Planning Board - Regular Meeting

God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, so Lisa O'Reilly, absent. Margaret Schneider, here. Warren Burke, here. John Matura is excused absence. Alexandria Bobo, here. Mike Miller, here. And Wes Mason, here.

If I could please have a motion for approval of the agenda.

I move to approve the agenda as written. Second.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

May I have a motion to approve the minutes of the April 6th meeting?

I move to approve the minutes.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

At this point, we have to do any kind of disclosure of conflict? Correct. Would anybody like to take anything about that, or are you all in favor of it? Okay. Any unfinished business? No.

Okay.

So the first item on the agenda then is the ordinance, the number 1719, regarding vehicle parking. And Dave, I understand you're going to give an overview of that?

Yes.

Happy to do that.

Good evening, members of the board. It's nice to be here. And also... for such a great turnout this evening. Yeah, this is a, as I was just talking to Byron, a lot of ordinances that ultimately get to this board and then go to the city commission are a result of issues that we have out in the real world. And this is one of those. We have our code enforcement folks This is an issue that pops up regularly. We have residents who are not happy with neighbors generally. And we have a lot of, as a matter of fact, I think we have a couple of active cases right now going to our code enforcement special magistrate to deal with vehicle parking. And so currently the city code doesn't have any specific language or guidance for our code enforcement officers and We have there's one in particular. I'm not going to Not going to name names or point to addresses But we have a property in the city that has ten plus trailers abandoned cars that aren't operating sitting there and it obviously it upsets the resident the neighbors and And so what we're proposing here is to put some additional guidance in our code to help, in particular, our code enforcement officers. And generally, this proposed ordinance takes a two-pronged approach. We're really trying to deal with two policy items. The first is dealing with number of vehicles. As I said right now, there is no restrictions or limitation or guidance in the code. So this is proposing, we'll go through the ordinance here in just a second. So this is proposing guidance on that issue. The other one is the location or the material that the vehicle is parked on. Right now we have folks parking on dirt, basically. And so what this ordinance does, it proposes a minimum paved improved area, or an improved area, excuse me. I'm sitting here talking to Byron, who's a contract engineer for the city, and I'm going, I think I missed something on this ordinance, so we may want to talk a little bit about that. I think I probably should have included a definition on improved area, what exactly that means and what exactly meets the intent there. But we can talk about that.

So anyways, let's just go run through the ordinance.

On page one, starts at section 120 definitions. And what you'll see is any of the language that's shown in black is existing language. The language shown in red and underlined or strikethrough are either additions or deletions from the current ordinance. And I'll try to hit the new language. In 303B1, what we're saying here is that if we're going to be parking semi-trucks or tractor trailers in commercial districts, we don't want them consuming the required off-street parking in a parking lot. So we don't want a semi-truck coming in there and taking 10 spaces, and it puts them below the required spaces for that particular commercial establishment. So that's what that language is all about. Down in the bottom of the page under paragraph four, in A, the vehicle will be parked on a driveway or other improved surface. You can see we're removing the reference to prepared and putting in a... a new term improved. And I think the intent there was it needs to be, you know, if you're gonna be parking on it, it needs to provide a minimum level of stormwater treatment, it needs to provide a minimum level of stability. I'm sure you've seen all over, we even have city streets that are put in pavers. They're not properly installed and they just over time, they get, they just, they're not effective anymore. So that's what we're going to be looking for with that term approved. Next page. We're removing paragraph C. And that language was allowing for the parking of a recreational vehicle in the front yard. Paragraphs and this is really where the meat is paragraph six through ten and I'll just read those Number six is what this language is allowing is a maximum of one boat Utility trailer RV or special purpose vehicle may be parked in the front yard of a property at any one time So it's limiting front yard limiting at one Not not one boat one RV one trailer just one of those vehicles. Paragraph 7, a maximum of one of those vehicles may be parked in the rear or side yard of a property at any one time. And here again, that final sentence is we'd like to see it on an improved surface. Paragraph 8, if a vehicle is parked any closer to three feet from, or you cannot park one of these vehicles any closer than three feet from the exterior of a structure or a building. So we don't want these vehicles parked right up next to the home or an accessory structure or something like that. Paragraph 9, these vehicles shall not be parked in a right of way for more than one hour. We can talk about that one hour time limit, but what we're finding is empty trailers, boats on trailers getting parked in city rights of way. overnight extended periods of time, and it's just causing a problem. Those parking spaces were not put there for storage of boats and utility trailers. And let's see. And then the last one, number 10, is if you're going to have these vehicles parked in your yard, we'd like to have a current valid tag on them. In general, that's it. I'm sure there's going to be some questions and some discussions, so I'll do my best to respond to those. Madam Chairman?

Okay. Anybody on the board have a comment?

Mike? I have a couple questions.

Mike? Go ahead.

Okay.

On the prepared round, what was it? Improved. Improved. Yep.

