meeting of the pope county planning commission to order normally we have a work session uh at 8 50 10 minutes before our regular meeting but we're having some technical difficulties this morning and i believe we're pretty much set right now so we're going to go and take a few minutes before the actual meeting starts to ask our staff to go over any agenda items that we need to be aware of any changes to the agenda that we need to be aware of okay good morning no changes to the published agenda just a few notes two cases they're highlighted in blue up there have been advertised but were continued to july 8th this is ldcu 2026-3 the agricola firearm range and ldpd 2026-4 the berkeley crossing pd again these were advertised but they were continued prior to going onto the agenda there are cases highlighted in yellow up there that will be presented together those are the gray line cases agenda items number one and two agenda items number seven and eight the shimmering drive cases and 18 and 19 regarding any lake estates and that's the only notes on the agenda okay thank you um could i get a roll call please merle bishop here cindy jenna masso here brooke agnini here mike hickman here angel sims here julie jackson here linda schultz here kevin updike i'm here we have a quorum thank you so with that i'll ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag next on our agenda is approval of the minutes from the may 6 2026 meeting uh hopefully you've had a chance to look these over any move to approve motion second second to approve all in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you and now ask our uh attorney to read our procedures and instructions to the audience thank you mr chair the office of land development will introduce the case and disclose any responses to the notification which were not already provided to the planning commission in their packets the 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 matter expedited hearing procedures may be used by the planning commission under the following circumstances one there is no opposition to the case present at the hearing two the recommendation of the office of land development is for approval and three 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 time for a de novo hearing if a party decides to appeal a decision made by 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 to 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 the de novo hearing as organized opposition you must either file the application for de novo hearing or receive written authorization from at least five entities or individuals to speak on their behalf against the application and they 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 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 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 second i should second to approve all in favor signify by saying aye aye 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 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 staff presentations citizen testimony may be competent substantial evidence so long as it is fact-based and may include testimony regarding subjective matters that do not require expertise such as aesthetic and compatibility of a project with the surrounding neighborhood however popularity polls petitions testimony that is hypothetical speculative based on fear or consists of generalized statements that do not address the land development criteria are not competent substantial evidence for example fear that the project will cause increased traffic or crime is not competent substantial evidence lastly when expertise is required for technical issues like traffic engineering drainage wetland impacts school and utility capacity light and noise pollution or the application's impact on property values citizen 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 i should have uh in the beginning reminded everybody please uh be sure that your uh smartphone cell phone is uh turned off turned to the silence with that i will ask staff if you'll present the first case please first case is ldcpas 2026-10 it's a conference of plan amendment it's also related to the next case ldct 2026-7 which is a text amendment to the land development code mark bennett is the case planner and the staff report application and other items submitted are submitted are submitted into the record and are included in the software that you use to review the agenda thank you good morning for the record mark bennett with land development presenting the green line x project as shonda just mentioned there'll be two items related with uh this project and we'll need i'll present them as one but we will need separate actions for both the comp plan amendment and the land development code text uh the requests here are to change 3.181 acres from residential suburban to industrial and then a text amendment to the land development code to provide for additional stipulations and provisions regarding the intensity of the proposed industrial activity at the site as far as notice requirements go 14 mailers were sent to area property owners on may 15th um one board was posted on may 18th and legal ad was published in the lakeland where even sun on may 20th um no response from the public staff does recommend approval the location of the site is on state road 60 you can see on the map on the left uh north of the city of mulberry you can also see the hillsborough county line as a reference point um and then the aerial on the right shows a more specific location uh basically just south of uh polly creek and the bridge there if you're familiar with that area excuse me this is a more uh close-up detailed uh view of the site outlined in black um i'm showing going to show three or four aerials of the site to uh provide some perspective uh this is a view looking northwest um at the site shown in red i highlighted the south lakeland air park park excuse me and i'll explain why further in the presentation here's another view of the site and this view in particular shows the teco easement that runs through the site there as i mentioned earlier the requested changes from residential suburban to industrial you can see the surrounding land uses there a linear commercial industrial to north residential to the behind the property basically also as part of the comprehensive plan amendment we do have text this text basically is an um is put in the comprehensive plan to make reference to the fact that there's additional text that's in the land development code that deals with regulating this site the next set of slides is in regards to the proposed land development text this slide here shows a summary of the proposed text it covers permitted and prohibited uses outdoor activities signage landscaping and some additional site development standards the proposal here is that any structure would be limited in height to 50 feet our industrial land use does not have a height limitation but the applicant proposed that and staff definitely um concurs with that provisions also on location of loading unloading areas restrictions on the bays loading bays and outdoor lighting with um some examples of fully sheeted excuse me fully shielded lights which minimizes glare and and uh visual pollution there some of the reasons oh i'm sorry uh yeah also included is a site plan uh the key parts of this site plan is that shows wetland areas and also um it's not shown here but there are significant floodplain areas related to polly creek it also shows the potential buildable areas um and uh the access point which i'll discuss briefly further three main components that were um related to or involved with coming up with the additional um restrictions and stipulations uh prohibited uses the there's a list of prohibited uses here um generally as you're familiar some of these uses can be very intensive in nature in terms of impacts and activities these would be prohibited um also included was general manufacturing um that that means by implication light manufacturing would be allowed basically a difference between light manufacturing and general manufacturing is that light manufacturing is conducted inside um and that any activities um don't happen or occur or like it says are detectable beyond the property line in contrast general manufacturing has potential potential for greater nuisance to significant properties and can be conducted outside and enclosed or partially enclosed structures um i also included um another excerpt from the applicant's narrative and a chart here out of our minor traffic study that lists the manufacturing category and i put that in there because one of the restrictions that we also are proposing here is a limitation on the amount of vehicle trips and and let me explain a little further here the big square here is an email that staff received from dot dot express concerns about access as of now the site has a structure a house on it it's access via an easement here um dot has concerns about using the full median here because there are space uh spacing standards that would not be met so to try and address dot's concerns our proposal was to limit any activity on the site to uses that had a lower trip count daily and peak and that's shown in in here um the the layout layout of the site is such that it sort of makes sense to make sense to have the access point here at a full median opening but nevertheless the ut express concerns about spacing standards so to address their concerns still allowing development of the site um we're proposing that there be limitations on the amount of daily and peak hour trips while you're there i hate to interrupt you but i want to leave i'm on a roll before i ask my question so what is the spacing concern is it that easement why what is this what is it related to in terms of their spacing concern i'm zooming in because here's the spacing standards basically half mile full median opening directional quarter mile and i don't think that meets it right now by how much i i don't i don't know but i'm i'm missing something and you're probably explaining it right and i'm just missing it so it's a gotta it's a spacing problem from the access point to what the median opening i don't understand what this what is the distance from the access point to what yeah and bear in mind you asked me to try and explain do two rules here but um you know they regulate the distance between access you know median opening okay and the gist of it is that they're saying that this area doesn't meet those standards so it's their median openings right okay right so this applicant didn't have anything to do with that exactly the dot's got a problem with their medians okay i'm with you now okay and if i may shonda bennett with london division i think part of the other issue is that the current access of from and the use of the property is residential right it's already not meeting spacing i got you so if we change it to industrial increases this the trips coming on and off so we're making a problem more problematic to me um and i know this isn't really a discussion part but it's just popping in my head it wouldn't to me it wouldn't matter so much the timing it's the type of vehicle that's going in and out if we're talking about spacing you know a prius is going to take up much less space than you know a giant dump truck that's coming in and out of spacing it's not really about the time of day it's the type of vehicle that's coming and going no okay i think they're both relevant because if a site has higher trip rates you could have extension of turning cues that make the length problematic regardless of the type of vehicle so it depends on i'm sorry i should open this up but i didn't you got 19 cases today i know i just i was just not understanding the spacing i just want to do that before you left this area so let's let mark finish yeah and and on one hand i get what dot saying on the other hand gee whiz there's a full median opening right in front of the site so right and and one of the criteria in our comp plan for industrial is access median openings so nevertheless dot raised the concern we felt the best way to address it is try and limit the potential amount of traffic coming in and out and we're suggesting doing that by addressing trip rates so um so the last item and the reason why i mentioned the south lakeland air park earlier and you can see it on the aerial there is that this site um although it's not in the approach zone south lakeland air park and you can see that drawn here it is in what's known as a height notification in-flight visual interference zone um the reason why this was added is that it's our understanding that there may be manufacturing of drones at this site and i'll defer to the applicant later to to clarify and explain that further um our concern was that okay if there's going to be drones if there's going to be testing if it's going to be near the air park um how's this going to be addressed um for those of you not aware i used to work in the cell tower industry and i do know that faa regulates only at 200 feet and above which is why there's a bunch of 199 foot towers around but um nevertheless we recognize that may be a potential issue so our proposed solution is that if in fact they do conduct you know manufactured drones and do wish to do testing there we're asking that they create um a testing operations plan for staff to review and approve as part of a level two so um impacts we don't foresee any impacts on the site uh there are some environmental concerns that was shown earlier as part of the site plan wetlands floodplains with uh pulley creek there but the site plan which would be binding conceptual but binding in nature um will will address those environmental concerns so uh to summarize our justification for approval we have location criteria for industrial there are industrial uses in the general area with properties east and southeast of the site like i mentioned earlier one of our criteria is in direct access to a full median opening for those reasons we consider it compatible with surrounding area and consistent with the comprehensive plan and with that i'll stand for any questions thank you any questions of staff okay if not i'll ask the applicant if you'd come forward please okay yep good morning for the record tom woodch tdw land planning i have a presentation it's very short but just provides a little bit better photos of what we're talking about to help guide the commission i'm not sure where uh it's located there's a lot of these it is yeah it's here somewhere uploaded earlier this morning appears that it may not have made it hang on just a moment please there it is thank you for your patience okay again tom woodch tdw land planning consultant for the property owner applicant here mark's done a great job outlining what we are intending to do we've been negotiating with staff and understanding what is the key needs for the site we've gone through numerous initial site plan renditions to deal with a lot of the things you've heard we've also held a pre-app with fdot something you don't usually hear from a comprehensive plan amendment applicant i'm sure so we were going down all the different avenues to make sure that we've covered all the issues mark's got a great list of conditions that we provided and he revised and through the sets of revisions we've come up with a great solution they found that it is consistent with the comp plan and land available code i just want to address a couple of things we have a mixture of industrial manufacturing warehouse salvage and commercial in around the site so while this is lcc around us the closest development and i'll show you a picture here soon but this is a welding shop next to us some light industrial almost warehousing across directly across the roads if you take what's directly adjacent to us uh in within the lcc it's actually quite compatible just because it's linear commercial corridor i want to explain those uses directly to have you understand what's actually who our neighbors are and of course some of the salvage up across to the north or northeast of us or northwest of us we have sufficient infrastructure we've worked through dot back and forth uh there's been no permit issue there's been no final determination this is all in ongoing discussions the information that you have here today is illuminating to a lot of the things that we've been going through but it's in no way restricting us uh it is correct that we have a full meeting opening at this time with deceleration lanes it's very safe to get in and out of the site and that is the reason why you see the location on our site uh where it's currently proposed uh we have wetlands on site we have access challenges that we're working through we have a power line easement cutting straight through the property so uh for this property to be usable for really anyone besides the single family home that's currently on it it's very challenging and so we would have to go through all these discussions and have to bring this forward to any commission to say hey we've addressed these one by one and have a conditional cpa that was the best route to say what's the best fit for a reuse a development of the site next to the uses that i've outlined to you all so we've buffered and designed it to be appropriate to get the staff's approval i want to show you uh quickly this is that meeting open a little bit closer this is on the ground this is looking on the right looking west within the desal lane and then imagine yourself turning to the left across the median so that's what put the pictures in this order now you're looking straight kind of west uh northwest into the site within the meeting open so you're standing here and you turn to the left and that's the view of our site uh we tried as best we can to avoid wetland impacts some of the challenges were that there was mention of an easement uh there is uh no desire excuse me of the property owner who currently owns that driveway to allow us access so that was our first step to check with dot and they asked us to request that from that property owner being declined that of course dot will issue us a permit somewhere here the best most logical place right now is located right in front of this median opening whether it is directionalized which means they take it from being wide open as it is to um westbound left in and eastbound you know left in across so it looks kind of like a uh you know passing cars but there's a raised bit of concrete that's what a directionalized median is they might do that they might close it we don't know there's nothing different they might leave it it might be 10 years it might be five years it might we don't have any idea so i think it's just best to keep that in mind when we talk about the access to say okay we are in front of it now we have the most ideal access with existing turn lanes and uh it's the safest location to put a driveway at some point if something changes in the future we will adapt and the second way that we address that is like mark said through a trip count to say well just keep it you know lower trip count that keeps it safe as possible that fully meets our use again this is a conditional cpa so we've taken an industrial category and we've really trimmed it down down down down down to a very specific set of uses that's allowed and even further so with what mark has presented as a limited limitation on the trip count so it says you can have those types of industrial uses minus the list that he showed you in the appendix that's provided as the text amendment as well also conditioned with that trip count so we're going to be fine with being compatible with the infrastructure that's available both now and in the future i just want to make that clear one other thing that we have i wanted to show you with some of the adjacent uses to give you an idea of what it actually looks like around here so you can say well this is residential it's it's not it's clear we are the last parcel at the end between pulley creeks wetlands and the across the street the size more storage to our immediate south is the welding shop that i mentioned and this is that access drive that they wanted us to utilize obviously there's you know there's it'd be better to space us further away but also this is for residential use back and behind as you go down that access area this is what it looks like so in terms of compatibility we're going to be right next to something that's part of the welding shop so there's not a residence even as you go back behind the welding shop this is the back of that building so this is the building their outdoor storage that they have an old wall that's kind of screaming some of the outdoor storage but that'll show you what's right across from what our building is going to be so it is compatible there's only just space for that little driveway in between us so you can't build a residential house for example anyway it's linear commercial corridor within that driveway within that welding shop and then this is a ground shot of the power line easement running through our property our access will come from the right there is a small wetland impact that is allowed through the comprehensive plan for access that's clearly stated in the comprehensive plan we've tried to avoid everything else we can by trying to utilize the existing driveway we were not granted that and frankly for the use that we have we think our separation of our driveway further to the west is probably safer more ideal and of course we'll mitigate for those impacts and make sure that's the least amount possible we must have gone through 10 more i don't know i've lost count of how many rendition official renditions of this generalized layout uh to get it just right so we stay out of the wetlands as much as possible as you notice it's just for the access drive and i want to point out even the curved access is because you know i'd said let's keep it let's curve it as soon as we can get that drive and not straight into the site coming straight through here we even you know are staying out of this little triangle of wetlands to try and keep it the tightest we can and preserve as much of that existing uh vegetation and wetland area uh the what the power line easement is shown in the middle that big cut through the center and then our building envelope essentially is what you see outlined in black the reason why it might be a little interesting with this notch the section 220 compatibility for setbacks from residential we can show you that we're going to meet that requirement and we've gone through all those in our site plan proposals and renditions read those with staff and show that we can meet all those even land development code standards down the line so this is a very well planned out uh product that you have in front of you and the process that we've gone through to work with staff has been extensive and very detailed to make sure that we are mitigating or staying away from the issues we need to stay away from dealing with the ones that are most important and then conditioning to make sure it's going to be a good fit for what's around us the only last thing i would say is that we had uh some discussions with staff relating to general manufacturing um we are an enclosed building we're proposing you know a metal building we've we've conditioned ourselves to be only 50 feet in height whereas industrial normally like mark said can go as high as you want we've done a lot of things to condition the overall look and feel of the site to be a great fit and our doors will remain closed we're going to be doing the manufacturing inside we spoke with mark about general manufacturing and thought well with all the conditions that we have in place we are light manufacturing what we what we develop is high-tech manufacturing we don't anticipate anything right now on the radar screen but we just after speaking with them we said that it might be good to allow us to go ahead and have general manufacturing provided it can meet all the other conditions the trip count everything else and the fact that we have to keep our doors shut and the building low and so it's going to put us in a small box if there is something that comes available that is ancillary to our light manufacturing that kind of bumps into general manufacturing i would hate that to be a snag for my client and his process his manufacturing process clearly he is well within light manufacturing but uh in discussing with all the conditions that we have in place we just thought can we remove that because we feel the protections are there we're not going to be doing outdoor things we're not going to be creating smoke dust noise vibrations this is high-tech electronics um you won't be able to hear it so we said can you please consider uh removing the general manufacturing prohibition from that list of conditional uses that's just the one thing i would i think ask um perhaps to be covered and i'll thank you for listening i'll stand for any questions any questions of the applicant i curious why industrial if there's welding in lcc right next door is that not does that not non-conforming not conforming right like i mean welding to me seems industrial yes and there are a lot of uses uh especially in willow and all throughout the county uh within lcc it almost functioned as a flex fix all in some cases because it was what is the best we don't necessarily want to you know put this land use in that land use in this land use this is kind of all kind of a commercial corridor and back a long time ago they referenced as commercial as everything that wasn't residential i think the mindset was different and so it was kind of a fix for everything that shops clearly been around for a while so it would be if it's legal non-conforming not legally non-conforming it's not from my decision to make but that's likely how that came about and there's probably others and other lccs nearby that aren't a great aren't a perfect fit but have just been there for very long if i may offer expanded answer that there are clusters of lcc that are meant to be industrial and those can be have infill uses new uses but lcc can't be expanded linearly so in this case lcc is not an option for us to recommend approval of based on the location criteria for lcc if it was further up on 60 that we can do infill of lcc but that's not an option for us so they had to pick something else that could be located and but there is significant residential nearby which is why you have the recommendation before you to make it more like business park center than industrial well that that's concerns me being industrial being in an environmentally sensitive parcel there um and with the residential immediately on the other side of the wetlands um future of what industrial could open it up if we change this to industrial now with just light manufacturing doesn't that make it an easy gateway to expand that and ask for removal of those restrictions in the future um i'm not sure if that's for me but i can um which is partly why we're requesting that general manufacturing be prohibited um but how easy is it to remove that like they'd have to come through a level change that zone well certainly we do we do think about that but we also think about um it's got a power line easement through it um and the residence has been vacant for some time now so i'm not sure how viable the residence is either there's really no other land use that we can think of that could fit on this site to allow some non-residential use so this was our best option but certainly if they wanted to um add if the board approves the text amendment as proposed and they wanted to add general manufacturing back they'd have to come through a level four review go back to the planning commission and the board of county commissioners to have it added or have it amended yes exactly and these conditions they go into the land development code it's not it's like shonda said that's why it's a it's a level four review they go into these documents so you can't just come through and scrape it away or quietly talk to somebody or whatever that that's not going to happen it has to come through the full process get the full review and then with these exact questions and concerns people would say well now you're allowing this this and this where we thought you weren't going to do that um and and again through the text that we've proposed we said hey these are things you can't do you know we can't do all the uses that uh mark has shown you on this on the um list of uh text that he's provided and there's also you know lighting limitations and so many things that you know keeping the doors closed and so many things that keep this as like you like point out as the size more across the street is the the bpc look and feel we should be something that looks and feels kind of like this and um you know that's that's basically what you should be expecting is something like that it's all indoors it's a metal shelf from the outside we're going to be behind the wetland there'll be some of they'll be able to see and we'll have some buffering up front which they don't that was built a while ago and doesn't have a type a buffer across the front which will require to put buffering in there uh so but you know everything you see in the bottom left will stay so the building will be tucked back in there and on the on the left of uh of where you see this bottom site so somewhere over in this side of the site so who with the dot concerns with the access who monitors or manages those trip restrictions we're going to be required to issue a full permit for our driveway and um at that time we'll be providing dot with additional data to show what we do and what we are before they issue us a driveway permit so we won't we won't be able to do really anything you see here until we get those permits in place so it's very important that they we get that full review we've initiated that process now so that we can be aware of what's you know what we'll have to be considering and staff has been coordinating with the ot we've all been coordinating together on this uh so the three uh three parties the us the applicant county staff and fdot have been working together to make sure it's a good fit and we have the calculations presented to you all that is the result of that so it's your request that we you know if we approve this that we remove remove item well item 3h which is general manufacturing from the prohibited uses under section one appendix c yes and and with regards to the drone usage and that there aren't any this is an unrestricted faa zone according to my client who works extensively in this field and uh so we're we're confident that we're not going to have any conflicts or issues with the airport that was presented to you because that's not a an airport that has the type of restrictions of your typical airport where you'd have those sorts of drone restrictions how about the neighborhood next door are they going to have drones tested above their homes no and you know speaking with my client this isn't we're not flying at 300 feet and you know that's that's everywhere else you go nowadays drones are all over the place we're going to be keeping it i mean our building is 50 feet high are we even going to be higher than 50 feet so there's yeah we'll need them to come up for it but yeah so we're going to stay over our property won't be flying over i'll just reiterate what he said won't be flying over the neighboring properties mainly in our discussions we're going to be staying below that 50 feet there's a chance that we will go higher but it's going to stay over our building footprint and it's going to be very infrequent if that occurs and i just want to emphasize the point that to address those concerns that's why we're asking for a testing operations plan for review and approval to understand what may occur make sure the impacts are addressed so that was the rationale behind that but while you're up there mark what is your thought or opinion i know you're recommending that general manufacturing be included as approved at use i guess elaborate a little bit on his request to remove that briefly sure um i guess the best way well two points one general manufacturing allows for activities and partially enclosed structures as per the definition secondly the intent here was to minimize any potential impacts so we thought the best way of doing that was to just not allow it the definitions between light industrial and general industrial um you know focus on the structures focus on impacts doesn't really address uses in other words um there's there's really not a difference between what's allowed in light in general it's more how it's done that being in the structures and the off-site impacts so best answer i can give you as to why we felt even with the additional restrictions and requirements it was just best to limit it to light and not allow general to offer there are some homes adjacent to this property so general manufacturing could have noise and vibration and odors off-site and we didn't think that's appropriate is the size of the proposed building is that going to require any um infill being have that building built up significantly with it being so close to that floodplain and wetland area that it could potentially push water into the neighborhood on the other side of the creek and i'll let the applicant speak further but my understanding is that the site is not is outside the floodplain area so um and even if it were the building would have to be i think one foot of base flood but um my recollection is that the floodplain is more over here so they're in other words they're staying out of the floodplain altogether tom if you want thank you and as part of that um