continue to may 7th okay thank you and we'll recover those when we convene are there any questions or comments from the board yes sir mr smith i assume the workshop is where we would discuss this but uh did not receive the agenda until the 27th um could not load it at that point in time um i call three times left messages only and um never received i received a phone call eventually but uh not in time um so i was left to read almost a thousand pages between march 31st and april 1st two days uh not counting this morning where i read even a little more but and april the 1st i got an email that said we were still adding excuse me uh oppositions to the to the packet and um we're voting on things that are significantly important to people and the devil's in the details with everything i think everybody understands that and to not have the packet for review significantly compromises my ability to vote intelligently on the issues i may not be a big deal to some people but i read all this stuff every meeting almost every page and um i'm just standing here to protest that i don't know what else to say or what else to do but uh we have things up there that are significant importance to people and i'm not sure how we handle this i'm not sure if that's legalities involved but um i don't know those things nor do i profess to but i'm just bringing the truth to the table i don't know when else to do it except in the work session so noted and uh i think we got the packet on thursday with the link in it and i i was able to open the link and view and view everything normally but we did get the emails last night but for the opposition so that's noted and if there are any other questions coming from the board if not we'll close the workshop portion and reconvene at nine o'clock thank you okay the minutes from the party meeting were included in our packet we'll need a motion to accept those move to approve second we have a motion and a second all in favor say aye motion carries um staff would you like to cover the changes to our agenda again all right ldcu 2025 3 the evans mobile home has been moved to june june 4th and ldcpas 2024 29 the rifle range road cpa has been continued to may 7th that's it okay thank you sir so if you're here in the audience to hear any of those cases they won't be heard today and uh you're not the mic anymore but the alderman road cases will we hear those together yes okay so those three cases we'll hear at the same time and then uh we'll just take a motion to confirm those changes to the agenda so move second we have motion to second all in favor say aye aye motion carries and now we'll turn it over to miss howard to explain our general procedures thank you mr chair 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 notifications which were not already provided to the planning commission in their packets the land development case planner will then 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 planning commission will then discuss the case and vote on the manner 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 the recommendation of the land development is for approval and all of the commission members present wish to use this procedure with regard to level three 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 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 a time for a de novo hearing if a party decides to appeal a decision made by the the planning commission with respect to any level three review he or she will need a record and may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made the record includes all testimony and evidence given at the hearing each person or party that qualifies to file such an appeal must independently exercise their right of appeal in order to preserve that right a party cannot and should not rely on their right to appeal being preserved by someone else filing an appeal on the same matter please be advised that a party may withdraw their appeal to the board of county commissioners prior to that de novo hearing if one party withdraws their appeal and another party 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 further be advised that if a de novo application is filed with the board to be recognized during that de novo hearing as organized opposition you must either file the application for de novo hearing or receive written authorization from at least five entities or individuals to speak on their behalf against the application and they must waive their right to speak during the public comment portion of the public hearing regarding level four reviews pursuant to section 907 of the land development code the planning commission's decision is a recommendation to the board of county commissioners the board of county commissioners will ultimately decide the matter at a later date regarding ex parte communication the planning commission receives numerous communications from the public unless otherwise stated it should be presumed that ex parte communications have been made to the members of the commission regarding the matter regarding the matter during the hearing the applicant organized opposition and the public may request the commission to disclose any ex parte communication or site visits they have had regarding the matter and question the members regarding their communications or site visits unless the commission member recuses themselves he or she has determined that they are able to hear the case and fairly and impartially make a decision on the matter based on the substantial competent evidence in the record Mr. chair would you like for me to swear in the witnesses for today's cases yes please thank you if you intend to address the planning commission on any case today 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 may speak today please be sworn in do you swear or affirm that the testimony and evidence you provide to the planning commission today is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you you may be seated 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 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 so moved we have a motion to second on fair to say aye motion carries thank you secondly if we have any experts of applicants then you may tender them at this time or you may wait until your case is called finally the planning commission must review quasi judicial land use cases quasi judicial means the action entails applying land development policies to a specific land development application in a fair and impartial manner the commission's review is limited to two areas consistency and compatibility regarding consistency the commission must determine whether the application is consistent with both the comprehensive plan and the land development code the staff report and presentation will provide expert analysis and opinion regarding the applicable criteria as well as a recommendation as to whether the application is consistent with those criteria regarding compatibility the commission must determine whether the application is compatible with the surrounding area the commission will be presented with testimony and evidence at the hearing both written and oral by law the only evidence the commission may consider is competent substantial evidence which 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 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 is hypothetical speculative based on fear or consists of generalized statements that do not address the land development criteria are not substantial 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 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 Ms. Howard and just two final housekeeping items just everyone make sure we have our cell phones on silent and if you're in the audience and you're here to speak for or against a case when your time comes uh just please state your name and address for the record and then you'll have three minutes to speak uh so with that i believe that wraps up all the housekeeping items and i think we're ready for the first case all right first up on the agenda is ldwa 2024 67 the donald v bell residential access via easement waiver um a legal ad was published in the polk sun on march 19 2025 44 mailers were sent to area property owners on january 21st 2025 and one sign was posted on the property on march 11th on march 11th there was no response by the general public so sunset lane is a small easement that runs from county road 559 to lake juliana the subject site is located on the north end of sunset lane and is surrounded by existing single family residential developments the request is to build a home on the site in the yellow box the site did not meet the minimum lot size requirements when it was created back in the 1970s a similar case was presented before the planning commission on november 1st 2023 which outlined similar circumstances that i will that i will run through today the site is just to the east of lake juliana and is currently unaddressed along sunset lane west of county road 559 north of reflection boulevard south of sutton road north of the city of auburndale and section 22 township 27 range 25 site is located just to the north side of sunset lane it is between sunset lane and an existing canal that leads into lake juliana the entire area has a residential land use designation of either rl1 or rl2 the subject site is zoned as rl1 and is just under one acre from the east the three parcels coming off of county road 559 have access to sunset lane that portion of the road is county maintained as you can see with the arrow going west past these three properties the county maintenance ends and the road sunset lane ends on lake juliana there are currently 11 lots on the on the north side of sunset lane along the private portion including the subject site including the subject site besides the parcel on the far western portion with access to lake juliana all of the 10 lots are or were slightly under a half acre the parcel outlined in blue was a previous case heard before the planning commission on the same matter the same applicant combined both lots to create a larger lot size just under one acre the lots were created back in 1974 and when they were created they did not meet the land development regulations at the time therefore they were not lots of record here is the former zoning map in effect at the time these properties along sunset lane had an rc zoning designation from 1970 to 1980 the rc designation required one acre that was changed in 1980 to 40 000 square feet which is slightly less than one acre that lot size regulation exists today a minimum of 40 000 square feet those 13 lots that were created were slightly under half an acre which is about half the size of what is needed to build so just going over the historical aerials of the site as i said the lots were created back in 1974 and according to the aerials the properties have been accessing sunset lane uh sometime prior to 1980 you can see an aerial photo from 1980 and there's residential development being built along the easement the area itself has been built out with single family homes over time that was once just orange groves as you can see the subject site still remains vacant today zooming out you can see single family homes on all sides looking west and you can see that the lakefront has been built out including the lot at the end of the private easement known as sunset lane so there are currently three lots undeveloped along sunset lane the other eight lots that have access to the private easement have been developed a previous waiver as i've previously mentioned case number ldwa 2023-43 was approved by the planning commission in november of 2023 under similar circumstances for the lot dressed at 514 sunset lane as you can see it's pointed out and shaded in yellow similar to the previous case the applicant has combined two half acre lots and the subject site is outlined in red now stands slightly under one acre issues of the size of the law and the physical condition of the access road itself have been addressed which i will go over in the next few slides this is a picture of the current site in 2025 north it has been cleared and as you can see the canals in the background another picture of the site looking east as you can see there's a new single family residence adjacent to the site which has access to the county maintained portion of sunset lane this is the entrance to sunset lane back in 2019 as you can as you can see it was back in a bit of a rough shape both on the county side and on the private side of the easement this photo was taken in 2023 which shows both the public and private portions of the roadway improved since 2019 and this is a picture of looking east again at the easement as you can see a lot of the overgrowth and the road itself has been widened and improved again looking west in 2019 and west in 2025. so staff recommends approval the neighborhood along sunset lane was created back in 1974 which was inconsistent with the land use ordinances and the zoning district in effect at the time in essence the lots were not and are not considered lots of record since 2019 the applicant has made substantial improvements to the site conditions including combining two lots and improvements to the physical condition of sunset lane staff finds that the subject site is compatible with the surrounding area with single-family homes in the vicinity the applicant has combined both parcels which exceeds the 40 000 square foot minimum lot size improvements have been made to enhance the traffic safety we have confirmation from polk fire rescue in the city of auburndale that access for sufficient ingress and egress for emergency vehicles back in 2023 staff finds that the impacts to the adjacent infrastructure are minimal we are adding one lot and possibly two other vacant lots remaining on that easement one of those lots again has been approved back in 2023 development for this lot constitutes urban infill development providing another home on sunset lane since it ends on lake juliana the maximum potential build out of sunset lane is 11 units this is an opportunity to provide affordable housing and reduce sprawl if not for this waiver the lot will just sit vacant in perpetuity and staff does not think it's in the best interest to to provide affordable housing giving the rest of the development elsewhere in the area and with that i'll stand for questions thank you any questions for staff i have one question do do you know or maybe this question for the applicant is is there a legal instrument that requires maintenance so that everybody that accesses this easement has to join in maintaining that i mean i guess everybody that owns that has a lot on the easement maintains that easement i believe so yes but i will defer to the applicant if they want to answer that what what does this do to the neighboring single lot is that which one it empty because it cannot be developed because there's no there aren't two lots there for them to combine right so so i believe um in discussion with the applicant um again i i will defer to him for confirmation but um the residents here has actually possibly bought this law it's just not shown on the property appraiser um so that would answer that question but again um if the applicant's here i will defer to them what we're doing does not affect that no it's affecting this law right here that was combined mr hickman uh andrew so um what is the distinguishing um feature of this site uh versus i mean we have acreage all over this county that doesn't does not directly access the county road and meets all other qualifications and i think primarily where we run into it is out in the lake wales area with these five acre parcels that are not on county roads and and i call staff and they say that you know they're not buildable um i mean what's the distinguishing feature is that it's an infill site and you're looking for you know to the density in those areas i mean how is that any different than someone who owns five acres out in office 60 and wants to build a home i think as i previously mentioned if you go along the easement um to the west there's already existing residential structures there and so i think well we have those scenarios too you know in this more rural areas that already have homes in place and and five acres to me certainly places little no burden on you know infrastructure of the county or anything else i think um the the lots themselves have been just sitting vacant just because they weren't lots of record and so um i i think just the the infrastructure itself is already there the public services are already there and those lots as i mentioned on the west are already accessing those services and so um i i just believe that with that infill um if that if it's not approved it would just sit vacant as i mentioned i have another question that brought up another question well i think one of the distinguishing factors according to the code as i recall is it has to have a legal easement but there's a limit on that so my question is although there was a variance issued for that one lot in 23 was there a variance issued for those other homes i assume there had to been i mean it was a different procedure back then historically but i just wondered how did those other homes get there it's a long story peterson development division ask the old guy ask for a long answer uh in short uh over half of them were not properly permitted um if you recall back in a day when people couldn't get a permit so they would get a mobile home setup or so it would sit out there and somehow somewhere well septic got hooked up i know we we had a few that were denied the permits were denied but the building's there and you think well how did that happen so it's like every case is a little different on each one of the properties i did a amount of research with this going way back to the 74. so the end so the short answer is it slipped through the cracks yes yeah i think that's i don't like that answer but no but the the significant thing about this case and the one previous is that before this was really bad i went out to do a site visit i got stuck between a moving van and a person coming out there was no room to turn around it was two ruts but now it's now it's been improved they they stabilized they widened it uh it's it's a lot more safe auburndale fire department came out there at first both fire departments were opposed to any more development on it but since the improvements were made they're they're able to uh get to them and and that would was what really made the difference was the widening of that that easement so this is a good easement now other cases out in different parts of the county we've got areas where the the easement ain't so great the easement's too long you know it's you know there's there's a lot of nuances to every access via easement waiver that we have but this one it's you know there's enough to suggest that it's it's sustainable um and uh like we said we've there's only one more property and it's probably going to get combined into another so we won't see another case here again any other questions for staff seeing none would the applicant like to come up and present their case name and address for the record please is that microphone on is your mic on i'm not sure there we go we're good all right i feel like i should sing now um i purchased the up the property prior to this one and we went through some issues with it and it was uh i contacted auburndale fire department i contacted the pope county fire department right off the bat they said they had no problem with it right off the bat um they uh was concerned about water for the fires and he said i've got pumps that i'll suck the lake dry so it wasn't a water issue i had i brought in crushed asphalt to improve the road there so it went good we got approved this one here is the same identical way we bought all three properties uh lots that the individual lots that you're all talking about now uh the neighbor purchased that from us doesn't plan to do anything with it other than park his company vehicles on that property so that i don't think that property will be up for a discussion as far as trying to build something on that property our property that we have now is actually even closer to the county maintain road than the other property was this property is about uh 300 feet from the county maintained road and which that again is no issue for the fire departments or any of the first responders that would have to go down that road um and uh when we took over that property it was in bad shape tires uh all kinds of stuff that was dumped there uh and it was overgrown um the rats almost chased us off that property trying to develop you know get it cleaned up so it's it's it's not an eyesore to community either anymore so it's it's and plus it'll bring you guys in some tax dollars too and impact fees which i i live right down the street from it so you know i'd like to see something nice being built in there thank you sir do we have any questions for mr bill i do i do so how does the easement get maintained i mean is there is there my question was before to staff is there a legal instrument that requires everybody that has access to that easement maintain it or is it up to each individual it's up to all of us in in that community and we have uh like i said we had brought uh ground up asphalt into that and we ran the whole the whole entire road and we maintain it if there's a pothole my question is if there is a problem with maintenance that's more than anyone can bear is there a requirement that everybody has to participate in that or does it just continue to be a problem until somebody comes up with enough resources or money to fix it what you just just said it's just uh an issue that it never it has it hasn't arisen since i've been out there and i've talked to a lot of people that have been out there and they take care of that road because they have to drive down it it's their car that they're going to be tearing up you know so it doesn't it doesn't go on on maintained and ask the other gentleman's question about property out in the county the acreage and why can't they be done i i researched this property the first property because of that road and things like that there are properties out there that have dirt roads that are maintained and i asked the same question that you did but it wasn't a legal easement and that was the issue so your answer to that question is there is no legal document that states that everybody along that road will participate in the upgrading or the maintenance of that roadways and that's what merle's asking no no sir there is not as far as i know i don't know if there's something out there that could be but i can answer it only that not to my knowledge anyway we all get together we all get together every neighbor name name please name and address for the record please see labelle 504 sunset lane you pull it down um all the neighbors on that street we all get along like when the hurt last hurricane came in two trees got knocked down in the canal going into lake juliana every resident on that road we all got together got in the water with chainsaws and cut the trees out and got cleared the canal so we could all use that canal it's not like we don't get along everybody does and if something did come up we would all put in to have it maintained we always have we still do and it's just like one of the signs fell down we have because we have a problem with ups and all them speeding down that road and it will tear up the road eventually and we uh we put everybody got agreed and we put up signs so it's a good community and we all work together it's i i hope that this doesn't sway the vote as far as approving it because there's no official document saying you're going to take care of the road uh one somebody's going to take care of the road because they don't want the car tore up as simple as that it doesn't have to have a document i know we live in the era now that everything's got to be put on paper when i was raised your word is your word you know and these people are that way so question is there a verbal agreement because verbal agreements in florida are enforceable they are that's that's wild to me because i didn't think it stood anymore but yes it is i mean everybody has agreed they'll say i'll take care of the road and and we all pitch in and have the canal sprayed to keep it maintained yeah it's being sprayed a matter of fact this week so it's not sway my vote but it would be nice to have something in writing i did want to add for the record for your i did want to your benefit yeah i i i'll i'm going to address that issue i didn't know that that would be a big thing to somebody but uh because of you know your word is your word but i guess i'm old-fashioned it hasn't got to that now but i want to address that with the rest of the the people in the community okay do we have any other questions for mr bill seeing none does county staff have a comment i did want to add for the record in the staff report on january 25th 1974 um there was a recorded road right of way in canal easement agreement um under or book 1574 pages 881 to 882 okay in the staff report okay thank you um mr bell anything else good no all right well now yes sir we'll now open the public portion of this case is there anyone in the audience who's here to speak for or against this case okay seeing none uh with that we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion mr chairman moved to approve second we have a motion in a second mr bishop roll call please david dalton for the motion moral bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion renee heath for the motion mike schmidt or the motion and kevin updike or the motion mr chairman motion passes thank you sir next case please thank you for your time all right number two on the agenda is ldcu 2025.5 this is the saw properties mobile home case and carl roguis is your planner good morning carl roguis with land development presenting ldcu 2025-5 the saw properties south winter haven extension subdivision mobile home the applicant is requesting a conditional use approval of a mobile home to be located in the south winter haven extension subdivision where fewer than 50 of the lots have mobile homes on march 11th 89 mailers were sent to area property owners one board was posted on the property march 11th a legal ad was published in the polk sun news on march 19th we have received no response from the public staff finds this request compatible with the surrounding uses consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code staff recommends approval mr chairman moved to expedite we have a motion next but you have a second okay is there anyone