Yeah, what we would do is and I think that's why I was I was sitting back there thinking about this We want to define this and we probably want to create some I'll call them design guidelines if you will And put those into our we have a technical section of our code that deals with all the technical, you know, sidewalks and driveways and all those technical things. I think what we'd want to do is add a section into that, um, that would give us some guns on, on the proper installation, meeting the, uh, meeting the definition of, of, of that term. So I think what we'll need to do if the board agrees, um, I think what we need to do maybe is, um, We need to bring it back next month or we can just move it forward and just with understanding we'll be adding that to the ordinance once it goes to the commission. Did I answer your question? I guess so.

It's to be developed.

To be developed. Exactly. Yeah.

So you're saying we're going to have one vehicle parked in the front yard and...

Plus one on the side, it just can't be the same. Right. One in the side and or, excuse me, one in the front and one in the side or rear. So you could have two vehicles.

And that three foot gap, that would be between the person that lives there between their structure and the vehicle. This has nothing to do with

Yeah, as far as easements go, I would imagine something like this could be parked in an easement, depending on the easement, depending on what the conditions of the easement are. Generally what we find in Cocoa Beach is we'll have what are called public utility easements. And those utility easements generally, if they have anything in them, they'll have stormwater, pipes, or they may have some electric conduit or something like that. So what we do is we would allow a, I'm going to call it a semi-permanent. Surface to be put over that but the the property owner would need to know that if city needed to come in there and Get access to any of those facilities would be digging that up So what we do in the go ahead it would be just like a fence you put a fence in there and in an easement you have the possibility to replace it if the city has to go in there and repair anything and One of the documents that we'd have as part of this package is which we have Acknowledgements that we require our property owners to sign And we would require one here that if they're going to put something on top of an easement, they'd have to sign an acknowledgment basically saying, hey, I understand I'm putting something on a city easement. If the city has to come in and tear it up to get that, then I'm responsible for putting it back to the original condition. So we don't want any surprises for anybody. And was there a second part to your question? Yeah, I think there's some language in here. Here it is. If the vehicle is within... The vehicle shall be set back at least two feet from any abutting property line. So you have to keep two feet off of your adjacent property line. Yeah. Anything else? Okay.

No. No. I really hate ordinances like these. It's not that I really hate them, but I hate that we have to have them. I don't know why it's necessary for us to tell you to have respect for your neighbors, but I think too often this degrades our sense of community, and I think to that extent, you know, it to me signifies that we're coming to slum. But having said that, I applaud you for taking this dive into the pool here.

Yeah, that's what we're doing.

Does the city engineer have a recommendation on what we may use as a word instead of improved?

I don't believe we ran this by Gary. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah.

I don't think that term has much meaning. I know you put it in there quickly, but I think something more definitive needs to be put in for that.

I agree. At a minimum, we need to define that term.

Yeah, so maybe we need to just work on that and come back with language. The other thing I have to learn about, and I don't have an answer for this, is if you need to stay away three feet from the side of building or an overhanding eave and two feet for the property line, 10 feet is commonly our side yard that only leaves you five feet. To me, that's a disincentive to get these things out of the front yard and put in the side yard. Maybe I'll reconsider that.

Yeah, I certainly want to get stuff out of the front yard if at all possible. I mean, if I'm a... I don't know what the answer is. I agree with you. Oh, I like that. Wow. That was one of my favorite shows when I was a little guy. Yeah, I mean, I think what we need to do, Corey, is we need to talk to our fire marshal to see if he's... Because a lot of these vehicles have gas in them.

Oh, okay.

And so we don't want them to get too close to a building. And there may be some provisions in the fire prevention code that addresses this. So we'll talk to our city engineer. We'll also run it by Sal, our fire marshal, to talk about... what minimums are there. And with respect to getting it onto a property line, you know, we do say the next, if the vehicle is within 10 feet of an adjacent, this is B2, this is right below the lanes we were just talking about, a six foot high opaque fence or wall along the adjacent property shall be provided. So, I'm totally open to whatever the board would like to do here. Like I said, I don't have an answer.

You don't want to block a window either.

Right, right. You know, I don't know how many people, you're right, typical setbacks in Cocoa Beach are 10 feet.

Yeah, except for Convert Cove where they're like 5'7".

Right. So there's, you know, I can't imagine anybody, even, I mean, most boats are probably about 8 feet wide, 7 to 8 feet on the trailer. Right. So... Sweet I mean it's it's prohibitive that three-foot requirement may be prohibitive and may take off take out That possibility in a large part of the city Since the curse that we're gonna work on that other Word improved again come back next month.

Maybe you can discuss it with fire marshal Come back and make a recommendation. Maybe it's not possible to park them in the side yard and

Yeah, side yards may. You're right. Now that we kind of think about this, it may not be, side yards may not be unless it's a certain width or something. Yeah, we'll put some more thought into that.

I applaud you for doing this. I think it's needed. We have some control over that. I think that's a good step.

Yeah. Believe me, I don't want to get in people's business about where they're parking their personal property on their private property. And, you know, frankly, I don't. Our code enforcement folks, I don't want to put them in that situation. But when we have egregious situations and we don't have the ability to deal with it, that's where I feel we have to kind of step in. When it starts affecting the enjoyment of adjacent properties and it potentially can start affecting property values.

