Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Mics are going live.

I'll call

the meeting to order. We had some technical difficulties. Sorry for the slight delay there. Could I have a roll call please?

Chair Wilson.

I am here.

Mr. Hale?

Here.

Mr. McKeon?

Here.

Ms. Fresca? Here. Mr. Jasper?

Here.

Mr. Furlagi? Here. And Ms. Sherberg?

She is.

She is here virtually.

You're here, right? Yes, she nodded her head. She is here. Okay. I have a set of minutes from 04/07/2026 regular meeting. Do I hear a motion? Mr. Chair? Yes, sir.

I move to accept the minutes for the meeting of 04/07/2026 as submitted.

Do I have a second? Second. Mr. Jasper, thank you. We have a motion to approve by Mr. McKeon, seconded by Mr. Jasper. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed the same. And the motion carries. Okay. The first order of business is the annual presentation by the Honorable Mayor Nick Pashoda and our city manager and our city attorney. We have all the city staff here with us today. I believe the mayor is probably stuck in that traffic that's out there. So we'll go ahead and proceed and hopefully he'll be here shortly.

And chair, just for the record, we do not have any general audience participation.

Oh, sorry about that. I'm messing up already. They're getting me confused today.

Just

a Do few we have anyone signed up for general audience participation not having anything to do with any of the petitions?

No, we do not.

We do not. Okay. Thank you. Now you have the floor. Thank you, chair.

Thank you very much. Kelly Michaels, I'm your city clerk and

I'm James Klintz, city manager.

And he asked me before I got up here if I knew any good jokes so I

could delay for the you

know on behalf of our mayor and he is, stuck in traffic. So we'll get started.

Can you

put the display up? And you're probably wondering why are we here? And so just a little back history as the city council had directed a number of years ago the mayor and charter officers to meet with board chairs annually and the purpose was to review the process of boards and also discuss any issues of interest that came up or challenges. And in our conversations recently we thought it might be helpful for the entire membership of each board to understand what it is that is our purpose and how things work and sort of the things that we go over with the chairman and as new members come on it's helpful for everyone to be on the same page. And so one of the primary goals that the mayor has is to promote the boards and support the relationship between boards and the city council and to make sure everybody understands sunshine laws.

And of course, mayor Pichotto always likes to, show his appreciation for the hard work that you all do because we know that you're not very well paid for this position in fact you're not paid at all. So we do thank you for your volunteerism.

I'll get the next slide. And

then the agenda for today that is something that the mayor put together is introduction and purpose. The duties and responsibilities of members, attendance and notification, decorum duties of the vice chair and the chair and then our attorneys are going to explain the navigating of challenging public hearings and meetings which is always a great topic for this particular board and the legislative referral purpose.

So

understanding your purpose responsibility under sunshine laws, you've all had training on sunshine laws that our wonderful city attorney does annually but if you're new you may not know all the ins and outs of the sunshine laws. In December every year she not only provides it virtually and in person but we keep those videos. So let's say you're a new member coming on to the board we can just keep queue up that video or if you maybe want a refresher you can queue up that video and look at your responsibilities but basically it is when you're outside of a meeting, an agenda meeting, you can't discuss the business that would come before your board and of course you all know that. But something that you might not know is perhaps your neighbor or your best friend decides to send you email to your personal email and talk to you about something that you will be deciding on and now you're outside of the sunshine law right because you have a city email that you need to use. How you correct that is you would just forward that email to your city email which is kept for the appropriate number of years and then respond to your friend, hey when we're talking about business you should send this to my city email.

Okay.

So your important work here is that you make decisions on very specific topics of interest. So one of the onboarding things that we like to talk to you about is you want to come to your meetings prepared to talk about each item. If there's anything that you need to ask a staff member or maybe go view the site, you should do that ahead of time so that you can anticipate maybe what things will come up during your meeting. You want to show up for your meetings on time and ready to listen to what you hear on the floor and then make your decision after that because we all have opinions but right we maybe don't know all of the facts. So that's how you prepare for a meeting in advance and then always follow Sunshine Law and parliamentary procedure.

My staff members are here from the clerk's office to help you with any parliamentary procedure as well as our city attorney who's very well versed in how to make motions and what the rules are. If you ever come upon an issue where you think you maybe want to get some more information you can either do it in advance and come in prepared with an emotion that you might want to have or you can take a break from your meeting and consult with the city attorney or who is here helping you. Attendance and notifications. So this is a courtesy thing that we ask. If you are not going to be able to attend the meeting in person, we ask that you notify us so that we can count, make sure we have a quorum.

If we're short on quorum, of course you can't meet. So we want to be able to let your fellow board members know that, hey. We don't have a quorum so that you don't travel all the way to City Hall and end up not being able to meet. So that's just courtesy, and you can reach out to Amanda who's a staff person or I know you have also contacts in the planning department who would let us know and then we would reach out to all of you and say, hey don't come. There are only two boards that really provide for virtual attendance which I see we do have some virtual attendance today but you have to have enough people in person in order to transact business.

Okay so it's a limited opportunity thing but if for some reason you're unable to attend please let us know. Hi, mayor. I didn't know

any good jokes to delay.

Imagine that the mayor has bridge trouble too.

I I told them you were

stuck in she'd be doing an admirable job in your absence.

Our staff is very capable and I had all the faith in the world that they would do something. I didn't know if they were gonna put on jester hats or not but, anyway, I don't know where we are.

We're on meeting decorum. I just switched the slide in. You're up, man. Okay.

So real quick, I just

wanna I wanna impress upon everybody why we're here and why we're doing this today. It's it's because we used to do a meeting of the chairs and we felt that with a lot of the boards turning over chairs, I think this is at least two if not three, that it would be a good idea to bring it to everyone so that everybody understood what was being said behind the scenes and if anybody was interested in being a chair, they would know what it entails and have as as good of information as possible. But all of that said, the most important message you should walk away with today is that we as a city council appreciate everyone for the work that you guys are doing on these boards. Thankless job, yes. Volunteer, non paid job of course and a great service to your community.

So I just really want to If you don't walk away with anything else today because I know some of you guys probably wrote the rules, know, know that we really appreciate you guys for doing this and that's the biggest message I want you to get today. Okay, so let's dive into the actual slides. So of course our chairs run the meetings, they're the ones that kind of set the tempo. I have an expectation of the council just as much as I would assume the chairs have expectation of the rest of the board that everybody before they come to a meeting comes prepared, they read their agendas and they come with most of their questions already answered. Staff is a great resource.

Always feel free to use the staff to the point that you're getting the information you need to conduct these meetings. City manager will tell you, you know, there's a fine line between overusing staff versus getting the information you need but I think that's one of the most valuable tools we have is we have our own attorney, we have our own clerk's office, we have all these resources, so please make sure you use those. With all of the revisions here in council chambers, the newest thing that I'm trying to tell everybody and especially those that have presented to us for many years, this is now like a TV studio. Before you could hear a lot of people when they would whisper in the back of the room at the dais, now you can definitely hear people when they're having side conversations in the back. So I say that to everybody at the dais so that, the the people in the audience hear me say it, but also so that you guys know it it is what you're hearing.

It it is like a TV studio in here and that's for a reason, so that people at home can see what's going on and we're very transparent in government. So just keep that kind of stuff in mind, even when the mics are off, we always treat them as live mics and, I like the citizens to know as well that when we're trying to conduct business, it's very important they understand that we can hear side conversations up at the dais, so to try to keep that minimal so we can do our business. Of course, keep everything cordial and civil with each other. We usually don't have many problems here in Venice. It's abroad.

We see a lot going on in politics nowadays, but, fortunately for us, we usually have pretty civil meetings, even our citizens when they get angry, they usually come and very civilly get angry with us. So, audience participation is huge. I like to impress upon everybody that the council members, if there's ever a question, you know, somebody wants to to reach out to a council member for whatever the issue is, they don't they don't feel like they got their answers here today, by all means, our our information is on the website. Our cell phone numbers are listed, our email addresses are listed. Never discourage anybody from reaching out to us just the same as they can reach out to you and any member of staff.

Alright.

So I'm gonna talk a little bit, more about some liaison roles because every board is assigned a liaison. I I think I've covered a lot of what's on here already, so we can go to the next one if you want. Okay. So council member liaisons. Every board is always assigned a council member liaison.

I think the only important thing I impress upon people is that the council member that's liaising is not here to give their opinion. They're here to give a translation of what's going on with council, whether we gave you guys direction or you're giving us direction. Your board's a little different, it's a lot more legislative, but, it's just important that everyone understands that the council members here do not give their opinion, they're giving that of the council and the direction of the council. There's also a staff liaison. City manager will cover the staff liaison piece of it, but as far as the council is concerned, if you don't know who your council liaison is, make sure you go to the back of the room and introduce yourself or they come and introduce themselves to you because that's what they're here for.

Every single board has a council liaison assigned to them. Planning Commission, you guys usually get probably five and six council members that show up. So just know which one is your actual liaison versus who's here to see what's going on in the Planning Commission.

The same is true with staff. So every one of our advisory boards gets assigned some staff members to support them. You get the honor of having the most staff members to support your board. And for good reason, because you're making very complex decisions with a lot of unique and different projects. I will also say the staff that support your board are probably the most well versed in what their role is because they do this very frequently.

So I don't think there's a lot of questions about what staff's role is, but I'll just kind of tell you the same as we've shared with the other boards. They're really here to help you, to help you to make really well informed decisions, to support you with information, with guidance. For this board, it's not giving any recommendations, but giving you background on how, the code has been applied and how the projects meet the requirements of our code and any other background information you might have. If you do at some point in the future need additional staff for a certain decision, you can reach out to Roger, he'll coordinate with me and we'll do what we can to get you those staff members. We have to be careful because staff are all, you know, they have a full workload, so we have to be purposeful when we bring staff in, but we're here to support you all, to help you make well informed decisions and that's the role of staff.

Thanks. One other thing I like

to say on the staff side of things is, if you haven't had the opportunity to tour some of our facilities, he doesn't necessarily like when I say this because I don't like to inundate staff with a bunch of But take the time if you can to go see some of the facilities. A lot of the decisions that are being made here and on council, it's very important to understand, especially if you're new, how everything works inside of the city. I mean we have some really, really incredible staff, but also some great infrastructure and as you're making decisions, it's important to understand how all of that stuff works. So if you haven't had that opportunity, make sure you do and like I said, just coordinate it with the City Manager's Office so that we're not overburdening them but no reason not to go see what kind of assets we have here in the city. Alright, legislative referrals.

Legislative referrals is a process that the council put into place to, you can think of it as a street, right? It's a two way street and it's a communication tool. So say there's something that your board decides you would like the council to consider putting on your agenda priority. You have that opportunity once a year during your annual reporting but what what opportunity do you have during the year? So you can use the legislative referral process as a board to decide you wanna communicate with council and get something added to your agenda.

By the same token, the council can decide, oh, the planning commission really needs to study this or work on this for the council and they can do the same thing as a body they can decide we're gonna make a legislative referral to our planning commission and we'd like them to put this on their agenda. And then the other way is annually your board chair or your vice chair comes to the council in the first quarter of each year and reports on not only what your prior year's accomplishments are but they that's also an opportunity to say, hey, could we get a permission to work on this priority in the upcoming year? It's also a good opportunity to speak to the council on maybe challenges that you're experiencing that you think that they should be aware of. And so in addition to using your liaison, your council liaison, this formalizes a tool for you to communicate outside of a meeting.

And I would say it's become very beneficial in the sense of keeping track of what council has assigned to various boards. Now we know through documentation what's where and who's handling what. But it also when there's boards that have an idea about something, it gives a good process for formal communication to the council to say, We'd like to go work on this. And the council can say, Hey, we've got a lot on our plate right now. Let's not worry about that. Or, Yes, go ahead and work on that. So it's been a very good tool. I again, I respect that Planning Commission is a little bit more unique that you guys typically have a full slate on your agenda. But it's been a really good tool. It's really streamlined a lot, and I'm very grateful for Kelly for helping us get to this point where we now have this process.

The other Kelly.

The other Kelly.

Hi everyone. So this group looks very nice and cordial today, but we don't always have that as situation in your meetings. So I'll just go over a little bit about how we can keep our meetings on track and organized and have a really good outcome that's based on just the material presented to you. So some of this is repetitive but it's worth bears repeating. Know your material in advance.

