and section 18, township 27, range 23. The site is located in agriculture residential rural future land use and in the rural development area. As you can see, single-family homes can be found to the northwest and south of the subject site. While single-family homes are found nearby, a majority of these homes are buffered by the thick trees that the subject parcel has. The applicant has also provided a noise study, and the noise study found it to not exceed high decibels for long periods of time, and the trees block a good portion of the sound that could occur on site. The applicant has provided an event management plan that addresses the traffic circulation to account for both attendees being dropped off, those utilizing the on-site parking, and has indicated adequate signage for guests to be directed appropriately throughout the site. The request will allow events and weddings on the site, and no outdoor amplified noise, music, or live entertainment will be permitted after 9 p.m. as conditioned within the staff report. And here is the photo of the site. The acreage of the site and the natural trees to buffer the events from off-site make this request compatible. Through site design and conditions of approval, staff finds the request compatible with surrounding areas and is consistent with the LDC and comprehensive plan. And I'll stand for questions. Any questions to staff? Do we have, this is event and concert. Now, event can have a pretty big definition. Do we have restrictions for what type of events? Again, I'm considering not only this ownership, but future ownership. I mean, we've got a good bit of wetlands here. Are they, would they, what all would they be allowed to do as an event? I mean, mud bogging. That's an event. Motocross races in the future, they're looking at weddings and things. I get that. But do we have a restriction? Yes. The event management plan that you have in your packet is, is a binding plan. That's binding. Just like the binding site plan, that event management plan is binding. If they make changes to that event management plan, they will have to come back for a public hearing. Any other questions to staff? Seeing none, okay, thank you. Is the applicant available, like to come up and present their case? Again, is the applicant here and available? If you would like to come up and present your case? Okay. All right. That's fine. Any other questions to staff? Okay. I'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll move to approve LDCU 2023-53. Second. You got a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalt and I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next is LDCU 2024-17. The applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for a construction aggregate processing and storage facility on approximately 10.41 acres in an industrial land use district within the U.S. 98 Selected Area Plan. Subject site is located north of Winter Lake Road, south of the Polk Parkway, east of Reynolds Road, east of the City of Lakeland, and section 35, Township 28, Range 24. Mr. Chair, move to expedite. Second. I got a motion and a second to expedite. All those in favor, hold on a second. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to come up and speak for or against this case? Seeing none, I got a motion and a second to expedite. All those in favor? Oh, you're okay. I'm sorry. Then we will not expedite. Are you the applicant? Okay. We'll call you up shortly. Okay. We will not expedite. Good morning. For the record, Melissa Celestine presenting LDCU 2024-17. Two things that I did want to clarify on the record within the condition of approval, that is going to be item number three, which it states that the stacking of vehicles shall not be permitted within the right-of-way. Oh, I'm sorry. Number four and number five. So to ensure no stacking occurs within the right-of-way, we're changing it from the 120 feet to the 300 feet, which is essentially going to put a gate located right here. And then we did ask for a cross-access easement on item number two, which it said to the south of the property is going to be to the southwest of the property instead of just to the west. So it's just right here, just for clarification purposes. All right. So the applicant is requesting conditional use approval for construction, aggregate processing and storage. A truck scale and office space with the necessary parking in association with this facility is also being proposed. The submitted site plan shows compliance with the setbacks and buffering requirements outlined in LDC section 303. Staff does recommend approval. The site is located north of Winter Lake Road and east of US-98 in Lakeland. It is approximately 10.4 acres in an industrial ex-land use district within the US-98 selected area plan. Per Chapter 4, Table 4.12 of the Land Development Code, construction, aggregate processing and storage requires conditional use approval from the planning commission and the industrial ex-land use district. The road frontage is deficient to the requirements of the current land development code, but accesses along the state maintained roadway and will require FDOT approval. Here is the context of the site and the existing developments within the vicinity. The site is surrounded by vacant and non-residential uses. A residential development is over 300 feet to the south of the proposed site and is separated by two parcels and an arterial roadway. Here is a close-up of the site. Again, we're proposing that the gate goes here within the conditions of approval, so I just wanted to outline that within the presentation. Here is the site plan. It is showing the proposed parking area, the office, as well as the truck scale. It also identifies the required setback of 100 feet for the processing and then the 50 feet for the storage. Here is a site visit photo. Again, staff does recommend approval. Past aerials indicate that the subject property was once a mining site. To the north is a similar use owned by a construction company. The closest residential structure is over 300 feet to the south of the property project area and is separated, again, by two parcels and an arterial roadway. Approval of the request is solely for the use. The applicant will need FDOT approval for access because Winter Lake Road is classified as a state road. If granted, the site shall be required to show compliance with all relevant sections of the land development code during