Nice, yes.

Yeah. So that's kind of where, in my view, that's where the city may need to get involved. But we'll look into that a little bit more and get you some stuff back next time.

I think going along with that, the improved surface, there's a line there that says preferably a pervious surface, and that seemed a little bit vague to me as well. It's the preferences that is that doesn't need to be a... Right, preference means nothing. Yeah, yeah. But I think that goes right along with this conversation about sort of restructuring that language. And then the other thing I was wondering is if this ordinance maybe should point to some of the code that affect this. I don't know if that would be something that would be, you know...

I'm not sure I'm following you on that.

In other words, would this ordinance specifically refer to the aspects of the code that would apply, and should some of that language be involved in the ordinance at all?

I can see it tied into plot coverage.

Yeah, I mean...

The surface is parked on as part of the driveway, and it's got to be 10 feet from the setback, right?

So you couldn't do that on the side of the house. You need to pull from it for the

Yeah, we need to think some steps through before we move on to you. Anything else?

Do you have any more comments? Yeah, I think we're all in agreement that we need to strengthen the wording so that any allowance doesn't impact a side yard building. zoning requirement, a front yard or a rear yard. Those boundaries have to be upheld. And I'd like to ask the... That's all I have to say about that because I don't want to beat it to death. The other question that I have is really for the attorney, and that is... Is that clear enough to withstand any kind of court action by saying a maximum of one boat utility trailer recreation or special purpose vehicle or should we add the word any before one to make sure everybody understands it's not one of each, it's any one of those. Again, I'm

We can certainly include language for the avoidance of doubt. Only one vehicle in total shall be placed in the front. Something to that effect. But I think it's pretty clear as written. I'd feel comfortable with the language as is, but we could always include additional.

Okay. And then the rest of my comments have all been covered already. So I think then it's the consensus of the board that it's back to the drawing board and we'll talk about this again next month.

That sounds great. I appreciate the comments and input.

We don't need a vote on that, right?

No.

Okay. The next item on the agenda is Ordinance 1708, Outdoor Seating.

Oh, I'm sorry.

We have two people that want to speak on this. Thank you for reminding me of that. We have two audience members.

Yeah, I've got Brian Everts.

Brian Everts. I'm terribly sorry. I'm new at this. Why am I here? Cory.

It's Byron. Byron. Oh, the lesser mortals are named Brian.

Sorry, Brian.

I don't know if there's a three-minute time limit. I'm Byron Evitz. I'm a resident. I live on La Riviera Road. And as Dave mentioned, I'm also a contract employee for the city. I'm a city engineer. Improved is vague enough. Let's leave it that way. I can get by with that. You know, everybody uses the word government overreach. I'm not going to use it. This strikes me a little bit as overreach because we're attacking, not sorry, we're going after everybody when there's certainly a few troubled children out here in Cocoa Beach. We have one on La Riviera. Two. Let's say abandoned vehicles, a utility trailer, and a boat. And the funny thing is, this will not fix that one problem because he backs the cars in so code enforcement can't see it, and one of the trailers is under 26 foot. So I'd really like to get that straightened out, but unfortunately, this doesn't do it. Now, on our street, we also have three RVs. Very, very nice, well kept, and every single one of us owns a boat. So unfortunately, this is kind of painting us all with the same broad brush when you've got three homeowners that take care of their stuff, get along with all their neighbors, they know where we park them, they move cars when it's time to leave. I've got to wonder, and I've heard rumors on, I'm at C2 now, why 26 foot? And it's in black text, so it's already codified. But this goes all the way back to somebody in Coe Beach who was building a boat in their backyard. And the mayor or commissioner at that time didn't like that. And I'm told that's where the 26-foot limit came up. My travel trailer is 29-foot until you add the bumper and the hitch. Yet I'm still off the right-of-way, and we still have a good sight triangle. So I'm kind of like, well, why 26? But I don't think we're going to be going back changing the stuff that's already in black text. I guess it would be 5F now. Only one vehicle exceeding 26 foot. And once again, I point out, what if you own a nice RV and a nice boat? The RV's kind of in the side front yard, and occasionally I need to have the boat in my driveway while I'm working on it or getting ready to trailer somewhere. So why are we going after RVs and boats when a lot of people in Cocoa Beach If you own an RV, I bet you own a boat. Yeah, and then two of my neighbors have ample parking for their RV and their boats and both their vehicles. All on, one's on an improved surface and the others are in driveways. So I'm thinking, once again, these guys aren't the problem. The problem's the guy down the street and this won't even fix that. Kind of beating this dead horse. And then we get down to, oh yeah, number nine. It started to come up, Mike. Thank you very much. As a private provider engineer, I have helped people reconfigure their side yard and their fence and whatnot so they can get their boats in the side yard. Now we're going to force them back into the front yard because as Mike points out, I got a 24-inch overhang, then I got three feet, then I got two feet. Most trailerable boats now are at eight and a half feet. So we're going to force all those people to now get their boats in the front yard. So we need to rethink that. The other thing that came to my mind is I can open my garage door and I can back my boat or RV all the way up to the garage door to stay out of the rain. And if I'm going to leave it there for a few days while I work on it, that would be disallowed by this. So if we can reconsider that three foot, that would be great. Nine, no boats shall be parked for more than an hour. I cannot load and unload my RV in an hour. And I realize there's, you know, are we going to make 23 hours or are we going to make it something just short of a day? I know when I come in late at night, backing in is kind of a hassle. So sometimes I'll leave it there overnight. I call my neighbor and say, by the way, watch out your backing. But one hour is just way too short to load or unload your trailer. And then item 10 sums it all up. Let's get rid of the junk. All boats, et cetera, shall have affixed current tags and stored with wheels and tires mounted. So what we need to do is get rid of the junk. We need to concentrate on the junk vehicles. And once again, I reflect back on my one neighbor with all that stuff, and this law won't even fix it. But I have seen some properties in Cocoa Beach that are definitely the problem. Is every one of those trailers tagged? Is every one of those trailers in working condition? That's what we need to go after. Any questions for me? All right. I know you all are in a volunteer board. I did the Board of Adjustments for a couple of years, so a little bit of brown-nosing, but I really mean it. Thanks a lot for your volunteer effort because I know it's a thankless task. Cheers. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry for that, Brian. All right. I have one more. Donald and Garrett.