as part of the multiple iterations that we've done on the site we've kept everything out and away and above and we've also been designing storm water to accommodate the footprint and the parking open of the building and the parking uh that we have that would be considered you know the impervious areas of the site so we've we were neck deep in all those calculations and feel confident that we've got more than enough the orange area that you see is that's not we're not developing all that that's kind of like a building envelope um or an area that would that could fit some things including drainage but we're not even you know anticipating to use uh all that for building area of course we'd have retention to accommodate so um we feel that we've got plenty in in place and plan to accommodate what we're proposing um and in terms of the the general manufacturing that was that was our request you know we have a lot of conditions in place uh to safeguard against the noises and lights and vibrations and things of that nature we also understand staff's concern it was our intention to just have a window open in case that came open we didn't want to have a hard door slammed so if as conditioned it can be accepted that's great um you know we would we would prefer that but it's not you know we're we've been working with staff for a long time to come to where we are and that was one of the things we discussed during our meetings and so this uh we're still kind of requesting that is i guess i wouldn't bring it up so um are there any other questions for myself or any other questions seeing none i'll ask i'll open the uh meeting up to uh any public comments and ask is there anyone present that would like to speak in support of this application seeing none is there anyone present who would like to speak in opposition to this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for any discussions further questions or a motion i'll present a motion for ldcpas 2026-10 for approval second motion second to approve and just for clarification that does include the staff recommendation that keeps the general manufacturing as a prohibited use subsequent ldc oh okay you're right you're right you're right i'm sorry okay motion uh in a second to approve the um the application all in our roll call please cindy jenna masso approved merle bishop approved brooke agnini approved mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson against the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes okay the next case um i don't believe we need to i mean you've already presented the information so the next case is ldct 2026-7 um any discussions on this do i have a motion we do still need to have a public hearing oh yeah you're right anyone present who would like to speak for or against the text amendment for this case which is ldct 2026-7 seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for a motion chair i move to approve ldct 2026-7 second and that does include keeping the uh restriction on general manufacturing yes okay roll call please cindy jenna masso for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case thank you next case is ldcpal 2026-4 it's a large-scale comprehensive plan amendment mark bennett is the case planner and also need to note that the staff report ordinance and applications submitted have been submitted into the record and are attached in the agenda software you use to review the cases thank you good morning again for the record mark bennett with land development presenting ldc pal 2026-4 known as the organic matters comprehensive plan amendment the request is to change 71.26 acres from business park center to industrial for property located in the rural development area regarding notice requirements 13 mailers were sent to area property owners on may 15th seven boards were posted on may 18th legal ad published in the lakeland winter haven sun on may 20th no response from the public and staff recommends approval a site is located generally south of the city of bartow on us 17 the aerial on the right shows the general location of it between us 1798 old homeland road uh homeland is uh located here and uh this white area here is uh the mentremont uh facility if you're familiar with that uh this is the current land use map as you can see there's industrial to the north and south of the site also within the city of bartow the property is designated as clear springs industrial um property to the west is within the city is um clear springs agricultural and does have um uh solar farm here so as as i showed earlier there are industrial uses to north and south and this is the proposed change to land use map and that the site would be changed to industrial for approved uh aerial photo site is currently vacant and here's some aerial photos showing the site it does have a i'll call it an access strip to austin phillips lane which then leads out to a um full median opening to um us 1798 and just like the previous case one of the things we look at when designating uh land for industrial is uh access points view of the site looking to the south east and west as far as um impacts on infrastructure um we do not anticipate any adverse impacts and uh our justification for approval surrounded by industrial uses and property designated industrial has direct access to an arterial road access to a full median opening um compatible with surrounding uses and therefore is consistent with the comprehensive plan and i'll stand for any questions thank you any questions staff just curious did you get any comment from city of bartow um yeah i reached out to them got a copy of the land use map um i their only comment was that even though it's in their water sewer and electric service area they do not have sewer um yeah email sent to bartow playing staff wednesday april 15th site is in the city of bartow water sewage electric service area but only electrical service is available mark is there a user at this point um i that's i don't believe so my understanding is they have the property for sale and that's this is the purpose of the action to facilitate the future sale there's no further questions i'll ask the applicant if he's present to come forward please you need to come forward but if you're if you're here for public comment i'm going to open that up in just a minute i'm asking the applicant if he's present to come forward and if he has anything to add to the staff report state your name and address please this one's fine ronnie baron organic matters i'm the general manager and i've been general manager for the past 28 years and organic matters been in business and for 28 years and we didn't just put lipstick on this thing to sell it it's been for sale for many many years and we happened to buy it uh two or three years ago as an investment and we wanted to be able to pick out who our neighbors were going to be because we have 21 acres adjacent to this property with a manufacturing plant on it and we're not going anywhere and we're family owned and uh again it gives us an opportunity to sell it and pick our neighbors and i think that's good for the county okay thank you sir yes now is there anyone present who would like to uh speak in favor of this application anyone in opposition yes ma'am would you come forward please state your name and address and were you sworn in i don't know were you here did you go ahead and raise your right hand do you swear from that the testimony and evidence you present to the board today will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i believe so this is my first time ever in front of a board i just need a yes or no that's where i tell the truth yes okay thank i just want to know you state your name and address please uh diana seyfried 239 first street homeland florida okay i just want to promise from the people buying the land they're not going to put a data center there i was just in fort meade uh last month or whenever they had the meetings over there and we don't need no data centers in our neighborhood they may be good for computer stuff but they're not good for the groundwater recently with the um little drought we had well the big drought we had the big uh uh drought we had i noticed uh my toilet taking uh 10 to 15 minutes to fill back up with the groundwater not replenishing and everything with the zephyrs and everything so if they're thinking about selling to put a data center in the future i would pray you did not think about that and not do that and my objection to putting it to industrial is that they will not sell to make a data center okay thank you and i would like a promise from what's the name of your company sir organic matter sounds real good organic does matter and if i could get a promise from you ma'am would you not sell for a data center i would not object okay thank you any others like to speak in opposition to this application daf would you address the uh concern for data center briefly we don't have uh criteria for data centers in polk county so they're de facto not approved use for any land use district at this time so they wouldn't be able to do a data so i'm not sure there's even enough property here to do it i can't speculate at that right i know i'm okay i was just gonna but ian is correct we don't have we have language in the land development code that says if it's not a specifically prescribed use it's not permitted and we do not currently have uh definition data centers or land use for data centers so with that i'll bring the uh close the public comment portion of the uh item and bring it back to the board for further discussion uh and a motion motion to approve ldc pal 2026-4 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy jenamasso approve merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for motion passes thank you next case please next case is ldcd 2026-3 i'm sorry ldct 2026-14 it's a land development code text amendment specifically within the polk city special protection area of the green swamp area of critical state concern robert bolton is the case planner and the staff report ordinance and application have been included in the agenda software you use to review the case and submit it into the record thank you motion to expedite we have a motion to expedite and a second um is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak in favor or opposition to this request seeing none then i had a question on it that i just wanted to clarify if this is going to make it easier or harder to allow development here well i mean is this tightening restrictions or is this let me uh let me take the motion first to expedite if we're going to expedite or not then we'll have opportunity for questions so all in favor of expediting this case signify by saying aye aye okay now you can ask your question would you like me to do a presentation first yes give a presentation all righty great thank you good morning robert bolton with land development presenting the ldct 2026-14 the polk city spa lcc x land development uh amendment and addition to what uh shonda said i had we also have uh submitted the former staff report and formal ordinance that implemented this the footnote that the text amendment is uh looking to eliminate the text amendment or the footnote uh states comprehensive plan amendments to change the parcels future land use district to linear commercial corridor within the polk city special protection area are prohibited by policy 2.32-c3 of the polk county comprehensive plan only parcels within the existing lcc x future land use district are allowed within the polk city special protection area the reason we're uh looking to eliminate this is that it is contra it contradicts actually the uh it says it's basing that the existing lcc cannot be expanded in section 2.111 of the comprehensive plan which has all of the land uses linear commercial corridors existing and it goes on in here to explain that we aren't going to create new lccs the polk city spa is the only spa between the ridge and the rural spa that has this restriction this is a map of the of the spas and the green swamp the orange is the polk city the rural spa and the ridge spa does not have the this footnote does not apply to them it applies nowhere else in the county for lcc whether it's an x or or not the same policy or within the rural there's lcc in this area right here that could be expanded into the rural spa the footnote does not apply to the rural one of the other main things is this dictates the ldc to the comp plan the comp plan by state law is to dictate or uh show give the path for the land development code so by removing this footnote footnote it brings the land development code and the comp plan into uh compatibility with each other along with state law and that there's two different ones that uh i had cited the statute 163.3194 and 133.320 as to the specifics on would it make it easier it would make it the same as expanding the lcc x within the green swamp area of critical state concern it would level the playing field so does that answer your question so it allows more development in the polk city spa area it at this point in time right here again this blue it's the the polk city spa is sort of scattered this area here is the where the location of the only lcc is this is an overlay excuse me of polk city spa right here this is the lcc parcel our mapping system maps it to the center of the road so there's really not two parcels there this is actually uh us highway 98 right in this area it could potentially apply to this one parcel that is here that is currently a church or to this parcel right here part of the location criteria the criteria for expansion is a depth criteria to the area activity centers so this is the deepest the activity centers go so it really applies to this one or a portion of this parcel once you go north of this church parcel you're into the rural that footnote would not apply to them so you're saying it could be um become lcc could be applied to the rural special protection area correct these these lccs up here yes could be expected they could they could apply to take these parcels here so if the footnote prohibits it and it's just a footnote other other than the footnote it's allowed so i'm just wondering how staff would respond to a application that came in uh and and i guess the companion question of that is are there have there been any applications that caused this that caused staff to become aware of this conflict lcc is not allowed in the rural special protection area so if anyone wants to do okay a land use change to lcc in the rural special protection area they've got to do a text amendment to the comp plan okay in addition to a map amendment that could happen no matter where you are right second this is only in this polk city special protection area and the polk city special protection area was meant to have some development opportunity this change allows someone to ask for a land use change it doesn't allow the development automatically they have to go through you the board of county commissioners they have to abide by 30 open space and all the other rules that's required in the green swamp but yes there was the parcel that robert pointed out that's due east of this site you will see i think next month for land use change to lcc but we were processing it with thinking it's meeting the expansion criteria for lcc and then we found this section in the code and needed to clean that up but honestly i had not even realized it was there for as long as i've worked here so it was a surprise to staff okay any further questions uh i've already asked if there's any um comment but i'll open the public hearing uh just to be sure if there's anyone to speak for or against this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for a motion move to approve ldct 2026-14 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy jenna masso approved merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case please next case is ldct 2026-3 it is the land development code district text district change sorry from rl1 to rl4 point sienna robert bolton is the case planner and uh just the staff report ordinance and application are submitted into the record they're in the software for the agenda that you review also there have been no responses to the advertisement in case you wanted to consider an expedited hearing motion to expedite motion second and a second to expedite is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak in favor or against this application seeing none i'll i'll bring it back to the board for a decision on the motion all in favor of the motion to expedite signify by saying aye aye okay well expedite good morning robert bolton with land development presenting ldcd cd 2026-3 the goldenrod lane land development code sub-district change map from residential low 1x to residential low 4x on approximately 17.1 acres for the record 166 mailers were sent on may 15th 2026 one sign was posted on may 18th 2026 a legal ad was published in the lakeland winter haven sun on may 20th 2026 no responses from the public have been received as shonda mentioned the staff ordinance demonstration need impact assessment were submitted for the record this is a level four uh review and will be heard by the board of county commissioners on july 21st the request uh as you can see this is the existing land use this is the rl4 what this will allow is the the surrounding development here has densities depending on which side you're looking at of from approximately 3.75 units dwelling acre upwards of about 4.17 dwelling units to the acre rl4 will give them the ability to develop this site at some similar densities it is consistent with the land use uh with the land development code and the comprehensive plan with that i'll submit this presentation and stand for any questions any questions staff seeing none and i'll open in the public hearing anyone speak in favor of opposition seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for a uh motion and a second make a motion to approve ldc d2026-3 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy janem also for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike kickman angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case please next case is ldcpas 2025-36 it's a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment robert bolton is the case planner staff report and application are submitted into the record in your agenda software and in case you wanted to consider expedited there have been no responses to the advertisement motion to expedite second motion second thanks expedite is there anyone in the audience wishing to speak uh against or in favor or against this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board and ask for a presentation by staff good morning robert bolton oh wait we got a vote on the motion yes all in favor of the motion to expedite signify by saying aye okay now you can good morning robert bolton with land development presenting ldcpas 2025-36 a future land uh use uh map amendment from uh residential suburban x to office center uh x in the suburban growth area and the us 98 sap for the record 73 mailers were sent to area property owners on may 15th 2026 one board was posted on april 16th 2026 legal ad was published in the lakeland wonder haven sun on may 20th 2026 no responses from the public have been received uh this is a level four review and will be heard by the bounded board of county commissioners on june 16th for adoption uh this will take uh the parcel that's about 1.335 acres from a residential suburban which has a use of one dwelling unit per five acres so it's going to be very difficult to develop residentially uh puts it to an office the office center which is allowed through the uh some new changes to the comprehensive plan because it is by a legally established non-residential use uh all the uh infrastructure and uh amenities uh public services are available and it's consistent with land development code and comprehensive plan with this i'll uh submit the presentation for the record and stand for any questions any questions of staff seeing none i'll open up the public uh portion of the item and ask anyone to speak in favor of opposition seeing none bring back to the board for discussion and a motion mr chair move to approve ldcpas 2025-36 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy jenam also for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke ignini for the motion mike hickman motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case please next case is actually tied with the case after that as well ldcpas 2025-24 it's a comprehensive plan amendment that's also has text amendment to the comprehensive plan is and associated with the text amendment selling development code ldct 2026-5 robert bolton is the case planner have the staff report ordinance and applications submitted into the record in the agenda software um we didn't have any response to the advertisement however the applicant did have did host a community meeting uh with some concerned citizens that did come thank you thank you okay all right good morning robert bolton with land development presenting two related requests ldcpas 2025-24 a future land use uh map and text amendment on approximately 3.87 acres from residential low to community activity center with the comprehensive plan text amendment uh to section 2.135 uh parcel specific future land use map amendment um that's uh ldcd c ldct 2026-5 to appendix e adding uh condition to ensure interconnectivity with the activity ex uh center expansion these will be presented together but need separate actions for the record 43 mailers were sent to area property owners on may 15th 2026 two signs were posted on may 19th 2026 a legal ad was published in the lakeland and winter haven sun on may 20th 2026 uh these are level four reviews uh the ldcpas 2025-24 will be heard by the board of commissioners on uh july 21st ldct 2026-5 the text amendment will have a first reading by the board of county commissioners on july 7th and adoption hearing is scheduled for july 21st the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code staff does recommend approval for both of these the the subject site is located on the south side of shimmering drive approximately 300 feet east of state road 37 or south florida avenue west of clark lake north of west carter road and north of the city limits of mulberry this is 2023 context aerial the site is located adjacent and to the south of the imperial christina plaza and set back from the intersection of state road 37 and the shimmering drive shepherd road intersection this intersection uh includes the imperial christina plaza here there was an art used to be an out parcel for a bank there you have walgreens you've got in the city of mulberry shopping center here um down here you have a tire store all along 37 on both sides is basically fully built out this section we have current uh level twos in for different uh properties so from yule road all the way down is quite well uh built out this is a 2023 image of the site showing a better context of the site's location within the plaza with burger king uh at the hard corner this is the former bank uh location out parcel the shimmering drive was originally the southern entrance and built as a boulevard entrance for the imperial christina plaza it now acts as still the southern entrance but also the entrance to the twin lakes at christina subdivision uh adjacent to the property right here is a dental office the subject parcel has uh historically operated as plant nursery there are wetlands uh on the southern part of the parcel and that at a level two review that would require a wetland delineation to make sure there weren't any impacts to those wetlands this is a current land use districts in the area the this is the city of mulberry this is the city of lakeland for reference this is shepherd road here this is the site yule road you can see this is the community activity center that is being expanded community activity centers are uh by our code uh more than 20 acres but less than 60 this is uh roughly 93 and a half acres currently um you can see how 37 has built out that we have quite a bit of activity here also for context this is the city of mulberry the red here is commercial highway it is a still an extension this parcel creates a good extension uh with that this is a closer look at the uh specific area with the rl one land use this is what it would look like with the rl uh with the cac excuse me this is the imperial christina plaza this is the twin lakes at christina subdivision they the entrance is a gated entrance right there ldcd uh the ldc text amendment ldct 2025 provides for an activity center plan that provides interconnectivity for the expansion of the activity center my apologies for the quality of this plan we are still working with the applicant to get a better quality plan that shows the interconnectivity and we will get that worked into the ordinance i apologize that we were not able to get that at this point in time this is the site on the left looking east along shimmering drive excuse me west along shimmering drive toward uh state road 37 south part avenue and shepherd road the imperial uh christina plaza would be over to the right this is shimmering drive looking west uh with the twin lakes at christina uh in the rear background with the plaza on the left the subject site is on the right this is from the subject site looking at the plaza and this is what the current uh the way the subject site currently looks the site has a is serviced by a full array of public services and is not in anticipated to have any negative impact as non-residential land use it is not anticipated to have any negative impact impacts on the school system the subject to requests are future land use map and text amendment ldcpas 2025-24 from residential low to community activity center with the comprehensive plan text amendment uh to the land development code ldct 2026-5 this site uh is approximately 3.87 uh expansion of an approximately 93 and a half acre cac district site location is approximately 300 feet east of the intersection 30 state road 37 and shepherd road the request would provide the site with the same development abilities as the properties to the north and the west on a road uh that is one of two primary access points for the shopping center the text amendment will ensure proper interconnectivity with the activity center and shimmering drive the request is consistent and compatible with the comprehensive plan and land development code again this they require two separate actions i submit the presentation in for the record and stand for questions any questions robert that um that was a commercial uh nursery there before is that correct yes it was was it just non-conforming i believe the best i could tell it was non-conforming okay that was one of the questions i was gonna ask in fact i bought some plants from there before um strange place yeah it was um how did the dentist office get there best i've been able to find is it looks like it was included in somehow through the pud of christina even though our maps do not show it as christ as the within the pud it appears that's the way it was permitted okay and i don't have i don't have definitive absolutely and is there a specific use planned at this time uh the applicant is the owner and he is looking to uh this point in at this point in time develop it with some uh like retail office any comments from the city mulberry no okay um any other questions i'll ask the applicant if he'll come forward please that'll be fine yes good morning everybody good morning were you sworn in yes sir okay name and address please my name is dario cardona i'm internal medicine physician and i live in a 990 ashton oaks circle just in the carter road close to the property we are talking about it and thank you robert for the presentation i think he described everything that we need to know about the property i think i love this property because has a big potential to improve the value of the residential and the commercial properties that are surround the the location then um if the board allow me we will we have good plans to have a small um strip retail storage in there maybe restaurants medical offices we'll see what we can do okay any questions for the applicant okay seeing none uh i'll ask is there anyone thank you sir is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition to this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for discussion uh and the motion uh mr chair i move to approve ldct dash 2026 or 2025 dash 2024 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy janem also approve merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes okay in the next case um 20 introduce case ldct or yeah ct 2026 dash six dash five that's five okay five and this is a companion text amendment to the previous case so uh i'll open you already presented the information for this i'll open the public hearing is anyone to speak in favor of the application or the application for a text amendment associated with this uh matter saying none any opposition saying none i'll close the public portion bring it back to the board for discussion and a motion mr chair move to approve ldct dash 2026 dash five second motion second approved roll call please cindy janem also cindy janem also for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes okay next case please all right next up at number nine on the agenda is ldcu 2026-9 the waffle house highland city tcx case for the record the staff report and slideshows and application materials have all been submitted to the agenda and andrew grohowski is your planner good morning andrew grohowski with land development presenting ldcu 2026-9 the applicant is requesting conditional use approval for a sit-down restaurant within a town center land use district in the us 98 selected area plan the request calls for deviations from the ldc standards shown on your screen the request would allow the construction for a 1900 square foot sit-down restaurant on approximately 0.75 acres of a larger 2.27 acre parent parcel on may 15th 15 mailers were sent to area property owners one board was posted on may 15th and a legal ad was published in the lakeland and winter haven sent on may 20th with no public response staff is recommending approval the subject site is located in the northeast intersection of clubhouse road and wallace court on the east side of us highway 98 south of lakeland and northwest of the city of bartow the entire site is approximately 2.27 acres within the tcx land use district in the us 98 selected area plan per section 401.04 of the ldc the tcx district has particular standards that development must adhere to this includes build to lines and parcel frontage requirements a conditional use allows flexibility to deviate from these standards should hardship be demonstrated so long as the remaining tcx items in the section are being met it is not uncommon to uncommon to find deviations from these standards in this tcx district as shown on your screen four requests to the west of the subject site were approved due to the circulation requirements drive-throughs and gas stations typically present the uses fronting us highway 98 received level three approval within the past decade decade or so to deviate from tcx standards the subject parcel will be split for re for a retail store and a sit-down restaurant as shown with the red lines the retail store will be about 1.22 acres while the conditional use request for the restaurant will be approximately 0.75 acres the retail store to the north is not part of this request as it meets tcx standards here's the site plan submitted into the record the request is 0.75 acres of a larger 2.27 acre parent parcel the sit-down restaurant will have access to wallace court through a cross-access easement agreement with the retail store to the north in short the tcx requires bill to design bill to design with maximum 15 foot setbacks from the road rights of way this requirement however is too restrictive for the sit-down restaurant as there is a 50 foot wide utility easement on the southern portion of the property outlined in red on your screen additionally being a corner lot with an irregular shape it is impractical for a restaurant of this size to meet the parcel frontage requirements without having to go through level three review process despite all of this the remaining tcx criteria are being met by the applicant which includes pedestrian interconnectivity a pedestrian amenity area and preliminary architectural designs thanks to county surveying here's how the request will fit in with the surrounding area should it be approved a handful of non-residential developments have received level two approval but are not reflected on the base map this includes a daycare facility as well as a retail and sit-down restaurant to the north as you can see you can see where the building footprint for the sit-down restaurant will be located in relation to the other structures facing wallace court here's an aerial and greater detail as mentioned earlier the proposed retail to the north is not part of this request as it meets tcx criteria for the bill two lines consistency and design is a critical feature in the tcx land use district per ldc section 4 1.04 development shall have a consistent streetscape and architectural style while not strictly defined staff encourages the street skate designs such as terraces awnings and roof overhangs as well as pedestrian oriented features the applicant has provided preliminary designs which have been incorporated into the record and are shown in exhibit 8 in the staff report as part of the conditions the projects are closely adhered to these