Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

[Applause] Good evening. This is the Thursday, May 15, 2025, planning and zoning commission for the city of Sebastian called to order. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, please. Mr. Roberts is absent. Miss Matthews, present. Chair Kotlinberg here. Mr. Carter Bradford. Miss Laruso is absent. Mr. Reno here. Miss Battles here. Miss Kinshin is absent. Miss Gizley here. Thank you. Thank you. Um, our announcement for this evening is that commissioners Larusa, Kinchin, and Roberts are excused from tonight's meeting. And Mr. Terry Reno will be voting with us. Commissioners, you've all had an opportunity to review the minutes of our last meeting. If you have any additions or corrections, please bring them forward. Madam Chairman, I'll make a motion that we accept the minutes of u the May 15, 2025 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. I'll second the motion correcting the date that it's the May 1st, 2025

minutes. Oh, May. I stand corrected May 1st. Okay. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. No opposed. Thank you very much. Okay. I am hereby opening our public hearing. Good evening. This is a public hearing on proposed ordinance number 02512, an ordinance of the city of Sebastian, Florida, which revises land development code article 5 zoning district regulations by amending the townhouse dimensional sorry dimensional regulations within the RM8 medium density multifamily residential 8 dwelling units per acre and RM10 medium density multifamily residential 10 dwelling units per acre zoning districts providing for severability conflicts codification scriveners errors and providing for an effective date. Thank you. Okay. Um this uh this hearing is uh brought to us by um our planning department and I would ask them now to make a presentation. Good evening commissioners. My name is Jim Man. I'm with the community development department here at the city of Sebastian. I have a PowerPoint presentation related to the item presented tonight. Um so this is a land development code text amendment ordinance number 2512 kind of um related to the town home dimensional regulations in the residential multif family 8 units per acre also known as RM8 and the residential multif family 10 units per

acre also known as the RM10. So, a little bit of a background of this text amendment. In 2001, the residential multifamily RM8 was created and uh town home uh dimensional regulations were established in 2001. And in 2021, with the approval of the 2040 comprehensive plan and our policies, we created the residential multif family um 10 units per acre, also known as RM10. And this was to basically be created um for the policies that were adopted in the 2040 comprehensive plan. And with some recent submitts and trends that we have seen with the town home uh regulations and uh submitts that we've seen for pre-application conferences, we've kind of noticed that our RM8 and RM10 seems a little too restrictive for what is being proposed. Um, we have had a few applications come in and we're kind of revising and advising some of the applicants what we would want to do to kind of help them along for the development of their projects. And so we've come up with a few different things to address in our land development code. Um, with the RM8 and the RM10, we're proposing to kind of reduce the width of the lot from 25 ft to 20 ft. Um, we would also with that increase the depth of the lot from 75 ft to 90 ft to kind of coincide with the code. Currently, we have um a maximum square footage for the lot size or minimum square footage of the lot size from 1875 ft. we would kind of reduce it to 1,800 ft² to kind of keep it in that ballpark of that 1875 and not, you know,

trickle down and be a little bit lower. And kind of as like a a visual representation of what the 20 foot lots would look like, um, I've kind of shown this rendering on the bottom of what a sixplex town home design would look like with the 20ft lots. And also with just the text amendment for RM8, this is just for the RM8 zoning district. If we would have reduced the side setback from 10 ft to 5 ft and increase the distance requirements between the two buildings of the town home or sixplex, forplex, whatever they designed from 15 ft to 20 ft to kind of give that bigger buffer. And as you can see on the right hand side, um there's a little bit of a diagram to kind of show you what that would look like. And for the RM10 text amendment, um we kind of saw some administrative things that didn't happen with the uh original adoption of the RN10. We had some footnotes in the actual dimension regulation table that actually did not make it into the code itself. So we're kind of finished kind of doing an administrative correction on that. And as you as you can see in front of you, those are the corrections that we're introducing into the code now. So recommendation from staff is, you know, a favorable recommendation for the city council to approve. Um the first reading at city council will be held June 11th, 2025. And if you have any questions of me, I'm here. I'm an open book. Okay. Thank you. Do we have any public input? I don't see anyone here in the audience. Do we have anyone on Zoom? Nobody's raised their hand.