Hi, I'm Garrett Koogie. I live in 26 Azalea. And I'm speaking tonight to just express my opposition to this, not in full, but in pieces. I think the problem we're trying to, like we've said, the problem we're trying to solve is the junkie cars, the junkie trailers, the house. with six boats in the driveway, none of which have moved in five years. But this seems to arbitrarily focus on those of us that maybe have a trailer, an RV that we use all the time, and a boat trailer that we store and only need to pull out every now and then. And then if you have two boats, if you have an offshore boat, an inshore boat, a jet ski, or a small trailer, and you're limiting that to one on the side and then one in the driveway, It just doesn't seem fair when people like us that have those aren't the problem. This could potentially penalize small business owners that have trailers that they use on a daily basis for yard maintenance type jobs and things like that. We're not taking those into account. If they have that and then they have a jet ski or something he's taking it out every day for his job, you know, that just, that unfairly penalizes him. Obviously, there's the burden of enforcement that came up. How are we going to enforce this? Where is, is there extra money available to pay for people to enforce this? And, and, and how? Okay, what else do I have? The three-foot rule, we've talked about it, but another just reason why it doesn't make sense to me is that some of us have much smaller lots. And like we've talked about, there just isn't any room to put it aside. So now I can't keep my trailer that's well-maintained. We use it all the time. I've got to go park it somewhere else because I can't put it on my side anymore. So now I've got to pay. 150 300 bucks to store it somewhere. We all know there's nowhere to store it in Cocoa Beach. There's no storage available So now I'm over in Merritt Island anytime I want to go Like if I can find something there when I need to pull my boat out for a weekend project or something One thing I thought about for the side yard That possibly there could be some language about The difference between an empty boat trailer, we are a boating community. That's what most of the trailers are, right? So there could be language about having boat trailers on the side versus RVs and big work trailers because those trailers are there. And even though I can't get it three feet away from the overhang, it's three feet away from the house. And then there's 10 feet between the overhang and the trailer. It doesn't seem right that I can't put it there now because of because of all of that. One of the other questions we had was about the, if we're doing this improved service, an improved surface, would that be a count towards our 60% pervious rule? You know, is each of these, whatever we're putting there, affecting that? Does that have to be permitted? What do those permits look like? Who's managing those permits? Or is it just like a you should go do it type deal? Okay, those are my main points. Any questions? Thank you all for your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Garrett.

Anyone else wishing to speak on ordinance 1719?

Nope.

Okay, let's go on to ordinance 1708, outdoor seating. Corey, that's you.

So here's the background. Basically sub ordinance 1708 is being proposed to establish some guidelines and rules for outdoor seating The intent is to encourage outdoor seating by providing standardized process at the same time addressing any safety hazards or issues to that point the ordinance provides rules for the following, standalone restaurants, restaurants on private property, and restaurants on public property. I think just for some background, when COVID hit, a lot of restaurants moved their seating outside, which was the right thing to do at that time. And unfortunately, the city doesn't have any guidelines that would help with the ADA sidewalks, the safety of the patrons. So that's what this is the start of, to put some guidelines and some ideas behind what we're doing. Now, each one of the Each one of the restaurants that want to do outdoor seating will have to fill out a contract. The concept is that we'll go out and do a safety review. We've got guidelines that will cover if there's a parking lot next to the seating, how do you keep the patrons safe. There has to be a buffer of some sort. Always keeping the ADA compliant that they can't block the sidewalks. Those kind of things. but this will be the start of the guidelines to help us allow for outdoor seating but have some structure to it.