renderings to the greatest extent possible during subsequent reviews and here's some photos from staff site visit you can currently see this is the retail and restaurant directly to the north of the site that is under construction and just another angle of the site facing west so staff is recommending approval the request is consistent with the relevant sections of the land development code and comprehensive plan staff finds adequate hardship on the property to recommend approval of the stated deviations to the tcx criteria in the us 98 sap the use is compatible with the surrounding area remaining tcx items will be met which includes architectural standards monument signage and pedestrian oriented design emergency services are nearby and utilities have available capacity according to the city of lakeland with that i thank you and stan for any questions any questions on staff i'll ask the applicant if he's present to come forward please you were sworn in and name and address name is robert alley uh waffles inc five nine eight six financial drive north cross georgia three zero zero seven one i think andrew did a fantastic job presenting it so i'm not going to take up any more of your time i'm here to answer any questions you might have thank you any questions of the applicant see none i'll open up the public hearing portion and ask is there anyone present to speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition to this application see none i'll close the public portion of the item and bring it back to the board for discussion and the motion motion to approve ldcu 2026 nine second motion second to approve roll call please cindy janam also for the motion moral bishop or the motion brooke agnini or the motion mike hickman angel sims or the motion julie jackson or the motion linda schultz or the motion motion passes thank you next case please all right number 10 on the agenda is ldcu 2026-2 the toho water authority case for the record the staff report and exhibits and application have been submitted to the agenda kyle roguis is your planner morning kyle roguis for land development presenting ldcu 2026-2 the toho water authority the applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for two new production wells and associated infrastructure improvements which are a utility class three for the expansion on the huron water treatment plant capacity on may 15th 115 mailers were sent to area property owners two boards were posted on the property may 15th the legal ad was published in the lakeland and winter haven sun on may 20th staff has received no response from the public staff finds this request compatible with the surrounding area and consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code staff recommends approval the subject site is located at the intersection of marigold avenue and hemlock avenue north of lake hash and hall road south of pine street east of lake marion creek drive west of laurel avenue and section 2 township 28 range 28 the subject site is located in the instant institutional future land use district in the utility enclave area chapter 2 table 2.1 of the land development code indicates the placement of class 3 utilities within institutional land use districts require conditional use approval via level 3 review the property is at the intersection of hemlock avenue and marigold avenue surrounded by single family residential and commercial uses the existing toho treatment plant is in close proximity to the south and southwest which makes this an ideal location for the new well production sites toho's water treatment plant requires expansion based on the latest portable water master plan demand projections due to growth in the area water demands in the point siena service area are projected to exceed the treatment capacity of the existing water treatment plant by 2031 the existing water treatment plants permitted capacity is 4.81 million gallons per day the projected capacity required to meet the future water demands is 7.5 this use represents a low intensity use with only traffic to and from the site for occasional monitoring of the well the site will adhere to the development standards of the land development code the northern or rear side is separated by residential development by a 60 foot wide open space which is part of the point siena master drainage system the northern side is also where the location of the proposed utilities class three are exceeding any required buffer from the residential and provides proper landscaping screening the proposed utility improvements are not expected to have any impact on school concurrency as the use will not generate the need for children to attend school water and wastewater is serviced by toho utilities and are reported to have capacity within area for future development through site design and conditions of approval staff finds the request is compatible with the surrounding area and consistent with the land development code and comprehensive plan staff recommends approval of this application and i requested the presentation be submitted to the record and with that i will stand for questions any questions staff so now is the applicant present you were sworn in yes sir good morning my name is uh maca smart for the record i'm the engineer from total water authority address is 951 mok boulevard and i can answer any questions you may have kyle did a good job presenting our case any questions of the applicant is is there no concern of adding wells during an extreme drought period not in this case because we did our uh modeling and our modeling takes into account you know um high stress um high uh volume considerations so droughts as well so we're not we don't have any concerns of this well in this location is your area that you service currently under water restrictions no not that i know of okay any other questions if not thank you if not i'll ask the um i'll open up the public portion of the uh item and ask is there anyone present to speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition to this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for discussion and the motion mr chair move to approve ldcu dash 2026 dash two second motion second to approve roll call please cindy gianna masso for the motion merle bishop for the motion rick agnini for the motion mike hickman oh mike's not here julie jackson against the motion linda schultz for the motion can if we don't mike's not abstaining is he okay can we just pause for a minute yeah okay okay i haven't voted yet i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry you want to finish if you have i didn't realize i finished we're just waiting oh angel didn't oh angel for the motion so we'll just pause for one moment i can get the full vote unless he wants to we're waiting waiting for your vote okay motion passes thank you next case please all right number 11 on the agenda is ldcu 2026-8 the reynolds road event facility for the record of staff report and slideshows and application materials have been submitted into the agenda and for the record kyle roges is your planner good morning again kyle roges with land development presenting ldcu 2026-8 the reynolds road event facility the applicant is requesting conditional use approval for a 10 584 square foot event facility on approximately 7.17 acres within an agricultural residential rural land use district on may 15th 18 mailers were sent to area property owners three boards were posted on the property may 19th a legal ad was published in the lake linden winter haven sun on may 20th staff has received two two emails in support one email in opposition and then we also have 150 signatures from a petition as well we don't have copies so is that in opposition yes in opposition staff finds this request compatible with the surrounding area and consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code staff recommends approval the subject site is located at 3115 reynolds road north of volturas babson park cutoff road south of county road 655a east of wallace road west of perch lake road in section 19 township 30 range 26 the subject property is located in an agricultural residential rural land use district in the rural development area pursuant to chapter 2 section 205 table 2.1 event facility is allowed in two land use designations agricultural residential rural and residential suburban in both land uses an event facility requires a public hearing before the planning commission prior to any two level review the properties at the intersection of reynolds road and waida road surrounded by large tracks of vacant pastures and single-family residential reynolds road is a county maintained paved rural minor collector roadway and waida road is a local commercial roadway this classification as well as the intersection location is suitable for development this location will not have any outdoor gathering or amplified sound as such this facility will not be utilized as an outdoor concert venue if the applicant wishes to introduce outdoor sound in the future a modification to this conditional use will be required the structure will be fully enclosed in the near structures to the event facility are approximately 500 feet away within this radius so you have one property just about outside here one to the north and then another structure here to the south the proposed event facility will be approximately 10 584 square feet and fully enclosed the events are often held outside the peak travel hours and most events are held during the evenings and weekends according to the event management plan hours of operation will be from 12 pm to 11 pm friday through sunday again this is a request for an event facility not an outdoor concert venue there will be no outdoor amplified voice music or live entertainment as conditioned within the staff report and section 303 of the land development code the venue will provide spaces for up to 125 attendees while exceeding the 71 space requirement and then the following are going to be photos provided by staff during our site visit on may 19th here's reynolds road looking north and then south and that was that structure that you saw to the south that was around that 500 square foot radius or foot radius here is waida looking northwest southeast and the subject site to the rear with the approximate event location and again here's reynolds road looking or wider road looking southeast towards the site event facility will be to the rear and then waida road looking west with the site to the left the parcels directly surrounding the subject property are residential land uses the acreage of the site and a required roadway landscaping will buffer the events from off-site making this request compatible through site design and conditions of approval staff finds this request is compatible with the surrounding area and consistent with the land development code and comprehensive plan staff recommends approval of this application and i request that the presentation be submitted to the record and with that i will stand for questions any questions of the staff if the applicant is present i'll ask the applicant to come forward please good morning everyone for the record tom woodridge ttw land planning here to present on behalf of the property owner our request for this conditional use application for an event venue we wanted to first clarify what our request is what we look like how we operate i think our events management plan provide a lot of details of what we won't be doing which is making we won't be making a lot of outdoor noise we won't be having those things outside we're an enclosed building we have limited hours of operation we have limited days of the week that we're in operation but we do have sufficient infrastructure to support this i'm going to show you some of the roads in the area weta road nonwithstanding which is a local commercial road as you saw in your staff report though not paid for this time it is well maintained and it is well maintained and i would suggest that you know the surrounding roadways do provide a good network for people to get to and from the property we don't have any environmental limitations there's no floodplain or wetlands on our site the drainage that we've provided on site is more than adequate and we have even more space to provide that so we have plenty of room to put the amount of things to make this a great functioning and useful use in the area we have two access points and we have enough space that we put the barn venue in the center it's going to look like a barn from the outside which fits the character of this area staff said this is a residential district it's technically agricultural residential rural so it is both agricultural residential a barn structure fits well within that as compatible and look and function and if in 10 years this ever changes you'll have a functional barn on property that can be utilized by the next owner of the property so this is not something we're designing that's going to be functionally obsolete it fits in well with both the character the function the look of of the overall area and we're here today to talk about how this can be fit within the community and conditioned as such that it's a good neighbor to everyone around uh we understand that there's a lot of people in the audience we heard about the uh letters the signatures in opposition although we know that's not competent you know substantial evidence it's just a list of signatures we are anxious to hear what the people have because we're here today to try and mitigate those concerns and to deal with this from a design perspective from a limitations standpoint understanding that we have already limited our use our hours of operation our daily occupancy of the properties to the point where it's uh very calm and fits in well but let's talk about why we're even here today barn venues are huge uh it's gonna it even shocked me when my client came to me and talked about it i had no idea that over the last 17 18 20 years how much this has grown uh we're talking about nearly one in five weddings are held at barn venues so while the people in this room and the people that you know and the people you might have talked about barn venues you know have their particular perspective on it you might have also talked to somebody who said oh yeah i actually had my wedding or their wedding at a venue type thing so they're very common they're very much in demand and it's a way to make them work so that they fit in obviously that's why we're here at the hearing today how can we talk about conditioning it how can we put place it on the property so it functions well and this is not just for weddings i think that's the the use that everybody sees is you know where is there going to be a problem with that okay there's a lot of assumptions along with that you know how some people hold their or conduct their weddings or how they might have experienced at other venues that's how they operate we're not interested in creating an impact to the community with this venue the property owner is well aware of how they need to be good neighbors from the onset of our application process has said talk to the neighbors this is going to be something we need to discuss with them to be prepared to make this a good fit this is not we're going to ask it and we get it no problems from the very onset we knew we'd have to talk to the neighbors we'd have to come to a hearing where we address these concerns so we're fully ready to have that conversation and to be responsive to what the what the people here today bring and we look forward to giving that chance to respond and provide that but aside from weddings we're talking about birthday parties family reunions other get-togethers that are you know people coming together but they don't have space especially in this area to do it and this is a great venue to allow people to gather together as you see from the pictures i've tried to provide examples these are not architectural drawings obviously from our building the barn is not there on site this is meant to provide the scale and size as you see i didn't put anything you know 50 000 square feet in size here i didn't prove anything very tall uh the architectural character is probably somewhat similar but um we're not being held to this but this is probably what it would look like a barn a metal barn on the property with walls to keep everything inside when we uh submitted our application and staff reviewed it staff compared us uh to our the impacts that we have similar to a church uh and if you think about it openly you say okay what that kind of makes sense you know it's not 24 7 that's happening there are certain events that a church has there are of course church activities that happen on the weekends typically and maybe sometimes during the week we're not even going to have our activities during the week only on the weekends but churches also have weddings churches have funerals churches have potlucks churches have fundraiser churches have you know all sorts of things that are get-togethers churches have amplified music and sound uh that can be heard off property churches have a lot of those things so uh we we're not saying we are church but i can understand why staff compared us to that and our traffic impacts it's the category that they use for traffic impacts so we're similar to a church you know it's once in a while there's a few days of the week where you have the main activities and the rest it's pretty quiet and i just want to keep that in mind that the evaluation the staff gave i feel like it was fair to consider us similar to a church and our location we feel you know if a church came requested here or if there was something in this location that was a similar use um you know this is a location that at least it's at an intersection on a rural collector roadway staff provided this aerial photo but again this just shows uh this the sparse population of the area around this you know while you have a hundred or a hundred and something signatures you can see from this aerial uh there's there's not a hundred home sites on this photo so with numerous people living in the house it's possible it's some there's some magnitude of people from that signature page that are close by but you're looking at about a half mile to three quarters to a mile in this picture around the site and we still have 100 150 people this is a very sparsely area there's grove trees pasture more agriculture that still is very vibrant in this part of the county our nearest residential of this the site formerly was uh consisted of five homes we're still the current owner purchased this property and is removing some of the remaining development that was there when he purchased it so that's something that is ongoing uh but you can see that at one point there was five homes of impact on here and now it's down to just the one home that's going to be the caretaker's cottage which i'll point out because it's part of our discussion on the site planned here this home is being renovated and will remain part of it but your other homes that have been removed uh lead way for the space that we would be using for the buffer zones actually for the facility that we're proposing we are about 500 feet from the barn to the nearest home and that nearest home is actually at this corner but it's well buffered by existing vegetation and trees uh and pretty far away the the barn facility is somewhere around this location i'll show you in the site plan a moment but i wanted to show you that's really our closest home the other homes that we have on the site um if you look to the bottom of the screen uh we have the three where the three stars are the property owner did reach out and try to talk to the neighbors that were at least adjacent to his property and we do have signed support from those neighbors i will say with a caveat that one of them then sent in an email saying oh wait a minute now i i actually am concerned because it's an open pole barn and there was some miscommunication there it's not an open pole barn so that was one of the concerns and then the other one was that there's going to be flooding but there's not flooding because we're going to have retention ponds we have plenty of room to provide for more than adequate drainage that is needed for this use and we're not in a floodplain wetland or have any other issues that that would make it so that's going to be a problem in this area so but i want to point out that the applicant no the my client he did reach out to neighbors neighbor property say here's what's coming and we're quite a distance away from the other property owners uh in the area some of the roads um in the area this is 80 foot road as you come down from state road 60. i just want to show you the actual services and the traffic on them this is just you know what you see as you drive down the road this is cox road runs east west and this runs parallel to weta now weta um does come up on a google maps search when you put the address in for the venue uh that's something that you know potentially we can work on but yeah weta is an unpaved clay road right now uh and cox road would be the preferable or abc which i'll show you in a moment um cut off which is another great collector rule and collector road with excellent pavement that runs east west as well and here's reynolds road this is south of our site when you come up to the corner of weta and reynolds you have to the northeast uh the reynolds business there that there's semi trucks and storage buildings things like that uh two or directly to our east to the bottom left is pasture and there's a home in the back you see in the far distance uh north of us there's a mobile home in the top left and you can see uh home behind the oak trees that i mentioned there's plenty of trees and buffering from that home to the property line and then again to our actual barn venue and then to the northwest of that is the pasture that i mentioned earlier so quite rural quite open quite distanced from actual homes in the area i'm trying to point out everything that is right next to us and in the previous slides showing you where the other homes are right next to us but we spoke to those homes to the southwest west and uh south so this is the site plan that we came up with our initial uh intent was to put this so that the building itself was far from residences where on the site can we put it so it's kind of equidistant from residential while still allowing for the parking that's necessary the structure is uh has grass parking with uh gravel drive aisles so it keeps it kind of a rural low impact look and not a paved parking lot type thing you do have uh parking areas adjacent to the building for ada accessibility which of course is required and for safety but overall it's going to be a barn with a gravel drive and two points of access on reynolds road to make flow of traffic coming and going from the site both easy and manageable uh we also know that you know people will disperse in multiple directions uh you've been to other venues say it is church say it is another venue you go to and at the onset of people leaving it there is you know there's several cars that are waiting to leave on reynolds road but as i showed you earlier the amount of traffic currently on those roads as you see in your staff report there's plenty of capacity on these roads and it's not something that we're dropping a use into a busy area that's going to cause congestion and problems just like a church there will be peak hours where people leave when they're done with the event and they will get on the roads and get back to uh the multiple places where they go to and they can do that turning right or turning left on reynolds going up to cox going to abc cut off depending on which way you're going north or south uh you can get to uh all over the county from this venue um again it is enclosed and we are on a rural minor collector road i guess uh my the main point is that we've conditioned ourselves we've designed the site and we have prepared to make this so it's a good fit for the area the concerns for noise and outdoor impacts we've mitigated with both distance buffering enclosed building limited hours of operation we're going to be open limited days of the week this is a once in a while venue this is not a daily venue this is something that would be open the property owners open to sharing the venue for even if there was a community service that need to be done or a funeral service that people would rather have in a barn venue i mean the viewing not the actual no preparation obviously but things of those nature it's meant to be something that community can get around and to utilize the demand is there for some of the things i mentioned like weddings and family reunions other events but we are still going to be limited on what we can do when we can use it and how often we can use it and staff has showed that we are consistent with the construct the uh infrastructure that's already constructed the comprehensive plan and the land development code with that i'll answer any questions that the planning question has at this time thank you any questions to the applicant mr chair i don't have any questions but i am recusing myself from this case and i will not be voting or commenting on it okay thank you um you say you're restricting the days of the week to weekends only fridays through sundays yes and times uh we put noon to 11 p.m that's somewhat flexible we were providing something we thought would be not too early in the morning there are typically preparations for weddings that sometimes happen around noon to one if the wedding's a four o'clock wedding so we didn't want to cut it too short but we're still open to that as discussion if there's concerns that you'll what what is that area on the site plan that has the the polka dot pattern this is the retention pond that we provided the site generally slopes from this corner to the reynolds weida corner and it's only four feet of fall so it's relatively flat but we have plenty of room for swales and other drainage features to make sure that everything is maintained in this location what's the expected occupancy we had put um like kyle mentioned on his slight maximum of two 300 at the most plus or minus 300 but we anticipate much of what we'll be doing would be in a range around there but if you want to cap it at 300 that's why we put that number out there we don't have a limitation on that higher end at this point and that we would be concerned with if you wanted to put something on there we just like to talk about it so tom with 300 people out there will the owner have some type of security or anything happening out there great question thank you for asking that because we had talked about that previously uh and said if necessary we're prepared to provide a sheriff deputy or some police off-duty police officer to ensure for those activities that you know people would think would warrant it if they're concerned with a wet wedding and there may be alcohol consumption that's fine all right i want to say also this is an enclosed fenced and gated property will remain as such the security residence that's located here will remain a security residence to maintain order and to make sure that things are happening and flowing well and locked up at night but in terms of the actual activities if there's a desire more than happy to provide that police presence for those particular events i just don't want to paint this as oh it's always going to be needing that sort of thing but if there was some condition that you wanted to place for example if alcohol is to be served then the sheriff you know they should hire an off-duty deputy or police official or private security for that purpose we're how close is the fire department and ems uh please please don't respond from the audience we'll have a public hearing momentarily thank you they're quite far uh the sheriff deputy you know 14 miles i'm correct from our memory so we've got some distance we're obviously in a rural area i think that alturas has an ems station is that correct it's on page seven of the staff report under near share fire and ems stations the nearest fire and ems station is going to be for station 10 located at 1235 9th street and for me that travel distance is about 13.1 miles where where is this in proximity to i'm just curious to leland young's barn oh it's a ways away is it please don't respond from the audience i'm not familiar with the distance okay this is so i don't answer i'm sure that we have responses yeah is that um i assume that's a county road and meets county standards and and they maintain it rails road is is narrow but it has paved and it is a rural minor collector road all the other roads i believe up to standards the other okay any other questions i was able to pass freely with other oncoming traffic while visiting the site so that can you bring the reynolds road photo back up please is it the one that there were thank you just be patient no no line gallery there we are i feel hanging ten a second hang on okay so that's around and it's the grass is a bit overgrown in places on it but uh so what is the width of that pavement do we know that's it it's that information is also available in the staff report it is on page i just lost it apologies it is page nine um number c under roadway conditions reynolds road is that rural minor collector roadway with an 18 foot wide pavement uh surface and then county road 655a is a county maintained 25 foot wide rural major collector roadway thank you and i'll say i mean you can you can hear some of the noise and coming from the audience and concerns and that's fair but i think it's imperative to remember the frequency of the use that we're proposing they may illuminate some frustrations that they had from the venue that you mentioned commissioner bishop i'm not familiar with that in this neighborhood so being compassionate to that they may have some uh concerns or objections based upon the experiences of other operations in the area for i don't even know if it's similar to what we're doing but it's important to consider us independent of other parties that we're not associated with nor do we operate their business we are proposing what we are today we are an enclosed barn we are a rural looking use in a rural area we're center of the site plenty of parking and circulation we're built to new code um we are going to be providing the buffering we have the streets and and roads in the areas that will support the intermittent use that we're having this is not an all day long facility this is a once in a while events facility thank you a technical question for county um past cases we've been required to have a 25 foot easement for ems buyer and did you say this was 18 feet this width of this road reynolds road is 18 feet wide pavement correct so it doesn't meet what we require a typical easement at 25 feet the pavement is 18 feet but the right-of-way width is 30 okay that's where you get that okay and just for clarity that's for access via easement for residential building permits we require a minimum 20 foot easement width and usually minimum 12 foot of compressed um surface but that's not okay that's relative to this thank you okay i'm going to open the uh agenda item to public comment and ask is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor of this application seeing none i'll ask then if if there's anyone to speak in opposition to this application and i would suggest that you line up along the wall here just in the interest of saving time i don't know who's going to go first and i would also like to emphasize please do not repeat uh what has been said you can just say i agree with this rather than taking time to give us repetitive testimony that would be helpful i think for everybody and you have three minutes to um to give us what you would like for us to know yes and and i assume you're all i have when you read it to yourself i'm under three minutes okay so you were sworn in yes sir okay so that you're fully aware and the board's aware i actually have um i'm speaking on behalf and i have alphadavits of other families i'm speaking on behalf i would like to have an exception to speak beyond the three minutes and i have lists of families as well as a usb drive which i'll be presenting as i'll give you a little leeway thank you but okay now you're not with him though okay we're all together i understand that i understand that but she came up and i just wanted to clarify that okay um hello my name is chad holmes and i live on weeda road two houses down from this proposed facility um i don't know who was running the transit when they said this property flows to the road because it doesn't it flows to my property and my neighbor's property and i've got ten thousand dollars invested in my bought in my pond the last two years to try to control the flooding because of the rainy season part of living in the country it's totally fine um i've lived in this community for almost 50 years four generations of my family live on three properties one of them where the star was the other two are behind me this is a quiet peaceful community and we don't want things like this the last thing that we need are people leaving this event and thinking they're bowing luke dude on our dirt roads i drag these dirt roads probably once a week to maintain them because the county can't keep up with it this is very passionate to me my family and everybody that's in here this should not be allowed this is agricultural residential property agricultural if you want to make money off the property you invested in buy cows roll hay sell sod whatever else supports it you don't build a facility and put everybody else out the the hours are limited to the reduced