If you come in prepared, you know which questions you may want to ask, you may know what further information you're seeking from either the applicant or staff and it'll help you give you a leg up on when you hear the evidence to be able to weigh it and compare it to what our legal requirements are. You get

a

lot of quasi judicial and legislative we have both on the agenda today and it's really key to understand what your role is between those two because they are different. Legislative you have a lot more leeway you can make decisions as long as they're not arbitrary or capricious on how you feel, how the public feels, a large number of reasons. Whereas when you have quasi judicial you're putting on your judge hat, you're acting in a role of a decider, you're acting based only on the evidence presented to you. So it doesn't matter what the as we always say, it doesn't matter what the public we could have a room full of the public here all in opposition or all in for particular item and if that evidence that you're presented doesn't meet or meets the requirements then you're obligated to vote in that manner. That's difficult for our audience to really appreciate because they're not here at every single meeting for the most part like you all are and that's why we try to set expectations when we have a large contingent present.

So you all under know I know you know what your role is but to help you have your audience understand what the role is too because that helps facilitate again a positive meeting. Touched on this too a little bit before about decorum as the Mayor mentioned we have a very active but polite citizenry in general but if a situation arises where either a board member or the member of public gets a little excited then it's totally appropriate to take a break, let everyone have five minutes or so to collect themselves and get back to a focus of what the meeting should be on. Also helping with that is really having a good understanding of Robert's rules of order, understanding how a motion is made, what kind of motion can be made, seconding, amending a motion. That's something if you especially our newer board members if you don't happen to have a lot of experience with, I'm happy to give you some information, happy to do a refresher at any time on that because that really does to help assist with a very streamlined positive process. And then dialing back real quick to our quasi judicial procedures as those of you who've been on the board for a while can appreciate we've refined those over time.

So we have hearings that hopefully are tight and really set up so that everyone knows how long they can speak, what topics they can speak on, not to be repetitive, not to talk about things that are not material to your decision. So our regulations are quasi judicial regulations just on how a hearing works helps facilitate positive public hearing and I do try to encourage us to stick to those and not deviate from what we found to be effective. I think the other part is self explanatory things you can look at. I'm always here whoever is sitting in this seat on behalf of the City Attorney's Office here to assist during a meeting, before a meeting, after a meeting with any questions related to process or to decorum and I know we'll just continue to have good meetings even if we don't always get the agreement from the citizenry and ultimately decision you make our goal is just to make sure it's legally sound and the best hearing we can have for both you all and for the public.

So again just final tips and takeaways from this. Being the Chair is a very critical role, really keeps meetings on time, the individual keeps everything streamlined so that we're not wasting your time, we're not wasting the audience time, but also so that those that are at home or those that are on council that might be watching your meeting can participate as well in the sense that we can see and hear what's going on. So just keeping those things in mind and just making sure that you guys get all your questions answered before you come. If there's something you need staff for, by all means, utilize that through the appropriate process and make good meetings. That's really the bulk of what we talk about on an annual basis.

We usually just typically we'd go around the room and see if anybody had any trials or tribulations. I know over time we've adapted the rules in public comment and things like that because we've had some meetings where people had to stay until two in the morning. So, we learn from from everything that happens on every board and we try to make it so that our meetings are efficient so that the public can participate, but also so that your time is being effectively used. The other big thing I need from today is I'm kind of doing a little recruitment drive. In the past, I know some of you guys know the mayor used to appoint all of the positions on the boards and we did away with that a few years ago.

So I've got some board positions. Some are are, they're important but they don't meet very frequently. So for instance, citizen tax oversight, meets once a year. It's it's not a very heavy commitment but at the same time I'm struggling to find people to fill some of these positions. So as you guys are are traversing our community, just remind people that it's not all that terrible being on a board and it can be a little bit of fun.

And if they have any questions about it, if they wanna participate, by all means they can reach out to the mayor's office, they can reach out to any member of staff, they can talk to you guys, but we we do need to continue the the civic involvement that we've seen from you guys, you know, moving forward into the future so that that we do have people to serve on these boards and give the citizens input. So if you know anybody who's looking for something to do, I've got a few positions available and I'd be very willing to, hit the streets and go talk to anybody who you want to refer to me or meet to them. With that said, I will entertain questions but I will also remind you that our email addresses are listed here as well as, again, the city council members do have their cell phones listed on the city's website. I think that's one of the of the neatest things in our community is when I get phone calls from people and they say, oh, oh, you actually answered the phone? You're the mayor?

And I and I smile and I laugh and I say, of course, you know, that's why we have our city cell phones online so that you can reach us. And if if we're not available, we turn the phone off or we put it away until we're available. So use that. I mean, that's that's a big benefit in our community is that there is a lot of access, to to our local government. So, use that, encourage people to use that. I'm always available. With that, any questions?

Any questions for them? We haven't heard. I don't see any. Great job. We appreciate you being here and all the charter officers being here and it is a pleasure for us to serve and we hope we'll live up to your expectations.

And I again, I will leave in saying that I do sincerely appreciate every one of you for your thankless efforts on the Planning Commission. I know that these decisions aren't always easy and the two of you have served on counsel before, so you're doing double duty and my hat off to you.

Thank you again. Okay. The next order of business. I've checked with the attorney and the next two petitions are actually related and they are both quasi judicious, so we will be able to handle those at the same time. So I'll open both of them up and we'll do them concurrently.

So the first one is Design Alternative Petition 20, Flagship Medical Office Building. The staff is Nicole Tremblay, the agent is Sydney Thornton, the applicant is Flagship Healthcare Properties LLC. This is a quasi judicial hearing. I do have a memorandum to read. This is for a petition number 2572DA.

This is to certify that the public hearing for this petition was appropriately advertised on 04/04/2026 as required by the City Of Venice Land Development Code. The next one will be site and development plan petition number 25Dash41 SP also flagship medical office building on the same staff and agent and applicant. This is also a quasi judicial hearing and I have a memorandum for that as well. This one is for petition number 20. This is to certify that the public hearing for this petition was appropriately advertised on 04/04/2026, as required by the City Of Venice Land Development Code.

With that I will open both the public hearings and I'll have the attorney question the Board.

If anyone has a potential conflict of interest please indicate that now. Seeing none if you've had any ex parte communications regarding either of these petitions that are not presently part of the record including site visit or communications with anybody please disclose those. Start with Mr. Florlagy.

Thank you. Site visit only. Site only.

Site visit and also while I was attending the nice rededication ceremony last week, I did have a gentleman from my neighborhood and I do live right in the neighborhood of where this well not this petition, but excuse me, wait a minute, I'm on the wrong one. Forget it. Site visit only.

Sherbrooke?

Cam, we can't hear you. See you're unmuted but we're not having your sound. Oh, we still can't hear you.

We will need to have her sound eventually so we might need to take a pause.

Do we need to take a short recess?

I want to make sure she's able to ask questions verbalize her vote. If we

Yeah Pam I think you can hear us but we can't hear you.

She's shaking her head, yes.

If you just want to check your settings and see No, we can't hear you.

She might be able to also try if she has a cell phone available to her calling in then we can have her both on cell phone and computer.

She's nodding yes. We have to give her a phone number to call and

she Well, yeah, it's a smartphone if she could click the link for the Zoom meeting if she has access to that.

Pam what you will need to do is the Zoom link that Amanda sent you. If you can pull that up on your smartphone you can click that. There's an iPhone link there. IPhone or Android.

Otherwise we'll just have to have her not participate in this set and we can try to regroup for the next one.

Right. I think that's what we're going to need to do.

Do you want to move forward?

So what I'll do is we'll just excuse her from this particular petition and we'll have her if she can join us later, we'll have her pick it up later in the meeting. Okay. We'll proceed. Mr. Hale.

Site visit only. You.

No conflicts.

And no site visits or Thank you.

Okay. And you'll confirm the speaker cards are taken care of. And with that we have Nicole. Take it away.

All right, good afternoon. For the record Nicole Tremblay, Senior Planner for the City Of Venice and we're looking at two petitions, site plan and design alternative for flagship MOB number one. You all are pretty familiar with this site as we've recently done the annexation, comp plan and rezone but it's at 2695 Currie Lane. The site plan requests development of a medical office building and the design alternative requests nine by 18 foot parking spaces on a portion of the site. This is for Flagship Healthcare represented by BHB.

The parcel is about five acres. The future land uses institutional professional and the zoning is office professional and institutional. It's in the Pine Brook neighborhood of the comprehensive plan. So here's the aerial map, you can see it's to the North side of Curry Lane, south of the hospital, in between the Pine Brook Medical Office buildings and then the PAM Rehabilitation Hospital. So brief description, the site plan shows the building itself.

It's a three story over 54,000 square foot medical office building. It was granted a height exception by council in September to give them up to 43 and a third feet, which is what they've asked for here. And it will provide outpatient medical care in this growing medical area of the Pembroke neighborhood. The design alternative is for the dimensions of the parking spaces. They are permitted to do this in Section 3.6.5 and they are proposing just some of the spaces to be nine by 18 rather than 10 by 18.

They indicated that was 39% of their total parking excluding the handicapped spaces. This would be to meet the requirements for the number of parking spaces as well as to meet their expected demand for their use based on their experience. So the remainder of the spaces would be compliant with the code, they would be 10 feet by 18 feet. And there are no other code modifications that were required for them to be able to accomplish the site plan so that's the only request in the design alternative. So here's the proposed site plan and you can see outlined in green are the location of the nine by 18 spaces and it's just one building to the north of the site and the hospital is to the north of this property as well with parking to the south.

These are the proposed elevations. As I mentioned they're consistent with what they were approved for through their height exception petition. And so for existing conditions I'll show you some site photographs, the maps and the surrounding land uses. These are some photographs of the site as it exists today. There's a single family home that will be going away and then the one photo shows the view across the street you can see the Sofia which is a multifamily development.

Future land use map shows that this is institutional professional with neighbors to the east and west with the same designation. The hospital to the north is mixed use corridor and then residential to the south on Currie Lane moderate and medium density. Zoning map is consistent with the future land use, OPI for this parcel and those to the east and west, Planned Public Hospital to the North, and then multifamily one and three to the South. So surrounding lane uses we've already talked about Sarasota Memorial, the Sofia, PAM Health Rehabilitation and Pine Brook Medical office buildings. So for planning analysis we'll look at the comprehensive plan, the land development code and concurrency and mobility as they relate to each of the two petitions.

So this is the strategy for the future land use. LU 1.2.4B institutional professional provides areas within the city for professional offices, educational, healthcare, religious or similar. So this would be consistent with those expected uses for the designation. And there were no other strategies specifically related to the parking size or the use of a medical office building in this area. So analysis has been provided to determine consistency with the institutional professional future land use designation, strategies in the Pine Brook neighborhood and other plan elements, and this should be taken into consideration upon determining consistency with the plan.

So for the site plan looking at compliance with the land development code. This is OPI zoning. So you can see here the required setbacks are twenty, ten and fifteen and what they provided are well in excess of that over $2.90 in the front, over 120 in the back and then 86.4 in the side. Building height is exactly consistent with what they were approved for, 43 feet four inches. The parking range would be two sixteen to three twenty five spaces according to our minimum and maximum requirements and they provided two sixty eight.

And their lot coverage maximum is 40% and they are providing 8%. Compatibility, this section from section four includes special considerations for certain types of properties. This one is subject to the JPA, JPA area six. So it may be considered for additional mitigation standards if it's deemed necessary. So those as you know are lowering the density intensity, setbacks, stepbacks if relevant, requiring tiered buildings, mitigating lighting, noise, mechanical equipment, refuse and delivery and storage, adjusting the road and driveway, and increasing buffer types and or elements.

So those are things to consider if you see a compatibility concern. These are your decision criteria for the site and development plan. You all know those. I'll in have this case you need to reference them later. And then these are your design alternative criteria.

We see these a little bit less so whether it's consistent with the stated purpose and intent, whether it will have a material impact, negative impact on adjacent uses and whether they propose to mitigate it, whether it will permit superior design efficiency and performance, whether it's necessary for significant existing environmental or cultural features, and whether it will result in a negative impact to the adopted level of service. So conclusions and findings of fact related to the land development code. The site and development plan has been processed according to the procedural requirements. It's been reviewed by the technical review committee and no issues have been identified. It is compliant with the land development code with the exception of the parking spaces addressed through the design alternative.

And likewise the design alternative has been reviewed by the TRC with no issues identified. For concurrency and mobility you can see that each of the relevant agencies has confirmed compliance with the estimated impact for water and sewer, solid waste and parks are not relevant as this is not a residential project. Engineering has confirmed compliance and the estimated transportation impact would be two seventeen PM peak hour trips. So they did exceed the 50 trip threshold and did provide a transportation impact analysis which was reviewed and deemed compliant by the city's transportation consultant. And so finally upon review of the petition and associated documents, conference of plan, land development code, staff report and analysis and testimony provided, we believe there's sufficient information on the record to take action on the site development plan as well as the design alternative petition for this property.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Nicole. Any questions on either of the petitions? Seeing none, thank you very much Nicole. If I could have the agent present their case.