I don't know if you all read through this yet.

So this is just the beginning of some structure to this outdoor seating. But yeah, there's a lot to it at this point. And I'm sure as we go along, we're going to discover other things that we didn't think of at the time. But that'll be handled as we do the contracts for each and every restaurant that we go through. Is there any questions that you all have? Does the board have any comments?

I have some questions.

Okay.

So this kind of covers a few different things in there, but the noise, light, visual impacts, the design standards, there's a lot of subjectivity, it seems, when it comes to the idea of what are they going to be. Is there anything in the existing code now that could give sort of objective standards to the people that are trying to plan this out as the restaurant owners? That was the thing that struck me is that even the safety issue that you talked about with the parking lot next door, do we have existing code that addresses that?

This does address it, but there are other safety issues that will take care of some of these things already, like outdoor lighting for the turtles or whatever. That's already in our code in other places.

Sort of what I was saying, the eternal issue Totally understood. It was the idea of noise next to residents, et cetera. It seemed to me it was a little bit quite subjective, the interpretation of that. And I think that that's something that could end up coming up as an issue for people. And that goes with the design standards. What is decorative? What is quality design, et cetera? Gotcha.

Well, there are current codes about noise, lighting. All of that is already covered. Outside of this ordinance that we're proposing at this point. Okay, so yeah that good point though, I mean I Notice that this ordinance even has outdoor TVs and you know that kind of issue It's not allowed. So we're trying to make sure that we take care of the neighbors as well I'd like to add something to that I

When we're drafting up ordinances and regulations, there's a lot of things that we consider. One of them is enforcement. And the other is, what level of specificity do we want to get into when we're drafting these things? In some ways, my experience has been it's always been better to be a little bit more vague. Because when you're drafting this stuff, you really can't contemplate everything. situation and circumstance that you're going to run into. And so if you keep the language somewhat vague, it allows staff to kind of apply the intent and the letter of the law to the situation. Anyways, I'm not sure that's really answering your question, but I'm always hesitant to get too specific when it comes to this stuff. There's some general language in here under paragraph D, because really the only thing that we're going to be dealing with outdoors is the furnishing and the barriers. And there is some language under paragraph D that talks, I mean, again, it just talks about... quality design a decorative and must be decorative and have a quality design to enhance the visual and aesthetic appearance then as you go down here it says we don't want outdoor trash cans we don't want PVC furnishing or plastic because that's that I don't I better be careful what I say I mean we're just looking for quality we don't want to cheapen anything especially in our downtown area so yeah i i get it i mean has to be some leap of faith to allow staff to to do their job frankly that we're paid to do but if you'd like to see additional standards put in here as far as stripping away some of the discretion from staff i mean we're we're open to it if you want to propose some language, we'd certainly be willing to talk about it. But, yeah. I guess I need a little clarification. Public versus private. Yeah, good question.

And then also defining what's considered to be outside because we have some establishments around here that have outside decks.

Yeah. Yeah. Public versus private. I'll give you some examples. Public would be up here at what used to be Destination downtown on the corner. They were out on the sidewalk. That's all public right away. So those are in the public space, the publicly owned realm. Right over here at the sushi place across the street. Cocoa's or Cocoa's? Cocoa's. They have their tables in the parking lot. So generally, if you see tables or eating areas in a parking lot, that's private property. Same would be down by Wake and Bake. In that strip center, they've got some seating in the parking lot. That's private property, too. So generally, if you see it close to the street or in the sidewalk, another example of public is Dirty Nudes just opened up just south of Dirty Birds. They just put some chairs and tables there in that little alleyway. That's all public. We entered into a use agreement with them to use the public right away. So that's kind of a distinction between public and private. You had a third question. I don't remember what it was. Oh, like Jonathan's perhaps? Or coconuts? Yeah. What was your question about those furnishings?

Yeah.

Right, yeah, it would I would I don't think that this Would we picked all that up in what's called our site plan process? So we dealt with all of the ADA issues and all the furnishings and everything in our site plan process and we generally apply the site the site plan usually involves brand new development like dirty birds that was a complete rue and Typically, these standards are going to be applied to somebody who wants to come in and kind of retrofit their restaurant or bar with outdoor seating. That's exactly what happened at Dirty Nudes. That's what happened at Destination Downtown. Coco's. Coco's, they came in after the fact. COA also. Pardon?

COA.

COA. Yeah. Which one is COA? I'm sorry.

COA is the one that's part of the Cundium. Oh, the surf project? The one that's the old Thai place.

Yeah, yeah. I got you.

A lot of people get confused.

Yeah.

If you consider an outdoor seating or dining area that's under a covered patio, say, like Sloan's area or, you know, Broncos has a Thai, is that going to be under this?

That would be in private. Well, yes, it would. I mean, if they came in after the fact. That's on private property. Really? Yeah, so we would. We'd apply this.