in the audience who's here to speak either for or against this case okay seeing none please expedite staff recommends approval yeah actually well we need to just do a roll call here all all in favor say hi all right motion carries okay thank you please expedite staff recommends approval it's consistent with the compatibility standards set in 220 in the latin development code and with that i'll stand for questions any questions for staff okay seeing none uh would the applicant like to come up and present their case is the applicant here i don't believe so we good to with no position in the past what we've done is if nobody's here in in opposition right if um the board is comfortable proceeding without hearing testimony from the applicant you're able a motion and continue that's your discretion okay we have a move to proceed you have a second second all in favor say aye all right we're going to move forward here is there anyone in the audience who's here to speak for or against this case seeing none and we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion mr i recommend approval second okay motion a second roll call please mr bishop uh david dalton for the motion morrow bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion renee heath for the motion mike schmidt for the motion heaven updike for the motion mr chairman motion passes thank you sir next case please next case is ldcpal 2024-19 the minute made ramp road number one commercial comprehensive plan amendment it's a large scale and jp sims is the case planner good morning jp sims of land development so this is case number three ldcpal-2024-19 minute made ramp road one so this is a change of 3.2 acres on a total of 13.47 acres that is currently residential high into the tourism commercial corridor this is related to uh another case that i had back in 2022 ldcpal-2022-21 uh location is south of inner i-4 west of us 27 so it is technically in the green swamp so even though it does not meet like the acreage requirement that's why it's a large scale cpa south of ernie caldwell boulevard north of us highway 1792 and in the north ridge sap there were 13 mailers sent to area property owners on february 11th 2025 there was no response by the public five signs posted on march 11th 2025 and legal abs published in the polk sun on march 19th 2025 so as i mentioned before locations just south of i-4 on the west side of us 27. this is a context shot so showing that there is a lot of development going on in the area now the 2023 aerial does not show the apartment complex that was recently finished down here to the south brightly and then there's the brentwood townhome development that is going to the west as well this is more of a close-up shot there is currently nothing developed on the site when i originally took the case back in 2022 the case was going from ecx employment center and tccx to rhx and tc how it is now so basically we're just kind of switching everything around for the overall development site so currently the land that is in question is this polygon right here is all residential high at the moment and what they're wanting to do is move it to tccx that way that the bottom portion of the site is also commercial in use abutting 27 and hollyhill grove road 3 and then this portion i believe and i'll defer to the applicant just to be sure but i believe on the site plan originally submitted that this is going to be like where the internal roadway would go for the whole of the development uh recently we were out there to post the signs you can see hollyhill grove road 3 has been improved with the development of the brightly apartments that are over here to the south of the development this is looking east on hollyhill grove road 3. like i said before there's nothing currently developed on the site and this is us 27. on the north side of the development this is minute made ramp road 1 looking east over at 27 again nothing there on site now when the development occurs on the site minute made ramp road 1 will need to be brought up to county standards that is something that is part of the overall project but not part of the cpa and then this is looking north from brightly apartments are behind me so hollyhill grove road 3 looking north at the site again you can see there's currently nothing there it is high and dry there is no wetlands flood plain flood zone surface water any of that on site and then looking west down minimade ramp road 1 again you can see that there's the brentwood townhome development that's being developed to the west of the subject site so with that the location of the parcels along us 27 does make it an ideal location for additional commercial development changing it from residential high to tourism commercial corridor will allow for the additional commercial development it's part of the north ridge sap which does encourage this type of growth along our major ulterior roads such as us 27 and it does it is consistent with our comprehensive plan and land development code and with that i'll stand for question thank you mr sims any questions for staff seeing none would the applicant like to come up and present their case name and address for the record please good morning my name is bill mackie i work with daily design group i'm a landscape architect we're at 913 north pennsylvania ave in winter park florida um we've read the staff report we have support from staff and we appreciate their help through this process i'm here to answer any questions and just ask for your support so any questions of the applicants i have one so just just for confirmation in regards to making the zoning change a bit of like the flag shape is the purpose of that for the future roadway to connect yeah for north south connector road okay so that pulls more traffic off from the hollyville and meanwhile okay thank you any further questions what are you what are your plans for this uh right now it's just changing it to a commercial use i don't believe there's an end user um it's just setting it up for future development i just wondered if you had immediate plans no sir okay thank you sir is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case okay seeing none we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and our motion but chairman moved to approve we have a motion do we have a second second mr bishop roll call please david dalton for the motion royal bishop i'm for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman for the motion mr chairman the motion passes thank you sir next case please next case is ldcpas 2025-1 richard monday's conference of plan amendment it's a small scale and mark bennett is the case planner good morning for the record mark bant with land development i'll be presenting um this case uh 29 mailers was sent out on march 11th a board was posted on the site on march 18th with a legal ad published in the polk sun on march 19th we have not received any response and staff recommends approval this is also a level four with and this case will be heard by the county commission on may 20th which you can see by the map the site is located uh off of state road 60 you can see the mulberry city limits there basically in willow oak if you're familiar with that area this is more uh detailed close-up aerial of the site um off of state road 60 you can see bailey road this is the current land use map with the site outlined in black and i want to speak to this for just a minute because staff's rationale for recommending approval is that we're considering this to be infill um the policies in the comprehensive plan do allow for expansion of linear commercial corridors in situations where it's considered an infill in this case given the office center designation here and then also the neighborhood activity center here we thought that this qualified for the criteria to be considered infill and if approved this is what the land use map would look like i have a few aerial photos and some ground photos to give you an idea of the area this is a view of the site looking northeast the the key picture here is that there is a dollar store directly across state road 60 a commercial use and then this is also looking north at the site which is vacant undeveloped currently and you can see it's a woodlands this is a view looking west but this is a good view you can again see the dollar store here convenience stores located here a religious institution here car sales here and there was a food truck here so the point of this is that there's a definitely a lot of commercial uses in the area so that's why we would consider it to be why you got that there what is just west of the no the other side here no on the on 60 yeah right there um let me go to another picture i got it's there's a house there oh uh it's coded by a property appraiser single family however there's a lot of outdoor storage there i'll leave it at that okay uh i think that was it yeah and this is just a view across 60 of the site so as far as public service oh and here's a view of the site looking across the street at the dollar store that way as far as public services and facilities given the small nature you know the site we don't anticipate any adverse impacts and because it's an area with commercial uses we're considering it infill um request is compatible and consistent with comprehensive plan and staff recommends approval i'll stay for any questions thank you sir mr hickman question for staff uh what are we trying to accomplish there on 60 because i mean i go by that on a regular basis the fact i go by when i come here in the mornings and uh it's such a hodgepodge of stuff there i mean you know so we just one at a time keep passing these things and what's our goal um good question something we've discussed among staff on one hand yeah the whole concept with the comprehensive plan and the growth management act was to eliminate prohibit urban sprawl one of the criterias of urban sprawl being we don't want strip commercial on the other hand you look at this site there's a dollar store across the street it's next to commercial you ask yourself who who'd want to live there so um i understand what you're saying and and yeah on the macro level yeah what are we trying to accomplish with our commercial corridors i believe and i'll defer to others but i believe we're going to try and address that issue in more detail with the comp plan update but looking this at more of a micro scale we look at this we see that there's a neighborhood activity center across the street it's next to commercial there's a commercial node there that's why we thought in this case at least it was appropriate and is there a use determined use for it um i believe so but i'll defer to the applicant on that one any further questions for staff seeing none would the applicant like to come up and present their case name and address for the record please my name is richard monday i currently own that piece of property uh rather than go into detail uh about the presentation my first request to be to ask you do you have any questions of me that would amplify or simplify this application any questions from mr monday mr monday what do you expect to do with the property when you get this approval it'll go to market for the best and highest use uh there's been some interest i get people calling me on a regular basis want to know if they could buy the property and i said no uh and until i get we figure out what to do with it now i think you mentioned also that there's a house to the immediate west uh a residential house and it is um to my opinion not being used as a residential house only it is a small business operating there janitorial service and they store their supplies and use it in and out and it blends fine with the neighborhood yeah it's acting as a commercial property it's actually being used as commercial property yes and um so what what do you what's your vision of that property who what do you think someone would use it for um well uh i've got one party interested that uh uh manufacturers uh utility trailers down the street uh bigfoot and uh they've expressed some interest in it if it gets commercial to use it as a as a as a display for their products because they're out of room and that little industrial piece of property they have about a mile or two to the west right before you go across the county line on the north side of the road and uh he like a used car lot be like a utility trailer lot which would be the small trailers like they're using the lawn care service and little little trailers like that yes sir that's just one of them and then i have other people call me and they they're the realtors basically just looking to uh find a piece to sell i guess i don't know really what they're going to do with it thank you any other questions for mr monday is that all mr monday you're good we're good all right uh well turn it to the public and uh is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak either for or against this case okay seeing none we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion mr chairman i recommend approval of ldc pas 2025-1 motion we have a second second we have a second mr bishop roll call please david dalton for the motion royal bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman rin heath for the motion mike schmidt or the motion kevin update for the motion mr chairman the motion passes thank you sir next case please the next three cases will be presented together by robert bolton the case planner those are ldc pal 2024-13 ldcd 2024-7 and ldct 2024-20 these are all related to property in the northwest part of the county we typically call these conditional conference plan amendments where it's got a map amendment text them to the comp plan and development standards and land development code good morning robert bolton with land development be presenting ldc pal 2024-13 ld cd 2024-7 ldct 2024-20 they were all uh had the same information 57 mailers were sent to area property owners on march 11th there were 13 emails received in opposition two phone calls in opposition six signs were posted on march 14th 2025 and a legal ad was published in the polk sun on march 19th 2025 and that was for each one of the cases can i ask a quick question did did we receive have we received all the let me get my thoughts together the the opposition that we received was that all the opposition or did additional opposition come in okay okay yeah there was one phone call last night okay yes late yesterday thank you that was that was all okay okay uh ldc pal 2024-13 is a request to change the future land use designation on approximately 75 acres from agricultural rural residential uh arr in the world rural development area the rda and residential low one in the transit supportive area the tsda and within the transit corridors and centers overlay the tcco to business park center ldcd 2024-7 is a sub-district change request on approximately 51 of the 75 acres to change from bpc1 to bpc2 ldct 2024-20 is an ldc code text amendment on approximately 166 acres which includes both the land use and the sub-district it's outlined in the red that you're looking at um it is a level four review it will be heard by the bocc on may 6th for transmittal and adoption hearing is currently scheduled for july 1st and staff finds it is uh not consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code and we are recommending denial on all three this the site is located on the north of interstate 4 on the north side of swindale road east side of alderman road approximately a half mile east of county line road and north of the city limits of lakeland this is a 2023 aerial uh giving some context to the west of the subject is an area of lower density residential development with eagles landing uh warehouse distribution center in the city of lakeland right there at the county line road north where the site are the country class subdivisions and the itch-paca-sassa creek development farther to the north east and south of the site are areas of developed acreage residential lots primarily on the west side of the stair-step portion of swindale road on the southern side of swindale road is the city of lakeland with older warehouse development along south alderman road the primary warehouse district in this area is located south of interstate four primarily along county line road both on the east and west sides in hillsborough and polk county this is a closer view of the subject again west of the subject is this residential area that i spoke about just previously and eagles landing the warehouse development within the city of lakeland going north through from alderman road is giant oak road one of country class developments and as you can see there's no similar uses that abut the subject it is noted that the parcel to the south right here in the city of lakeland has been approved by the city for a warehouse distribution building its location will be basically in the southwest corner the northern and eastern parts are covered by a deeded conservation for stormwater and conservation and like i said the development will be fronting i4 this is the existing land use districts within the immediate area the blue outline represents the area that has the request for the bpc1 and bpc2 areas the red outline is the area that comprises the text amendment the request for cpal 2024-13 for just the single land use to bpc2 is what this represents you can see that this bifurcates this whole residential low area district and it is approximately 75 acres the request for ldcd 2024-7 is for a sub-district change on approximately 51 acres of the 75 acres as is seen in the proposed future land use map the request bifurcates the rl1 district with the western portion being sandwiched between the city of lakeland's eagles landing warehouse development and the proposed subject site the request would also extend the bpc district uh further north than the city's industrial area further to the east their actual designation comes up to the very top here this actually extends truly further north than that much of this uh north of this right here is for stormwater retention and floodplain compensation the sub-district change request to the bpc2 uh allows for outside storage the western bpc1 district was left in an effort to ensure that no outside storage would be adjacent to the western rl1 district the same accommodation has not been made for the eastern rl1 district right here the current requests have significant portions of stormwater and floodplain compensation within the arr this is allowed by the request the requested ldc text amendment ldct 2024-20 significantly limiting future development of the site except for stormwater and floodplain compensation that allows them not it allows not to change the color on the map to some version of purple similar to what happened in lakeland their floodplain and stormwater changed the color by the text amendment the color won't change the requested land use extends approximately 2910 feet or more than half a mile north of swindale road this is applicants map c or their uh site plan that's been overlaid on a 2023 aerial the mapper is representative of several stipulations that are within the text amendments ordinance the lower hatched box area right here is for the commercial support development that would be allowed under under revised and limited bpc1 uses this diamond hatched area here while not outlined uh specifically distinguishing the difference between the commercial and the bpc is where the bpc or warehousing would be allowed to go this whole area is constrained by wetlands they are primarily located in this diagonal crosshatch area and it like i said previously will be used for a lot of their stormwater and floodplain compensation that for the warehouse development the commercial area is located on the southern 850 feet of this portion of the site which represents approximately two-thirds the depth of eagles landing so the warehousing in this will be north of two-thirds the distance of the actual buildings of eagles landing and showing the incompatibility within the surrounding area access will be only allowed from swindale road they will not be allowed to access alderman road they have approximately 313 feet of frontage on swindale road this is an aerial photo looking southwest the greater text amendment site is outlined in red with the proposed bpc districts shaded in the purple the non-shaded area is comprised of what the wetland areas and will primarily be used for the bpc's stormwater and floodplain compensation which is allowed by the text amendment west of the site is eagles landing down here over here a small area of warehousing in the city of lakeland is south of the site down here with the primary distribution warehousing being south of interstate 4. this is an area looking northwest of the entire site and you can see here is eagles landing and the context of what the area is with the bpc being in this area the ldc 2024-20 text amendment the full the ordinance is including your packet includes limitations and enhancements to the development site these include a limitation on the total development size of the buildings both in square footage and in height enhanced buffering limited access only from swindale roads approximately 313 feet along uh feet of road frontage 70 feet enhanced setback is uh requirements for the western side of the bpc and 30 foot enhanced buffer for the eastern side of the bpc districts adjacent to residential districts limitations to loading and unloading limitation limitation limitation to operation of refrigerated trucks overnight and limitations to to the use tables of bpc 1 and 2 arr and rl the text amendment will limit the site the site to a maximum of 685 000 square feet 640 000 square feet of warehouse and 45 000 square feet of commercial support as allows as allowed by the revised use tables on the north side of i4 uh are the two eagles landing warehouse buildings at just over 152 000 square feet and 156 000 square feet or a total of about 108 000 square feet about 48 of the proposed allowable warehouse area requested the next largest warehouse is the national power sports auction warehouse warehouse at just under 142 000 square feet south of i4 going along county line road both in polk and hillsborough counties the location of the distribution warehouses is the primary location of distribution warehouses in this area the typical size of distribution warehouses has significantly increased over the past 20 years and can be seen in this area south of i4 the text amendment limits the maximum height of the building to a maximum of 50 feet from a maximum of 75 feet in bpc1 and 100 feet in bpc2 it's noted that the maximum structure height within arr and rl1 is 50 feet as with the warehouse sizes on the previous slide this information came from polk county property appraisers parcel records for structure characteristics within this area the typical height is between 32 and 38 feet three buildings or portions of buildings exceed this height range the public's warehouse down here has an addition at 50 feet and southern wine and spirits has an addition also at 50 feet the third is the new warehouse the new amazon facility located lakeland international airport and this building is at 60 feet and represents the second tallest warehouse light industrial building in polk county the tallest ones are over in auburn the auburndale area uh with at the katrale facility this is the southern wine and spirits warehouse on old tampa highway highway at the pope parkway the left side of the the warehouse is has a height of 32 feet with the rights uh being 50 feet this row bushes right here is approximately 400 feet from the warehouse this is an aerial view of the same building with the 32 foot portion and the 50 foot portion this is the row of bushes that i was uh that i was uh speaking about in the previous picture the text amendment establishes a setback from alderman road right of way of 165 feet right here between where these three these uh cars and these tractors are is about 165 feet from the 50 foot portion of the uh fit the warehouse within the staff report or the use tables with strike throughs of the prohibited uses these are the allowable uses within bpc1 and bpc2 these are allowable uses in arr and rl1 this is a depiction of the location of the enhanced buffering provided by the applicant and is included within the text amendment most notable is the enhanced buffer starting 850 feet north of swindell road a 70 foot wide buffer area with a six foot earthen berm with typical 20 foot type c landscape buffering with additional six foot pvc fence along the northern area there will be a 70 foot wide uh on the eastern side uh is a 30 foot uh enhanced buffer with a typical type c landscape buffering with no fence or berm the rest of the property will have a typical type c 20 foot landscape buffer part of land use designation change request is looking at what the currents the site is currently the subject is currently arr in the rda and the rl1 in the tsda the site is also within the center of the tcco which allows for a higher intensity and density of development when located within the tsda it should be noted that the tsda and the tcco were adopted in 2010 and were based on tpo's 2060 2060 vision plan how are the areas for the tsda and especially the tcco were not evaluated specifically for developability based on wetland or floodplains which have an effect on actual maximum achievable density or intensity of a site typically limiting it especially with significant wetlands and floodplain the tcco allows a residential density of 12 dwelling units to the acre within an rl district however the development still must adhere to current development standards and use code for that land use district if the belt needs relief from the ldc whether for lot width of less than 50 feet reduction of setback or other standard it will be required to go through a conditional use hearing or possibly a planned development depending on exactly what they're trying to do to reach a density of 12 dwelling units per acre multi-family will likely be required that is not allowed within the arr and as a level three review uh conditional review approval within the rl1 district about a year ago the board of county commissioners adopted a planned development locational eligibility score matrix this is the locational eligibility score matrix for the subject site it scored 14 points placing it into a three and a half maximum dwelling unit per acre while this matrix is not required to develop in the tcc or the tsda it is a good indicator of maximum development load that the subject site could support given the proximity to various infrastructure items that are needed for a successful