the level two review process, including providing FDOT approval. Staff does find that the request is consistent with the LDC and comprehensive plan. With that, I thank you and I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? None. Okay. Thank you. At this time, I ask the applicant to come up and present the case. Is that residential to the south? I thought you said there was no residential. So this right here is the residential development across from Winter Lake. Right here, all of this is actually identified as BPC. It's all identified as BPC here. When I went on to the property appraiser's website, it looks like it was a house on there, but the description calls it industrial and commercial. So that's why I identified the residential portion here. Now, as far as the distance goes, it's about over 200 feet from where the project area is going to be also. It says residential. Good morning. Waiting for the record, Sarah Case, next-level planning and permitting. My address is 3825 South Florida Avenue, and that is in Lakeland. I'm here representing the property owner, 540 Industrial Park, LLC, as well as the Arcosa Crushed Concrete, who has a contract for purchase of the property. So thank you, Melissa, for putting this slide up, because I wanted to show you the surrounding land use. Yes, and in order to answer your question, there is residential high across the street, as well as Polk State College across Winter Lake Road. I recently did the entitlement process for the townhome development that is to the south of this site, a little to the west. So what's interesting about this use is industrial land use is the only land use designation that allows for the concrete aggregate processing and storage within the county. We actually, I was part of an applicant-initiated text amendment in 2014 that broke out or removed this language from salvage yard in order to keep this as a separate line item with allowed uses in table 2.1 in the land development code. recognizing that the concrete aggregate processing, recycling, and storage is essential to the construction industry for road stabilization and road base and, again, for construction purposes. So I do understand we have a couple folks in the audience. Along the lines with staff, there are a couple tweaks to the conditions of approval that she mentioned to you. The one being, because this is our only access point here, and the length of that, she originally had 120 feet on the fourth condition, and she's changing it to 300, so no cars can queue or stack. And then the condition number two was a little ambiguous, so I wanted to clarify, because it says a cross-access easement shall be granted to the property owner to the west, and here we have four property owners to the west of our, so what they are talking about is, I'd like to change that language to the property owner to the west of the southernmost portion of the site, or however this board would like to craft that modification to that language. So with that, I will stand for any questions, and I would ask this board for an opportunity to respond to any comments that the public makes. Thank you. Any questions of the applicant? I do. Can you speak into the microphone just in case somebody has to put the minutes up? That's what we need to speak into it. I asked him earlier. No, I don't. Being a contractor, I understand the use for concrete aggregate. I've used it many times, so I have no opposition to that per se, but I've also, by virtue of experience, been on site when these facilities are running, and you can look down and see the gravel on the driveway just moving around from vibration, hammer mills or whatever. The mitigation of vibration and noise, what is the plan for that? We have business park centers right next door on both sides. I can't see how industrial is compatible or consistent with those, and I'm just trying to get a grasp on what's going to be going on here. I assume this is going to be hammer mill equipment or something of that nature to do the fracturing of the concrete, what do they plan to do without that? So, I want to clarify a couple things. We're not asking for industrial land use. We have industrial land use. You can't see because of the blue shade, but it's actually dark purple, just like that to the north and to the east and to the west of us. So, we are industrial. We're not asking for industrial. So, the conditional use permit before you, the very last page in your staff report shows a site plan, and it is a binding site plan that accompanies this request. So, what we've done is in chapter, in section 303 of the Land Development Code, it specifies what is required for this specific use, the construction aggregate processing and storage, and it's very particular with the items spelled out. Staff was great about putting all of that in the staff report, and there's specific setbacks that have to be met. There's operations time and all of that, but again, today is to request that this site be used. We still have quite a bit of permitting ahead of us, access being one of them, as staff mentioned with DOT, but we will comply with all of the regulations as specified in that condition in Chapter 3. On the coloring, I did not understand that. Absolutely. Was it already industrial? Okay. It is. She highlighted the site for us and used blue because it's a dark purple. So, thank you. Sarah, that's hubbard construction to the north, isn't it? And those are aggregate piles on the south side of their property, is it not? I am not familiar with that because ownership is different in Polk, PA, but this is an area that is construction-based and lends itself to the construction industry, so that would not surprise me. The aerial appears. It is under, she had it on her aerial, so there you go. Tommy? Tommy? Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anyone in the audience who'd like to come up and speak for or against the case? Absolutely. Name and address for the record, and remember, there's a three-minute time limit. My name is James Middleton. I'm at 2519 Bookskin Road. I own the property just south of that, Kesey, Inc. That's historically been a grove. My questions are really a couple things. To one of your points there, Hubbard does store materials there, but they do not, to my knowledge, process them, so they bring them out on a truck, they dump them, they're not pounding rocks out there. With all of the aggregate processing and the hammer mill and whatnot, I do have concerns about vibration, noise, and then dust. They just built a bunch of apartments just south of Winter Lake, some nice buildings that's right there by the college. I don't know what the process of aggregate looks like, but I can imagine it can be kind of dusty, noisy, and everything. I don't know what kind of effects it might have on Polk Community, which is just south of their Polk Community College or Polk State now. And then, you know, I also have a couple concerns about the entry coming into the site. We had the wetlands delineated and our mapper showed that that was, that driveway basically went through a wetland all the way. You know, the wetlands are right on the border of our, on the Kesey, Inc. property there on the eastern border. And then last but not least, there is a pond there that historically we have accessed for irrigation in the grove. That pond does, there's not a lot of it there, but it has, it does come into our, into our property to where we have a pump set up there. It's been there for 50 years. I don't know. So those are, those are really my three concerns would be the dust, the pond, the access coming in through the, you know, through the wetlands and then DOT turn lane. I know that that's going to be a problem. So these are just kind of some concerns that I have here. Those, those four things or three things. And then, you know, just the, the, the process of grinding up the rock itself. And that's pretty much all I have. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience that'd like to come up? Okay. I'm going to close the public portion, bring it back to the applicant to address the concerns. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Middleton, for your, your comments. So I can address those as part of the requirements. Um, once this level three process is complete and we go to level two construction engineering plan review, um, the land development code specifies that all processing activities and storage piles shall incorporate dust prevention measures. For example, water spraying and that type of thing. We will have to demonstrate that, uh, through the engineering process. Again, this is just for the use of this. As for the access, um, the reason that condition, um, that we were proposing to modify the, this, uh, Mr. Middleton's particular property, um, would be according to these conditions would be granted cross access. That would actually help once he, should he develop his property for possibly shared access onto Winter Lake road because it is a DOT road. And if we give cross access, that's something in the future. I can't speak to any legal, um, agreements that are in place as far as the watering from that, that pond. Um, but this action today would not circumvent any of that. If there is an agreement between these property owners, um, that is inherited when my folks would purchase this site and that type of thing. But I would like to have the opportunity to follow up and get them into contact with the owner and the, the buyer. Um, the other thing we too, like the case before us submitted a, um, a wetland delineation study. And we did show that there was, um, there were wetlands in the South portion and, uh, in the pond and in the, in the North, but they are isolated and they are not jurisdictional. So, um, hopefully that answers your question, but again, we still have to go through permitting. Um, we have not gone to Swift mud yet. Um, obviously this was the first step with the, the purchase of the property from my client. So, um, I hope that answered all the questions. Yes. But who is the owner of the property now and who is the applicant? So I'm the applicant, but I'm authorized by the owner who is 540 industrial LLC. And my clients are Arcosa concrete and they are under contract with the owner. So this is sale contingent. I'm not privy to the details of the contract. Any other questions for the applicant? Seeing none, I'll bring the item back to the board for discussion and or motion. Uh, Mr. Chair would like to discuss with staff, uh, condition number two here regarding the cross access easement that shall be granted to the property owner to the West. Ms. Case had some revised language that I do think is needed and helps clarify this. Her language was that a cross access easement shall be granted to the, to the property owner to the West of the Southern most corner. Is staff comfortable with that language being revised as a condition? Yes. It's going to be Southwest. Okay. Include the property as discussed. Okay. Perfect. That works for me. Thank you. If not, I'll entertain a motion. Did you guys want to talk about number four? Going from the 150 foot to the 300 foot as shown on here? That was good. That's going to be revised in the staff report as well. From 150 to 300? Well, from 120 to the 300 as shown on here. Correct. Yeah, that works. Okay. For queuing, that helps. Okay. I'm good with that. Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve LDCU 2024-17. With the modifications noted? Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Mr. Dalton, roll call, please. Runny Heath is not present. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. And Runny Heath. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 7-0 unanimously. Thank you. Next case, please. All right. Good morning. Ian Nance with land development. Staff recommends approval of LDCU 2024-18, a request for a borrow pit to support the construction of a gyp stack extension at Mosaic's New Wales facility. Subject site is located at 3095 County Road 640, east of the Hillsborough County line, west of State Road 37, south of Mulberry, and sections 4-9 Township 31, range 23. For the record, 24 mailers were sent to area property owners. One sign was posted on June 25th and a legal ad was published July 24th. Staff has received no responses. Site is located in a phosphate mining land use district. The proposed borrow pit will be located at the southeast corner of the existing gyp stack and mining activity and transport of mined material is to remain on site. There are wetlands here created mostly by past phosphate mining. This is a closer view of the site plan with the wetlands noted. Non-phosphate mining is actually one of the few activities that can impact wetlands, but the site plan shows no impacts and allows for 25-foot buffers. The borrow pit is needed for the expansion of the existing gyp