Thank you. Look at that, the old guy forgets sometimes. For the record, my name is Marty Black and I'm representing Flagship for the medical office building proposed on Curry Lane. You have seen this before through the annexation comp plan and rezoning. We just wanted to provide some overview comments before I turn it over to Sidney for details on the site development plan and the design alternative for the parking spaces.

If you recall, there were some issues on Currie Lane relative to drainage. You may or may not know that those issues were resolved through the water management district and certified to city councils who resolved those as part of the zoning process that we had stipulations on for this case. So those issues for the flooding that occurred a number of years ago during the storm have now been resolved and the adjoining property owner had responsibility for that, took corrective action with the water management district to correct that. Second thing I wanted to provide, there has been some information out in the media. Sarasota Memorial Hospital will be a primary lessee of the facility at least roughly a third of the building and it may be more as it goes through, they're looking at what their needs may be.

But at this point, we're working cooperatively with the hospital to meet some of their adjoining site needs as we move forward with the medical office building. So I think that helps create some unity in the medical office and medical surgery and other ancillary services to provide residents and visitors to Venice even better healthcare than we receive today. Relative to the overall design compatibility issues since this is a joint planning area, if you recall during the zoning and comp plan, we actually did a preview of this site plan and indicated we will be coming back with a site plan that would keep the building toward the rear of the property to add to that compatibility that meets one of your additional criteria and we try to reflect that in the site design. Relative to the design alternative for the parking, we've placed all those along the perimeter. They're a little bit smaller sites and that's in order to provide additional parking beyond the minimum so that we can accommodate as you know medical flow.

Sometimes the doctors take a little longer, sometimes they go a little slower but this gives us a little bit more parking than the minimum required, does not exceed your maximums but allows us to provide additional parking. So as we have that patient turnover, there is adequate parking that we believe based on the experience and operations for the proposed facility. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sydney.

Thank you, Marty and thank you Nicole for the presentation and thank you commissioners. So I just wanted to run through kind of our presentation. We are proposing our three story medical office building. The initial uses within the building as Marty alluded to is there will be a Sarasota Memorial Hospital Endoscopy Center. It's anticipated to create 100 healthcare jobs and this facility will address the growing demand for healthcare services and outpatient services for the community.

The adjacent land uses are obviously Sarasota Memorial Hospital to the North, medical office buildings to the East and West so we're compatible with the current land uses and the Sofia to the South. The location is up in the Northeast just south of Sarasota Memorial Hospital, so you can see that blow up of the location. And then our civil site plan, our landscaping plan and the architectural elevations are compatible with their surrounding neighborhood and city of Venice code. We received the height exemption earlier February allowing the three stories and then we set the building farther back to allow for the site difference. We are requesting variants on the parking stall width from 10 feet to nine feet for approximately one third, 39% of the parking spaces in order to reach the operational standard necessary for this building.

Here's a rendering of what the final building will look like. These are the architectural elevations, the north and south and then I've also got the east and west. Here's the overall site plan showing our storm water facilities in the back, all our parking mainly located in the front, those smaller parking spaces along the perimeter, our dumpster facility in the back. Our overall landscaping plan which follows all of City of Venice's code requirements. Our landscaping details and I'll open it up for questions.

I would just like to add one other item. Don't know if you noticed we passed the site plan but there are two heritage trees at the entrance so we actually bumped out the landscape island in the entrance way to preserve those trees at the front of the property in accordance with the city code. We're also trying to accommodate the existing tree cover and canopy that is required to be preserved under the city regulations. That concludes our presentation.

Thank you very much. Do we

have any questions? Yes, Mr. Jasper?

Yes. I don't know whether this would be a better solution or a worse solution, but have you ever considered taking in you've got a certain running distance of parking space. So making them all the same, which would give you parking spaces maybe like nine foot seven and a half, close enough for an engineer. And I don't know if that again would be a better situation whether you have all one class or first class in tourist.

So I'll let Sidney answer after I have to respond initially. Part of the reason we're providing the variances is frankly we still have really big cars and sometimes people come out in different ways and they may be in crutches, they may be in other components and not necessarily in a wheelchair or handicap space. So we are trying to provide the larger spaces for those larger vehicles and then just like you see now with even electric vehicles, they have their own little set aside area for recharging stations. We thought it best to do the perimeter design for the smaller spaces so that they are easily identifiable rather than doing them all in the smaller and getting even more spaces. We've optimized what we need and didn't to overdo it.

Marty took my answer.

Question on the storm water as everybody knows my particular interest. I wouldn't say it but your stormwater collection, the front of the building is collected, does not run into the ditch along Currie Lane and then it is transported back to the retention ponds and when the retention ponds overflow they dump into the right away, the Fardel Power and Light right away in the back, is that?

It actually does discharge to the ditch in the back and then a small portion discharges to the ditch in the front but it is significantly less than in the pre developed condition. So less runoff than before is going to that ditch.

Thank you. I'm sensitive to water flowing into the ditch on Currie Lane.

I understand.

So are we.

Any others? No, seeing none. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And with that, do we have any audience participation signed up for this petition or both these?

No, not for these petitions.

None? Okay. Thank you very much. With that then, any additional staff comments? You're good to go? Okay, we're good there. And so no rebuttal. I'll close both the public hearings. And do I hear a motion on the first one, the design alternative? Mr. Chair. Yes. Mr. Jasper.

Based on review of the applicable materials, the staff report and testimony provided during the public hearing, the Planning Commission sitting at the local, as the local planning agency, finds this petition complies with the design alternative criteria in section one point one one point three of the land development code, and therefore moves to approve design alternate petition number 20.

Thank you, sir. We have a motion by Mr. Jasper to approve. Do I hear a second?

Second, Mr. Chairman.

Okay. Mr. Hale is the second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? If not, our electronic voting machines are not working, so I'll do a roll call vote, please.

Yes. Mr. Hale.

Yes.

Mr. Jasper.

Yes.

Mr. McKeon. Yes. Ms. Fresca. Yes. Mr. Ferlagi.

Yes.

Chair Wilson?

Yes. And the motion passes seven-zero. Yes. Is she? Oh, she's not voting on this one.

Do you want to confirm, Pam? Pam, can you unmute?

We had her not voting on this one. Can move

forward with her not voting. Okay. So it's six nothing in favor. The motion passes. Okay.

That will then take us to the next order of business is site and development plan petition number 25, 45SP, Benetown House. The staff is Nicole Tremblay. Agent Before is

we move on, we do need the vote for the site plan.

I'm having difficulty today with us. Things are not going the way they're supposed to electronically. Okay, on the second vote on the site and development petition. Do I have a motion on the second one? There were two, there was a design alternative has been approved.

Mr. Chair, based on review of the application materials, the staff report and testimony provided during the public hearing, the Planning Commission, seeing as the local planning agency, finds this petition consistent with the comprehensive plan in compliance with the Land Development Code and with the affirmative findings of fact in the record, moves to approve Site Development Plan Petition 20 five-41SP. Okay. And do I have a second?

Second, Mr. Chairman.

Okay. So we have a motion to approve by Mr. McKeon and a second by Mr. Hale. Any further discussion? Seeing none, can I have a roll call vote, please?

Mr. Hale? Yes. Mr. McKeon?

Yes.

Ms. Fresca?

Yes.

Mr. Furlagi?

Yes.

Mr. Jasper?

Yes.

And Chair Wilson?

Yes. And the motion carries, six-zero. Okay. Now if I have things straight, I can move on. All right. Moving right along. Let's see. The next one up is site and development plan petition number 20Five-45SP, Venetown House. The staff is Nicole Trembley. The agent is DMK Associates.

The applicant is Martin Palu. This is a quasi judicial hearing. I do have a memorandum. This is for Petition 20 five-forty five SP. This is to certify that the public hearing for this petition was appropriately advertised on 04/04/2026, as required by the City Of Venice Land Development Code. Okay. And with that I will open the public hearing. And with the attorney question this Board please.

Anybody has any possible conflicts of interest please indicate those at this time. Seeing none.

Other than that I live close, 0.2 miles away if that matters.

So if that's relevant or pertinent or anything, I just thought in full disclosure.

Can you remain fair and unbiased to make your decision today based solely on the record presented to you?

I can.

Seeing no others, if you've had any ex parte communications that are not part of the record presently, please indicate those at this time. Mr. Florlagi, it sounds like you have a site visit at

least. Site

and

I'll try this again. I was at the recent rededication event and I did have a gentleman introduced to me that lives in the neighborhood and I also as I live right at the very end of Ormond Street on Apalachicola right around the corner from the petition. I did have the gentleman come up to me and started to tell me that he was going to be here today with other members of the neighborhood to express their concerns and I promptly stopped him and said, you know, first off at that point I had not even looked at the materials yet, but I advised him that I was unable to have a discussion. I'm sure he's here today, I want him to know is I'm not being unfriendly, I'm not being impolite as you heard earlier in the meeting, I'm not allowed to talk to anybody beforehand and so I stopped them before there was any real ex parte communication.

Thank you. And can you also be fair and impartial and make your decision today based solely on the record presented to you?

Yes, I can.

And I do we have audio from Pam?

She in with us now?

Pam, can you say something?

Still nothing. She's talking but I'm not

hearing you.

Yes, we're still not hearing you. Okay. She is unmuted.

I'm to proceed as we were unfortunately. She'll just be absent from this petition. We confirm the speaker cards are all.

Thank you.

None of those. Okay.

And we'll confirm the speaker cards are signed. And at this point, Nicole, you get to go again.

All right. Thank you. For the record, Nicole Tremblay, Senior Planner for the City of Venice. We're looking at 2,545 SP for Venice Townhouse. This project is located at 816 Ormond Street and the request is to develop six multifamily units.

The parcel is about half an acre with the medium density residential future land use and the residential multifamily three zoning district and it is on the island. So this would be a three story residential building with six units. The first story would be parking and then two floors of living space above. It would replace an existing single family home on the property. There will be two access points to Ormond Street and then buffers provided to the adjacent single family homes to the north and east.

Storm water would be retained underground and there is a six foot sidewalk proposed along the street frontage. So you can see all those things here on the plan. There are six units with each one has their own garage, entrances in the front and terraces in the back. And then two openings to Ormond Street here and here. These are the north and south elevations.

These did not have any architectural requirements but you can see the design here and then the east and west. And then here's the aerial map, can see it's kind of right in the middle of Ormond Street, a small street on the island just east of the Esplanade and the beach. And so for existing conditions I will show you site photographs, the maps and the surrounding land uses. These are some photographs of the site as it exists today. You can see the house that's on-site and then the neighboring houses, condos and then in the bottom here is the view from this property across Ormond Street to a single family home and some more condos.

This is the future land use map showing medium density residential for this property and the property directly west. There's also high density residential in the area as well as low density residential. And then the zoning map showing corresponding zoning residential multifamily three with RMF two and four to the South and RSF three to the North and East. So surrounding land uses directly to the North is single family, to the South is single family and the Gulf Twin Towers condominiums, to the East is another single family home and to the West are Chavista condominiums. So for planning analysis we'll look at the comprehensive plan, the land development code and concurrency and mobility.

So consistency with the comprehensive plan, the relevant strategy here is LU1.2.3C medium density residential. Supports a variety of residential types including single family attached and multifamily as well as mixed use residential. So this would be a multifamily which is within these contemplated uses and then you can see also the density table here. So for this density or for this future land use medium density they would be required to provide between nine point one and thirteen point zero units per acre and they are within that. Conclusions related to the comprehensive plan analysis has been provided to determine consistency with medium density future land use, strategies in the island neighborhood and other plan elements which should be taken into consideration upon determining consistency with the plan.

Compliance of the land development code for parking, they would be required to have a minimum of six and a maximum of 12 spaces. They proposed to have 12. The maximum height would be 57 feet with 10 feet available for understory parking. They've proposed 38 feet and 7.25 inches with 10 feet of understory parking. And then setbacks, are compliant as well.

Front, side and rear should be twenty, fifteen and ten and they're proposing twenty, fifteen, and 30.8. So also when reviewing a site and development plan we look at 1.2.8 land use compatibility analysis. You can see all those in your staff report along with applicant responses but I just want to provide you a brief summary here of the items and how we responded to them. This proposal is consistent with the applicable codes. It replaces an existing nonconforming use, the single family use is nonconforming in a multifamily zoning district.

There is no commercial or industrial proposed for the site and the density is within the allowable range. They are proposing Type one landscape buffers adjacent to the single family properties as required by Section four compatibility in the land development code. So those are the basic items in the land use compatibility analysis. For decision criteria, the same as with every site plan but the applicant did want to point out, they let me know yesterday afternoon that their original decision criteria responses which are

in your

staff report were provided with the first round of their submittal and a couple items have changed. So if you see something about six driveway openings that was part of their initial submittal and that's no longer the case. So what you have for your staff comments in the staff report are accurate but there is that one part of the applicant responses that was outdated and based on their original design which has since changed. As you can see there's only two openings now. So for concurrency and mobility, you can see that each of the relevant agencies has marked that the project is compliant based on the estimated impact for water and sewer, solid waste and parks as well as drainage.