I'd like to see supply more, and I don't really know if there should be a different standard between standalone restaurant and private. Those are both being on private property. I think a much higher standard for restaurants using public areas, I think we need that to be a higher standard and more regulated. Some of this stuff seems restrictive to me to a standalone private restaurant that has a covered patio. They need to bring all their furniture in every night. That's not a fit. I think that's... sure we can we can strip that out of you know something too some of the um you know the times nine o'clock i think of you know i was kind of for a fresh grill like they're facing a parking lot they want any there's much more road noise parking lot noise and their little dining areas don't want to close it down at nine they're not you know they never have any entertainment out there it's very quiet and nice so or I think a little too restrictive on some of our restaurants and our property.

Fair enough. Good observation. Yeah.

I wanted to comment.

Like, something that I haven't built yet that we're in the schedule, like SEMA, that's not built yet. And that's going to be like where the old plastic is. Right. And so, no telling where they would, like, put outdoor seating, or another question of mine would be, like, is there entertainment outside, or is it assumed this is just for eating, or, you know, would they also turn this into an entertainment house?

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, a lot of the projects that are new construction, I mean, we can just go down the list. Weston, they're going to have all kinds of outdoor seating. We're not going to apply this to, I mean, we're going to deal with that and what was the site plan approval. So when we look at the entire project, when they come in to get an approval from the city, we're looking at all of that at the same time. And so that's when we would start applying a lot of these standards. This is, again, this is generally going to be for after the fact. You know, as I mentioned some examples, right across the street here is an example. So it could be after the fact, you know, saying that they build and then they sell on the internet?

Most of those are already set up in their site plan and what's approved before it's even built.

And if they wanted to increase that space of outdoor seating, we would probably take them through what's called a minor site plan review. We'd take them back through the site plan review process and deal with it that way. A lot of these projects don't have This one across the street, I don't know when those properties were built. I have no clue what the original site plan looked like. We don't have a lot of this stuff. And so this is why we would apply in that situation. This is what we would propose to use.

There had to be some sort of regulation because when the French place originally was the twin something or other, their seating was on the side. Oh, right across the street?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you'd be surprised of the stuff happening without any approvals.

Yeah.

You come back on Monday, and there's an outdoor seating setup going on. Anybody else have?

I have a question.

Are you saying that there weren't regulations on outdoor seating previous to this, or there were?

There was nothing in code. But what there was, which was really curious, we have these agreements that the city entered into with property owners. And it spelled out a lot of these standards and requirements, frankly, that are in this. That was our jumping off spot. But there was nothing in code that enabled these agreements to exist. I mean, that would Garrett could probably talk a little bit about that. I think we get in deep water if we start requiring things that aren't in code. It's just kind of an ad hoc, let's start applying these different things. Certainly those sorts of agreements would be appropriate for private property owners who would want to use public land Yeah, it wasn't a review before this could be a daunting task and look how many restaurants we're a city Yeah, they unbelievable There is You know and there's some language in here that's exempts existing these existing seating areas right if they were if they were result of the seating areas were a result of a site plan approval now that's going to be fun trying to track all that down but you know what we're trying to do we're trying to claw some of these I'll call them weekend established dining areas that that we just in certain situations it's frankly not safe you've got seats and tables next to cars and alleyways and it's just, you know, it's not safe. So we're trying to, you know, this applies to this ordinance as well as the other one I'm about to say. You know, we establish, cities establish codes and requirements. And, you know, a lot of this stuff, it's in our toolbox. It's in a staff toolbox to deal with violations. But we use discretion as well. We don't enforce all of these codes and ordinances to the nth degree, especially in retroactive situations like this. But if we find a safety issue, and now we do have ordinance in place, we'll attempt to apply some of these codes needed. So there is discretion. Code enforcement uses discretion every day. Corey and I use discretion on how best to apply codes and ordinance requirements to everyday situations. We run across it every day. But we try not to be the heavy-handed government. Believe me, if we wanted to be that way, we could. We just don't do that.

My perception is that We've got the climate that allows outdoor dining almost year-round. And we're a resort community, and we want to encourage that sort of life, especially in the downtown area, as long as it doesn't pose a safety problem or a public nuisance. To me, that would be the guidelines for what we're doing. I didn't read this as carefully as I should have, but I will. Is there anything in here about amplified music?

Well, we do talk. There are some languages. I'm sorry. I don't know what your name is. Wes. Wes. There's some language in there Wes is talking about at 9 o'clock. Music is supposed to be turned off, and there's some distance requirements or distance standards from residential areas. So there is some stuff in there, yes. So we don't totally prohibit outdoor music. I mean, it goes on all over downtown.

That's a slippery slope. It is.

We do.

No, not really. We have a nose that's not worth anything. Try to enforce it. I have. You can enforce it. It's impossible.

Again, this whole discretion thing. Our police officers will go downtown and they'll talk with the proprietor of one of our downtown restaurants or bars. Right. And they work with them. And sometimes it takes two or three visits a night to get any success. And sometimes there's no success. But, yeah.

