Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

You see me as a greeter at Walmart?

Please be nice to me.

Try to be nice.

That'll be like your fourth job, right? Yes. Chief Bottle Washer.

The June 15th meeting of the Delray Beach Planning and Zoning Board is called to order. 502. Ms. Miller, if you could call a roll, please.

Karen Kiesielski? Here. Mitch Katz is absent. Deacon Strong?

Here.

Jim Chard? Here. Price Patton? Here. Roger Koch? Here. Gregory Snyder?

Here. Okay. Are there any proposed changes to the agenda? Okay.

I propose we accept the agenda as presented.

I have a motion. Second. But Mr. Cope seconded by Mr. Chart. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The agenda is approved. We have to approve the minutes from February 23rd. Are there any questions, comments, or discussion of the minutes? Can I have a motion to approve, please? Move to approve.

Second.

OK, motion by Mr. Strong, second by Mr. Cope. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? OK. At this point, time to swear in everyone who's going to speak tonight.

please raise your right hand by the authority best to meet the notary the state of florida you swear affirm the testimony about to give us the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you okay uh

I was going to say comments from the public on non-agenda items. I see no members of the public present. So that's public comments closed. No presentations, no quasi-judicial hearing items. We have number nine legislative items, and we'd like to proceed with number 9A. Ms. Giannis.

Okay, good evening. This is an ordinance that is a little more far reaching than the land development regulation changes that the board normally sees. So this is an item that has been talked about for the last four years and has now had a professional study done that has made recommendations. And so if the commission is going to Adopt impact fees, this lays the framework for a new Article 8. And a schedule of fees and adopts the study that justifies it pursuant to state statutes. Which is what I just said, but it's now on a screen. okay so um so this would establish the new 8.1 the only impact fee that the city collects for the city is a parks fee and it is a parks fee that i believe has been frozen in time for well over 20 years i will tell you other communities Have adjusted their park fees or is this is one of the lowest that I found so I hate the clicker Okay, so adopting impact fees is regulated by the Florida impact fee Act it is in Florida statutes and it governs all the rules related to is what a city can adopt and then how much it can raise existing fees and So if you did your homework, and some of you did and some of you probably didn't. I know someone did because that's a really good question that got me researching. So if you looked at the background, the recommendation for where the parks fee needs to be is much higher than what we by statute are allowed to raise it to. So but outside of that one-time charge for parks in our city, we do not collect any others. We collect transportation impact fees for the county, which are really roadway fees, which is a whole other area of conversation. But this study was specifically looking at very specific public infrastructure. So the important thing about impact fees is that they are a tool to help cities pay for and service the growth that is happening. But it is not meant to go back and fix every road that is not directly affected by that growth. So this is not meant to help you catch up with all the investment you didn't make over the past 20 years. It's really meant to offset the impact by the new growth. So the impact fee itself is required by state statute to be based on a study. It has to be a study that uses data collected in the last four years, and the study has to have been completed within the 12 months preceding the adoption of the impact fee. So this is supposed to be real-time dollars of how much it costs to keep up with the growth that you're servicing. The study that was attached to the backup is by DTA, and it was completed in January of this year. So we have to adopt something before January of next year. Otherwise, the study is stale, and we have to start again. There's a lot of background in terms of how they were managing growth or how they were counting the anticipated growth, excuse me, what was needed in our CIPs and other impacts. And so ultimately, there's a series of different fees that are based on different metrics. So there's what they were calling is a city administration fee. Actually, you'll see in the ordinance table, that's not what we're calling it. We actually have something already on the books called a city administration fee. It's related to collecting county impact fees. So you can see that we actually were calling it a municipal facilities impact fee. There's a police fee, a fire fee, and then again the parks fee. The parks fee, of course, having to follow the different statutes in the latest House bill that govern this. The current parks fee, just as a point of reference, is $500 per unit or $500 per hotel room. The rest of things that you see there, we do not collect right now. It also has proposed residential water and also sewer impact fees. They were based on a residential unit are I think I put the backup in there the director of utilities after looking at the recommendations of the study he applied a Sort of a percentage to the defined. I think it's called an ERD, which is an equivalent residential unit and To put it in line with what he thought the city really needed so he was recommending a lower fee than the study promoted Or suggested and that was both whether it was a per unit or if it was based on meter size for commercial or other things. This one, I really had a hard time understanding this, keeping in mind that we're going to have to program all of this into the new permit system for calculation. Because to me, I was like, well, I don't understand why You're going to charge a higher impact fee for one land use than another. The water's sheeting off the same. Does gravity work differently? I asked a lot of questions. Ms. Barletto provided a memo that came to me after this by an outside agency explaining how runoff is calculated differently. So it makes sense. But this would not be based on, if you read the study, it said it was a fee per acre. And it's not about the acre of land. It's not the size of the lot. It's about the square footage of impervious surface. We already calculate that. We get those numbers for drainage calculations. We get those numbers for what ultimately becomes your trim bill on your land. for stormwater on your tax bill. So that impervious surface calculation is something that we already readily have available, and it makes more sense for it to be done per square foot based on our incremental development. So again, the ordinance before you will establish a new section. It will adopt the required study, which is part of state statutes. It moves the park fee, which is right now in chapter 5. And it will move it under this new chapter to put them all together. And all of the pages of the ordinance explain how to calculate, what you're giving credit for, how to appeal if you don't agree with your calculation, and that there's an annual review by the city required that would be done in conjunction with the budget to show what came in, what's needed. Things like that. That said, you can only raise an existing fee a certain amount. So if you underestimate what you needed, you're still going to have to follow the state mandated limitations. The last page of the ordinance that was in the backup gives you a fee schedule for all of the different impact fees. And then the staff report provided a couple of examples of how much this fee would be. And if the city commission decides to adopt the maximum, with the caveat that the director of utilities has already dropped the two recommendations for, I mean, we're in the middle of a water plant. We know a lot about the water and what's needed and those things. But this is the maximum they can adopt. The city commission could decide to adopt $1. They could decide to adopt $100. They could decide not to adopt anything. It's up to them. But this is the maximum they could adopt. And so for just a 2,000 square foot house, if you're paying your $562 parks fee, and you're paying $1.39 per square foot for your municipal fee, and $0.61 per square foot for police, and $1.22 per square foot for fire, your per unit wastewater and water fees and then it was a for instance on how much square footage the impervious surface would be your permit fees would be now also collecting a $12,000 $757.50 one-time impact fee So keeping in mind, permit fees are only for the review of permits. They cannot go into the general fund. It does not matter that I have $10 million in the building fund right now. We cannot spend it on parks. We cannot spend it on buying a new fire truck. We cannot spend it on Kevlar vests. Other parts of the statute say your permit fees are only to pay for the review of permits. And if there's too much money, then we give it back to the people who gave it to us. through a very long accounting exercise. So those fees may go up or down depending on technology and how long it takes for us to review permits and what is the actual burden on how many employees it takes to look at those things, what's your software bill, how many computers did you have to buy, those things. This is meant to go into the general fund to offset the cost of infrastructure and facility improvements that have an increased demand because of growth. So the way the credits work, though, I want to make clear about this. If you, some of these, this is a for instance of, and this is happening all over the city. You have a property that is actually two buildable lots that are put together, right? Somebody tears down the big house in the middle, changes it into two lots. So one lot is an entirely new house that was never, it's a new household that was never in the city before. The other one might be a wash, right, because you had a house there before. But this is what a new house with no credits would look like under this, 2,000 square feet. So then we have, of course, much larger development happening, particularly along the Congress corridor. And when you think about, for example, fire impacts, you had a one-story building surrounded by lots of asphalt. And now you're building an eight-story residential building the same fire apparatus cannot reach the eight-story residential unit the way that it could serve a one-story smaller building. So this is meant, again, to start providing that impact of growth. So for fire in this case, it would be $384,000 and change. That would go into a fire account so that the type of needs that they have to service the new growth would have a resource that is not just the city of Delray Beach's current taxpayers. That's the idea behind the impact fees. So this was a 267 building, 267 unit building. It had gross square footage of under air. We knew what the clubhouse was. We were testing sort of an existing example. After I got the stormwater memo, I did not do the stormwater memo exactly right, Ms. Kalaweski, she called, because we did it kind of just as a what's the net difference. And actually, with the... with what was given to us as a schedule, there's a runoff rate for industrial. And so the industrial credit would have been higher than what a residential exchange would have been. So there's a couple of dollars in here that are probably off. But I think it's still a pretty good estimate that under the highest possible adoption by the city, this project would have to write a check for $2 million to help offset the costs City facilities than demand on services beyond what has been currently Collected which right now is $500 per unit for parks So I went the wrong way I think I did So in terms of growth and what we're trying to do why would the city want to do this aside from the fact that tax you know, there's always this push and pull between our current residents having to pay for growth that maybe they're not really excited about having in the first place. There's that balance. But there's also the real financial benefit behind that, while we continue to try to lower taxes for our residents, the rollback rate that was adopted a couple of years ago, for example. A tool to raise money for needed funds we have a lot of comprehensive plan policies that talk about the superior park system we want to have all of these things take money so but then there are some other questions that have come up while we have been talking about this and I would ask that you specifically weigh in on these topics because we will take them forward to the City Commission for their consideration We have other comprehensive plan policies about providing incentives for workforce housing and attracting workforce. So we have a long-standing policy of using a lot of different tools to try to achieve workforce housing. So if it's going to be $12,000 for the new house that was never built on a lot before, is this something that there should be a different schedule for? provide an incentive for that. And then we also, the only other real policy driven planning type of development effort we have is historic preservation. So if you've taken on a historic property and you're doing an addition, and you're doing a lot of other things that sometimes takes a specialized design or take different materials that maybe cost a little bit more than using hardy plank or something like that, should we consider reducing or relieving historic properties of a discount? And that's pursuant with other comprehensive plan policies about that. So we do ask that you choose from A, B, or C, because there is a time crunch on this. You can recommend approval of the ordinance. You can recommend amending it. You can just say this is a terrible idea. That's fine, too. And any comments you have related to this as a tool for this city, I think, are greatly appreciated. If you're going to ask in-depth financial questions, I will not be answering them. Assistant City Manager Jeff Forrest is here, and he's really been the project manager overseeing the DTA study.