And then for transportation, the estimated impact is twenty three PM peak hour trips, so that's below the 50 trip threshold and they did provide a traffic impact statement rather than the full analysis which was reviewed and deemed compliant by the city's transportation consultant. So upon review of the petition and associated documents, the conference of plan, the land development code, staff report analysis and testimony provided, we believe there is sufficient information on the record for a Planning Commission to take action on this site and development plan. Do you have any questions for me?

Any questions?

RMF3, what is the minimum square footage per unit? Is it it's three thousand three and fifty, is that right?

That's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm bringing up the code so we can look at it. So it's lot area and that is 3350, yes.

Thank you. Nicole, just to make sure I haven't missed anything, based on what I have read in studying the materials and your testimony now, what I understand is this is not requesting any zoning changes. They are going to build on what is the existing zoning. And under that zoning, it meets the height requirement, in fact, about 11 feet less than what it could be. It meets these density requirements.

It meets the setbacks. It meets all the concurrencies and the TRC found no outstanding issues. Do I understand that correctly?

Yes, absolutely. There were no remaining issues issues and we did find it compliant with the code.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Oh, I have one last question I did have. We had received, an email and one of the things that was asked about was that it showed that there was a pipe that was going to be used for storm water discharge, like a 15 inches pipe, and there wasn't anything that showed on the plan for it to have a easement to allow it. Can you answer that question for us?

I think my understanding is that that was part of the original design similar to those six driveway openings that was changed throughout the design process. We also have our city engineer here in case you have more specific stormwater questions, but that's my understanding at

this Okay. Thank you. Just want to be clear of that. Thank you.

Yes.

Could I ask a question about the noncompliant single family residence that's

close How

to this

did that become non compliant? Was it that it was built after the multi family residence zoning was already in?

I think it's more likely the other way around that the house already existed than it was zoned to multi family. So the existing single family home could stay for as long as the property owner wishes even though it is non conforming. It's fine for them to stay there but they've chosen to propose this instead.

Okay. And have the surrounding neighbors been have they opined on what they think about this project?

Yes, you should have received some written correspondence ahead of time. Right. And then I know there are people here to speak so I'll let them speak for themselves. Okay, good. Thank you.

Anything else? If not, thank you Nicole.

Thank you.

And can we have the agent present their case please?

Hi everybody. My name is Mariah Miller and I'm with ML Miller Law. I'm here to present to you the site and development application for twenty five-45SP at 816 Ormond Street, Venice, Florida. With me today I have the applicant Benny Townhouse LLC with their principal Martin Poulute. We also have our civil engineers with DMK Associates, Craig McHugh and Erica Kelly.

And we have John Brown who is the principal architect for Coastal Agriculture. So the applicant today is requesting to approve the site and development application 20 five-45SP. As Nicole and kind of the questions just fleshed out, it does comply with all the zoning and development standards in the code. What they're proposing to build is allowed by Wright. It's consistent with the comprehensive plan and compatible with Section four of the code and the surrounding area.

Now Cole did a great job going over the property information so I'll just go through it real quick. This is the zoning location or the property location. This is the current zoning of RMF three map and here's a future land use designating medium density residential allowing 9.1 to 13 dwelling units. Here there will be six with the allowed of a multifamily housing type of the townhomes. So I wouldn't go through compatibility with you.

There are four points I like to hit. The future land use in the surrounding area, the buffer, the storm water management and site design mitigation. I like to start with the future land use compatibility matrix. I pulled this from the Venice comprehensive plan. On the left side will be medium density residential which is what our property is designated as and then it's surrounded by low, moderate, medium and high density residential.

And you can see the green here is it is presumed compatible. So these can all be located next to each other. This is just the zoning map again zoomed out. I want to point out all up and down the Esplanade the properties are zoned RMF four or RMF three and they decrease to RMF two or RSF three as you move east. So this whole surrounding area has a transition from the water east to a lesser density that allows for step downs in density to the single family homes.

And this project will do just that. It's located behind Shre Vista. It's going to be a lower density before you get to the single family homes. I also want to note that's also been talked about that it will it's currently a non conforming single family use and it will be a conforming multifamily use. That means the property or the city you know intentionally zoned this for multifamily use.

Here's a zoomed out map of the island in this area. You can see the green star. Let me see if this works. Yeah. The green star appeared.

This is our property. So the Esplanade north to south that connects to Granada Ave has a high density multifamily bordering the Esplanade that transitions again to the single family homes. And down the Esplanade, I just want to point out that there are other projects all the way down. So here's our project here and then down here is the Canterbury apartments which are located behind a higher density and are lower density before you get to the single family homes. As we go down on Barcelona, there's Sutton Place and on the other South Side of Barcelona, there is a carriage house that do the same thing located behind a higher density.

They're lower density then goes to single family homes. Coco Palms Condominium and then down to Granada Ave where this yellow dot is Venetian Shores. They do the same thing. Venetian Shores is a townhome project as well located behind a higher density that's on the Esplanade before you get to the single family homes. So this really is just to point out that this project is similar with the transition from the high RMF to the RSF three single family homes in the surrounding area and on a significant portion of the island.

Next I'd like to go over the buffers. So the green here are the buffers that that are in compliance with the code. A seven and a half foot landscape buffer with the trees and shrubs. On the west side in the white is a landscape buffer next to Che Vista. This buffer is not required so they are providing it and it goes above and beyond the code.

Next we'll get into stormwater. So stormwater will be monitored and managed in accordance with all state, local and federal regulations. Our civil engineers have designed an underground retention system that includes treatment before discharging into the existing structure in the northwest corner of the property and it flows into an existing drainage system. There will also be a retaining wall and the driveways are proposed to be made up of pervious pavers. Here is a drainage map.

It shows the drainage going into the underground retention on the northern portion of the property and the pervious pavers on the southern portion. So this would be the change that was just previously talked about with Nicole from the pipe. This is this is the plan. And then here is a historical map of the drainage flow in the area. This is taken actually from the Tre Vista study report and you'll hear more from Craig here, our engineer, but per regulations overflow drainage can flow according to historical map and that's exactly the case here. The drains will be contained in accordance with historical flows. And Craig, I just wanted to touch base with him. How long have you been an engineer for?

I've been an engineer for forty years.

And what is your role at DMK Associates?

I'm President of DMK Associates here in Venice.

And would you like to go into some of the storm water?

Yes, just briefly, our part of our site plus some of the other off-site areas drained to the Che Vista stormwater system and that was part of their submittal and their approvals, their approved plans. There's an inlet in the rear of their I would call it the rear or the east portion of the site. So we are, taking that portion that Mariah showed you that drains to the back. We are capturing that water, putting it through a, underground storage system for treatment and attenuation for the twenty five year design storm and that will discharge to a what we call a spreader swale. It will be an area that on our property, that will capture the water and it will allow it for to dissipate the energy and basically be able to, settle there and then sheet flow out of that area over land to the existing basin on the Chavez, just very similar to what happens now.

Now the water flows from the backyards of this site and adjacent properties to that area right now. It's a low area that was not designed as part of their system. So that we're basically maintaining the existing historic flows. We're keeping, the storm water improvements and construction on our property. And the post development runoff is less than the existing runoff is approximately 0.82 CFS.

It's not a lot of runoff, but we're reducing it to 0.7 CFS. So we're discharging less than we were before or existing today. Let me just check if there's anything else. One last thing is the storm water velocity is basically coming out of that out of the underground retention area. It's an eight inch pipe.

It's not much more than you come out of a downspout of a of a building. That and when it gets spread out over the 15 foot wide spreader swale, the discharge velocity is less than a foot per second. So for erosion and control, typically grass or vegetated surfaces can take three to four feet per second. We're at 0.8 feet per second, so we're less than maybe 25% of what it could normally take. So there's not an issue with erosion and or flows to leaving the site.

Thank you. So I'll jump back in here and go over the site plan with you real quick. On the northern portion of the property, that is the underground retention area you can see. Then we have the six units and the driveway on the south, that's the pervious pavers. The sides of the property have a 15 foot setback and that's what's described per code and the front front is a 20 foot setback also required by code.

The back has a 30.8 foot setback. The requirement is only 10, so they're going above the setback requirements on the back portion of property there. The wall is located at the northwest corner as you can see the little zigzag and the open space here is 45%. Here are the elevations. I also want to go over some compatibility implemented site design mitigations that the applicant has done.

They did have two neighborhood workshops and they've had discussions with the neighbors. So through the discussions and neighborhood workshop they decided to decrease the height of the buildings. They removed the rooftop terrace that they originally planned and the elevator shafts. The final height of the building is going to be 48 feet seven and one fourth inches which as Nicole pointed out is lower than what the code allows which is 57. And then they also decreased the driveways, Nicole talked about this too, from six to two driveways and implemented the previous pavers.

They are providing the buffer on the west that goes above and beyond the code. They have the underground retention system and they have carefully considered the character of the area with their architecture design. So overall the applicant has provided competent substantial evidence that this proposed development is compatible with the comprehensive plan and surrounding area. The proposed development will conform with the RMF three zoning standards without any special exceptions, conditional uses or anything like that. Again, what they're proposing is allowed by right under the code following the code.

The surrounding area along the Esplanade is also zoned RMF four, RMF three and the property across street is RMF two and as I went over this is a significant portion of the island has the same transition into the single family homes. The proposed buffers will mitigate any perceiving compatibility with the surrounding homes. They do meet the compatibility requirements in Section four of the code and the storm water will be monitored and managed according to applicable regulations with special considerations of the underground facility provided by the applicant and previous pavers used for the project. The applicant respectfully requests approval of the site development application twenty five-forty five SP and I will open up to any questions.

Thank you very much. Any questions? We're good. Mr. Hamill.

Star Motor. What's the volume of your retention system?

First sense of of year.

To

we're volume a necessary for to hold back to the predevelopment discharge rate of 0.82. So we're holding back, like I said, a little bit more through the discharge to 0.7 CFS. The actual cubic feet, I don't have that number, but I can probably look it up and get back to you on that.

One other question and I may be have read it wrong, but in your response to decision criteria, Paragraph five, you stated that you were going to discharge water at 1.7 cubic feet per second. Maybe that's an error, maybe I read it wrong. And I know that sounds like a very small number, but it's between it's almost seven sixty gallons a minute, which is not a small amount of water. So I just wanted to I may have made a mistake, but I think that's the correct one.

No, there's if you look at the you're correct in the total there's an area that drains to the front of the property and then there's an area that drains to the back. So the front, if you add it together, I think that 1.5 is close to the total CFS. But to the rear, it's 0.7 that's discharged. So the balance is drains to the front.

Also in your same design, very small nitpick, Your design criteria, Paragraph three, you stated you were going to do a five foot sidewalk and on the site plan it says a six foot pipe.

Yes, those that were initially we submitted several months ago, probably a year ago and we've had those two neighborhood meetings and there were some adjustments. Of course, we had comments from the city staff and I think believe that was one of them. So some of those answers have been changed due to comments from the city and actually addressing comments from neighbors.

Yes, there is a second round of comments where they did change the sidewalk to the sixth. So similar to what they were talking about before with the pipe, there were changes in site plan after some rounds of comments.

Thank you.

I have a question. It would be very helpful if you could go back to a photo or a diagram of the map that shows the area and especially identify the single family homes that are in that vicinity of the proposed?

So the light yellow are single family homes.

They're all same. Okay, got you. Okay.

You.

Anyone else? Thank you very much. You. And I assume we have some audience participation for this one.

Yes, we have seven speakers sign up. The first is Bert Matthews. He has five minutes.

Hello. My name is Bert Matthews. Trying to get my notes set. My wife and I own the house at 809 Ormond Street, which is directly across the street from this particular project. And her family has owned this house for more than fifty years.

My wife and I court there thirty five years ago and we've seen plenty of changes. There are issues of compatibility, article four that I'd like to speak to you about. One of those is traffic and circulation. So this past weekend there are a number of people that park on that street to access Chauncey Howard Park. There were nine of them in fact on this really small street.

In making the determination that you're looking at the ability to access that public park is gonna be greatly diminished. Right now it's so thin coming across that width of that street. An ambulance or really just kind of getting up and down the street can be extremely difficult. So something that is an issue related to circulation, traffic and parking should be taken into account from a compatibility standpoint. Second is the issue of mass and scale and I understand their ability to be able to build whatever.

