Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, guys, we're here for the ethics and training meeting. October, August 24th, and it's 6.02 p.m. Bring this meeting to order. Do we need a roll call?

David Dahl. Dean Haddock.

Here.

Nicholas Andrews. Matthew Feiler. Justin Henderson.

Here.

John Linus.

Here.

Lindsay Haga.

Here.

All right. Good evening, everyone. David Miggott, city attorney. It doesn't seem like it's been a year, but it's been about a year since I was before you all. And I am here in a similar fashion as last year, but a little bit. My presentation will be, um, more condensed, and then Christian will handle a lot of the other issues. But I'm going to focus on ethics. Last year, I think I did ethics, sunshine law, public records, and then Christian did quasi-judicial proceedings. But the reason I'm going to focus on ethics is, bear with me as I get my glasses out, is the city has an ethics code, local government optional ethics code, in addition to the state laws. And under this ethics code, which was passed in February of 2020, it's to be reviewed annually by the city council boards, commissions, and committees to see if there are any, you know, just, I'm going to give you guys a refresher and then to see, I'll come back next month and see if there are any recommendations because the code also says if any recommendations are received from the review, they should be passed on to the city council. And then Our ethics code also says that it shall be updated as necessary in November of even numbered years. So as we're now in August, or is it October? Sorry. I'm just trying to keep that timeline. I'm appearing before all the boards to both give them a refresher and then to come back a month later and see if they have any proposed changes, edits, thoughts, concerns. Report back to city council in October and city council will make a determination whether or not to update its ethics code in November. So if, perfect, I see that's up there. So I'm going to first focus on state ethics in general. It's going to be the same slides you guys saw last year. I might go a little bit quicker since you guys are a little bit more educated perhaps than last year because of my excellent job at that point in time. And then I'll go into some of the provisions of the city's ordinance to make you aware of them. And then I'll probably pass it on to Christian for other matters at that point. So what are some of the state ethics concerns to be aware of? Solicitation or acceptance of gifts is one thing. I actually have another slide I added in with a little bit more information later in the presentation that I didn't show you last year. But I'm going to kind of go off script a little bit here. Actually, I'm just going to skip this because I'm going to go off script. I think the off script I was planning on doing matches the slide I inserted a few slides down. So basically, what I want to stress on this slide is don't take any bribes. Don't vote in a way that, you know, if someone gives you something of value, you cannot accept anything of value if there is an expectation or a possibility that your vote is trying to be influenced thereby. This will also apply to your spouse and minor children. So don't let them accept any gifts from anyone that's come before this board for a vote. These first two are very similar. They're different sections in the ethics code, so I put them both in there. But this goes back to bribery and misusing your position. Do not misuse or abuse your public position to get a special benefit for yourself or others at your direction. And then don't, I call the last bullet my Congress bullet, don't do what's being alleged that a lot of members of Congress do. Don't commit insider trading or use any sort of information that is disclosed to you that might not be available to the public, disclosed to you by virtue of your position on this planning commission. It probably very rarely comes up that you guys learn anything special or not known to the public, but there is a prohibition on state law to the extent that you would get any sort of information not available to the public. You are prohibited from using it for your personal benefit or for helping others benefit from such information. information not known to the public. These two are kind of tricky, but they're important. So I go through them every year and I try to give some examples. They're distinct, but very similar. So by virtue of you all serving on the planning commission, You are ethically part of the city, is how I like to say it. So because of that, you, in your personal capacity, cannot sell anything, lease anything, or contractually enter into any sort of contracts for services with the city. You cannot do business with the city because you represent the city as a member of this board. So if... let's say you have a second job or a business you own where you have a cleaning company. City decides to put out a contract to clean some city buildings out to bid, and you would be prohibited from entering into a contract and thereby prohibited from bidding on that contract to try to get the cleaning contract with the city because you would then be doing business with the city, which is prohibited under state law because you're a member of this board. This does not apply, just for your general knowledge, this does not apply to a company that maybe you're just an employee of and there's dozens or hundreds of employees. It only applies to a situation where you're either an officer of a