hours to the weekends when we're trying to unwind enjoy ourselves on our property that we've lived on for 50 years be thoughtful of everybody else that lives around here thank you thank you next please good morning my name is nick salisbury 25 40 wallace road um i just want to start by saying hats off to the county people whoever takes these pictures i've watched so many of these pictures that are so inaccurate they make you guys just take pictures of whatever looks good go by the right now right now they're building illegally onto a mobile home putting a front porch on putting windows in they're saying that they're destroying or doing this they're constantly over there partying drinking it's a mess they've put uh culverts in the ditch store uh unpermitted the county's had to remove uh as my neighbor said the roads are terrible i have to go out there every single day i did it this morning because it rained last night the county can't keep up with the roads our wives get stuck so we have to go out there we have to maintain road i drive a dually when somebody comes down the road i have to put my duels down in the ditch to pass oncoming traffic and uh the last thing i'll say is i brought my two kids here today um the emergency services out in alturas suck my kids were involved um i don't know if anybody knows two years ago there was side-by-side accident where a 10 year old girl got killed my kids were on that buggy with them kids with their girlfriend that died 10 years old we waited 15 18 minutes for the first ems to respond out there to try and save a 10 year old girl that was trapped under the side-by-side but luckily i had the time to drive back to my barn with my tractor get my personal truck and go over there and try and perform life-saving measures on that girl but we don't worry about that we don't worry about the cops let's just keep trying to make money more money more money more money right it's all about the dollar um the second accident my wife got the phone call because the first responders couldn't get there on abc road where he's talking about his proposed entrance right there two adults got killed on a go or excuse me a go-kart we waited there for 17 minutes for ems with people's brains laying on the curb so but and then we're going to attract the venue with drinking driving something happens to my kids on those roads i'm going to come and i'm going to look each one of you in the eyes and we're going to talk about what we talked about today that's all i appreciate your time please use that for consideration thank you well well sir we no we're going to we'll give you a chance to comment i'm sorry yes sir well wait i'm i'm sorry um i'm gonna give the applicant a chance to uh to comment pardon the interruption i think uh and i'm pardon in the interruption to the respondees but it sounds like the applicant is request to rescind this application so that would stop people from being needing to if you want to still test away we're not trying to take your voice away but the point is he's you can sir could you could you come up please i'm sorry but we need you we just need your comments for the record i'm fifth generation floridian as well i got sixth generation kids i don't want to ruin y'all's community so i rescind it it's fine i understand that's good okay okay we i'm sorry we need to stop we need to stop comments directly from the audience i mean if you still want to speak but you need to come up but he's he's rescinding this application so we will not proceed any further if that's that means he's withdrawing he's withdrawing the application we're being so hateful mr badcock if you want to come and build a house and be part of our community you're welcome with open arms sir and we look forward to it and we look forward to be a neighbor we just don't want something like this coming into our community and all i took all i took sir and we it's only two people that say it okay thanks all right okay thank you thanks tom and he did a great job all right the case the case is withdrawn that's a first there's nothing to vote on no i didn't all right next case all right next case on the agenda is number 12 ldcu 2026-7 uh this is the west cannon heights duplex um for the record the staff report and slideshows have been uh introduced into the record and alia and gleema is your planner sorry good morning alia and gleema with land development presenting number 12 on the agenda ldcu 2026-7 the west cannon heights duplex the applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for a single family home to be converted to a duplex on 0.40 acres within a residential low three future lane use district the subject site is located at 1210 northwest 33rd street north of avenue k northwest south of avenue m northwest and west of the city of winterhaven in section 24 township 28 range 25 on may 15th 70 mailers were sent to area property owners one sign was posted on may 18th a legal ad was published in lakeland and winterhaven sun on may 20th with no response from the public the surrounding homes were built between 1960 and 1970 while no duplexes are located along the street multiple can be located just south approximately 300 feet away the duplexes are located off woodhill court and have been there since 1988 the subject site is designated as lot 118 and 119 of the west cannon heights subdivision west cannon heights subdivision was recorded in september 10th 1925 prior to the adoption of the comprehensive plan and land development code the subject property is also part of the inward redevelopment district so here's a picture of the site plan the existing single family home will be converted into a duplex the existing home will remain it's just the inside of the structure is changing and here's a picture from the site so this is not a matter of density as this is a parcel comprised of two lots of record this is about housing type and this project will utilize an existing house just the inside of the structure is changing to convert it to a duplex the site is compatible with surrounding uses and is consistent with the comprehensive plan and land development code and i'll stand for any questions any questions staff see none i'll open the uh public hearing for any public comment anyone speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition to this application yes ma'am would you come forward please good morning my name is mildred smith i'm the um president of the inward association um i'm speaking against this um our community is primarily older people um when people come in our community and they want to put these duplexes up they raise the property taxes for the people that has been in our community for years and wood is built on people that has been there for 70 80 years and when people want to come in and they want to revamp our community they raise our property tax they raise the property tax where the low income people that are on a set income can't afford them they're not there to help our community they're not coming in our community to do better for our community they're coming in there for sole purpose of money they come in they spent a little bit of money on something then that almost doubles our property taxes i'm here speaking for the elderly people so we don't want that we don't even we don't want no more and i will be at more of these hearings since i've stayed here and listened today when it comes to my community and that's all i got to say thank you i failed to ask the applicant if he's present is the outcome present yeah well she while she's coming up did you say there did you comment about other if there were other duplexes in the area i thought i heard you say that but i've forgotten already there is just to the south off wood hill court right here okay are those all duplexes or just yes those are all duplexes okay do you know are they duplexes or are they single family attached i'm just okay duplexes okay yes ma'am hi i'm angela williamson williamson i'm just here on behalf of the owners that are trying to to convert this single family residence into a duplex we're just going to demo the um existing wall and put in a firewall they already have two septic um existing septics on the property and um i've got approval for the health department i'm just needing approval from you folks to in order to get the permit through the building department that's what i was here for thank you anyone else to speak um in opposition to this so this would have two separate entrances then yeah correct and it currently has that now they just want to just put the firewall yes i don't know why they just didn't do it okay i'll bring it back to the uh to the board for discussion and a motion i move to approve ldcu 2026-5 motion no no oh seven sorry i'm on the wrong looking at the wrong one i second that i have a motion and a second for ldc ldcu 2026-7 roll call please cindy janem also motion to approve merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case all right good morning ian ass land development staff recommends approval of ldcu 2026-5 a request for short-term rental on an unplatted residential lot north of davenport for the record 17 mailers were sent on may 15th and one sign was posted on the same date legal ad was post legal ad was published on the 20th we've received no public responses the site is located at 3119 north highway 5547 south of ernie caldwell boulevard west of us 1792 and section 22 township 26 range 27 in northeast polk county this site is close to attractions in orlando and elsewhere which makes an attractive spot as such short-term rentals are common in the area just last year ldpd 2025 was approved to the west with approximately 1600 units designated for short-term rental the subject property is approximately 2.63 acres within a residential medium future land use district approval here does still require a level three review and unlike unlike an approval within a platted subdivision this approval would just be for the subject property the property is shown to the right and the house is to the bottom left as i mentioned is a large property and the 3600 square foot home on site is just about the size you could get for a lot in residential medium in this part of the the county there's a privacy fence and gate the home is set back 60 feet from the home to the north and type b landscaping will be required and existing vegetation can be utilized there's ample room for parking which we really analyzed with short-term rental because on smaller lots where you have these approved there's often parking into the rights away that prohibit travel and emergency vehicles this site has has plenty room for guests and one final note no other construction is being planned they're just using the existing home according to the application during the rental periods guests will not receive meals or additional services the typical duration of stays ranges from three to seven nights most bookings are vacation oriented and do not exceed 14 days the ldc has ongoing standards required for short-term rentals to provide enforcement of behavior on site to avoid disturbing neighbors this request is compatible with surrounded uses consistent with the land development code and comprehensive plan and i think you'll stand for questions any questions staff so there's no other short-term rental uses in the immediate vicinity of this you said they're pretty common in the area i understand but in the immediate vicinity like those residences around north and south of this and across the street or no sir okay i believe this is bpc across the street with a couple homes and is this this is part of ridgewood lakes and all this came in was a broad short-term rental options uh this is estonia it was not but right across the street here uh north estonia was approved for short-term rental okay or the north solar veto was approved for it too when did that regulation go into effect no went back quite a few years look that up i know it precedes the state rules on it because most municipalities are uh it was back when i was here so that's quite back in the stone age yes uh let's see the uh our short-term rental code was last revised in 2009 and um the state preemption took place in 2011 so if we change so these new pro these projects were after that that have been approved for short-term rental yes these aren't grandfathered in correct yes sir and so anytime yet you want short-term rental you have to come before the yes most often we see it as part of a plan development approval it's pretty rare we get these individual lots we get a lot of requests for uh existing subdivisions with lots within them but our code states that if you approve one lot within an existing subdivision it applies to the entirety of the subdivision and certain places don't aren't interested in that option if this is approved would would they be able to do any expansion to increase the level of use for this you mean expansion of the home of the home or additional home or additional residence on the property there's no prohibition on it at this time okay but they would have to come before they yeah it's conditional use so we we've presented a site plan and that's what would be binding right any other questions is the applicant present i'll open up the uh public hearing portion of the agenda item and ask is there anyone here to speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition of this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for further discussion and a motion i move to approve ldcu 2026-5 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy janamoso for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike hickman for the motion angel simms for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes thank you next case please all right for the record ian nance presenting on behalf of eric peterson for ldcu 2026-7 a request for a plan development to modify a sign plan specifications for an existing conditional use approval a large retail center with gas stations in the employment center future land use district for the record 55 mailers were sent to area property owners on may 15th eight signs were posted on may 18th and a legal ad was published in the lakeland winter haven polk suns on may 20th staff has logged no response here's a subject site north and west of ridgewood lakes entrance the site was approved for a large retail development in october 24 without parcels including gasoline sales within this approval was a sign plan that deviated from the ecx standards that sign plan approved i'm sorry the approved site plan sign plan included five plaza signs and two freestanding signs for the major retailers in exchange for pole or monument signs on the nine out parcels essentially they reduced the number of signs but gave the existing signs they could have larger copy area the previous conditional use was very specific and does require this hearing to make a slight change and these are the two basic changes that have been proposed the first is adjusting the copy area from one sign to the other i got the right side up they're changing reducing this sign and moving some of the square footage to this sign and they're adding the digital gas prices signage to one of their monument signs and that's the effect of the request here it's it's very minor uh with this application though we are suggesting suggesting conditions of approval to allow further changes to um the area and height of signs up to five percent through the building permit approval in case you have different vendors come in or different technology changes we don't have to keep dragging this back through but in case we do this is also being changed from a conditional use to a plan development so we can track the changes that might come with that request is compatible with surrounding uses and consistent with relevant sections of the code and comprehensive plan that i thank you will stand for questions any questions staff does the applicant present yes sir come forward please were you sworn in you were not please raise your right hand do you swear or affirm that the testimony and evidence you present to the board today will be the truth the whole truth for the record the staff report and slideshow and application material have been entered into your agenda aliyah and gleema is your planner good morning aliyah and gleema with land development presenting number 15 on the agenda ld spd 2026-1 the old dixie highway spd the applicant is proposing a suburban plan development to develop eight single-family lots on approximately 5.29 acres the subject site is located at 2610 old dixie highway south of saddle creek road west of old dixie highway west of the city of auburndale in section 6 town tip 28 range 25 on may 15th 44 mailers were sent to area property owners three signs were posted on may 15th a legal ad was published in the lakeland and winter haven sign on may 20th with no response from the public so single-family homes are located just to the north south south and east town tower manor mobile home park is located to the west of the subject site the proposed site plan will add eight additional single-family homes to the area lots ranging from 0.5 acres to 1.3 acres the site is down the road from tenorock high school spds require level three reviews and rs the subject site is 5.29 acres and the density is 1.51 dwelling units per acre achieving 22 locational points maximum density permitted with 28 locational points within an spd is three dwelling units per acre so this is a modification to a previously approved suburban plan development ld spd 2025-1 and it really is to change the access from one driveway on saddle creek road to two driveways on old dixie highway this changes because the access issues on saddle creek road the parcels will utilize two easements with no more than four lots to an easement so the picture on the left is a view of the site from old dixie highway and the picture on the right is a view from the site from saddle creek road so in short the only change is the points of access the request is consistent with the pull county comprehensive plan and the land development code and staff recommends approval and i'll stand for any questions any questions of staff so he were they unable to get a driveway permit from saddle creek road was that there's just some access issues there's um it's hard to see but it there's a big dip right here also there's metal bars um it's a lot of issues on saddle creek road okay okay and any other questions is the applicant present yes sir were you sworn in no please raise your right hand do you swear or affirm that the testimony and evidence you give to the planning commission will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes uh chad broker traditions engineering 900 orchid springs drive winter haven florida i don't have too much to add i did want to elaborate there on the access issue so there's a pretty substantial head wall that runs along the entire property frontage on saddle creek with a guard rail on a sidewalk the the revision is to avoid impacting that because there's also some drainage features there in that area and so instead we revised our access points to be to uh old dixie highway there's actually two existing driveways there um in both of those locations that we can utilize because ultimately with the four lots access via easement they're just residential driveways they're not commercial excuse me um i did want to point out too that as part of this request we are actually requesting to reduce the lot density of our request we have an approved spd you can see there on the left for 11 single family lots on this property our proposed modification is only for eight uh lesser or larger lots and less density so um we think that this is compatible with the area we think the access points make sense to the existing driveway locations in the lower uh capacity roadway that they're connecting to and i could stand for any questions you have any question of the applicant seeing none thank you sir thank you i'll open up the public hearing um anyone in present to speak in favor of this application anyone to speak in opposition to this application seeing none i'll bring it back to the board for discussion and a motion i move to approve ldsbd 2026-1 second motion second to approve roll call please cindy jenna masso for the motion merle bishop for the motion brooke agnini for the motion mike kickman for the motion angel sims for the motion julie jackson for the motion linda schultz for the motion motion passes next case please for the record ian nasa land development staff recommends approval of ldpd 2026-6 a request for 150 single family units through the rural residential development process for the record one sign was posted and 104 mailers sent to area property owners on may 15th 2026 and a legal ad was published on may 20th staff has logged three responses in opposition and as before the staff report slideshows and application materials submitted into the agenda the subject site is located at 4235 decent road west of kathleen road east of pain road northwest of the sea of lakeland and section 20 township 27 range 23 is approximately 153 acres with roughly 80 acres of uplands flood zones wetlands and a floodway are present on the site and it is within the blackwater creek drainage basin an area described by the county as a stress basin due to constrained stormwater outfall the site is within a residential suburban future land use district where the by right density is one unit per five acres through the rural residential development tool a maximum density of one dwelling unit per acre can be attained over the entirety of the site through the dedication of at least 50 percent of open space additional density can be realized with a locational score similar to what is required for other plan developments these are based on proximity to public services roads utilities and commercial areas here's the site plan 150 lots clustered to the northwest of the site and away from the floodway a majority of wetlands the requested density is 0.98 dwelling units per acre under the maximum allowed with an rrd the minimum lot size is 9 380 square feet and minimum lot widths are 70 feet wide most setbacks are being met or exceeded with one exception of a reduction in side setbacks on corner lots to 10 feet which is consistent with typical side setbacks in the rs the apkin is also proposing 39 foot rear setbacks to accommodate buffer and drainage easements there's one access on the decent road and no access is proposed onto robbins road to the north the application demonstrates consistency with the locational criteria provided by the ldc including access to an urban collector roadway availability of utilities proximity to schools and emergency services a minimum of 60.88 percent of the entire site is dedicated to open space purposes not including the landscaping buffers and recreation areas sidewalk will be required along along with road improvements to decent road internal sidewalks walks and shielded lighting will also be provided internally in essence this will be the development footprint of the site moving from the west half acre lots are proposed along with open space and wetland wetland tracks and a 20 foot wide type c buffer where abutting existing lots combining the buffer and increased rear setbacks new homes will be no closer than 59 feet from the western and northern property lines and there will be a step down to 80 foot wide lots before transitioning to the 70 foot wide ones the standard lot depth is 134 feet open space buffering and stormwater management ponds are also located near the entrance to the site here's a look at the surrounding development most of this was permitted prior to the adoption of land development code and comprehensive plan and therefore therefore lacks a defined pattern of development which is reflective of when these were created in some circumstances the proposed lot sizes are similar to what's around and others they're well below most do not meet the residential suburban or agricultural residential rural standards in which they are found they also did not develop with the availability of services today including a wastewater line to which the development will connect but this is in an area of residential development with urban services available for the drainage the site will be held to close basin standards or to accommodate a hundred year 24-hour storm event i'm showing two ponds here on the site but other open space tracks other open space tracks including to the north and northwest of the site are being designated as open space but will likely contribute to stormwater management plans when that level of review is complete drainage easements are proposed along all lot lines and within the rights of way of the internal roads it's a quick snapshot of services in short capacity is available in utilities schools in the roadway network a major traffic study will be required during the level two review process on the right just a demonstration of all the different tracks and this is included in your staff report in your agenda packet for their various purposes but for everyone's benefit to the left is what all will be reviewed during the level two review process the engineered site plans ensuring the conditions of approval are going to effect a species walkover review of flood studies of wetland delineations and any roadway improvements for now though for this compatibility review staff finds that the submitted site plan is compatible surrounding uses these are single family homes among other single family homes where there are differences in lot sizes the applicant has utilized the tools provided by the comprehensive plan and land development code including increasing landscaping buffer widths increasing setbacks and transitioning lot sizes urban level services are again available to the site and with available and are have capacity i'm sorry this request is consistent with the relevant policies within the comprehensive plan and land development code staff recommends approval and i'll stand for questions i got a question but it may be more it may be more to legal than it is the staff of his staff anyway but does house bill 399 which went into effect july 1 as i understand it on compatibility have any application here you mean house bill 399 that was just approved by the government this last last legislative session yeah i think that's not effective okay right now right it'll be effective january 1st okay 27 went into effect july 1st and i would like to reference to if there are any technical engineering questions uh or okay right um go back to this well i guess that's okay right there it looks like that the entrance road on the site plan doesn't line up with what is it greenfield acres road is that that that appears to be correct and it might be a little off with my overlay there but i i'm sure that's to accommodate some of the existing features on site and i'll defer to okay i just wondered if it needed to or if that there was a spacing problem there over there's there's wetlands and and okay proposed in that area okay thank you does the applicant present yes okay come on up and i'll come on up to the podium yes thank you if you'll please raise your right hand do you swear affirm that the testimony and evidence you present to the planning commission today will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do thank you and oh you can speak and we just need your name and you can speak in this one it's eric swanson i'm with swan capital partners the applicant for this project uh good morning uh as i said earlier my name is eric swanson with swan capital partners i do have a handout i'd like to pass out or include into the record if that's possible yes yes so today i'm requesting approval of kathleen reserve it's a rural residential development consisting of up to 150 single family lots on 153 acres along decent road it's within the residential suburban future land use district before discussing the site plan and diving into the methods of compatibility that we we applied to this project it's important to explain how we arrived here because this proposal is a result of multiple years of planning evaluation of environmental analysis flood attenuation review compatibility modifications as well as community feedback as the planner mentioned we do have drc recommendation for conditional approval was found compatible with surrounding uses and general character of the area and is consistent with polk county comprehensive plan and the land development code the site itself is comprised in a unified fashion over three parcels totaling the 153.23 acres it's predominantly vacant pasture land at the moment and is the last parcel of its size along decent road available for residential development the eastern parcels are almost entirely wet wetlands and flood hazard areas associated with the blackwater creek tributary floodway now this slide's really important the project just didn't simply reappear over multiple years the property was evaluated through several planning frameworks there were prior spd concepts one of which was brought to this planning commission and was approved there was a writ evaluation there was a polk county environmental lands evaluation and subsequent discussions regarding flood attenuation and preservation opportunities the current rrd proposal is a result of that evolution each successive step increased preservation improved compatibility enhanced stormwater performance and refine the overall site design and one of the key lessons that i learned in this process was that compatibility wasn't just a technical exercise it's about how development is experienced from neighborhood prop neighboring properties and that influenced the design you're about to see so a common misconception is that this is simply a repeat of prior concepts and that's not true the current rd incorporates larger perimeter lots the perimeter lots are half acre in size the yellow shaded lots are intermediate transition lots at quarter acre and the interior clustered lots are 0.215 the greenish blue and our open space wetlands floodplain and preservation stormwater tracks and then the orange tracks are amenity parcels then the slide illustrates the overall site design as i mentioned the larger lots are on the perimeter the smallest lots are internalized density is concentrated up in the upland area we have 93 acres that are going to remain preserved the plan intentionally creates transitions between neighboring properties and the internal neighborhood overall the area around this property is a mix of lot sizes including numerous smaller legal lots of record manufactured homes and parcels with multiple dwelling units so one of the compatibility techniques here was to reduce the road frontage off of robbins road that's that south north south rural collect collector that area is going to be just left open space but with the reduction of frontage you can see that we're abutting with three lots off of robbins road comparatively there's five units off of robbins road on the existing development um north of that little line the red line it's a non-residential track of 15 acres it's agricultural and it also contains some wetlands but south of that line off of pain's pain road there's 10 lots um the typical lot size is about 0.88 but there's some some of those lots have multiple family dwelling units comparatively to what we have at those 10 lots though um we're abutting with six lots there's a community benefit opportunity um we've carved out 18 acres of upland um available for future flood compensation and regional attenuation now this is really important i really want to take my time in um reading this out these are what staff found this isn't my opinion um for the rd clustering development on upland acreage with smaller lot sizes is encouraged through the rd tool to avoid environmental sensitive areas maximize stormwater management opportunities and to take advantage of centralized utilities overall septic systems in such an environment and close to a major floodway are undesirable the availability of public services are more attuned to the urban growth area which i believe is up to five dwelling units an acre and we're below one in terms of achieving the standards for development per the ldc and comprehensive plan the project exceeds the necessary requirements now the property has also been evaluated for its broader environmental and flood management characteristics because of its location within the basin the property has been evaluated for flood attenuation water quality improvement nutrient reduction reduction and environmental preservation opportunities now the current rd proposal reflects multiple years of planning refinement environmental evaluation flood attenuation analysis and compatibility modifications in response to community input and site constraints now this is exactly why the county created the rd framework to preserve environmentally sensitive lands cluster development away from wetlands reduce fragmentation utilize centralized utilities protect open space and improve stormwater management now the question is not whether this property develop develops it's the question is how right now the rd framework provides centralized water centralized sewer coordinated stormwater management enhanced buffering and permanent preservation of 93 acres the alternative is fragmented rural development with private wells septic systems fragmented drainage systems and no coordinated preservation framework because a significant portion of the property is constrained by wetlands and floodway this is precisely the type of site the rd framework was designed to address it allows development to be concentrated on uplands while preserving