So that's it.

Thank you.

guess it's up to us uh who who wants to start i have some questions please so yeah i did my homework so um and i i'm familiar with impact fees before so um i do think you know the city current city residents and businesses need to pay for a lot of infrastructure i think we're going to need a lot of um uh capital improvements in all these areas going forward just because a lot of the city was built a long time ago and things are starting to get old and wear out so i and i do think that the you know current current population and community should should be responsible for that and i do like the idea of having new growth and redevelopment help contribute to keeping the city and including these new areas. My questions had to do, I had a couple of them. One was, it's a technical one, it's on the ordinance, item G, 812G. It declares everything except water and wastewater in it. And so I may have missed where water and wastewater include in the where, where, where it has this kind of language. G on page four. Staff report? No, it's on the ordinance. On the ordinance. On the ordinance. So I would just think you might want to make sure that we've included water and sewer somewhere in those declarations. These are sort of declarations in my mind. And then another one was, I just want to make sure I clarified, there's a 1,000-square-foot cutoff for additions. So I can add on to my house up to 1,000 square feet, but if I added an ADU of 1,000 feet, I'd pay for the ADU but not my addition.

Yes, there's a cumulative cutoff.

Is that right? Okay. So I just wanted people to be aware of that. So I think it's going to cause, it may cause more, not that impact fees may contribute to someone's decision, but it may keep someone from building a mother-in-law suite instead.

The ADU would be a separate item.

The ADU would have impact fees, but the addition would not. to build the same amount of square foot of footage. Up to 1,000 square feet. Up to 1,000 square feet, yeah. Which is quite large. That's half my house. That's good. Pretty generous. So that was my other thought, is where the 1,000 came from. But I can live with that, whatever. And then I do like the concept of thinking about something for workforce housing. I'm not sure what that should be. And I did see in there that there's some opportunities to amend this based on policy decisions later. So I didn't know if that was something to bring back or not.

so thank you for involving me i'll piggyback on that and i i would propose to incentivize the historic preservation component yeah yeah either equal you know in some significant way and i i don't know if it's if it's discounted now Or if it's not, but whatever we can do to promote historic preservation, I'm all for that. Absolutely. Well, yeah, there's existing tax breaks.

You know, the 10-year no more payment to the county or the city. The ad valorem taxes. Right. So that's, but that's like you say, that's just one of the tools that you have. And the existing isn't exactly generous.

Right.

But I agree. If you could add more incentives to encourage, how would I say, responsible historic restoration, that would be good. Do you have more questions? I'm sorry. I had a quick one. So what you're proposing, you know that example you put up, the 267-room hotel? Their fees would go from about $133,000 to $2.2 million.

If the maximum was assessed or if all of the potential fees were adopted, because it's also possible, I should say this too, that the city commission will raise the parks fee And they could adopt police and fire, but then decide not to adopt the rest. Or they could just say, you know, the biggest issue we have is stormwater. We need to do that. This is the menu at the maximum rate they can choose from, I think.

Jeff Horace, assistant city manager. This scenario also assumes there's nothing on the land now and hasn't been for 10 years. Because we do have that series of credits if you've had existing construction on that site.

And I guess finally my only question, I think it's good because we've been, you know, builders have been paying to the county and they pay to the school district too, which are like big, big hits. But is this to kind of establish a framework for when and if the voters decide to eliminate the property tax?

This is a four-year effort, so we didn't anticipate that a drastic reorganization of homesteaded property tax would also be on the table. So we look really super prepared, but that was not. We just have known that, particularly with the life safety impacts, that we need to be able – this will not pay for new officers or firefighters, but it will pay for the gear that they need. to serve the larger growth. So that, I think, is important. But, yeah, we've been at this for a while.

That's a whole other piece that... Well, because, yeah, because of Delray's facing a $24 million shortfall because they raised the property tax exemption.