stack, which was approved in 2015. Site plan will incorporate an existing 53-acre pit and add 105 more acres. The alternative to this would be to bring materials from off-site, increasing impact on public roads, and that would be really inefficient given the availability of material here. For compatibility considerations, the borrow pit cannot be seen from 640 or State Road 37 from off-site. The nearest home is approximately a mile and a half to the southeast near Bradley Junction, and most of the surrounding property is owned by Mosaic. In the end, the reclamation and post-closure plans will allow the pits to remain as surface water and wetlands with revegetation and exotic plant removal from the area. On the right are the criteria that the Planning Commission is to consider when reviewing mines. Staff recommends approval of this application, finding that the request meets these standards, is compatible with surrounding uses, and is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code. With that, I thank you and I'll stand for questions. Move to expedite. We have a motion to expedite. Do we have a second? Yes. We have a motion and a second to expedite. That was it. That was it? You're done. He's been expedited. All right. So with that, do we have the applicant here? Are you the applicant? Ian, let me ask you a question. Yes, sir. What are you asking me? I'm talking. It's already. I'm running the meeting. Okay. It's already phosphate mining, and it's obviously gypsack is part of it. So why is it even coming before the Planning Commission? It's a level three across the board for non-phosphate mining in our code. And there's a limit. I think once you exceed five acres and there's a cubic yardage threshold, you have to go through this process. So with that, we'll let the applicant. Good morning. My name is Brad Deneve with Mosaic Fertilizer, business address, 13830 Circuit Crossing Drive. I'm here to answer any questions the board may have. Thank you. That's all you need to say. Thank you. All right. With that, we'll open the floor for the public comments. Anyone here to speak for or against this case, please step forward. All right. Seeing none, we'll close the public portion of the meeting and we'll return back to the applicant on staff. Seeing no further comments, we'll take the motion back for discussion and or motion at the board level. Move approval of LDCU 2024-18. Second. We have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Thank you. Next case, please. We're going to hear these next two cases together, but we'll have to vote on them individually. Mr. Chair moved to expedite. Second. Can we do that? We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm not for expedite. Oh, you're not? Okay. Okay. Sorry. The next two cases, I'll read them both in and then staff will present them. First is a conference, small scale conference plan amendment, LDCPAS 2024-5, which is a conference and plan amendment from Business Park Center to institutional. And it also includes a text amendment to the comprehensive plan. And LDCT 2024-16 is a text amendment to appendix E of the land development code. This was once a, what we call the conditional CPA, several years ago, and they're building something that wasn't allowed in that. And so we're doing this land use change to provide for the permissibility of it. The location is north side of Pipkin Road, east of Dawsey Road, south of Jordan Road, and west of Hardin Boulevard, south of the Lakeland city limits in section 11, township 29, range 23. It's approximately 1.22 acres. It's in the transit supportive development area. The nearest jurisdiction is Lakeland. And in terms of advertisement for the small scale, 29 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 15th. No response by the public was received. One sign posted on June 6th. And a legal ad published in the ledger on July 24th. The text amendment to land development code, case LDCT 2024-16. The legal ad was published in the Lakeland ledger on July 24th. And no response was received. And Robert Bolton is the case planner. Okay. I got a question up there. It shows LD, LDDPAS 2024-5. But on our sheet here, it says, dash 15. Which one is it? Five. Five. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm Ryan Robert Bolton with land development. And yes, I'll be presenting the LDCPAS 2024-5 and LDCT 2024-16, both on Pipkin Road. Just as a note, they are separate actions, but the CT, and I'll get into this just a little bit later. But it allows, because it's a condition, the property is located within a conditional CPA. So the CT will allow for the changing of the future land use. So on the technical, it probably should be voted on prior to the CPA, because it's in the conditions of that CPA. The request represents a text amendment, the LDCT 2024-16 to the land development code section 2-135-K, permitting institutional land use district within the conditional CPA area adopted on August 21st, 2018, within the conditions of CPA 18-C-01, same date. And a land use amendment, CPAS 2024-5, for a land use change from BPC to institutional on approximately 1.25 acres. The subject site is located on the south side, or excuse me, on the north side of Pipkin Road West, west of South Florida Avenue and Hardin Boulevard, at the intersection with Old Highway 37 and east of Dossie Road, south of the city limits of Lakeland. The site is within the greater southwest Lakeland area, within an area of older residential and newer residential development. Pipkin Road to the east was recently completed. They've recently completed the widening and updating, with the western portion currently undergoing widening multi-lane all the way to Medela Road. Medela Road. This is a closer look at the site. This is all the BPC area, which was the conditional CPA. It was put in place for the development of the self-storage facility here. The, I've got two different, Dollar General here, there's a family dollar across the street, was part of that CPA also, which is not typically within the BPC. One of the other parts of the CT, the text amendment, is within this conditional CPA, for the self-storage there was enhanced buffering. For the self-storage, which came down much further south to about this portion right here, the enhanced buffering is going to be reduced basically to the end of the retention area. And this development will have a standard, typical buffering required between the