call the meeting to order. We're going to go ahead and start with our Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Bishop, if you could please do roll call, including the alternates. Robert Beltram. Present. David Dalton. Present. Merle Bishop. Present. Brooke Agdini. Here. Mike Hickman. Here. Mike Schmidt. Here. Adam Bass. Here. Kevin Updike. And Linda Schultz. Here. Mr. Chairman, we have a quorum. And just for the record, the alternates will be listening in, but not voting today. We appreciate you guys attending and backing this up. Thank you. All right. With that, meeting minutes were sent out to all the board members. Do I have a motion to approve? Yes, sir. I'll make the motion to approve with one correction. In the roll call section, there's just some conflicting information regarding the positions. So I just want to clarify that the previous meeting, Mr. Beltram was our chair. I, myself, was vice chair, and the secretary was Mr. Merle Bishop. And with that correction, I'll make the motion to approve them. We have a motion with an amendment to the amendment as noted. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. General procedures. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning. I'll now go over the general procedures for today's meeting. 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. The commission will discuss the case and vote on the matter. 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. With regard to Level 3 reviews, pursuant to Section 906 of the Polk County Land Development Code, the Planning Commission may approve the applicant's request, deny the applicant's request, or approve the request with additional conditions. Pursuant to Section 921 of the Land Development Code, the applicant or any substantially affected interest may appeal the final decision of the Planning Commission to the 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 is 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 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 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 during the public comment portion of the public hearing. With regard to Level 4 reviews, pursuant to Section 907 of the Land Development Code, the Planning Commission's decision on a Level 4 review is a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners. The Board of County Commissioners will ultimately decide the matter at a later date. Mr. Chair, would you like me to swear in the witnesses for today's cases? Please go ahead. Thank you. If you are 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 to all cases, so if you believe you are going to be speaking today, please 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? Thank you. I'll now go over some housekeeping items before we 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. Any questions for staff? Without any opposition to their admission, can we please have a motion to accept staff as experts in their field of land planning? So moved. Second. Motion is second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Secondly, if we have any experts of applicants, then you may tender them at this time or you can wait until your case is called. Finally, the Planning Commission must review quasi-judicial cases. Quasi-judicial cases means the action entails applying land development policies to a specific development application in a fair or impartial manner. The Commission's review is limited to two areas. First, consistency. Second, compatibility. Regarding consistency, the Commission must determine whether the application is consistent with both the comprehensive 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 may 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 does not address the land development code criteria, as hypothetical, speculative, based on fear, or consist of generalized statements are not competent, substantial evidence. For example, fear that the project will cause increased traffic or crime is not competent, substantial evidence. Lastly, when expertise is required for technical issues like traffic, engineering, drainage, wetland impacts, school and utility capacity, light and noise pollution, or the application's impact on property values, citizen's testimony is not competent, substantial evidence, unless the witness is qualified as an expert in that area. That concludes my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much, and just for the record, we did not make any changes to the agenda, so we didn't take a vote on that, but we are listening to items three and four together with two different motions, and items six and seven will be presented as one with two different motions. So with that, just want to remind the audience to please silence your cell phones. Please be sure when you are coming to speak for or against the case to please come up. You will have approximately three minutes to state your name and address for the record, and if you have any comments or questions, please direct those to us, the board who's sitting at the board. The applicant will come back later and potentially respond to those those kinds of comments. But any questions or comments, please reframe that back to the board. With that, we'll get started with our new business. I have questions, sir, for the county attorney, or actually just a request. Sure, go ahead. As far as the general procedures go, determining ahead of time which is legislative and which is quasi-judicial. We do advertising, people see the pink signs alongside the road, and they know who we are, okay? And so they catch me at the restaurant or they'll catch me at a call me on the phone and say, what's going on over here? And I'm flat-footed in most cases not knowing what they're even talking about because I have not received the agenda yet, so I'm just kind of okay. And I just asked you a moment ago about being notified as to which of our items on the agenda are quasi-judicial, which are legislative, which we are allowed to talk about, but the quasi-judicial, of course, we're not until we come to the meetings. And it just kind of has me in a quandary. Makes me a little nervous when people start, I mean, you know, we're up here serving the people of Polk County, and I just am compelled and oftentimes compelled to just at least listen to them. And I, you know, without offering any, and I almost always tell them, this is my position. I can't talk to you about this. I want to be sure I'm allowed to listen. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Because I can't, you know, I can't stop them from unloading on me. And as a general principle, anytime we're applying the criteria to a specific piece of property, that's going to be quasi-judicial. And we just discussed the accessory structures, LDC text amendment, where it's applicable to not a specific piece of property that would be legislated. Okay. This last one was, the comment was, are we becoming one great big HOA? Is that now the function of county government? And they were specifically talking about the legislative coming up today. And I guess they'd been online, looked and read the, and I said, you know, I'm not prepared to talk about that yet. So those are the, those are the things that I'm hearing and people are saying, and I just think it's wise for us to know. And I just wanted to, it, can we be notified somehow when there is some, what's quasi-judicial? I mean, it's, I can figure it out, but I'd sure like something a little more definitive than just what I think. Sure. I think, I don't think staff would have any issue unless you will, um, of just noting on the agenda, which ones are legislative and which items are quasi-judicial. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Thank you for your comments. All right. Any other comments before we get started? All right. Starting with item number one, staff. All right. Mr. Chairman, can I make a motion that we expedite this case? We have a motion to expedite. Is there anyone here to speak for or against this case? Are you here to speak for, are you the applicant? Okay. So with that, we'll go ahead and no other ones here to speak against it. We'll take a, we have a motion to expedite. Do we have a second? Second. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor to expedite this case? Aye. Aye. All right. Please expedite. All right. Uh, so just a brief overview. The property is located in the community activity center, land use district. Uh, this development was approved by the development review committee back in March of 2024 for the construction of a 2000, uh, 24,500 square feet, freestanding emergency department. Um, the applicant has made this request in anticipation of heavy traffic in the entrance to Lakeland regional health off highway 540 a, which might limit the view of the sign staff recommends approval. The increase in the height of the monument will not create a visual hazard while still providing sign visibility for the main entrance and emergency responders outside the visibility triangle. The original applicant for the development did not consider assigned variance in the original level two review, and it would be difficult to anticipate what would be needed at the time since grading plans and further engineering reviews had not been completed. And with that, I will stand for questions. All right. Any questions for staff? We are under expedited procedures. Just check one more time. No one's here to speak against this case or for it other than the applicant. With that, the applicant's welcome to come up and say anything they'd like, and then we'll take it back to the board. Good morning. Addie Mentri, 1-3-2-6-6 Bird Drive, Odessa, Florida. Um, we support staff's recommendation. Thank you, Kyle, for your diligence, and I'm here to answer any questions. Any questions from the applicant? No. All right. Seeing that, seeing that we're under expedited procedures, I'll bring the item back to the board for discussion and or motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve, um, LDPVAR 2024-1. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robert Beltram. For the motion. David Dalton. For the motion. Merle Bishop. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. For the motion. Mike Higman. For the motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chairman, the motion's approved. Thank you, sir. All right. Item two. All right. Number two on the agenda is LDCU 2024-36. A request for a conditional use for recognition of a formal legal non-conforming use of three dwelling units on one parcel. Eric Peterson is your case planner. Good morning, Planning Commissioners. Eric Peterson. This is, uh, you don't get a lot of these requests. These, these happen, uh, fairly infrequently. This is where a property once had some legal non-conforming rights to certain uses, and for whatever reason, calamity, uh, the uses ceased for a period greater than two years. And that is the case here. Uh, this request is, uh, I'll go through the details. This is on, off of Alturas Babson Park Cutoff Road or ABC Road to, to many. It's south of 60 in between Bartow and Lake Wales in a rather rural area. As you can see the context of the area, there's sporadic, uh, uh, development or units here and there, mostly citrus and pasture surrounding the, uh, agricultural residential rural district is one unit per five acres. That's the current standard went into effect in 1991. Uh, this is the current property here. Uh, it's, it's just a little over an acre or, sorry, it's just a little under an acre and it once had three units on it. Uh, they would like to restore the three units that were there. Uh, the one former unit was a single family dwelling. They'd like to restore it to a mobile home as part of this request. March of 2007, you can see the aerial photo here. The, all three homes were, were, uh, there, uh, and, uh, being used. Uh, the applicant even replaced one of the, the mobile homes in 2012, but, uh, had to demolish the single family home in 2023 and recently demolished the, uh, other mobile home in 2021. But 2021 was, even though it's recent, it's a little too far past the, uh, the cessation period of two years. So that is what they're requesting is to return those rights. Uh, this was March, 1988. You can see the homes were there prior to the adoption of the comprehensive plan. The zoning was R3. It allowed for this many homes on, um, on the, the acreage of, uh, 0.07. This is, had a, uh, a density of eight units per acre. And here are the homes. Uh, this is a May, 2011. You can see they were there during that period of time from, uh, our friends at Google. And this is how they, they look today. The, the three homes were on a, uh, a multiple, uh, water system, multiple unit water system. And, uh, the water system is still in place. Uh, one of the septic tanks is still in place. I couldn't confirm the other one. And Alturas Babson Park caught off road, not a lot of traffic. I was able to stand on it for a while, taking pictures. It's all just me in the pavement. So is it the, uh, they're not going to put a lot of capacity on the roads or, or in the schools or things of that nature to restore these rights. So we have adequate capacity to serve them. Uh, there is also the neighboring uses all have multiple dwelling. So as a, as a matter of compatibility, the neighbors to the, um, to the west have a duplex in the single family, the neighbors to the north once had eight units. Uh, uh, now they're down to three, but we might see them back sometime for the same thing with that, the criteria you must go through to, uh, recommend, to approve their, or recommend to the board of county commissioners to approve their, uh, restoration of their rights, uh, is listed here in, uh, and summed up in this criteria. We have photo documentation. We, we have infrastructure in place, uh, multiple dwellings. There's not a matter of compat and compatibility. It had the prior zoning. Um, that we're recommending that this restoration be permanent. Uh, the applicant wants to replace one of the homes, but it'll be a while before you can afford to replace the third home. So we'd like to give them that amount of time. And with that, I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? Eric, I had one quick question. When they build these structures again, they all have to go back through permitting. So Oh, yes. Water systems all be brought back up. Yes. Yes. Everything. It, and it's anticipated they'll be need, need to do some, uh, rehabilitation of the system. It's been a while since they've been fully operational. Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. All right. Is the applicant here? Okay. Um, they were not sworn in. So if you can come forward and state your name and address and anything you'd like to add to staff, uh, uh, report, but you do have to be sworn in first. So if you'll raise your right hand, do you swear or affirm that the testimony and evidence you present to the planning commission today will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Thank you. All right. Anything you'd like to add? No, sir. I just want to thank you for hearing us and, um, giving us the opportunity to get back on our feet and get our mobile homes back. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Anybody here to speak for or against this case? Please step forward. Yep. In the middle, if you could just state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes. My name is Charles Lanier. Uh, I own the property directly behind them. Um, I'm opposed to this, um, why I do recognize the right to do what they want to do on their own property. Um, you know, I have family there and I understand what they're trying to do is a, um, a low income migrant camp. Um, I have some safety concerns and also, uh, being as there's a little pitch there, I understand that they're going to, um, you know, if there's a sewer problem or something, it's going to flow right into the back of my yard. So I do respect them and I understand the right to do what they want on their own property. I have never had any problems with them, but I do have some safety issues. Okay. Thank you. That's all your comments. Appreciate that. Thank you. All right. Anybody else here to speak for or against this case, please step forward. All right. Seeing none, we're going to turn the floor back to the applicant or staff to address questions or comments. Would you like to say anything else? Okay. Eric, anything else you'd like to add or we're good? I, uh, as I stated before, both properties do have multiple dwellings on them, uh, to the rear and to the, to the west. Okay. Any questions from the board? All right. Seeing none, we'll bring the item back to the board for motion or discussion. Move to approve LDCU 2024-36. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robert Beltram. For the motion. David Dalton. For the motion. Earl Bishop, I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. For the motion. Mike Hickman. Motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chairman, the motion is approved. Thank you very much. This will go before the board of county commissioners on, uh, January 21st at 9 a.m. or soon thereafter. Thank you, Eric. All right. So items three and four coming up now. We're going to be held, heard together. We will look for two motions on this. Go ahead. We're running quickly through the agenda here. Not necessarily a bad thing, right? Yeah. All right. Uh, good morning. JP Sims with land development. Uh, so items three and four are LDCPAS-2024-27 and LDCT-2024-22. Uh, both of them are concerning LaRoche road developments. We have the comprehensive plan amendment and the text amendment that is a parcel specific text amendment for development on the site. Uh, the change of 18.35 acres on a total of 23.78 acres, parent parcel of employment center in the transit supportive development area to residential medium in the transit supportive development area. And then the remainder of the acreage on the site, a little over five acres will be left as employment center. The LDCT-2024-22, like I said, will implement parcel specific development conditions. Site is located south of Bowen Road, west of U.S. Highway 92, north of Ernie Caldwell Boulevard, east of County Road 547 in the Northridge SAP, north of Davenport. Uh, 18 mailers were sent to property owners on December 20th, 2024. There's been no response by the public. And we did go out and post one sign on December 20th, 2024. One legal ad was published in the Polk Sun on December 25th, 2024. And staff does recommend approval. So to start with, we're going to look at the location of it. As I mentioned before, we're in like the northeast portion of the county. Uh, the site is highlighted right here in the yellow box. Ernie Caldwell Boulevard is right here. County Road 547. And then we have the large Estonia development right here. So taking a closer look on the site, you can see that it is currently undeveloped with a road that runs through it. LaRoche Road is a private road. So they do have like their own access point for the development sites in the rear. Currently it is an employment center. So one of the things that we're looking at is when the future land use map was adopted, this was originally residential medium. So what we're doing is we're changing it back from employment center to residential medium, because in 2015, at that time, the landowners did change it from residential medium to employment center, believing that they were going to build like office buildings on the site. But now that is no longer the case. So now they want to switch the majority of the site back to residential medium. And then this would be more kind of what it looks like with the change to the site. So you have the residential medium where residential development could occur. And then the rest of it will be employment center, which is where they're going to realign LaRoche Road to go through the remaining employment center down here. And this portion of it will be, um, it's like wetland that it will be undisturbed. So they won't be able to develop on that portion of it. So looking at the site from County Road 547, you can see LaRoche Road right here. Like I said, it is a private road and the site is currently undeveloped. Going north on County Road 547, this is where LaRoche Road meets the road. Looking south on County Road 547, for all the roads that are impacted by this site, there is available capacity. And then, as I mentioned before, it is currently undeveloped. As far as assessment on impacts for the site goes, these are the numbers that are associated with that. So for like the water and sewer and traffic, there is available capacity in all those items. And then on the text amendment for that, like I said, LaRoche Road is a private road and will be realigned to the north portion of the parcel. That way it does allow for the reconstruction of the road to be at local commercial road county standards. It will have adequate buffering on the north and south ends of the road to provide that protection because as you saw, there is industrial to the east of the site. So the buffering that will go on the road should be sufficient to help mitigate any noise issues from the traffic. And then this was how the road replacement will look on the site. So like I said, they're moving LaRoche Road to the north part of the parcel where the remaining employment center will