residential development regardless of what land use it's it's in this is looking west along alderman road uh with the site to the right you can see the stop sign of alderman uh in the in the background there this is looking north from swindle road near where the uh entrance would be looking south along alderman road towards swindle looking north along alderman road looking northeast from the pretty much the northern end of alderman road looking southeast uh across the site from alderman road the site is uh serviced by public services and will not impact schools the applicant has a water and sewer commitment uh or had a water and sewer commitment from the city of lakeland which has since expired much has been talked about uh wet flood drainage conditions of the site and surrounding areas the area has significant history with attempting to moderate these issues on the left is a 1941 aerial of the site from the polk county data viewer showing the historical wetlands and drainage canals that were started prior to this aerial on the right is the same area with most 20 with most recent 2023 aerial and floodplain wetland layers turned on no matter what is developed on this site warehousing residential the development will be required to meet the same policies for stormwater management wetland protection and floodplain compensation with wetlands and floodplains and general groundwater levels in the area it's anticipated that significant portions of the site will need to be dedicated to floodplain compensation the subject three request ldc pal 2024-13 is a request for future land use designation change from arr and rl1 to bpc1 on approximately 60 75 acres ldcd 2024-7 is a sub-district change request on approximately 51 acres of the previous 75 from bpc1 to bpc2 and ldct 2024-20 a development code text amendment adding conditions for development on conditions for development on approximately 166 acres uh are not considered to be consistent and compatible with the comprehensive plan and land development code the bpc request would bifurcate the rl1 district development with large acreage residential lots and intrude into the ar arr district and also also developed with large acreage residential lots the intrusion into this area would be just over a half a mile the requested bpc district is not contiguous with another similar land use district the requested text amendment is not considered to provide adequate protections and buffering from this intrusion staff recommends denial on ldc pal 2024-13 ldcd 2024-7 ldct 2024-20 each of these each of these requests require a separate action with this i will stand for questions any questions for mr bolton mr chairman yes i got a couple questions if i could is this area serviced by polk county utilities lakeland lakeland so okay now let me ask you this question on to the of this property to the southwest of this property what is that use right there just adjacent to it uh let me just get i know that's in the city of lakeland however i'm just curious right there the south southwest right there uh-huh right there that is uh i don't know the exact use but there's like pumps uh pump trailers trailers it is some sort of uh something other than residential correct okay all all of south of swindale road is in city of lakeland and is of some sort of industrial or our equivalent of bpc use so so this site would be compatible to do to the uses next adjacent to it the one to the south of it there is a conservation easement here with the use down here i i have a this may be and get down this is the kind of on the parcel to the south of it this is the conservation easement okay this is where the warehouse will be built these are much smaller uh commercial uh light industrial type of uses okay and yet the last question only because i think i'm confused okay um one of the maps you're showing where the the bpc currently is a current land use in that portion of that property is bpc currently no okay well it says current bpc on your map there's why i'm confused okay let me see if i can find that map i may have accidentally mislabeled uh well no keep going it's an aerial oh it's an aerial oh showing the outline of bpc and it says current bpc that's where i don't know what you're talking about there that was proposed this is proposed here no that's not the map it's exhibit three what page honey exhibit three in the staff report page 38 is that what you said oh yeah page 38 uh that is i apologize that is a typo that should say proposed bpc my apologies i will get that uh well you really had me going there okay no my my apologies i did okay apologize that's all i have for now thank you i will get that i have a question mr bishop yes can you give me a short answer uh if you can't then then i'm ready to move on as to why this is a ts da and a t c c o the short answer i can say is it was decided in 2010 and i was not here well what makes it that i mean i understand it's a transit corridor but what makes it the court i guess the centroid of that designation appears to be alderman and swindell why shonda if you want to look at i've got an exhibit that i'm getting ready put up yeah there that shows the the center yeah uh the center of the center but what is that alderman why is that the center so uh for the record china bennett land development division uh the it's the center mr bolton mentioned in his presentation that this all the centers the tcco was based on the 2060 vision plan that tpo did prior to 2010 somewhere between 2005 2010 they did that as one of part of their one of their long range transportation plan updates and that was incorporated into the conference plan at that time now the center doesn't necessarily mean it's for non-residential it means it's to support transit right so the idea is it could be residential or it could be non-residential and um was it an arbitrary designation to some degree it was it was based on a macro view not a micro mr bolton also mentioned that we didn't go into those centers and analyze well how many areas are wetland what's the stormwater issues with it the short answer i needed yeah i get long sorry another question is this is contiguous to the city of lakeland it is contiguous to the city of lakeland yes any other questions for staff seeing none would the applicant now like to come up and present their case good morning commissioners for the record bart allen i'm a lineage attorney with the peterson and meyers law firm my address is 225 east lemon street florida uh lake uh east on the street lakeland florida forgot about the city there apologize um here this morning on behalf of the applicant sei plant city llc with what we call the stalwart business park a couple things before i get into kind of my comments uh housekeeping items um i want to introduce mr sanjay i mean he's here this morning on behalf of the applicant but i also have a number of experts with me as well that i'd like to tender this morning um first and first i'd like to introduce from stantec i have miss diane chadwick she's an aicp planner of 47 years tremendous amount of experience doing land use planning compatibility analysis evaluation of comprehensive plans on all kinds of projects whether it's things from the nature of lakewood ranch to significant industrial projects that she and i have worked on here in the county including things such as new core uh the uh walmart distribution facility up at i4 the fedex distribution facility so she's got a tremendous amount of experience in that and i have a copy of her resume um she also does a tremendous amount of work in plant city which i think will will show to you in just a few minutes is is is completely relevant to this case as staff's presentation it it is like the world ends at the county line and and that is in fact not the case um also with uh kimley horn i have mr mark wilson mark wilson is a 35 year uh civil engineer doing civil engineering stormwater design floodplain compensation wetland impacts all the all of the um all the items within engineering that are relevant and important to this case in this area i also have with me this morning mr justin ham who's got over eight years of experience as a professional engineer also doing civil design for purposes of the record i have copies of their resumes if anybody would like a copy to look at i may have an extra copy in my in my briefcase but i would request they be admitted as experts they were previously admitted as experts and when this case came before you in july of 2024. i believe mr allen's looking for a motion from the board motion to accept the experts or what okay yes sir second do we have a formal motion okay okay we have a motion in a second all favor say aye aye aye motion carries continue mr allen thank you very much all right let me get this presentation up we can move on we can just i'm going to kind of move through some of the as is often the case we have some duplicative exhibits with staff but as i kind of mentioned i really want to highlight more of the region and not so much just east of the county line this is 165 acres it is north of swindle road north of i4 with tremendous exposure and access to the interstate system it's east of alderman road the reason why this is in the tsda is because there's it meets all the criteria of the transit supportive development corridor within your policy which talks about transit urban urban type planning urban services coordination with the tpo the 2060 vision plan but it also talks in those provisions about being within a quarter mile of a fixed transit route service is how you become part of the transit corridor mr bishop also one mile radius of the point of the point of access for transit services provide you the ability to be in a transit center and one quarter mile of the access point for those transit services is where the transit core sits so all of those overlays are important for the purpose of what we're doing here today because what that does what your comp plan encourages it encourages the intensity of the development to be located in these areas because they are near those services that's the point of having the having the incentives for the densities and to have the incentives for the increase in intensities this is clearly a transitional area when you think of it on a larger scale there has been historical development going back in from a long time ago where you have some of the larger lot development but you now will see as we work through our presentation how more urban development is coming into this corridor as i4 has grown as um as our community has grown here's a subject uh the request this did come before this panel in july of last year as many of you may recall and we had a fairly lengthy hearing there so i'm going to try not to beat on a lot of the same uh items that we we touched on in july but i think it's important to show here what we're asking for current land use designation is on the left it is residential low with arr on the north end and then we are asking to go to bpc within uh 75 acres internal and then add the bpc2 on 51 of those 75 acres for purposes of context this is on the left side here this is city of lakeland future land use of business park today that is eagles landing those those items immediately to our south we have lakeland business park center designation all across the south side of of swindle road that conservation easement that was referenced earlier is a result of the wetland impact in order to develop the site as industrial it is not a conservation easement from the perspective of we are conserving the land for purposes of some sort of wildlife corridor it is it is a result of the industrial development that is occurring on that site that is why that's in place because they are mitigating on site for their wetland impacts you can also see here you got lakeland interchange activity center and then expansion of industrial as you move further south what's changed since july well we've already agreed we were asking for a 60 foot building height in july we've we have agreed to reduce that we have suggested to reduce that to 50 feet one item that was really kind of a theme if you will of the staff's presentation was this is a 684 000 square foot industrial facility well that's the accumulation of all the square footage that we're asking for here but this is a multi-building site our biggest building that we're proposing is less than 250 000 square feet around 240 236 239 240. that's consistent with what you see at eagles leaning right just to the west they have smaller buildings if you add start adding up the multiple buildings on each one of those sites you start getting to 600 000 square feet it's not uncommon it's actually more of the trend these days instead of having a million square foot buildings or the 900 000 square foot buildings to have these multi-tenant have the smaller buildings that can be broken apart into into smaller chunks so we're we're doing that we've done additional geotechnical work on the site we've done additional analysis on stormwater pond design we've done additional analysis on floodplain design i'm going to have mr wilson give you all those details because that's his expertise right give you that expert testimony on it we've done a full uh an icpr drainage model on the site so we've gone substantially further in the design process than you typically do for a future land use change at the end of the day what mr wilson is going to tell you and what our report that we provide as staff is from a floodplain compensation perspective including the site's impacts we provide an additional five acre feet of floodplain compensation into this basin with this project that's about 1.6 million gallons of extra storage floodplain compensation within the within this within this basin by virtue of the project that we're proposing here today we've also reduced as you can see you you can see our our line is substantially less than what it was before or our depth of the uh change that was one of the big concerns in the july hearing we've reduced it 1200 feet approximately i didn't get out with a you know my engineering scale and and measure it out but generally that's about a 1200 foot reduction it's also a 25 acre reduction in the amount of business park center land use classification that we've we asked for in july what we've done is and you can see between the two requests the one on the left was our july request we've expanded a little bit further to the east we've taken the building that was furthest on the north end the proposed building that was furthest on the north end had the most actual real floodplain impacts and basically moved it down and shifted it to the right so we've maintained our square footage yet limited the change of the future land use the limited this bifurcation of the residential land use classification that we've we've heard a lot about so uh with that other things that we've done um maintain the additional buffering landscaping requirements a 70 foot buffer we've maintained all of those issues so i'm going to kind of jump into a few other things here the planning overlays this is again important because what the comp plan indicates in the tsda in these cores it says it you shall permit business park center i'm not saying that doesn't mean we don't have to go through the process and we don't have to meet compatibility and things of that nature but you shall permit it in these areas it wasn't too long ago that business park center wasn't even allowed in the rda so it was recently and you know i use recently since i've been here for 17 years now recently maybe three or four years ago but in the grand scheme of things business park center was previous previously not allowed in the rda we changed that the royal v we changed that so adding some bpc into the arr is not inconsistent with the comprehensive plan it is permitted it's allowed to happen again getting to what we want to what kind of development do we want to have along the i4 corridor in these areas the transit core allows 25 dwelling units an acre the tsda and residential low allows seven dwelling units an acre the pd all that stuff that's good theoretical conversation but there's an administrative determination by this county staff that says the density is allowed it's not a conversation about the density it's a conversation about how you site plan it and how you meet the and how you meet landscaping and buffering criteria so just within the 86 acres of residential low i have by right seven dwelling units an acre i have to go through and i have to get my site plan approved i'm not saying there's not a public hearing process i'm not saying that but that i don't have to meet the pd bonus points to get to the seven dwelling units an acre because the tsda provisions the tcco provisions trump this trump the um land use classification uh standard residential low classification policies and i think that's important we want intensity we want the urban development we want that type of development along the corridors where we have the infrastructure where we have the transit where we have the access to i4 where we have access to the parkway that's where you want these kinds of uses um i've kind of i've kind of railed on some of these provisions already so i'll skip through them um we're setting aside a significant amount of open space i just talked about the additional floodplain um compensation stormwater design that we have within the project um we've reduced again reduced the um in the uh depth of the uh future land use change to the north and and ms chadwick's going to talk a little bit about this too and i'm going to sit down in just a second and let them talk but when we look at the region when we look at the node when you look at what this area is here is this purple line here is the depth of the tsda boundary it also coincides with the depth of the city of lakeland's future land use for business park it also mimics everything that's occurring just immediately to the west of eagles landing blue steel here this blue that's been approved by the city of plant city for industrial for up to 70 feet of height building height we're asking for 50 feet so just immediately to the west this is 70 feet you've got a proposed industrial project just to the east you have residential developing between them within plain city again demonstrating that these two uses can coincide you've got a you've got a pilot travel center that's developing right at county line road right here at the corner there will be a pilot travel center in this little gray piece let's see if i can zoom into it commissioner beltran taught me that trick that piece right there that is industrial that's being developed as the mccord equipment they're relocating their industrial activity from the airport to this facility so there's additional industrial development that wasn't referenced um previously so that so part is that excuse me bart is that in the county or city of lakeland it's in the city of lakeland okay thanks um so all of those are moving forward and today how to get it back to where i was when i get for trying to be technology technologically advanced um but again you can see this isn't just uh a rural area anymore this is a transit area this is why it's called the transit supportive development area here we go a little additional context for purposes of kind of demonstrating the point here's the blue steel project with the with the layouts that have been approved on the project again you can see a substantially bigger building than what we're proposing this is to scale this is all proposed you've got industrial here you've got you got a tremendous amount of industrial developing on the north side when you look at it um on the larger scale it's not likely and i think i think it's fair and i would i think it's fair that and most people would agree this 166 acres is not going to develop at 1.8 on a median acre site as as is referenced in staff report of 1.8 acres per dwelling unit it's not going to this is a proposed use that with the limitations that we've put on it the conditions of the buffering and compatibility conditions that we've added to it is a less intense use and a more appropriate use for this area is going to limit traffic on alderman road which if we develop as a residential development we're going to have to do we're going to have to access alderman road so it's going to keep traffic only on swindell which makes sense and um i'm now that i'm getting into compatibility i'm going to ask ms chadwick to come up and speak about a handful of the policies um and then we'll move into engineering well we were until i messed it up great he leaves me with a mess good morning my name is diane chadwick and i am a planning principal at stantec and our address is 777 south harbor island boulevard tampa florida bart's already talked to you about this map but it's meant to show you what really is happening more right around this interchange and it gives you a real clear picture of the immediate area you can show you can see that it's got a close proximity this is the i4 and county line road interchange right here so we're very very close to that i4 has obviously become a very popular transit route for industrial uses between tampa and orlando plant city has approved multiple industrial projects and uses along i4 and their eastern edge this site right here is an fdot truck stop they have funded the construction of a truck stop there and they did that because they saw the need for additional truck parking and stopping locations because of the amount of truck traffic coming on i4 they they lack that in the state of florida and so they're looking for good sites and this was one of their prime sites that they they wanted to have this is obviously an industrial hub and even more so on the polk county side the city and the county have approved a variety of business park and industrial designations for this area and as bart mentioned uh the city of plant city recently approved blue steel i believe that's 1.6 million square feet and they are uh holding their final hearing on this site uh within a couple weeks and i believe that's over a million square feet also whoops went too far there there we go uh i want to point out on this this is to show you the length of uh i4 corridor all these dark blocks on here are buildings that should help you see that the size of so many of these other buildings compared to the size of our buildings as bart mentioned we got 640 000 square feet but they're averaging just over 200 000 square feet each uh and this and you can even see the 45 000 commercial sitting down here these are all in varying stages a lot of them are existing a lot of them are under construction many of them have new entitlements and will be going under construction soon and several of them are pending approvals so there i am going to zip through the comprehensive plan uh items so we don't belabor those points but uh we did look at a variety of the policies and um the comp plan discourages urban sprawl in the creation of low density development this industrial hub exists today and continues to grow comp plan calls for the protection of neighborhoods as part of this application as mr bolton told you we did file a land development code text amendment to provide for a lot of restrictions it's about eight pages long i think of uh restrictions that would go for this property on the different land areas we did restrict building heights added enhanced landscape buffering created greater building setbacks we also restricted hours of operation the types of operation and the allowable uses let's get past that one um well i'm going the wrong direction sorry uh let me see if i got the right one here location oh i apologize i think it's up here nope here um i'm sorry i'm bart come here i will make sure i'm in the right place but um but i will just point out the comprehensive plan policies call for a floor area ratio cap of 0.25 we are proposing 0.12 which is only half or less than half than what is allowable and we're able to do that and needed to do that because of the fact that we are preserving wetlands we are providing a great amount of stormwater facilities and a great amount of floodplain compensation areas and um and of course lots of additional open space so let's um comprehensive plan directs that the land be allocated for future that lands be allocated for future industrial uses to allow for a viable and diverse economy policies also encourage the clustering of major industrial uses this project obviously is in close proximity to arterials and it's only a half mile from a major interstate interchange and there are many other industrial uses in close proximity as far as the text amendment goes we did work really hard with mr bolton over the last year quite honestly to work through a lot of different restrictions and we had a lot of conversation about that what would work what wouldn't work and we wanted to create something that put on restrictions to mitigate any perceived impacts uh those restrictions limit the development to 640 000 square feet of industrial and again i'll point out that's in over three buildings that so you're averaging just over 200 000 per building which is very consistent with the surrounding area also 45 000 square feet of commercial and this commercial would serve not only industrial users but it would also serve the surrounding residents we restricted access to only swindale road and we strictly prohibited access to alderman road we also provided for additional buffering on our western property line in recognition that there are homes over there that western boundary uh allowed for an enhanced buffer 70 foot wide a six foot berm a six foot fence on top of the six foot berm with additional landscaping materials we did a slightly smaller version of that on the eastern edge where the buildings would be with a 30 foot wide buffer and a six foot fence and landscaping materials our northern buffer will have the significant amount of open space and it would be a large expanse it would be wetlands stormwater facilities floodplain compensation and open space we provided for greater building setbacks greater setbacks for loading including not having any loading on the west side of the property it all has to be on the east side so it cannot be over where the residents are we talked about limits of hours of operation the type of operation limits on refrigeration trucks and restrictions on outdoor storage also for the lands that will remain a rr and rl1 those will be restricted to stormwater wetland floodplain plain compensation and open space and this is a this is just a graphic of the cross section where that 70 foot buffer is this is this is the buffer so you also have