Also forms in the back. If you're going to speak, you need to call, fill out a form and hand it to the clerk. My name is Jan McDonald. I've been appointed by the Board of County Commissioners to be a land use hearing officer to hear variants and special exception cases. During the meeting, I just did this for myself, please turn off all cell phones. The cases will be called in the order listed in the agenda unless there is a request to be called out of order. These hearings are quasi judicial, which means they require due process and decisions will be based on competent, substantial evidence presented during the hearings. The county staff will present the county's review and recommendation on the case first, and then the applicant will present any additional information they would like to provide. After the applicant has made their presentation, I will open up the hearing for public comment. This is the public's opportunity to provide information and speak and express their opinions on the application. If you have any questions that come up during the presentation, you can ask them at this time. Please do not ask questions or make comments from the audience while others are speaking at the podium. The county, the applicant, and I will note questions you raised during your comments and try to have them answered at the close of public comments. When it's your turn to speak, either for your case or during the public comment, speak your name and address clearly for the record. These proceedings are recorded, so it's very important that we know who you are and where you live in Polk County or elsewhere. After the public comment closes, the applicant and the county will be given an opportunity to answer any questions or comments that were made during the public comment. They will also be able to make concluding statements. The hearing will close for each case following the concluding statements of the parties. My decision will be not given today, but will be provided in a written order within 14 days of today's date. I will do my best to get it done quicker than that. Again, if you would like a copy of my decision, please fill out a form on the back table and provide it to the clerk. For the record, I don't know anyone out there except the members of the county staff. I've received no ex-party communications and no one's contacted me about these cases. If you need an interpreter, please, when you raise your right hand to be sworn by the clerk, please have the interpreter also be sworn in. All the testimony taken today will be under oath, so I will now ask the clerk to swear in all the speakers. If you're going to address the land use hearing officer on any case today, please stand and raise your right hand and answer out loud to the following question. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you provide today is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. Okay. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the meetings of the July 14th, 2026 hearing. Those meetings, those minutes for the meetings are being accepted, and the first case is LDLSE 2026-5. Mr. Kosike, are you present? Thank you. Would the county please go forward? Yes. Eric Peterson for the Land Development Division. This is LDLSE 2026-5. Francisco Kosike is requesting a special exception to park a commercial vehicle, a 2025 Caterpillar 305-7CR hydraulic excavator at his residence on approximately 2.31 acres in the Agricultural Residential Rural District. The subject property is located at 1191 Barnhorst Road, north of Cox Road, south of State Road 60, east of 80-foot Road, west of Alturas Road, north, east of the city of Bartow in Section 6, Township 30, Range 26. On August 12th, 32 mailers were sent to area property owners. On August 7th, one board was posted on the property. And on August 7th, a legal ad was published in the Polk Sun News. So far, we've had no response on the case from the public. Kyle Rogus is the case planner. Good morning. Kyle Rogus with Land Development presenting LDLSE 2025-5, the Kosike special exception. The applicant is requesting a special exception to park a commercial vehicle, a 2025 Caterpillar 305-07CR hydraulic excavator at their residence on approximately 2.31 acres within a residential neighborhood. The subject site is located at 1191 Barnhorst Road, north of Cox Road, south of State Road 60, east of 80-foot Road, west of Alturas Road north, east of the city of Bartow in Section 6, Township 30, Range 26. The subject site is located in the Agricultural Residential Rural Land Use District within the Rural Development Area. The subject site has about 327 feet of frontage on Barnhorst Road, road number 060705, a local roadway with a paved surface width of approximately 20 feet and 50 feet of right-of-way width. The vehicle will travel under 1.50 miles before reaching State Road 60, a principal arterial roadway. State Road 60 is considered a major thoroughfare for commercial vehicles as industrial operations and warehouse facilities have historically stretched this corridor. The property is about 2.31 acres below the five acre minimum lot size from the ARR. However, staff finds the parking location to be sufficient to accommodate a vehicle such as this while meeting