But when you look at the relationship across the neighboring and across the street from us, is a single family house, being able to deliver scale and density and still be able to get six great units there seems to be something that should be taken into consideration. And finally that sheet draining across the property, the folks at Shea Vista I'm sure will speak to it. That's a lot of water coming across particular parking lot. So thank you very much for your consideration. I urge you to take into account issues of compatibility and either change, modify or defeat this particular motion.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Steve Ross. He also has five minutes.

Hi, thank you for having me up here. Am nervous as can be. I am not usually a speaker, but I thought that this situation warranted some speaking. I wanted to thank Councilwoman Planner Fresca for asking about those of us, the light yellow ones. I'm a light yellow one.

I live at 817 Madrid Avenue which is just north of the proposed site. And I don't know, I live by, try to live by the golden rule about, know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I don't know if any of you up here have a nice backyard or a pool where you like to spend your time. I could only imagine what this is going to look like when it's done. A 48 foot albatross with various balconies like at a theater where there's balconies on the side of people to stare right down into our backyard.

I've watched the Topians from the time they bought their house do a marvelous renovation and transition with their home. It's a gorgeous home. And now they're gonna have they are gonna be, they are gonna have an audience, okay? And I can't see that being fitting with the Venice mission of Venice as vibrant, charming. I don't think that would make the property very charming at all.

In fact, I am sure it would be detrimental to the resale value of the property if and when it came onto the market. Anybody who looks at that and sees that kind of invasion of privacy, I hear all the codes and everything but I don't don't hear anything about the imposition or the misfit to what's already there. I heard them say a step down housing, well how about if they step it down, whoops, down, you know, to a level where they're not peaking up and and and and disrupting all of us who have been there. My house dates back to 1953, the roots of it. So we've been there a long time.

And I don't know, keep looking, there's one of the maps out here in the lobby of the John Nolan, know, plot for the city, his planning. I think the guy was brilliant and ninety nine years ago, he had my little plot of land on there along with this one. I mean, it wasn't as big as what this is nor was it as imposing, but, you know, I I would wonder, you know, that little slogan WWJD, well, I wonder what John Nolan would do if he were in your, if he were sitting in your seats as far as thinking that that is fitting or becoming or part of the plan, so to speak. So you are gonna hear a lot more about the facts and figures and all the other stuff. I am appealing to your heart as far as just as a neighborly thing, I don't know about good neighbors and that kind of stuff, but I sure don't see this being very neighbor friendly when it's all said and done.

So thank you and thank you all for your service. I wouldn't want to do what you do but thank you all. Alright.

Next speaker is David Topian. He has five minutes.

Good afternoon. I have to say, just Pam, all I can think about with you on the screen is the Big Bang Theory with Sheldon on the screen going around with everybody because you're on the computer.

So it's

little light hearted thing

for for right now. But I would like to thank the commissioner

for Could you speak into the mic? I'm sorry. I can't hear I'd

like to

thank the commission for meeting with us today and hearing our concerns about this project. A little bit about myself, my name is David Topian, I live at 825 Madrid Avenue. My wife and I bought the property in 2021, we got our building permit in 2022 and we renovated and gutted and completed the house and moved in late twenty twenty three. My background is I'm a civil engineer, been in the business for forty two years. I'm a vice president of construction for a development company in Ohio.

So I do this stuff all the time in five different states. So I have the background and hopefully some knowledge of what's going on and what we're trying to accomplish here today. I want to say first and foremost that we all agree and everybody that's here from the neighborhood agree that the RMF three zoning is being complied to. We're not here to 86 the project, we're not here to say we don't want it built, but like Steve just brought up, there's many, many items that just don't fit with the neighborhood, with compatibility, with drainage, with site well, site distance is not so much. So there's many things that I want to talk about and the reason that we're here today is we need your help.

We need your help on this. This is why we have planning commissions and city councils and again, I'm not against the project. I am in construction, I develop, I do this all the time. All we're looking for is some help on what the final product of this project is going to be. So it does fit with the neighborhood, so the neighbors are happy and it's a win win for the city with taxes, it's a win win for the developer because he's got his capital being paid for with six units, and the neighbors are happy because it's beautiful building and everybody can live together on the street.

So that being said, there are things that I think need to be looked at over and above what was presented. We get into having to hold some people accountable for what they want to do. Everybody wants to build the grand of a building and put their name on it for their legacy and whatever, But you have to be responsible, you have to be respectful of others in my opinion and you have to be accountable to do the right thing. And in my heart and I think you're going to hear from a lot of people here today, none of those are being taken into account. Yeah, we took the building down from 55 or 56 feet to 48, but in that 48 foot tall building, I have a 10 foot garage and I have two floors above it that are 14 feet.

And I'm being told throughout the design that it's for utilities and it's innocent. If I ever had two feet to put utilities in any structure, commercial or residential, I've ever built in my life, I would be so happy. In my opinion, the 10 foot is okay. I mean, we understand we need that because of the coastal assessment and the Zone X and the Zone AE. Okay.

14 foot 2nd And 3rd Floor brings that building up to the height that they're designing. In my opinion, it's something that needs to be looked at. There is nothing wrong with a 10 foot first floor for the garage, a nine foot second floor and an eight foot third floor and it takes you down to about the same height, maybe two feet higher than the tallest building between Apalachicola, Ormond Street and Madrid Avenue. I've done the research. There is nothing that compares to the size of this building.

That being said, with those units being that tall, as Steve mentioned, we have 12 balconies and an at grade patio on the north elevation, the drawings are wrong, they're not interpreted right. The north elevation is the south and the south is the north. There's a lot of anomalies in the design that true. Are That being said, we have 12 balconies that are going to have light from lighting that they're going to have to put on the balcony just for safety and then when people start buying these units, string lights, whatever other kind of light, those balconies are 30 feet away from four of our properties in the back of Madrid Avenue. In my opinion, they have no right, they have no right to impede our privacy with that.

It is going to take away it's going to take away all of our quiet enjoyment of those backyards. We're going to take away all the sky views that we have right now. Basically, if I'm standing at the edge of the deck of my pool, when that building is built, I will be looking up like this at the building. And if I wanted to live in New York City next to Trump Tower, I would have moved to New York City, not Venice. So the the views, the sky the sky views, we do have I'm gonna get into drainage issues, we do have drainage issues and I don't agree with anything that was said about drainage. They don't have

Thank you, sir.

Don't know

understand why we have five minutes and everybody had forty.

Next speaker is Mary Topian.

Hi everybody. My name is Mary Topian. I'm Dave's wife. I live at 825 Madrid and there's just so much concerns in our neighborhood that five minutes really doesn't cut it. And I don't have the knowledge that David has on the sewer system and the storm water drainage.

But we're really concerned about our properties being flooded like you're looking at what was being said and I think that needs to be re examined because what's gonna happen when their retention basins fill up in a storm, in a tropical rain, where's all that water gonna go? It can't just go out to this pipe that they're talking about, it's gonna flow onto our properties. Also the drainage from their property to the properties behind, how high is that? Like a new tropical storm is it gonna flood our yard, the yard next to us? Like we don't have a clear indication of that.

And I'm sorry that David was cut short but there's a lot of pertinent information on the storm water. But other issues that I have are the compatibility again. Everyone keeps talking about how they're compatible to the Esplanade. We're not the Esplanade, Ormond Street is not the Esplanade, it's not as wide as the Esplanade. When we moved in, the Esplanade, the buildings are there but their buffers are huge.

They have big parking lots, they have green space, they have the front of their buildings have a huge buffer zone, this doesn't have it. And the 30 foot setback from our property to them is based on their retention, their retention pods, where are they going to put them if they went back 10 feet, they're not being generous to anybody. And then on top of that, lighting, there's no light plan. Is there going be light pollution? Are they gonna have exterior security lighting or wall pack lighting that can spill out into the neighbor's bedrooms into our yards?

Is it gonna have a daytime effect like they do in New York City? And you know the comparison in New York City may sound strange but our homes compared to this, that is such a huge contrast. They are not they are not, compatible with the homes in the surrounding areas. I also thought it was funny that the pictures that they put up showed Chivista and showed the other properties on the Espanade, not on these small residential streets. Also has there been any wind tunnel effects studies done?

We live in a high wind zone area especially during tropical storms and no one has assessed this threat. When wind hits a large building face which theirs is gonna be the largest, what happens is it's forced downward and accelerated into adjacent residential yards which can damage smaller tree structures and outdoor space. And then there's the privacy like these balconies that they're proposing are looking on our yards not at the ocean, not a green space, not at a park, looking directly down on the neighbors. I don't comprehend the fact that they can take away our privacy. And there's no reason, there's absolutely no reason why this developer architect can't design and build six units in a smart responsible way that protects the residents that are already here with an appropriate storm water management plan in place because we're all concerned about the storm water, all of us because we've all been through the hurricanes in the last couple years and you know, if we hadn't all been responsible when we put our homes in or revamped our homes then our water would have been on everyone else's property.

This is an accident waiting to happen and are they gonna be financially responsible when our properties are damaged because of the irresponsibility of their storm water? I doubt it. We'll all be stuck trying to pick up the pieces. Well and you know in the end, we're just asking you, the planning commission to consider the people that are already there, consider the future damage that can be caused if things aren't done appropriately, privacy, compatibility, storm water sewer storm water drainage, sorry, all of that has to come into play and that affects our quality of living and Venice was the last place I would think something like this could even make it this far. But anyway, thank you for your time and I hope that you consider those of us who are already living there in our single family homes.

Next speaker is Dina Kolbecker. She has five minutes.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much. Appreciate your all the knowledge and expertise that you guys bring to our city. I just wanna take the opportunity to express my opinion. I'm I'm not an engineer, you know, I I don't have all the facts but this is just me voicing my opinion.

I've lived here for twenty four years and over all these years, I've walked or ran down this little quiet Ormond Street on my morning exercise routine. And since seeing the post and reading the public notice hearing on the property, my heart breaks every time I go past it. One of the many disheartening aspects is if this is approved, all of the trees on this property will be completely leveled. In passing by, I have counted 42 trees and that's just the ones that you can see from the street. And I can I can see them and the majority of them are hardwood trees?

I know what you guys are saying to yourself. Is this girl really gonna use up our time to talk about trees? Yes, am. Trees are silent but hold tremendous power. They help fight climate change and absorb carbon dioxide. Trees act as a huge air filter and remove air pollution from fossil fuels. Trees provide valuable habitats to support biodiversity. Trees support storm water management. Data from The U. S.

Forest Service states that one acre of trees can help avoid 7,000 gallons of storm water runoff per year. The shade of trees provides cooler temperatures. Concrete and asphalt absorb heat and can add seven to 15 degrees to the atmosphere. Trees filter water removing pollutants and sediments from rainfall that ends up in our Gulf waters. Trees muffle sound pollution. Studies conducted by the U. S. Department of Agriculture have shown that trees are a benefit to our mental and physical health. Trees look out for us. We need to look out for the trees.

The recent tree canopy analysis study revealed that there has been reduction in trees in Venice. Developments are approved and entire forests are leveled and replaced with concrete and asphalt and an occasional palm tree. I know the city has a tree program but it appears there aren't any rules or codes regarding the trees in the building and zoning department when dealing with developers of private property. It would be advantageous for the city as well as the environment to impose restrictions on the permitting application process regarding tree removal on private property not just city property. Seeing all the recent development going up on the island, it appears there are no city zoning code limits or permits regarding the leveling and removal of trees.

If a developer's proposal involves taking down 100 or 50 or 30 trees, there should be codes that require a percentage of the trees must remain and cannot be taken down or cannot be replaced by a few palm trees and bushes. Another perspective to be considered regarding Vinna townhouse project is the effect on the neighboring properties. I know we've heard about this already but this is again just my opinion. Building three stories higher than the private residential properties that border this land completely invades all the privacy of the existing homes. They will no longer be able to walk into their own backyard without someone looking down from them next door.

Would you want this at your house? Additional concerns about the development is density. Not only does it rob the neighbors of privacy but it also adds to the already overcrowded island. Trying to get off and on the island is already a fiasco. You have to add twenty minutes to get off the island, another twenty minutes to get back on as our mayor tested today.

I have friends who live in Sarasota and would like to move to Venice due to due to traffic and overcrowding in Sarasota but they refuse to even look for property on the island since island traffic is preposterous. In closing, I want to point I just wanted to point out a few negative variables that will occur should this project be approved. Hopefully this will spark ideas for new code requirements that relate to the environmental issues.

Thank you ma'am. Thank you.

Next speaker is Glenn Spinelli. He has five minutes.