institutional and the residential uses. And to the south, like I said, there's a family dollar, a couple of residences, Dossie Road, a lot of multi and single family. This is the land use in the area. You can see the BPC area, the convenience center to the south. There is a commercial enclave area at Dossie and Pipkin Road. But the much larger area is a very large area of residential that is predominantly built out at this point in time. This is the land use map if the land use is changed, adopted. This is the site looking north with the Dollar General, the self-storage. This is looking west where the construction is basically beginning going westward and looking east toward South Florida Avenue. The impacts to public services are very minimal, going from BPC to institutional. And the justification for approval, as was mentioned previously, the applicant is wanting to build basically a daycare center there, which is not allowed within BPC. They're requesting for the institutional. Locationally, it is a very good location with the surrounding residential uses. They do have cross access with the Dollar Tree. They've got access with the to Pipkin Road. This will allow you again, the text amendment allows for the CPA change because of previous conditional use. And it is consistent with land development code and comprehensive plan. And we recommend approval with that. I'll stand for questions. Any questions of staff? It calls for 18 peak hour trips. Yes. How do they justify that? That is through our comprehensive plan manual. At this point in time, there's currently a level two in on this property. But for the land use change with the comprehensive plan manual, that's where that's coming from. The level two will look closer at the exact traffic counts and if they're going to require any other improvements, that type thing for access. The ingress and egress that was shown on a, I can't get it to come up here, but that was shown on the site plan. Do you have the site plan? Do you have that? I do not have the site plan, but I know what you're talking about. And right here to the north of the Dollar General, they have access and to the south they have access here, as well as right, it'll be right about here where the access for Pipkin Road will be approximately. Is that what you were? Yes. I drive that every day. Okay. It is a traffic nightmare now. Well, the, a lot of the, this, because there is a median here and I don't believe that they, with the widening and with the location of old 37, I can't imagine that they're going to get a median cut. So it's probably going to stay a, a right in, a right out with the, most of their traffic going through the signalized intersection with old highway 37. Do they have the cross access to use the neighboring properties for cut through? Yes. So they can't access the light. Correct. Any other questions of staff? Okay. Thank you. The applicant available like to come up and present their case. Good morning. My name is Matthew Johnson. I'm with JSK consulting. Our address is 5904 Hillside Heights. We're in Lakeland, Florida. Our zip code is 33812. And I just want to first, I'll give thanks to the county staff and working with us. They've been really good for working together with us. And I did want to confirm that this parcel does have a cross access easement with the parcel on the west side on. So we have not only on our northern side, but our southern side, we have access driveways going across Dollar General to get to the signalized intersection. And as mentioned, we do have an existing driveway access as well. So that will be our third driveway access onto Pipkin Road. As everyone knows, the county is investing a lot of money in the infrastructure out here. And one day, the road will get finished, I'm sure. And so anyway, I just wanted to thank the county staff and thank everyone here and stand for any questions you guys might have. Any questions of the applicant? Okay. Thank you, sir. At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none of the closed public portion, bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion. Mr. Chair, I'm going to approve LDCT 2024-16. That's the text amendment first. Second. Got a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Renny Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalt. I'm for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Next case, please. Next case, LDCPAS 2024-8. It's a small-scale contract. Okay. Which one was that? Which one was that? That was the text amendment first. Okay, good. And then I would like to move to approve LDCPAS 2024-5. Second. A motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. For the motion. Next case, LDCPAS 2024-8. It's a small-scale conference plan amendment from residential suburban. I'm sorry. Yes. Residential suburban to recreation open space on 8.82 acres. It's a county-initiated amendment. Subject site is located north of Martinique Drive, east of Highlands by the Lake Way, west of Shore Drive, east of the City of Lakeland in Section 10, Township 29, Range 24. Development area, suburban development area, nearest jurisdiction is the City of Lakeland. And in terms of the advertisement, 76 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 15th. No response by the public was received. One sign posted on May 20th. A legal ad published in the Lakeland Ledger on July 24th. And Aaliyah Englema is the case planner. Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to expedite. Second. A motion and a second to expedite. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to hear this case? Speak against or for it. Seeing none, bring it back to the board. We've got a motion and a second. All those in favor of expedite? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Good morning. Aaliyah Englema with Land Development presenting LDC PAS 2024-8, the Banana Lake ROS. This is a county initiated comprehensive plan map amendment to change the future land use designation from residential suburban to recreation open space on 8.82 acres. The request is consistent with the comprehensive plan policies and is compatible with the surrounding land uses and infrastructure. And I'll stand for questions. Any questions to staff? Seeing none, and you are the applicant as well, correct? Correct. Okay. Any questions? At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, close the public portion, bring it back to the board for discussion and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC PAS 2024-8. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Albert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalt. And I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. The last comprehensive plan amendment is LDC PAS 2024-9. It's a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment from residential low to recreation and open space on approximately 39 acres. It's located south of County Road 540A, east of Tierra Vista Circle, west of Cross Creek Boulevard, north of Cruz Lake Hills Loop, south of the City of Lakeland in Section 21, Township 29, Range 24. It's in the Transit Supportive Development area. In terms of the advertisement, 125 mailers were sent to area property owners on July 15th. No response by the public was received. Three signs posted on May 20th. An illegal ad published in Lakeland Ledger on July 24th. And Aliyah Inglima is the case planner. Mr. Chair, move to expedite. Second. We got a motion to expedite. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this? Seeing none. We got a motion to expedite. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Good morning. Aliyah Inglima with Land Development presenting LDC PAS 2024-9, the County Road 540A ROS. This is a county-initiated comprehensive plan map amendment to change the future lane use designation for residential load to recreation open space. The request is consistent with the comprehensive plan policies and is compatible with the surrounding lane uses and infrastructure. And I'll stand for questions. Any questions to staff? And I guess you are the applicant as well. Correct. Any questions to the applicant? Second. Seeing none, I'm going to open the public portion. Anyone in the audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none. Close the public portion. Bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC PAS 2024-9. Second. Motion to second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Veltron. For the motion. David Dalton. I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Mike Hickman. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Next case, please. All right. This case was continued from July, but I'll run back through it since a couple of people weren't here. Ian Nance with land development for the record. The staff recommends approval of LDCT 2024-11, a county initiated text amendment to multiple sections of chapter nine of land development code. A legal ad was published on July 24th with no response. This is a level four review. Two board hearings are set on August 20th and September 6th. This amendment addresses changes that have been needed to comply with state statutes on how development applications are processed. Essentially, for staff level two review applications, there will be a 120-day window to have these applications approved. For all levels three through five reviews, this timeframe is extended to 180 days, and there will be a waiver that we're currently using now to process longer timeframes if necessary. Since we were already doing this, the board has directed staff to add a couple other changes here. Notably, this will codify the recent decision of the board to allow legal ads to be published on a county website in addition to a printed newspaper. The board has also directed staff to clarify the outcomes of a case in the event of a tie for public hearings. In such instances, a tie vote will be deemed a denial without prejudice, and this applies to planning commission and board hearings, including de novos. Finally, the board was directed staff to incorporate attendance requirements for planning commission members. If a member misses more than three hearings within a rolling 12-month period beginning with their appointment date, their seat will be vacated and a new member appointed. Additionally, two alternates will be required to attend hearings on a rotating basis, filling in as necessary. And similarly, if any alternate misses three hearings within a 12-month period, that seat will also be vacated. With that, I thank you and I will stand for questions. Yes, I have a question. So you're going to change this to allow the county to approve or deny a level 3 through level 5 for 180 days? We'll have to bring it to you or the board within 180 days is how the statute reads. So for the level 2, you know, which are the staff review applications, we have the 120-day period without the waiver. And then if we have cases that go before the board or this commission here, we have that 180-day window to have these resolved. So if it turns out we have an application we've heard nothing on, we don't have a waiver, we're going to bring it to you with the recommendation of the denial for insufficiency. And we'll have to act on it. Which, believe it or not, we have quite a few of that come in and languish in the system. Okay. And these are all state. This is state statute stuff. We're just incorporating to the . Okay. The questions of staff. Okay. And you're the applicant as well. Yes, sir. Any questions of the applicant? I don't have a question, but I have a request. When do we ask for a little more time to review what's being given to us? I received the email with the agenda on August the 7th, or excuse me, August the 2nd for a meeting on August the 7th. And we had over 900 pages to review, not just speed read. If you want to get into what's, I mean, you've got to take some time to digest that. They're asking for three absences and all of that kind of stuff. I thought, is there some point in time we can have a little more time to, because I review this stuff. I know two commissioners that kind of look and see who voted for what and how, and they depend kind of on us, I'm sure, to know what the issues are. And I've made suggestions before to have work sessions or something, and that's just kind of gone past. But I'm just not comfortable. I'm trying to do my job here, and I'm not comfortable having 980-something pages to read in five days, and the last day is meeting day. So I just... Right now, it's office policy, more or less. We have, or we try our best to have all cases in 10 days beforehand, and it has to go through the system, go through the attorneys. And we try to have these published onto the website by the Wednesday so there's a full week. We've run into software problems the last couple of months. That is our goal to have it. It's not something that's being codified