the standards required in Section 216D. The submitted site plan indicates the proposed parking area for the commercial vehicle will be 50 feet from the southern property boundary, 20 feet from the western property boundary, and 177 feet from the northern property boundary. The nearest residence to the proposed parking location is approximately 90 feet or 95 feet from the existing central mobile home on site to the east within 200 feet, which will require additional screening. This commercial vehicle parking approval shall be contingent upon the applicant constructing at least one entrance to commercial vehicle driveway standards for structural thickness and turning radius in accordance with Section 705I of the Land Development Code. And staff recommends approval for the special exception. Applications for special exceptions are usually for either semi-trucks or freight liners, which have an average weight of 17 tons with the trailer exceeding 70 feet in length and 13 feet in height. The hydraulic excavator is substantially smaller in size, resulting in minimal visual impacts, as indicated by the submitted site plan. And with that, I will stand for questions. Does anyone have any questions? Mr. Kosike, as the applicant, would you like to come up and give some more information? And your interpreter? Good afternoon. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you swear or affirm that you will truly and correctly translate English into Spanish and Spanish into English here today? Thank you. You're welcome. I'm sorry. Good afternoon again. Here is my brother, Francisco Kosike. My name is Jose Kosike, and I'm going to be his interpreter. So what we plan to do is just bring excavator, three or five excavator, a small excavator, weight is 12,800 pounds. And it's only sometimes on the afternoon when we now want to come to the job site and drop them off of the afternoons when it's too late and just park on the nighttime. And the next day we just bring to the job site and that's it. It's all. You wouldn't be doing any work on your property with it? Not at all. And are there trees on your property to shield it from view? Some of them, yes. And would you be responsible for putting in a commercial driveway? Yes, we do. And more trees to shield it? Yes. I'm sorry. We plan to put a fence on the backside of the property. Okay. I have no further questions. Does anyone from the audience want to speak or have any questions for Mr. Kosike? Good afternoon. Can you state your name and address for the record, please? JT Staines, 1338 Barnhorse Road, Bar 2. Okay. What would you like to, what would you like to say? Okay. This road is not designed for heavy equipment we live on. And it's already cracking up. And when I moved out there, I had to pay for helping that road being paved. And it's not designed for heavy equipment. Barnhorse Road is just cracking up bad now already. And this heavy equipment is not, it's not designed for heavy equipment to be rolled in on. That's why that I came, you know, because I don't, I don't, I don't, you know, it's just tears our roads up. And they know tractor-trailer is supposed to be coming in out there. And that's how they bring this equipment in. Okay. Do you have any response to that, Mr. Rogus? The roadway is a local residential. However, we specifically require the commercial driveway apron for those turning radii with heavy equipment, those kinds of vehicles that are going to damage the residential roadway or the condition of that, that roadway. Did you have occasion to look at the roadway? During my site visit with my site photos, I don't know if you can see, this is not within the roadway. So I don't have specific evidence of the road from a visual standpoint, but from driving out there, it was still a paved road and met conditions. And that's why we require that additional driveway apron for that protection for the county roadway. Anything else do you want to say? They had signs out there of no tractor-trailers coming in, but somebody keeps tearing them down every time they put it up down there at the end of Hankin Road. Okay. Yes. That's all I have to say. Okay. Is there anyone else in this room who wants to speak, either for or against? Hearing no one else, I'm going to close the public hearing. And does anyone have any closing arguments or anything they want to say? No, ma'am. Mr. Kosike and family? Okay. At this point, I will close the public hearing, take everything under consideration, and come up with a written order within a week or so. Thank you. When you're ready. I'm ready. Our next case is LDL VAR 2026-42. Lisa Wilson, on behalf of Paul and Pamela Behrens, is requesting a 1,500-square-foot accessory structure to be 115% larger than the primary structure in an agricultural residential rural district on 0.98 acres. The subject property is located at 885 Marty Lane, north of Cox Road, south of State Road 60, east of 80-foot Road, west of Alturas Road, north, east of the city of Bartow, in Section 5, Township 30, range 26. On August 12th, 29 mailers were sent to area property owners. One board was posted on the property on August 7th, and a legal ad was published in the Bulk Sun News on August 7th. We've had no response from the public as of