I can tell you where this idea originated from. This idea originally came from the fire department who are saying, we're coming up at some point in the future, we're going to need another fire station. And we don't want to stop development because somebody gets us to that point, that line in the sand where we need a new station and they can't build until we do it. So they had come up and said, we really need to look at the impact fee avenue. So all the new development from the point of adoption forward is going to pay for that new station and the development can continue. And then, of course, we looked at it through all of the avenues that were able to collect impact fees on. just to lessen that burden on the existing residents. It's not their impact. They're not paying any of this. It's what is the impact of bringing new people in, bringing that new square foot share, and making sure that it pays so the existing residents don't have to.

And then just to clarify, like you said earlier, the impact fees, they're similar to other cities. I mean, a guy's going to build a 267 apartment building, and his fees go from like $133 to $2.2. Is he going to shop elsewhere? How do you track that building down?

He or she may shop elsewhere simply because each city, it's based on your individual city needs. So if you look at impact fees across cities, It's some not in the same ballpark in some areas, some very much right on target. It depends on what they've done over time, what kind of development they anticipate in future years, and exactly what their costs are.

I'm sorry the last thing too that's important that is not included so is mobility fee there was a lot of legislature changes that happened in the last couple years which I think were very beneficial to Eastern communities like Delray Beach who have been paying a rate of roadway impact fees to the county and based on a county schedule that is the same for every development, whether it's east of 95, west of 95, et cetera. And those types, by the way, the interlocal says they are for new lane miles. New lane miles. We're built out. How many new lane miles are we building? So a lot of the eastern communities have been great donors. And the county's perception, of course, is that we're regional. People drive, like I drive from West Palm to come to work here. But if you had a train station that stopped downtown, I could get on the West Palm one and ride it here. So how are we going to pay for that train station, right? Which we did. So the new house bill that passed a couple of years ago, TOPS, is part of why you're seeing that the county is tackling a pretty extensive countywide transportation plan. Because they are now having to tie that fee that everybody is getting charged to actual improvements that are needed to build up mobility for the county. um the city needs to also have that mobility fee and so in the cip that will be considered where you're going to see a line item for a mobility plan and fee we were trying to do this before covid started and then like the money went crazy because everything went crazy So we started breaking it down into, like, the parking curbside management plan, the bike ped master plan, and now we need somebody to pull all of those plans that are not specifically roadway plans and figure out a fee assessment similar to this table. And it could be that if you're on military trail, you're paying the county impact fee because the countywide transportation fee plan has figured out what happens there. But if you're in the TCEA, which by its definition means we're not widening the roads— then maybe that fee stays with the city and can be used to build a train station, sidewalks, bike lanes, other things that we need to improve mobility here. This ordinance is like laying the framework for bringing that fee in after that analysis is done as well. So I think it's important to, even if you don't like all of them, we need to get some of this in place for the long term.

if i may just a quick summary of some of the important things to note one is that this is not paid by existing residents it is paid on new development so it does not affect existing residents the money collected for each is deposited into a separate fund for that grouping so if you're paying a fire fee it can only be used for capital projects for the fire department So it's not mixed up with everything else. We can't pay for just whatever we want out of it. Statute also identifies that we've got to pay for specific projects in a timeline. All of our projects came from the CIP coming forward in the future. We have an extensive list of inventory and projects that's included in this wonderful, exciting study that I had to read through several times. So it's important to note that this is about the impacts of new development and new development only. It is not a fee that goes to the existing residents. It is something that will save them moving forward in having to pay for the impacts of new development. We will all pay for the general maintenance of those and some of those other items, as Anthea alluded to. These dollars can't pay a new police officer or firefighter, but they can pay for the new vehicles that they need. can pay for their portion of new structures. Unfortunately, we're getting ahead on the police headquarters at this time. Had that waited, or we had this impact fee 20 years ago, we would have had a fairly sizable pot of money to use, and we wouldn't have had to use all bond money for that construction. At some point in the future, as I mentioned before, we'll need to build a new fire station. It may not be for another 10 years, but at that time, there'll be a substantial amount of money waiting for that to happen so all of the residents don't have to come up with it at that time, or the bond release that everybody pays in the future isn't quite so large.

So I thought the study was fantastic. I never understood that impact fees were so complicated. And it was exciting reading. I didn't read it three times, but a couple of times.

I didn't find it quite so exciting. I kind of dozed off once or twice.

It's OK. I wasn't going to admit that. This only is one-time fees. So it would do little or nothing for the reduction in real estate taxes, right? Maybe one year.

It would have an impact moving forward on those simply because that portion isn't going to come. But just for one year. Just for whatever that project is at the time that that happened.

So it isn't really a solution to that problem? No. It's helpful. It's not a solution. Secondly, Jeff, you said this was only for new residents. On the other hand, it talks about increasing the size of your home. We also talked about historic preservation, which are likely existing residents.

It's new development. My apologies. I said, for the most part, it's going to be new businesses and new residents, but it is for new development. It may impact minimally some of those existing residents if they're trying to expand significantly.

OK, so that clears that question. I noticed that the fee on water was apparently much higher than any of the others. Does that fee go down when the bond is paid off?

Well, I think one of the reasons why the utilities director felt that we should not be charging the full amount is simply because we've gone to bond for the new water plant. just didn't like the calculation, felt that some of that was captured in the bond and did not feel it was appropriate for us to charge the entire amount. That's why he went back to 50%. He also looked at the neighboring cities and felt it was a little bit more in line with what they were doing. He didn't want to be a far outlier. And I would tell you most of those other cities probably will, next time they get a chance, will increase those impact fees simply because of the impact of new legislation on water plants. And the things are going to have to increase and enhance to meet those new regulations.

But my question was a little bit different. The bond is what, a 30-year bond? whenever it's paid off, would that mean that we would readjust this fee, recognizing that the dollars going out are reduced?

We may. We would look at this. The ordinance itself requires that we look at the fees every three to five years. Okay, great. So we will continuously look and update, do more studies to this effect to find out what is the needs moving forward that There may be some we met. There may be some new ones that come on, and they will adjust accordingly and make sure that the new development is paying the appropriate share. So that won't be a four-year effort, though? Probably not, but we'll have to be ready to do it when that time comes.

Why are we saying land that has been vacant for ten or more years? Why is it not five or more years? What's magical about ten?

We're trying to keep consistent with what did we have it with?

The economy is growing.

Yeah, we didn't feel it was appropriate to keep it in there forever just simply because we do have some land out there that at one time had something on it. But at 10 years, it seemed appropriate to say, okay. You've not participated. The budget has absorbed whatever was there. If you jump on now, you're adding those new impacts. We thought that 10 years was a fair time. We looked at, I forgot what it was. There was something else we were benchmarking against that was 10 years, and we just thought that was an appropriate time. What was it?

Was that maybe the tax evasion on historic preservation? Because that's 10 years. Tax abatement on historic preservation is 10 years.

It wasn't that. And mine have been in my head. I have one.

Non-conforming uses?