constrained lands it also is consistent with uh ldc section 303 where it expressly encourages the rd tool where environmental constraints constraints constraints exist rd is the vehicle designed precisely for this condition and here's just um some project steps by the number uh by the numbers 100 we're capped at 150 lots um we're preserving 60.88 percent 93 acres um we're below the rd cap which can only be achieved through uh locational and design criteria and scoring um we're below that and we are um voluntarily moving forward with a hundred year 24 hour storm standard at a minimum and um to achieve one dwelling unit per acre you need a hundred point minimum um we've achieved 139 um the spd maximum that's um and we we have the our um a land use designation of residential suburban that allows three dwelling units per acre if it was um if we were to pursue an spd the max for the rd is one and we're at 0.98 um compatibility we're as mentioned earlier we're providing larger lots at the edges um we have no access proposed for robbins road and we've um have a triangle buffered preservation area to help um reduce our our uh road frontage we have enhanced buffers we have increased rear setbacks so 39 feet um for our principal rear um and that's excluding our type c buffers um we've utilized natural um separation features stormwater management ponds to help have more distance separation from public rights of way and uh we'll have shielded lighting and trees in these buffered areas smart growth and public investment the availability of public services are more attuned to the urban growth area out here so we have existing utility capacity central water existing roadway network has adequate level of service pre and post development uh we have fire protection improvement so we'd be required to extend the water line um it's currently at lewin drive so it's about four tenths of a mile um there there is no um fire protection out here so that would be a public benefit if we had the opportunity to do so service is already extended to the area last year there was a wastewater extension um about two miles to a mobile home park um closer to hillsborough county line um and a lift station was also built there and we'd have the opportunity to tap into that extension and actually have uh return on investment on our public investments um you saw this earlier but i i want to point out um the hydrological tracks um so n o and n excuse me m um that's approximately 18 acres of land that we're um dedicating for floodplain storage water quality enhancement and storm attend attenuation function oops um this is we recognize that this has been a long history and the neighbors care deeply about kathleen and their homes and where it's located um we've done the best we could to respond through this plan um and i think that's evident with some of the conditions that are in place that directly address those concerns um with flooding and drainage um we are we will model the drain the stormwater system to 100 year 24-hour closed basin design um post development discharge will exceed pre-development rates and the wetlands and the floodway will be preserved we have adequate level of service for transportation and we would have a single access from decent road which would be accessible through a turn lane that we would build there would also be sidewalks along decent road which doesn't exist today um i have been monitoring some of the community feedback online and i was taken back by a resident whose family member was hit by a car and this was just what they documented online um you know that as a back in the day i was a plan urban planner and um that hits close to home so i think having sidewalks is definitely an improvement for the built environment out there i mentioned roadway commitments were adequate level of service we'll have a an additional 15 feet of right-of-way dedicated to the public right-of-way out there we'll have a type 3 intersection and turn lane is warranted and i mentioned the sidewalks already it's required for us to tap to central water and central wastewater we'll have a fire protection benefit as mentioned we're preserving 93.28 acres wetlands floodplain open space habitat protection floodplain storage and stormwater treatment we'll have conservation easements over these tracks all the wetlands have 25 foot wetland buffers we had we did conduct two wildlife assessments prior and there were no threatened or endangered species that were identified but we'd have to run that again and we've already delineated and had a jurisdictional determination with swift mud so we know the boundaries of these wetlands as as mentioned earlier we'll have a closed basin design standard no increase to discharge rates floodways and wetlands will be preserved and we'll have agency review and permitting so final design reviewed and permitted by swift mud in pope county and that concludes this portion of the presentation i'm i want to introduce um dakota mccoy he's my a member of my civil engineering team he's going to discuss the flood and drainage issues out here have you been sworn in no i need to be sworn in will you please raise your right hand do you swear from that the testimony and evidence you present to the planning commission today will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you okay so i'm dakota mccoy i'm with uh germana engineering the civil firm that uh has done the concept and also some preliminary drainage assessment for this project just to make sure that you know what we're doing here is feasible so the pre-development drainage currently there is a let's see i have a mouse here so there's a wetland to the west and there's a ditch to the northwest that come onto the property with ditches for drainage that then bring it to this wetland here in yellow with the floodway kind of sort of where this line is so the water goes across the site right now and ends up here in the wetland what we are proposing so we're going to be with this you know we're going to have these houses here so those ditches are not going to be there we're going to have an underground storm system that is separate from the storm system for the neighborhood that basically just bypasses what's currently going through the property so we're not intending to impede anything off site just pass it through as it's going and then with our development we're going to have these blue areas here which will be wet ponds and also floodplain compensation so this is going to improve the water quality it's going to improve the water quantity the amount of water coming off the site in a storm as well as we're going to be improving the floodplain because we are compensating cup for cup but there will be more than what we're impacting in compensation so we are we will be improving the flooding situation out there so yeah so like i was saying so water quality so we've got wet detention ponds that are going to function we also by just changing the land use from either i think it's a sod farm right now but you know it was cattle both of those are very bad for nutrients and the waterways especially you know carrying it downstream like eric was saying with the hillsborough river watershed study you know the they're looking at the nutrients down there so just the change to single family alone reduces the pollutants but then we're also putting in these wet ponds which the water and the nutrients will co-mingle in the wet ponds and it will remove even further the nutrients that are going downstream and then like eric said we are voluntarily we will do the 100 year 24 hour storm event the requirement for the state and in the land code is the 25 24 which is for an open basin which it is it goes to the hillsborough river but we are told that this is a like an impacted basin kind of an area of concern um and the the county would like the 100 year 24 hour storm which is normally would be for a closed basin where you wouldn't have any outlet right the water is just kind of going to sit there um so we are we will be providing that even though this is an open basin just because of the area of concern and the nature of this area um and then you know lastly just the compensation i think i talked about that and if anybody has any questions for dakota after well he'll he'll come back um so staff found that this project was consistent with all relevant requirements of the ldc it was consistent with all applicable comprehensive plan policies it's compatible with surrounding uses and general character and it will it has the potential to meet concurrency requirements when built here's a policy policy 2.102 from the comp plan and you know a through a2 through a15 which this project is compliant with i'm going to summarize i'm not going to read all of this but there are conditions of approval in your packet we're capped at 150 lots the minimum lot size is 9 380 square feet um you know with the setbacks i think what is nice is the principal rear at 39 feet at a minimum the stormwater management plan shall comply with closed basin requirements so 100 year 24 hour storm pursuant to section 740 there will be drainage easements provided as shown in the typical lot layout that ian presented a sidewalk will be constructed along the front edge of decent road and we will have type c buffers now what this approval for today what it doesn't authorize is construction this is limited to land use entitlement final engineer plans and agency permits remain a requirement what an approval actually does for today it preserves 93 acres it requires central sewer it requires central water requires enhanced buffers requires 100 year storm standard above and beyond what we would be required to do requires level 2 engineering review requires swift mud review and requires traffic review so approval today establishes the framework the detailed engineering remains subject to multiple layers of levels of review and permitting and with that i thank you um for the time um if there's any questions for me or um dakota mccoy my engineer we're happy to answer any questions you may have do you have any questions of the applicant seeing none i'll open the uh public comment portion of the agenda item and ask is there anyone here to speak in favor of this application see no one is there anyone here to speak in opposition to this application okay um again uh come forward to this i guess it'd be easier to this microphone but if you'd line up again uh just in the interest of saving some time and ask that you try to avoid repeating any uh comments that were made um in terms of repeating your concerns or objections we would appreciate it you have three minutes and and mr chair if i may if is there anyone that wasn't sworn in because i can do that all at the same time rather than doing one by one if there is anyone or was everyone sworn in that's planning to speak yes ma'am okay thank you okay hello my name is guy lalon the third uh resident is residence is 6036 cherry road lakeland florida we only get one opportunity to make the right decision for this property in this community once development happens we cannot easily undo the impacts after the recent hurricanes severe storms and flooding events media residents have seen firsthand what happens when infrastructure and drainage are not properly aligned with growth the main concerns i continue to hear are compatibility flooding and traffic while the staff reports that the project meets current technical requirements i believe there is a human factor that must be considered many families have built their lives in this community residents have already the in community and residents already feel the local roads and infrastructure are stretched thin we often hear that infrastructure needs to catch up with growth my question is why not allow that to happen before approving additional density the kathleen and the kathleen and these decent intersection is already a major concern traffic backups from train crossings and continued growth creates delays that affect families school buses and emergency vehicles i understand comparisons are being made to other developments in the area but respectively we are here to discuss this project today past approval should not automatically justify future ones if this residence if residents are already feeling experience and experiencing the impacts i'm not saying growth should never happen but if development moves forward it should happen in the way that residents and the board and the board feel confident about years from now i also have one question regarding this development with large with a large preservation area being proposed who will ultimately be responsible for long-term maintenance of those areas including drainage and stormwater systems this is not about stopping growth it's about responsible growth and making sure infrastructure traffic drainage and public safety are prepared before asking residents to absorb more impact thank you thank you yes ma'am my name is danica gay and i live at 4940 maple drive lakeland i'm 12 years old which means i've grown up hearing about this property i've seen my parents and my neighbors spend years fighting to keep this land safe i'm here today because this isn't just about zoning or maps it's about where i live and where my friends live i know that adults have to look at paperwork but i look at this land and i see a flood basin my parents have explained to me that the board of county commissioners has already voted twice to stop this development because the land was too wet and is not safe for more houses i don't understand how the facts could be the same but the decision could be different if it didn't make sense to vote here in 2022 and 2023 why would it be okay in 2026 when i ask my parents for something and they tell me no two times i don't go back and ask them again because they've already set the standard i'm asking you to think about the kids in our community we go to school here we play here and we need our homes to be safe when it rains we shouldn't have to worry about our neighborhood flooding because a developer wants to build where they shouldn't please look at the history of this project in the voice of a thousand people who signed our petition i'm asking you to honor the previous decision and choose our community over a plan that has already been rejected please vote to deny this application thank you for listening to me thank you good afternoon my name is caroline gay and i live at 4940 maple drive just southwest or downstream of the decent road property i stand before you representing over a thousand citizens who have signed our petition at change.org opposing this development we reach this number in record time because our community is unified in its rejection of this project i ask you to imagine this chamber filled with those 1 000 people they are absent today not because they are indifferent but because they are balancing the demands of their jobs and the needs of their families the requirement that our citizens take time off from their jobs and family obligations to stand before this commission on a wednesday is sometimes an impossible ask do not mistake their physical absence for a lack of commitment their voices are clear and they are demanding you listen they are deeply alarmed that you're once again considering the approvable approval of a development on a known flood basin the board of county commissioners has already examined this property twice and reached the same conclusion both times in july 2022 and august 2023 the commissioners voted four to one to deny development on this site the official record of those proceedings highlights that this site is located in the kathleen drainage basin also known as north blackwater creek a stressed basin where surface water accumulates after hard rains and where soils do not percolate well in those hearings the commissioners provided the common sense reasoning that this community still stands by today commissioner rick wilson stated it is a very wet piece of property and this is nothing like what is in the area commissioner neil cumby noted this development looks good on paper but this is poor property and drainage drainage issues will always be a problem commissioner bill braswell warned it is not compatible and who would be responsible if the surrounding residents sue because the properties are flooded commissioner martha santiago added it is not compatible with the surrounding area furthermore this land is not merely just another parcel for development the public record confirms this site was formally nominated and considered for the county's environmental lands conservation program by this nomination the county itself officially recognized that this land possesses the ecological value worthy of preservation for public good common sense and consistency are the foundations of public trust if this land was not suitable for development in 2022 and 2023 those were those facts remain unchanged today the wetlands are still there the floodway is still there the risk to our existing homes is only higher we urge you to honor precedent we're asking you to listen to those 1 000 voices who cannot be here today and once again deny this application i implore you to reject this application do not simply rubber stamp a proposal that the board of county commissioners commissioners have already rejected twice as the planning commission you have a duty to uphold the standards of our community and the precedent set by the board please act with integrity that this community deserves prioritize our safety and security and decisively deny this proposal thank you my name is britney holland and my address is 6209 robin road i'm sorry i'm a little nervous i'm speaking on behalf of my entire family um they own the only parcel that wasn't on his presentation it is the 10 acres directly to the north of the development so a little history on the property before you today my family owns the 10 acres my father and grandfather worked for mr maddox for 20 years before purchasing that 10 acre parcel in 1993 the reason that they did not purchase more of the land at that time is simple the parcel that they bought was the only dry portion of the property of the entire property um the remaining land had such extreme water issues that it was considered nearly worthless and it was not worth paying the property taxes on you will be hard pressed to find anyone who understands this parcel and how the water flows to and from it better than my family we have observed this land firsthand for the last 54 years it is irresponsible for the current owners and the development developers to present a development plan during one of the worst drought periods then rely on engineers that the developer pays to create a solution fema has designated large portions of the property as flood zones a e and a on the federal flood insurance rate maps surrounding the parcels also fall within the fema zones a e and a my parents who luckily their house is completely paid for but after the last hurricane they can no longer obtain homeowner's insurance so i cannot imagine what any disposition of any rainwater would do to the surrounding parcels the area functions as an interconnected watershed and fledged man flood management system solving the developers site plan concerns does not in eliminate the inherent flood risk to the surrounding community the only responsible decision for the planning board is to deny this proposal and prevent the irreversible damage that this development would cause to our watershed floodplain and natural flood management system and then i have a few seconds i want to add we have on that 10 acres we have a 46 pond uh tropical aquaculture farm and unfortunately we have another farm that's located off of park bird road and there was a development that was done along the banana road on 80 acres that checked every box just like this development and after the last hurricane we had water that came onto our property from the east and the west which has never happened we've been there for over 20 years so that was one event and we're still repairing damage from it it destroyed the foundations of our buildings that were built within the last 10 years so i mean these weren't 50 year old buildings that we're talking about these were modern buildings thank you for your time thank you my name is roger allen 5248 bethel drive lakeland florida i agree with the gentleman in the sport coat and the lady that was in the black dress and we'll repeat it we live in a senior park at the west end of decent road where during the season there are over 500 people gathered together and enjoying florida many of them were there last october that when milton came through and we have blackwater creek running right through our park it always has when it floods it makes a mess during milton it made a real mess 180 out of 200 and some homes were either destroyed or at least uh destroyed enough where they were unlivable some of them had to be torn out completely it's a mixed use property as far as the types of dwellings but it put a lot of people in jeopardy all seniors so far we have not heard of anything and we've worked with the southwest florida water division we have not heard anything as to what exactly has caused all of the flooding uh we've heard the hundred year flood tossed around and if we have another one it will probably destroy the park completely it has been noted that this is a wetland that this proposed developments going on i agree with the fact that it's all the boxes have been checked and i thought what could i say after seeing this beautiful presentation i will say this it affects our lives when the water comes through we were there and i implore you to reconsider this look at it again when it's the wet season not the dry season you'll see a real difference and you'll wonder why you would want to have a home in that area and those homes may be dry during the wet period because of all the concrete but everybody else is going to be wetter you can almost guarantee it thank you thank you my name is cheryl allen 5248 bethel drive lakeland florida my concern is driving up and down decent road every almost every day at least three four five times a week um there are no sidewalks there is no room for sidewalks in order to give sidewalks they would have to take out the ditches on the sides of the road there there are barriers across the the waterway along there that that have been had to be replaced because of trying to go around someone who's riding a bicycle or having a scooter or walking even there's no bike lane there's no walking area on that road the road the road is so very narrow there have been people hit and so when you go around and you try to avoid somebody you have to go over the the double yellow line in order to avoid someone that's walking or riding their bicycle already i don't know how they could put sidewalks in there that sounds wonderful but it would be a huge challenge and i'm just concerned about the traffic there are already two new developments one at the the end of decent road adjacent to kathleen and one just across kathleen that are already um being built and are adding to the the traffic adding to the the concern for safety on that road and so i just i agree with the the presentations that have been made already i just ask that you consider the safety of our community that this is not a good place as well as all of the water thank you hi my name is lindsey hobner i live at 5130 greenfield road in lakeland i live directly downstream from the blackwater creek tributary floodway also known as the kathleen drainage basin and also known as the north blackwater creek in fact it runs right through my property my family's owned the property for about 35 years um and we have watched the water come go and continue to come and go um i'd like to follow mr swanson's lead and just speak based on a few facts uh the fact of the matter currently is we already have a severe drainage and flooding problem in our area it's been witnessed uh at least four times in the last six to seven years uh between hurricanes typical rainfall and just you know your your normal uh summer patterns with the weather um of course hurricane milton stands out in everybody's mind because it was really really bad uh there are people on my road that were the original owners that built their homes back in the 70s those homes had water inside of them that was the first time that's ever happened i i'd like to think that uh hurricane milton was that one in you know 5 000 year storm or whatever everybody keeps dreaming up but the reality is the one in 100 year plan that they they talk about isn't realistic at this point we have a much greater chance than one percent of flooding in a year um mr swanson also spoke to the fact that this was the best use of this land however we all know by public record that the county has approached the owners of the property to purchase it for conservation so in fact that would probably be the best use of a flood basin um from the staff report directly from the staff report for this project i learned that a lot of the man-made ditches out there have been dug since 1941 again fact of the matter is this property has always been known floodland the soil over 90 percent of the developed the proposed development area is comprised of soil that it says not suitable for development it goes on to state that yes that could be mitigated uh and manipulated in order to build this development but it seems as though we've seen all over the kathleen area much less polk county what happens when we continue to manipulate and mitigate these soils and these wetlands um i know i'm i'm running out of time here i could go on a lot longer again facts but uh we appreciate your time so we hope you make the right decision thank you my name is uh nesta mutirera i live at 4212 decent road uh just directly across from the entrance proposed of this new development uh we moved there four years ago and this was a topic of discussion at that point in time having recently moved there we were pretty out of the loop of the area having not learned what it looked like uh i'm not under i'm not quite sure the standards of a 100 year 24 hour storm but i can show you pictures of what happened two years ago in less than 12 hours i also worked as a professional firefighter in the central florida area for the last 12 years so i've experienced responding to many severe hurricanes of which we've experienced over the last decade the flooding that we saw over a decent road was enormous it actually turned our house into a lakefront property where they want to put this new home development here it also covered the entire area of which they want to have the only entrance to this residential area you're wanting to cut off 150 families from emergency services because of flooding during the worst time of a storm if you go ahead with approving a development like this that is something to be taken into consideration because there is no there's only one way in and one way out from decent road and there's only one way in and one way out from this residential development and if it is cut off by flooding there's going to be families who are set without resources for multiple days if not weeks at a time not even able to get in and out so they say seeing and believing i would love to give you guys these photos that you would be able to see with your own eyes what we are talking about when it comes to flooding so i implore you all to uh use this as evidence factual evidence and to make a wise decision to not propose the development of this new community thank you thank you yes we can accept those into evidence good afternoon planning commission my name is peter hobner i live at five one three zero greenfield road and uh today i really just want to take a different turn i want to i actually want to stop and thank everybody who's taking time out of their day time out of their schedule taking pto time or vacation time to be here we do not get paid to come to these presentations as developers may because if the development goes through obviously it is a big score and everybody gets paid that is what the developer is about let's not hide it i know what it is i'm in construction myself but when you look at the map and you look at the aerial topographical views of this property you have to almost wonder how come in all the time in imperial polk county we've been developing never developed it how come in all this time we've only developed right around to the edges of it because past commissions and past boards have known and can see it this property is not conducive we can talk about it all day long but what i really want to talk about is maybe three other subdivisions in our area that have been checked the boxes by the staff and planning commission has pushed it forward which has also put strain and stress on our community we start with knight's landing which is right there at the end of decent road and borders up against kathleen phase one was completed a few years ago entrance to that is 50 feet from the railroad tracks which are about 15 feet from kathleen which is an intersection proposed for years to have an intersection and a light put in hasn't happened probably because of things of planning where we walk over to ross creek which is right across kathleen road and the intersection there the entrance of that subdivision doesn't align couldn't quite acquire the right property to make it align with kathleen road maybe i don't know but it sits there and in construction i wonder why was that never done why weren't those intersections aligned and the traffic light put in so we're not sitting there waiting for people to make u-turns when they come out of ross creek and come up to decent road and then they want to go they want to go southbound on kathleen they have to make a u-turn right there which actually impedes people leaving decent road making a left going northbound on kathleen road and even the traffic making a right off of decent onto kathleen road heading southbound it backs the intersection up currently with phase one at at knight's landing people around the afternoon everybody coming home or going out grocery store dinner decent roads backed up all the way to llewellyn some of those people are trying to make left-hand turns but you can't get up to the left-hand lane because it's not long enough the road is inadequate as it is and yet we have already i believe started construction on phase two in knight's landing with no other entrance in sight the entrance is there singly off of decent road so we're going to dump more traffic there these have already been approved and they're in process but yet we as a community are stressed with the things that are going on due to this it's too late as other as other citizens have already said once it goes on it's over thank you thank you good afternoon my name is linda campbell my address is 5154 rock dove loop i've lived out there 30 years i live north of the site decent road is terrible there is no sidewalks there is no anything other than for two cars to get back and forth and they're proposing 150 new homes on a road that already is not even hardly a road yeah they'll put in sidewalks they'll put in sidewalks only to theirs but then the people that live at the end of the road decent road in the mobile home park what are they gonna they won't have sidewalks i actually tried to um i do permitting for 28 years i tried to have my friends wanted to buy this property and they said it was unbuildable that was back in like 2005 um also when i did my permitting um you had to look at what the surrounding area was there is no development out there everybody's on acreage um they say that the property where they're wanting to put 150 uh homes that it's been bad because of the cows and they're gonna up they're gonna make it better and da da da i've never seen any cows i've only seen water there water water and water if they go ahead and they put in their drainage um how are you gonna know that's gonna help two miles north of this they put in willow a willow ridge community it flooded so bad that nobody could get out of the community one way in one way out nobody could get in or out of that community for three weeks while milton came here till they pumped the water over the fire station and down the road down kathleen i feel the same thing's going to happen to this water has a right to go and it will go yes you can kind of think of where it's going to go and try to manage it here but it can't happen and all of us people that have our homes out there for many many years we're the ones that are going to hurt and let's not even bring up the the decent and kathleen road i can't believe there is not an a light there a turnaround or something they added that new subdivision that is a mess there's always accidents there i bet there's an accident two or three times a week it's ridiculous um i nice to have sidewalks they're actually putting sidewalks down first street um that's all but please deny this it's just not good for us it's not good for the community there's plenty of other building around why do they have to build on a wet area i mean it is soaking wet i've never even seen any cows on it because it's so wet thank you very much for your time thank you yes sir i'm mark calamaris at 5944 robbins road in lakeland i'm just calling uh excuse me i'm just here to show support for my neighbors uh mr swanson put on an excellent look uh presentation on paper however uh there's a reason why this project has been denied two times prior and uh those reasons haven't haven't changed uh the flooding is the potential for the flooding has only gotten worse and i think the uh it's the the clear logic has been presented today that we just need to deny this project thank