yet. Kyle Rogus is the case planner. Good afternoon. Again, Kyle Rogus with Land Development, presenting LDL VAR 2026-42, the Barron's Variance. The applicant is requesting a 1,500-square-foot accessory structure to be 115% larger than the primary structure in an agricultural residential rural land use district on approximately 0.98 acres. The subject property is located at 885 Marty Lane, north of Cox Road, south of State Road 60, east of 80-foot Road, west of Alturas Road north, east of the city of Bartow, in Section 5, Township 30, range 26. The property is located in the Agricultural Residential Rural Land Use District and is approximately 0.98 acres. This lot is below the ARRX minimum lot size of 5 acres. Many of the surrounding properties are below the 5-acre lot size in the ARRX land use district, ranging in size from 0.92 acres to 79.54 acres. Recent aerial data bearers show multiple properties in the immediate surrounding area to have an accessory structure. The property, two houses down to the south of the subject site, has an existing structure in the rear of the property that measures 30 by 40, or 1,200 square feet. The property listed or outlined in red here. The subject site was recorded in April of 1978 prior to the adoption of the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code. The applicant purchased the property in February 2026. According to property appraisers, the home was built in 1994 at 1,296 square feet. The proposed accessory garage structure will be 1,500 square feet, which is 115% larger than the primary structure. The requested variance is believed to be the minimal variance necessary to optimize the use of the owner's land. The property is 0.98 acres, which is 1.02 acres below the 2-acre minimum for granting accessory structures up to 2,000 or 150% of the principal structure without a variance. If the subject site was the 2 acres, the applicant would be allowed to construct an accessory structure 500 feet larger than what is being currently proposed today. The accessory structure will be 144 feet from Marty Lane, a county-maintained local roadway, and 20 feet from the southern property line. The accessory structure will be 30 by 50 oriented so that the structure is uniformed behind an 8 by 20 shed minimizing visibility from Marty Lane. Staff recommends approval. The approval for this variance to Section 209G of the Land Development Code is to allow a 30 by 50 accessory structure to be larger than the primary structure as described in the staff report. The use of the accessory structure approved herein is limited to the storage of items associated with the residential use of the property. No home-based business or commercial uses shall be permitted to occur within the accessory structure. And with that, I will stand for questions. I have no questions concerning this. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak? I'd like to hear from the applicant first. I would like to hear from the applicant first. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Wilson. I have a permitting and consulting company called the Permitech. Like, these folks just purchased the property in February. They're still moving. They're not in the state. And the wife is very sick with Lou Gehrig's. So I'm representing them. I must say that I do these all over Florida and Polk County does all my investigating for me. It's fantastic, really. So the only thing I have to say is just to reiterate that it's a non-conforming lot. It was formed a long time ago before these rules. These people bought this size property so that they could store their trucks and a boat in a garage. The home does not have a garage. This is the reason for the 1,500 square foot. And I believe the last thing I'd like to say is that it won't be very visible by the road. So it shouldn't be an eyesore. And that's really all I have to say. Thank you. Does anyone in the audience have any questions for Ms. Wilson? Can you state your name and your address, please? Thomas Harper, 955 Marty Lane, next door neighbor. Okay. I just have a couple questions that I think that she may have just answered. Okay. But I would like to ask her that no commercial vehicles will be and commercial equipment will be stored there. No, sir. These are two. I don't believe you. I've met Paul. You, so you, yeah, I don't believe you. And why I'm here is we've had someone else come here and get permission and ended up putting commercial vehicles on there, which got stopped in a hurry by a call to you people. Thank you. And that was my only question, that there was no commercial vehicles. So I have no problem. Thank you. Is there anyone else who has any comments or wants to make any statements concerning the Barron's accessory structure case? No? Yes. Okay. Hearing none, I'm going to close the public hearing portion of this hearing, and I'm going to make, give myself about a week or so to make a written order, and you'll be receiving a copy of the written order. Thank you. Anything else? No, ma'am. That's all the cases? That's the order. That's it. That is all the cases we have today. You will be here for September. Yes. Didn't you? I guess. They switched, so, yeah, it was, yeah, you're here again for September. Okay. Okay.