a 30 foot right away and then additional setbacks from that right away to any homes over here but it also shows you this is 165 foot uh distance uh coming over and and i will say that i realize that this shows a truck over here we're not having loading there i apologize there shouldn't be a truck there um but this this shows you the visual where someone's looking across they would be having to look through the six foot berm the six foot fence and additional landscape materials on top of that so with that i think we're going to turn it over to mark mr edwick just two quick questions before we get technical with mr wilson there and wasn't hi um our our comp plan here states that polk county shall promote contiguous and compact growth patterns i think it's pretty clear that it's not contiguous but in your mind is is this a compact growth pattern i think it is when you go back up to the context maps when you start looking at what's around there and uh what's within lakeland and just within the corridor when that within that uh node with that interchange you really start to see a pattern of a lot of non-residential uses and the vast majority of that is industrial okay okay and my second question here i read this as you were clicking through this slide so i could have read it wrong but i think i read a bullet point that said that the uh site does not create a isolated land use pattern is that is that what you believe i believe that yes okay okay that's all thank you any other questions while we're here with ms chadwick seem none all right mr wilson good morning for the record i'm mark wilson professional engineer with kimmy horn and associates at 109 south kentucky avenue and i know you've all been waiting to start talking about some engineering issues i can tell um so what you have before you hear the exhibit is it kind of gives you a a look at our site plan that we've talked about a lot here today diane and bart and it shows you the light blue is what's mapped as flood prone areas or flood plain areas so we know that area floods i'm sure you may hear some testimony today about the flooding that happened during the hurricane and you're going to see some photos photos and we know it floods so that's why it's it's been mapped that way based on detailed studies so it's not surprising that when it rains a lot it floods we have tried to design around that and to accommodate that and what you really see before you hear happens all the time and what we do so there's a lot of projects that we work on that do not have to come before this board or any board they already have existing land use and and or zoning depending on where you're developing it and this is common most properties in florida have flood prone areas mapped on them and or wetlands certainly we do projects that you know that like you've seen here before you in other cases that are citrus and they're upland and there are no wetlands those are great to work on but more times than not we're doing this type of project uh weekly and and what we do and it's kind of what we do and and um in our world and we work with staff staff is familiar with us as well they have rules and regulations stipulations i think you have some other stipulations or another case coming up before you later on today about tightening up some of those rules so we've looked at this project not only with the existing rules but also some of the upcoming rules to make sure that we can confidently say we're meeting the standards and design standards something that's a little bit unusual in this case though is we typically we're doing zoning and land use issues we kind of run some really conceptual numbers and we're not doing detail numbers in this case our client we've gotten with our client and the team and decided to do detail calculations so we've actually gone ahead and done a detailed design a design that we can you know be ready to permit with and not just come up here and talk about estimations we know the numbers so we've been hired to run through and do the detail design what you see before you hear is uh kind of engineering related shows you our stormwater ponds which are in the light blue areas uh all the areas that were you know not impacting if you will in the sense of it's it's remaining green and then what we're doing with our development there's a drainage system that kind of runs through our site we're leaving that unimpacted we're conserving the wetland here we're letting this flow through happen that continues just like it does today we're not changing that um and and this kind of gives you an idea where our development is occurring on the property and again we've done detailed calculations to show that we can meet the 25 year the 100 year we can meet the volume sensitivity and we can meet the standards that are that are currently in place and we can meet the standards that are going to be in place that you're going to be talking about later today this gives you just an idea visual maybe more of a graphic to let you know what's happening drainage wise how it flows through and continues to flow on out we're going to be excavating out so these areas here as um bart had talked about some of the additional volume that we're going to be providing on site so we're we're trying to bunch our development up in here hold back additional stormwater and then we're also going to be excavating out these areas here so we're going to be digging holes effectively digging ponds but it's just going to be from natural ground down so when the flood waters come we provide extra volume for that flooding to happen there and again we've uh submitted detailed engineering design reports to show that um we've actually run real numbers to feel confident and and understand that what we're talking about here today we're going to meet the standards stand for any questions if you have any chairman i got a question sir mark um just so everybody else out here understands what what you guys are doing you're going to actually increase the stormwater retention on your property versus what it is today yeah so we're going to hold back additional stormwater with our retention and then we're also going to dig these other areas and provide additional compensation so we've calculated about five acre feet and maybe the best way to visualize that is if you take a five acre pasture and you have one foot of water on it that's the extra that we're going to be providing um you can't account for every situation our design standards are 100 year which is about 10.9 inches of rainfall in this area and when the hurricane mountain came through there was over 12 inches of rainfall that was recorded in this area which obviously it's that's above 100 year or you know rainfall event so we're doing the best we can and we feel like we're going above and beyond by providing some additional volume compensation out there so thank you thank you mr wilson um i'm going to kind of get to get to some of the conclusions but this is a concept plan that would show you how this site would look just as a as a more of a color rendition rather than the all the engineering line work and things of that nature again just to kind of show we're putting in a substantial landscaping buffer on the west side 70 feet wide six feet six foot tall berm with a six foot tall fence as well as all the landscaping and that will go on the exterior with the buildings being set back 165 feet courts things of that nature 120 feet with everything kind of internal as it relates to bay doors and things of that nature dark sky lighting other use restrictions that ms chadwick went through and i won't i won't rehash all of those but i think those are important considerations when you take this into account a couple other things just to before i wrap up i want to go back up to the top procedurally we're here on the this is a new application from the july application we we withdrew that when it's in its entirety but prior to that july application and i think this is beneficial for the commissioners that that are new from that from that hearing or may or may not have been here we held a community meeting um in advance of that where we invited the neighbors out and we we talked about this the night property we talked about what um stalwart sei plant city's intent was we talked about some of the other options we talked about well if it would did not go into this into this category would you like to see residential out here and it was it was very clear that residential wasn't really a desirable use um we we had a lengthy discussion about that at the community meeting um lengthy and i would even say tense at moments uh it may have changed my policies on community meetings and i now have sheriff with me wherever we go but it was uh it was uh it was a very uh thorough conversation and um at the end of the day there were you know it was a mixed bag for sure you know there were people that wanted to see residential but there were also people that wanted to see industrial um in business park center so i think that's important the restriction of traffic off of alderman was an incredibly important conversation point with the community they they liked the fact that this project would be doing that i can't do that if i develop it residentially because i because once i get to a certain number of certain number of units i have to have multiple access points so i will be forced to access or the developer won't be me uh will be forced to access alderman in that regard so i think when you start layering in all of the conversation all of the work the conditions the things of that nature this is an appropriate use within this corridor and again i'm bringing back up this compatibility context map because i want us to think about this more than just on a on a partial basis this is an extension commissioner dalton to your point this is an extension from the south of the of the existing development trend it's a it is a it is a mirror not mirror image but it is similar in development that you see occurring to the west this here is the the northern end of the existing bpc that the county has entitled on the north side of i4 right there we're very similar in those we've not exact we do have a little bit of a that in that area that goes into the arr but given the concessions given the uses given the limitations we think that's an a this is an appropriate use we believe it's compatible you've heard expert testimony from almost 5 47 year aicp planner who says that this is consistent with your with this comprehensive plan who says it's compatible with this comprehensive plan we've had our engineer who's got 35 years of design saying that we can make this work we will make this work we've provided conditions that require us but to go above and beyond so i think that's that's important and at the end of the day and even in the staff report if you look at just what the base staff report traffic generation we are two and a half uh residential on the base before i go to any pd before i go to ask for any of the additional densities it's two and a half times greater trips trip wise 2500 i don't remember the exact number but it's about 2500 trips and it's about a thousand trips on the day out of what we're proposing here based on these limitations again that just demonstrates that while there are concerns and there are challenges what we've done is we've met those challenges and we've brought a good use to this property that's respectful of the adjacent neighbors it's respectful of the property owner and we believe will be very successful and be a tremendous benefit to polk county so we would request a favorable vote on recommendation or favorable recommendation to the board of county commissioners for transmittal and adoption of this large-scale cop plan amendment the sub-district change and the land development go text amendment and i will sit down because i know there's some residents i want to speak mr chairman i got a question yes sir part what how do you get from this property that you're proposing to to the parkway or i4 how would you how would they access that you may have said that i did not commissioner uh heath here's a traffic pattern for you so basically the parkway comes you can come this way and get to here you can go out to the to the west down um swindell and access i4 east and west and then you can go uh east on uh swindell across across the interstate down to the parkway swindell a collector yes sir okay thank you that's all i have excuse me sir any other questions mr schmidt and all of those allow heavy truck traffic there's heavy truck traffic on the on this road already today commissioner schmidt by virtue of the existing industrial i'm reminded of last week's county commission meeting where they proposed an increase impact fees for warehousing and one of the reasons for that this being a transit corridor one of the reasons for that was the heavy truck traffic and the statement that we cannot maintain our own county roads because of the number and the weight of such trucks and that does not in my mind play into your proposal for this expansion of the transit corridor um and you in impact we will pay impact fees that are in place at the time as we come through development impact fees aren't for maintenance impact fees are for the construction of new infrastructure impact avalorum taxes tax revenue other sources of of uh funds are for um and that's and that's not a polk county thing that's a state law consideration it was just a statement i understand and i and it's a challenge trucks are tearing up our roads is what i think it was said it's a challenge i understand but one quick question before we get to the public portion of this i'm still having trouble trying to wrap my head around how this is not a isolated land use and it seems like the extensive amount of buffering more than normal kind of seems to acknowledge the fact that the stuff that's adjacent to the property might not be super compatible so can you just comment on that i can so looking at looking at this map the you know this is a good map commissioner dalton for us to talk from it is not isolated in that you have we are contiguous to other industrial business park center same future land use classification so it's not isolated it's an expansion this big kind of um notch if you will out of this out of the south of this particular piece of property is a dot stormwater pond it's residential yep it's residential low i can't change it because i don't have an owner's authorization from dot but it was previously a part of this particular piece of property and it was condemned in order for the expansion of i-4 that is also another non-residential use that's that's within this area so it is a it is an extent it's an extension it is a i would anticipate that over time and and there's been conversation that you're going to see some additional assemblage of the properties to our west and you're going to see just a continued growth of this in this area i understand your i understand your comment and and i certainly appreciate it but i i when i look at the area as a whole this is is it is on the edge of the expansion but it is the continue continuation of an industrial expansion okay noted thank you there are no further questions from the board we'll go ahead and open up the public portion of this meeting if there is anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case now is your time you can come up to the podium uh pre-state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes and if you'd like if there's more than one you can queue in the middle or anything along those lines my name is jeff fitchett i live at 4651 swindale road and like the staff had commented on it's pretty much dropping 165 acre development right in on the side of alderman road they will open up their front door and look right at the tops of these buildings i i don't understand how that's compatible with the residential part of what's out there and i'm no road expert but i live there i see what the traffic is now that just the traffic in general in polk county has gotten so bad that you got highway 92 old tampa highway interstate 4 swindale road people are getting so tired of the traffic on 92 that they're coming down swindale road already out there which okay you're going to build a warehouse there i don't know what truck numbers or whatever but it's going to increase traffic and uh as uh about a mile and a half or uh probably less than a mile from where they're proposing this at across old tampa highway there's already a warehouse that's approved uh development it's approved there's already one built there the pads are already there there must be at least five six seven pads a couple acre size dirt where they got the pads already set up out there they've built one warehouse like i said it close to i don't know just guessing but 600 to a million square feet that's just sitting there with the gates closed on it why are we needing another warehouse right here when it would take years a couple years for that place to be built up it's just and drainage is another big thing out there i'm sure most of y'all are aware it's your pack of sasa creek every time it doesn't take a hurricane for those those folks to almost every one of them to have water inside their house i mean yeah it's a problem all over the state but i mean it's as long as uh the way i see development going uh the roads the infrastructure is just not being kept up and just like the gentleman said here about i can't believe that uh the uh county commission would not increase the impact fees for these types of buildings i think pope county right now it's 650 dollars per 1 000 square feet of warehouse space you look at hillsborough county theirs is almost 6 000 per thousand square feet and yeah they're complaining about we don't have the money to do the roads well what where does that fall back on the taxpayers instead of requiring these developers to spend the money to help do some of these road works or intersection stuff thank you sir thank you sir name and address for the record please jenny fitchett um 4651 swindale road we have one of the biggest flooding problems there is we have a creek that runs down um and into this property okay and then it goes out and it meets up with it to pack sasa which is on the other side okay normally it's low but we get a good rain we get a storm it floods anything that's over in that direction is gonna i know they said well we're gonna put a pond here a pond there you don't understand there is a lot of water and the reason why it's not just that if you see uh the poke parkway that that little jog where they turn around and get on that other little pink area over there that is um commercial too and all that water comes down from that commercial area into that wetland and then it drains into our creek and goes to this property and back we we're getting water from down the row it's not it's not it's not just that one particular area and the other thing is i just want you to know that um there's a lot of people that are going to suffer because um it's just it's we're going to have a big problem um and um also the driving we have more uh traffic out there than we've ever had and um they are if they do this just the other day we had an accident on i4 and people were trying to go around and it was bumper to bumper all along that road it's only a two-lane road okay so and and then if you went straight on that you go into another residential section that is a part of plant city in hillsborough county but we seem to be we have to fight for this side um the other pink side now we've got to fight on this side because there's no place for the water to go i have a picture and i don't know if you can see it but i have a patio on the back i don't have brown floors thank you do you see that so i'm real concerned we appreciate it thank you thank you for your time yes ma'am ma'am anyone else in the audience here to speak for against this case question to her point yes sir um perhaps to the applicant um we'll we'll note of it and then come back to the applicant all right like okay that works that's fine i do sir uh i'm joshua briggs 945 country oaks lane my community is just to the north of said project um i've been fighting for about nine years again you know against overdevelopment in the area of the flood area i've been going to hillsborough county plant city and i'm glad that they all brought it up because i have been arguing the same argument and there is a lot of in their they're playing a game so it was like plant city denied i had i had an expert testimony uh the guy that teaches hydrology he's got like seven doctorate degrees he is a expert in it plant the developer requested my subject matter expert gets denied so then i got forced to appeal it and just five minutes of his speaking time would have been all of his credentials to justify so the the fact that the attorney got to request a denial of subject matter expert that would have definitely put some information into the thing that these guys are going to want to transmit to the state to where they can get the story that they want to get the results was a denial of my community's due process and they got part of that whole subdivision or the blue steel warehouse is done but the mayor of plant city also said that the project is dead water unless they get polk county to to extend kyneline road well this is where you guys come to play is because that warehouse isn't going to go neither is a truck stop or anything else because they still have to rely on polk county to improve that road well if you guys know your history polk county looked into it they didn't want to have any part of it that's why there's no kyneline road extending anywhere northwards that's why there's a lot of stuff that's not built northward of swindale road so there's a history there so the fact that they keep wanting to shuttle in more and more businesses is so that way they can get their compatibility as i can put more and more issues on everybody else we're not they're not getting any relief to the flooding i've got aerial photos from all over that whole area everything that they've promised was going to be contained by retention ponds and stormwater is all underwater i've got pictures of that even new developments that they approved in the last two years have been completely underwater so when they say that you know certain things are going to happen it's not going to happen because they're not looking at the actual hydrology of the area the hydrology is the groundwater the surface water the amount of rains the saturation soils and everything else my my experts will testify to that thank you sir anyone else here to speak for against this case name and address for the record please joseph fisher 855 giant oak our property is just to the north there there there are 16 properties down giant oak road there will be more built i've been there 24 years i've had to land about 30 what's happened the water off the property that we're talking about now comes our way there are pipes that come through floods the road at the entrance that's normal when we have a big rain just their water that's without the blacktop that they're going to put there and force you see all the ponds they've got and the more they're going to do they know and they they can't handle the water that's there now that's wetlands that other land but what's happened to us now our land we're we're down exactly a half mile down giant oak it's there's another three quarters of a mile this last storm that went through we all know we got 12 inches and they can only handle 10 but what happened my property sets up a little bit i've had seen water in the fields across this year water came up i sat back 230 feet i have a two acre lot water came to my house on three sides i have a springboard back so it's up a little that was about six foot now we're setting in this water my wife and i there were pictures sent in i don't know what happened to our pictures but my wife had to get a kayak out and kayak you could kayak down the whole giant oak road past this land to get my son to the airport so he could go back to college i could not drive my car off our street for three days that's from the property that's there now it's that one entrance area there should be something put there the lift station what how are you going to get the water out of there there's more water coming don't let them fool you you know the song and dance that we just had it's very good and and can confuse us but it's not going to happen and we're going to have more water and as far as traffic on swindell you know your gps now takes you off of i-4 takes you on kathleen road send you across the little ways and then down and then on swindell i've come out to the corner and there's 30 cars to the left because their i-4 is backed up we're not going to fix i-4 never we're going to fix i-4 so we need to work on this property there's homes all around it they can tell you whatever they want please come look you know your staff says no they've come and they they've told you what's going on please listen thank you mr fisher mr chair i'll just add for the record that looks like the pictures are included um they start on page 342 of the staff report noted thank you coming out just for the record please david huth 920 country oaks lane i'm not going to go over what other people have said but i'm going to implore you to and i appreciate that they've looked at the bigger picture we have an imaginary line called the polk county hillsboro and we kind of stopped looking at it this way and the other people are stopping looking at that way and nobody's looking at all these things that are happening and saying it we know this area is distressed i've lived out there for 25 years my neighbors across the street every summer have water in their backyard and each one of these little parcels that people doing just like the truck stop that plan city says that they've approved and that blue steel and all these things that come up are just going to add to this area that so as a planning commission and i think it needs to be working with both we need to plan you know for the future of this larger area not the individual parcel each unit will put a parcel you could say yeah this this would work okay this can do this this can do that but you add up all these things it's like if you're lifting weights and you lift 100 pounds you add another one you know eventually it breaks we're not at 100 year flood now or 25 year we are annually flood and every one of these things are just going to make it worse i implore you to stop the development until you figure out what you can do to get the water out of there and if you can't then it