be. There will be the Landscape B buffer on both sides of the road with a six-foot opaque fence. And then we're going to leave this portion down here alone. And then I did a nice overlay right here so you can kind of see like the road currently goes almost through the middle of the parcel. The realignment will take it to the north end of the parcel and will allow for all the residential areas to be developed appropriately. So the justification for this, as I mentioned before, this was originally residential medium when the future land use map was adopted. It was changed in 2015 to be employment center. We're changing it back to what it originally was. The access road will be reconstructed to the north end of the parcel so that it meets current county standards at the local commercial road. And the future home future land use is compatible to the north and the south as there is currently residential medium on both sides of it. It is consistent with our conference plan and land development code. And with that, I will stand for questions. Thank you. Any questions? Yes. I understand, I guess, why you're leaving the employment center, but I'm still, why wouldn't you change the entire property to residential medium? I don't understand what's the purpose of leaving the employment center strip. I mean, it's almost like a flag. It essentially creates a flagged lot for employment center. And you said it can't be used for employment center. So why not just make the entire thing residential medium? Actually, Shawna, would you be able to speak to that? She was the original conversation person. Shawna Bennett with land development. I say you're asking why not have the whole parcel be residential medium. So part of it is the truck movements, I think, are quite impactful. They can potentially run 24-7 and employment center is a much more accurate land use description for what could happen on that road. It's not perfect. This scenario in terms of how it's developed is not perfect. So that was the reasoning. And the second reasoning on the east side was because of chapter three in the land development code. So Martin Marietta is basically a construction aggregate processing and storage facility. The aggregate comes in on a train, can come out on a train or come out on trucks, come in on trucks. So in chapter three of the land development code, construction aggregate has to be set back from residential property by 200 feet. So by bringing the residential medium line to the property line of Martin Marietta, we've incurred an impact on their property by that designation, even though it had it before when it was residential medium, but that was removed and then we're bringing it back. Plus, but the east side is basically a wetland. You can't even build it for residential medium anyway. So that was part of the scenario, trying to find the best of all the scenarios in terms of how the, how it should develop and how it should look on, look on the land use map and what the neighbors that might live there should expect. I'm seeing that we're realigning the road. Okay. Yes, sir. I've got a question for staff. So are you, are you done? Yes, sir. I'm just, yes. We'll come to you next Mr. Bass. Thank you. Sorry about that. Any other questions, Mr. Schmidt? You're good. All right. Mr. Bass, you're recognized. Just talking about compatibility. It looks like a lot of single family homes around the area and then we have an aggregate mining site and talking to heavy truck traffic going down that road. That's 10 units to the acre development would be allowed on this site with this change. So yes, employment center also allows multifamily. Multifamily employment center does. Okay. Yeah. So one of the compromises that we spoke with the applicant was like, which one kind of gives you the better option. Okay. Because even with employment center, they can still develop it with a multifamily. Yep. Understood. Where is the aggregate? That's to the east. That's the big white circle. That's right there. I don't see a north arrow. Let me go, go back to the area. So right here. So the north, so to the east of us, this big circle right here, that's the construction aggregate right there. Any other questions, Mr. Schmidt? There's also another use on, on, it's not just Mark Marietta, it's air gas. So there's two non, there's two industrial uses to the east that use that access road. Okay. And this question I have, maybe not for you, but maybe for the applicant, but is the road going to remain private or does it become a public road? I believe it will remain private, but we'll ask the applicant if you want. Okay. All right. Any other questions for staff before we have the applicant come? So why are they making the change if they can do multifamily on that property already? Because the employment center only allows a certain percentage of it to be developed as multifamily. The residential medium would give them a bigger area to work with. You done, Mr. Schmidt? Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Patton. What is the current, as it stands today, the employment area, how much of the site would be allowed to be developed for multifamily? Greg, if I'm wrong, Sean, I believe it's 15%. Any other questions? Okay. With that, we'll have the applicant come up and present their case. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Steve Sloan. I'm employed with Sloan Engineering Group at 150 South Woodlawn Avenue. Thank you for the opportunity to come before you this morning. We have worked extensively with staff. This is a little bit of a different request than what you're used to seeing. I share some of your comments, and I originally shared those comments. We believe we can do exactly what we want with the ECX, but staff was very helpful on this project just trying to come up with the best way for us to be able to move forward, and we agreed that there were some concerns with the ability of whether the property would be able to be buffered appropriately. Therefore, we proceeded with the recommendation that staff has so that we could put a text amendment in place just to ensure that we were doing the most protection that we could to satisfy staff. Any other questions, I'd be glad to answer them. Feel free to elaborate or ask further questions. Thank you. Is it board's pleasure to ask more questions? We want to hear the other side and then ask questions, and the applicant comes back up. Is that okay with you, Mr. Schmidt? Yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. With that, we'll open the floor for anybody here to speak for or against this case. Please step forward. All right. Seeing nobody here to speak for or against this, we'll turn back to the applicant. The board may have some questions for you, Mr. Sloan. Mr. Schmidt, go ahead. If I heard right at the beginning, this is a part of a greater residential medium, where would that be in conjunction with this? The entire parcel is the subject of this case. The residential medium portion, I think, is what you can see. Am I seeing what they're seeing? So the residential medium portion, which is what is proposed to be developed, is shown on the screen. The ECX will have the relocated road on it as well to the north. If I may follow up to that. So there's no other development than what's being shown on this site? I mean, it is contiguous to RMX to the south. Correct. Is that being developed in conjunction with this? No. We are only developing the subject parcel. Is that not at this time or? Sure. We intend to, we fully intend to proceed with level two review plans for. Okay. Mr. Bass, you're recognized. Sure. While I see it's RMX to the south and north, it also looks like it's mostly single family adjoining. I just worry about compatibility, putting 90 units up against single family homes. Kind of looks like an island. So is that your intent to fully utilize? I realize that you'll have a level two review, but what is your intent? Well, I think it would be, um, we have not designed the property yet. We do have some site plans that we have worked on. Um, the, the maximum density, I do not think will be achievable here just based on site constraints. Um, but yes, it is certainly our intent to, to develop in accordance with the RM, what RM allows us to do. Any other questions for the applicant? Sorry, my screen's gone dead. Oh, I can't. That's not for the applicant, but any other questions for the applicant? How many acres are we talking about? I believe it's 18, 18 and change. 18. Oh, 180. That's in the gold, just the gold area, not the entire parcel. 23. Oh, good question. Steve, does that have sewer available? Um, extensive money has been spent in the area on sewer water reuse, both by the county, as well as, um, previous developers in the area. It's one of the highest growing areas in the, in the county and the state. Yeah. I don't know. I'm already parkway. There's a ton of infrastructure down that roadway. Any other questions for the applicant? Mr. Chairman, if I may, uh, I know I'm an alternate, not on this, but I've been on this board and a chairman here. I think, I think the thing to, to consider with this case is this was, this was what we planned to do when I was here. And that's why the money's been spent. Um, they're just trying to get back to where they were. So I just kind of feel like this is a, this is a project that was intended. That's, that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Uptake. Any other comments or questions for the applicant? And we'll bring the item back to the board for discussion. All right. Mr. Chair, do you have a quick question for staff? Um, Shonda, just concerning the flag lot style of this with the ECX, it's really not that big of an issue for me, but just for clarification, couldn't we have just kept the entire site as RMX and then condition the buffering, or, or would we have needed a use in place in order to condition the, the buffering requirement? Right. Two answers to that question. Uh, one, you can't condition a comprehensive plan amendment outright, except through what's happening today, which is the land development code text amendment. Okay. And that land development code text amendment really prohibits any other use in the employment center other than retention and the access for Martin Marietta and air gas to the east. And, but you're toward the end of your question, if they had a conditional use that was a level three or four that came before you at that point, yes, you could condition that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Good discussion though. Anything else from you guys? Good. Okay. Thank you. With that, I'll take, sorry, something else. No. Okay. With that, I'll take the item back to the board for any further discussion just amongst the board and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I'm going to approve LDC PAS 2024-27. Second. We have a motion and a second on item three. Roll call, please. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. For the motion. Earl Bishop. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. For the motion. Mike Hickman. For the motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Motion. Adam Bass. I'm against the motion. Mr. Chairman, the motion passes. Thank you. And I believe, did we, you present both items on that? So we're good. We're looking for a motion then on item number four on the agenda. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC T2024-22. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton. For the motion. Earl Bishop. I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini. For the motion. Mike Hickman. For the motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Adam Bass. Yes. Mr. Chairman, the motion passes. Thank you. All right. Next item on the agenda, please. Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Shonda Bennett with Land Development Division. This is an applicant-initiated request for future land use change, LDCPAL, excuse me, 2024-9, from Conservation Core X in the Rural Development Area and the Rural Special Protection Area of the Green Swamp Area of Critical Stay Concern, to Business Park Center in the Transit Supportive Development Area, the Ridge Special Protection Area of the Green Swamp Area of Critical Stay Concern. I wish I could acronym that, but I can't. And the Ronald Reagan Selected Area Plan. In terms of advertisement, a legal ad was published in the Polk Sun on December 25th. 39 mailers were sent on December 7th. One sign posted on December 19th. Two emails in opposition with a letter that we received from the Sierra Club. And I have, if you could, I need to take a moment and note that the wetlands on this particular property are really the focus of this amendment. And they have been illegally impacted back in 2022 and prior, but 2022 was when it was noticed by the South Florida Water Management District and Polk County. And codes cases were issued by both organizations and are still pending. So the question is for this case for staff was, if the wetlands can be delineated, should the core boundary be moved prior to their restoration to come into compliance and remove the code violations? This is a location map here showing that the property is north of Dean Still Road and west of US 27. Here's a context aerial of the site showing that the site is adjacent to the warehouse area in the northeast portion of Polk County. This is a close-up aerial based on 2023 aerial imagery. And I did my best to draw an outline of the subject area to be changed in red. It's not meeting partial lines, so it's a little bit more difficult for staff to draw. On the northern end of the property exists two structures. One is a 990 square foot structure constructed in 1967. It was residential and that's on the right side in the distance. And a 6,400 square foot structure on the left currently used for storage and a workshop type activity built in 2002. This request, if approved, will bring these structures into compliance as the house isn't used residentially anymore. The southern area of the property does not have any structures, but the property has been used for commercial vehicle parking and a sod farm in the past. I also need to note that in the staff report lists the property to the west under the ownership of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. When in actuality, I know some of you will know exactly what this means, the ownership is TIITF, which is the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund of the state of Florida. And the property is within the Hiloche Water Management Area Osprey unit property. And the property to the south is owned by FHK Properties with a pasture of Department of Revenue Code. And the property to the north is part of the Laurel Estates subdivision. This is a photograph standing on the subject property looking south toward, and you can see Dean Sill in the background, and you can see some of the impact that's occurred and sort of toward where the wetlands are. And you can see the type of improvements that have been made on the property to date. And then the dot there on the left hand side is approximately where I was standing when I took the picture. And then this is standing on Dean Still Road looking north into the subject property. And I have a map showing that right about here is where one of the wetlands are that has been delineated and generally accepted by swift mud at this time. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the eastern boundary of the property directly getting a little bit into transportation impacts. So I'm showing this not to have a discussion about the site plan in detail because it's not binding. It can't be binding. It's just an idea that the applicant is trying to work through some of the engineering issues as they need to do that to figure out how to cure the code violations that they have and restore the wetland of historical wetlands. So I know so north on this map is to the right. And what would be on the east side of the property, the applicant is proposing to construct part of the Northridge Trail and access the Northridge Trail and not access Dean Still Road, which would certainly be preferable. The status of the Northridge Trail at this point is the which is the extension from between Dean Still to Sand Mine Road is currently awaiting environmental permits from the Army Corps of Engineers. Once the county has the permits, the county will build out the project to determine how much of the project or that segment can be constructed. Another aspect of transportation is I wanted to focus on Dean Still Road specifically and the Amazon warehouse facilities on the south side of Dean Still. We did get I've had two emails and conversations with area residents about the truck movements that are currently existing on Dean Still Road. So on the left you see some photographs of standing on the entrance into the property looking to the east and to the west of the property. You can see a sidewalk going toward US 27 but no sidewalk to the west. So the Board of County Commissioners last month accepted or directed staff the Roads and Drainage Division to put barriers along Dean Still Road to prevent trucks going westbound on Dean Still to turn into the Amazon facility. And it's expected that those will get installed this week. So what you see here, these arrows are once those barriers are installed, what the movements options of the trucks going in and out of that facility will have. So to go into the facility they'll only be able to access that access that off US 27. But you can see from the aerial that there is access to these two buildings on the north from a variety of directions. So basically the Amazon facility will have to figure that out how that's going to work. So it should help somewhat with traffic in terms of an engineering and safety standpoint. Dean Still Road does have trip capacity on the roadway on its link. So from a capacity standpoint and concurrency it's consistent with concurrency at this point. Safety is a different issue which will be addressed at level two. So going back a little bit to the wetland impact issue as I'm I'm sure it's going to be part of the discussion this morning. So this provides four previous year aerials from Google Earth Pro. You will see how the impact in 2022 which is the year of the code violations have looked differently over the different years. So in 2007 which is on the left side you can see the property more than just the area of the change being impacted by most likely the truck parking and how that differentiated just a year before that in 2006. And then you have 2022 which looks like a huge amount of impact there and improvement on the property. It's quite larger. And then in 2024 you see how that has shrunk somewhat. So I just wanted to give you that historical framework when we have the discussion about the wetland impacts. This slide displays the current land use on the left and the proposed in the middle and the delineated wetlands on the right and this map on the right was accepted by at least not it was accepted by an email that was provided in the backup material that you have as where the wetland lines are located. So section 2.123 of the comprehensive plan provides that the entity with the authority to determine the wetland location it's not the county. It rests with the South Florida Water Management District or the Army Corps of Engineer or DEP. For this property we have we have the email stating where the wetland line should be and that that wetland line that you see on this map is what should be submitted to the water management district. And the core boundary shift it shifts west but it's to the east of the wetland the wetland lines that you see on this map. And it gets a little wonky on the south side but what the core boundary would not go around this wetland it would just go to the east of it and just continue straight. In terms of impact assessment we don't anticipate any residential development so there's no direct impact to school concurrency. The nearest parks are Loughman Park, Northeast Regional, the Hillichee Reserve Osprey Unit which has an access for a trail I believe off of Old Polk City Road between Payne City and County Road 557. The sheriff priority amounts or response times are listed in the table which is average for this area. Fire EMS is about a little over four miles away on Ronald Reagan Parkway. The water and sewer provider is the North Beach Regional Utility Service Area of Polk County. As I mentioned before Dean still does have available trip capacity for build out of this property including the closest link of US-27. Further south on US-27 it is a failing link but that will have to be addressed in more detail when we get the level two review with the traffic study. I wanted to give the board a little bit of background about the core boundary because some of that is referenced in the letter that you received from the Sierra Club. So the core boundary on the north and the west and the south is easy to identify either follows a section line or a parcel line or on the north side of the core it follows the county boundary. So that's easy to delineate. The west east side has always never followed a particular property line and Mr. Bishop correct me if I'm wrong since he was here in 1991. So in 1991 the core boundary on the east side was based on the 125-foot contour. We didn't have the software then that we do now