No. I think we just wanted the decade so that it was

We wanted to make sure there was some cutoff. We didn't want it to be there in perpetuity simply because we have a hard enough time now looking back at what may have been on a property. So we didn't want to have to worry about something that may have been there in 1952 and isn't there now. We thought 10 years was a fair amount. Gosh, I wish I could remember. There was some other fee that went back 10 years and only 10 years.

Well, maybe Rebecca can tell us at the next meeting.

I mean, ultimately, if you have an approval, it's supposed to be for two years, and you can get four years plus tolling on an extension. And so if you haven't built it in 10 years, then you may not be ever going to build it. So these are fees that are due at the issuance of building permit. So a lot of what this board approves changes or it doesn't. it doesn't get built or it gets built right away like none of us know what different people's schedule are so these fees are collected at building issuance because they could have been adjusted up or down or in response to the changing needs of the cities so so on that on that same page of two of the staff analysis it says the first example is a new 2 000 square foot house

I'm assuming that that is just the example. This would apply to historic houses that have an additional 3,000 square feet or something, right?

And I would think that that's... You wouldn't pay an impact on the existing house if historic houses are existing.

But you're going to have more bathrooms, you're going to have bigger kitchens, more electricity. I mean, it's just going to have an impact.

I don't understand. Because if the house is historic and it's there, unless you're building a 1,000 square foot addition, you will not get an impact fee assessment.

If it's over 1,000 square feet.

If the addition is over 1,000, not the house. The addition. The change.

Most of the additions, I think, are well over 1,000.

then they will pay an impact fee on not the 2,000 square feet, but on, it would be half of this, because if there's not an allowance made for historic, because it's based on the square footage, and they would not pay a parks fee at all. We do not take parks fees. Some of these fees are per residential unit. The residential unit's already there, unless it's an ADU, where now you have two residential units, right? So... You wouldn't pay a parks feed. We don't collect it now if it's a house that's getting an addition So we wouldn't do it again that taxpayers already paying less than a thousand square feet addition That's what yeah, that's the threshold where it starts Unless you have a recommendation on that We're open. The base that we used was Coral Gables. We were using Coral Gables fee as a little bit of a guiding because they've actually dropped their police and fire fees fairly recently and adopted a mobility fee, so they're a little bit ahead of us. Their parks fee is over $5,000, though, I think. That's why Jeff's like, let's get rid of the parks fee, do a new study, and adopt it properly.

So where you'll often see a higher parks fee is in a built-out city because they're contemplating buying land to expand their park system.

I notice here that you're saying, you're asking staff if we have any suggestions for reductions that should be included. And certainly, Roger's point about historic preservation, I think, is something worth considering. And then you have a section here where the LDRs are calling for an adopted neighborhood plan if applicable. So what would happen if a neighborhood does not have a plan? I'm not sure that all of our neighborhoods have plans.

Can you tell me where you're reading?

Yes, page three of the staff analysis under review and analysis, LDR section 2.4.7, A5. A5.

and okay that that's the rule that it says you have to make a finding that the amendment is consistent with the comp plan and then it furthers of an adopted plan if applicable so if you don't have one it's not applicable because there's no plan maybe just one or two more

Oh, on the actual study, it talks about preliminary proposed Delray Beach DIS. And it does not specifically call out restaurants. It says office commercial retail, which might be restaurants. I'm not sure. And it doesn't call out not-for-profits, which We have quite a few of them. That would be institutional. And restaurants would be commercial.

Yes.

All right. I think that answers all my questions. Thank you.

I don't have a lot to add. I think everything's been pretty well covered. I think, to me, the important thing that we need to do is make allowance for workforce housing of some form. I don't know if it would be X percent discount on the fees if you're putting for a workforce housing unit and I You know what don't design for the day, so I don't have a percentage for you, but I think that's appropriate Not I mean I could say something but based on nothing so so what's the point I?

Chair, this is a little different where it's not a quasi-initial privately-initiated application. So if the board did want to make a recommendation of a certain percentage or type, it could if it simply wanted to say some type of discount being afforded to different categories as part of the recommendation, that would be fine as well.

Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of not qualified, but if the board as a group, if we have a number that we want to put out, I'm happy to support it. I'm hearing nothing. Well, go ahead.

What do you think is appropriate? Specifically, what is the question?

How much of a discount on the impact fee do you get for workforce housing?

And historic preservation.

We'll talk about that next.

And it would be sufficient. The board could just make a motion to recommend to the city commission they adopt some type of discount without a percentage or a number if the board just wanted to make that as a general recommendation to the commission.

Does that sound fair?

Unless staff says we should be slightly, I mean, I agree.

You want a number from us? Okay, I mean half Yeah

And the first one, I believe, was because you couldn't incentivize it for whatever reason. It was past that point or something. So, yeah, we need to make it more. Substantial.

All right. But, Counselor, would that not depend on the percent or the number of units out of the whole that are workforce housing?

Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, if it were just one unit, 50% seems too high. If it's 50 units.

I think some of those are per dwelling unit, which makes it very simple. The workforce housing dwelling unit gets a reduction. If it's for the square footage, then you have to take a percentage of the square footage. And so if you have nine units and three of them are workforces, then that's 33%. So you take half of 33% off, basically. You know what I'm saying? I'm not doing the math probably correctly.

I read a report somewhere that said if you're supposed to build 30 workforce units and a builder wanted to only build 24, he had to pay an extraordinary fee like an in-lieu fee for those units.

Well, that'll be going up soon.

The fee, we just went through that, and the fee was ridiculously small.

So the fee right now, I believe, and I'm working up my memory. $160,000. It's $160,000 per unit. So we just had, for example, Bliss on 5th, Came through, got approved, small little lot next to the JT's building, what's it called? The Wiseman building.

Yeah.

And a lot behind it off of Atlantic. Ground floor, retail, upper level. They were entitled to three units under the density. They got six additional units provided. Two of those were workforce, right? So it went from three to nine. One was for moderate income, which is 80 to 120 AMI. And one was for the step lower than that, which was low. And we just took this before commission, who was very happy if he could just pay $320,000 and not build any. And the commission said no. You got approved saying you got all this extra density saying that you were going to build it. And they're saying that they're building the low income unit would be built at a loss, which is possible, which is why you should have negotiated your price maybe differently. But that does raise the question of maybe the percentage of discount is related to the income of the unit. You get a moderate income discount. Rental is over $2,000. I mean, it's not... People are acting like this is like a low... This is just... Moderate is most of us that, you know, have jobs and go to work every day, right? You start stepping down, and then you have people that are working, but they're not necessarily in fields that are paying that much. So that's why it goes to the 60% to 80% of the area median income. And then the very low... To be fair, we're typically in CRA, Housing Authority, where there's a mission to build this housing. So we're not necessarily going to capture that through giving you a discount on your impact fees. But we could look at a sliding scale, too.

Yeah. Listening to that explanation, it's obviously more complicated than just throwing out a number of 50%. And I think that we ought to just recommend that there be an adjusted fee The impact fees should be adjusted for workforce housing, and I don't think we should sit up here and try to figure out exactly how to do it because we're not as smart as Anthea. Okay.

We appreciate the recommendation. Yeah.