has to stop we can't keep building you just can't thank you keith knight 575 alderman road i wasn't going to speak today but i'm hearing things that are just not true um i i was born and raised on that property just one second were you sworn in sir at the start of the meeting you were yes sir okay yes sir um born and raised on this property uh worked this property with my father my mother family members my property my mom's property my family's property has never flooded i don't know what this man's talking about there i've been there long to long time and i don't care what these pictures i've got the pictures too that property does not flood giant oaks it should pack a sasa creek floods giant oaks has nothing to do with my property yes we've got more water than i've ever seen i'm 47 i mean you had four or five storms in a row and then milton was was crazy we all know that florida was flooded but for people to stand up here i don't lie i was raised right um to say that my property floods them they can show pictures all they want i mean i had water we had what we all had water um i just wanted to say that thank you sir you guys can also queue if you like you know stand in the middle form a line that'll help the process go a bit faster i am dennis craig i live at 5129 alderman road i was not sworn in do i have to do that yes if you'll please raise your right hand do you swear or affirm the testimony and evidence you present to the planning commission today will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do thank you i live at 5129 alderman road i've lived there for 15 years now the flooding that everyone is talking about is real we were flooded at hurricane irma we were flooded during hurricane milton i had waist deep water in my property all the way on all four sides of my home which is raised up three feet fortunately i didn't get water in my home uh my workshop where i restore cars was destroyed all my equipment was destroyed i had occasion to drive out of alderman road i have a tall truck so i could get out through the water which was nearly two feet deep and as i drove down alderman road and went around the curve and headed towards wendell road i could see the water rushing off the property in question like a torrent rushing down into the alderman road and giant oak road neighborhood i could see the water rushing through the pipes that direct the water from that property over into the giant oak and alderman road neighborhood the flooding is a big big issue and besides the flooding this project is being proposed in the center of an established polk county residential neighborhood i've heard a lot about lakeland the city of lakeland they did this they did that you represent polk county we're polk county residents the property is in polk county if this thing is approved our conditions are only going to get worse six foot berm everybody knows about water if it can't go over it it'll go around it one way or another that water is going to come down into the alderman road and giant oak road neighborhood and this project is just going to make it worse thank you very much for your time thank you sir thank you sir good morning once again i hope we don't have to keep doing this very often um name and i just for the record please sorry my name is janet benton i live at 5139 just on the other side of the gentleman that just spoke i'm at very dead end be fly by the crow the hillsboro polk county line as the man said while ago is not far from our property you go around the corner where the knight's land is you go down here there's john oak road you go on down we're at the dead end i too flooded i live in a double wad as the water drained it came down on us fortunately we went this was during milton we went stayed with my daughter in hillsboro county just not a couple of miles down the road off of a north frontage road which i4 is right in front of her house her house was high and dry we got up the next morning to come look we couldn't even get down the road to our house my husband has a truck um he went ahead and went outside he was waiting the border up to here and i'm not lying i'm not accusing mr not i'm not saying that it's make sure whenever you're speaking you're talking to the mics that we get it for the record no worries and i'm not we're not accusing him of flooding us it's just the way nature works there's going to be stuff coming from hillsboro county stuff coming from polk county and as the gentleman said it goes around it's got to go somewhere don't matter how much you dig or make holes or whatever it came into our house i live in a double wide my air condition was this far from being underwater we were out of our home for three months because we had to remodel luckily it wasn't because of uh high water in there but imagine my home's up and it came over and came into my house the drywall went sucked it up because we had carpet in there so we had to do a lot of remodeling but anyway on to the other thing with hillsboro county over there it's ridiculous and when you come off county line road and dead end into swindale whether you go this way or that way we don't want a bunch of warehouses there it's been residential i grew up in that area i grew up off frontage road and it's ridiculous it's just ridiculous county line is ridiculous and all these big developers that come in y'all don't y'all don't have any respect with y'all lot for y'all but to have that done in y'all's neighborhood somewhere okay the mic remember the mic we'll keep going thank you ma'am for your time thank you ma'am any future comments from whoever else wants to speak just keep them directed to the board please hello my name is kara knight my address is 575 alderman road lakeland florida i'm going to read because i'll get distracted and ramble so i apologize but i'm sure it comes as no surprise to this room that polk county is attracting new residents and record numbers contributing residents who want jobs and need homes and over the past decade our family's been inundated with solicit solicitations from developers and their representatives in an effort to purchase this property due to its size and close vicinity to i4 some of those developers have even been some of our loudest critics on the project simply because they aren't getting their shot at purchasing our land for decades our family simply denied their inquiries but ultimately after a number of other industrial projects were approved in our area along with the pilot truck stop just a few blocks away on the hillsborough county line we came to the inevitable conclusion that the area is changing and we must evolve as well our decision came at a time when my mother-in-law wanted to retire after working the land and the cows for over 50 years we made the decision to hire an agent to manage this for us with the intention of only considering offers that made sense for the area and fell within what the county had already specifically established as acceptable future land use we decided as a family that the use of our property could really benefit the evolving needs of polk county and work to generate and build the infrastructure to meet the current and projected growth of the county not to mention help the rising concerns surrounding water issues for our neighbors north of us who built and purchased hundreds of homes in a flood zone we were one of them too so we lived in that neighborhood and they're not wrong there are water issues um but it's one of the reasons why we chose this buyer we've watched the surrounding parcels be developed and now our property is the rural component of the community we are the island in our neighborhood surrounded by years and years of development what the drone shots don't show you is what has been approved for development which they showed you next to eagles landing millions of more square footage of warehouse next us for anyone to ask this board to stop development now might be construed as hypocritical as everything around us is developed we are two-tenths of a mile from i4 this is not a rural area we would like the businesses and people who own property around us to know that we did take great care in choosing a buyer we were presented with many lois and offers some of them exceeded the offer of this developer from a dollar standpoint but we chose this buyer specifically because they plan to build on far less than the property allows for they're building an excess of water retention to help improve the water concerns in the area they're thoughtfully landscaping it they're trying to keep all of the traffic off of the residential roads and they're keeping over a hundred acres green more than 60 percent of this property thank you thank you name and address for the record please good morning my name is christina b night some people say that i have address please i'm sorry address 575 alderman road thank you and you can grab that mic and pull it down too if you need to some people say i'm greedy because i want to sell my land but after working there and living there for 50 years hard work and you saw the road on uh alderman facing my property i've kept that clean because people toss out their garbage before they get home or on the way to somebody visit someone it was clean and mowed i've done a lot there and it's been hard work and i appreciate everything everyone has said but after all this time i think i feel i can be greedy and try to sell this property thank you thank you good morning my name is erica sumner 924 east jefferson brooksville florida i am the listing agent on the property i met the knight family at a branding if you don't know what that is it's where we take our cattle brands and we brand at that time they did not seek me out to be their real estate agent however through uh lots of cultivation of a relationship they approached me to take on the task to find the proper buyer for the subject property i am not known for selling or developing land that is in fact goes against my florida cracker properties uh brand where we like to keep things agricultural but the subject property they've owned the family for over 100 years and in fact mr bolton shared a photo earlier of many many years ago of the property where no one was around it so in fact it is my customers who have had all of the development happen around them it is no longer a cattle area an agricultural area so when i was given the opportunity to help find the buyer we had seven lois three written offers on the property one that was substantially higher than the existing offer i was allowed to be given time to interview each one of the buyers when i met the current buyer not only did they commit to improving the community addressing the issues that we brought up right from the very beginning but they put a healthy budget and the experts behind it i know it's very difficult for the community to hear because it is just not something that you think someone would do but the experts and the financial backing that they've had so far to date they've done more than what you would typically do to this to prove to you that they are improving the area for the flooding of the concerns of the community so we ask that you consider this because of the experts that you have accepted their knowledge and experience in the industry thank you thank you is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak either for or against this case okay mr allen would you like a second to respond to the comments oh yeah we need to close the book portion the public portion is not closed uh thank you mr chair i'm going to ask mr wilson before i make any comments i think he's given the given the nature of the conversation from the residents and let him talk about drainage floodplain things of that nature before we go in any other issues mark oh you're up there it is i'm going to learn that one day again for the record mark wilson mckinney horn and um i don't know that we heard anything here today in some of the photos that were in the staff report i mean anyone who's i'm from pole county i was born and raised here so 59 years of me but um i and i think everybody knows this it should pack assassa creek area floods it always has it always will there's nothing that's going to fix it there's no magic tricks no parlor tricks to make flooding stop on this area when it rains uh a lot or even when it rains less than a lot there's going to be flooding out here and i think the problem is a lot of these developments that we're hearing from were just constructed uh you know before we had these rules and regulations that we have to deal with today and regrettably there's i don't think there's going to be any magic tricks that's going to make the flooding go away so what can we do we've been increasing standards we're we're continually uh and improving and increasing the development standards i think anybody does development appreciates that and knows that and you guys are going to be talking about it here today so what we can do is design the standards and try to find a way to design above to go above those standards because this is a large basin area that drains here so there's going to be a lot of development that happens that you're you guys aren't going to get to hear and talk about and it's just going to come through normal engineering process whether it's the city or the county and you have to meet those standards and it's going to still drain to this area we know there's water that drains to our property we know there's hundreds of acres that drain to this itchapacas area and development's going to continue so you increase the standards we we are going to meet those and go above and beyond which is about all we can do we are i think it's important to note and some people have talked about it here today that we have a lot of green area we're we're keeping out here open we're trying to cluster our development in the upland areas and we're trying to limit the impact and also provides compensation additional compensation for that so stand for any questions family any questions for mr wilson yes sir um you used the word basin and that was what i was going to reference the lady's comment earlier old pasture land old family land whatever you want to call it is this parcel is surrounded by many many others and typically over the years flood water or surface water has moved back and forth and until we get to a place where we're starting commercial development like this and those issues just become exacerbated and i don't know just what you said i don't see any amount of engineering can really fix that but i'm looking at a dilemma in my mind just seeing all of the surrounding residential properties all of those little smaller parcels all the way around and what are you doing to prevent just lateral surface water flow is there anything that you're doing for that so there is that that's a good question the water doesn't know which way to flow okay it'll go from this property to there or from there to here and then on down the creek and if you've seen development you know as you're driving by or if if you're not part of the development process but if you drive by and just see it as casual observation you notice that typically there's a lot of dirt moved around right uh with any kind of development single family commercial industrial you're you're getting out there with heavy machines you're moving dirt around and a lot of that has to do with trying to sculpt the earth to make sure you're you're draining onto your property and there are rules and regulations so the water management district the county there's a lot of scrutiny a lot of different eyes on it to review it and make sure that you're capturing your water that you're developing so we're trying to cluster our project and develop on the upland areas but we'll be capturing all the water we have with grading and pipes and stormwater management type systems to to grab it and take it to our stormwater ponds that we have proposed everything else we're going to be letting continue to flow the way it's always flowed so there's a lot of effort and energy and review put forth containing and treating your water but at the same time also maintaining maintaining existing historic drainage patterns which is why we are not developing in the central area here we're going to let this creek continue to flow through here our property like it's always done into this large wetland that holds water and then it flows out just like some of the residents have talked about here today so we we know that's going to happen and we're trying to maintain that basin pattern and at the same time hold back more water and provide some extra compensation because we aren't going to fix itchipacasa creek flooding problems um it's not going to happen are you of the opinion that the creek is backflowing are you denying or whomever here is denying that this property or this basin is is flowing into and creating some of that problem well i mean anything that drains it itchipacasa basin i guess you could say creates the problem right because that water contributes to it so we know that we do have a a ditch or a creek that flows through our property and we're going to maintain that pattern so i think when flooding happens sure there's a lot of flow through it it meets an equalization if you will kind of gets up and gets static for a little while and it moves really slowly like they talked about for three or four days until it all drains out so that's just going to happen in any any area that has a chronic flooding problem the good news here is you know it's not a closed basin it flows it just flows slowly i got a question mark again when i asked earlier i just wanted to make sure i was clear as well as other people in the room were clear you've got to match your pre-post development criteria with your stormwater retention correct it's rate and it's also volume and it's right and so what you're doing if anything with your development after after it's developed is is is um making this situation less less creating you're creating more stormwater retention onto your property than you're necessary then then it's required because your retention like you said you match rate and volume but then if you're in a floodplain area you also have to match if you have an impact you have to match that impact so it's right you know equal what we're doing is we're providing more volume to offset that impact so if anything you'd be improving the the situation out there that's correct based based on math and on science and the numbers and how you do that that is correct okay that's what i needed thank you anything else for the applicants and i just got a couple just a couple conclusory comments uh commissioner dalton if you don't mind um again i just kind of want to bring it back to um a couple things here what what what we've seen and what was kind of discussed the flooding the drainage issues were the primary conversation we understand you know that there's road improvements this development will have to go through a level two analysis will have to go through full-blown traffic analysis we will make all those determinations as to to as to what road improvements need to be made as a result of this project but that's a that's a step further down the line so we we recognize that um and we will you know we have to go through those before we can move move an ounce of dirt on the site the other things that i heard just kind of generally whether this is from staff also some of the comments on the residential was the building height of 50 feet and being concerned about that if there is a motion to be made in favor of this project i would we would put on the table voluntarily without any coercion or you know making sure that miss howard is is satisfied that we would limit the building height to 45 feet rather than 50 feet which is in line generally with what the exhibits that uh staff presented in their presentation i would also because of the other just look again looking at this exhibit and that's the reason why i put this exhibit up we did we talked about 640 000 square feet of commercial of the uh business park center development right and with the 45 000 of the commercial we would also agree that the max building on the site would be no greater than 250 000 square feet so no single building could be more than 250 000 square feet and the overall business park development would be the 640 that was in the staff report so that would that does a couple things right that helps reduce the bulk and the size of the building which addresses compatibility it helps to make sure you're going to have more of a building break it looks you know less but it's also now starts to fit in with the size of the of the in the uh industrial development that's existing and coming uh or less than as a matter of fact uh than was coming on the north side of i4 and in this in this corridor whether it's in pole county or plant city and we think that those two those two additional considerations we would like to have if there is a motion to be made to approve this and we think that's appropriate um we talked a lot today i'm not gonna i'm gonna take the advice and not repeat what other people said but this is a good project this site as you've heard from the knights and you heard from the realtor and you've heard from a number of you know you've heard from our from our experts is a highly desired area it is highly desired for development and it has been sought after by many many projects this project on the whole when you think about the 640 000 square feet on 166 acres is at the end of the day extremely low intensity i mean that's a you know on the gross there that's a 0.1.12 floor area ratio that is a significantly lower and if other options have are pursued and i'm not saying they are that it will be different considerations and and we believe that this project while staff is recommending denial and there's nothing that i dislike more as a land use attorney than being at odds with this staff because i respect this staff very much but from time to time you have to do it and but we believe that based on 47 years of planning experience from our expert indicating that in her expert testimony and her expert opinion that this project is consistent and compatible with the area we have a 35 year engineer who's designed projects similar to this in similar situations in other parts of this county in the state of florida that he that this project can meet or exceed all of the stormwater design criteria that with the conditions and the site restrictions contained within the parcel specific policies and the parcel specific restrictions in the arr the rl and the bpc that this project is consistent with your comprehensive plan it's compatible with the area it's consistent with the development pattern in the area and we would request a favorable vote today and we really do appreciate all your time appreciate all staff's time um you do have a very uh excellent staff you you've gone one more excuse me two more questions i think miss howard has a comment as well i'm sorry yeah i think you go and then miss howard has a comment as well after you you're good go ahead i'm sorry who miss howard once oh okay i'm sorry um i believe it was you that mentioned the availability of sewer has expired it was not me but it was in the staff's report it was in staff report okay we just we just haven't gone back and re-sought that we don't we went and did that initially during the initial application we would certainly get capacity uh verification as we move through that otherwise we can't develop my experience that um when that happens capacity has been exceeded already no it was there's just a time limit on these on these capacity letters that you get at this day at this stage in the game it's no different than a non-binding school concurrency letter they only give it to you first period of time and how much there's been no impervious area over this entire well precious little over this entire parcel how much impervious area are you proposing which will drain all of that water into the surrounding area i would i would have to ask mr wilson or mr ham to give you that i okay i can't speak to that somewhere in your calculation it is somewhere in the calculation i certainly don't know that level of detail we do have that number because we run the calculations i just don't have that number on me um but i think uh when you go back to the site plan it's it's i'm going to be guessing somewhere in the 20 acre range but i'm really don't have that number committed memory nor did i bring the number to expect i was gonna get that question today or i'm not i wasn't prepared for that but we have calculated the impervious so the building impervious area and also the pavement impervious area and you see by the site plan we showed before there's a significant set aside of pervious green open space floodplain compensation stormwater retention ponds we still try to cluster it on the upland areas but um certainly there's no impervious out there today besides the house and some other minor issues if you will we are going to be adding impervious to it which is why we have the rules and regulations to follow that we've talked about to deal with those issues so you're losing that amount of percolation natural dissipation of flood water etc that's right it runs off it goes to a collection system it goes to stormwater pond to compensate for that that is correct that's how that works right okay yep that all mr schmidt yes sir ms howard thank you mr allen if you don't mind for the record i just wanted to clarify what um you indicated the applicant would be amenable to amending so the the two conditions the first being that the building heights currently um in the staff report we have buildings would be limited to 50 feet in height but that you're saying the applicant would agree to buildings being limited to 45 feet in height and then currently we have that the total developable area to a maximum building area of 640 000 square feet and you said with no single building exceeding 250 000 square with no single building exceeding 250 000 that's i think the part i don't see that's not in there it would be an additional restriction okay so we're not amending no i'm suggesting that we additional limitation include that in this in the motion is not saying 640 to 250 i'm saying it's 640 total nothing no individual building thank you correct sure no i didn't say that but i'm fine with that we never like doing conditions on the fly but of course if it's something um that if staff can consider and give an opinion to and the planning commission's okay with you know we could certainly consider that um as long as they're limited and if you did that that would be part of the land development