company, officer would include ownership, or if it was a big enough company and they had its own purchasing or procurement department, if you were a purchasing agent. this law would also restrict you. But it does not restrict a company that you have no ownership or managerial interest in from doing business with the city. This would also apply to your spouse or child as well. So they cannot, if they have any companies that they have an ownership or management interest in, they cannot contract with the city by virtue of you serving on the planning commission. Similar but distinct is you cannot have a conflicting employment or contractual relationship. And the technical language is you shall not hold any employment or contractual relationship with a business or agency regulated by or doing business with the city. The second bullet is the one on the bottom here is the one that comes up more often. You shall not hold any employment or contract. I misspoke there. I was thinking of a different slide. Both these bullets are equally applicable. You cannot have a recurring conflict. In a more common sense or practical sense, I thought of two examples, one more germane to you all, but a second one that I see occur from time to time. Let's start with the one that is germane to you all. This law would prevent a, it applies to city employees and city board members. This would apply to a city planner. We have one sitting over here. If a city planner were to take a job, a second job doing private zoning consulting work, for local property developers that develop in this city, that would violate this law. It would be a conflicting employment and contractual relationship. The other example I see the most often, which does not apply here, but just to give you a practical sense of how this law could apply, is public school teachers. They are prohibiting, prohibited, I keep saying prohibiting when I mean to say prohibited. I'm sorry, it's going on hour 11 at the job today. they are prohibited from tutoring their own students for money. That's a conflict with their employment. Um, so they can't tutor their own students. Interestingly enough, the ethics commission has found if a kid is not in their class or they don't actually teach them, they can still tutor them for money. But students in their own classes, um, by the teacher making money from a conflict in situation like that violates the ethics laws. So these don't arise that often, but a lot of times our volunteers like you all have successful careers that are very similar to the work you do here. So they can arise once in a while, so I just want to make you aware of it so it's in the back of your mind. If you sense something like this could be at play in the future, just reach out to me with as much advance notice as soon as you realize it, and we can call the Ethics Commission together. They're happy to help ahead of time and give you some guidance, informal guidance on whether or not an issue you see arising would be an ethical prohibition or not. Voting. If you are here at a meeting, you cannot abstain from voting with just two exceptions. First, a conflict of interest exists, and a conflict of interest under Florida law basically means a financial interest. So what that is, is if the vote could impact your personal financial gain or loss, you have to abstain from voting on a matter. And under Florida law for appointed boards, you also cannot discuss the matter with your fellow board members. The other one, it's a newer law, but it's been around for over a decade now, and this one applies to you all as well because a lot of your work is quasi-judicial matters. In a quasi-judicial matter, if you feel you cannot be unbiased or you cannot be fair, you have the right to abstain from voting on that specific matter. The test is purely personal. No one's going to second guess you if you abstain because you think you cannot be impartial if it's a quasi-judicial matter. In either of these instances, you do have to fill out a form. It's just a formality under state law. Do you generally have those forms or? You have 15 days to fill it out after the vote you abstain from. We always work with board members when this happens. It's a very easy form, but you just have to list what your conflict was and why you couldn't vote on the matter. You cannot abstain or vote present, as happens in some other jurisdictions, under Florida law. You can't... Let me be... I don't want to say politically incorrect, but let me use language that's not... Let me use slang if it's for lack of a better phrase. My apologies to anyone who's a fan of a certain type of rodent or animal, but you cannot weasel out of a vote, a controversial vote, by abstaining under Florida law. You have to have an ethical conflict of interest. In this day and age, I don't want to offend anyone. You know, there has to be an ethical conflict where, you know, maybe if you own the house next door, that could be an ethical conflict. These go on a case-by-case basis. Yes, sir.

I guess my only question on that is, say you have a conflict, when will we bring that up? Is it before the meeting, send an email, say, hey, I can't vote on this particular item?

Advanced notice is always appreciated. If you're not sure if you have a conflict, more advanced notice is better because in that case, reach out to me and I'll review it. And then I'll also bring in the Commission on Ethics if I think we need to. Again, we're proactive. They love it. They love to give us guidance ahead of time.