Okay. I think we can assume that what you just did is your summary. So, we'll go to um close the hearing uh and have commission deliberations and actions. We'll start with you. All right. Um thank you, Madam Chairman. I don't really have any specific questions, just something I have sort of have mixed feelings about this as far as changing it. To me, it seems that we're going to be allowing more density for area. Is that a fair assessment? Um, well, technically the density would still remain the same. We're just allowing them to kind of come in with a different dimensional size criteria to kind of allow it to be a little bit more affordable because, you know, currently the 25 width lot and then the 75 ft depth kind of creates a different dynamic of what the town home design could be. And I think with the decrease in size or the width of the lot and the lengthening of it can increase maybe the affordability of some of these town homes. Well, if history is any indication of that, they'll still be just as expensive. Yeah, hopefully not. So, anyway, that's just a a concern that I have that by allowing more, we're actually going to be and certainly I have no problem with company making profit, but we're not actually lowering prices, making them more affordable. And I mean most of the regulations will remain the same within the actual um zoning criteria and the development criteria. So it's just kind of we've noticed this as more of like this is the model of the town home developments nowadays. They're

kind of making them thinner and longer. And um we kind of wanted to kind of help you know provide development within the city for our you know density requirements for multif family for our compreh comprehensive code our plan and we would help you know developers you know obtain that ability to develop those town homes. Okay. I can I can also add Mr. Carter for the density. Um so remember our medium density residential we increased with the comp plan the new comp plan. It went from 8 units per acre to 10 units per acre. But if you're zoned RM8, you can still only have eight units per acre. So, um the townhouse change with Yes, they are smaller. It does accommodate probably mostly RM10 is where this is really going to benefit because, uh they now will be able to possibly reach that 10 units per acre. Um and we were having projects come in saying, you know, for the cost it's going to be for the town houses, unless we can get that much density in the 10 units or um and using this 20 foot wide footprint. Um we've kind of seen some of that. You'll know we only have we still only have one townhouse project on Schuman in Sebastian because we're not finding that they were finding it hard to meet our dementia regulations to bring a townhouse project in. Well, and the density does statement. Yeah. And you know certainly I think well it's been my position I know several other members on the board over the last several years that we want to get more affordable housing in this this city. Um you know the people who work here can't afford to live here. So um anyway I just want to make a general comment. Thank you Miss Casey. Um, I'm generally never excited about making a lot smaller or changing setbacks, but

this does not seem um extreme and I always defer to staff because they are very very smart. I had one question um on page two it says minimum living area 900 square feet. So that's not changing correct. Correct. that is not changing. And that makes me wonder if the square footage is the same, is that significantly going to reduce the cost of the units. I mean, it's not, you know, I don't I don't know that 75 square feet on the entire lot is going to significantly make those units affordable, especially given that it's still 900 square feet. So, that's that's my concern. Mr. Reer. Yeah. Just curious. Oh, we our original the the uh code that we adopted to establish them in 2001 was Satellite Beach. Um that we used them as a template. So that was my first uh municipality to go back to to see if they had changed theirs from the original 25 that we had emulated back in 2001 and their they have dropped theirs down to 15 to 18 ft wide town houses. Um but we did do satellite beach u Melbourne in county did not have specific dimensions on their lot width. You would just refer to density. Um and I believe it was uh Port St. Lucy or Stewart or one of the other ones. We had pulled up a lot of codes. A lot of people didn't have specific dimensions. Um, but yeah, Satellite Beach had dropped theirs down between 15 and 18 ft wide. What's the difference between a a side setback and a side interior setback?

So, the side interior setback is basically the setback requirements in between the buildings themselves like wallto- wall. Then the side setback would be the individual end property line with the setback requirement for that property line. Are you able to pull up that that we can actually I'm going to pull that up. It was in the diagram earlier in this slide. So if you see here the two circled numbers on the right diagram um one of them is indicating the five foot setback requirement on the side property line and then the other circle of the 20 that's the 20 foot separation side setback requirement against another building it's like an end unit from like a sidewalk uh from the side property line. Yes. of the platted townhouse lot. Matthews, I think I'm good right now. So, I'm generally in favor of all of this. I think like you mentioned, there's no change in density, but it allows for more flexibility and options for developers to come in and provide, you know, houses in our community. So generally think this is a good idea. Okay. In favor um I concur with the rest of the panel here. I don't have any concerns. The um change is um insignificant in reality. Um but I think if the perception of the change is important for us. So um I don't have any problem with this either and I will call for a motion. Oh, wait a minute. We can call for a motion.

I'll make a motion to um suggest uh support to council for um the land development code amendment ordinance 02512 amending article 5 uh to the townhouse dimensional regulations. I second. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Voice vote, please. I mean, roll call vote. Sorry. Sorry. Uh, Miss Cottonberg, yes. Miss Matthews, yes. Mr. Reno, yes. Miss Gezy, yes. Mr. Carter, yes. Miss Battles, yes. Thank you. Thank you. And we have uh no quai judicial, no unfinished business, no new business chair. Oh, I was going to say before you adjourn, but that's fine. We just want to thank you guys. The last couple of meetings have been very short. Thank you for coming in for such short meetings. And we didn't get a chance at announcements. I wanted to introduce um Bridget Aikens. She is a new assistant to our city clerk. She will be joining us on our meetings and doing our our minutes for us. Um so we wanted to welcome her. This was her first week and her first meeting. Welcome aboard. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Okay. And now this is the real adjournment. Thank you all.