you so much thank you anyone else like to speak see no one i'll bring this back to the board for discussion and a motion i have a question for staff what has changed with this project that the bocc denied it twice what's changed unit counts have changed unit sizes have changed setbacks have changed uh proposals for drainage have changed cool to get to the density that's requested has changed we've had to take this you notice my presentation doesn't have accounts of the old spds this has to stand alone on evaluation so it's multiple things have changed since then so the density is different the lots are different yes the account lot count is different if you look under section um or page eight of the staff report i kind of give a history of different approvals and cases on this property from when it was changed from our agricultural residential rural 2022 to residential suburban which precipitated those applications for the spds and and the first iteration was 242 lots the second iteration was 147 lots which was approved by the plan of commission but ultimately rejected by the board but the tools changed how we evaluate spds from then to now has changed for gosh sakes we've gone to this locational criteria that's kind of being adopted now as opposed to i don't miss ignini and mr hickman might remember we had a map up there purple and red what was developed on mr up externally to us so a lot's changed since then well we have three or four commissioners that are still sitting that this will go in front of who did not approve because of the water not so much your different changes but because it's major flood so what that that's basically what was my question this is going in front of them again right i understand it and um i'll tell them the same thing you know that this stage is this compatibility review and and those tools have been used uh to address the the surrounding uses that you know that as the applicant stated and we've stated before this is the first step um into the whole development process if they come in and it comes to counter review and goes before our flood plan manager and county engineers and these 150 lots are too much for what they need to accommodate the storm water and the flood they're going to reduce that and mr swanson might walk away still with less than what he can develop with and make money off that this is very preliminary stage in this that's amazing thank you yes ma'am what what is the soil classification i mean i know it varies and there's different classifications i'm just wondering the looks like i mean i'm guessing that's pretty high water table soils yes sir and i would defer to to the applicant on it but to address the comment about the staff report in the soils we we know the majority of that area that's upland is that pomona fine sand which is an ideal for septic which the availability of six inch wastewater line promotes some of this higher density development there we know we'll need i'm sorry i know that the applicant will need these hundred year ponds to accommodate the the the poor um um what am i trying to say percolation rates on this and again i would defer to our county engineer for more detail on that for the applicants expert i i don't think this case automatically goes to the board um commissioner jenema so this is you had mentioned that this will go to the board of county commissioners technically that's not decided this is the final decision by the planning commission unless appealed by somebody so this will not automatically go to the board of county commissioners oh so this will not go back to the vocc so this only if appealed okay would the other cases appeal yes sir yeah so no vote okay okay so um if we don't approve it then it will go before the county commission most likely you know if the applicant can choose to do that and honestly i imagine he would given all the time and dollars he's spent to get it to this point um you know normally i'm for development i think we have a real need in this county for availability of housing sites and that in turn keeps the cost of housing down if they're if that's possible these days but um you know i've built in that kathleen area for 40 years and and um has issues out there so i appreciate what everyone's saying uh to that i'd like to make a motion to disapprove lpd ldpd 2026-6 and i can i just second second can i add something in before we take an official vote because even before the public testimony part of this to me the footprint of this looks nothing like the surrounding areas and then considering everything with the drainage you know i just i'm giving reasoning as to why i'm gonna vote why i am just one more comment i i understand the consistency and compatibility and i actually have no problem with that it's the citizen's testimony that has you know is going to make me vote the way that i am today so i looked at because i have access to near map aerial photos i saw this property about 80 percent underwater and an october of 24 photograph which kind of mimics what was presented here um i think it's irresponsible to put potential new homeowners that don't know that background information that are purchasing homes similar to other i think it's the willow ridge kathleen those home buyers didn't have that knowledge when they purchased those homes so i i just i think it's irresponsible to allow such development on such wetland and so close or through a floodway before we take a vote i'll give the applicant the opportunity thank you i'm not disputing that hurricane milton caused flooding to this site it was underwater homes were flooded off a decent the county declared a state of emergency so did the state people died including in pole county a significant portion of the property does flood this is why the rd framework was utilized developments concentrated on uplands while more than 93 acres remain preserved as wetlands flood plain open space and stormwater management with 153 lots and we've made reference to willow ridge that tract is approximately 25 or 26 acres this is six times the size we have stormwater areas or floodplain areas that we've carved out that are 18 acres that's nearly the size of willow ridge itself um i would say i want to answer a couple of other things um this is not the same project that was denied um the current rd incorporates larger perimeter lots enhanced buffers increased setbacks centralized utilities again over 93 acres of preservation and i will point out you know i'm i think the question before the commission is not whether flooding exists or whether people have concerns we know we know they're they're real i've incorporated community input into the design to best handle these issues the question is whether this application satisfies the comprehensive plan the land development code and the purpose of the rd framework staff concluded that it does and that's really what we're here to vote on whether it complies with the comprehensive plan and the land development code and the intent of the rural residential development framework i'll just add to comment that i think you're correct i mean and i think that the staff has done a good job in making that analysis however we also have the responsibility to determine what is an appropriate location for that development and given environmental factors uh drainage factors soil factors floodplain factors those all have to be taken into consideration in addition to consistency with the comprehensive plan and the land development code because there's policies in the comprehensive plan that address appropriateness of development with regard to those issues which it was evaluated through this rd scoring uh framework where i didn't where we had to meet a minimum of 100 points we've we've surpassed that we've also had a determination from staff that we've exceeded and over complied with stormwater thank you so i'll ask for the roll call and we have we do have a motion on the floor to deny and a second to deny this request i'll ask i can edit yeah i don't know that we got that because there was did we okay someone seconded it though right i thought so i second okay okay okay roll call please linda schultz i'm for the motion julie jackson for the motion angel sims for the motion mike hickman for the motion brooke agnini for the motion moral bishop or the motion cindy jenna masso for the motion the motion to deny is approved thanks case you're saying the dogs expert take me okay i already said that chair we ready to do the next case or we take yes i'm sorry okay all right next one uh number 17 on the agenda it's ldcu 2025 35 the cross paw rescue conditional use for the record the staff report and slideshows and application materials have been entered into your agenda alia and gleema is your planner um excuse me mr chairman i'll be abstaining from this vote okay i will be as well and i will not be making any comments either okay i'm not sure if we need you to vote or not we may i need to ask the attorney okay good morning alia and gleema with land development presenting number 17 on the agenda ldcu 2025-35 the cross pause rescue conditional use the applicant is requesting a conditional use approval to allow a kennels and boarding use on approximately 4.63 acres the subject site is located at 36 56 kayville avenue south of highway 92 west west of the city of auburndale in section 18 township 28 range 25 on may 15th 42 mailers were sent to area property owners one sign was posted on may 12th a legal ad was published in the lakeland winter haven sign on may 20th with 14 emails in support staff is recommending denial so the subject property is 4.63 acres and is about 157 feet in width and 1 282 feet in length the subject property is located within a residential suburban land use district intended for residential uses of one dwelling unit per five acres the purpose of the rs district is to provide areas for suburban residential development to promote the proper transition from land of land from rural to urban uses the rs district permits single family dwelling units family care homes agriculture support uses and community facilities the only category that permits kennels boarding and breeding by right is agriculture rural residential which is generally intended for larger parcels at least five acres to help mitigate potential impacts they are not allowed in any other residential category in contrast kennels boarding and breeding within the residential suburban district require a see-through review and are evaluated on a case-by-case basis to address compatibility concerns so a pet rescue operation has been established at this site based on site inspections and case records multiple animals are being housed on the property in three 30 by 40 sheds associated with the rescue operation the property owner is pursuing this case to to bring the use into compliance the presence of the rescue has resulted up observable increases of on-site activity including regular animal related noise frequent visits associated with the operation according to code enforcement the codes case was created march 17th of 2025 a code enforcement inspection of the property found older residential structure two newer accessory structures and a concrete slab behind them permit records confirmed active permits for the rear buildings and online searches identified cross pause pet rescue advertising the property as a new facility during a follow-up codes inspection on july 15th 2025 staff observed multiple buildings with attached outdoor kennels at the rear of the property and heard barking coming from the inside of the buildings so three residential accessory permits for detached metal garages were applied for the site plan provided to building shows the existing house on site forms were filled out saying the sheds will be used as a personal use ldc section 209 does not limit the number of accessory structures a property can have the proximity of existing surrounding single-family homes and the narrowness of the parcel makes this project incompatible with the surrounding area as you can see the sheds are within 200 feet of three single-family homes the county cannot regulate the number of dogs on site three sheds are currently on site used as a kennel not meeting setbacks the applicant is proposing three new metal buildings to the rear of the property meeting setbacks the staff cannot prove that this will reduce the impacts to surrounding residential properties relocating operations towards the rear of the parcel could still create impacts severe enough that neighboring owners can no no longer reasonably use or enjoy their property as they previously could given the narrow width of the subject property the ldc requires all new structures shall be a minimum of 50 50 feet from any side or rear property boundary boundary line at a minimum a visual buffer equal to a type c shall be provided between all new facilities adjacent to residential properties the applicant has addressed this but the current kennel buildings will remain and be used for storage all kennel sites shall be a minimum of 40 000 square feet additionally all dogs more than four months of age shall be kept in pens designed and maintained for secure confinement all sanitary facilities shall be approved by the health department kennel shall minimize adverse noise and odor impacts detectable off-site such features shall be noted on site plan these are the minimum standards across all lane use districts that allow kennels but not necessarily prescripted to rs so compatible sites include the polk county bully project spca florida within a business park center to lane use district kennels boarding and breeding is a c2 and bpc2 the humane society of polk county is also within a bpc2 lane use as you can see it is approximately 536 feet from the nearest residential structure here are pictures from google earth and staff's visit and this is a view of the entrance of the site and here are pictures on the property of the sheds that house the dogs here are pictures from the neighbor's uh side to the east as you can see there's an eight foot fence and here are additional photos from the neighbor's side to the west and there's also a eight eight foot fence so part of the review is to ensure compatibility with surrounding uses given the shape of the property in the operation of the kennel relative to surrounding uses staff finds this use incompatible and recommends denial and i'll stand for any questions i also do want to note that code enforcement is here if you guys have questions for them as well thank you i've got a question i'm sorry yes were there a lot of complaints about this prior to this meeting is that why we're here today yes there's a code enforcement case for this merle yes just uh full disclosure on this uh sarah case called me last week on it and uh i guess she was flushing out what she was going to say today but just for staff um let's see um so the new location of these buildings what are the distance from existing residential properties once they're relocated and if if you sarah if you're going to cover all this i don't have the distance and cells on my slideshow but it seems that sarah does i'll wait till sarah does her thing okay any other questions of staff say none is the applicant present thank you good afternoon for the record sarah case i'm with next level planning and permitting my address is 38 25 south florida avenue and that is in lakeland i have been sworn in we are here today i'm going to give you all kinds of backstory information to give you the story of why we're here today okay so my clients purchased this property in december of 2024 under the name of cross paws pet rescue inc there's they are a c3 non uh 50c13 non-profit um organization so when they purchased the property and i don't know if you can see that without it blurring but here are the three building permits that were issued for each of the sheds that are currently on site and that took place in january of 2025 so they bought the property in december in january they applied four permits for three permits under cross paws pet rescue inc because that is the owner of the property then there was a little bit of gap in time but in may of the same year 2025 they pulled electric permits for all three of those sheds so the sheds that are on site in place were legally permitted and they have electricity they are actually um air conditioned for the comfort of the dogs that um are owned by the owner of um cross paws pet rescue who is stephanie badillo and you will hear from her so um not to be redundant because i know staff showed you some of this information as well so here is our property kayville our site is in the turquoise whatever color and we back up to c e commercial enclave and right this is vacant um and you can tell from an aerial i'll show you later but the but here is texas pipe and supply company um an active um commercial organization as staff also indicated we are rs and kennels and boarding and breeding is the the category and um it is allowed with planning commission approval so there was a code complaint file or i guess a call from our neighbors in march of 2025 saying that um there was noise odor lots of barking there were no dogs on site until after july 4th weekend because and i'll go back in may we didn't even have electrical permits with ac for the dogs they were not on site in in march the c3 and why we're here obviously is the code enforcement violation we were cited in july and um my clients felt like we're a rescue we are not a kennel and i'm going to show you why we are so different than a kennel however the code enforcement code enforcement violation citation was we were operating the kennel without a c3 permit so we filed the c3 permit and that's why we're here today so as staff indicated and this is also in your staff report these are this is in chapter three alphabetical order in the land development code under kennels boarding and breeding so here is the four criteria that are required for kennels regardless of land use this applies to the actual use of kennels all new structures shall be a minimum of 50 feet from any side or rear property boundary line we did not build 50 foot setback for that compatibility buffer because those permits were pulled in january before we were cited we have decided we are going to leave those sheds where they are now and use them as storage my client pays for two storage facilities off-site and she's going to save over five hundred dollars a month by using storage on site it's too expensive to have to move them and relocate them to the rear of the property and so we're proposing new structures at it would really be the north of the property but it's the rear of the property and it would abut that ce land use secondly at a minimum a visual buffer equal to type c shall be provided between all new facilities and adjacent residential properties and public roads on our site plan that's shown as exhibit b i'm sorry exhibit five in your staff report you will see that we've put a type c buffer all kennels sites shall be at a minimum 40 000 square feet or almost an acre we are 4.63 acres so i want that to be noted for sure all dogs more than four months of age shall be kept in pens designed and maintained for secure confinement done all sanitary facilities shall be approved by the health department because we're not open to the public these are personal dogs owned by stephanie padillo of cross paws we are not required to get health department approval there is a note on the site plan that i want to go over later at the end of my presentation and after we've heard all other testimony that discusses the actual conditions that we are proposing that are applicant initiated they were not included in your staff report under where the denial was mentioned but they are on that sheet and i'll reference that i have a slide later for that kennels shall minimize adverse noise or odor impacts detectable off-site such features shall be noted on the site plan we have duly noted on the site plan we have as you saw from some pictures an eight foot opaque fence we've actually triple fenced and i'll show you some pictures to that effect so exhibit five page 17 you will see on that site plan i had to break it up because of the size of the slide and we had a match line right here so here currently are the sheds that were legally constructed we're now going to use them for storage the red indicates the 50 foot buffer from all property lines again these are 30 by 40 and we are proposing to put them this is the north property line ethel avenues here and you've got texas pipe supply here we're showing a type c buffer and we are able to fit the three and we are i have another slide but we are approximately between this point can you see my cursor between this point here and this point here is 599 feet so i would have to add that to the measurements that are shown on the staff report but from this north building line to here and again we're matching lines is 599 feet is what we're proposing farther away from the neighbors the distance to adjacent to residential homes would be how far to the closest building so um if i could i'll actually tell you that so let's just say it's 600 feet it's 599 so we're just going to add 600 feet to each of staffs oh i'm sorry okay so property to the east um the closest shed is 187 feet at 600 of that we're going to be 787 feet from the single family home that is on our east the single family home that is also on that site staff is showing 178 feet adding the say 600 just for fun it's going to be 778 feet the single family home that is adjacent to our west side staff is showing at 184 feet we are proposing what will be 784 feet here are some pictures that so we we this was a difficult case because number one i had to convince my clients yes you've been cited as a kennel we're crossing that bridge we're saying we're a kennel and we're moving forward this is how we're going to get into compliance with the county it was very hard for them because we are so unlike a kennel because we are not open to the public we um are so unlike and i'll get that i'll get to that later into my presentation but we are not like spca we are not like humane society we are not um like you know bully project we are this is private property owned by cross paws and you'll hear later but um and the owner will be living there on site once the single family home is refurbished so so during drc staff was a little stumped because they're like why why are you here because you're not a kennel um they had an issues meeting we came back and they said well we're going to deny it and we said okay why don't you meet us on site so we had code enforcement come on site we had staff several um in this room were with us and these are the pictures from the public records request that i um received from codes enforcement from their case file so as you see the date 218 2026 so we were all on site and i want to say maybe a total of 12 max there had never been that many people on this site before so we walked around and here are the existing sheds you can see the fence investment that they have made for the property there's the utility and then this is going to be facing the the west side is where that fence is again all units are air conditioned this is where they go out to um this um take a break and um and then what cross pause does is they collect the solid waste and they take it to the dump to dispose of and that's why i was addressing that part about the health department and as part of the record we did submit um polk county um solid waste facility receipts from her taking um that solid waste to the to the dump um staff indicate code enforcement staff indicated that when they were on site that every pin was labeled with each dog's name their vaccination and all of that and um this was included in in their slides for code enforcement so this is a little rough but um we're getting there so here's where i said 600 feet so this is going to be so the site itself is twelve hundred and eighty two point four seven feet so that's the length of the property the width of the property is 147 not 157 excuse me so right now with the single family home and the sheds this red line here is where the sheds stop the existing so it would be this line here so this is 431 feet from this red line to this red line again we have 1282 feet this is approximately 600 feet and with the 50 foot compatibility the setbacks in between the buildings that we're showing on the binding site plan it's approximately 250 feet so single family residents single family residents and then we're proposing these buildings back here it's a terrible slide but i actually cut and pasted it from the staff report but it just shows on an aerial view of what i just showed you here's existing they are outside of the compatibility buffer we're now proposing to use them for on-site storage here are the proposed building buildings that are just like these so this is existing this is proposed here you have single family single family single family residents this was an actual copy of the survey which shows you the actual dimension of the 1280 32.47 this being north is just another slide so um at this point um i'd like to pause ask answer any questions that you might have um and then i guess proceed as you wish any questions of the outcome um so i guess the first thing is uh and this is directed to staff because we tend to see this uh not all the time but irregular enough that um you know staff and or the building department approves a plan and people go out in good faith and build what they intend to build and then all of a sudden somebody complains about it and um you know staff kind of says oh well and you got to go through this whole process so i mean if they came in and apply for three buildings under the name of cross paws pet rescue wouldn't somebody ask and say you know what is the purpose of these three buildings uh i mean you know and again that would have probably solved a lot of these issues right out of the gate they either would have been disapproved or they would have been before the commission and got this right the first time uh so that's just a comment um to uh staff you uh said that they had no limit on the dogs but we could as a commission limit the number of dogs allowed on the property is that correct okay um distance you know 700 feet you mentioned that sbca is 600 feet away from the nearest residential so it certainly seems like they have the ability to have distance from existing residences um and then if um so if you get this designation sarah would you be required to then be regulated by the health department no no we would not so when does the health department come into play then so it's it's the type of facility this is personal property residential property that we're asking for a c3 for the kennel this is private property and all of the dogs on site are registered to stephanie badilla all of them they're personal they are her dogs some of them she rescued years ago i mean you're kind of mincing that you got an llc that owns the property and is submitted for permitting uh i'm not sure where an individual comes into play on this well we'll we will actually address that in some future slides and comment merlin may i am i going to vote on this there's five right now we have a quorum okay we have a quorum even with two recusals i i want to make a comment just from what mike said and this is if i'm a staff member i don't want to have to disertain from somebody's llc name on what they're doing now that i think we're putting a lot on staff to to make that and if you look under the findings of fact this was supposed to be three residential accessory permits for metal garages with no concrete or with concrete and no electric now we've pushed the limits here is that's that's all i need to say good point i thought i heard staff say earlier when you present this case that the permits when the permits were issued or applied for it uh it stated they were for personal use and didn't elaborate any beyond that but there was a residence on the property at the time yes and it wasn't used but they wouldn't know that i do want to go on record and say we are trying to come into compliance with all of these my point with when we built them was that it was unknown that we were in violation because we did not consider ourselves a kennel per land development code we are not asking you all hey we're fighting we want to take these buildings that are there now and give us a waiver on this 50 foot setback from every property line we're not saying that we also don't want to move them because of the cost of that we are proposing as a mitigation factor to build new buildings farther away and it's more than just 700 787 789 and and all of that so so another question for staff if i've got five acres and i want to keep 80 personal pets on my acreage is there a limit to that so so so the the real factor is what the noise that was the allegation yeah and and what's our decibel um limit to a noise off of a property i mean we pass water pumps that you know crank out a pretty good decibel level uh i mean what what exactly are they saying is the problem here i mean operation of the non-residential use between two residential properties to sum it up i mean no there might not be a restriction on personal pets but we're also not offering up our personal pets for adoption all the time people coming and going it's the activity on the site that's really in the question here and how that conforms the land development code well is that the case no it is not the case no the the site is closed to the public this is personal property the site is closed to the public they do not have any adoptions on site people don't there are board members volunteers they've never even been on site and that is one of the conditions that we are proposing to lock it in specific to this site is that it is closed to the public that's how we are different than spca and animal control in the humane society you said there's no volunteers on site either no what i i'm sorry what i said was there are volunteers and supporters that have never been on site this is not a public gathering space this will be stephanie's home well there must be a limit because you've just got so much space i mean so if she's rescuing dogs how do you rescue dogs and add to this if you're not i guess having any way for the dogs that you've got to place them somewhere else because you're i mean there has to be a limit a capacity i would imagine so um you're going to have an opportunity to hear from stephanie and she will answer some of that as well as one of the board members to address that okay specifically um so i'll ask step go ahead so you are limited you've got three buildings so you can only house so many dogs is that correct each building um can house 27 dogs and actually staff had a better slide from our site visit in february that just showed how they're divided up there were also some pictures in the code enforcement um records so how many dogs are there currently well there are approximately 66 dogs so 27 times three so three buildings 81 and stephanie just went last week to maine where she works with another rescue and she transported 15 dogs to maine and this is a no kill this is rescue dog assist the county in not killing this is no kill so let me ask staff what is i mean how does this jibe with a kennel is there definition in the code of a kennel she has yes in chapter 10 yes correct it's it's under uh breeding and boarding and there are a couple different levels there as i recall and there's some nuance in the language here that is what sarah's point is about it being an adoption rescue clinic versus what you would consider like a breeding kennel or where you'd take your dog to the spca for while you go on vacation so does this but it's still a housing that's the issue we don't have a definition that exactly lines this is kind of a gray area maybe it's a little green is it you're saying it's a kennel she's she's arguing it doesn't meet the the letter of the i crossed that bridge and came directly to you for a c3 okay my clients were saying well we're not a kennel not a kennel not a kennel i said we're i'm not taking this case unless we say that we're a kennel and then we can because it is a conditional use a c3 use allowable in rs you all can place conditions on this site that make it site specific as mentioned in the code that is allowable through the c3 you all can make those decisions i suggested some language for conditions and we can get to that once the public okay so let me go back to my previous question what was the basis for code enforcement uh citing you all neighbor complaint neighbor complaint of noise and odor and so what basis that you were in a non-con that you were non-conforming or that you or the dogs were noisy or what in march we didn't have the dogs on site so and i am under oath we did not have the dogs on site okay so they cited you what did they cite you for a kennel operating the kennel well and we have code enforcement i just want to point out officers here enforcement is here the question okay for the county okay all right thank you so i'm not i am not saying we are not a kennel i'm asking you to put conditions on us that make you all feel better about us being the category of a kennel okay any further questions just one sarah so the i think i'm on the right website the cross paws okay you're telling us that these are your clients personal dogs and what do they do with them are they they look for homes throughout the united states or i'm kind of reading up on their website a little bit i am going to allow stephanie to discuss that when she speaks okay um no new rescues have come on this site every dog that is there now is