with this particular amendment. It's more policy that Ben and I and Sean and I think we're going to sit down and talk about if this is a concern for the Planning Commission. I just figured this might be the time to bring it up and ask. And we can talk more after the... Yeah, let's do that. Okay, any other questions of the staff or the applicant? Ian, I think I asked this last time, but let's say something slips through the crack after 180 days and you don't bring it for denial. What happens? We're bringing it in the next hearing, just as soon as possible. It doesn't get automatically approved? No, no. It has to have an action of some kind. That's okay. Any other questions? What happens if we don't approve this? It's going to go to the board, but... I'll ask the hard question. That's two hearings before the board, if that's your recommendation. But most of the... Like I said, half of this is state statute. Half of it's board-directed. Right. Any other questions? Okay. At this time, I'm going to open it up. Thank you. I'm going to open it up to the public. Anybody in the audience who'd like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, close the public portion. Bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion. Mr. Chair, I move approval of LDCT 2024-11. Second. Motion and second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalt. For the motion. Mike Kickman. Brooke Agnini. Tommy Addison. And Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 7-0 unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Next case, please. All right. Next up, for the record, enhanced land development. Staff is recommending approval of LDCT 2024-12, a county-initiated LDC text amendment to conform suburban plan development standards in Section 303, the Juanita neighborhood plan, and the Polk City Spa in the Green Swamp area of critical state concern, with the development criteria recently adopted for all plan developments. For the record, a legal ad was published on July 24th with no response. And I just have the one slide here, and I'll kind of run through this briefly. The SPD tool was created to provide densities of up to three dwelling units per acre in residential suburban land use districts where public water and suitable infrastructure are in place. One of the tools for determining the timeliness of a property for an SPD was this developable area map that you see here to the center right of the screen. To qualify for an SPD, on properties over 100 acres, 60% of developable properties within two miles had to be developed. On those under 100 acres, 40% of developable properties had to be developed within one mile. This has been a frustrating tool to implement and really spoke nothing to the surrounding density. One, developable properties, as defined in the language for SPDs, means those without wetlands and flood zones. So everything you see kind of in this awful FSU red right here is what doesn't count towards the equation. And they're all generalized too, so it became very difficult to come up with an accurate map. And when these have gone to hearing or later in lawsuits, they've been picked apart. So luckily, back in February, the board adopted the changes to planned developments that we know now. We're incorporating these locational eligibility scores that will get rid of this map. Much of the same criteria involved for locating an SPD on collector roads and connect to water. But their density is going to be determined by this eligibility score that was adopted for other PDs. So in short, we're scrapping the old way of doing it and just incorporating what was adopted back in February for just a different type of plan development. That'll stand for questions. Any questions, staff and the applicant? Seeing none, okay. I'm going to open the public portion. Is there anyone in the audience that I'd like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, close the public portion. Bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion. Chair, I move approval of LDCT 2024-12. Second. Motion and second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. David Dalt. Mike Kickman. Brooke Ignini. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously, 7-0. Thank you. Next and last case, please. All right. Last one, Ian Nance with Land Development. Staff recommends approval of LDCT 2024-15, a county-initiated text amendment to modify Land Development Code Section 705B to lower the required levels of review for residential access via easement requests. On July 24th, a legal ad was published with no response. To be eligible for a residential building permit, a lot must typically have frontage along a paved county road or private road meeting county standards. But in certain situations, LDC Section 705B allows for access via easement to be approved administratively provided the easement does not allow access to more than four lots, is at least 20 feet wide, is no longer than a quarter mile, provides for sufficient access for emergency services, and demonstrates legal access to the easement. Waivers to the number of lots on an easement and the length of the easement can be appealed to the Board of County Commissioners as of right now. The site plan to the right is one example of one that we'd approve administratively. These are four lots meeting district standards, sharing easement to reach a county road. And this arrangement is preferred to requiring four driveways or flag lots. And with so few lots, there's really no great cause for a private road here. This is what the Planning Commission is more familiar with, in which you provide recommendations to the Board. This was a level four waiver that allowed the subdivision of this property into four more lots on an easement that exceeded a quarter mile in total length and obviously allowed more lots than that. This ultimately was approved by the Board. The first level review was to ensure that there is an orderly subdivision of property. It also evaluates the sufficiency for emergency access and the condition of the easement at large. Staff is recommending removing these from Board hearings and have these waivers approved or denied by the Planning Commission. We've had, let's see, 24 of these cases and one was denied. I believe that was for lack of legal easement or legal access to the easement. So these tend to hum along pretty easily. In the event, there is a controversial case that we can still be appealed