I'm not concerned, quite frankly, about the deck behind dunes or about the garden area in Cabranos. or any of the places where it's self-contained on their property and it's not obstructing any kind of pedestrian traffic. Our sidewalks right now are in stiff competition of walkers, beach cart pullers, bicyclists, sometimes small golf carts, and restaurant tables. E-bikes. And bikes and trikes and restaurant tables. There's a lot of competition for very little sidewalk space. It's been one of my big complaints about the fact that our sidewalks aren't wide enough. They're just not wide enough. So I would like to see, I think this is a very, very good start, and I would like to see more emphasis put on areas that it can actually impede on safety and just overall quality of life, people being able to walk or being able to push their carriage and not having to go out in the street and go around. Yeah. a dining room table. That's number one. Number two, E3. I'm not sure what technically Heidi's is classified as. I thought it was classified as a nightclub or a cabaret. And according to this, they're prohibited from obtaining an outdoor restaurant seating area permit, and they have one. Again, it's on the side. It's against the building. It doesn't encroach on the sidewalk. But I don't know whether or not they are a nightclub or they're not a nightclub, so we may want to look at that.

Okay. Yeah, we'll look at that as an example. Try to apply that to that situation.

One more thing. I've been talking about this for years. It's just beyond me why the city does not have an architectural review board. And while I'm delighted with the planning staff that we have now and the development staff, I think you guys are fabulous. It's really a lot to be putting on your shoulders, and it's just one of the most critical boards in any municipality. We wouldn't be running into a lot of these problems if we had that.

I just came from Canaveral. I was up there for 10 years, the city of Cape Canaveral. We had what was called a community appearance board, and they played a significant role in development approval. Yeah. So, but I see where they can be beneficial. So, but that's a, that would be a city commission policy decision.

Oh, I know. I've spoken to a lot of city commissioners, some that are still here, some that are gone, and some that would like to be here. I make my feelings. Is there anybody from the audience who would like to speak on this issue? Any other comments from the board?

I do. I mean, along with what you were saying, I have concerns about, like, where you allow outdoor seating because I think about downtown with such a long A1A and around the surf and what was designated downtown and you had, I guess, another development or so that may be going up and I don't know what they're going to do, but if you had a number of these outdoor Seating areas, I think, would compel traffic to slow down and create a chance, you know, traffic. I mean, it's not that you want them to go faster downtown, but I think it would tend to slow down as many traffic patterns impact on traffic. It would be something to look at, you know, considering what they allow, you know, on site traffic.

But I think Dave's point is very well taken. It's not what we allow. It's what the commission finally decided they're going to do.

Oh, I know. It's just my...

But if they have guidelines, at least they have things to operate under.

Yeah. I mean, it's a little different. But when we get on A1A, it's... Oh, yeah.

It was the worst. Okay, if there's nothing else to talk about on Ordinance 1708, we can move to staff reports and announcements.

All right. The only thing that I brought was that request of the projects that are going on. My supply, it's in Excel. It didn't copy well to our software, the agenda software, but I think for the most part all the information is on there. Is there anything on those projects that you want a little bit more information on at this point or want to talk about?

I understand the drift was approved by the commission. How did that happen? Is that true?

Well, the site plan was approved.

Yeah, by the commission?

No, that's through our process. Right. Right, through our department.

So they're still coming back for site plan approval here? No. No.

The code has an administrative site plan approval process and a commission approval process, and it depends on the size of the project. I think it's three acres or 30,000 square feet. If it triggers either of those, if it's over that, then it has to go to the city commission. If it's under those, then staff can administratively approve the site plan.

But doesn't it go to the Planning Board and then the City Commission?

If it's a... Let's talk about the drift.

The drift is 7.9 acres, 220 units, two restaurants, and a leasing building. I don't know what that means. But at any rate, what is the status of it right now? Are we still waiting for them to come back to the Planning Board? I know they came for preliminary... They made a preliminary presentation maybe two years ago.

Yep. They're waiting to start a building permit, phase one.

So that means they got site plan approval.

Yes, they did.

Okay.

Yep. They've been through all the whole process. I wasn't here for the beginning of that, but site plan approval has been approved.

I can talk to you a little bit about that more in depth. This was a significant research and discussion question because if you do read the code, it says three acres or 30,000 square feet. If it's over that, it has to go to the city commission for approval. As you say, this project is over. I think it triggers both of those. Well, I was scheduling the project to start back through its process for final site plan approval, which would include this board and then to the city commission. The attorney for the drift didn't agree with that. And he raised and he brought to my attention some language in the development agreement. You remember this project, the drift was approved via a development agreement. And there's language in the development agreement.

That was approved by the Board of Assessment?

The DA was approved by the commission.

By the commission, okay.

Yes. So the attorney relied on language in the DA that basically said that the staff could give final approval for site plan. I didn't necessarily agree with that. So I referred this issue to their attorney and our city attorney. And discussions were had. And that was a decision that it would be the final site plan approval would be provided and given by the city staff. It would be an administrative final site plan approval. So you did not see final site plan approval, this board nor the city commission.

Wow. Wow.