Thank you everyone. My name is Glenn Spinelli. I'm the president of the Shea Vista Condo Association. I'm here to show my concern for storm water management. There is a storm drain behind one of our outer garages. It's approximately three to four feet below where our garage is. And, initially, I was given some sort of notification from some engineer saying that they're going to dump their water into that drain behind our it's an open drain behind our garage. I'm concerned with that because if that erodes the foundation of our garage, if

it

overflows, now I've got a real problem on my hands. So I don't know, I'm not an engineer, I'm sure that that was a qualified engineer saying all that water, but as you were pointing out, a lot of that that's quite a bit of water that's gonna be funneled down towards our property. Right now, we don't have a problem. I survived three hurricanes here. I watched the water come over the Gulf into the onto the Esplanade, and we survived without any flooding whatsoever at Chez Vista because we were asked to put in our own storm water management ponds that sit in front of our building, which we maintain.

They take water from our property and water from the Esplanade to drain it slowly and properly. I don't think what they're proposing is a proper way of draining water. I do look at the vision of this organization. It's to maintain Venice as a vibrant, charming, historic community. I I believe that. We could have moved to Siesta Key, but we didn't because it was all high rises, even though I live in a high rise. That high rise is on the Esplanade. It is not on some of those offset streets with single family homes. It's not what what Venice should be about. That's all I really have to say.

I at first I thought they were going to There is no easement, so they can't just plumb into that drain, and now I understand they're going to dissipate the water somehow. And how much of it goes to the front and how much it goes to the back, I don't know that that those are adequate numbers. Right now, there's a house on that, a a small house, and most of that is sand and grass and trees. You take that and put that structure which to me looks more like a bank than it does a residential building. It doesn't fulfill what Venice looks like.

Our building at least has arches and columns. This looks like a bank building or an office building. And I don't believe it fits the community and it will not enhance the community in any way. So that's my two seconds. If Dave wants to take the rest of my time, he's welcome.

No, we can't do that. Alright, thank you. Nice try though.

Last speaker is Scott Slickers. He has five minutes.

Good afternoon board. Thanks for taking time to hear my concerns. I would like to hone in on one specific concern if this project is approved and goes forward, and that has to do with the design development of the foundations. I'm at 500 Esplanade in the Gulf Twin Towers. I was here when Che Vista was being built.

There was driven piles as part of that foundation, and it went on for a significant amount of time, weeks and weeks and weeks, and I can't attest to the exact number of weeks. But my concern is, when they were driving those piles, there was a lot of vibration in our building, and we had a renovation project about three or four years ago, and the facade on the north side of the building that faced the Chey Vista property had significantly more surface cracking of the stucco, and my concern is if this project were to be approved, since it's so close to Cheyvista, my assumption is the design criteria would be similar for the foundation. It would require piling. And I would request that the board ask a specific question to the applicant's engineers about if they've driven down to that detailed design yet, what the design criteria and details are for the foundation. And I'm respectfully requesting that if the application is approved, that the board put a condition on the approval that helical piles be used in lieu of driven piles.

Again, my concern is the amount of vibration that would be impacted by our building and Jay Vista didn't bring this up, but I assume they may have similar concerns and maybe even the adjacent property owners. I know the three story building that was built recently on the Esplanade, there was agreement between them and the adjacent property owners that they would use helical piles in lieu of driven piles for this specific reason. I think it's a real risk if the foundation does have a driven pile design and that's my chief concern about this application. And again, I would respectfully request that that specific question be asked of the engineers from the applicant and also respectfully request that there be a condition of approval if you elect to approve this application today that driven piles not be used and helical piles be used. I thank you for your time.

Thank you. With that is there any additional staff comments, Nicole? I'd to address some of these.

I'm sorry, your name?

Nelson Rechner.

Okay, miss Rechner. Sorry, didn't get your speaker card. If you want come

up to speak and we

can complete the card after. Yes.

Thank you. My name is Nelson Rittner, J. Vista Unit 305. You have my email, which I sent on Friday afternoon into your system. Hopefully you've had a chance to go through that. These are highlights. I am not in favor of the applicant application moving forward. I agree with David Topian and Glenn Spinelli who just spoke to you. Applicant added a drain field on that northwest corner for the excessive storm water. This will cause a swamp collecting weeds and snakes near the front and only entrance to 15 J.

Vista units which pay approximately $217,000 per year in real estate tax. The applicant has no legal right to flood J Vista property. If the application is approved, I propose a sub pump moving his excess water from the rear of his property toward the front and let it flow onto the grass onto Ormond Street. That sump pump would have to move water underground and then toward the front of the building move it to above ground, anti backflow valve, etcetera. I am a mechanical engineer if you want to know, and I studied fluid dynamics.

Applicant would then revert to the original 90 degree wall at his northwest corner, which we face, and surface finish that wall matching our garages, which he's already agreed to. Further no fencing on top or near the wall to keep a better appearance of state. Keeping the wall rather five feet minimum away from all the property lines. Applicant would then further need to cut the curbing on the CV property along the street such that to put in his sidewalk, he then has to replace our curbing to keep that water flow out of our driveway, which goes downhill from the street. We don't need the water to flow in a big U-turn and then come down our driveway.

Applicant further would need to relocate the irrigation controls and the water supply to the opposite side of the building. His drawings currently show those controls on the West side toward J. Vista. And I ask is there a wellhead in an accumulator tank? There's no indication of where that irrigation water for his property is sourced. With that I will say thank you for your kind attention. Do you have any questions for me?

We're not allowed to question you sir.

Thank you.

Sir if you could just go to the kiosk in the back and complete your speaker card. We did not receive it so it must have not completed the process. Thank you very much.

Just something we wanted to clear up that we heard in the applicant's presentation, not inaccurate in a literal way but just the co definition of building height. They do get the 10 feet kind of for free for understory parking. 38 feet, 7.25 inches as opposed to the 57 they'd be allowed. Just wanted to be sure that that was clear on the record, the height measurement versus the allowance.

And again the concurrency is according to the city everything meets what's required.

That's correct, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And any rebuttal by the agent?

Hello. I think somebody left their glasses up here.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Did someone leave some glasses up here? One of the speakers?

Think

I know who they are.

Okay, thank you very much. I just want to start out and kind of reiterate a part of the definition of compatibility straight from the code. Compatibility does not mean the same as, not straight from the code. Rather it means the sensitivity of the development proposals and maintaining the area of the existing development. So yes, there are single family homes on the right, but we can't forget that Tre Vista bigger than our project on the left along thus far was the point being made that it's a transition in from the higher density to lower density.

You can't just look at one half of the property. Another point I would like to touch on the traffic. The traffic is only twenty three p. M. Peak hours average with, let me see here, twenty three for entering and fifteen for entering, eight for exiting. That's the average traffic. The applicant did make many concessions to be consistent with the neighborhood. They didn't come in and build everything they can to the code, right? They're not taking the max of everything. They have reduced.

The ceilings of the internal will have to be reduced because they reduced the total height of the building. I think that you know I'm born and raised in Venice, Venice L, Venice Middle, Venice High. I've seen a lot of growth. I actually think that this is what the city intends, right? This is RMF, zoned RMF. It's an infill project. I think infill is good. It reduces urban sprawl. I So think that the Afghan has been responsible in that development technique that they're using. They also do have property rights and as for the storm water, I'll hit a couple points and let Craig touch on maybe some details.

So the pervious pavers actually allow for one foot of storage water under it. They are replacing the curb to help protect that area that the last gentleman just touched on. And the drainage is almost identical post and pre and post development. So even with all the single family home now it's going to be almost identical. He went over the numbers in our presentation.

So let's see what else we need to talk about here. If you want to say something, I'll

look again. Oh, yeah, there you go.

Yeah, just to reiterate, so that's an eighteen and five foot reduction or less than the maximum for the height of the building. I think that's pretty significant. The storm water, yes, I take objection that it's going to be a swamp back there. We left that wall off the property line on both, the Cheyvista side and the rear to place that in there but also to get access to it to maintain it. So I think maintenance is obviously part of the requirement for that system.

There is another thing mentioned about flooding. The storms that we received over the last several years, the hurricanes, those are flood from surge, not from rainfall events. So unless I haven't heard of any rainfall events flooding in that area, it's actually drains positively down towards the inlet. So basically I don't think I think that was sort of pretty much unfounded.

I would also like to add that the applicant already does know they do not have to do pilings. So that can alleviate some concern for the gentleman with that piling. Piling. And then let's see. Oh, the trees. So there are 38 trees to be removed. However, 10 of them will be preserved and 18 will be planted. So you know the turn on that is not I just wanted to put that information out there for them. They also, you know, it's established in Florida law. There is no right to a sky view.

A waterfront property does have repairing rights and littoral rights for waterfront views which are also litigated but they do not have a right to a sky view. I do have case law I can hand. It's Fountain Blue Hotel Court verse forty five twenty five. This case talks about how it's well established that there is no right to any air or sky view. It even in this case goes far to say that even a structure constructed with spite is not something that can be damaging to somebody's view.

So and of course that's not what's happening here. The applicant has taken lots of consideration into how they've been developing this property. The right to and then let's see. And I want to reiterate again that the city departments have all reviewed this including engineering and traffic and deemed it compliant as Nicole said. And do you have anything else on? This is Erica by the way. I also want to mention that one of one of the applicants is actually going to live on this property. So this

is one of his this

is for him and his family to reside here as well. Yeah that's correct and you know it is it's only six units. It's right next to Che Vissa which is a condominium. There's condominiums all up and down. I do recognize a single family homes but again the intent of the city has this zoned as multi family. And with that we thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you. And with that I'll close the public hearing. Mr. Chair. I'll entertain Mr. A

Chair. Before we get start started I just thought I would make sure we get your discussion your motion on start on the right foot. So I just wanted to go over again what your role here is today. You are in the quasi judicial position. So you are not here making law, you are here applying law, you're taking the regulations the city has on its book, the evidence that's presented to you and you're applying it.

So the standard and it's a state law not specific to Venice is have you been given competent substantial evidence to show that the application meets the code criteria? So competent substantial evidence just breaking that down real quickly. Competent evidence is that which the people testifying are qualified. Substantial evidence is that that there is sufficient relevant incredible evidence on which you can base your decision. Usually you get competent substantial evidence from three general categories of testimony.

It's the comments and opinions of professional staff. It's the comments and opinions of someone who has been demonstrated as an expert in the field that they're testifying to and it could also be fact based testimony of citizens to the extent it doesn't require specialized knowledge and it's of more of an objective nature. So things that courts have found not to be competent substantial evidence is the popularity level of a particular petition, expert testimony that may

be

speculative or generalized or based on conjecture about future actions. So with that said, just want to make sure that's what you are basing your decision on today and if we do find ourselves in a position that the motion is to deny then again by state law you have to cite a specific provision of our code and the reason why this competent substantial evidence hasn't been provided to meet that.

Okay and with that I will entertain a motion. Don't all speak at once. Mr. Jasper, would you like the honors?

Mr. Chairman, based on review of the application materials, the staff report and testimony provided during the public hearing, the Planning Commission sitting as a local planning agency finds this petition consistent with the comprehensive plan in compliance with the land development code and with the affirmative findings of fact in the record moved to approve site and development plan number 25Dash445SP.

We have a motion to approve by Mr. Jasper. Do I hear a second?

Second.

We have a second by Mr. McKeon. At this point, do we have some discussion? Yes, Mr. McKeon. This

is one of those events where I can say that I have real sympathetic feelings for everything that you all have said. And I hope you heard earlier in the, you know, when the mayor talked and everything, you know, we have to follow quote unquote the law of the land and by that I mean our comprehensive plan, our land development regulations. And fortunately or unfortunately, they meet all that criteria. The second thing and I'm just going to throw this out to maybe the developer also or the homeowners. I was hearing the comments about you know, they're going to be looking down on me in my pool.

I have that issue in my house where the house catty corner is almost three stories. And just an FYI, my wife and I had Eureka palms planted back there because they will grow up to 30 or 35 feet. And I do enjoy getting in my pool and the Eureka palms will give us that cover when they're fully grown. We have them in between the house and our house next door.

Please, Sergeant. No.

But anyway, that's just anyway, sort of enough said. I think you understand what I'm saying. And I think the criteria have been met and that is why I voted in support. Any other comments?

I'll make a few. Usually I'm the one who gets to say these things and I was planning to say exactly what our attorney said and she took the words right out of my mouth, but as you heard earlier when we were here, our personal opinion means nothing. Unfortunately, your individual opinions mean nothing. We have to base our decision based on the evidence that's presented as presented here. I like to get feel your pain, I live right on the end of Bormont Street on Apalachicola.

My wife has lived on that property since 1952. Believe me, we've seen it all. So, certainly can understand. But I too, I I have a two story house. When I'm up on my second story, I look right down into my neighbors over my six foot privacy fence, I look right down into their pool, and when I'm in the back in my hot tub, I look up at a house that's just two doors down on Ormond, and I can look into five windows.