registered to stephanie they are hers she's had them for 10 years nine six and we told staff that on the staff visit so so people don't go there to adopt no one is allowed on dog okay except stephanie her sister who feeds the dogs stephanie's husband and then when we have a meeting with staff when we invited them out to look at the conditions of the property it is not it will never be open to the public okay so as part of the applicants presentation unless you have more i'll let i guess you want stephanie to come up and then after she comes up i'm going to ask code enforcement to come up and clarify so hopefully maybe clarify some issues so if if it will please and if i could please ask for permission um i would like a couple other people to speak before stephanie because they i have not been involved as much as they have from the beginning of this foundation they can talk to you about that answer questions about the land do that kind of thing and they are part of they have written statements they are prepared to present um and how long is their presentation going to be three minutes each all right okay i'll allow it as part of the applicant's presentation oh no no i meant during the public hearing oh during the public okay so so you're through with your applicants through with their presentation almost there almost for now yes but i would i would ask for the opportunity to come and address any concerns that you all right so if you want them to come up before stephanie because i'll open it up for the public here and for people in support so i'll ask for code enforcement so i come up i would actually like to ask because this is a code enforcement violation and it was called in by a neighbor could we have those in opposition speak so that we know what concerns theirs are they have and to answer you know some of your questions well they'll have a chance to speak yes okay so and then you'll have a chance to rebut anything or answer any questions that come up from that so all right we can we'll do it that way then who from code enforcement is going to come up and discuss this with us good morning my name is tanya long i'm code enforcement supervisor with polk county code enforcement and my name is david lambert code enforcement investigator and we were both here earlier when y'all swore in at nine o'clock okay what would you like to well i guess the this is the first time i think code's been here so yeah i guess the main question was what was the nature of what what was the complaint that was called in and what did you what are your findings and what is the basis for the violation but i guess first of all what what caused or precipitated the complaint and the in the violation the initial complaint i believe we got was in march but it was more because there was i believe either had been hosted or were planning to host some type of a fundraising event on that site so they were concerned about the traffic in back in march it then took us a couple of months of doing research with their website speaking with the owners when we went out to talk to them to determine what was happening what was not happening during that investigation we learned that this location is used just to house the dogs it appears she has another site inside the city limits of auburndale where most of the daily operations of come meet a dog adopt a dog that's done from a different location um it's not that i get to come here and just like you said through the spca walk through kennels and pick out the dog i want um i guess she arranges that to be happening in another location not at this site so this is just the fact that she does take in dogs in whichever way she she obtains dogs um and houses them there until she can adopt them out through her rescue so when we went there that is basically this is just the location that she is housing multiple dogs during our research we found that last year and i confirmed this morning october 21st of last year she posted on pace facebook her number 400th dog intake for the year on october 21st of 2025 she'd already taken in 400 dogs um this year on her facebook website three days ago she had she announced that she adopted out her 159th dog for this year so that many dogs are coming in and out of this location and being housed and fed um and maintained here until that transaction happens with that that's why we determined it was more on the kennel side because she's housing them until that portion happens of finding new homes but you don't know how many dogs were there at one time i mean obviously there wasn't 400 dogs there at one time i believe um david was there on the february visit february 18th visit about how many dogs were there at that time all right so what what we heard uh sarah case say that and i don't have my dates i don't remember the dates but at the time there was a violation uh registered and or a complaint made and you went out there there were no dogs on site and she says that she has evidence or can present evidence that there were no dogs on site that's correct on march when i went out there there was nobody or no but no dogs on site or anybody living on site that i'm aware of okay um they weren't cited with a violation until july and that was after i received a complaint in may that dogs had been moved on to the property and that there was an rv on site and someone was living in the rv at that point i posted i i went physically to her other property in auburndale with a courtesy letter just advising her of what the problem could be and also took a courtesy letter and taped it to the door of the rv letting her know what potential violations there could be and at that point i hadn't cited her she then called me we met at the auburndale diner we had a conversation out on the sidewalk and i advised her that in order to have a kennel inside the county she needed to have a land development review she needed to contact land development several other times i received phone calls from her partners or whatever i advised them the same thing that they needed to contact land development and then eventually when we saw that there were dogs on site and we were getting complaints about odor and barking then that's when i cited it for having a kennel and without a review the the real the real violation was doing this without having the land development review so the specific violation then was for operating a kennel without the proper land use approval yes sir okay and the facilities were there in march when you went there she just hadn't moved dogs into it at that time march 18th i believe if i'm not mistaken there were two of the buildings were done and there was concrete slab the third one wasn't wasn't done yet okay they did move out of the rv they did comply with that when i told them they couldn't live in the rv so that they have been you know compatible with that all right all right any other questions okay thank you okay i'm gonna open the um public comment portion of this agenda item and ask for those who want to speak in favor of this application to come forward please don't get old any glasses uh good afternoon and thank you for your time my name is peter galako my address is 45 24 nuns wood lane lakeland florida i'm here today to support cross paws rescue i am both a donor and a proud sponsor and supporter of the organization i'd like to take a few minutes to explain why this property and the conditional use permit is so important the board of cross paws selected the property very carefully and for several important reasons the property provides ample space for the dogs to exercise and enjoy a safe environment it is pretty much secluded which is beneficial for both the animals and the surrounding community most importantly it offers the opportunity for stephanie to live on site and care for the dogs that depend on her every day i want to be clear about the dogs that are on site every dog on site is owned by stephanie personally she does not bring dogs on site that are not owned by her all those dogs stay at the others the other place so these are not shelter dogs being brought in and out on a continual basis these are dogs that stephanie has personally adopted and registered her own name these are the dogs that were unable for whatever reason to be adopted they're all her dogs there rather than seem abandoned and euthanized stephanie gave her home and made a lifelong commitment stephanie has already begun to rehabilitate the house that's on the property but the board asked her to stop there's no reason to put more money in the property if we can't continue with our mission as a non-profit organization cross paws must be careful and be a steward of their money it would not be prudent to continue to invest funds and improvements before knowing whether the property can be used for its purpose i'd also like to address the ownership of the property the property was purchased with financing provided by a private foundation that supports charitable causes to comply with this requirement associated with the funding the property is currently owned by cross paws pet rescue a recognized 501c3 organization at its core this request is about providing a safe and appropriate place for these animals to live while allowing cross paws to continue supporting animal rescue efforts throughout the community this property is uniquely suited for that purpose i respectfully ask that you support this conditional use permit and thank you for your time and consideration if you have any questions for me i'd be happy to answer any questions yeah yeah i do have questions um so how many of these what's the turnover of your dogs of stephanie's dogs so there are no turnovers stephanie's dogs well i take that back she did take 15 up to another rescue but those that are there on the property are registered to her they're her dogs um and she's not taking them to the other site for adoption no no no not not according to what i know about it those are all registered to her those are the dogs that were not able to be adopted for a lot of different reasons she takes in dogs that are that are hurt that are sick that are abandoned that people just don't want and if there's dogs that people don't want there may never be a home for them and that's what she does she steps in and takes these dogs that nobody wants i assume there's a vet that that she works with absolutely and there's a letter from that the vet wasn't able to be here he had surgery but we have a letter that's going to be read from the vet so let me ask i mean you said this property was purchased by a non-profit for this reason but why this property i mean there had to been other choices that may have been more conducive to this i don't know i'm just wondering why this property just because it was for sale or well first of all they looked at a few other properties okay this one was large enough and long enough for the dogs to have access to and run on also we're not for profit it fit into our budget also so you know having the foundation that sponsored this saw the need that she had all these dogs that she was keeping and there's nowhere to put them and as she gets dogs that are not able to be adopted where do they go so this foundation was kind enough to step up and say we want to solve this problem for you we want to be able to house these dogs safely in a great environment and allow them to live out the rest of their lives um and because of the 501c3 rules it had to stay within the not-for-profit so that's the reason why it's in that i got another question i'm not sure you're the person to ask this uh but um the code enforcement mentioned that on the website he referenced what was it 400 and over 400 dogs those those are adopted out of the auburndale location those dogs do not come out of the property and leave those okay so what is the relationship with the auburndale location and this location this location is the location was purchased for stephanie to live on the property and be and take care of the dogs because you know having 40 or 50 dogs it's very difficult to have a house that houses all of them so there's issues along the way this gave the ability for her to be there for them all the time and we're going to come across a few dogs every year that will not be adopted and we still need a place to put them so this would be um a facility then that would take absolutely the bottom of the barrel as far as dogs are concerned that no one's going to adopt and your only other choice you send them to the to county services they're going to put them to sleep and that's not you know in my opinion that costs a lot of money to our county this is funded by individuals in the community and this will help with the expense of euthanizing dogs and also it allows her to live with her dogs you know consistently without they'll be there till they pass on and they'll be there till they pass on and you're gonna and you you're limited into the number of dogs absolutely and again mr chairman if i may are we need to focus here all right we're trying to determine whether or not this is we need to approve this today this is all circumstantial evidence like your county attorney spoke of at the beginning of this meeting we need to redirect here i'm not sure if it's circumstantial evidence because this is really what the property it is when we're talking about dogs we're trying to determine we got to get a hold of this determine whether this is the proper location for this type of and if it fits underneath the code but i think this is important because we have the ability to put restrictions on this should be granted and and unless we know the scope of what they want to do i don't know how we put restrictions on it all right and each of them have three minutes so we need to adhere to that well we that's correct but we kind of got off track by asking the questions which extended to three minutes so thank you sir unless you have something else to say no i don't but i appreciate your time thank you okay next please hello thank you for hearing me out my name is cheryl sylvia i live at 209 rose street in auburndale i have been sworn in i sworn sworn in at nine o'clock i'm speaking today on behalf of cross pause pet rescue i'm here to read a letter from the vet's office um i've assisted stephanie i'm her sister um i help with feeding the dogs and taking the dogs outside i do not help with the dogs that she adopts out um because they don't come to the facility i am at the facility every day caring for dogs this is the letter from hardy animal clinic they are at 1927 highway 17 north in watchua hardy animal clinic it says to whom it may concern hardy animal clinic clinic pma began working with stephanie badio in 2019 to provide a low-cost spay and neuter service for her animal rescue cross pause in polk county florida stephanie has been a great asset to polk county residents by rescuing homeless abandoned and starving animals she willingly goes wherever needed at any time to trap and rescue animals in need at times her personal home is full of puppies and adult dogs requiring care and treatment and placement stephanie nurses these animals back to health and works to adopt them out through events held throughout the year she has also established a system for placing the adoptable animals out of state including in maine hardy animal clinic pma has given stephanie our full support in her animal welfare efforts our service to her is based on the belief that every dollar saved creates another opportunity to use that saved dollar to treat and rescue other animals this allows more animals to be rescued and cared for at a reasonable cost stephanie works tirelessly and sometimes to the point of exhaustion to save abandoned animals her rescue has grown over the years and has received a great amount of support through donations her facility her facilities are kept clean and provide an ideal environment for animals and in her care if any dog has a medical problem stephanie calls immediately for instruction on how to proceed i have never seen stephanie abuse any of her animals she does not allow animal abuse on her private property and takes the welfare of her animals very seriously we are now in our seventh year working with stephanie and we hope to continue working with her for many years to come please understand that stephanie's rescue is the real deal there this is her calling and her gift respectfully william h lovett and it has his license number of hardy animal clinic um i've worked at this facility since she opened it or i'm sorry since she purchased it and i have never one seen a dog born on that property not one time and i have never had a dog adopted off of that property that's all okay thank you i am marianne matola and i live at 2265 palm use circle in auburndale and i have been sworn in and i thank you for your time today i'm speaking on behalf and in support of cross paws pet rescue 10 years ago i started following a rescue called marley's mutts in california and wished that there had been a local place where i could get involved after meeting stephanie at a local dog adoption event my wish was answered since that day in 2017 i have done my best to support her by giving her my time and my talents when needed i have never met a person like stephanie in my life her compassion and dedication are unlike anything i've ever witnessed she works non-stop for the love of her dogs she traps dogs nurses them back to health bottle feeds litter of puppies that are dumped in a field and takes injured dogs that may require thousands of dollars in vet care she even hired a drone pilot recently to locate a lost dog one night and return it to its owner together we have rescued and placed thousands of dogs that otherwise would have died or had a life in the wild very seldomly do we take any surrender owner surrender dogs over the years we have spoken to many groups including auburndale rotary and local community events educating public about the problems with unwanted dogs we hold annual fundraisers with local communities like shallamar creek and the hamptons along with many local businesses and restaurants that have sponsored cross paws over the years my work has included working at and setting up events reviewing adoption applications arranging meet and greets driving dogs to and from vet appointments and hunting lost dogs in 2019 i was asked to serve on the board of cross paws and have been a board member ever since stephanie and i and many other volunteers do not receive any salary or any form of compensation as you know poe county animal control has one of the highest kill rates in the state we have a huge problem with stray and abandoned dogs cross paws has placed over 600 dogs in loving homes in just one year in 2019 my husband frank mattola and i opened a thrift store on main street in auburndale with the mission of donating all proceeds to cross paws in 2025 we transitioned this location to host our adoption meet and greets and to conduct office work this location is now called the adoption depot cross paws has a facility on k road kville road and does not conduct any business or allow the public inside to see the dogs this way the property on kville could be dedicated to getting dogs healthy enough while housing them in safe and in the comfortable place thank you thank you for your time thank you hi good afternoon commissioners my name is kay bork i'm at 1133 brook road in fort meade i'm here today in support of cross paws rescue and the request for the conditional use permit i've been a supporter and a donor for stephanie for a number of years also but as a pope county resident who's been advocating for improvements in animal welfare at the board of county commissioners meetings over the last year i'm aware of cross paws mission to rescue all those pets who are abandoned mistreated and in need of medical help the impact of this rescues work is great and it's immensely important for these animals who cannot help themselves additionally this work is an integral part of the effort to reduce the intake at polk county animal control which will in fact reduce the euthanasia rate when i saw that cross paws has requested the conditional use permit i thought how perfect i was excited as i see it as a win-win it's a win for the animals and cross paws and it's a win for the residents of polk county as we continue the work to improve animal welfare in this county thank you thank you hi my name is aaron galako my address is 2710 derbyshire avenue in lakeland i'm a donor vice president of the board of directors but most importantly an adopter of the rescue with cross paws pet rescue our mission is to save the forgotten abandoned abused and neglected dogs that others give up on we are committed to rescuing dogs from the streets woods shelters cruelty situations and life-threatening conditions no matter the time weather or circumstance every dog we save is given a second chance through medical care rehabilitation nourishment safety and love we believe every dog deserves dignity compassion and a family willing to fight for them we are not government funded and receive no grants our rescue is powered by sacrifice community support and an unwavering commitment to the animals who have no voice from emergency trapping and critical care to transport and adoption we stand beside these dogs every step of the way until they find the loving homes they deserve our mission is more than rescue it is restoration hope and giving back to the dogs nobody else could save in january of 2021 stephanie found tank a german shepherd puppy on the side of the road with two broken legs he was in terrible condition but through her dedication and care tank made a full recovery i adopted tank on march 28 2021 and that is when i first met stephanie since then i have witnessed firsthand her commitment to helping animals that others may overlook our paths crossed again after hurricane milton when she rescued milton a german shepherd mixed puppy found on highway 27 as with so many other animals she has saved stephanie stepped in when no one else could tank and milton both found loving homes with me but not every dog that comes to the rescue is easily adoptable for those dogs stephanie does not give up on them she provides them with safety care and a chance at a better life when necessary she makes them a permanent part of her family rather than abandoning them or allowing them to be euthanized again the purpose of this property was to give stephanie a place to live with the dogs who become permanent members of her family the property provides a space necessary for these animals to live safely and humanely while allowing stephanie to continue providing them with the care they require without this property many of these dogs would have very limited options and some may not have survived in the first place it is important to understand that this is not simply a rescue operation located on a piece of land this will be stephanie's home and it is the permanent home of animals that she has rescued rehabilitated and committed to caring for when no one else would thank you so much thank you good day my name is saina wolwine i live at 261 greenfield road in winter haven could you pull that mic down just a hair thank you i'm vertically challenged in in 2018 i was following viral videos of gypsy a standard size vehicle beagle that had been roaming all around polk county haynes city winter haven and finally in auburndale i saw a video of stephanie at the auburndale police department parking lot on a cold november night no shoes just muddy white socks crawling in the mud to save gypsy so many people were following gypsy that that her rescue made it onto bay news 9. i knew i had to help this rescue instead of saying i wish i could but i donated a trunk load of dog food and started fostering i believe so strongly in the work across paws pet rescue that i have fostered over 30 dogs in the past seven years this rescue has over 59 000 followers on facebook alone it is supported by the community its followers and fosters over the years the community has raised thousands of dollars to get dogs food medical help spayed and neutered microchipped and on preventative medication the rescue has probably rescued about 2 000 dogs or animals a generous supporter donated the funds for the current property followers donated thousands of dollars to provide the secure building so much fencing and supplies for the dogs comfortable housing during the layout planning stephanie took into consideration the privacy security and safety of the rescues dogs and neighbors now the rescue and the community need your support by approving this conditional use so they can continue to provide solutions to a challenging time in our community i hope the final outcome will be your approval so this rescue and its followers can continue to save lives by providing a temporary solution on one dog at a time please don't be the one that says i wish i could but be the one that says approved and help save more lives i appreciate your time and consideration thank you i'm very nervous you did good my name is stephanie medeo and i'm the founder of cross paws pet rescue i live at 106 margaret street in arbondale and i have been sworn in i wanted to provide some of the backstory of the rescue in 2017 my daughter called me about two small dogs that had been thrown from a truck near my home in lake alfred arbondale area i went out and i spent 11 days trapping them after getting them healthy i contacted a rescue hoping that and they could take the dogs in but when i arrived and saw the conditions of that rescue i made a decision that changed my life forever i'm going to read this for her because she's having such issues and i'm just going to say real quick if you don't mind but she will have it together to answer all your questions so it's just very she's very passionate about this so she changed her life forever i would start my own rescue at first i only planned to help a few dogs i began trapping stray and abandoned dogs rehabbing them providing veterinary care getting them spayed and neutered microchipped vaccinated and then finding them loving homes everything started out of my home but before long i it became overwhelming as more people reached out for help i rented a building to continue rescuing dogs on a larger scale over time social media helped spread awareness about what we were doing i created a website and a facebook page and our rescue community grew rapidly today we have over 60 000 followers from around the world people contact me from everywhere canada texas georgia alabama and beyond asking for help with abandoned abused and neglected dogs while i cannot travel everywhere i do everything possible to help the dogs in need here in florida and the surrounding areas one rescuer i'll never forget was a frozen mother dog or i'm sorry one rescue i'll never forget was a frozen dog mother dog with seven puppies in georgia we were told that she had died but when we arrived i noticed her eyes were still moving we saved her rehabilitated her and today she has an amazing home along with every one of her puppies i have transported over 500 dogs from polk county florida to rescue partners in lewiston maine giving countless dogs a second chance at life i also help families who cannot afford veterinary care by paying to have their dogs vaccinated vetted spayed and neutered whenever possible we are not government funded we do not receive grants everything we do is supported either out of my own pocket or through the generosity of our community this includes appealing to the facebook community requesting donations directly to the veterinary veterinarian sorry we exclusively use in hardy county local agencies regularly call on me for help including the polk county sheriff's office winter haven police department lake alford police department davenport police department polk county animal control and as and even as far as hardy county i've trapped dogs that other counties or other people couldn't catch from starving dogs deep in the woods to frightened strays running rural areas for the weeks a few months ago i helped trap a great dane that authorities had been able to catch in fort mead animal control and deputies were unable to secure two abandoned dogs after they left i stayed and i caught them are you close to finishing up yes i'm almost finished okay this is simply what i do i do not breed dogs i do not bore dogs my private residence is not open to the public because i value the safety and privacy of my home and my family we operate adoptions through our adoption center and the adoption depot which is run by frank and marianne mottola my mission has always been simple save the dogs nobody else will save i take dogs that are starving abused abandoned injured sick or near death and i give them another chance my rescue is a spay or neuter microchip my rescue is spayed neutered microchip deworm vaccinated or prevented prevention medicine and treated for any medical needs including heartworm disease seven days a week 24 hours a day i answer the call when a dog needs help i never expected this life but somehow god placed me exactly where i was meant to be fighting for the ones who cannot fight for themselves especially when there is nowhere for those dogs to go i realize my time is up but i will definitely answer any of your questions specific to the rescue thank you any questions of the applicant no i i am curious as to what research was done prior to buying in this zoning for the purpose that you intended we didn't log it um we did go up and ask and we were told that we could have as many dogs as we wanted on the property so we went with it we filed all the the permits did everything like we were supposed to do and we thought we were doing everything right because they are my dogs who told you that i'm sorry who told you that she didn't log it marianne is the one that asked before we bought the property because we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing so she's logged in that she was there that day but she doesn't remember who she talked to so if i can understand this correctly this is where you live this is your home well i'm going to live there i was living in the rv okay um i rented my house to my best friend uh-huh i was living in the rv but then david told me i was not allowed to do that so i filed for a permit to live in the rv and i was denied so that's why i'm not there we are redoing the house okay but is that your homestead that's where i'm going to be living yes okay and these are your private animals that you have on your land they're the dogs that nobody would adopt those i understand that i understand that but but there's two different entities we're talking about here one is an adoption place and i'm looking up on your website that's somewhere else we're not talking about that right now we're talking about this is your home and you have dogs on your home and that's that right dogs okay so it's not a kennel it's not in an adoption center it's not whatever else this is your house and these are your dogs right and so is that where was the whole thing from the beginning i do want to clarify the application is for a conditional use permit to allow a kennel so they have been advised and they are seeking that use and we can place the board can place conditions on it but that is what they're seeking even if even if it doesn't perfectly line up with the definition they understand that and they are requesting to see you to operate as a kennel okay again i'm confused she wants to have kennels on her property to house her dog the definition of kennel in the land development code is what we're using we have to have a definition to relate to we understand it doesn't line up accurate she needs to be here today because they're not giving her any choice it's either get rid of her 80 dogs or come in here and get conditional use and i think because of the unclarity in the code of a kennel and how it's being applied that she's being i guess asked to get approval for a kennel and the applicant through her representative has suggested that we can place conditions on that that would allow her to do what she's doing okay that's my understanding if that's in that way she's clear of any future code issues or violations or what what have you so are we going to do i don't know i i well we'll do something today i'm not saying what it'll be so there's a big distinguishment here that keeps going back to they're my personal dogs this is a business entity corporation that owns the property but if they're your personal dogs do you personally pay all the vet expenses and treatment and care and food for your animals or is the rescue in the last 15 years these dogs were rescues but now whose dogs are they they're mine who's going to feed them who's going to take care of them me well then this can't be your homestead right if this is if this property is owned by an llc or a corporation this is not your homestead i am going to live there with my dog but you would you don't would not personally own the property the non-profit owns the property as i understand cross pause yeah right i understand that's you but that's that's a core uh non-profit organization that has a board of directors and i just want to advise the board to be careful i mean we obviously we do have homestead property people title their property in a trust there can be so the ownership of the property how it's titled yeah i mean they do llc's all the time so that can't be indicative okay well no new dogs come on the property they all go into fostering my intake is completely closed right now um new dogs come in they go to foster or they go to the adoption depot no new dogs come in on that property at all the dogs that are there i've had 10 years six years five years