So if you're here and there's other items, would you just kind of refrain from partaking in that discussion and just kind of leave the room or sit here? I'm just curious how it goes down.

So my recollection of the statute, which I have semi-memorized but not completely memorized, is you could still sit up here if you want. I've also seen, well, let me take one step back. If it's you yourself who's the applicant, you should step down from the board and sit in the crowd. But if it's just a matter where you may have a financial interest, but you're not the applicant, I think you're okay sitting up there. You're welcome to also come down and sit in the crowd. You just cannot participate in the discussions and you cannot vote. So did I answer your questions? This is all basically what I just said. All right, so here's that, where I said I was gonna go off script, and I said, wait, I'm not going to, because I put a new slide in. All right, so gifts. Some gifts are never permissible, and some are permissible, but you have to report them. And then some nominal gifts, this doesn't apply to at all. So what is never acceptable? You can never accept a gift worth more than $100, while you're a member of this board, if the gift is coming from a vendor or a lobbyist, um, again, if you ever have questions on vendor lobbyists, reach out to me ahead of time. Um, you know, even if you're friends with the person, if you're friends with an attorney who represents, um, you know, members, uh, developers before this board that may trip the vendor or lobbyist statute, and you cannot accept a gift from them while you're serving on this board. If it is not a... Oh, and you can never solicit a gift from a vendor or lobbyist. So let's put vendors and lobbyists to the side now. Those are the ones that we're the most strict with. Otherwise, you can't accept a gift unless... It is given or has the appearance of being given to influence your vote. So if someone's coming before you in the next few months, you're aware of it. Even though you're like, this gift isn't going to affect my vote. It still has the appearance of affecting your vote. And you couldn't accept a gift from anyone coming before this board in the near future. Or foreseeable. Or it's foreseeable they're coming before this board. Let's say your vote's not at... at issue. So it's just a friend of yours wants to give you a gift. And I say friend because all these laws do not apply to a relative. A relative could give you a gift and you don't have to report it. So if a friend wants to give you a gift, let's say they have two tickets to a Jaguars game. They're not coming before this board for a vote on anything. They're not trying to influence your vote. That is a permissible gift. But if it's worth more than $100, you have to report it. There's nothing illegal about reporting it. It is a permissible gift. But there's a form called Form 9 that you would have to submit to the state. I'm going to get a little bit into the weeds here, but... By the end, by the last day of the calendar quarter, following the calendar quarter in which you received the gift. So let's say someone wanted to give you two Jaguars tickets for the first home game, regular season home game, which I assume is in September. I don't have the schedule memorized yet. That calendar quarter ends September 30th. Let's say it was a ticket worth more than $100. Five years ago, we never had that problem. That's a joke. because they were horrible. But actually, recently, every time they have a good year, the next year really sucks. So we might go 5 and 12 this year. Who knows? So you would have to file a gift disclosure by December 31st with the Commission on Ethics. If this comes up, this relates to your official duties, you're requiring the law, I'd be happy to help you guys fill out that gift disclosure. I would say gratuities are appreciated, but then I would be violating the ethics laws probably, so I would not say that. My services to you, when it's related to your duties on this board, are free of charge. You're welcome. You could have said that. I'm just kidding. So just know that if it's a gift worth more than $100, unless it's coming from a relative, even if it's your best friend since first grade, you have to report it under Florida law because you're on this board. Any questions on that? Dean, you want to volunteer info from the past? I'm putting you on the spot here.

Let me take it one more time from the top. I got married in October and had to file that form. The ethics team in Tallahassee is fantastic, will answer any questions that you have, walk you through everything. Even they have to file the same form. And the person that I spoke to was saying like, yep, I got married too, I had to do this thing. So I filed it. It was painless, but definitely an invasion of my privacy. Oh, well.

Thank you. Two things. Sorry to put you on the spot. I just kind of blurted it out. And two, you got a pretty cool friend group because you sent every gift you reported. That means everyone gave you something, $100 or more.