If I can look into their five windows, they can look right into me and my hot tub. So, there is no expectation of privacy in the backyard, it just doesn't exist. And if you go down that street, and I walked down at the other day and looked, and the house that's right next to this petition is a two story house. The house next to that is a two story house. Then there are two single stories, and then there's mine, which is two story.

Right across the street from the intersection is another two story. Everything in that area from the end, the two houses on the end of Orman are are actually still multifamily, they're duplexes and everything on that side of Apalachicola that backs up to Ormond is multifamily and in most cases, multi story. So, you know, we have to look at it from we go down the line and check it off. Does it meet this? Does it meet that? Does it meet this? Does it meet this? Does it meet that? When we, as you heard said, when we make a motion deny, we have to say, this is what is not in compliance and order, we have to spell it out. What is it that's not in compliance?

If we don't, we're just gonna get sued and we're gonna lose in court anyway. So that's the way we have to look at it. This is one where you go down the line, it is just meets everything that's right there. We have to get something that's legally defensible to be able to say we're gonna turn it down for that reason. I didn't hear anything today that said legally defensible.

I'm not a storm water engineer, so I have to base what I hear on our experts, and when the city experts say it meets all the criteria, it's okay. I can't stand up and say, no, they're wrong. Listen to me, they're wrong, I'm not a storm water engineer, they are. So I can't do that. So I have to make my decision based on the expert testimony that we hear. So I feel your pain, I understand it, I'm right there, I live right there, I'm affected by it as well, but that doesn't change the way I have to vote. And with that, can I have a roll call vote please?

Opposed.

Mr. Jasper?

Yes.

Mr. Hale?

Yes.

Mr. Furlagi? Yes. Mr. McKeon? Yes. Chair Wilson?

Yes. The motion carries. Yes. Was just going to ask that. We will take a five minute recess before we start the next petition.

Let me get my okay. The next petition is preliminary plat petition 20 five-68PP, Chalet's Adventist. The staff is Britney Smith. The agent is Morris Engineering and Consulting LLC. The applicant is P3LAF Chaletz at Venice LP. And let's see. This is a quasi judicial hearing. I do have a memorandum. This is for petition number 20 five-68PP. This is to certify that the public hearing for this petition was appropriately advertised on 04/04/2026, as required by the City Of Venice Land Development Code.

This is a quasi judicial hearing. I've read the memorandum. I'll open the public hearing. And can I have the attorney question the board please?

If anyone has a possible conflict of interest, please indicate that now. Seeing none, you had any ex parte communications that are not presently part of the record please indicate what those are. He said none.

Okay. Site visit only. Site visit only.

Site visit. Site visit.

None. Thank you.

Okay. And we'll confirm the speaker cards have been completed. And with that, Brittney, welcome.

Hi. Good afternoon. So for the record, Britney Smith, planner for the City of Venice. We are here today to talk about 2568pp Chalets at Venice with the owner is P3LAF Chalets at Venice LLC and the agent is Morris Engineering Consulting LLC or Pat Dawson. I just want to briefly mention that we did have a written correspondence that was not added to the agenda that will be added to the agenda later, so you may have a speaker on this item.

A little bit of general information. This property is located at 282 North Auburn Road. The request is for the development of the 43 lot single family residential subdivision. The parcel size is 10.1209 acres approximately with the future land use of mixed use residential zoning of planned unit development. This is within the Pine Brook neighborhood.

So a little bit of project background and description. Again, this is for the creation of a 43 single family lot which is consistent with the binding concept plan or binding master plan. As you all know, this project was previously before you in February for annexation comp plan and the rezone which you recommended to City Council. City Council approved that on second reading on April 14 and the density of this project is 4.25 dwelling units per acre. Here is an aerial of the property.

So this is a few miles down Venice Avenue taking left there on Auburn at word-of-mouth or the American Legion and going up about a half mile up the road and this would be on the right hand side across the street from Sawgrass. Here is a picture of the preliminary plat. It is attached to your agenda as well if you need to see it in a little bit more clarity or greater detail. And in comparison, this is the binding master plan that was approved with the rezone recently for the property showing those 43 lots. And then a lot of the details are also included on here on the the setbacks and the landscaping and buffering that go with this binding master plan.

Here are the proposed elevations, the different building types. The first one you'll see is a two story with a couple different finishes for that model, and the second one is a one story with a couple different finishes for that model. For existing conditions, we'll look at the future land use map, zoning map, some site photos, and the surrounding land uses. So here is the future land use map showing the property as mixed use residential. To the North, have low density residential.

To the East and the South, you have moderate density residential. And to the West, you have mixed use residential. For the zoning map, you'll see that it is PUD zoning. To the North, you have a county zoning and to the East you have RSF county zoning. To the South you have OUE one, which is also County Zoning.

And then over there to the West you have RSF, that being Sawgrass. Here are some site photos that were recently taken. One was the first one was across the street facing to the east, kind of the Southeast and then the same is backed up further towards the north of the property is Blackburn Canal and the photo is taken looking Southeast. For the surrounding property information to the North, you have Venice Acres which is county residential conservation estate planning and development and the future land use is county low density residential. To the South you have the remainder of the subject property which is that OUI E1 and County Moderate Density Residential.

To the East, have Venice Palms with the zoning of County Residential Single Family with the future land use of county moderate density residential. And to the West you have Sawgrass which is single family residential and the future land use of mixed use residential. For planning analysis, we'll look at comprehensive plan consistency, the land development code compliance and concurrency and mobility. For the comprehensive plan, we looked at strategy LU 1.2.16 for mixed use residential as the proposed housing project is within a property that is zoned PUD and has required or has the required amount of open space. We also looked at LU 1.2.17 for mixed use residential open space connectivity which this project provides.

So in conclusion of finding effect with the comprehensive plan analysis is provided to help Planning Commission determine consistency with land use element strategies applicable to mixed use residential future land use designation, strategies found in the Pine Brook neighborhood and other plant elements. For land development code compliance, this has been reviewed by the TRC and no issues regarding compliance with the land development code were found. The applicant has responded to the decision criteria and that's included in your staff report. And this project has a binding master plan where Planning Commission considered compatibility, access, layout, drainage, open space and arrangement and that was approved again by or recommended by Planning Commission and then approved by City Council here recently. With preliminary plot decision criteria, they're here for your review, won't read through all of them and these are also included in your staff report.

So in conclusions of finding a fact with the land development code, the proposed petitions are compliant and no inconsistencies have been identified with the land development code. And looking at concurrency and mobility, I just do want to mention that there was a staff error in the staff report and the department was marked as county utilities but this property is served by the city and compliance has been confirmed or concurrency has been confirmed by the city's staff and departments for utilities department and public works and engineering. Transportation estimated impact was forty eight p. M. Peak hour trips and that is just marked as de minimis and the traffic our traffic consultant has reviewed and confirmed that it is compliant.

So for concurrencies, no issues have been identified regarding adequate public facilities capacity to accommodate the development and for mobility the applicant has provided traffic analysis which was reviewed by the consultant and no issues were identified. So in conclusion, upon review of the petition and the associated documents, the comprehensive plan, land development code, staff report analysis and testimony provided during this public hearing, there is sufficient information on the record to take action on preliminary plot petition 2568pp. Are there any questions for me?

Thank you. Any questions for Brittany? No? Seeing none, thank you ma'am, appreciate it. You're welcome. Mr. Boone, I assume you're coming up.

Good afternoon for the record, Jackson Boone, attorney at Boone Law Firm, agent for the applicant. And I think this is both unique and beneficial in the sense that the application bundle, the annexation complaint amendment and rezoning with the PUD was just in front of the majority of you back in February. Obviously, Ms. Fresca, Mr. Floralagi, you weren't on the Planning Commission when that occurred.

But typically, preliminary plats take longer to get back in front of the Planning Commission. So there may be some more institutional knowledge you all have with the PUD plan since it was just in front of you back in February. But we have all the facts in the presentation can replicate essentially what we had for the PUD. We have put together a PowerPoint. So Aaron, do you have it pulled up already?

Right here? All right. So what I will do is I will try to balance hitting the high points on the application. Essentially, the preliminary plat is implementing the binding master plan approved with the PUD. All of those macros and items such as the landscape buffer, private right of way profile, etcetera, etcetera.

So going through the property, again for you all, it's approximately 10.12 acres. Here you can see it has a future land use of mixed use residential. It has a zoning of PUD. It's there located on the East Side Of Auburn Road, what I call the kind of the South East Venice Ave Auburn Road area there. We have the preliminary plat implementing the BUD master plan, 43 single family homes.

The annexation rezone future land use map amendment, those were all at City Council for second reading approval April 14, just about a week ago today. So now we have here's the PUD plan that was approved and we have the preliminary plat plan that implements that, taking all of the approved standards, implementing it. The one thing I do want to point out to you that you may have seen, so in the preliminary plat plan here with you can see the stormwater design that we had L2, that was designed as a potential dry stormwater pond. So that was if needed, they could use it. In fact, today, an ERP permit from SwiftMud has been approved for this plan and the need for that L2 pond was not required.

So that's no longer a what could be used as a compensating area. I believe is there a drainage easement there? Just

for pipe.

Just for pipe. So that's something that if you're looking at the PUD plan and you look at the preliminary plat plan and say, is there supposed to be a pond there? Well, pursuant to the ERP approval received from SwiftMud, there was no pond that needed to be there in order to meet the drainage requirements and all the waters collected in Lake 1, which is that northern stormwater pond, which then is eventually routed to Blackburn Canal. Just hitting some high points again, density for the project 4.25 units per acre. We have the private right of way which was approved, which has sidewalks on both sides of the street.

There is the walking path that is there on the northern side of the property connecting from the Hammerhead Movement turning movement terminus then to about the almost working its way three quarters of the way back to the western property line. The Brittany touched on the transportation. You can see obviously access is limited to there from Auburn Road. Forty eight p. M.

Peak hour trips according to the traffic study. Again that's determined to be a de minimis impact. That was reviewed as part of the comp plan in the PUD applications, no issues raised by staff. This preliminary plat meets the minimum 50% open space for PUD's providing the respective 10% functional open space and 20% conservation open space standards. I mentioned storm water already.

We talked about this at the prior planning commission hearing. I don't know if Ms. Sherburne can hear me, but she had asked the question about which direction does Blackburn Canal flow. As we discussed, water flows moving to the West where it eventually reaches Roberts Bay and then goes out into the Gulf. For purposes of maintenance for Blackburn Canal, there are no proposed changes for maintenance responsibilities as it relates to Blackburn Canal.

Typically the dividing line is if you look at Auburn Road, the city maintains it to the west of Auburn Road and the county has maintenance to the East. Nothing's being changed here. We have a 25 foot perimeter landscape buffer including the six foot PVC fence. The 25 feet is greater than the 10 feet in width at the Type two buffer which is required for the area. So it's a wider 2.5 times as wide landscape buffer than what's required by the code.

We have increased setbacks for the lots on the property to benefit of compatibility. It has the 20 foot front and rear setback standards, five foot yards five foot side yard setback standards attributable to the product. I know in there you saw potential elevation types. This is intended to be mentioned at Planning Commission. So I know you all saw both a two story and a one story.

Those were submitted at the time before they knew what they were moving forward with. Again, the intention is the two story product for all of the lots. That's how this is designed. Let's see. The rest is more what I would say zoning related items, just about the density and compatibility with the surrounding area. I think the key takeaway is this implementing the approved PUD plan in those standards. This preliminary plat is consistent with the comprehensive plan. It's compliant with the applicable land development code criteria, including the Section 100 ten-one decision criteria. We respectfully request your approval and we're available for any questions you all may have.

Thank you, sir. Any questions for Mr. Boone? Yes, Mr. Hale?

Curiosity question, guess. The two story plan that you showed is a four bedroom, are you is that the standard plan you're going to use all two stories are going to

be four bedroom? That's a very good question for the applicant representative here. If they know that, I couldn't tell you whether that's the one type of offering they have for layout. But I think the intention there is to show the footprint and then whether it's four store, whether it's four bedroom it could be two bedroom or three bedroom up there, I think that was the intent. I know too that the preliminary plat, those elevations are intended to show a design profile.

They're not 100% binding by nature, but I think those paint a good flavor of what the units will be like. Okay. As Mr. Collins confirmed what I was thinking, same chassis size obviously, but there could be some three bedrooms and some four bedrooms.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Chairman. Thank you. We have any audience participation signed up on this one?

Yes, we have three speakers. The first is Jim Perry and he has five minutes.

Good afternoon. My name is Jim Perry and I'm a resident of the Sawgrass community of five sixty homes immediately across Auburn Road from the Chalets. And my concern is storm water runoff. Sawgrass sits at the confluence of Curry Creek and the Blackburn Canal and is bisected by both. Be aware that Curry Creek east of Sawgrass to the Myakka is actually a man made drainage channel like the Blackburn Canal.