so it was drawn on a map trying to estimate it as best we could and on this particular parcel it wasn't drawn based on a wetland delineation it was just based on those aerial photographs. In 2001 the conference plan was changed and the core boundary was based on the wetland line and then in 2015 we changed the description of the core boundary to as it appears on the flue map. We're not basing it on the 120-foot. In 2015 we changed the core location criteria on the east side to be that it's as it's shown on the flue map. So it can't it wasn't related to where the 125-foot contour was or the wetland line was and why that is particularly relevant and why staff is recommending approval is the area that's circled in yellow that's the particular case that we had to enter into the settlement agreement with the department of community affairs because they did a wetlands jurisdiction survey and they crossed a little bit of wetland but what you see mostly in that fuchsia color is the upland part and they have a subdivision that's there now but and we allowed that to happen without a conference plan amendment which led to the settlement agreement with the state and we hired a consultant and we evaluated the eastern boundary of the core from the northern end all the way to the southern end and we found in some cases that we needed to adjust the core boundary to the west because some of the residential subdivisions that got constructed in the last 30 years are showing in the core so we needed to fix that and we needed to adjust it where the right of way for the northridge trail is going to be located and any other adjustments in the core or to be based on that scientific approach the consultant took back in 2014 and another property has done that back in 20 i can't remember the year but before covet did that and they did a wetlands jurisdictional survey and we adjusted the core boundary based on that survey so the basis for staff's recommendation is based on the information we received from the south water water management district so again just to show you a little bit about that change so this is the maps submitted by the applicant which provide a different way of looking at this particular site you can see the current boundary on the left in the middle you can see they're proposed and where they're not only do they have to restore the impacted wetland they also have to restore the buffer to that well end so they have to do a considerable considerable amount of work they're doing it for the property owner that impact that allowed the impacts of the well and then here you can see where the core boundary would be if approved today or approved by the board of county commissioners and what that 50 foot buffer would be and this is just an example of that they started thinking about what that wetland restoration plan would look like it started to engineer that so the justification for staff's approval basically is really the wetland line reviewed by the south florida water management district and how the core boundary has changed over the years in terms of how we define it second bullet is out of place i'm sorry and we do find it consistent with the comprehensive plan policy policy based on that scientific analysis and that analysis that the applicant did for that is also part of your backup material and we do find it compatible with the surrounding land uses i'll stand for any questions thank you uh any questions we have sure we got a couple let's do this one at a time and make sure let me know i don't necessarily have any questions i have a comment um and i'll comment i was part of the the whole uh debate and issue and discussion of this boundary the boundary the eastern boundary of the green swamp and the core area i mean the green swamp critical area and the core area has always been problematic and controversial um it was felt that the us 27 was an arbitrary boundary for the establishment of the core itself because the um hydrogeological aspect of the green swamp actually goes to the east of 27 but 27 made logical sense as did the 125 foot contour and the wetland boundary but that was a problem because you couldn't identify it on a map unless you had a survey and so it continued to be a problem so but that being said the hallmark or the the goal was always to protect the wetlands and so i i can see i mean this is not the first time as as shonda has pointed out that the bound the eastern boundary of the core has come up for debate and adjustment and so that being said as long as the wetland is being protected then um i could support this so my i guess my one question is because the boundary and the on the property to the north did align with what is currently the core bound the eastern core boundary but now with this adjustment it doesn't align is that i mean can you talk about that a little bit and the same concern i don't we can let the applicant come up as well if you'd like if that's i'll do that first okay we're gonna hold questions for staff we'll let the applicant present their case and then we'll come back and circle back and ask the applicant and staff questions together name and address for the record please uh alex getz with kpm franklin civil engineering um we're at 6300 hazeltine national drive in orlando florida um yeah so when we first got called by um the the development group park industrial mr wilson um during our due diligence analysis it was very clear that there was some um previous impacts done on the property and we went back and found the um compliance cases that were ongoing at the time so you know one of our priorities obviously is to to to face that challenge and come to you guys with um something that um we can stand behind as far as getting back to the the pre-impact conditions so previous to 2006 you know fortunately we have pretty strong historical records and historical lidar that backs up a lot of the things that we are saying and i just want to make it clear that we are not relying on any of those impacts to justify moving the line um everything that we've proposed as far as justification for the line 100 year floodplain and the wetland impacts pre-date or excuse me the wetland line predates all of those impacts so again you know we understand the history and the importance of the green swamp why it's protected by the state we are trying to just you know right size where that line goes based on the 100 year floodplain line as well as the wetland line and then also as part of this development we are going to be restoring the wetland and its buffer so the wetland impacts themselves to the core boundary were you know not it didn't go and wipe out the the entire wetland most of those impacts were in the buffer and because we're you know working in polk county um we understand that the 50-foot buffer requirements for the wetlands are equally as important as the wetlands themselves so we are going to be restoring those 50-foot buffers as part of this development package and so those were the things that we use to justify this line and i'll take any before we jump to questions can you point on a map for me exactly where the impacts were and what will be restored and what won't be i believe sondra had your your figures at the end of that presentation if you put it back in presentation mode just point to it appreciate that yes you can kind of see where this yellow line goes down um that's that's approximately where that 100 year floodplain line um the the wetlands historically were this this blue line here and then this isolated wetland here um this isolated wetland was impacted you can kind of see in white where that material was put down and then a lot of the um the the fill and material is within that 50 foot wetland buffer here so most of our restoration work is going to be within that first 50 foot area as well as the area between this red arrow um and the wetland line here itself um so this area would would not be able to be developed um because we are not moving the core boundary there so we will be cutting that area and using it for wetland restoration and and possibly some stormwater enhancement okay thank you with that we're going to take questions from the board i'm going to ask we do this one at a time mr bishop you're recognized i'm still a little bit concerned about that jog and the north boundary the boundary of the core on the property north of this does not appear to be coincide with a con a topo contour it's just a straight line and now when it did a line with the core boundary on this property and now with the adjustment there's a jog and my my concern is the wetlands is the boundary on the north uh property recognizing or responsive to a wetland area and all of a sudden because of the property boundary it's not i mean i'm just help clear that up for me yes sir so um that jog i'm sorry sean i think i jumped off yeah so you can you can see here in this figure where the wetland buffer is um there's a lot of topographic land change there and we are proposing to cut that area down and restoring the wetland buffer at that boundary in order to do so um we we are using the wetland line as our core boundary line um and then the the 50-foot buffer restoration would take up that jog so while it does look like on the map that there is going to be a jog there that transition area will be um will be a restored wetland boundary at that at that junction point you're saying it's gonna be within the 50-foot buffer yes sir so the 50-foot wetland buffer um would be would be that that area of that jog so that transition area between the northern property and the southern property um you know after this project's done it will look and feel just like a wetland because it is part of that wetland buffer so it will be loaded the ground wetland vegetation and it will be kind of making that a smooth line in reality but the line on paper to facilitate that will will look like a slight jog in the land use so so when all is said and done and i go out to the property and i look i i won't see a jog i mean it'll be a continuous wetland that uh corresponds to the historical wetland boundary yes sir any other question i have one more question the uh what's it called now the green swamp trail the north north ridge trail north ridge trail and um commissioner santiago is interested in including the red word road at the end too so well i was going to say it's not a trail it's a road right right but my question is so they are i guess the applicant is proposing to construct part of that road as part of their development did i hear you say yes sir so um to to what extent um we are going to be building it and funding the road um we're still working out um i understand by code we have to we would be responsible for up to our driveway access point um so so exactly where you know if we're building 2500 feet of it or 1500 feet of it or what portion of it we're still working out with the rows and drainage um that being said we would we are planning on accessing off of north ridge trail and therefore we'll be um constructing a portion of north ridge trail yes okay is that portion is this portion of the north ridge trail part of what's been submitted to the would you say army corps for uh permitting it is okay yes sir and this road was um is like like said uh is in for permitting and um has already been designed um so we're also um working with uh uh aecom the roadway uh engineers that did that trail making minor improvements to facilitate um large vehicle traffic for the portion of road that we need to utilize as well okay and other questions mr bishop all right i wanted to point one other thing out for mr bishop's uh question if you'll notice to the there's been i know they're not supposed to impact the wetland but certainly there's a retention pond there that was used for oral estate so and then if you look at the um overall boundary of the core you'll see it's not a perfect line anywhere it's not a nice meandering line because as you stated mr bishop back in 1991 we didn't the 125 contra was estimated and it was just trying to be we think we think we knew where it was on a on an aerial map so um i just wanted to make those two points thank you i've got to follow just your follow-up that that was negotiated with the the state planning agency which at that time was the department of community affairs i mean they concurred and that was a negotiated um agreement thank you for the industry our mr bass you're recognized yes sir um going to exhibit five of the staff report shauna can we look at that map real quick because it piggybacks off of merle's question i i have the same concerns and i don't necessarily think the question was answered the way i want it to be um for a second yeah yeah well it's that proposed boundary in the middle there and if we could i don't know if you can zoom in on the the very northern where the change is going to be if you hold down control i think you can zoom in while you're in presentation mode might be the best i'm just going to make a statement shauna you pointed out there was stormwater pond put in that definitely impacted wetlands to the north my question would be uh very rarely do i see a hard right angle left hand turn to delineate a wetland and i understand we're trying to move the wetland boundary but going to your statement about 2006 prior impact prior to impacts to the wetlands what historic aerials or what historic data was used to determine where the original wetland line was because it's obviously been altered yes sir so um yeah first i'll note that it's it's kind of skewed because it's also the the green coloration the wetland line is contiguous north and south of our property line and and to my point is what you're seeing that looks and feels like a wetland on an aerial is part of that wetland buffer for the northern property line which we will continue the historical um we we did have a lot of tools to use um dating back previous to those impacts there was um lidar there was the national wetland inventory maps there was also um some wetland delineations done at that time by environmental consultants which we had surveys for um so we were able to go back um we were able to go back and look at those historic that historical evidence and uh right and and make sure that we were using a a conservative um line and they the the water management district consultants as well as biotech um engineering um went out in the field and looked looked at the soil conditions the wetlands and then also um could take into account some of those historic impacts and see if it if it was in fact moving the overall wetland line or not so consulting was the uh consultant yes sir biotech so so then my question still goes to on the property and this is i guess not directed to you this is directed to shauna so are we moving the wetland delineation the corex boundary on the northern parcel as well because we're gonna we are putting a hard right jog in and saying this is a new wetland delineation essentially i guess i just want some clarification and shaundra maybe you can help us here the the corex boundary is it the wetland line or is it also including in the buffer i mean that that's really the question yeah what you can see is the jog is occurring it looks like from here from the applicants because of the buffer area right it it it appears to me based on where the line was that um when that development was done the core boundary line itself did not include the buffer and now we are including that buffer as part of our land use if that makes sense i would just argue that that's the opposite of what i see on this map but we're moving the corex boundary to the edge of the wetland in this proposed edge of the buffer instead of the edge of the buffer yeah that's what i meant to say i apologize okay yes i would agree with that statement and there is another policy in the greenswamp area of critical state concern that there is an additional 50 foot greenway corridor to the east of the core boundary it cannot be impacted no it can be impacted for um stormwater so the idea is moving the core boundary to the wetland edge is it inconsistent with the comp plan it's not inconsistent with what we were implementing for several deck for a decade in terms of where the core boundary was because if you remember one of the slides i showed said that the eastern boundary of the core was the wetland line not the buffer but the wetland line so staff's recommendation is that moving shifting the core to the wetland edge which we've done in other cases is a part of the recommendation of approval you certainly don't have to accept that certainly because the other alternative is if you move the line 50 feet then they still have to add another 50 feet beyond that so that's give that's encroaching 100 feet more and so i i would assume based on the conversation alex too that's the northern end on the northern parcel there what you see is green is not the edge of a wetland it's the edge of the 50 foot corridor and it is the established core x boundary though as it sits today yes right right but the core x boundary up and down the whole corridor it's all about it's all about right right proofing yes ma'am if i could help maybe follow up so if you were if we were to be able to move the boundary on the north property to correspond with the wetland then what i hear you saying it would line up with this boundary yes i i don't i don't believe that the the green lines would necessarily line up if we're trying to match wetlands because it does not appear that that green line coincides perfectly with that existing wetland line um to the northern property i don't well you confuse me now because why wouldn't the wetland i mean the boundary line doesn't change the wetlands does it i mean did did the did the um did the encroachment change the wetland boundary i mean because the wetlands should line up just because there's a property boundary there shouldn't change the boundary of the wetlands right and merle to piggyback on that can i that's that's the question i have is if we're looking at restoration of impacted areas already and we're going to shift the corex boundary based on the existing impacts how far back i understand 2006 already shows that there was impacts to wetlands in that area what is the historical prior to any impact what was the historic wetland line that's what i really want to know yes yes sir so if we focus on just the northern portion of the property you can see that from from aerial to aerial from i believe this is 2006 to today there is not significant development activity or any any a lot of evidence um here i don't mean to stop you um but i understand that i'm just asking prior to 2006 because you can see there were impacts to the north already and impacts to this site property what was the historic like did you having worked in the consulting world did you go back and reference 1940s historic aerials and things of that nature that's what i'm asking yes sir so we have a a full um an environmental impact assessment that was done by the environmental consultants with biotech which they went back um to to all available maps as far as back as as they could find i don't think it was exact dates but um you know back when you look when you pre-date a certain um point um the technology that they had obviously in the 40s is not what we have today so it's impossible to be perfect but they there this line was fairly consistent um predating all all available evidence that the the line here was never substantially moved from what we can see if i may if i may add i didn't make my recommendation based on this aerial photography or the other or the exhibit five that you referenced what i based it on was the email from the south water water management district which their line lines up i guess what my question is their their line that they told the applicants environmental consultant is the line they're picking for the core but they've gone out to delineate wetlands based on existing conditions and i understand that i understand they've referenced historical areas but obviously impacts have been made to the wetlands on this site so they're no longer wetland species it looks like pretty well cleared we're taking this to the edge of a clearing essentially that has impacted wetland species at some point more than likely no right but the staff member from the south water water management district who per the comp plan has the authority to designate the wetlands i don't i don't know understood drew said the line that the applicant draw drew for where the core boundary is to go meets is to the east of the wetlands and i'm i apologize you're gonna have to bear with me i'm a grumpy uh guy on this type of stuff uh go ahead mr my my point being great as it sits today yeah but not as if we're changing the core x boundary based on the existing which is what we're saying based on today's evidence no so so so just for clarity so our core x boundary line takes into effect not only um the wetland boundary as it stands today but also um we verified that that it that it is more conservative or the same spot that it was predating this the impacts that are known which um which we looked at the surveys from i believe it was 2017 which um were around that were before the complaints came in about the impacts of the wetlands that's not the question i'm asking no disrespect but what i'm asking is i want what it was yeah and like the in the 20s or 