code text amendment right the text amendment and that would be part of the recommendation to the board because again this is a level four and we'll go to that that's correct yes thank you that's excellent clarification you have a final comment and then we'll wrap up mr bolton for mr bolton um has anything proposed by the applicant change staff recommendations to deny this project the two clarifications uh do not change the recommendation we are agreeable to them and if i could have a moment i'd like to make a couple of clarifications from staff standpoint to several issues that were brought up yes sir did you have any more questions no sir no questions okay um back to one of the things that was brought up is uh mr allen talked about the depth of the bpc being at this point going across the one one of the ways that we look at depths is from road frontage this is from north frontage road so really the depth should be looked at at a diagonal not in east west measurement so it does not go from here all the way over to blue steel as the correct depth the way that we look at depths of districts a second item is that when he was made a point about making a clarification that this is all industrial or excuse me not industrial it's a bpc as i had just want to make clarify clarify for apples to apples comparison to have all their stormwater and flood plain within the the bpc use we would need the whole entirety of the red box switched to some shade of purple four apples to apples of the eagles landing um so i think that that was a just like i said i wanted to make sure that that was clarified also uh they brought up the um plant city plant city is hillsborough county we are yes we're in polk county um we do care but there's not a lot we can do just like we don't have a lot we can do about any individual municipality either the as you can see and somebody brought up about the north frontage road that is being built the vast majority is located within hillsborough county the only portion is there is some alignment that is needed that is having to be built because polk county did as part of their conditions of approval no access for the blue steel development onto swindell road no access for the pilots to uh truck stop to swindell road they realized what swindell road was yes there's traffic on there because people because trucks go on it doesn't necessarily it it is classified as an urban collector but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way it acts as an urban collector and there was a also a mention of the floor area ratio being like a 0.12 i believe that they were also calculating that on the 166 acres which includes the arr we calculate it on the district the bpc district there is a portion of code where it talks about the development area arr does not allow warehousing does not allow any of these uses through the text amendment almost all arr short of family farming that type thing has been stripped away when you look at the floor area ratio for the 75 acres it bumps it up to about a two uh excuse me a 0.21 far and the isr on there they showed their conceptual plan our gis analyst uploaded that did some calculations from their estimates so this is if mark has different calculations i'd be more than willing to accept them but we came up with both building and asphalt at about 41 acres of impaired impervious surface within the 75 acres or a 0.55 isr again if he's got a different number than that uh would like to you know take a look at that but those are a couple points that i just wanted to clarify that were from inconsistencies thank you sir thank you sir all right you guys all follow that yeah all right so we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion remember we need three separate votes here mr chairman i'd like to make a couple of comments if i could um in regards to compatibility even though the the adjacent property of the the similar used to the south of this properties in the city of lakeland doesn't make any difference and and so i i don't see where the compatibility issue is a problem um whatever what everybody else needs to take consideration if this thing is turned down as bpc that they can come back in the rl land use and do up to seven units per acre by right and that would be equal with their 51 acres of bpc one and two roughly 51 acres i'm guessing there's about 357 dwelling units i know that there's a lot of people out there as well as everybody probably in the county that's concerned about traffic well the traffic would be a lot less of an impact on those roads out there with the the use that they're after versus if they came back and decided to do residential subdivision of seven units to the acre so that's another thing that i i think we need to take in consideration um therefore i'm not going to agree with the staff's recommendation on this noted any other comments i'd like to make a comment mr commissioner um just being from a farming family and being in this position in the past this is a this is a a litany of compromises that we're making with with this situation and you know one of them being access to collector roads so the applicants trying to be uh amenable to those those asks they're also allowing water to flow naturally through the project as well as collecting it on their own land allowing it to drain and then the knights compromising with uh being able to take more money uh with this property i've been in this position in the past and i don't i don't envy your position miss knight it's tough it's very tough um but i just wanted to make those comments before and i i also share uh commissioner he's uh sentiment on you know this is going to be developed one day it's just what what do we want here and and uh this this looks like a good compromise to me thank you sir any other any other comments from the members if not we'll look for a motion i move to do deny the request lpc pal 2024-13 i second that okay we have a motion in a second roll call please hold on just a second um so your your your motion is to agree to the staff's recommendations okay that's what i make sure i want to make sure i approve staff's recommendation to deny yes okay thank you david dalton for the motion royal bishop i'm for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman for the motion renee heath against the motion mike schmidt for the motion kevin update i'm against the motion mr chairman the motion passes thank you sir we'll take another motion for the second case we have a motion to approve staff's recommendation to deny for the second case or a different type of motion i don't have the number i would make a motion to again approve the staff's denial however we need to say that sorry my computer's gone dead i can't i can't read i don't have the numbers here in front of me ldcd 2024-7 i'll second the motion okay we have a motion in a second mr bishop roll call please david dalton for the motion robert bishop i'm for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman for the motion against the motion mike schmidt for the motion coming up against the motion all righty and the last motion that we'll need here is one for ldct 2024-20 again don't have the number but i will move to deny if i could have if i could get a question before we have the voter yes sir is this the tech this is for the text amendment correct i don't have it in front of me i mean i could it take me five minutes to find it but was the staff recommended denial on the text amendment as well okay thank you yes all three thank you motion stands okay we have motion we have a second okay mr bishop we have motion a second roll call please for the motion robert bishop i'm for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman for the motion mary heath against the motion mike schmidt for the motion given update yes the motion passes mr chairman okay thank you sir it wraps up that set of cases as a reminder it's not completely final this will go to the board of county commissioners on may 6th for the transmittal hearing in july 1st for the 2025 adoption so still to be heard in the future by them okay staff we'll move on to the next case please all right good morning ian answer land development staff recommends approval but barely morning oh i thought you were looking okay good yeah we're good then we're gonna roll all right in s land development staff recommends approval of agenda item number eight ldpd 2024-23 a modification to pd-1001 to allow 40-foot wide single-family detached lots within a rural mixed-use development previously approved for 533 single-family townhome units the subject site is located south to county road 640 east of us highway 27 on the north side of crooked lake and south of city lake wales in sections 19 26 and 35 township 30 and range 27 for the record 185 mailers were sent to area property owners six signs were posted and a legal ad was published in polk sun on march 19. staff has logged one public response in opposition to the application this slide shows the future land use map in the area the site is in an agricultural residential rural land use district within the southeast polk selected area plan much of the surrounding development is decades old and includes light industrial and residential uses other than that it's been mostly citrus groves this on the north side of crooked lake designated as an outstanding florida water the site was approved for a rural mixed-use development in 2010 an rmd is essentially a large plan development that combines residential commercial uses and what are mapped rural areas which would but which have available central utilities to support higher density development up to two dwelling units per acre in this instance the approval was for a mixture of 533 single family and townhome units along with commercial entitlements for this rmd there is an improved maximum lot size of 7200 square feet and maximum width of 60 feet these smaller lots encourage compact development near the roadways to preserve a minimum of 67 acres of open space and wetlands north of lake as part of the r as part of the rmd policy in june of 2016 this approval was modified to allow a hotel in the commercially designated portions of the rmd the site was modified again in 2019 to allow a circle k at the northwest corner of the site with the development of this gas station the entire rmd was vested for density unit type setbacks layout and access and the residential portion of the site is underway of development too earlier this year the board approved the cdd for the 533 units and land development staff is currently reviewing the level two application for phase one of the development with 50 foot wide lots this is the old site plan north or is oriented to the left here and as you can see most of the lots are located away from the lake save for a pod to the southeast the site plan can be implemented today without further public hearing approvals this is the new site plan with a very similar layout the number of units are being maintained and there are no further changes setbacks the only difference is with the purple lots which are 50 or 40 foot wide the land development code requires planning commission approval of any lots below 50 feet in width and width so that's really the only reason this development is here today the result in reducing the lot sizes and clustering more towards the interior of the site will allow the footprint of the development to move further north of the lake providing for more contiguous open space passive recreation and floodplain compensation as with the original site plan staff finds this one compatible with surrounding uses the 40 foot wide lots will be towards the interior of the site a 50 foot wide type c landscaping buffer will be planted along the eastern property lines which is well more than standard requirements sidewalks will be constructed along 640 and all these items on the left here will be reviewed as each phase of this development comes to letting development for level two reviews these include capacity terminations wetland delineation floodplain review etc it's the brief impact assessment this is a very large development but approval of 40 foot wide lots rather than 50 foot wide minimum will have little bearing on the impacts of public services lake wales is the utility provider and capacity is available in zone schools roadway networks and utilities again though the unit count and overall development has been vested staff finds no apparent incompatibilities with the 40 foot wide lots at their location within the development and this stays within the intent of the original rmd approval to cluster away from the lake there are enhanced buffering techniques that are already programmed one way or the other staff has reviewed this application for consistency with the new pd and residential standards that have been adopted by the board since this was originally approved and finds it meets these criteria as well the request is consistent with the land development code and comprehensive plan and i will stand for questions mr chairman yes sir so if they change if this is approved goes from 50 foot wide loss to 40 foot wide loss the density is staying the same correct correct if the density is staying the same why is this a model major mod because of the uh 40 foot wide lots our land development code requires pc approval for anything under 50 feet okay okay thank you any other questions for mr nance i have one just regarding the front setback with that 20 foot and we passed some stuff a while ago for the 25 foot front setback is the reason that it's at 20 feet because this was agreed upon back in 2010 or that's correct okay no all right thank you any other questions for staff okay seeing none would the applicant like to come up and present their case name and address for the record please good morning mark stelle uh civil engineer with poles and bennett uh 26 to east livingston street in orlando um our request here today is just to specify the minimum 40 foot lot uh width as mr nance has specified we believe this is consistent with the intent of the original pd uh which instead of speaking to minimum lot sizes really just set a maximum lot sizes and further went on to speak to uh clustering of a higher intensity development um as well as um you know diversity of product uh so just to be clear the intent of this request is not so that my developer can get a higher lot yield using smaller lots we're still maintaining the same number of lots that the pd allows but rather it's just to provide a better mixture of product uh that would afford a a more affordable option for some uh buyers um as well as the you know the market's demand for that sort of thing uh as a as a benefit uh of doing this uh as mr nance has pointed out it has allowed us to pull the development away from crooked lake um providing uh you know maintaining the shoreline and preservation of those more environmentally sensitive areas down there and uh in addition to that uh eliminated a significant amount of uh floodplain impact that was uh anticipated with the uh currently approved pd site plan so we think it's a benefit all around ported as well as to address floodplain environmental presentation which we heard a lot of conversation with regards to that with the previous uh case that was up here so uh any questions i'll be happy to answer those yes sir any questions from the board i've got one just that where's where's the sewer going from what's your closest so the uh provider for this is the city of lake wales um they have a sewer uh force main that is uh running uh it's just uh just west north of hunt brothers road on us 27 okay so we literally just have to take it from our frontage probably about about six seven hundred feet to the uh intersection of us 27 and county road 640. and it's going to be pumped north is that correct correct yeah okay thank you any other questions i think none okay thank you sir uh we'll now open the public portion of this case is there anyone in the audience would like to speak for or against this case name or not just for the record please yeah my name is jim studiali i'm uh familiar with many of you having been the planning director in lakeland for assistant director for 15 years and director for 15 years but i've been retired for six years i work a little bit as an expert witness on appeals to land use and comp plan cases case you just had i was approached in my last couple of months to work that i said this will be so much pain and suffering for my planning commission and for my city it was up here too yes and yes so i want to thank you for being volunteers i think my phone's on silent do you hear that it's just coming through my hearing aids yeah one minute yeah i turned it back on got a new 16 this week you sorry clock's running that clock is ticking maybe we can maybe we can give you an extra i just took a call out in the hall i'm sorry um i won't give you my background except that i've done this type of work a lot and and i don't have a lot of problems with the case i have a lot of respect for you and i have a lot of respect for your staff i said when i came to lakeland someday polk county will pass lakeland the way broward county passed fort lauderdale where i grew up the county has to get more sophisticated more savvy but in the day when i came to lakeland in 78 lakeland was head and shoulders in their development standards um and uh it we would fight in the old days right merle it wasn't merle and i fighting but it was really the politicians it evolved lakeland's still pretty savvy what i object to to cut to the chase because you don't want to have me here we prohibited in in my years we never allowed 40-foot lots because we called them and the planning jargon calls them snoot houses which you see all garage no front door now eric told me at the when i asked him before the meeting or as the meeting started in the hall he said oh no we require some things like you did we used to require that you can see the front door that it be within 10 feet of the front wall because all you get is a garage in front and you see a garage you don't even see the door it's 25 feet back and what i would tell you is we brought a slideshow to the art commission that showed these 40-foot lots 10 years later five years later don't hold their value like 50 and 60 and in that day we had bob adams and and george kind of doing 70s and they were all for it and they went to 50s but i don't think they ever went to 40s i'm retired now i don't think mike hickman's ever gone to 40s so i would argue they're saying oh let us do a good thing go to 40s and we'll get a little further from the lake if they've got to cut some density the argument that this is harmonious with what's surrounding you made a mistake years ago before merle was around with what's called crooked lake park mobile homes rvs we'll do an extra 30 seconds just because you're fine tight lots there's density everywhere around there from lake easy where some people live to oh and i have a property i live on crooked lake south side and i have two boys who live on thornbird road north side where kevin up dyke and a lot of the up dyke family are i've gotten to know sam your dad and i are doing a retreat at holy spirit together and uh anyway it's just i don't see the argument that this is harmonious 40-foot lots don't work here noted thank you sir so i appreciate staff i hate to say something against the staff recommendation but 40 foot doesn't make sense thank you all it's great being thank you staff's taking some black eyes today name and address for the record please how are y'all doing today good how are you just so i'm doing quite well how are y'all doing good so i'm from uh address please oh yes sir 220 north lake shore drive that's part um lake wells actually so i'm from lake wells and i've lived there for 28 years i'm 28 years old so 27 now um almost 28. anyway i've lived on pretty much every region of crooked lake and um this year development proposal is uh just not what we need in the area i'll tell you what it's uh we've already had two that are definitely not the greatest you know they're trashing out the region pretty good but other than that i would say uh you know on behalf of myself and the locals around we would uh like to see ldpd 2024 23 um moved for uh discontinuar please that'd be fantastic as well as any other uh future development permitting that a three mile radius of the lake would also be moved to a discontinuar please thank you um also this is a 268 acre region i don't know if y'all see the map there but that's that's a big space you know 268 acres is no it's no publics you know so anyway it's a it's gonna be a big space upwards of 500 people so our area is primarily single family homes um i live there like i said in a single family home a lot of my friends do too so i just believe having multi-family homes and i think it'll disrupt the culture of the area honestly so and further furthermore you know it is it is set for agricultural use you know and it has been for all this time along with the surrounding areas as orange grows and cattle farms as my mama has she has her own set of cattle so yeah um it's currently cattle right now as as we know our developers know and uh yeah so i'd once again i'd like to go over and say uh the proposed status for ldpd 2024 23 to be moved to uh not only to that discontinue our status but to remain agricultural use thank you thank you sir anyone else in the audience you'd like to speak for against this case okay yes sir name and address for the record please um alex madison um forced eligible uh four star development group 1064 greenwood boulevard specifically you are not the applicant correct just the owner developer okay we should we do on the four star does own the property okay okay go ahead yeah i just wanted to kind of talk about uh uh pud modification um obviously we agree with staff recommendation approval um obviously currently we already invested with the pud for 533 units um townhomes 50s uh and 60s um the reason we did come in here because when we underwrote the property we're under the uh understanding that there was a maximum lot size um not actually a minimum i guess when this pud was done 40s may not have been a standard in the county so i think it was kind of silent as far as uh we were concerned um we feel like the 40s is a natural uh progression for a mixed unit project we have the townhomes 40s 50s and 60s that just is marketable um lot size we do 40s in every one of our mixed use uh projects that we're currently uh owner a developer on in in the um such florida the 40s we feel like are interior to the project they are surrounded by um other 50s and 60s um i i think it it opens up uh an affordability when um there may be some buyers that you know maybe don't want to be a townhome maybe their situation they'd rather have a single family detached home um maybe that you know they still want a three two but maybe not want a larger home um that 40-foot um lot fits that segment um as far as the garage door dominating and you can't see the front door all the product uh that we've um that's presented us via loi of builders that's not the the situation um the the front door is it is within seven feet if not fronting the garage so it's not necessarily set back to some of the other 40-foot product that uh that may be seen in other locations and i'm able to answer any other questions that anyone may have okay any questions mr nickman um did you provide any uh product in your submittal we did not provide any product this middle um four star is actually uh just a land developer okay we actually don't build we actually don't build any homes we work with um many national home builders um around um dr horton mi homes um casa fresca poll tea richmond american so we work uh work with a lot of different builders in our projects there was a product that was in our packet that i thought was it was dr horton i think yeah there there's some elevation drawings in there it was a sample it was but i i sort of assumed that was a product but it is a sample those are those are uh elevations and product that we we have been currently built in and multitude of other okay we don't have an actual contractor then user now so that that is an example of what's in some of our other communities single-story homes uh they're single-story and and two usually two two-story homes that are offered um i think the the majority of the 40-foot products end up being single family i feel a lot of buyers uh for those are in our other communities are usually maybe empty nesters but maybe they have grandchildren and things that come over they don't want to deal with stairs but they want to have a little extra room that maybe a townhome wouldn't wouldn't uh provide all right anything else from the board seeing nothing okay just uh clarify is there anyone else in the audience would like to speak forward against this case before we close the public portion oh no you think you've had your turn sorry yeah we can do that if you is that not okay we'll do your three minutes no break any rule i thought the other guy okay yeah you're fine go ahead that's uh mark armstrong he lives on crooked lake too and all i'm saying is that they've got approval it's set law and we see the density and that's fine but to say this is common in this area where you do 40-foot lots in the county and the reason it's a major modification is it's an urban area this is not urban it's a long way now the great news is defenders of crooked lake which i'm not representing those other people here are um got the crooked lake sewage plant turned into lift station and goes to oakley and goes to lake wales it was polluting the lake but to give this urban density as if it's urban the recent stuff that's on crooked lake closer to weber are large lots which county did a great job on defenders never spoke up because there's track housing southern homes built them but they built little bigger lots little better and all we're saying all i'm saying is do quality and don't shove 40 acre i mean 40 foot wide lots in an area where it makes no sense just in the overall harmony of the area it makes no sense look what's happening all around it except for a mistake that was made in the 50s before zoning over there on the east side on 27 which if you ever drive in there you see it's a code enforcement nightmare so everything else around there has developed well is continuing to develop well with the county staff doing a good job so and this got a lot of approval it's got a lot of entitlement let them have it but let them do 50 foot lots and larger thank you thank you sir okay public portion is now closed applicant has had their chance to respond i'll bring back to the board for discussion and or