Both of these ditches, Blackburn and Curry, were constructed more than sixty years ago for the purpose of draining undeveloped land. And there have been few significant improvements in those channels in a half a century. So my question is, what evidence does the planning council, planning commission have to assume that those channels can somehow carry storm water runoff from hundreds of new homes that have been constructed over the years in their respective watersheds. Neither the city nor the developer has produced any hydrological study which determines that more runoff from a dense development like the Chalets can be safely added to Blackburn Canal during a hurricane. The tragedy of the commons is being repeated.

More and more storm water runoff for more and more new housing, yet no recognition by the city of Venice that those channels dug decades ago for the sole purpose of draining agricultural land have already reached capacity. I hope the members of the commission viewed the Blackburn Canal and Curry Creek from the bridges over Auburn Road. If you did, you saw two rather narrow channels with shockingly limited capacity to handle hurricane outflows from hundreds of acres upstream. You would have also observed incoming tidal water flowing upstream at times in the Blackburn Canal and Curry Creek. Imagine a hurricane arriving at high tide, storm surge pushing tidal inflows even further inland in greater volume and at the same time envision 12 inches of rainfall trying to make their way down the Curry Creek and the Blackburn Canal.

The entirely predictable result, both streams would overflow their banks flooding sawgrass as well as nearby communities including the Chalets, Fox Cove and Cassata Oaks, the most recent developments in the area contributing to channel overcapacity. Another critical point. The Chalet's developer mentions a retention pond to keep storm water runoff neutral. But the developer fails to mention that virtually all retention ponds are totally passive. They cannot be drawn down in the face of an incoming hurricane.

And even worse, if there's been a spade of really rainy weather or two hurricanes in quick succession like Helene and Milton, the retention ponds will be already full. Every drop of runoff from the chalets will flow directly in in the Blackburn Canal and across Auburn Road into Sawgrass. The choices are few. The city of Venice either needs to commit millions to upgrade its storm water facilities and undertake full management responsibility for both Curry Creek and the Blackburn Canal or the city must limit the density of development proposals such as the chalets in order to reduce storm water runoff. I think it's the duty of the planning commission to warn the city council that further development along Blackburn Canal and Curry Creek can no longer be rubber stamped without risking major flooding to the communities such as Sawgrass.

And that would be an event which would dwarf the Flamingo Ditch disaster. I wish I could say that I saw more interest in the city government in investigating the problem of adding more and more housing along Curry Creek Blackburn Canal. Thank you. Thank

you, sir.

Next speaker is Danny Swain. He has two minutes.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much. My name is Danny Swain. I am a resident off Auburn Road right next to Venice Acres. I've been there for twenty six years in my house.

Just two years ago when the hurricanes came through, I watched sawgrass just about go underwater. Those two ditches that they're referring to or canals as they would like to call them, yeah, they're ditches, they're something that were dug sixty years ago like the gentleman mentioned. They will not do the job, they have not done the job and they do not do the job. I watched those ditches fill up to the point where the water was all the way across Auburn Road from Sawgrass over to the proposed new area in which we're discussing. Water come up over the bridge at the one ditch next to Venice Acres.

Water comes where I am, I'm off Claremont, is right off the difference from Auburn to Frederick, which runs right next to, close to Foxlia Farms. Water came up to the point where we had it almost to the interstate, just from the flooding of the waters coming off Venice Acres, the waters coming off of Sawgrass. Where I am, it's called OUI, Open Use Estates. We were Venice Farm Acres at one time. I've got five acres out there.

I'm watching this place just turn into nothing more than apartments, storage villas, Venice buildings for for people moving here and taking up property and moving in and just taking all the open property which we have for, you know, I mean, we got a horse farm next to us. Really? That's that's that's nice. It's part of what we're out there for, why we're out there, why I built that, why I bought out there. To have some seclusion, to have a little privacy, there's no more privacy.

Thank you, sir.

Next speaker is Mary Moss and she has two minutes.

Good afternoon. Thank you for your service in allowing me to speak. My name is Marilyn Moss and I'm a resident of this neighborhood area and passionate steward of our local environment. I urge you to look at the whole picture. While I understand the drive for development and increase housing, I believe we are at tipping point where development is destroying the ecosystem that makes our city viable.

I speak to you not as an observer, but as an advocate who has taken action. On my OUE property, I've planted over 70 trees to increase shade, support local wildlife. I have owls, hawks, and bobcats, which is around the corner from this location. However, it's distorting to plant 70 plus trees while watching the horror at the real life avatar happenings at the end of Auburn, Border and Edmonson, and now to learn of more. It feels like we're losing paradise and the accelerated clearing of land, removing established root systems, destroying established habits habitats, frankly, is unsustainable.

Let's be clear, replacing a 100 year old native hardwood tree with a non native palm tree or small sapling is not equivalent replacement, is catastrophe downgrade. Removing ancient native tree is ecological destruction that takes century to reverse. Non native plants do not support our ecosystem. I urge this committee to look beyond the immediate development plan, consider the long term consequences of these decisions. Once again, changing the land and not building within.

We are stewards of this land, not just owners. I ask you to make decisions today and in the future to ensure that we have a functional, viable, green ecosystem fifty years from now. Please do not let our city become

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you for your time and your dedication.

There are no further speakers.

Thank you. Any additional staff comments? No. The applicant?

Yeah, again for the record Jackson Boone, agent for the applicant. Just real quick since stormwater came up, just to reiterate, this application has been reviewed by the city staff for compliance with all applicable city stormwater criteria. And then it also has

received that swift fund ERP approval.

And And then then there there was was also also just just a a comment about rubber stamp of the process. Most I mean all of you here are aware of the various application processes, but this had annexation, comprehensive plan, rezoning with the binding master plan and the preliminary plat application. Four applications all submitted to city staff, reviewed by staff in front of you all planning commission at the hearings and then the annexation comp plan and rezoning in front of the City Council for two hearings as well. So plenty of thorough review, plenty of professional time spent on these applications. We're consistent with the comprehensive plan, compliant with the land development code. We respectfully request your approval. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. With that, I'll close the public hearing and I'll entertain a motion.

Could I ask a question or a clarification? What is the size of the whole development? You have 43 lots but how many acres were there?

You have to reopen the public Yes,

have to reopen the

hearing. Yes,

will reopen the hearing and Mr. Boone can you answer that question?

Sure. Yes, Ms. Fresca, the property is 10.12 acres which is in the that's consistent with all the applications that have been filed for this property. Yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions? Okay. And I'll close the public hearing. I'll entertain a motion.

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Hale.

I've got my readers on. Based on review of the application materials, the staff report and the testimony provided in the public hearing, the Planning Commission sitting as the local planning agency finds this petition consistent with the comprehensive plan in compliance with the Land Development Code and with the affirmative findings of fact in the record moves to approve preliminary plat position 20 five-68pp.

Okay, I have a motion to approve by Mr. Hale. Do I have a second?

A second, Mr. Chambers.

Mr. Jasper's second. And again, I'll call for a roll call vote please.

Mr. McKeon?

Yes.

Mr. Hale?

Yes. Ms.

Fresca? Yes. Mr. Jasper?

Yes.

Mr. Frelagy?

Yes.

And Chair Wilson?

And the motion carries six-zero. Thank you. And with that see Mr. Clark coming up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Roger Clark, Planning and Zoning Director. Just have a couple of things. Your next meeting, you're going to get a cancellation on your next meeting. That's the May 5 meeting. We had a pretty minor variance for that, but we've pushed that off to the next meeting. You will have the next meeting after that, I think it will be the nineteenth. So there will be a meeting May 19, but as we confirmed with them in their agreement to allow us to push it off to the next meeting because it's the only application we had and it's pretty minor that we would make sure that they were heard on the next meeting. So the meeting on the fifth will be canceled.

You'll get a cancellation notice from staff on that. Just a couple other things. Obviously, tough decision today on some of these applications and that occurs. It was a very good timing to have the mayor here and the city manager and the city clerk to go over the aspects of your tough decisions sometimes and I know Mr. Wilson puts it very well.

When you have these situations and as does the city attorney that it's not a popularity contest, they hit all the boxes then you really don't have any choice. So I think you did a really good job today on evaluating these applications and moving them forward. I know there's a lot of discussion out there about storm water and I think there has been since the hurricanes. But the fact remains that we would love to do something about that. We would love to increase our storm water requirements.

But our good friends in Tallahassee that wrote the 01/1980 don't allow us to do that because that would be more burdensome or prohibitive. So we are kind of where we are at. But as Mr. Boone indicated at the end, these applications do have to check all of our boxes as far as our city engineering department for storm water and they have to get permits from Swift Mud. There's a lot of discussion about the Curry Creek and Blackburn Canal.

You also need to think about the county because those are large streams of water that traverse many areas, not just the city of Venice, Sarasota County as well. So there's a lot to be thought about in the future, hopefully north of us and we'll see where that goes. With that, I don't have anything else unless you have anything for me.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Yes. Oh, Roger. Roger. One, on this idea of storm water. I think basically people A lot of people have the wrong idea of what it does. We they don't design for hurricane and air and seven hundred year storms and so on. Yes. Because everybody refers to, you know, again, I think that was about a seven hundred year event.

Yeah.

So is there some way, somehow, in general, like we've got out about how we have to operate under LDRs and so on, that we can get a general word out through our newsletter or something just what the design criteria is and there might be another e n come and you're not going to be protected because we're not required, we're not required, it's almost impossible to design financially for something like that.

Right. And that's a planning aspect as well in our world as well because we don't design for the anomaly. Okay. We design for the normal. Yeah, you're never gonna be able to anticipate or even design against hurricanes. You do the best you can. Obviously, you know, we haven't been hit for many many years. I guess maybe it was our turn and we did and we got hit pretty good. You know, two hurricanes in a couple weeks, that's pretty tough. You know, I think, Jerry, you've probably been at my presentations that I do.

I've been going out in the community for the last two, three years and speaking to as many homeowners associations as I can, civic groups, realtor groups, speaking to them to explain to them how development happens. We have a story map on our website that we always encourage folks to go to that talks about development and all the things that are looked at when we're considering development. And we will not bring it to you unless it's compliant with all the regulations that we have. There can be some times when maybe we and the applicant might agree to disagree and they wanna move forward and they come and it comes into your realm. But our task is to make sure that everything is reviewed and that it gets to compliance with all the regulations in the city before it comes to you.

So it's gonna be a rare time that something comes to you that has issues. As far as getting something out, I mean, I don't like I said, we go around and speak as much as we can. We have the story map. I'm not sure what engineering might have on their portion of the website that talks about, you know, storm water. But you're right, it's because of the recent occurrences that have occurred that stormwater is heavy on everybody's mind.

And it's probably gonna stay that way for a while. Hopefully, we have some really good hurricane seasons there, we don't have any. But if it pops up again, it's certainly going to come up. I understand what they're saying, a lot of these facilities were dug a long time ago but the applicants are following all the rules and regulations that are not only put in place by us but by SwiftMUD and they do plenty of basin studies and look at all these things in an overall fashion. So if we were trying to put out some type of design guidelines tutorial or something, I think it would probably be way too complicated for somebody to really understand.

The most basic thing that I can say and I've gotten in trouble for this before, saying it at the counter and I'm not an engineer so I always qualify it. I'm a planner, not an engineer, speaking out of my realm. But basically, a development cannot run more water off of their site after they develop it than before it was developed. And that's rate and amount. So that's the general way up here rule and there's a lot of details that goes with that.

But basically that's what the regulations say and that's what these applicants have to meet. It's kind of where we're at.

And I think that's where the big misunderstanding is. I mean with the general public.

Sure, absolutely. Absolutely and like I say, we try to straighten that as much out as we can when we do these these presentations, but you know.

And also as you heard numerous times today, the folks in the public give us way more power and authority than we actually have by a considerable amount. We don't get to tell everybody else what to do.

Right. Right.

We see if it follows the rules. That's our role.

Absolutely. And you know, compatibility is one area where you can kinda you know be a little flexible but that application that you had today had I don't wanna say it checked all the boxes but it was pretty close so

It did. Yeah.

Thanks, sir. Just a heads up, Roger. Yes, And to you, Bill. I will not be here for the July 7 meeting.

It's a

trip that Wanda and I actually purchased our tickets for a cruise around the Great Lakes a year ago. So at the

appropriate I time don't think that's a good enough reason. I'm sorry. Well, at

the appropriate time,

I'll make sure

I bring it up up efficiently. Sounds good. Heads up. Okay.

Thank you,

sir. Great Lakes out. Any

other comments from the planning commissioners? No, say none. If not, then we made it. We're adjourned.

Thank you for your patience, Pam.