40 yeah whatever exactly yes sir all we have to rely on predating you know aerial evidence would be the historic records which we've reviewed okay um that's what i want to hear about yeah yes sir um and then we also do have some good um topographic lidar data so wetlands don't necessarily follow a pretty line sure but there is a lot of correlation there between the 125 contour line and um the wetland line the wetland line which is i think one of the reasons why it it was used at one point to delineate the the um the boundary and we are using the um the oldest 125 contour line that we could find as our other delineator so you'll notice on our map we do not just follow excuse me we do not just follow the wetland line and say this is our line we look at the wetland line and the 125 contour line the historic 125 contour line and we use the worst case scenario or the best case scenario depending on which way you're looking at it the further upstream line is the one we're requesting we're looking at soil surveys as well historic soils are not hydric on this uh on to where we're looking at changing yes sir and that was part of um that was part of the water management district's concern okay um dating back to 20 uh 2017 or 2021 whenever they um excuse me the complaints came in around 2022 they had some concerns about the historic surveys so that's part of what they wanted to look at were the soil conditions um beneath some of those impacted areas um to see if there was evidence that something was wetlands which is why there is still a pocket wetland um in this general vicinity area two um they were said that area has the evidence to show that it was a wetland and so it will remain a wetland even though today it doesn't meet the classification it did at one point more likely than not so they did go back and and we are respecting that the fact that those area two labeled on this map was more likely than not a wetland line at one point and will remain preserved that's what i'm asking for so that's what i wanted to hear yeah sorry no no all good this for mr bass's information that has worked at the water major district previously um there are three factors the district looks at obviously soils hydrology and vegetation two of the three classifies as a wetland so whether the site's been cleared or not been cleared if the soils and hydrology is there it's going to be called a wetland and with the letter we got from the district delineating that line i'm comfortable with the fact that they identified historically where the wetland we should be or shouldn't be that's what i wanted to hear thank you all right any other questions for the applicant or staff from the board i don't want to belabor this but this wetland is important to me um talk to me talk to us briefly about the buffer what is the buffer what buffer yeah what what is that that tell us i mean is that are you the buffer area restores what's been impacted in terms of cleared and then what tell me tell us about the buffer yes sir yeah so um the you know the wetland obviously provides um multiple benefits uh both and flood flood control as well as the environmental um based on the species that allows to um to to exist in the wetlands so we are going to be using this 50 foot wetland buffer in part to restore that some of the floodplain capacity that that was lost so we are going to restore elevations down to below the floodplain line so the wetland exists between elevations 123 and 125 um in this in this area we're going to cut that area down to 123 provide a gradual slope towards the wetland lines um and then enhance it with um with native species that thrive in a wetland environment um there there will be some re um re scraping grading to restore that wetland back down to its original elevations or below and then it will be planted with um with appropriate buffering plantings um then outside of that wetland restoration area that is where we will grade up to finish grade and um provide our our stormwater enhancements along that edge as much as possible to provide additional buffer from from you know pavement building areas so between um from northridge trail you will um and in almost all cases here have northridge trail um some developed um property stormwater facilities stormwater ponds wetland restoration and then the wetland line um and that wetland line will be that wetland and wetland protection line will be codified with the water management district permits so if you do me a favor if you could right click on your mouse and then zoom into that cross section so we can see that's the buffer area you're talking about if you right click on it you'll have a zoom in option all right thank you yeah no problem ah that's great sorry so you can see here the existing grade um it obviously varies wildly across the site um uh but it it does reflect a um the tent that the trend was about a four to one slope away you know from the wetland in and it's a pretty steep steep incline in most of the property um the wetland line itself that is remaining unchanged is going to be then um like i said scraped down to to level um have have some grading take place to provide a gradual slope but exists between the floodplain line and the the wetland line which is around 124 in this area and then planted with the appropriate species similar to what you'd see in like a littoral shelf of a pond stuff that does well in a mixed hydric conditions whether it's wet or dry any other questions on the 50-foot buffer any other questions from the board just one for staff on this and then we got to go still the open yeah go ahead it's a quick one uh sean who will as part of this um restoration effort who will be responsible for ensuring that is to a satisfactory level is there is that water management district who yeah okay yes perfect that's what i wanted to hear there is a compliance issue on this since the district perfect they're in compliance in any fees or whatever is associated with it all right thank you i think we're good with staffing the applicant for now appreciate your patience with us we're going to open the floor up for anybody here to speak for against this case please step forward but don't sit down we're going to ask you to come back one one more time anyone else here to speak for against this please come forward go ahead and come forward and please state your name and address for the record and i ask you to address your comments to the board you can stand there or in the middle it doesn't matter just one picture i know where'd erica i can do it i don't need eric tell you about what we're do you guys have a certain order or do we let the other person they do that why don't you come to the middle and go ahead i'm sue nelson i live at 2920 cruise lake drive i'm a former polk county planning commissioner i am against changing the land use on the seven acres from conservation in the green swamp to business park center and respectfully ask that you make a recommendation of denial to the board of county commissioners the green swamp is an area of critical state concern protecting the green swamp is vital to protecting the quality and quantity of florida's water supply i think we can all agree how extremely important the area is history on this property every aspect i reference has to do with the current owner of the property and not today's applicant park industrial llc this property was previously a sod farm agricultural commercial this property has had three code enforcement violations two of which went before the special magistrate page 4 of 33 in your staff report mentions all of the code violation cases code violation after code violation you don't reward bad behavior with a land use extension a polk county code enforcement officer noted he observed enormous commercial vehicles parked on the property it appears there has been a parking lot built here for the storage of all types of commercial vehicles violation of ldc chapter one building without a permit some of you are in the building industry you would never think about doing that chapter 4 section 401.02 commercial vehicle parking prohibited in the core conservation zoned areas chapter 5 section 502 table 5.2 commercial vehicle parking prohibited in the green swamp ldc chapter 6 infilling of wetlands and a lake ldc chapter 9 section 902e developing property without obtaining proper review the list goes on and on do you know what was going on here the property owner had leased the property to richie brothers the heavy equipment auctioning house you pass on i4 east of us 27 with their sea of massive machinery as far as the eye can see yes that was parked here in the green swamp even in the right-of-way this property was listed for sale for close to six million dollars by the current owner the owner advertised this property as 37 acres on an i4 corridor as a distribution warehouse site however it's not a 37 acre commercial site it's only 30 acre commercial seven of seven of those acres within the core of the green swamp which is before you hear today seven acres of conservation you don't reward bad behavior with the land use extension moving the conservation line further into the green swamp to accommodate a 37 acre sale is not the answer the cases if this case is approved doesn't fully restore the previously damaged wetlands please let me continue i've done this thank you a little bit of time it only creates a new wetland boundary line see the big red arrow look up this case is if this case is approved makes that building in the picture finally legal yes the illegal building in this picture is located on on the 7 acre portion of the green swamp conservation that the applicant wants you to change to business park center page 2 page 2 paragraph 3 in your staff report this request if approved will bring the buildings into the correct future land use designation of business park center you don't reward bad behavior with the land use extension page 32 of 33 in your staff report exhibit 7 is a non-binding preliminary illustration of what the property could look like but it's just that non-binding because it's a land use change you can't hold the applicant there are no guarantees in closing if this case moves forward you'll be setting a very dangerous precedent if you build without a permit fill in your wetlands and park industrial size machinery on your property without a permit we'll grant you a land use expansion extension to fix the code violations no leave this property as is if the applicant wants to buy the property 30 acres as business park center so be it if approved i assure you this case will have a rippling effect other green swamp property owners are anxiously waiting this case anxiously watching this case and are chomping at the bit to develop their property how do you tell them no thank you for the extended time thank you mrs nelson next please it doesn't matter it's ever easier for you good morning i'm marion ryan conservation chair of the ancient islands group sierra club i just wanted to read our letter into the record on behalf of the ancient islands group of florida sierra club we offer the following comments this application involves a request to change the allowed land use to bpc at the edge of the core area of the green swamp area of critical state concern this is an area that was not planned for intense development under a settlement agreement with the state in connection with the updating of polk county's comprehensive plan to comply with state law although the applicant has proposed to keep development out of the wetlands and to conduct some restoration work to buffer the wetlands area of the property from any development that occurs we are concerned about the kind of precedent that this will set for further encroachment in the core section of the green swamp area critical state concern in other locations this is relevant in connection with other development regulation change that loosened the regulations for residential development in the green swamp area critical state concern that was approved last year there is also a larger context polk county government officials have a long history of opposing green swamp development restrictions and the imposition of the critical area designation itself those restrictions were imposed because state officials felt local officials were incapable of resisting development pressures that could seriously impact this area and its value to protecting central florida's water supplies and important wildlife corridors therefore we urge you to consider the environmental impact of this request throughout the green swamp and seek assurances from the applicant for the record that any development approved will proceed in the manner claimed in discussions with county staff thank you thank you thank you um good morning uh suzanne lindsay 181 lake otis road winter haven and i'm here to oppose the boundary change here that you're putting forward this part of the green swamp is the high loci corridor and it is not compatible with the destruction of the wetlands that's occurring even though it's seven acres i mean again the precedence that it'll give to others that are wanting to do the same so these ongoing boundary changes of the green swamp are encroaching on our natural communities creating irreversible impacts on our habitat loss and annual flooding that leads to costly repairs as the importance for flood control water storage wildlife habitat and the florida wildlife corridor connection have increased our protection seems to be decreasing what will prevent future destruction of wetlands if we give compliance okays to code violations so i think it's imperative that more environmental conscious studies be implemented before we allow this boundary change thank you very much thank you for your comments anybody else here to speak for or against this case please step forward all right seeing nobody else we'll invite the applicant back up to respond to any comments and for any further questions wherever you'd like all right yes um just i'll be brief um you know obviously um you know we we weren't hired by the current landowner we understand our our client is trying to purchase this um the county has been um working you know on on getting these problems solved for a while um our uh our client is working with the the um the estate that is selling the property for the previous landowner um and and quite frankly this is going to be the quickest way to to get these problems solved um obviously it's not a perfect solution but with the new development coming through um we we are prioritizing um getting all these issues resolved um to make sure that we we have a good successful project um wetland restoration um enhancing the stormwater and um and improving the stormwater functionality of this area is going to be top of the priority list thank you any other questions before you run off any questions for the applicant from the board mr hickman go ahead you're recognized so uh the building in question that's highlighted there is that in the wetlands um so i haven't found evidence that it's in the wetland necessarily it is well above the wetland however when the core boundary line was originally drawn the line does go um through where that home is and i i just don't know for sure the history of the the permitting of that building but i trust um the person who spoke that it was probably done without the proper permits back in the day i i just don't know how is that being addressed um so that building is going to be removed as part of the development um and that area is going to be pushed down to to to grade um you mind going back to your site point or your it's not really the site plan i shouldn't call that the the plan that you showed might help answer and then maybe identify where the home is or that structure plan that you should i mean that yeah that shows the roadway and the building the engineering plan yes ma'am and i'm going to ask you to use the right click the stormwater pond um to the to the top of the drawing right there yeah so that that home currently sits where that stormwater pond is so um the the top of that stormwater pond would be um near the hundred year floodplain line right now it is it is several feet above that um so that home is going to be removed and that that portion of the site um because of its rounded nature it fits perfectly for stormwater pond and being on that side of the um the wetland so on that map the green line is the proposed wetland line or the core line and the brown line is the buffer is that correct yes sir so we have the the green lines the wetland line the light blue line you can see there that's the meandering 100 year flood line um and then um the the buffer line there in orange is is the 50 year enhancement area 50 year 50 foot enhanced 50 foot okay mr chair yes sir go ahead mr hickman and it may be for staff too i guess i'm trying to get my head around why you need to do this yeah i mean swift mud certainly has their methods of ensuring quality of the you know wetlands and the buffers and would move forward under that i mean yeah so why should we do this so why should you all do this or why should we approve this change um that's a very good question you know i i think um we we've done our best to to look back at the historical records to try to take off more than we're to take off not more than um we need um we're trying to get a a line that's that's based in reality and historic records we've tried to do our due diligence the best as possible with all the environmental regulations um and and really just um verifying that the intent of the core boundary is what we're trying to is what we're requesting we're not trying to to push further um further than the original intent of the core boundary line is is our best argument um the the benefit to the county um for this project is um twofold obviously um it will help the development happen as well as um all the restoration work that we are trying to do um quite frankly so you're saying the development would not occur without this zoning change the development as it stands in this image would not occur i'm not i can't speak to if something else wouldn't happen here mr chair i got a question to follow up on that go ahead mr bass you're recognized yes uh so currently with all of the violations that are out there would the is the remediation for those impacts would that be altered at all right now but if we approve this like do they have to go through and fix what they've um impacted as it sits right now yes the wetlands have to be fixed one way or the other whether land is so if this project does not move forward they still have to get fixed yes sir okay meaning the violations will stay and until until they're yeah understood thank you let me sean direct a quick question for you on the type of development that we're talking about here shown in this picture i understand this is non-binding would that be able to occur under the current land use without these changes only within the bpc only within the bpc okay so meaning right so um some of this is within the core boundary so they'd have to shrink the size they'd have to shrink the size of the project yes and and so just for the record so i'm clear according to the staff report the current owners dean still properties llc and the applicant is the people in front of us looking to make this change to to buy this to restore everything as best they can based on the historical information they have and in compliance with the water management district and what they're looking at correct and if this doesn't happen this will still stay as an issue with the district we'll still have a property here that may not be as usable or possibly usable especially with the trail coming through and we'll still have all these other issues that will still just be pending until somebody else comes along to fix it or the existing landowner is held accountable for his actions correct okay thank you any other questions or for staff mr chair i have one quick question for staff um did you hear anything in the public testimony that changes your view on the case no and if i could expand slightly the reason is because the only reason is because of what swift mud has said that the wetlands the historic wetlands are being maintained which has been the case for all of the subdivisions along the core boundary up and down this corridor from the northern property line all the way down to i4 so go ahead mr sorry sure so your consideration or your thinking is that the current boundary as it sits does not match the historical boundary i mean the core boundary as it exists is not based on the wetland boundary so the core boundary as it exists is based on what was negotiated and what was thought to be the 125 foot contour line in between 91 and 94 so you think that's an error currently yes based on the data that we've received from the water management this is a follow-up to that again because my history was all working at the district um you know i think at the time best available science determined certain lines to be reasonable right and so they used the best available science anytime you look at something especially as long as this line is down in the east side of the of the of the green swamp you know you you take large swaths of information you make your best determinations and you and you do what you have to do when you get more site-specific information anytime you look at a regional