I do think that's important. And the other one is the historic preservation, although I'm puzzled a little bit because how is new construction historic preservation?

There is some. Not much.

You're building a new historic building. No, you're building an addition onto a historic building.

There's infill. There's infill.

Okay. But again, I think that if it's historic preservation, we're going to get some kind of a break. I guess that's the way to say it. That we should have... Is discount probably the right word? I don't know. For workforce housing and historic preservation. Incentivize. Just say incentivize. Incentivize. There you go. So I would be happy to hear a motion to approve this with those comments added. If anybody, or not, or whatever anybody wants to make.

We're in agreement, right?

I'm in agreement with that.

I'll make a motion to recommend approval to the City Commission of Ordinance number 3426, a city-initiated amendment to increase the parks impact fee and adopt new impact fees by finding that the amendment and approval thereof is consistent with the comprehensive plan and meets the criteria set forth in the LDRs with the additional consideration of providing incentives for to encourage workforce housing and historic restoration. And historic restoration and infill. Historic preservation. Preservation and infill construction.

Was that a second?

we have a motion by I just have a question when you say workforce does that also include affordable yeah I have a question also would we want to say

I know we're not designing from ideas, but would we want to say up to as much as 50% just to indicate the significance that we're talking about?

I would, after the discussion, I would kind of leave the numbers alone personally. So we have a motion. We have a second, I believe. Do we need to call a roll on this? Yes, Chair. Okay. Ms. Miller is by Mr. Price, Mr. Price, Mr. Patton, and seconded by Mr. Strong. And would you call a roll, please?

Karen Kieseleski? Yes. Mitch Kass is absent. Deidre Strong?

Yes.

Jim Charn? Yes. Bryce Patton? Yes. Roger Cope? Yes. Gregory Snyder?

Yes. That passes unanimously.

Thank you all very much.

That's great. I think it's time. Yeah, I agree. Definitely time. No, the next ones are not going to take long at all. I don't think. How can we spend an hour and let this move away? Right. There he is. All right. 9B.

Good evening, board members. My name is Sean Adams, planner in training. At this time, I'd like to enter into the record file number 699-2026. All right, so the request is to provide a recommendation to the city commission on resolution number 108-26, which would add Weatherspoon Way as a secondary name to the street segment Northwest 12th Avenue. As you can see on the map, outlined in the red, that's Northwest 12th Avenue, and it lies between Northwest 2nd Street and West Atlantic Avenue. So again, just to reiterate, the request is just to refer to the street segment as Northwest 12th Avenue slash Weatherspoon Way. All right. So for some key background information, Northwest 12th Avenue was originally planted in 1925. The city owned right of way. It's one of the oldest streets in the city. Approximately 30 properties front this street segment. And as you see on the map, that's the entirety of Northwest 12th Avenue, again outlined in the red. For some key context on Reverend Weatherspoon, whom the city's being, or for the streets being named after, he moved to Dowery Beach in 1940. He's a key figure in Dowery Beach's black community for several decades. He funded Weatherspoon Paving, where he hired many migrant workers and they paved many of the city's streets. He became a lifetime member of Dowery Beach's Voters League. Later on, he funded and built a primitive Baptist church on Northwest 11th Avenue. He's also received the NAACP Community Service Award for his community efforts in Dowery Beach. And later on, his son Jimmy Weatherspoon entered local politics and became the Vice Mayor of Dowery Beach. Also, I'd like to add that the Weatherspoon family still live on Northwest 12th Avenue to this day, and they have property on that street. So this would be an honor to his legacy, Reverend Weatherspoon and the family still living here. All right, so is the name acceptable? Here are the street's naming requirements. It states that the use of a person's name for a street is permitted only if they have been deceased for a minimum of five years. Given that Reverend Weatherstrom passed away in April 1988, that was nearly four decades ago, so he wouldn't meet that minimum criteria. Also, it states that the person had to have made significant contributions to the city of Delray Beach, and given the... Reasons I stated in the slide prior, we believe that he meets those contributions as well. And as for sign implementations, if the name and request is approved, of course, staff will replace applicable street signs. The Florida Department of Transportation will replace the street signs on the FDOT right-of-way. And as for aesthetics, as you can see in the photo, there's an example of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Northwest Second Street, which is also, again, an example of a street code designation. So it would follow that same style and format, but this would be Northwest 12th Avenue slash Witherspoon Way. Finally, here are the board's options for action to recommend a street code designation request, to recommend denial, or to continue with direction. is all.

Thank you. Do we have any comments?

I'm of course going to vote for this, whether some families make amazing contributions for many generations. But I do have a concern, and maybe this is more appropriate for board comments. If you look at the the laws or rules on street naming they are fairly loose and And there it shows up two different sections one says in selecting names for streets or in renaming streets Consideration should be given to the use of names that are historically culturally or environmentally significant in the immediate area and I'm just thinking in the that Two things. One is this has been an issue that's been fraught with politics for as long as I've been here. At one point in time, I think there was even a rule that we couldn't name streets after residents. And then I remember one issue where the CRA tried to name a street. And that really led to the takeover of the CRA by the city commission. It was sufficiently political in that regard. And where I'm really concerned is We've had some very notable residents die just in the last year. The former mayor, Rita Ellis. Mark Sauer, who has probably put hundreds of minority children in colleges. Tony Allerton, who contributed to this city for 70 years, 65 years. Francis Bork, who basically invented Del Rey as a culture center, and Roy Simon, who just recently passed, is a very notable architect. So my question is this. The other thing I wanted to mention is at one time there was a county commissioner that wanted to rename Atlantic Avenue, or at least as a double name, Andre Fledel. Oh, boy. I don't know if you remember that. And if you do drive around this town, there are at least four or five streets named Fladel. And so I think those historical facts led the city to kind of tighten up the process. But I think it still needs more tightening. The language here is very loose. And the number of persons that we could or should be honoring is... Fairly large. Oh, great. I was short. You were.

What was the genesis of this? Did the Weatherspoon family approach the city?

to the best of my knowledge i believe that is how this came to be and then the commission directed staff at a meeting several months ago to find a solution to this with the street naming so um yes i think the family and the city commission had started us down this path is there anyone in the city who keeps a list of um famous people who've died for future i mean future consideration Not that I know of. The tightest thing we have is the person has to have passed away at least five years ago for them to receive this honor.

Mr. Fledell is still with us. And apparently, I think, yes, Mr. Was it before they changed the ordinance then? We never, yes.

So as I understand it, there was some kind of a fundraising effort in the city that allowed people to pay money to get names on the streets. There was a fundraising thing. And it was a bit fast and furious on the assigning of street names for people.

No, I'm totally in support of this as well.

as long as you if you if you mail a letter to you know 122 northwest uh 12th street it'll still it'll get there right correct thanks just really quick i want to make sure the record is straight on this yes the cra did not recommend to name the street after lamar schuler we only voted to support it Hence the 2017 hostile takeover of the CRA. But, no, I'm definitely in support of it. As a matter of fact, Elsie Witherspoon's church is still being used now with the elders table, which has had some significant impact with the city. So this legacy is still living on after him. So, yeah, definitely. Absolutely.