all right so going back to my original statement to you this is your home and these are your dogs right period period okay okay thank you thank you now i'm going to ask if there's anyone in opposition to this request to come forward please next door i'm the one that um started the um okay uh were you were you sworn in yes sir okay would you like those entered into evidence i'm not sure what they are yes okay only at the end i thought it was only okay it's going to be here so give us your name and address please it's gary bozeman it's 36 42 cable avenue um my property butts up to their property uh cross balls uh pet rescue at 36 56 on march 17th i filed a complaint with code enforcement for business running dog kennel david lambert with code enforcement said could not do anything until dogs were on the property and they moved into dogs on july 4th since then that's when i called and let them know the dogs were on the property the non-stop barking for hours the smells have turned into uh cameras now installed on top of their eight-foot fence pointed directly onto my property i called the sheriffs said with nothing they could do so and that was on july 27th of 2025 i ordered mine got them at august 2nd installed them towards her she called they called the law uh sheriff's office and when i um talked to the sheriffs they did nothing they could do um this is hard to read my own handwriting and he said uh um she showed them my cameras pointed at her when he came talking to me i showed him her cameras pointed on my property directly on my property he said that she didn't show him them told me that i should leave my cameras up because there's no telling what they will do um steffi bedello filed an injunction on me for protection i had she said i had cameras on all areas of her property and home she has not um lived on the property from the beginning and still doesn't she wants me to remove my cameras while hers are still aimed directly on my property stating she is in fear of a man watching all of us women and stalking them because of previous charges i had lo and behold she's been accused of the same charge on 2024 stalking with violence then puts up a sign stop watching us pervert asshole my attorney showed her turn which the well i just really want this you don't need to though oh i'm sorry over that part all of my evidence and um my pictures with metadata my amazon amazon delivery date then she stated she did not want to pursue the charges the property damage had done by cutting down my tree uh cut two more in half didn't drop them completely and has crouched her uh fence on my property i sent all three officers cross paws the letter stating with the sealed um survey had to hire a lawyer to for defense to be moved still has not moved one part of it still on my property all of the they have received and gone a year six oh the dogs bark six to eight hours a day i do have a recording i know y'all don't want to hear it but i could play you what it sounds like on my property this is in my backyard would y'all like to hear sure i'd like to hear and this goes on for hours in the morning and afternoon any questions you'd like to ask me about the stuff i gave you anybody have any questions okay thank you sir thank you anybody else would like to speak in opposition yes ma'am my name is marion bozeman i live at 36 36 kville avenue and thank you for the opportunity to let me speak today i'm 90 years old and have lived in my home since 1964 more than 61 years i raised my four children here as a widow built my life here and until recently i have lived peacefully and independent in all my years i have never experienced the level of stress and emotional stress that i am enduring now since the arrival of cross post pet rescue next door the mental anguish caused by this business has significantly affected both my emotional and physical health i own five acres which i have walked daily to maintain my strength and well-being i also have a koi pond and a garden that i tend with great care these activities no longer a source of peace for me the constant barking and whining from numerous dogs makes it impossible to enjoy my property i now walk in fear fear that a dog could escape and confront me while i'm alone the noise is unbearable and the odor is something no homeowner should have to endure after i contacted code enforcement to seek help cameras were stopped facing my property in addition my character has been public attacked on social media by the operator operator of this business being defamed in a community where i have lived nearly my entire life has been deeply hurtful and humiliating most troubling of all and man was sent to my home to question me about my objection to this business i live alone being approached while working in my yard by a man asking pointy questions was frightening and humiliating i consider this behavior to be bullying and harassment and i believe anyone in my position would feel the same this property was purchased with the intent to operate a dog rescue a commercial business since then there have been reports of increased straight dogs in the area either because people abandoned animals believing the rescue would take them or because dogs are escaping the property this poses a serious safety concern not only for me but the entire neighborhood i respectfully asked how can the county allow this activity to continue this business has knowing circumvented regulations and proceeded without regard for proper zoning permitting or well-being of surrounding residents i fear that without meaningful intervention this operation will only grow larger further impacting the safety and quality of life of those who live nearby liens and fines may be discussed but i asked you are they truly affected when the business is funded by donations and already demonstrated disregard for laws and regulations where are my rights as a homeowner who has followed the rules paid taxes and lived peaceful for decades at my age i should be able to enjoy the home i have lived in for most of my life without fear harassment or constant distress i am asking this county to protect not only me but the integrity of the community thank you thank you thank you anyone else speaking in opposition seeing none i'll ask the applicant to um come back to the podium thank you for the opportunity to kind of clear some of this up it is it is cloudy and and and i know we understand um before i continue did everyone receive a packet that i um put around okay so i think so yes so you should have in that packet there is and there were extra i did 10 also so if our neighbors wanted to have a copy as well um in there is a letter from former animal control with polk county officer she was there for 11 years in that packet also is a letter from a current davenport police officer and he used to work for winter haven and there's also one from winter haven um but also in there i did put in um some case file notes from um david lambert um from the 218 site visit that we have with staff and i highlighted his notes for that day and he lists who all was there stephanie board members mary ann peter aaron myself jessica phillips with code enforcement david and land development members kyle andrew chandra and alaya he says i observed another wooden fence has been constructed around the dog kennels further securing them on property we were given access to the inside of one of the three buildings used for storing dogs inside the building i observed five by five pens with approximately 27 dogs we were told all three buildings are the same with that being said approximately 90 dogs were on site each pin was labeled with a sheet of paper identifying each dog by name and tag number a strong smell of ammonia was smelled inside the building on this date i did not observe a strong odor of feces or urine outside of the structure but i have observed that in the past i also did not observe any dogs barking until we physically went inside the building i've also witnessed that in the past during our visit one of the board members inquired if the violation would go away if the property was put in stephanie's name instead of the rescue's name they were told that would have to be researched and then there were inspection photos so that brings me to a couple points sir could you tell me when you um audio recorded the dogs we we really can't we can't do question and answer with the audience sorry okay you can provide rebuttal testimony from what you heard but we can't do okay with all due respect i apologize i did not know that i do think it is important to know when that date was because i want to eliminate all of the he said she said whatever stuff the talk of which is my point excuse me mr updike the problem is this our opposition was attacking the credibility of the site we are asking for permission that's not what's in question sarah we're trying to decide whether or not this is a conforming use that's all we're doing the dogs all the other he said she said you know this is not part of this the heart string deal if i may continue please what is in front of you right now is we are asking for permission for a c3 use to allow kennels as decided by code enforcement which is why we're here we are saying that we are we have mitigating factors for any visibility noise pollution all of that we are proposing we're asking for forgiveness that we placed buildings that we thought were legal that were legal okay forget it we're not even asking for that we're saying by right in front of you we want the permission and for you all to consider approval of us building three sheds 787 feet away 778 feet away and 784 feet away from where they are now you all know with a 50-foot compatibility buffer an opaque fence vegetation excuse me that would be required and the distance itself we will be abutting um conditional i'm sorry commercial enclave and then there's a railroad on the other side of that you said you mentioned earlier that you had conditions that you were i do so let's go to those um i i am under oath and i want you to know there have not been advertisements for anything on site and we are proposing again that this site not be open to the public so you are not giving us permission through this binding site plan conditional use permit for us to grow this area the binding site plan these are our suggested conditions i believe in your um little note packet as well we did get some just general notes um from miss howard and on and this is also page 17 of the of 21 page staff report so we are asking for you all to approve and put the condition on that the conditional use will run with crossed paws animal rescue and or stephanie you can this is we are proposing this is draft language i just want you all to consider that so that you have more of a comfort level of this type of use that we're proposing we've already stated that the subject site is closed to the public this is in writing on the binding site plan subject site prohibited to the public that is not what the operation is it never has been and we're stating this on this new property as well part of the level three conditions of approval talks about grooming and boarding there will be no grooming and boarding all that will be prohibited other than the canines registered to cross paws or stephanie and the last because originally there was a complaint about odor we wanted to make it a condition or suggest that you all make it a condition that we maintain records so proof that we go to solid waste facilities to dump the solid waste and we have receipts so i just talked to my team about it and threw it out there a couple months ago and it is for you all i didn't just come up with this we've we've been wanting to discuss this to give you a level of comfort on how this can live um more as compatible we've shown mitigating efforts with buffering and moving or i'm not even saying moving because we're going to have personal storage but constructing new kennels as far back as we possibly can with the buffer staff indicated in the in their staff report that there's a concern that there will be increased traffic activity on the site staff and people and i am under oath telling you we this is closed this is closed to stephanie and her husband by appointment just for board i guess i don't know but it is not open to the public adoptions do not happen on site they happen at the adoption depot in auburndale anything that was advertised yes we have a new site but was what was advertised is meet us in the park not on site so i will stand for any questions that you have i i it's a noble cause and i i can see that but i mean there is some evidence presented here that in august of 24 that she was searching for big buildings with property for a kennel that has to be commercial that kind of tells us she had the foresight and had awareness of she was purchasing in a residential zoned area for that ended up purchasing in a residential zoned area knowing that she needed to be commercial and i just kind of feel like this is the asking for forgiveness after the fact yes i'd like to comment to that because i spent 40 years in this county and you go down to the county building department and depending on what person you talk to on any given day you're going to get a different response to your question so um should they have known that this is a commercial operation probably but you know if they giving them the benefit of the doubt if they went in there and and uh and asked the question and someone either didn't give it full thought or otherwise but you know so it is it is not unlikely that they got a response maybe that they wanted but they probably did get a response that said oh okay we don't have to do the commercial thing we can just go you know hither and yon put up these buildings now i think they um personally i think they just um you know really gave very little thought to the surrounding uh property owners and and i you know i sympathize with that but we have an opportunity to to you know one support a worthy cause and that's exactly what it is because this county spends a lot of money to take dogs in and and kill them i mean that's what the sheriff's department does they probably put to sleep anywhere from a thousand to fifteen hundred animals per year uh at great expense to the taxpayers so when when volunteers step up and you know private money supports some little facet of it i mean obviously 80 dogs isn't going to change the world but you know it's 80 dogs that don't have to go to the county to be killed by the sheriff's department and all the other efforts that they make so that said i'd like to make a are we to the we can have a motion and then we'll still have discussion just because i'd like to make a motion for consideration um that we approve ldcu dash two zero two four thirty dash thirty six i'm sorry dash thirty five with the following conditions maximum of 80 dogs kennels to be at least 700 feet from any residential structure uh the kennels to be fully fenced to contain uh to contain any dogs that might get out of those buildings proof on an ongoing basis of waste disposal and um that the property not be for public access if i may sir um it's kind of i need to do that and you tell me i can't do that well i'm not sure you can do that as far as a setback for those structures you might be able to get them set back from these folks here but as you move them to the rear you're bringing more people in to the west that'll be 350 you have commercial property oh no sir no back to the left or back to the left to the west is a residential suburban still to the north is your commercial enclave in the railroad so if you move those structures up to the north you're going to bring these structures into new people or less not as close as they are to these folks now but they might be 700 feet away from them but they're now 300 some feet away from the folks looking at two commercial properties that's the immediate rear but so tell me where where residents can go in that home is 300 feet from which home there's homes right here they're 300 feet from the property line well our width is 117 so it's 350 feet we've measured it a few times we'll sit here and this is sort of the trouble we've had with this case there's so much uncertainty of what we can measure and what we can enforce the operation personal pets we know this property is in association with a a rescue facility with off-site adoption we can't monitor our dogs all the time we can't monitor the noise you know even if they move it to the rear 700 feet and this gentleman wants to go mow his backyard he might have 80 dogs bark at him it's it's just we very rarely very rarely recommend uh denial and i hate that this is the case to have to do one to given it a cause there's just too too much we can't monitor for non-residential use with right between homes and that's kind of the our staff's argument on it the whole thing about how it was permitted and kind of inconsequential at this point that's right and there's just too much we don't know that we can't drill down with trust we've worked hard with sarah for months now to try to come up with some some solutions to and we're still at this point we are currently houses to uh the west to the west east of powell street within what distance to her property line i think it was right about 300 then i can't do a survey on the data viewer but the data viewer shows about 316 feet from the property line so you add 50 feet then it's what 316 plus 50 um we we all need protein i can't add that quick right so but that's not you know necessarily a that's to those houses on roll royal royal street royal street it looks like powell street oh is it i'm sorry it looks like an r we're just displacing the potentially and if you but if you recommended that a condition of approval it wouldn't be enforceable anyway so yeah i'm just saying that there's more impacts to just what we're seeing here what is intended if you structures yes sir at the 700 feet that you'd propose you wouldn't physically be able to do it even if you move it out to the north you'd be able to get away from these folks over here but what i'm saying is you'd end up impacting these folks back off to the west off powell street okay so that was the motion do you want to amend the emotion amend your mo not emotion motion yeah but you got a second yeah so the make well i don't yeah i don't know if you want to change it to 350 feet or a minute to be specific to at least 700 feet away from the two adjacent property owners along caveville yeah but it's there that doesn't okay i'm i'm i get you trying all right i don't think that addresses you know are we just moving the the problem down the road there um can i can i weigh in for just a second i've abstained from this vote because i've um supported cross paws through my business i've hosted events to raise money for for their efforts and i'm not going to go down the road of believing in what they're doing but what i will say is i um went by the property and i parked in front of the closed area and i stood there for about 10 minutes waiting to hear dogs barking looking for any smells i heard nothing i smelled nothing i got in my car i honked my horn i still couldn't hear dogs barking so that was just what i went and saw for myself and um and there you know there is ways to contain noise i mean spca and a lot of these places they have concrete buildings rather than metal buildings and those i mean you can reduce decibel count just through construction methods may i add also um there are things called bark boxes they have not installed them pending the outcome of where these kennels will go and again we have code enforcement staff and we have staff here that is not barking it's not 24 hour barking like that so um well mr ziskell i am trying to yeah so we're we're installing bark box can you help us out ben the challenge well i i've got a topic that i think i need clarification um from there's been a lot of discussion about um stephanie and her possible intent to live on the property um the fact that the property is currently owned by the non-profit um miss stephanie did give an address of 106 margaret street which is what she read into the record as her address that is her homesteaded property that she lives in so i think as you're deliberating we need clarification there's been a lot of discussion about her living on site is that going to be a condition that she lives on site and there is 24 hour care at this facility because at if she's has another property that she's living in it is a homesteaded property and nobody is living 24 hours there's there's a different operation and a different traffic pattern of people coming to take care of the pets but not living on site so i think and i'm not suggesting which way you go with that but i there's been a lot of discussion about that and i think as as you make a decision we will need clarification as far as what is the expectation of while you were saying that i see her nodding her head in agreement that she will live on this property yes mike well people purchase homes homesteads and llcs all the time my personal residence is in an llc so uh and and i can get i have homestead exemption so i mean i'm not concerned about the ownership what i'm concerned about is is the expectation that there is somebody on that property 24 hours to care for the pets versus living across town and and right more volunteers coming in shifts there's a different traffic implication there's a different caretaker residents is basically we would agree to a condition that someone is going to be on site all right all right what about the distance thing and the noise factor you didn't like my other suggestion well i'm not sure what the other is the site plan's binding and sarah showed it at the back of the property so but i don't know if the distance requirement is necessary because if you accept it is what it is it is what it is approving of site plan so if it changes it's got to come back if she adds to it it's got to come back oh yeah absolutely yeah and i guess we wouldn't want to put a distance in there because someone can go put a residence a second home right behind their existing home and to negate your conditional okay all right so this is the binding site plan and this is where we would reward those conditions so say your conditions again okay so i am recommending approval they're at 2025-35 uh with the following conditions uh maximum 80 foot i'm sorry maximum 80 dogs allowed on the property this is 35 905 i'm sorry it's 202 2025 35 yeah not oh you're you're on 18 we're on 17 um 2026 oh i'm sorry it's okay ldcu 2025 yep okay all right um maximum 80 dogs um fully fenced uh kennel area to contain any loose dogs proof of waste disposal not for public access and um now you made me a condition that someone lives on site to maintain the residential use full time a caretaker to live on site 80 dogs is a lot do we have a second 80 dogs is a lot it is a lot of dogs in a neighborhood with neighbors it's that would be a hoarder that would be a hoarder under services and they can do away with 80 dogs any other individual person at a residence they'd call that a hoarder so we need to know if there's a second and then we can discuss the motion otherwise it will fail for lack of second second all right i got a second we second it what i don't want everybody to imagine is 80 dogs running freely around the property this i mean we've seen pictures of what the kennels or what the spots are like that the dogs are in and you know i don't see a world where a responsible rescue is going to let 80 dogs running around the yard at any given time so just that that two cents well and i understand i have a lot of experience with rescues and dogs not this particular one but you know a lot of times that adoptability concern isn't just health reasons like was presented or age it's aggressive dogs it is you know there there's other undesirable traits that you're going to cluster up to 80 dogs oh and that they're fenced apart they're not and yes but that's where the noise comes and that's going to then disrupt a residential area so i would also suggest that if there is any noise problems that violate county code and the decimal level so that's still subject to code enforcement the land development code doesn't have decibel levels for residential districts so it would be the sheriff's department for noise but it can't be regulated that's correct not by land development staff regulated yeah so we don't it wouldn't be a condition of our that's just going to be an option of any resident around it maybe very difficult also to enforce the maximum number of dogs without creating some operating permit or some procedure to report in proof of ownership and things of that nature well the facilities are designed for so that would limit them from adding more facilities at a later date the binding site plan would too site plan would as you said 27 per building there are 27 um five by five units per so so that condition really doesn't factor in you're going to use those buildings to their most efficient use and you're only getting three buildings correct i can strike that condition of what else you got for me oh no no it's it's a process come on get it out oh we we've we've batted through a lot of this stuff already oh no i know i got that i got that message right from the just for clarity i just want to make sure on that motion are we removing the maximum of 80 dogs and otherwise the motion stands you want to remove the maximum of 80 dogs correct so what's left fully fenced to contain kennel area proof of waste disposal is that something we can i guess we can get an email once a month not to be facetious about it but i'm not sure yeah it would just be a matter of it who's going to enforce it i think logistically i mean obviously if there's a smell complaint then they would have proof of removal and not for public access is that what we have and uh that a caretaker is on on site okay i have a motion in a second seconder of the motion is okay with that yep was it yeah with just removing the a maximum number dogs okay roll call okay julie jackson against the motion angel sims oh you're you abstained mike hickman brooke agnini for the motion merle bishop against the motion cindy jenna masso for the motion one two three motion passes okay thank you for your time i know it's late so just the mission's approved you have seven days to file an appeal for level three so there's you have seven days to file an appeal for de novo hearing okay they can help you um yeah yeah next case i believe it no no no okay we have a call we're okay three three ready are you ready yeah yeah i'm ready so the next two cases are related the conference of plan text amendment and a land development code text amendment related to indian lake states ldc pal 2026-5 and ldct 2026-12 a legal that was published in the polk sun on may 20th and staff report and ordinance and application are submitted into the record the conference this is similar to a case you heard last january but it's a little different uh because there were two building permits issued for duplex in error one is here and one is here and the conference of plan for any lake estates restricts densities above two units of the acre to have to be on sewer the lots in rl4 are half an acre so if you put a duplex on it it's four units of the acre it has to be connected to sewer permit was issued there is no sewer in any lake estates so it can't meet that provision in the conference of plan so that's part of the amendment and the other part of the amendment is to restrict in land development code that if duplexes are permitted they have they can only have one septic tank per unit so it doesn't mean that all the lots you see in rl4 will be doubled in terms of septic which was the biggest issue last year when the planning commission and the board considered this case uh these cases that was very similar and the other item in the land development code is to make duplexes a remove it being a level three in rl4 as it is anywhere else in unincorporated polk county and make it a conditional use level one in rl4 indian lake estates is a platted subdivision it was platted a few decades ago several decades ago it has about 8 000 lots that's both um in the front and in the back i'll explain what that means a little bit later there are some dirt roads in indian lake estates when you get back here and in fact this permit back here was issued on a dirt road um but uh when the conference of plan map was adopted in 1991 it wasn't given a land use other than pre-dri number one pre-dri means dri means development of regional impact it's a state statute regulating large developments but the property was given a land use back in um in 2009 in the lake estates you probably know where it is it's west it's on the very east side of the county east of lake walk on the water between state route 60 and highway 630 two permits issued with the duplexes are circled in black there are a couple other stars that you see where we've had other interest in duplexes those stars were the generator of the cases from early last year there is a gate in indian lake estates you can see that in the yellow uh we as staff refer to things behind the gate and in front of the gate behind the gate is residential suburban i think i have the land use residential suburban is back here there's no sewer there is some water public water throughout indian lake estates but you can see the more urban densities and intensities are outside the gate that's where the public can access you have to have a obviously live back here to get through the the gate uh i should mention canopy oaks is down here and canopy oaks uh is relevant um uh because it was a case that we had in terms of lots of development activity in this area and this is part of the military compatibility zones related to the avon park air force range the air force range submitted a letter last year but submitted the same letter with this case which states they don't necessarily have a concern with these amendments because there's still be development residential development in the lake estates just expressing concerns for new development that impact the maneuvering of training sessions for users of the air force range this is the conference of plan amendments we had to restructure a little bit the intro into this table this is the table that dictates what densities have you have to have water and sewer you can see an rl with central water but no sewer to two dwelling units the acre has to be on public water above that we have to assume the more restrictive it has to be on public sewer that's not there so then we rewrote this language down here duplex units may be allowed on a single lot as long as that parcel existed on august 16th which is the adoption date scheduled by the board of county commissioners without connection to public sewer then if you get to the land development code we did a little restructuring here in terms of just some simple updates to the language there is an approved land use map for any like states now so we're removing that these are the conditions that state that it has to have one unit per duplex one septic tank per duplex unit and it also has some language about the minimum rate of the capacity of the on-site septic tank to 100 gallons per day per bedroom as managed by the health department or dp who's ever the issuing jurisdiction for the subject tank we're also adding a use table part of the confusion i would imagine for the duplex permits being issued is there's no use table where these regulations are listed in land development code it's used in another chapter so we are adding this table to help provides for some clarity going forward and you can see here that duplex is a c1 the conference plan does limit or prohibit class three utilities so this is so these are the two differences from table 2.1 that we use for use table for the rest of the county and it's blank here so with that staff is recommending approval increasing it does increase the housing types within indian lake estates and already existing community limits the subject tank per unit and changes the use table uh to help alleviate alleviate and add a use table to help alleviate confusion for staff and i'll stand for any questions any questions to staff seeing none i'll open the public hearing anyone in the audience wishing to speak on this case seeing none bring it back to the commission and i'll entertain uh any further discussion or a motion i move to approve uh lbcp a l two oh two six dash five second motion second approve roll call please for the motion for the motion for the motion for the motion for the motion for the motion for the motion okay uh open the public hearing for ldc 2026-12 uh seeing no one to speak for or against i'll bring it back to the commission for any discussion and a motion move to approve ldct 2026-12 second motion and second to approve roll call please cindy jenna mosso for the motion for the motion for the motion thank you i don't have a comprehensive plan update yeah three o'clock no i'm so disappointed no no i love you and i love hearing about it but i've got to go but we do need to say goodbye to miss lindsey today is this is her last planning commission she's moving on to more experience um it's going to make her cry i don't mean to make her cry but anyway so wish her luck we wish her luck well don't tell him or else they'll be mad at him yeah we don't want to prejudice you for future cases really are you going to be doing this similar thing okay all right well good all right yeah well and we welcome lisa sitting next sir to replace a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second move all right all in favor say aye aye aye all right we're adjourned