perspective versus an isolated parcel perspective the more site-specific information is always much more accurate and so what i'm hearing from staff is that's what was occurred not only by the consultant but also the water management district was out on the field on the field verifying those three criterias for the wetlands and this becomes the more proper place for that line to be that's correct i'll also follow up with that if i may sure go ahead when we chose 125 foot contour as the eastern boundary back 1991 92 whatever that was we really struggle with what that should be and that was uh the best approximation given the 100 year flood and the wetlands and we looked at maps and we looked at usgs topo maps and we said looks like the 125 is the the most approximate where all that is one of the concerns we had and one of the problems with that is i don't know what the distance is from the lake county line to the southern boundary but we also once we decided 125 it was like wait a minute you got this distance here of several miles it's not 125 from the south to the northern boundary so what do we do with that and we just said we that's just too too complicated to use this boundary and so that was all part of the negotiation when we with the state when we said 125 is it but uh i say that to say this is not the first time that boundary has been adjusted it's been said that this sets a precedent the precedent was set i don't know what date it was but years ago when someone came in and said hey 125 is 125 is doesn't work we need to make an adjustment here and that was adjusted so there's been i hesitate to say numerous but there's been several adjustments made to that boundary based on what what you said we're all got a question for you going back in time uh to that conversation uh you know the settlement with the state uh for intensive development along the green swamp is this in line with what those conversations were like is this the type of development that was intended for part of yes i would say so well that's that's that's a difficult question sure i'm just asking from because back then a lot of this area was orange grove right of course and and because it is ridge uh we knew and the state knew that it was destined for development so there were policies in place and shonder needs to speak to this maybe i don't want to belabor this any more than we need to but there were policies in place for stormwater retention open space set aside buffering and other things to try to mitigate the impacts of the intense development that we anticipated was coming and in fact like i said i remember one argument in fact it was with jack brandon over the boundary whether or not it should be 27 or not because once you look if you look at the geological and the hydrological uh contours 27 is an arbitrary boundary it's just a physical boundary that was used to designate the area of critical state concern because there are certain areas where the groundwater actually for the green swamp actually goes on the east east of 27. yes if i'm if i may follow up a little bit um in terms of what mr bishop is saying in terms of historic precedent you see the hand there on the screen i i can't point out exactly which subdivisions i don't remember but there are at least two of these subdivisions that were built in the core designation we didn't change the land use before they were built because they did a wetlands delineation line and they were east of that wetland so they were allowed to build so i would say that this is consistent with what has been developed all along the corridor but the other thing i do want to mention um in response to what miss nelson said about um other parcels interested in changing she is correct there are other parcels other property owners that are interested in it specifically on the one to the south and i can say this or miss howard won't kick me later because it's public record i have said in a public record on a pre-app on the parcel to the south that staff would probably recommend denial of a land use change to bpc because it's clear where the wetland is and it's incorporating the entire parcel so i just want to let you know it's i'm this is not my favorite case by any stretch of the imagination and it's very difficult and i made the applicant delay for several months to figure this out with the water management district so so but i think you have two paths the path is the core is the core is the core is the core end of story and you stick with that and the other is you take the data that we've received from the water management district and go with that as your data so i think you have two sets of of appropriate paths for data to make a recommendation i have one more question but would you say that the bar has been set pretty high to justify a request like this based upon the water management district and what the applicant has provided in terms of data and analysis it's the highest that we have for complementments we do not make any other applicants for comprehensive plan amendments to a wetland delineation before they submit their compliance plan amendment well not only wetland delineation itself but what has to be done to justify the request in terms of yeah they would be the floodplain the petrol metric the yeah uh there's a there's a whole list that was listed in the staff report of the different items that they review that anyone that wants to change the core has to review that mr vast do you have any comments could anybody else have any comments or we bring this back to the board for final discussion and or yes go ahead mr schmidt dare we even consider the fact that swift mud might be wrong sorry um we we've said it several times merle said it she said it the hydrology of this goes beyond some magic line that's been drawn by an engineer or a or the county or swift mud it goes well beyond that and we all know that and we've got water problems water shortages and we're dealing with all kinds of other things that just eats at my mind are are we listening to the right evidence are we listening to the right engineers i i somebody's got to say it appreciate your comments mr schmidt i you know i think that is a dangerous precedent you're proposing there i think the water management district has responsibility and the legal legal rights to to live at this i do trust their science i do believe their science is very solid uh we do have diff two different professionals who've been out there both one for the applicant and the independent agency so you know as we get cases and we get facts i think we have to depend on what was presented to us as real and truthful any other comments i do appreciate chandra's comments about to pass here and and this is how i look at this as well is again we have regional analysis that were done back in 91 or or through the time based on best available regional information we now have site specific information that's been provided to us um and i think site specific is always better than regional analysis overall um and so with that i mean that's part of the reason i think i would be able to support something like this go ahead mr bass um are you ready for a motion if we have done with discussion i'm happy to have a motion yes sir i i moved to deny so so we have a motion to deny do we have a second second we have a motion and a second to deny roll call mr bishop robert beltram i'm against that motion david dalton against the motion moral bishop i'm against the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman against the motion mike schmidt motion adam bass or the motion i think the motion failed so you need another motion i'm just making sure the motion checking his math oh i'm sorry i'm butting in making sure before i say the motion fails mr chairman all right so we have a motion that's failed the item's still at the board for discussion do we have any other motions to consider am i doing this right okay i'll go on the record as making a recommend uh recommendation of denial for myself to the county commission i think i think the vote will be voted after it leaves this i appreciate that i'd like that on the record sure we i think the roll call from the last motion for denial has been will be on the record mr chairman i'll i'll make a motion for approval of ldc pal 2024-9 so we have a motion do we have a second second we have a motion and a second and this is for approval of the yes roll call please robert beltram i am for the motion david dalton for the motion earl bishop i'm for the motion uh brooke agnini against the motion mike hickman for the motion mike schmidt against the motion adam bass against the motion mr chairman the motion passes order three for the order three and please make sure the meeting minutes reflect what was said here thank you thank you very much next case please good morning it's me again shonda bennett the land development division um so the next two cases will be presented by myself and jp we'll do them simultaneously or back to back and then ask for your questions answers or questions and motions so it's ldcpal 2024-15 it's a county initiated request to amend two policies in section 2.130b which is the indian lake estates portion of the comprehensive plan and i'll reference it as ile instead of saying indian lake estates each time it's to allow duplexes in the area highlighted as office center x area of concern on the map on the upper right and then to allow up to four dwelling units per acre to be on septic if sewer is not available in terms of the advertisement a legal ad was published in the polk sun on december 25th i'm sure many of you know where indian lake estates or ile is located it's on the east part of the county east of lake walk in the water between sandwiched between state road 60 and county road 630 this is an aerial photograph of ile ile is divided between behind the gate and in front of the gate behind the gate is all residential which is west of the gate and a mix of uses outside the gate which is to the east the yellow line shows approximately where that dividing line is you can also see canopy oaks to the south we've had several cases regarding canopy oaks presented to the planning commission so it's i felt it's relevant when we get to a discussion on the avon park range this amendment started with a pre-app from a property owner of a lot on deland which is this area in yellow and the owner of the three parcels with the star located on it and i'll describe that next you can see on this these land use maps that the lots behind the gate are residential suburban and the residential development area which is a section of the county where sewer is not expected or planned outside the gate you can see a mixture of land uses like community activity center neighborhood activity center residential low four office center residential medium and institutional certainly a mix of land uses that some can need sewer to develop but not all the land avenue has a future land use map of office center which again is outlined in this yellow box with this arrow you can see some white on the screen and the only development in that office center is duplexes there's no offices so that was certainly an issue that is reasonable for a property owner in that area that wants to build duplexes has the property owner of the starred parcels is interested in moving through a level three conditional use process for duplex in residential low that's the orange color but since the lots that you see in the residential low are half an acre the comprehensive plan policy requiring densities of more than two units to the acre to be on sewer prevents the applicant or prevents staff or the planning commission from approving any level three requests it is important to note that ile does not have public sewer and does not plan to have public sewer a few important facts for the case our duplexes onto land have existed since the 1990s office center designation was given in 2009 with a comprehensive plan amendment cpa04b-09 which was initiated by the ile board at that time with the intention of providing sewer at some point ile is a platted subdivision of residential and non-residential lots consisting of more than 8 000 lots approximately 5 000 acres basically we consider them lots of record ile was given a pre-dri development of regional impact future land use designation in 91 but it's not vested from the dri statute but it's not necessary since there are basically lots of record i pointed out canopy oaks due to the history of the area with the avon park air force range and the compatibility areas the comprehensive plan refers to them as the memphis military impact planning areas you can see that ile is in two different areas so what of the memphis is the closer you get to the range the more concerned with the impact to training performed at the range is an issue for the range for example the military branches that train at the range must adjust their height upward the denser the area becomes however the base understands that the ile ile will be denser as it develops out and have made the appropriate training adjustments which is what the letter that we received from the range states the next slide just displays the proposed changes the office center change at the top we did have to include the specific plat block um numbers in that so we can make sure that it's clear what we're talking about that can allow a duplex although it still has to go through the proper process and then at the bottom you can see where if sewer is not available the maximum density permitted is no more than four dwelling units to the acre and in unincorporated polk county is possible depending on soil types to get four dwelling units to the acre on septic and not on sewer so it at least allows them to have that consistency with the rest of the county and we certainly allow far's of of 0.25 25 percent 30 percent to be on septic tanks so again we were removing that requirement so staffers recommending approval for the reasons listed in terms of allowing duplexes to be adjacent to duplexes and that's consistent with the infill practices and policies that are in the comp plan and that have been adjusted over the recent months uh and since sewer is not going to be available it makes sense not to require everybody to connect to sewer so i'll stand for any questions any questions for staff mr bass go ahead do you already know that yeah well i you're signaling yes sir yeah i i just um obviously very um involved in comprehensive everglades restoration and where this property falls in south floor water management are we setting a precedence for allowing septic where we don't want it or are we setting a precedence for increased density with septic in places we don't want it by doing this in your opinion it's a planning so it certainly will allow more units than what they could achieve currently because the sewer prevents them from so basically what's in the rl4 is half acre lots yes they're all vested lots they could all pull a building permit in each one so with the removal of this policy or the amendment of that policy that would allow each of those half acre lots have two units on them either a duplex or they divide them subdivide them so certainly it would allow more density in indian lake estates um just knowing but the septic i i didn't i'm sorry i'm going to interrupt you but i just remembered the septic tanks do have to be the enhanced nitrogen reducing systems yeah yeah i just again i just go to the fact are we encouraging growth that we don't necessarily want long term because we're i think we just had a on the last planning commission meeting looking at encouraging growth out past boy scout road this is currently they can build duplexes on the site just one right no well they can't without a um the sewer right it's technically they can go through a level three review yes ma'am but if they can't connect a sewer you can't recommend approval or there's it's point it's a moot point are we taking anybody's property rights by not approving this and are we in theory preventing additional i mean because right now the number is somewhere around like 180 000 septic tanks in the everglades headwaters which this falls in which impacts downrange as well just had this discussion earlier i'm just going to say this uh because i'm a grumpy guy again about these things um we need growth we need ag and we need healthy waters we need a healthy force we need a combination of the three is this in alignment with wanting all three of those or are we just focused on putting development way out in the middle of nowhere i'm not focused on putting development out in the middle of nowhere i can tell you that but i will say that we're increasing density out you're correct in a very rural area you're correct you're you're correct it will increase density and um i think it kind of goes to a question that ultimately you will be part of the discussion when the conferences plan up that comes to you is we're going to have to plan for another 250 000 people in the county and by state by state statute we have to plan for them so the question is where do we want to put them so do we help by allowing them here in a place where there's already some retail land use designations there where there are lots of um it's already a cluster of development sound like it's a new development or do you leave it as is and force them in more urban areas right that's a that's a policy direction sure sure absolutely i i'm gonna just can i make a comment go ahead perfect i'm gonna go ahead and go on the record just saying i don't want additional development out there increasing density wise you know existing um existing property rights aside i think this is a bad idea driving density out here it's going to put a strain in my opinion i'm sorry oh you're fine yeah it's going to put a strain on county resources driving density to the very far limits of the county i mean there's nothing else passes there's nothing for a long way and so for that reason and for the additional septic tanks that would go in out there or additional um impacts on septic in this area i i don't like this idea thank you mr bass mr mr you're always grumpy with those smiles i know yeah mr did i did i hear you say in your presentation that there had been previously other duplexes developed in india lake estates yes there are oh let me use the new tool to be a service yes can i zoom again no can only do one all right just okay uh so these developed okay units they're duplexes okay but and and there's duplexes here and i believe these are duplexes down here so there are duplexes peppered throughout and i guess what we're what we struggle with the staff is the one uh property owner owned this lot right next to this duplex and office or duplex right does it what's what's the so that's the first part of the amendment but then outside but in the rl4 it's a level three so it would come before you so the idea could be that if they want to put a duplex next to what's already a duplex you know would you want to consider that uh and changing the sewer requirement gives that opportunity for a property owner to come to you and ask that it's not like it would be allowed outright but mr bass you're not grumpy you're passionate so i get that no i um maybe i take it as grumpy sometimes i i understand so but there are no duplexes as you said behind the gate and the other correct right to the west it's all single family detached the star on the map you said is that but the star there was a star on the residential suburban area right that was just a legend label oh okay okay so the only this only would allow duplexes in front of the gate or the the rl4 well technically they're already allowed but the issue is because they have to get the sewer yeah okay okay so so the idea that there was the intent to allow duplexes in this area but since there's no sewer and i i wasn't i was here but i wasn't part of the uh planning staff that worked on this land use amendment but they did do it in conjunction with the board and i did talk to the board about these amendments um but it there was a different board it was a different time so mr chair yes sir go ahead mr um i have to agree with mr bass on on this uh i built out in indian lake estates and it's out in the middle of nowhere uh and there is no reason to encourage higher density in that location um you know it's a nice rural area half acre site someone wants to build a home out there you know with the lake and all the other amenities that's great but uh high density in that area is just inappropriate i think and and i'm a strong believer in giving opportunity to you know to build where people want to build and use their land as they want to use it but that one just is is wrong and i think to follow up on that i think the current regulations have probably been a deterrent for people i mean i wouldn't want to build a home out there i know people that live out there that love it but not it's not for me but i'm afraid if we change the the uh requirements here all of a sudden people said well i may reconsider that i understand so not only are we creating the opportunity we may be creating the desire or the market mr chairman if i may just add to this there's there's a a way they can get around this right no they want extra they can build a a sewer facility right yeah oh yes well correct right but that would probably fall with the ile board but yes if