I'm in agreement with everything as long as mail goes through.

I want to welcome Sean to the city. Great job on your presentation. In what little I know about the history of the naming of streets in Delray, they were never numbered streets. They were all originally named streets, always. And somebody can correct me. But in the 50s, apparently? The United States Postal Service, and I'm simplifying this down to my level of competence, they insisted that all streets be numbered in avenues and streets. So we all had a street. that you live on right now that didn't have a number. And to me, that would have given it so much more character. So the Weatherspoon family's been a dynamic family in the city forever. I'm in favor of voting for anybody's name on any street other than the daggum number. So I'm 100% behind this. But I have no idea where Andre Fladel Avenue is. And apparently, it's way out west somewhere.

No.

Is it an alley or a street? It's an alley. It's a street.

Alley. And the South County Civic Center is now the Dr. Andre Fledel Civic Center down on Jog Road. Man, that's almost hard to believe. Don't get me started. He lives around the corner from me.

Roger, we have to reassert the name Parrot Way for 3rd Avenue.

3rd Avenue has a Parrot Way? It used to be. That's what it was before? Yeah. Because of the bird?

Well, the street that my historic house was on was Lawrence.

They were typically named after those turn-of-the-century people that were settling the city and that may have owned the entire area. And so streets were named after people that were significant in founding that area. So this, in a sort of roundabout way, this is going back toward that direction. I'm in favor of that 1,000%.

Um, Sean, thanks. Welcome aboard. Nice to see you. Thank you. Yeah. Good job. And can I have a motion, please?

I'd like to make a motion, if that's OK. I'd like to recommend approval to the city commission of resolution number 10826 to rename the existing public right of way, otherwise known as Northwest 12th Avenue, to Northwest 12th Avenue slash Weatherspoon Way, finding that the request meets the applicable criteria in the land development regulations and is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Motion by Mr. Koch, second by Mr. Strachan. Diane, would you read the roll, please?

Karen Gieselowski? Yes. Mitch Cass is absent. David Strachan? Yes. Jim Charn? Yes. Price Patton? Yes. Roger Koch? Yes. Gregory Snatter?

Yes. That passes unanimously. Thanks.

Very good. Rebecca, did the language change in terms of the options for the word? Because what Roger just read is different from what I have here.

He read that, I think.

Did you read from the document or from the screen?

Screen. It was his screen.

Maybe it changed. Just a quick, well, I'm getting to it. But I've got it printed out here. It's not the same thing.

Let me see.

Okay, understood.

Okay, 9C. Ms. Pinkston, welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. This is Agenda Item 9C, an amendment to the Land Development Regulations, approval expiration dates for fee-simple townhouse projects and city projects. And the request is to provide a recommendation to the city commission on ordinance number 33-26, a city-initiated amendment to section 2.2.4, certification of action taken of the land development regulations to establish expiration dates for public projects and townhouse site plans with an approved plan. So pursuant to Section 2.2.4, Certification of Actions of the Land Development Regulations, site plans, conditional uses, conditional use modifications, and subdivision plans expire 24 months after approval. Approvals are considered established or commenced when improvements representing 25% of the total cost, which excludes demolition, have been completed or a certificate of occupancy has been issued. Projects with approved plats are tied to the expiration date of the site plan. Other jurisdictions, such as Palm Beach County and Palm Beach Gardens, utilize plat recordation to establish commencement of a development order. Platting typically indicates an applicant's commitment to move forward in accordance with their development order. This is particularly problematic with approved fee simple townhouse developments as changes to the approved site plan that are inconsistent with the plat would require that one or both be modified. So this is specific to the city and CRA. Projects initiated by the city and the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency are also subject to the same expiration dates as private sector projects. Government facilities, however, require the preparation of RFPs, RFQs, and bids for various components. Additionally, unforeseen budget issues or public emergencies may impact funding and the ability to start in a timely manner. These potential delays could ultimately result in the development order expiring, which would require re-approval at an additional cost to taxpayers should the 18-month time extension prove to be insufficient. Non-governmental entities are not subject to these same requirements and have a faster path to obtaining a building permit and commencing construction within the given timeframe. Please note that if approved, these provisions will be retroactive to January 1st, 2022. So that's for the government and city initiated projects. So this is a table that's just comparing different municipalities. So Palm Beach County and the Village of Wellington have exemptions in place for specific governmental entities. Applications initiated by the Village of Wellington are not subject to approval expiration. Palm Beach County goes further by also exempting applications submitted by local, state, and federal agencies. So just to compare, the city, it's a little bit harder for the city to get their projects through, not necessarily through, but constructed in a timely manner. So there could be any type of delay or something may happen and then the application may have to go back through the process again. You would have to request a time extension. And this is just a description of the proposal. Item F, expiration of approvals, conditional uses, site plans, subdivision plans, and zoning certificates of use. So C and D are where the changes would occur. So C would read site plans for fee simple townhouse developments. with a recorded plat shall be valid for a period of 24 months from the date of recordation. A 24-month time extension may be requested. So that, when we were making some edits, so that second sentence got removed, but that's to stay in there. And it's included in the ordinance caption. And D, site plan approvals for city and Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency-owned properties shall be valid for a period of five years. And this is just some of the findings and how they relate to the comprehensive plan objectives. So this one's particular to neighborhoods, districts and quarters elements. And it just speaks to updating land development regulations. The next speaks to economic prosperity elements, encouraging predictability and consistency in the city's land development regulations, while allowing for flexibility and creativity in the site development process. Promoting a culture throughout the city organization that continuously improves the predictability and reduces the cost of development review process. And options for board action would be to recommend approval to the city commission, recommend approval as amended, recommend denial, or to continue with direction. And that concludes my presentation.

So I just want to make sure I'm glad to hear about the 24 month extension But everything else is still subject to their 18 month extension. Yes, only these that are mentioned only these are mentioned Okay, and then the five years doesn't get any extension at all for the city property should it need it, right? It would just it's just five years, which is more than the 24 plus 24. So yeah, I just want to make sure okay, so I'm all for making this easier. Our plat recordation is much easier than 25%. And they're expended. So, I mean, I think that's a great suggestion.

Ditto. I agree with you. It's 100%. Okay.

Mr. Tron? Yep. Mr. Pat? Good. I'm good. Okay. We're good. Somebody make a motion, please.

Oh, you want me to make a motion? Yeah. You have the right paper. I recommend approval to the City Commission of Ordinance Number 33-26, a city-initiated amendment to Section 2.2.4. certification of action taken of the land development regulations to establish expiration dates for public projects and townhouse site plans with an approved plan by finding that the amendment and approved thereof is consistent with the comprehensive plan and meets the criteria set forth in the land development regulations.

Second. Motion by Mr. Charge, second by Mr. Koch. Ms. Miller, would you please call the roll?

Karen Giesilewski? Yes. Mitch Katz is absent. Deidre Strong? Yes. Jim Chard? Yes. Price Patton? Yes. Roger Cope? Yes. Gregory Snyder?

Yes. That's unanimously passed. Thanks, Barbara.