And I think the argument was, and I'm not going to say it was without merit. There is language in the development agreement where it could be argued that the city commission, when they approved the DA, provided for this administrative approval of site plan.

From what you said, they said it could go through administrative approval. It wasn't necessitated. In other words, did the agreement say it must go through the... That approval process or? No, it didn't say that. So there was an agreement that was made to have it sort of go that way. Was that the city attorney that made that decision?

Yeah.

Okay. And so the city attorney said that we are going to go through this administratively.

Well, the applicant, the developer's attorney requested that. Right. And so since the intent of the commission, apparently the intent of the commission or it was, you know, I wasn't there. I don't know what the commission, what the intent. All I could go by was what the DA, how it reads. And there is language in the DA that it could be argued that administrative approval, that was the intent of the commission for it to go through that process for site plan approval.

Was that the city attorney's thinking?

I'm the...

was not the city attorney who who did all that's becky vose so i'm not familiar with the project so i couldn't i haven't read the da so i can't advise on that but uh we're very fortunate and i'm going to speak my mind we're very fortunate that this is a a developer that's a good developer that's a developer that's probably not going to hesitate to work with the city but we're not going to have that all the time and there's a process and again i'm preaching to the choir i'm sure But I've got to get it off my chest. There's a process. And if we start fooling around with that process, what's the point? What's the point of having the process? Anyhow, that's enough of that. Never want me sitting in this chair ever again. You're doing great. That requirement is still in there.

Yes.

Okay. Any other report from staff representatives?

No.

Okay.

I did have one question for staff. I don't know if you want to say it for this. Is it staff's intention to bring both of these ordinances back to the planning board? Yes. So you're not looking for recommendations to the council? All right.

Very good. I think we'll take the input that we received this evening, and Corey and I will roll up our sleeves. And Kristen. We might even get Kristen involved, too. And we'll all just...

Just the board didn't make a motion with respect to either ordinance, so I think just staff will just go off the consensus to bring it back.

And when we get a draft that we're comfortable with, that we think meets what the board is looking for, we'll obviously get it to Garrett, too, and let him take a look at it.

We don't have to formally table anything. It just stays on the agenda.

I don't think so.

If the board wouldn't mind making a motion for each ordinance just to continue it to the next board meeting date, which I believe is August 3rd.

Could I have a motion to?

I move that we review this again on our next meeting.

Well, it would be. Well, hold on. We just need one motion for the first ordinance and then another motion for the second one.

So if I could have a motion to table. Ordinance 1719 to give the planning and development people a chance to make modifications as discussed tonight to the next meeting, table to the next meeting. You know the wording. Any second? So moved.

So moved. Second?

I'll second. Okay.

All in favor?

Aye.

And I would like to have a motion to, again, table Ordinance 1708, outdoor seating for the next meeting. so that the planning staff had an opportunity to make adjustments as discussed this evening.

I'll make the motion. You can second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. All right. Is there any public comment on anything else? Anything you'd like to bring up? Nope. And board members, do you have any reports, announcements, anything you want to say?

I do. You love this I know you love one more thing to do, but I think down the line Sometimes we need to make changes have to do with fundamental changes in the way business takes place We've discussed this before I think in reviewing science there's a big change in number of deliveries that happen at facilities Amazon, FedEx, UPS, they get frequent, many more deliveries than they used to. And I've checked this. Amazon does not schedule their deliveries by place of work that they're delivering it, but how they're actually, they arrive to them. So they can have four or five or six deliveries in a large complex, just one, just Amazon. And I think the same is probably true of UPS and FedEx and everything. And I want to make sure that we require that there be enough parking space for them in a large complex that does not hamper the project.

Yeah, I think our code, honestly, I'll have to go back and specifically look. But I think what you're talking about, Mike, is loading and unloading areas. Yes. And I need to go back and see what's wired with unloading and loading zones in our site plan approval process. Right. I don't know, honestly. I haven't specifically looked at it. But we'll go back in there and look. If we think that, obviously... You feel like we need to get a little bit more detailed on what we have. We'll go back in and look at it, and we'll see if we can come up. We'll do some look around for some best practices.

There are some metrics for that. Yeah. That's my opinion. Yeah, yeah. For larger projects in particular. I was also astounded years ago when we reviewed some major projects that were going on. There were no really guidelines for when you need to have a loading dock. That shocked me. Fortunately, I was able to convince the developers of those projects that they needed to have one or they already had it. But maybe there are real ones where a loading dock is actually required and a way to maneuver into it without blocking traffic and other things.

Yeah, I think that's great. I think in new construction, it's a no-brainer. When we're dealing with redevelopment, especially in a downtown area, sometimes it's really hard. You almost have to do it off the front of the street. We'll take a look at the code and see what we can come up with.

Especially residential areas.

We'll put together an ordinance and Bring it to the board.

I think there's a fundamental change. There's far more deliveries than there used to be. Totally agree.

And there's going to be more and more. Okay. If there's no further comments, business, I'll adjourn the meeting.

Well done. Well, thank you.