it's coming out there and possible yes you're right warrants it then they'll do it right sure sure i'd ask that if the planning commission uh wishes to keep the sewer requirement in but you're okay with the off duplexes and office center if in your recommendation you can bifurcate that you shouldn't apologize yeah hold on for a second yeah okay any you good go ahead mr and and and just to clarify the office center in question is just that yellow area yes outside of that in the rl4 they can build a duplex without the well with sewer and level three approval yeah yeah chandra can i ask a quick question then on that follow-up to that you had mentioned they'd have to be using enhanced septic systems yes which are not our typical septic systems enhanced septic systems really are a little wastewater plant essentially what they are they are correct and it reduces the nitrogen by 65 percent nitrogen the release nitrogen by 65 percent if we don't do this are they going to still have to use enhanced septic systems regardless correct okay and i i will say too that uh when jp speaks about the land development code text amendment those both of these concepts are in there as well so so we've had a long report from staff on this one for me for sure do we have an applicant me okay so all right appreciate the discussion then all right do we have another presentation to listen to before we start talking about motions and or discussions welcome to the fun jp i know glad to be back all right so uh to piggyback onto shonda's case agenda item number eight is the text amendment that goes along with the changes to the indian lake states development mostly this is primary this is based on a new use table that would go into indian lake estates that way even if uh you know you don't have the sewer connections or the duplexes or anything like that you have a new use table that will help to clarify any confusion about what is and what is not allowed to be developed within the current future land uses of the indian lake estates area we're already familiar with the area that we are currently in um and as she mentioned before it's so the comprehensive plan tie-ins that we mentioned before these are the parts of the comprehensive plan that are uh relevant to the indian lake estates development portion and then the office center sections of it so basically what it does is it's talking about the different things that they don't want that they do want that are debatable in that area so a big part of what i was creating was um the use table that way that there's you know you're just hammering out the details of saying this is allowed this is not allowed because it is its own dri so you want to make sure that you are having these established guidelines um and as you mentioned before even if you don't do the sewer connection portion of it you know you keep that requirement where has go through the conditional uses outside of the office center then at least you're still having the different uses that are allowed within the future land uses that exist okay so these are the prohibited uses based on the comprehensive plan like when it goes to and lists out the different things that they don't want out in that area so we did list those as prohibited uses that are not included on the use table so then i did create the use table using the pre-existing uh land uses that are there ranging from rs all the way up to the r the recreation open space the institutional office center and you'll notice that on here for the duplexes for office center we did put that still as a level three conditional use so even if you know you don't do the sewer connection requirement in putting in in there it'd still be a level three and then the justification for that as i mentioned before it helps to alleviate any confusion about what is allowable within the indian lake estates development of regional impact um and we already discussed that removing the requirement of sewer connection at certain densities would help to increase density out there and help to with any development that might want to occur with land developers out there and it would give the ability for people to build duplexes within the pre-existing office center onto land avenue with that i'll stand for question all right any questions for staff on this portion of the presentation and just to check for either of these two items since they're being presented together is anyone here to speak for or against this case i guess he's not so that's good all right so we're back to we'll close the public portion of the meeting make sure we're back to staff any other questions for staff before we ask for a motion or discussion on the board and i think staff is saying if we do want to keep lane use changes we could make a modification to the recommendations is that correct yes but keep the sewer like for example and yes i'm leading the witness is uh right is uh recommend approval of the amendment regarding just the office center to allow the duplexes but not the other changes regarding the sewer and that way we don't have to sit here and um wordsmith the language and if you trust me and jp to make the changes to the board hearing to make sure that we don't do that motion would have to be something to authorize staff to make the changes that combine with these general conditions as if the board member wishes to make that motion so with that i'll entertain any motions i've got one question there there already are duplexes that have been built within there so there's it's a it is uh currently an issue anyway that we need to resolve is that true or the level three allows duplexes to move forward it's just trying to prevent having to do a level three every time somebody wants to do that or no the level three won't get them out of the sewer it's only the changing the policy and the comp plan is gets them out of the sewer connection so if we did a if we did a modification of the language that would allow four duplexes they'd still have to hook to sewer though is is that what we we're trying to modify possibly what do we let me go to the comp plan because i'm fine with if you want to hook up to a sewer plan at some point and there's already duplexes there making that that change change i just don't want to make it easier now to make duplexes out there so the first of the comp plan amendment which is reiterated in the land development code duplexes duplex units are permitted in the blocks there which is that specific office center section you're already allowed uh per the review requirements listed in land development code which jp talked about land development code the table being added okay and then we go down to the sewer the following densities intensity shall apply related to utility provision if sewer is not available the maximum density permitted is no more than four dwelling units per acre so i think what i'm hearing the interest from the some of the planning commission members is to not include this second set of changes and if that's the case and if that's the recommendation we can certainly make the similar modifications in the land development code mr chair yes so if we bifurcate this what are they going to be able to do that they can't do now so the general the property owner that had the three properties in rl4 he's going to have no choice but to build a single family detached unit he uh he won't have a job i mean if he goes and miss howard can correct me if i'm wrong he's got a legal right to submit a level three review but we're going to have to recommend denial and i would imagine miss howard's going to have to tell you or advise you that if you recommend approval it's inconsistent with the comp plan because they can't connect sewer yeah i got that part of it but what oh i'm sorry what does it allow them to do if we break this down and let you where you oh single family detached um he can do it he can still build in those lots if they do you're saying if we make them change the motion to allow the duplexes in the office center are you saying that that would also include allowing that on the enhanced septic system only in the office center the enhanced septic systems are anywhere in anywhere period so regardless of what right now you can't do duplexes in the office center correct okay and if you and if you wordsmith it what can you do can they do you're saying if you wordsmith that they could do single family residences in the office center yes i'm sorry okay so in the office center they can do what table 2.1 allows which is offices personal services things like that this change here gives them an additional right which is duplex that's all does it allow them single family or could it no no yeah i i'd be opposed to that change okay so if somebody wants to do a bifurcated motion chandra help me out we're going to allow you to modify the definition of office center but make no changes to policy 2.130 b dash b 3.4 is that correct yes and then yeah yeah for or deny it all together as some of the other members have talked about that's also a possible motion right or we can approve the whole thing that's the third option so with that i'll entertain a motion from the board i move to deny i second we have a motion and a second to deny and this is for uh item number six at this point yes um and to clarify that's to deny both the changes to both policies not by the deny outright okay just a straight denial yeah just straight denial okay all right so we have a motion and a second uh roll call before you can i jump in mr zisco was um saying that i perhaps i misunderstood mr hickman's question that there are or bass's question there are i guess i'm not over the core case still the um there are duplexes currently in the office center yes ma'am that are developed okay okay any other clarification before we take the vote that's all all right mr bishop robert beltram i'm for the motion david dalton against the motion moral bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman mike schmidt for the motion adam bass for the motion mr chairman the motion passes okay and i'll take a motion on item 7 ldct 2024-24 move to tonight thank you motion in a second for denial roll call please robert beltram for the motion david dalton against the motion moral bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman mike schmidt for the motion adam bass for the motion mr chairman the motion passes okay on item number eight ian all right last one for the record ian nance land development staff recommends approval of ldct 2024-21 a county initiated land development code text amendment intended to provide some clarity and direction to county staff and citizens regarding standards for various accessory structures and fencing on december 25th a legal ad was published in the polk sun with no responses since this is a level four review staff is seeking your recommendation to the board for hearings set on february 4th and february 18th this amendment is the result of requests from the building land division or land development and code enforcement staff to clear up some confusion when dealing with certain accessory structures and fencing one such example is with accessory dwelling units or adus these would be the mother-in-law suites and garage apartments last year the staff and the board approved changes to land development code to allow these adus but wasn't really incorporated with it were size limits to them true to form people have showed up and have wanted to have adus just square foot smaller than their primary structures this is not the intent of adu policy anywhere you can find it essentially you're doubling down on density in a residential neighborhood so after uh talking with staff and reviewing multiple jurisdictions staff is recommending a maximum of 50 percent 50 of the primary home up to a maximum of 1 000 square feet for adus these will keep these living spaces properly categories categorized as accessory structures and maintain the benefits of adus in 2022 staff recommended and the board adopted changes to allow small accessory sheds utility sheds to go up to the property line at zero feet to the rear and the sides since that time we've run into issues with stormwater runoff going on neighboring properties and maintenance issues so the building department has asked that we return this to three feet from side and rear property lines which will allow for maintenance and storm runoff it's a very particular instance of some things we found around to find around the county where we have a parcel essentially two pieces of property under one parcel id with waterfront and a public road bifurcating the property technically you can't have the boathouse here just to clear up confusion we're making allowance for that now so if someone comes in there's not all the wrangling and determination it's black and white finally fencing the ldc has very limited guidance on the maintenance of fencing we currently regulate what materials can be used and where they're supposed to go etc but when we have instances where they've fallen down because of storms or become dilapidated there's not much code enforcement can do about at this point so this amendment does add some language uh and and it's really going to rely on some discretion from code enforcement when this is going to be enforced but it gives them some teeth to move forward if if they find instances such as this um this here is in polk county this is actually in lakeland but these are some of the instances that county runs into where the fencing will fall across strange easements or across sidewalks it becomes a health and safety concern beyond just being an eyesore so staffs recommending adding some language into the code for that with that um again staff recommends approval we kind of see these as minor changes intended to promote health and safety and to make things a little easier on customers and staff when dealing with accessory structures and fencing anybody have mr hickman go ahead uh just a couple comments on that your adu sizing thousand square foot seems rather arbitrary um i mean we build these structures and we have had to keep them under a certain size and that doesn't always meet the demands of the client um you know these are dual family you know establishment on larger pieces of property and uh so again it's kind of arbitrary i mean the 50 rule in my opinion would be a better approach to it and it probably would limit most to a thousand or less but you know um some people like big homes and they have extended families and and we've seen all kinds of combinations where parents build for their children and with the anticipation that they will when they get older you know someone dies they'll move into the little one and the family is it this younger family as they grow will move into the bigger one and so i just don't you know these i always have a problem with these arbitrary you know numbers there but certainly 50 i would encourage that the other thing is uh the side yards um you know to to reasonably grade around the properties i know that the work that we do we have to contain any runoff within the property uh you know when we do a dwelling so three feet uh zero feet absolutely doesn't work uh because you're shedding onto another person's property three feet uh really doesn't allow you to properly you know cut that swale and and keep that runoff off of those structures so i don't know what the size of a shed is uh of 400 square feet but even at that and the other part of it too is just um the aesthetics of it you know a little bit of a setback is certainly a better approach uh and i think most of the structures that we build are five foot setback minimum and that seems to work pretty well so i don't i don't so see why sheds would have a you know an exception beyond what me building a you know a built structure there let's start with the sheds uh in 2022 when this was brought forward these are intended to be the small utility sheds no bigger than 400 square feet um benign in use mostly just for storage it's not supposed to be which tend to be the ugliest thing you can put on your property they also tend to come after the proper home has been built and things of that nature yeah um i mean i applaud the direction you're going there i just would you know i think you could refine that a little bit and the and the uh accessory dwelling unit affected i i won't disagree it's a little arbitrary as far as the um size is concerned my staff report i go through multiple jurisdictions and they range from a maximum of 800 square feet up to 2 000 square feet and different i mean you know we have homes that are 10 000 square feet and they want to move in you know their parents and they want to put in a 2 000 square foot home with a couple car garage on a property that certainly would easily accommodate that i don't know why we would limit them from doing that i mean that's it's been looked at and in some jurisdictions they'll allow that and others we don't we had to kind of find a happy medium in all this um because we do run into so many different instances out here in the county between uh you know smaller lots towards the cities and out out in the country generally you wouldn't see that situation but we have had people come to us with those requests and this just applies to detached adus too so if you have an attached garage that you turn into one or some other structure you build onto there's no limit to that that would be considered part of the primary structure all right we got a bunch of questions mr bishop you're next well i i have to agree with mr hickman i i actually i don't live in the county i live in the city of bartow i actually built one of these for my mom to live to come live with us but i took advantage of the fact and built a apartment and a garage a detached apartment and garage and a loft above it and the living area including the apartment and the loft exceeds a thousand square feet but i'm within 50 percent of my house and it's perfectly fine in fact people say you know hey i wish i had that uh my mom no longer lives with us because she passed away years ago but all my kids have lived there and so i i don't see a problem with that so i i'm not necessarily support the thousand foot limit appreciate that mr schmidt go ahead national association of home builders unless they've changed it says that mother and law suites is the largest remodeling project in the country they call it the walton effect from the waltons with grandma and grandpa living in the house that's the the term they put into it um that this is a bit personal and i i won't go there but um i have a 98 year old mother that we're doing this for i also have a coming mother-in-law and if you think i'm gonna put them into the same but but this says uh in section 2 uh a one it says not more than one adu per parcel um and again in my case i would need two okay because i'm not putting them all in there together and to squeeze them into a both of them into a 20 by 50 subdivided that's not going to work they used to way more footage than that they couldn't put their closet in that kind of space um and the the the part that you said coat says code compliant everybody's okay with that i don't have a problem with that but to not to exceed a thousand square feet i just again i'm reading i i've i got this and i went through the thing i've got two pages of notes so at some point in time y'all are going to have to entertain me a little bit um i would i would agree with both of those statements um it also says in section 10 uh same electrical service that gets a little dicey and same plumbing now i'm not sure where the wording for all or what the intention of the wording is again i really y'all know i read this stuff okay and i try to digest it and try to see what are you saying what are you trying to do what are you not saying and i have to kind of read into that as well um says no mobile homes but what about modulars and other things like that which are capable of being installed on a on a foundation uh they're not mobile homes per se um that's that's as far as i got with the uh ad use i got some more for the for the uh accessory structures but let's just go on with that part of it for the moment okay for for a second there too people want to mr zisco reminded me here too that uh the thousand square foot maximum is tied to uh impact fees once you get over a certain threshold it's tied into paying traffic impact fees so i think that's kind of where we landed at when you exceed that we we painted that uh the parts that you're referencing uh mr schmidt the not allowing more one single family residential lot of parcel that's old code that has been part of the code for a while as is the as is uh i believe the the plumbing electrical was adopted in 2023 and the idea is that you're not having separate meter and separate build housing right there and we run into this a lot of staff as we put these larger homes and we have premature subdivisions a lot of pressure to have them subdivided that would be to uh what their density or lot sizes would require by the code so this is very tricky stuff as far as you know it's personal to a lot of people but we also have our land development code we have to buy by yes go ahead mr hickman um so we pay full impact fee on any of these accessory structures i'm not sure what where you're finding a threshold of of no transportation this is information for the um building department yeah