Okay, good evening. For item 9D here, I'm going to read into the record file number PZ000665-2026, and my name is Rebecca Dossery for the record. This amendment here is to modify procedures related to the Development Services Managed Group and Director responsibilities in providing relief for development applications. We are amending just one section of the LVR the full text of ordinance number 20 32 26 is provided as an attachment So essentially dsmg as you can see on the slide here It's administrative body that grants relief from technical requirements for different applications It's made up of different department heads within the city that have the relevant professional expertise to make these kinds of determinations and the administrative relief that dsmg can provide is limited to modifications of cbd streetscape standards deviations up to five percent to a max of one foot from something already an already approved waiver during construction so if um i'm trying to think of an example here if as they're building and there's some kind of site constraint that they need to adjust and it's not really a big impact on the project dsmg has the authority to do that rather than bringing the request back to the board that approved it and then also adjustments to set back requirements for single family and duplex structures if there's a right-of-way dedication so for example if you have to dedicate five feet of right-of-way dsmg is allowed to allows you to is able to grant the relief to move your set back to 20 feet instead of 25 for example dsmg can also grant appeals of administrative interpretations of regulations and then in 2023 when we modified our chapter 2 procedures for development review we gave the authority to review and approve special event applications Today, we are specifically modifying two procedures. So the relief related to a right-of-way dedication, we are proposing that we give that authority to the director instead of DSMG. So really, we're finding it's kind of a no-brainer in a lot of ways where there's not a lot of need to opine on whether it's impacting utilities or roadway conditions, because usually it's us and our engineering department that has asked for dedication. So it makes sense to make it an easier path to relief by giving the director the authority to grant that instead of taking it to DSMG. We've had, let's see, I think we've had five or six requests in the last year that have been to DSMG, and it's approved every time. And then we're amending the dsmg powers and authorities to again take that power from them when we give it to the director and then also um to expand the authority for deviations up to five percent to a maximum of one foot if there's a tree in the way that doesn't allow them to meet the technical standard or if there's an existing utility line or an existing building. So very specific circumstances where we're finding a lot that it's not really necessary to take it to a board because the impact is so minimal and it actually is helping preserve something unique or desirable about the site. The board has to make a finding that the amendment is consistent with the comprehensive plan. And again, we always try to make things more smooth and streamlined here in the city for our applicants to move the process along faster. So in the spirit of that, we're looking for a recommendation. And these are your choices before you.

Thanks.

Anyone? I love the DSMG. DSMG, yes. I've sat in on some of their meetings. They're in charge of ensuring that all the streets are the proper width. If they're not the proper width, they're recommending widening them in dedications. And like Rebecca said, setback relief that you may have to ask for in exchange for giving up some of your valuable land. So I'm in favor of all of this. It's a great tool, great body of people to guide projects.

Cool.

Nothing more to add, I agree.

Okay. Mr. Strong. Just to be clear, so you're taking away one authority on the set.

power yeah it's very narrow now so this one just gives a little more wiggle room for really common-sense kinds of asks that we don't have it built in to provide in an easier way than we currently do I'm all for streamlining

Well, I'm certainly in favor of saying legacy tree location. That's cool. What about other kinds of easements? It specifically says utility lines, but there's a whole variety of easements on people's property that I'm not sure this encompasses.

It's typically related to utility lines, I think, for tree placement. So that's the one we see the most where the utility lines is the one that we encounter the most. But we can look back and see at the different applications if we have another type of easement that it would be wise to include at this point.

I think there's some for drainage, for example.

Yeah, so that one, we can definitely go back and look at that before we bring it to commission.

I think otherwise it's a discrepancy that will come up and bite us. Other than that, I don't have any other comments.

Yeah, I can support this. I have no comment. Do you want to make a motion that talks about what you just said? Sure.

I have the right section, Greg. Recommend approval to the City Commission of Ordinance Number 32-26, a city-initiated amendment to Section 2.1.1, Administrative Officials, and Section 2.1.2, Review Authorities of the Land Development Regulations, LDRs, to amend the duties, powers, and responsibilities of the Director and Development Services Management Group related to relief. from development standards by finding the amount and finding the amendment and approval thereof is consistent with the comprehensive plan meets the set forth in the land development regulations as long as we include as an amendment the inclusion of easements along with the other indications such as utility lines and legacy trees.

Second. Okay, motion by Mr. Chard, second by Ms. Kiesielski. Ms. Miller, call the roll, please.

Karen Kiesielski? Yes. Mitch Katz is absent. Dieter Strom? Yes. Jim Chard? Yes. Price Patton? Yes. Roger Koch? Yes. Gregory Snyder?

Yes. That's an unanimous approval. Okay. One more.

OK, good evening again.

Item 9E, we are reading into the record file number PZ666, 2026. And this amendment is brought forth to clarify how property lines along alleyways will be treated. So as you all know, we have many, many alleyways within the city. And we're looking to adopt a rule to treat Setbacks along alleys or to apply the rear setback requirements to lot lines adjoining alleys So based on the strict interpretation in the LDR an alley is classified as a street it's a secondary means of access to abutting properties and not generally for traffic circulation And a street, again, is a thoroughfare. Larger volume than an alley, but it can... So the alley still can provide the vehicular access. So because alleys are a local street, we've been, for setback purposes, treating them as streets on the side street, which has caused a lot of consternation. So I think when you think of how an alley is configured with an alleyway width of 20 feet, it's not necessarily... there's not as high of a volume of traffic on an alley as there would be on a street. And when it's along a side street, we want to have it back far enough from the property line to protect from any crashes and to allow just sufficient space between the structure and the street. So because of the different nature of alleys, we are going with a different interpretation that allows a smaller setback. So this diagram here, in front of you shows how we currently interpret versus how we're intending to apply it. So looking at the diagram on the left, so adjacent to the alley right of way, the structure would have to be set back from the street 15 feet. So under the current interpretation, or under the proposed interpretation, the setback would then be 10 feet. And one case where some of our older neighborhoods particularly on the smaller lots. If you had a alley that was being treated as a side street, plus you had an alley on the rear, it could result in a very constrained development. So we think this is a better way to provide the sufficient setback from the property line without overburdening property owners. The example I just showed you was in the R1A zoning district. For the R1AAA zoning district, similar scenario. Instead of 17 foot setback along an alley, you could build with 12 under what we're proposing. so um the exception to this would be um we have about six different single family zoning districts one of them um the side setback is smaller than the rear or side street setback so we're going to stick with that but for the rest we're going to defer to the smaller setback again we have a number of policies to protect our alley network and we think this encourages people to utilize this great system of alleys for accessing their properties if we can adjust the setbacks and you have your options for board action we'd be looking for a recommendation and I will be happy to answer any questions

Thank you. Yeah, I answered my question in the beginning, which is, this confused me when I read it, until I finally figured out that you were treating alleys as streets. Because I thought you were treating them as, it looked like you were making it bigger. But no, it makes sense. Anyone else?

Jim? A couple thoughts. I know one of the things we're trying to do is, move parking from swales and front yards and front entrances into alleys and in the back. And I'm wondering if this counteracts that wish on the part of the comprehensive plan and the city commission because it reduces the amount of space that you can park in the back if you're reducing the setback.