motion mr chairman i gotta make a couple of comments if i can um we too are developers and been in development business in polk county for over 50 years and the market has changed to where it they want the people that are buying the single family hose houses now unlike mike hitman's type product like the smaller lots they don't they don't want the bigger lots in the market right now with the national builders is 40s 50s and 60 foot lots and if because of what these gentlemen are proposing the density is not increasing whatsoever and you can stand in out in the uh in the roadway of a subdivision and you can have a 40 foot lot and a 50 foot lot and i bet you can't tell me the difference but you can tell the difference in the price because that's what they're trying to do be be uh a little more um competitive if that's the word to be able to to build the home so that's what the the market is the national builders like that and i don't see a problem with this at all the shipman yeah just to uh jim to your comments there uh we actually built a home on crooked lake with a 45 foot wide lot it's three stories high and it was about 3 500 square feet so it was a pretty significant house but first floor all you saw pretty much was that garage so uh but but i really think that it's important to have that menu of options for all the buyers and uh and to ronnie's point you know between a 40 and 50 foot wide lot you know there's not you're still going to see a lot of garage so i don't think that's enough to you know i'm going to support the motion uh for this change any comments mr uptake just just a quick comment and i i was concerned with the with the sewer and i'm glad to hear that it's being taken care of that was a major issue and i know jim and mark out there in the audience would agree it was it needed to be taken care of this has been taken care of and the density's not going up guys i mean i i stand to agree with with rennie i mean 40 50 year this is tomato tomato that's what i had all right thank you if there are no further comments we'll look for a motion mr chairman moved to approve we have a motion do we have a second roll call please mr bishop david dalvin for the motion merle bishop i'm for the motion brucagnini against the motion mike hickman for the motion for the motion mike schmidt against the motion kevin update for the motion the motion passes mr chairman thank you sir next case please all right for the record enhanced land development and this is agenda item 9 ldct 2025 5 a county initiated amendment to land development code section 222 regarding livestock and foul in residential areas for the record a legal ad was published in polk sun on march 19th of no response this is a level four review and staff is seeking your recommendation to the board for hearings set on may 6th and may 20th if you'll all clear out and head to the outside just so we can continue on today thank you all good oh good all right so what's being changed with this amendment is pretty straightforward it's going to adjust the setbacks to 10 feet for structures for the purposes of feeding and sheltering livestock and fowl from 50 feet i'm sorry from from 50 feet to 10 feet in response to citizens input who have felt the setbacks are too restrictive especially on narrower properties second part of this is regards roosters in 2024 alone code enforcement dealt with 225 complaints that had something to do with chickens 34 of these were specific to roosters but most of them had them in addition to other complaints such as free-ranging birds as is the situation now all foul must be kept within fencing on properties under half an acre but roosters will be prohibited on properties under this half acre mark just to note this amendment is keeping other current policies intact for one animals intended for shows and educational groups and projects are exempted this does not affect bona fide agriculture and is not effective in the agricultural residential rural phosphate mining or core future land use districts finally code enforcement can only be initiated by a neighbor within 250 feet of the property line staff has surveyed multiple surrounding jurisdictions and found that roosters are prohibited in all the residential districts and her post setbacks are consistent with those jurisdictions staff recommends approval and i'll stand for questions do you have any questions from board members does the projects for ffa 4-h that kind of stuff um does that exempt roosters yes yep that's fully are not exempt or are exempt from their projects right they cannot have roosters as projects no they can they can't the rules are exempted for ffa educational problems okay okay so all of the rules are exempt how do you how do you enforce that i mean how do you determine whether it's an ffa project or not does the owner have to show some sort of letter or something or i don't know i mean i i could just see a problem with this people call a complaint on a rooster and they say oh it's an ffa project and then you you just say okay i i i'm sure there are membership credentials for the ffa out there somewhere i don't know i just had a car from du every year so i just anticipate but it's more of a code enforcement action if that's it's answer your question well i mean this this is a no-win situation no matter what you do i think uh and i'm just wondering if you're creating more of a an issue trying to say well you're exempt if you're this you're not exempt if you're that well again this isn't creating anything this is current policy this is okay so it's been exempted we're not so all you're doing is changing the this all you're doing is changing the set by you're just setting the setbacks right yep and eliminating roosters on a properties under half an acre residential those two half an acre what's that correct okay yes your point though we have had a codes cases where emotional support chickens have been involved three three already problems the pages of what merle missed in reading was chicken call-ins on code violations that's that's why the packet was so bad i read i read almost all of those and i found five that were upheld out of all of those five and um they're almost every time when they got out there there was there was nothing to be found they couldn't even find chicken so we've got a few karens in the in the county apparently that are fussing and calling in and and uh do we have any do we have anything for false any penalty for false um complaints or anything like that not that i'm aware of that's outside of my lane here but to your point i went through all those two and and yes a lot of times the rooster was no longer there they got rid of it or behind the fence and yeah it's a big hassle for code enforcement they're trying to do something here how long do chickens lay eggs about two years i've heard three and uh well i said about between 24 yes between 24 and 36 months so where do our citizens how can our citizens replenish their flock without a rooster okay every every ffa kid that would come in here could explain that all to you because those eggs are fertilized before the hen even lays them okay so it um we we have no root if if you have no rooster and no capacity to have one where these where are these people going to replant how are they going to replenish their laying hens and i won't even get into the price of eggs and all that kind of stuff but this is this is um we're just talking about setbacks right it's setbacks and the prohibition of roosters prohibition of rooster property under half an acre right so under half an acre yeah i think it's balancing it's it's in the staff report but it's balanced if you have over if you have a half acre over you can have a rooster you have a rooster okay you're an arr you're in core you're in phosphate mining you can have rooster regardless of lot size okay all right mr well i got part of the report i got a page of notes excuse me page and a half of notes from people that call me okay i was the ffa chapter president at lakeland excuse me at one of the schools here in in town for three years and the booster club president and people know me and they were calling chewing my ear up one side and down the other how do we do this how do we maintain a flock and we've got to then go out and buy new hens to lay eggs for ourself and i i don't know who wrote this but i don't think they have much understanding of of chickens and how to how to keep and maintain a flock would you would you prohibit a stockman with cattle from having a bull on a half acre lot i mean you would probably or less just always yeah and this i will just comment this has been well vetted with the board of county commissioners we've had say again it's been well vetted with the board of county commissioners when it came back um so it is limited to half acre or less okay any more questions for staff all right uh staff is the or the county's the applicant so let them explain that to the voters because we're going to get the vote today mr smith all right and uh so we'll move on to the public portion here if there's anyone in the audience you'd like to speak for either for or against this case now's your time we state your name and address for the record yes josh briggs 945 country oaks lane i'm kind of for it but i have more questions about it because i happen to have an agricultural business where we raise and breed highland cows we educate home school groups and everything else so we've got a flock of hens and but we're also governed by like really lax hoa uh guidelines you know it's like basically under the old way this any animal is considered a nuisance so what we've done is we've you know like we allow chickens we don't allow roosters because under the news issue is if they got out in the storm or whatever then they can get out and then you know breed everybody else is flocking then before you know if they're not well kept you know enclosed or anything else and then predators and roosters and everything else and you got a nightmare of a mess around communities so we've kind of you know like put the rules in to where you know it was like we were only maxed out at hens so obviously if you're a responsible farmer you're gonna know those life cycles and replenish the hens you know either purchasing or get a network of other people so we've kind of eliminated that but what i don't understand is the the guidelines for having the roosters at all we we just said no complete you know for that but we're all on five acre lots so is there any rules so your hoa deed restrictions will if they're stricter will um be enforceable this is just um but what the county standard would be if it's approved right but if your h oh go ahead i'm sorry yeah but our hoa we we don't have any enforcement power so then it reverts to county you know so and that's why it's kind of a that's why i'm just trying to get some clarification yeah well we'll note that and then we'll let county staff respond to it rules are private you would have to enforce those through the courts yeah and that's what that's what we're running into so the county doesn't enforce hoa exactly and hoa don't enforce itself so we're kind of all right thanks no we'll let mr nance if he wants to comment on it anyone else in the audience here to speak for against this case seeing none public portion not closed mr nancy have any comments regarding public testimony no to mr briggs point there you know i'll just read the passage here the keeping of mail foul is going to be that are deemed to be a nuisance due to the noise that produces is going to be prohibited and that's going to be on properties under half an acre rl rs rhm agricultural residential rural core and the green swamp and phosphate mining any property there if it's a half acre under they can still have them all right thank you uh with that we'll bring you back to the board for discussion and a motion there we move to approve we have a motion do you have a second second mr bishop roll call please david dalton for the motion royal bishop i'm for the motion brooke ignini that's the motion mike hickman against the motion branny heath for the motion mike schmidt against the motion kevin update for the motion mr chairman the motion passes thank you sir next case please ldcpa s 2024 2025-4 is a small scale conference plan amendment and the next case as well um ending in number six is both being presented by eric peterson are we into the afternoon howdy eric yes we are good afternoon board uh this is a request for a comp plan amendment uh on uh eight and 8.13 acres go from rural cluster center to institutional one 52 mailers were sent to area property owners uh a board one board was posted both on march 18th a legal ad was published in the polk sun on february 11th so far we've had no public response this is the site of an existing uh water treatment uh water treatment plant down in bradley junction which is a good ways as you can see for most municipalities uh currently down here we have a little fire station uh and we need a bigger one in here because we're not only going to improve some of the fire uh fighting apparatus we need overnight stays and we're also going to add an ambulance so we need to move to a bigger site and we just so happen to have county property over here at the water treatment plants so we thought what the best idea would be to change it to institutional one which is a the category in which you can have both water treatment plants and fire stations and it's really good to acknowledge on your future land use map where all our public facilities are it kind of informs the the prospective home buyers and developers of our county so staff finds this is to be a good uh endeavor uh here's our water treatment plant it's been there for a good 30 years or more uh this is where the the facility would be exiting onto old highway 37. uh it would pass a few neighborhoods of course it would give them much better response times on there for fire this is our current facility and you can see how small it is there's just barely enough room for two trucks and we even have to have a have a little carolina carport for another vehicle there's not much area for our firefighters to reside in this facility will be new and improved so with that i'll recommend approval uh it's county water production facility already it should be recognized as institutional on the future land use map this will cure that problem and enable for expansion of county services such as fire protection in the future with that i'll stand for questions thank you any questions for mr peterson move to expedite we're pretty much he's done isn't he yeah all right uh county is the advocate anything anything else to add all right we'll now open the public portion of this meeting is there anyone here to speak for against this case seeing none we'll close the public portion and uh bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion mr chairman move to approve second motion and second roll call please mr bishop david alden for the motion for the motion for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman for the motion and he's can you start over no for the motion mike schmidt for the motion coming up like for the motion motion passes mr chairman thank you sir next case please this may look like i'm starting over but this is a completely different site on a completely different part of the county ldcpas 2025-6 is what we call the calusa fire station this area is referred commonly referred to as the calusa area uh by many uh it was it was featured in one of the last cases as well it is a change from 5.82 acres of agricultural residential rural to institutional x the current uh fire station is too small uh staff is uh recommending a new site there were 19 mailers sent to area property owners on march 18th and one board posted on the property on march 18th the legal ad was published in the polk sun on february 11th so far there's been no response uh the site is located as i said in the calusa area this is a uh rather urbanizing area um it's in between two colleges two colleges that are growing rapidly uh or actually universities uh warner southern is nearby there's also several uh major employers in these these areas uh non-basic if you're into economic diversity uh the chemical containers uh robin builders and eager beaver trailers all uh produce products that are consumed outside the county and generate revenue for us as well as employment oakley transport also transports many places uh outside our even our state so they this is an ever-growing area there's a high dense area of population and as i mentioned to college campuses that are growing so we need to grow the services in this urbanizing area so we've selected this site it's a little off the beaten path but as you can see how the growth is in the area we anticipate that there will be more infill into the area in the future the land uses around it are are mostly industrial in nature and we will be changing it to institutional acts just the same as warner southern college to the south this is the property as you can see it's there's a few single family homes nearby but they're not really very very close uh the uh roadway traffic is very minimal it'll be good to get out it's not too far from the intersection of 27 which will be the primary service uh needs for this area for now this is our current facility as you can see it's like the other one in bradley junction rather small uncomfortable and it doesn't have enough room to put enough vehicles we also want to have ambulance service in this area so we need a little more room for ems staff it should be recognized as a government facility i strongly recommend it it's an urbanizing area and with that i'll stand for questions any questions for mr peterson seeing none uh looks like port county facilities management is the applicant so i think we're good there we'll now open the public portion of this meeting is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak for against this case seeing none we'll close the public portion and if the applicant doesn't have any more to add then we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and our motion mr chairman moved to approve we have a motion in the second roll call please mr bishop david dalton for the motion or bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the heat for the motion mike schmidt for the motion heaven updike for the motion motion passes mr thank you sir next case please eric you left out that the development we just approved was right across the street from that yes it is sir it'll help them greatly with their iso reading yes our next case i'm going to take a little slower we need to pay a lot of attention to this one um you know what i'm going to do then before before you move to expedite i just want to want you to know this is this is a big uh change for uh polk county especially when it comes to um the management of storm water and some of our more marginal areas like the one we were mentioning earlier of the county which have struggle with off-site and on-site flow first off a legal ad was published in the polk sun on march 19th i have not received any formal response from any members of the public uh this is a uh a text amendment to chapters 1 2 7 10 and appendix a to establish uh a map identifying stress drainage basins and improve development resilience to adverse storm events when i say adverse storm events i'm not talking necessarily about hurricanes hurricanes are always going to be difficult but this is this amendment gets a lot at the reoccurring storm events that we have grown to known as normal like a 25-year event followed by a five-year event followed by another 10-year event and another 25-year event all in the same week uh that is july august in in polk county so we're we're realizing that some things are needed first off as i mentioned this uh introduces this stress basin map uh stress drainage basins and this is adopted by reference in this ordinance these are not finite located areas we just know that these are areas that are trouble all rivers um you know all five or six rivers however many are recalling my staff report originate in polk county we we've got the the hillsboro the alifaya the peace even the saint john's river starts here uh so we are the beginning of it and because of that this is where a lot of the water originates and builds up before going downstream not all of those routes to the hillsboro to the alfaya to the peace river are clear there's a lot of things that get in their way so when you have development in these areas even though they're they're in a basin that conceptually could be open they're stressed they they can't perform like a normal open basin so these are the areas where we're targeting in addition to all closed basins which we already have uh rules in our code so these these this amendment only applies to those areas most of this amendment only applies to this area yes some of the things have to do with just storm water in general uh like the next one here stem wall foundations when you get homes that are too close to one another and they have to be elevated whether they're in one of these stress basins or whether they're just in a in a flood zone and they have to get to a certain elevation above the base flood elevation when they're too close together that that angle of the field dirt goes up and it's harder and harder to manage between homes so what this this portion does is it if it if it exceeds a four to one slope you have to go to the stem wall foundation uh for at least a portion of in in order to get that fill grading down to below a 401 slope now we have street flooding problems uh not just because of of hurricanes and things of that nature but because of back-to-back storms and as a result we're requesting um that the level of service standard drainage is a concurrency item level service standard be improved for local roads and rural collector roads uh local roads be improved to a 25 year from a 20 10 year event drainage the it's not affecting the yes changing the elevation changing the structures that move the water off the road and then for all collector roads to go to the 50 year standards now you know collector roads are more on polk county that's a standard that'll affect our future road roadway projects but the local roads going from the 10 year to a 25 year will enable um even in you know some of our worst storm events we you know we experience not the the home was fine the home was above the base flood elevation but the rest of the development was was impassable because the roads were so much lower this will get them up a few more feet so you don't swamp the car trying to get out that's that's the the the essence of this this change i have a question um if i can um so if you if you have if you're building a subdivision adjacent to a local road and and this new criteria is in effect is that development development going to have to upgrade that local road from a 25 to up to the 25 year when you're in a local road you're typical building you know a a development in the interior you're going to have to handle that runoff in your stormwater system right um if you're doing infill on an existing local road just plat you wouldn't you wouldn't have to meet the standard no you're not you're not doing that yeah uh but yeah this this would affect you know new development where you're building new roads not where existing roads exist also well we had to put stress basins in one of these categories and we moved it to the same one with the closed basins because there's not a lot of difference um the finished floor elevations and new developments and flood proofing for commercial sites within the 100 year flood prone areas will uh be required to go recurrent level is one foot above base flood elevation and we're recommending in this ordinance that it go to two and a half feet above base flood elevation also you know our current standards with the rate and volume match for the 25 year uh those those haven't you know those haven't changed but within these hundred year and stressed basins we're going to be making some more improvements and we're also even on the 25 year going to require the developer which is in the code we're just kind of clarifying that they need to consider the 100 year storm upstream when designing their uh the the developments drainage system within it that means even though i'm only required to hold back the the 25 year on my site pre-post what if what if the you know it's a hundred year event and i've got somebody upstream pushing water through my site i need to be able to convey that through the property and and not ignore it existing are you going to have to capture that no you're going to have to convey it you you have to deal with it you have to assume that it's there so it changes it can change the design to how the internal uh development is is uh is you know the system is designed in order to convey that drainage through your site you don't have to capture it you don't have to capture you're capturing yours right right but not theirs but you you have to account for theirs because if it's going through your site and you're only planning for a 25 year you're going to have a lot more water and that could affect how your system holds up to the downstream so you have to get it through the site without it tearing up your system essentially did i get that right yeah thanks i have these engineers back here explain things to me but um i'm trying to to put it in layman's terms because they those guys can be very confusing so i think i usually have to stop them and get them to draw me i understand what you're saying a lot of the flooding that has occurred is because water has come on to site that wasn't engineered for and therefore it didn't they didn't accommodate it flowing through the site and it flooded the development although they could say we engineered this site according to the standards yes but they didn't take into account the water that was coming to them that caused them to flood if they had of taking that in account they would let it pass through and the subdivision ideally wouldn't flood yes it would pass through the match the pre-post right it would pass through the way it did when it was on um yeah you know undeveloped essentially but uh uh the other one takes another step i guess it it elevates it to the next level yes sir but even though you do pre-post you can still flood if you account for the water coming to you to your to your project in a higher event yes um the other thing in those closed and stress basins uh there we're going to have a slightly higher standard for the on-site retention requiring that uh only 80 percent be released after the the storm event and the