if it's under a certain i think right now it might be 800 or is it i guess it's a thousand dollars um if it's under a certain um i don't think we'll let you find that way separately in a park a little afraid on that so uh that's interesting i'm sorry i shouldn't it's not and i don't have the impact fee ordinance in front of me it's not that you don't pay any impact fees you don't pay the rate of a single family residence so i think it's a county manager or administrator of determination of what impact fee you will pay if you're under a thousand feet i have not seen that threshold but that's um 2.0 i think it's in my staff report 800 yeah right i can get the site for you know the the other thing that the county really needs to get their uh arms around is the um you know these family compounds i know we've they've you know gotten to where you can do um you know multiple residents now but it kind of goes to what a mike saying there is that um you know we should encourage families extended families to live together on the same property i mean that's good use of property so i wouldn't be opposed to having two adus per parcel and uh and again not have limitations to that yeah mr chair yes a quick question or not a question but a quick statement um i see where mr hickman's coming from in regards to the the uh 50 number and that number makes sense but to change that today seems to me to be sort of out of the realm of what the job of the planning commission is so i would be more comfortable to approve this case today is what i would recommend and then leave it to the board of county commissioners to make the change if they decided to do so mr chair yes sir i mean we do have the ability to for them to modify that so that they could drop that one line on the yeah we do have that i believe we have that ability i guess my before we go i guess my question for staff is you're hearing a lot of comments from the commission is it best to punt and let you guys go back and put this or or would you like some more feedback and make some changes on the fly how would you guys think we should want to proceed mr chair i actually have a question for clarity on okay i'm sorry go ahead mr bass in regards to the fencing standards i just want to be sure we don't adversely impact agricultural producers this is just specifically to residential and or would this could this possibly be could we possibly be uh finding ag users and things like that because of dilapidated it's gonna be ag exempt is from my understanding it will be it will not impact okay okay there do you want to talk about fencing or do you guys want to talk about the path what's the prayer for every of the door board mr schmidt i think had more comments so i don't want to okay that's fine uh if they want to revisit that's okay as far as the fencing i i assume y'all know this is in there uh section 5a 5 shall not contain broken glass spikes nails high voltage uh designated to inflict pain or injury but then number six right below it says barbed wire or razor wire shall be permitted i mean that's just kind of a i i don't well that's why i wanted clarification this had an impact on ag there's all kinds of stuff here electric hits i i'll speak to you mr schmidt uh number five is specific to residential districts number six who's talking i'm number six is specific to non-residential districts and number five specific to residential districts okay number six is not is uh specific to non-residential districts so the barbed wire razor wire that's for non-residential and none of that stuff is allowed in residential is what it says number five okay that's that's existing code too so just for the record i also have an issue with a thousand feet and i do like the five foot that's the other thing and the fencing i really had a question about i can't believe we don't have any way to enforce i mean if it's a requirement of a development to have a fence and the fence gets knocked down there's no responsibility for the hoa that the county can enforce that they have to re-establish what was approved on in the developments this fence right here i believe the county has said a please pick up and sign two but we don't have anything to go find them or go find them okay so this is really just put some more teeth to us yes sir okay i appreciate that that is so let me ask staff what how do you guys want to you're hearing a lot well for the record ben zisco land development director um if if we really have some issues with the accessory dwelling units and we want the other parts of this ordinance to move forward we could make a recommendation to move forward with the the shed setbacks and or the fence language and bring back something different for the accessory dwelling units i just wanted to clarify one thing that we're it's an interesting discussion with the last item being talking about duplexes and this item talking about accessory dwelling units the intent of this language is that these units are accessory to a single family home and part of why we're looking for ways to limit the size is so single family homes are not subdivided into duplexes and then we don't have two families living in areas that are designed for single family homes so the intent to limit these accessory dwelling units is to maintain that property as a single family dwelling unit rather than than becoming duplexes but but certainly there's a lot of discussion here and we can go back to to the table on on some of this language um so i think there's some options but i wanted to clarify that we are talking about accessories on purpose um that it's not family compounds or other areas where you have two independent single family homes it's it's one home while we now recognize that some accessories grandmother-in-law mother-in-law suites or other garage apartments may not be in the attached structure they're still designed to function as one single family property so with that whichever way the the board wishes is there a process if somebody say has something larger than a thousand get or other than i guess just a variance yeah could we limit it on maybe zoning or it could it be tied to single family yeah lot size or single i just don't want to make arbitrary decisions up here without letting staff have an opportunity to think through all the ramifications yeah i think it's clear that that portion of this ordinance needs to be probably continued so i'd leave it up to the planning commission's decision whether you want to continue the whole thing and have us come back or is this an appropriate since there's three separate issues here is this an appropriate ordinance to to sort of bifurcate and bring back something on the accessory dwelling units and move the fences and or the sheds forward i think it's also a question on the setback for the sheds too right we were yeah i mean mr chair um you know we could simply take it as presented and just drop the thousand square foot requirement and uh and change that three to a five and i'd be fine with everything else that's in that proposal i'd like to hear from me to the board members at this point how do you feel about it mr bishop yeah i agree with that i mean i've dropped a thousand feet and changed the three to five i'm i'm okay with that mr dalton i would be more in favor of approving it as is and then letting the county commissioners make those changes if desired i agree with merle and mike okay you're i do as well i do want just further confirmation we we are ag-exempt in this right because we just said non-residential for fencing i want to make sure that ag-exempt is out because that would be you could give a whole lot of people a lot of headaches that don't need them so is there a timeline to get this done right now no this is not an urgent matter this is just something we're trying to clean up i i we feel it probably best just continue the whole thing because i'll have to go back and reword this ordinance and all that do you think it would be better for clarity to move the entire thing forward because i think there are some other implications staff would want to think about even the three to five with smaller lots i know serving on the land use hearing board they're very small properties where they could not put in a shed if it was so i just think there's some other considerations now hearing this feedback it would be best to continue the whole thing so may i ask leaving the fencing you mentioned that leaving the fencing to the discretion but there's question of code enforcement i've got a little heartburn with that because that just puts an awful lot of capability in their hands i'm i'm reading this and i don't see any where is it i don't see anything that that gives a time frame for the remediation of a fence down i don't see any are we going to then move to penalty phases are we going to then put liens on the property how how far does this go it this is this is going we kind of a hard direction here it is and we struggle with this trying to come up with a time frame i know miss howard sat in with us and we said well let's say after a hurricane what's fair because fencing is probably the last thing you're worried about 60 90 days what seems right here so going through the whole no it's not we took it out because why do we want we they're extenuating circumstances in that so to draw down the heart damage that last thing they want to worry about is their fence correct they're putting blue tarps on the roof everywhere and we're you know i would say we got much higher priorities than fixing fences but that's just me that's why there's no set time frame in there we say some discretion okay and there's a process that they go through you have a notification being violation then the magistrate and the whole whole process for months on end to until it's remediated it's 100 clear it's ag exempt i will write it in there perfect thank you that's all i want to know yeah so okay we've had a lot of discussion on this item and and we're hearing from our attorney that it might be best just to to set this aside let the whole thing sit aside that's one of the options is there any other input on what we want to do before we entertain a motion for that i need a motion on what we'd like to do eventually but i guess the question is are we done with discussion is there anything else from our alternates you'd like to add i'd just i'd i'd just add if if you wanted to get it done today it seems pretty simple i think the heartburn is with the the the thousand foot but just just a comment to the county this is a lot rolled into a burrito here i i don't know if you maybe do separate ones look at them individually i know it causes more work for you so we're also going to have pool safety and cargo containers in here but i yanked those out thinking this was the closest it's a whole bash of things that kind of need to be taken care of and and maybe got too close to the sun appreciate you guys working with us all right so i'm entertaining a motion now mr chair i'll make a motion to continue ldct 2024-21 to a future date we have a second i'll second we want to do a date certain so we don't have to re-notice it um i don't know if you're ready to do that if you have an idea like the next march i'm hearing i'm not near march you know what the march date is oh we can do february i think it's february february okay so for the next planning commission in february february 5th i believe is the date all right you can amend your motion accordingly mr dolton yes sir i'll make a motion to continue ldct 20 24-21 to the february 5th planning commission meeting we have a motion do we have a second second we have a motion in a second any other discussion before we go roll call yes sir mr schmidt i think there's great wisdom in breaking this up appreciate the comment into separate issues to be brought to us so is continuing this our best move and it's in its current format that addresses all three of these issues at one time sounds like i understand i'm not i don't mean to do that but i i think these are individual issues i i don't know how fencing would be tied to the size of a of a mother-in-law suite i i'm just saying i i think the motion to continue is appropriate for the entire thing and whether that comes back as three separate agenda items or we tell you then we have one ready for you to go in march and you know request another but i think the current motion on the table is appropriate to continue the whole item for now so would it impact your advertisement by doing the date certain to february 5th we won't have to re-advertise for any that we bring back if we you know aren't ready on one of them because we need more time to look at it we would again i think again ask for a continuance of just that portion but i think that sounds like we'll have something ready for february 5th you requested that they be broken up as part of this continuation can that be a we have a motion yeah yeah yeah and redo a new motion understood yeah whatever y'all want to receive that direction staff understands what we're looking for i think i believe so with the current motion as it stands for continuation only all right we have a continuation motion on the floor until february 5th it's at staff's discretion on how they want to bring that item back to us with input they've received with that i'll take a roll call robert dalton for the motion david i mean robert david dalton for the motion borough bishop for the motion brooke agdini for the motion mike hickman for the motion mike schmidt for the motion adam bass mr chairman the motion passes thank you sir i believe we have one more item to discuss with chandra i want everyone to take a deep breath okay everybody's good so if you don't talk now i'm gonna be upset because this is what i need you to talk now you've been primed all morning um let me get a pen so for the record shonda bennett with the land development division so as you all know we are in the middle of updating going through the process to update our comprehensive plan uh was originally adopted in 1991. uh so i wanted to go through a few slides of kind of where we've been where we're going what we've heard a little bit of activity of what we've done through the workshops we have seven workshops throughout the county um we have been in partnership with polk vision some of you probably know if not all of you that polk vision has spent over a year and a half kim long and her staff to meet with a lot of people they got 2600 surveys returned to them and the number one issue was growth and that people are scared of the growth so we wanted to make sure that we let everyone that we met with know that we've heard we've heard that um a couple of questions that we asked people to prime them what's the oldest city in polk county anybody know fort mead yeah fort mead and when was polk created one very good very good and then the start year of phosphate mining 18 something all right 1890 yeah and the start of citrus there's citrus was brought into polk county in a different time than when it was commercially started right you got a range because i i'm not giving you a year i uh this this data that i found said it was brought into florida at polk county by the spanish in the 1500s but commercial something you're good commercially was after the civil war and this is a picture of lake morton really that's cool i found that from um the archives yeah right yeah me too yeah buddy a little bit of zoning history uh we had our first zoning code in 1970 we got the map after in 19 that's right i forgot that see this is going to be fun having merle on the planning commission talk about comp plan right um then we actually adopted our first comp plan in 73 merle came to work for polk county in 75 then the state growth management act in 85 um and then we adopted our first comp plan in 1991 uh we've amended it uh obviously we amended every year we amend the map we amend the tax a major update we did in um 2010 when development code was adopted in 2000 and we are now working on the rewrite the project team that's been working on it really all of our planners have been working on it um you all are working on it uh the county staff uh myself ben kim long tara watson with pulp vision i should have put down um stephen barnes who's in the alcove back here he's he attended all of our workshops filming them um uh on the screen and i keep forgetting to put his name on here so he can yell at me later for that um our consultant is inspire place making collective the project managers eric rosh we've worked with chris doherty gabrielle castro kyle peterson claudius cecilia hayden lewis and they've hired a sub consultant pga consultant to help us with the transportation element i'm sure all of you know what a comprehensive plan is but basically it's to guide the future actions of the jurisdiction to guide that growth direction we have several elements of the comprehensive plan all but the ones that are starred are required by state statute so we've got the future land use element the housing element conservation economic infrastructure property rights transportation recreation open space public school facilities intergovernmental coordination and capital improvement element public school facilities was a required element in 2007 and then the legislature removed that requirement but we've maintained the element part of our focus for some of the comprehensive plan update is really what we've heard in planning commission over the last 20 years 30 years as you know we are becoming warehouse distribution central in the state so that's certainly becoming an issue in terms of how close those are to existing residential and how the truck traffic moves we heard some of that issue earlier today redevelopment areas are still of a concern in our county with all the growth we've had our non-residential location criteria for like community activity center neighborhood activity center is from 1991 and hasn't been modified since except for rural cluster center we did that just recently so there's it's time we need to update that adaptive reuse back when the conference plan was adopted we wanted the intent was for non-conforming uses to go away the thought some of those ag structures might go away well they haven't none of them have gone away and we keep getting property owners coming to us going well i want to use it for something it doesn't meet any of our land use criteria so what do we do and we don't want necessarily to have the buildings destroyed we want to have it some kind of adaptive reuse we're trying to figure out what we do with that community concerns obviously that's always an issue every time you all meet here a natural resources water protection we have now we have the polk regional water cooperative which we didn't have in in 1991 but water and natural resources should always be a concern all the transportation improvements that are occurring in the county bright line sunrail etc and along with freight mobility and safety so some of those are some of the key thoughts that we keep having in terms of how do we address these bigger issues in our comp plan update a few of so several of these slides are regarding the data that we've been presenting at the workshops so we've got some of you in this room know how many acres we've lost in citrus in the county this map shows by county how much has been lost statewide polk county is right there at the top with the amount of acreage lost to citrus so i had mentioned earlier in a previous case that we have to plan for the growth to 2050 that we're going to receive so the growth that we have received overall so that green is county-wide including cities by 2020 it was over 700 000 today it's over 800 000. you can see that uh in 1970 the growth of the counties in the cities were similar but counties outpaced the cities and that historically the recent historical here is that we get about 60 percent of the total population of polk county is in our jurisdiction unincorporated jurisdiction so we have the largest jurisdiction in polk county so this is a snapshot of what the growth is over the next 25 years and county-wide it's certainly a large population but the amount of population that we have to manage is that 250 000 that we have to determine can it fit into our land uses that we have on the map today or do we need to make land use changes to accommodate them or policy changes that allow higher densities in certain areas to accommodate that additional population that goes along to that thought about well do we put some of that in indian lake estates or not that's a policy change and clearly i'm hearing the you know the planning commission in that sense not in that area let's put it somewhere else that's a policy direction that you'll be able to participate in providing direction to staff which you can do here today as well uh because uh on the 17th of january our consultant eric rosh will be making a presentation to the board at their agenda review and we do want to be able to tell the board that we've presented before you and and let them know any concerns or thoughts you have about the comp plan update today so this is our existing land use map we still have a lot of acreage still left in agriculture whether it's passive or whether it's active and low density residential uh so we don't have a lot of area really still in urban areas it's it's growing uh but we still have room to grow that could be good or bad right