So these rear setbacks would remain the same, but I think It is the minimum setback or maximum minimum setback. So if you could. Build farther from the property line. This just gives leeway to how you could design your lot to give you options. I think for ADUs, for example, we're allowing rear parking either parallel or with the full length of the car. So, again, this is just providing options for people to design their property in the way that makes sense for how they intend to use it.

I understand the intention, and I think that's correct. I'm just wondering if we have some unintended consequences. I know a lot of the work that was done, particularly in Northwest by the CRA, was to activate the alleys and the parking in the back to get rid of the cars that were in the front yards. And I'm just wondering if that's an unintended consequence of what we're trying to do here.

so this would only apply to the side property lines which is currently being treated as a side street setback which is a significantly greater amount of a setback so the scenarios where someone i think would be providing parking along a side lot line that was an alley would be minimal but if someone chose to park along the side they could still move the setback further back to accommodate it on the side rather than the rear i'm just wondering if anybody would do that um the other thing and i'm not sure uh how this pertains but uh in the background uh analysis it talks about the uses of setbacks

And it talks about air circulation, fire protection, protect views, and so forth. It says nothing about landscaping or trees. And I realize this is the report, but I'm just wondering if that is baked into other places in the ordinances or the policies or the LDRs, because it would just seem to me that's one of the major reasons that we have setbacks.

Certainly. In fact, we require foundation landscaping on any right of way facing a street. So that's, like you said, if there's a street frontage, then you're required to landscape that side of your property. So, I mean, that's absolutely correct. There's... That's not an all-inclusive list of the things the setbacks do for us.

So that isn't language that's resident in some other document. This is just the staff report.

Just general language. But yeah, our landscape regulations certainly provide all the space for the landscaping and the setbacks.

I'm good, thanks.

You're reducing the setback from 17 to 12 feet.

No, so I don't know why I didn't actually put the full chart on here. I should do that for commission. So let's say, whoops, which direction? So, for example, here on this, the rear setback is already 10 feet. So if we were...

Okay, so... Well, for both of them, I see. Okay.

Yes, so this would allow, so currently you would have to be 15 feet from the alley if it was along the side of your property. Under the proposed regulations, you could be 10 feet from the property line.

On the side?

On the side, whereas the rear is not changing. It's applying that rear setback, which is somehow less than the side straight line. Yeah, I think we need to last minute I need to adjust the diagrams because I think having the alley on both of them made it confusing but Correct, it's that rear setback isn't changing I was totally confused This is this

A reduced setback only when there's an alley on the side of a property. Yes. You just said that much easier. That was not clear to me at all. I'm very sorry. I'm sorry. I've been doing a lot of design on houses off alleys for 40 years. I've never had a project where the alley was on the side of a property. How few of these properties are we talking about?

We've actually been getting a lot of them in where there are the alleys along the sides. And especially on the smaller lots in the older neighborhoods, it becomes a huge challenge for design. We could possibly try to map that, but we have been having a significant number of requests for zoning verification about how to treat the alley, and so that's why we're bringing this forward.

We used to treat it as a side street, and that was very penal. So this is trying to give relief to that, and you're hanging your hat on. Like the other diagram, I think it was 17 feet. That's a common side street setback. So you're reducing that from 17 to 12?

If it was in the R1 AAA zoning districts. Okay, right. So, yes. I just did examples from two of the zoning districts.

One of the smallest lots versus one of the larger ones to help kind of give some... Can you take the 12 to match the interior size setback? Yes. Is that the contract?

In most cases, it does. There were some circumstances where it was a lot smaller than it should have been. I think particularly in R1A, the side interior is 7 1⁄2 feet. 7 1⁄2, yeah. And we thought that was a little too tight for potentially something that is quasi street-like.

Maybe 1 to 10, probably, hopefully.

So that's why, yes, we went with the 10. Okay. Hopefully that will make it.

I'm much clearer now. Thank you. There are very few properties out there. All right. A handful?

Not a lot. We would have to do the analysis, but we can see if we can do that for commission.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there may be less than 10 in the entire city. So this is a very unique situation.

Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion. If my computer won't let me. I'd like to recommend approval to this city. There's somebody else making. Mine keeps going out.

I move to recommend approval to the City Commission of Ordinance Number 31-26, a city-initiated request to amend and update Section 4.3.4, Base District Development Standards, Subsection H, setbacks of the LDR to specify that rear setback requirements shall be applied to side lot lines adjoining alleys by finding that the amendment and approval thereof is consistent with the comprehensive plan that meets the criteria set forth in land development regulations.

Second. Okay, motion by Mr. Strong, second by Mr. Cope. Ms. Miller, would you call the roll, please?

Karen Kiesielski? Yes. Mitch Katz is absent. David Strong? Yes. Jim Chard? Yes. Price Patton? Yes. Roger Cope? Yes. Gregory Snyder?

Yes. And then that's passed unanimously. Thank you. Now we have staff comments.

No comments, just the usual. Referring you to the next meeting dates, July 20th and August 17th.

Thank you. And Mr. Board Attorney, did we pass?

Yes, Chair. No comments tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Board comments. Roger? Nothing. Ma'am? Mr. Strong?

Just one quick question. I got an email earlier this week. No, last week. uh about my i guess appointment coming up it's but i don't remember when i got appointed i'm not sure we will have the clerk reach out to you about that okay thanks

Do we as a board ever have the opportunity or the encouragement to suggest looking at issues like this? And this is all staff-initiated. Is there any history of things board-initiated?

Yes, there are. Our list of things we need to update is a very long, long jury list, but you are certainly welcome to provide a recommendation on some things you'd like to see updated.

Well, one that I would like to discuss before the board, not tonight, but at some point in time, is the way we do fences in Delray. We're kind of becoming a... city of fences in many regards. And I think there's a code enforcement issue, and I think there's also a problem in the LDRs about fences, particularly on corner lots.

Too high?

Too high, no transparency. You can't really see the yard or the house.

I think that's good. I tend to agree with you. I don't want to do it tonight either. We can be prepared to do it in the future. Yeah. Because we certainly can recommend to the board that we think something needs to change that's been done.

Would you want to consider hedges as well? Because I see a lot of site problems around the hedges that are now out of the streets and a lot of places.

And a lot of them are very high.

I will say that we had an amendment in the pipeline to bring through that would have addressed the really big problem we're having with structural fill resulting in the fences being really some of the fixes we were going to bring forward we couldn't quite yet because of sb 180 so once that one is uh but we certainly hear the the complaint and we'll see if there's anything we could do now to try to address it okay anything else i just brought something to mind to me we passed we made a motion on a all county paving you remember all county paving

And our motion included them putting a hedge on the street side of their fence. And there's no hedge on the street side of their fence.

so it could be that um they were not able to submit for permits yet because their plat took a while to move through the process but we just approved the plat so they should be coming in for permitting shortly we can follow up to make sure that yeah i just just wonder i go by there and i keep thinking mitch like that and i liked it and okay and if no one else has anything we're adjourned