remainder to be held on site uh you know without being released so essentially you're going from uh more of detention to retention in your pond design so that means bigger ponds yes it will result in bigger ponds slightly bigger ponds but but these these are in in your your closed basins or 40 and your stress basins so currently we're at a hundred year design anyway it it's it's going it's holding back 20 percent or not holding back sorry yeah uh releasing eight only 80 percent after the event and not the entire amount there's a calculus equation to how much that'll be on site depending on the situation so i won't go in how did you come up with those numbers how did i come up with those numbers there those experts my experts back here we've had a lot of experts on on the input into this ordinance this would i didn't dream it up overnight um one thing we're doing is is kind of cleaning up appendix a nobody's using soil cement anymore really and if you are using soil cement when you get a high water table it's going to create problems soil cement is actually a little more expensive than crushed concrete out here uh also uh crushed coquina it's very hard to find and it's not necessarily to keep it that's almost just an ordinance cleanup but the the best material we found is uh um crushed concrete in it when you're dealing with road base in a um uh high water table we the option of soil cement or crushed concrete no no no it it's just coming up with all this well it's kind of cleaning it up nobody's using soil cement or or crushed coquina crushed concrete is the way we want to go it's the ideal so we felt it was a good time to just get that out of the ordinance um we did analysis of not only our our counties in the central florida area alachua duval uh that are you know similar in nature to us but we also did an analysis of our uh cities that are within these stress basin areas of and the most important thing to notice is how many are have policies in there for just the the pre-post volume and rate match most jurisdictions are only doing pre-post rate uh for the first inch and holding about the first inch but uh there are as you can see latua brevard osceola county volusia orange county are all doing some sort of rate and volume match um ours will be as i said our standards when we adopt these will be better than anybody in central florida and uh you know the next step is to get the cities to implement certain things uh only uh dundee and winter haven have any type of similar volume match in their ordinance uh so so you know these it's good that the county has these standards but if it's as you can see remember that map with the stress basins a lot of it's city so we really need to this will be the first step in going reaching out to the cities to say hey you know you should improve your your uh drainage standards in these areas as well um we did just in the stressed areas this is just in the stress and of course it it's currently in the the closed basin you know yeah when you have a closed basin you're you got a lot of how did you determine and i don't necessarily want to link the answer to this how did you determine what's the stress basin if there's just flooding problems and complaints yes well a lot of it's been studied by a roads drainage uh division staff over time many years this stress basin term is not new we've been using it since the 90s i think you can remember it um it we know where the areas are we have a lot of the studies we don't have a definitive boundary to say you're in you're out but we we know where the the troubles uh lie in the ordinance we left open for instance the st john's river we we uh we solved back in 98 most of the problems with the the st john's and we haven't had troubles with with that in in a while but you know we keep the door open the ordinance lists the all the possible uh drainage basins where this might have to be applied for now our map currently just shows the ones i i showed on the screen um all in all getting back to you know who doesn't help it will help lower insurance costs for future homeowners it'll improve public safety response um it it improves drainage capacity that that whole adage when we have a new development and everyone says don't approve this it's going to cause drainage problems well it's actually going to cure some of the drainage problems it's not compensating for everything but you can definitely rule out this new development if it meets these standards is not going to have an adverse effect on this upstream or downstream does this change the uh i forget what you call it the fema flood insurance rating that you get every every foot you go above bfe you get an extra bump on the rating uh this will take it from a one to a two uh to really you know uh there's there's a debate amongst you know in in the state about going from you know going going from one to a two but not only going from one to a two but to a two to the three this this is kind of meeting the halfway mark on that um resiliency too uh when it comes to our public safety vehicles stuff like that uh the better drainage that we can have on on county uh roads is is uh going to pay dividends in the long run it does uh for properties in low and marginal areas it it's going to drive up the cost yeah but you know a lot of that can be compensated with approval of 40 foot wide lots and lower setbacks i can't believe you okay i'm throwing that out are you down there so we can compensate you know there's there's other ways in which you can reach see it's always a good argument um yeah it's a you know in these stress basins so you know ultimately it can have an effect on density but uh well you know that going in to these areas anyway you know that it's going to be hard to engineer and it's just it's raising the bar for the purposes of of public safety uh you know so the the the higher cost and uh higher uh cost to initial home buyers but in the end it lowers their insurance uh improves drainage control public safety things of that nature so there's a lot of benefits to this amendment that outweigh the cost and with that i'll stand for questions any more questions for mr peterson eric i have one the the stress drainage basins map that's going to be on the gis system so you'll be able to look at it yes yeah we're going to incorporate that into the the the the gis system okay um and but but you know it's not a when you look at it if your property's like on the line and you're saying well half my property's in it it needs it's like a wetland boundary yeah you need to go ground truth it okay you know we know it's kind of in that area it's like an unnumbered a zone yeah we know it floods we're not really sure how high it gets but so it needs further study once you get on site but for that uh going into the development you know that you're going to have to analyze a little bit more okay thank you uh port county is the applicant so with that we'll open the public portion of this case is there anyone in the audience you'd like to speak for against this case name and address for the record please 945 control plane joshua briggs i'm for it and i have to commend the county staff and everything else for actually addressing this i've been up here critical of developers and everything for the past eight years and finally we're starting to see changes in the right direction this is important one is because as you saw earlier with the hitchback sassi creek what we got going on is is i highlighted we got all these municipalities that share this jurisdiction and nobody's willing to do any sort of improvements to it because it's both county will say it's hillsborough county hillsborough county will say well swift mud's got does a permitting there's a lot of bureaucracy that gets intertwined and it's allowing everybody to just just kind of kick it down the road and nothing's getting done so but there's development going on and the cost is coming up to everybody the infrastructure you know you guys vote for is getting overrun and you know wiped out so you're spending money on studies and everything else for problems that everybody's contributing to but yet nobody's fixing it so this is the right direction i'm grateful for everybody that's put their hands on this and the engineers and i will support anything moving forward but again you're not going to hear the end of me against development until there is a lot of because there are trends that we see when we live in the area we do see trends and we see trends like you know they people talk about climate change and everything else that's true but what we're also seeing is the shift of water as as development increases we see a shift of water moving up and it's changing the way the water flows and now i've got people that's getting parasites uh there's wildlife that's being uh severely you know killed i mean i've got wood store necrops it shows that organ failures and everything there's so much more going on to this area that needs to be addressed and like i said this is a start and this is going to hopefully start impacting that for better for the county as well as for the people too so thank you thank you sir anyone else in the audience here to speak for against this case seeing none we'll close the public portion eric do you have any comments on the public testimony yes i've got it i've got a question for eric how does this compare to the criteria that you have to go by for the water management district as far as stormwater as you can saw saw and uh if you look through the the comparison tables uh there's so many jurisdictions that just go by the the minimum standards the stormwater standards for the water management district are the bare minimum standards so this is over and above that this is over and above that yes because uh you know polka special when it comes to rain uh we get a lot of it and there are certain areas that that have trouble getting rid of it it doesn't apply now it's not going to apply to half the county uh because you know you're on a citrus you know a sand hill or things like that the northeast it's really not going to have any effect it's mainly in these areas that you see on that map that we really have to exercise a much higher level of caution okay thanks mainly in these areas or only in these areas well mainly in these areas i say because there are some things that pertain to outside the stress basins like the the crushed concrete standard and the okay the the slope um but in these areas is where a lot of our storms and they are there are closed basins there are not identified here right right that that is yeah it um there's a lot of of closed they're fairly small and isolated isolated uh you might be familiar with the one uh most notorious is uh lake seward uh up in the high even though it's the highlands there's there's a pocket there where the water just doesn't go anywhere and we we have to move it out when when we get into these bad storms so you know those are examples where you can be in a be in an open basin but you can be in a closed basin as well i mean the surrounding area can be open but you can be in a closed basin that's why we don't have a map for that that's kind of a site-by-site okay any other for the questions seeing none we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and our motion and just for the record it might kick when it's had to leave the meeting and linda schultz is going to step in so that will take a discussion or motion mr chairman i make a motion that we uh recommend approval of ldct 2025-6 second we have motion in a second roll call please mr bishop david dalton for the motion bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman oh i'm sorry linda schultz yeah yeah i'm just going down the list here breney heath for the motion mike schmidt for the motion linda schultz kevin updike for the motion uh the motion passes mr chairman thank you sir next case please afternoon um andrew grahowski with land development presenting uh ldct 2025-4 this is to increase the public hearing mailer radius to 1 000 feet from the existing 500 feet staff was instructed by the board to initiate a text amendment to chapter 9 section 960 subsection a of the land development code to increase the distance regarding public hearing set forth before the planning commission and the board of county commissioners this change would uh this change would increase the distance um from the 500 foot radius to the 1 000 foot radius move to expedite second second we have a motion and second to expedite is there anyone in the audience here to speak against this case saying none we can expedite all in favor aye aye motion carries okay be a curve thank you need a motion no we just oh i thought he was gonna keep talking oh okay sorry i was looking at my notes okay okay any questions for staff sorry i thought you had more on the on the agenda you're good we get it we know what it is i got a quick question yeah any questions for staff i saw the uh i saw the list of jurisdictions so i guess we'll be the only one that has a thousand feet of the the ones you surveyed is anybody else that does a thousand feet what is this correcting i'm sorry no that's fine what's this correcting um so we were just initially um driven by the board to increase the yeah um to increase the radius from 500 to a thousand and this won't include uh lujo cases um that will stay at 250. what was that the last section you said the one it won't apply to land use hearing officer cases those will stay at 250 feet any questions for staff anymore okay seeing none polk county is the applicant so we're good there we're now open the public portion of this meeting is there anyone here to speak for against this case seeing none we'll close the public portion and bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion to approve ldct 2025-4 second we have motion to second roll call please mr bishop david alden for the motion robert from for the motion brook cagnini for the motion renee heath for the motion mike schmidt for the motion linda schultz kevin updike for the motion motion passes mr chairman thank you sir next case please all right last last case last one up is ldct 2025-6 was allowed in all plats prior to may 20th 19 six and 71 and eric peterson is your planner this is a request to broaden the places where mobile homes can go in the county uh legal ad was uh published in the bulk zone on march 19th so far we've had no uh response from the public on may 20th 1971 we adopted the first ordinance i i don't want to call it a zoning ordinance because it didn't wasn't called the zoning ordinance it was called the land use ordinance and uh that was the first one where it referred to mobile homes it was actually adopted by referendum yes yeah there's a lot of history behind um i could go into depth if you want no first i want to expedite well if you ask me to expedite i'm done all right this expedites future mobile home cases i'm well for it but go ahead uh just to clarify what a mobile home is um modular homes are manufactured housing but they're not mobile homes modular homes are built florida building code that's not what we were talking about those can go the same place um and it's not anzi units it's not trailers park trailers or anything like that where mobile homes have a specific standard set up set forth by hud there's a few extra standards put onto it for the state of florida when it comes to wind load we have a lot of plats that occurred prior to that first adoption of land land use ordinance you you see them a lot when we have mobile home requests you wanted to farms and wood had one in eloise today cave ill waverly old dixie highways those are the kinds of places where they commonly come before you um there's a stigma on mobile homes which is essentially why it's into the code and why everybody has certain districts where mobile homes can go and where mobile homes can't go a lot of it is based on the permanents and you know a site built home or modular home is built on a permanent foundation mobile homes are set on blocks and they're they're tied down now they meet a wind load requirement but it's not a permanent foundation that's the biggest difference between them uh there are other subtle differences in you know side of the walls the the the structural things like um uh the floor joists and stuff like that i can go on but but essentially that's the main difference we analyzed all the counties and realized that polk is special everybody else has distinct mapped areas where mobile homes can go and where mobile homes cannot go polk county is a little different we have kind of an explanation if if you're here if you're there if this happens that happens you can have a mobile home it doesn't isn't set forth in a district in the last five years we've had 117 applications that were applied for um not all of them came to you because there was various reasons 89 of those cases were in plats uh 83 of those cases were in plats older than may 20th 1971. 17 of the cases for some reason or another got withdrawn before they came to you um but in all 66 you approved them you approve the mobile home there's not a lot of criteria as to why a mobile home is compatible whereas a single family home isn't you know from an infrastructure services use it one dwellings similar to another in function they pay different impact fees not a permanent foundation that's really the difference but we targeted this distinction of the the may 20th because they were developments that never intended to discriminate by housing type within them they were single family uh you know developments mobile home or otherwise so you know there there be that that there's some stigma to them for various reasons um we don't quantify it in our code so it's hard to deny somebody uh a a mobile home request because of inconsistency or incompatibility it's also a vital need whether you like them or not they are a vital need of formal housing to many members of our community they are safe there is not the chance that the mobile home is going to fly off and roll onto your house next door that's the that's uh not not the case anymore mobile homes standards today for placement are much higher than even site built homes were back in the 70s so um so there's not an issue of safety anymore these developments like i said were never never intended to separate them it was the county's regulation at the time that started to separate districts for mobile homes and districts without so for that reason we feel it's safe to use this as one of the criteria when somebody wants to place a mobile home on a property that if you're in one of these older subdivisions pre pre night may uh 20th 1970 then you're you're able to have a mobile home without any other further questions as to whether there's another mobile home next door or whatnot with that i'll stand for questions i've got a question uh so the the 50 rules out the door this is the new sheriff in town that is correct the the 50 of the plat rule which is the common case every one of these 66 cases there was a percentage of mobile homes within the development it just wasn't 50 percent rule would still apply if you want to do a mobile home in a subdivision that was planted after after yes it would still apply because those those we we couldn't discern and say well maybe that was what was intended i'd have to go back to the zoning ordinance and say was it an sf1 or was it next question yeah was it an sf1m but you're saying most practically all of the ones that we that the planning commission has considered were in plats that were prior to 1971. that is correct we had only one that was de novo but both you and the board found their objections uh you know not substantial i was in bradley junction by the way just to point that out if single family was the original even before 71 and it's been removed or destroyed or torn down or whatever so we can replace it with a mobile home that is a vital need in this county that's where most of our our requests come from it's in in inward in eloise there might have been a a former home on there that that home was dilapidated demolished and they're coming in to replace it you guys in the uh the construction industry know the that there's such a high level of fixed costs involved when when building on one site versus building in a larger development all about cost so yeah so it it's it puts a very high bar for someone to infill development in these areas so having the mobile home option lowers that uh and this amendment you know though you know the 66 cases they paid anywhere from 600 to 1200 to come before you to get your approval this would eliminate that at least uh ability and the three month delay and give them the ability to go ahead and permit in those infill areas blanket approval blanket approval especially areas like inwood kayville bradley junction waverly uh florence villa those are those are the areas where we get the most requests juanita any more questions staff seeing none uh polk county is the uh applicant there so we'll now open the public portion of this meeting is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak for or against this case seeing none close the public portion and with polk county being the applicant we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or motion move to approve second we have a motion to second roll call please mr bishop david dalton for the motion bishop i'm for the motion brooke agnini for the motion brunny heath for the motion mike schmidt against the motion linda schultz for the motion we have an update for the motion motion passes mr chairman thank you sir and we have a comp plan update ms bennett short okay can we start the three minute timer yeah yeah no one minute yeah come on now i want to hear this is important stuff it's short so my name is shauna bennett the land development division i'm here to give you a conference plan update so just we've had a i told you a little bit about last time we had a change in the process we started last year our public workshops during the fall last year now we're here trying to prepare goals policies and objections uh now we're having to do an ear based analysis that will still come to you in june and july to the board of county commissioners starting in may we're going to start um doing uh the new committee and i'll talk about that in a little bit just a reminder of some of the public interest we've received and we finalized the ear based analysis of carrying capacity to accommodate the projected population of 250 000 new persons in unincorporated polk county by 2050. we do not have to do any land use changes to accommodate that population so if you take the maximum density that's allowed in those land uses that we have for residential you multiply that and it comes out with population that we can handle without any land use amendments some of the focus that we will be talking to the committee about are listed here development area expansion criteria update on location criteria for existing land use designation and transfer development rights the pulp green incorporating the florida ecological greenways network we're going to propose two new land use classifications for adaptive reuse and conservation adaptive reuse um when the comp plan was adopted in 1991 the idea is the non-residential uses would go away well they haven't especially the ag buildings that we see in unincorporated polk county they're not leaving uh so we need to i think accommodate we we've decided we need to accommodate that make that recommendation conservation land use uh with lots of discussion with parks and rec and and other environmental groups the conservation land use we think might best handle the um environmental lands properties like the circle bar b and the property they just recently purchased by lake marion rather than every environmental lands property being a recreation and open space and kind of making people nervous uh addressing more about warehouse compatibility uh we want to discuss the parks and rec level of service with the committee whether we need to separate that out from just incorporating all passive and active or separate separating that out um we've heard people about restricting development in the wildlife corridor allowing density flexibility in redevelopment areas some more intergovernmental coordination transportation um some transportation issues in terms of context classification and our transit development plan bringing that into the transportation element uh trying to determine how do we amend our new community selected area plan policies and addressing private utilities now this is based on what we've heard from the public based on conversations that we've had with the board of county commissioners it'll go to the committee which is listed here uh the board county commissioners appointed them just yesterday uh there's a 15 member board and we'll start meeting in may and we'll take about one or two elements per month till the end of the year and um um and then we've got our listening sessions in april uh on and lindsay thank you lindsay for emailing that a month ago to you all for those dates so uh and the idea is you'll get the year-based amendments but then these other amendments that the committee will hear you'll get them may june next year and what we'll end up doing i think when we present it to the board is that based on the listening sessions and the workshops that we had with the public they had a certain set of policy changes the committee might have altered them in some way as part of their recommendation and then your recommendation might alter that as well so the board may hear three recommendations and then they get to choose what they want to do i've been asked about the listening sessions uh interesting choice of words listening sessions and that seemed to generate some questions from people is the general public able to speak at these listening sessions or are they just listening to our presentation or are we listening to their comments which we're listening to their comments okay but we will start with a slight introduction at the start of it at six o'clock but then i think we're going to have about seven tables and they'll each capture those different subjects that i just showed you in different ways we'll have some of the pot what the policy direction is we may in some cases we may have the verbatim word structure of what it's going to be in some cases just maybe more of a theoretical and then we're going to record what what their concerns or if they support it they don't support it at those listening sessions good good that's it anything else all right we need a motion to adjourn so move second motion second all first say aye aye aye motion carries thank you thank you chandra