for a future land use map so when you see land use changes today this is our land use map and how that's broken up in terms of percentage of the county we do have a good portion of our county in low density cities and phosphate mining again still matching that existing land use map that we have an urban core which is really lakeland winter haven along the ridge and up into the northeast of polk county so the input that we've heard with our public engagement uh we've heard comments about land use parks natural resources the economy transportation historic preservation utilities and housing we've had over 5 000 website visits we've had eight specific group interviews at least with the consultant ben and i have had more and all of our staff have had all kinds of conversations with people throughout the year we've had seven county-wide workshops we had 105 people participate some of that's probably double counted unfortunately we've had three community events i attended these hispanic heritage festival in juanita flighttoberfest and international we went to a saturday at international flea market to get some comments from some of the attendees that were shopping we have received 574 surveys we've had 944 website contributions uh and the vision preferences over 4 000 and there were two methods for residents to provide comments they could put a point on a map and give comments about what some of the issues are with that particular part of the county or just list comments like you're on a instagram or threads or one of those kind of social media sites oh and ben and i have been going to all the cities in the county meeting with their city manager and their planning director we've met with 14 so we've got a few more to go we have another one actually this friday so we're getting around so one of the survey questions what should be prioritized within the comprehensive plan i would imagine none of this is surprising to you but the number one is preservation and conservation of our natural environment and wildlife habitats improve roadway infrastructure adequate water supply protect rural and agricultural lands by directing growth into where there's already infrastructure which is something you hear from staff about well we want to put we want high density in areas where there's infrastructure northeast and ensure the residents of all income levels have safe affordable housing another question from the survey is what type of development should the county prioritize within the next 25 years more slightly more than 50 percent want to limit that in terms of the number of acres amended per year limit on the number of permits i think that's a reflection of this pace of growth we are one of the fastest growing counties in the united states so that's certainly a reflection of of the speed of the growth and then you can see other comments we received let's put that density or that extra additional development in the urban and suburban areas and some say no growth at all another exercise that we did at every event that we attended is we asked people to put where they want the new residential and where they want the new commercial so you can see the blue dots is residential and the red dots are commercial so it gives you an idea it's still focused around the city's corridors um it was 27 some reflecting the knowledge of new growth that needs to occur maybe in the phosphate mining areas phosphate mining stops so next steps are we are currently finalizing data and analysis i have to read lots of things uh the data for every element that you saw listed and soon we'll be getting the drafts of the element themselves mentioned the consultant presentation on january 17th um the vision document draft policies the um we once we get the draft policies we're going to have we've got five listening sections we're calling them we're not sure how we're going to do them if they're going to be community events or if they're going to be virtual or combination of both but we're going to be doing some of that we hope to send you drafts of those the policies and the data and analysis march and april because it's probably not a good idea to give you a week's time frame to review a completely new comp plan however all of the policies won't be new uh there's property rights we have to deal with and burt harris and but there will be some updates at this point i don't anticipate it will be an underlying strikeout draft how to tell you what are new policies what are are not new policies i haven't figured that out yet um but our expectation is to ask you to take action on it in june and if you don't move it on in june and we can't get it to the planning commission and get it transmitted in july we will be in non-compliance with the state so are you going to give it all to us in june i mean we're going to get the whole package in april march and april right well we're going to ask you to take action on the whole package in june but we're going to feed it to you feed you parts of it before june so that you can comment not collectively you can call me and go shonda yes that's how we um did the uh 2010 okay it'll be shorter than the current comp plan could we consider maybe bring as an information item in may sure no action just an information item that way if we have questions we can ask you guys directly we can talk about it in the public forum absolutely i'm writing that down we are able to call staff and maybe come in and talk with you about it absolutely perfect absolutely yeah and just for the attorney we're allowed to talk to staff directly but not amongst each other unless we're in a public session correct so the consultant will be here then in june at least i'll ask them about may well it would be helpful i mean the consultants is the one proposing this and we have questions i'm not saying staff couldn't answer them but if they're the ones who are doing the work they certainly maybe have more insight or more background into why they're recommending what they are i'm just like suggesting that maybe the consultant presence would be helpful yes so this is an opportunity that if any of you had general comments or thoughts about where you want to put under two 250 000 people this would be an opportunity to give me some general comments if you'd like a few questions for you and i know you mentioned water obviously it's near and dear to my heart but um how does that really fit in the early chapters didn't have a water section to it or an element i guess what you call it but i saw water sprinkled throughout the rest so where does water fit in this whole plan and how does that work certainly water is mentioned in the sections of the comp plan where we have the development areas listed whether you have to connect to it or not the infrastructure element is has a whole section on potable water it also has the water supply plan listed in it regional water supply plan yeah which the polk water cooperative is mentioned in that what about natural systems the conservation element okay it'd be under the conservation element and then we have a section it's called section 2.1 2.1 251 community design section that was added in 2010 that has the polk green in it and we've had some specific comments from residents about the polk green and updating that in particular and bringing in the wildlife corridor certainly into that in that mix go ahead mr mass to your point on natural resources natural systems are we you know we're blessed with the lake whales ridge and obviously i hope we would focus on high aquifer recharge areas as well because they're prime for development and several of them and we have some pristine water bodies like crooked lake that are at threat right now just focusing on on some of those for sure you know and aren't we are consulting with our amazing environmental lands team right yes yep beautiful oh yeah yeah because i know they have priorities that they'd like to see and after that in now we wouldn't necessarily work with them in terms of they wouldn't want to prescribe direction for the cop plan no but like we'd get data from them or talk chat to them about things they're doing yes yeah but i think it is important when it comes to conservation and our natural resources that we're working with who are acquiring our natural areas for conservation and they already have areas of the county that they want to see preserved and i think speaking of corridors and natural systems to protect that's our best resource in the county from a planning standpoint they already have this data put together of what they want they have the mapping they have all that data i just want to make sure we're consulting with them because that that's the plan i think the concern from our our environmental land staff is that because they have to buy land to then have us put on the map what to conserve we don't need it in a parcel by parcel deal but i mean that exists we have to be very careful with how we use what they recommend to preserve because that's a that could be a conflict a severe conflict of interest and sandy's shaking her head well the beautiful thing is we've got the state already has most of that data put together and that's what the county's following so we can certainly use the state that if we say it's the state data that's different yes yes it'd be comparable to the when you were talking to the residents about where they'd like to see the growth oh i'm sure yeah i'm sure but the number one issue was preserve the natural bond but how we do that is a different question because the comp plan currently is more um encouraging meaning carrot and stick approach if you preserve this then you can get an expedited review or get a little bit extra density but it doesn't require the preservation except for wetlands and i wasn't meaning go to the our environmental lands team and tell them what parcels are we considering for acquisition but more they're they're working on the ecological greenways network which is state data set and then outside of that they have their own um stormwater projects and areas that they need help in the storm water that we don't want to have impacts on so just that would be my only recommendation yeah yeah well that's not my only recommendation for right now right jondra i would suggest in your list you you put on there just to educate people when the water management districts came into existence as well i think it's 85 i think it was when it was authorized for legislation but you might want to check into that because i think that attacks a lot add in when the water management districts came into existence yeah yeah because it started off with flood protection and then it got into water quality and then it got into water supply and natural systems and lands i just think little contents would be helpful for people have you make that presentation i'll shoot you an email with some bullets how's that that'd be great chair one last thing outside to rural boundary areas like seminole county and things of that nature are we looking at anything like that like where we are putting a line on the map where we do not want to encourage like we would like we need ag we need conservation are we looking at maybe defining that a little bit more so one of the things that i'm working with ben and the and the consultant on is what kind of directional asks we want to make of the board of county commissioners i think that's one of them okay if to be responsive to the citizens concern of the rate of growth there's different ways to control that one of them is other jurisdictions that do a different way of expanding the urban area so if they want to change how we do that that's a question for the board certainly as policy direction and we will definitely take the direction from the board on that but if you had specific recommendations we can take that to the board as well mr chair yes sir i would strongly discourage those arbitrary lines for rural versus you know urban development hillsborough county is a nightmare i mean you have situations like just over the county line which would be very appropriate for more urban um you know development and the fact that they feed off of lakeland and and polk county side and you just can't do it and it's just uh expensive and and burdensome and arbitrary to a great degree so i would you know the the beauty of polk county is that we allow people the freedom to really decide what they you know where and how they want to live uh you know we've had commissioners in the past that say oh everyone should have a house on one acre you know because we want to we don't want the density and then the next commissioner will say uh we need to put everything and you know right on the outskirts of lakeland to increase the density to provide this housing so we're not impacting earlier but people decide you know what's best for them and there's a guy that wants to be out on 10 acres with his home or there's a the person that will live in those apartments in downtown lakeland and think that's the greatest thing in the world so it's really i think what you see out there in our county is what's driven by demand uh more than anything and utilities yeah well but i mean there's people that don't want your water they don't want your sewer they want to be out there by themselves you know and they probably wouldn't even take your electric if they could figure out how to ride that so mike i just want to clarify i'm not encouraged just i'm not trying to say you can't do what you do on your on your land i'm saying the guy coming next door to that guy who wants some privacy and deciding to put 120 units next door to his 10 acre piece i get it i mean we're you know it you could look at the county and say it's pretty hodgepodge of how this occurs but you know it's driven by people that want their little piece of paradise and sure but i'll say the last part and then i'll shut up but i'm all for private property rights but i think it gets encroached on both sides of the house when you you don't approve something well you're you're protecting that person next door's property rights as well and that's that's where i'm at with that that's all yeah it's a balancing act amen that's the that's the equation there always yeah and you all do a pretty good job at it so thank you but don't screw it up and he'll let you know no pressure i will let you know yeah anything else from staff no so are you looking for more input from us or at least as we get the elements we'll be getting yeah um so if you don't have any other thoughts or comments right now it's not like you can't have them tomorrow or next month or whatever um i'll we'll feed you the information when we can and try and plan for the may i may um time where we come before you and present some information maybe some specific policies and get some more direction and give you a first blush at it first reading if you will so we can have another one in june so let me ask and maybe maybe this is premature maybe you don't know yet but is the is the premise of the comprehensive plan program that's in place now pretty much going to stay that way are you taking new direction are you tweaking what's there now i mean i'm just wondering what is what do you anticipate this looking like is that i yeah i i am expecting anticipating and this is me speaking out of turn not necessarily speaking with ben directly or upper management but my expectation is um if we have a holistic or a huge change in location criteria and density requirements that's i think too big of a change so that the core density limitations in general will probably stay the same structure that's in place now pretty much stays the same you're just changing policies from the standpoint of maybe densities or location criteria or things like that yes yeah i one of the a couple of things where we are thinking about um in that sense is combining the three saps in the northeast making them one ronald reagan us 27 north ridge putting them into one they're mostly considerably built out already and there's really no difference anymore um removing the i4 northeast sap out of the comp plan and the code for example you're like the transit oriented corridors that's this point we've discussed keeping that because that gives additional density rights that we assume would be a property rights problem for how this change is going to take place yeah you'll still see the same land use categories you'll still see the same development areas um that kind of same elements and we may have some land use changes we're not sure that's part of the direction we need to get from the board so and we've had one we've had a comment from some residents that we need to there's some spot changes we might need to make and that's a strategic response to directing the growth some of that discussion has been around skyview and as well as do we change the land uses around the cities like um dundee and like hamilton where it's all arr now wouldn't some of that come after we make after the change is made to the comp plan rather than enrolling that into this overall policy change couldn't you then follow up with some of those specific i think it depends on to be made it could because that could complicate things because you can get into the discussion like we have today about where where should that boundary be or where should that growth be and which takes so distracts from the policy issues i'm just suggesting if there's any of those specific changes or amendments that need to be made follow up with the overall concept changes that we need to consider rather than trying to roll that into making the amendment the overall amendment because we could get we could chase you know go down rabbit trails and chase issues that that aren't pertinent to the big picture sure yes i get that so i encourage you not to to separate those and follow up get get the comp planning so we're in compliance but then follow up with those issues that you've identified that need to be addressed you know separately and more detail okay any other feedback for staff my only other feedback for you would be the b maps make sure that since they're all being updated now yep i don't know the timing how that's going to all work for you but oh the b maps so when you say the b maps there's a lot there what do you mean specifically i mean they're all being updated by the state this year in 2025 and so they'll probably be new requirements that are coming okay because we still have to uh we still have to bring to the planning committee it's going to incorporate it in the comp plan update the um the feasibility analysis of connecting all of the residential communities that are 50 dwelling units are more on septic to sewer and we have to there were a lot of them over 300 developments in an incorporated pulp county that we have to analyze per the state law so we have to bring that back so to you as well so yep i would know i'm just gonna say one last thing go ahead yeah yeah the last one was done in 91 and it's been what we've lived and died by for the last 30 40 years now so i just say be uh be bold and make the polk county we want you know because that's what we're going to be living by for a while well i'm hoping we'll hear good direction from the board of county commissioners absolutely 17th yes ma'am chandra your presentation on the 17th i know it's for the agenda review but there's not an item on the agenda for january is it or is it just a presentation because it's the one that you list on your second bullet there um it's we call it an unagended item because it's not an agenda for the board's regular meeting right it's just you're taking yeah so it should be at the beginning advantage of the open session the advertised session to have a conversation with the board is that open for us to attend if we would say yes it's it's open to the public and it's also advertised um on advertised it's also published on tv okay i just know it's a limited room so i didn't know yeah and if you can't get in the room itself there's a lobby right outside that has a tv that you can watch as well okay perfect what time is that at i know it's average starts at nine nine a.m for those of you who are interested all right is that probably essentially what you gave us or is it going to be more specifics it's going to be more specifics yeah it's going to be more it might be worth because it'll be some of the some of the information obviously that i presented but it'll be more specific it'll be more direct asks specifically and that's what we need to talk as management we need to talk about what we're going to how we're going to present it to the board and what we're going to ask we're going to ask ask in terms of trying to get direction yes yeah okay because you're you're giving us some of that direction so same thing the board i mean not detailed on every aspect but certain big ones big items all right any other questions for staff adam anything last i already i'm sorry commissioner adam's good yeah no but i i appreciate everyone's uh comments and thoughts um like you said it's a it's a big deal uh so it's important and we're going to be living for it living with it for a while so i appreciate it you guys good down there anything else good okay appreciate it yeah appreciate the wisdom um i think this is our last item for today is that correct you're free to go i'll take a motion to dismiss second motion is second all in favor all right meeting closed adjourned