to the Board through the Novo hearing. The bigger component of this amendment, though, is addressing situations like the one on the right. To the best of staff's research, this is a legal lot surrounded by developed lots on an existing easement, which reaches that county road. The applicant does not want to subdivide and does have legal access. As the rules are written now, to issue a building permit on this lot would require Board approval of a waiver since easement provides access to more than four lots. This is excessive for what is essentially infill. We've been doing this now since 2018. We run across quite a few of these situations and they ultimately either back out or enforce before the Board for what, like I said, is infill or redevelopment. So this is going to change situations like this. We'll make a determination whether it's a legal lot of record and just allow it administrative approval. There's no subdivisions. There's no real public interest here. It's simply creating a lot. I'm sorry, developing an existing lot. This is an instance of creating a lot where you have a parcel that could be split. It has sole access to an easement but no frontage. Right now, to cut this property in half or just about would require, to district standards, would require Board approval. And this amendment corrects this. The caveat here is that this particular easement doesn't exceed a quarter mile and doesn't provide access to more than four lots. In the instance that it did, it would still come before the Board. It was kind of our happy medium decision on these. So in the end, staff recommends approval. Again, we're looking to alleviate some burdens and costs on applicants when building a single-family home. This still maintains the requirements that they provide proof of legal access to easements and that there's a review by a development review committee and fire marshal. The current rules do not allow access via easement in the Green Swamp, and that remains the same. It also doesn't apply to substandard land sale lots that we find throughout the county that are insufficient for lot size and frontage. So with that, I thank you, and we'll stand for questions. Is this for specifically separating parcels? What does it do to, like, a family farm? If you're doing, like, family homestead, usually you have a one-time split. And it would fall under this category right here, potentially, if it didn't have frontage. Most family homesteads we find have some sort of frontage, and they can split. And they fall under what could be administratively approved anyway, which would be all this down here. So there's an administrative level already, and we're kind of broadening that a little bit. The code was written more or less in 2018 to prevent subdivisions way off roads, and we're finding these old lots that are hoping to get around level four. A family farm is different. I didn't know if you were talking about family farm versus family homes. Family farm is on one parcel. It's not even a subdivision of property, actually. Right. So. But it can have multiple residences on a single property, and egress, ingress, whatever is always the issue, seems like. Correct. So, okay. Any other questions? Yeah, sure, Mike. Oh, just for example, four-acre parcel, and you, it's sown one per acre, and you want to do four houses on it. Currently, what level review are we, do we have to go through for that? If you have frontage, it's a level one review. You come through our process, and if it's a minor plat, it's usually approved through just a minor plat process. If you're creating infrastructure, you'll do a level two. And if you want some just, we have a mechanism involved, too, if you want an easy infill. Oh, does this impact that? No, no, no, no. Okay. This is more geared towards individual lots, existing lots. Existing lots only, then. Yes, sir. Okay. And if you're reconfiguring them, so let's say this four-acre parcel had three lots, but you wanted to reconfigure it to four lots, then how does, then this applies? More likely what you're looking at on the screen here. Okay. So currently it would go before the board. Now you're saying it would go before the planning commission. It sounds kind of like what you have or what you're describing is what we're looking at here on the screen. This was an old, old subdivision that they've reconstrued some of the parcel lines in it and created an easement through it. But this was an administrative approval here. The board, you're still going to need it if, again, we're, sorry, let me backtrack. Right now, if you exceed a quarter mile and exceed more than four lots in easement, it's a board approval. This amendment is going to take it out of the board's hands and let you all decide, the planning commission decide, if it exceeds a quarter mile or exceeds four lots. And it doesn't have frontage. If it exceeds four lots, but if it doesn't exceed. It's administrative. Yes, sir. It's kind of trying to go back to before the comp plan was adopted in some ways. And I'm looking at the two that have been around paying attention to the development standards, but trying to avoid the green swamp from developing at the same time. So. I'm a country boy. Quarter mile ain't far. What, how do we come up with that? Is that just an arbitrary, let's make it a quarter mile or is there something that drives that or something? I'll say in the review of the staff report, I don't recall seeing any sort of justification for a quarter mile. I think the intention though is to be as close to the county roads as possible for emergency access. And if I had a guess at it, that has a lot to do with it. Any other questions? Thank you. At this time, I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there any audience that would like to speak for or against this case? Seeing none, we'll close the public portion, bring it back to the board for discussion and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDCT 2024-15. Second. Got a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Bernie Heath. For the motion. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. I'm for the motion. Mike Hickman. For the motion. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Okay, thank you. There's no other cases. Any other business that we need to discuss? Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, motion adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. estava on constructed,