Sorry, no. Everyone who gave me a gift, I had to put on that list, yes.

Messing around with you. Thank you for, I don't want to say being forced to volunteer that info. I appreciate it. In the future, I'll ask you ahead of time if... Just like you all should come to me ahead of time, if you see something on the horizon, I should have come to him ahead of time before putting him on the spot. Any questions on gifts? These are some of the penalties under state law. The more egregious the violation, the worse the penalty could be. Impeachment, removal from office suspension, public censure and reprimand, civil penalty, restitution of any benefits received. One other thing, not in these slides, Fill out your annual financial disclosure and make sure you file it. And if you actually have not yet this year, they get serious after August 31st. They kind of give a 60-day grace period. They were due July 1st. So especially if you haven't done it yet, I highly recommend you get it done in the next eight days. All right, so let's talk about the ethics ordinance. Christian emailed it to you all this afternoon. Please have a read, if you can, before your next meeting or probably two meetings from now, right? They're meeting twice a month. Do you guys meet twice a month? I mean, sometimes.

The soonest it would be the second meeting in September. There are going to be applications for the next meeting.

And is that the fourth Monday in September?

The 24th.

September starts on Tuesday. Yeah, 28th. Okay, so I definitely don't have a city council conflict, so I'll be here on the 28th to see if you guys have any feedback. I would appreciate, I haven't gotten into it yet, if you guys have any thoughts, comments that I could convey them. to city council. So I'm going to give you a quick overview of it. A lot of it is bullets summarizing the provisions, which I'll try not to read verbatim, but I'll probably read about half of them verbatim. And then once you've had a chance to maybe also read the six-page policy yourselves, if you have any feedback. You could also, if you know you're not going to be here or you're just better in writing, if you want to send me an email with any thoughts, you're welcome, but certainly not compelled to do so. Awesome. This ordinance, I keep saying ordinance, it's actually a policy that was adopted by resolution. That's a minor distinction with no real difference. This resolution adopting the Code of Ethics was adopted in February of 2020. I put important words in red there, important term. It expresses standards of ethical conduct expected for all public officials. And the third and final bullet is why it applies to you all. Members of boards, commissions, and committees are public officials under this policy. It's also the city council members, the city manager, myself, and you all. So we're all in this together. We all have to be ethical. So a summary of some of the provisions of this ethics policy. First one says that stewardship of the public interest shall be the public official's primary concern. And I kind of knew what stewardship meant, but I thought I should probably spell it out in case someone said, what's stewardship mean? Like, well, it kind of means that. So according to the Google dictionary, not Black's Law Dictionary, not Merriam-Webster's, but what my Google search came back with was stewardship. Careful and responsible management care or control of something entrusted to one's safekeeping. So we need to carefully manage the public interest as part of our duties, both as appointed board members and other public officials. We should comply and uphold all national, state, county, and municipal laws. We should carry these out impartially as we perform our duties. We should be above reproach and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Be respectful to each other. This is probably in the bullet somewhere, but this just popped in my head. I haven't seen you all disagree much. I mean, there'll be split votes, but you all seem to be civil from what I've seen. That's not always the case in other parts of Florida. I mean, you watch a public meeting from Dave Broward of Palm Beach County sometimes. There's once in a great while. There's some doozies. They go after each other, the board members. So the way I heard it phrased once, and I really like it, so I often repeat it. When we disagree, we need to disagree without being disagreeable. We need to be respectful to each other. Refrain from abusive conduct or verbal attacks, either on each other or an applicant or even any members of the public that come up and speak. When you run meetings, if someone's shouting out from the crowd, You know, you're probably going to tell them that, you know, they'll have a chance at public comment to speak or, you know, they'll have their three minutes. Please sit down, but, you know, do it with respect. Don't say sit your behind down or, you know. And if they get, just as an aside, if they get really abusive or just completely raucous and unrespectful, he stepped out. I was going to say we have our safety valve back there, but our safety valve probably stepped out because there is no one in here right now. But when there are people in here, we will have, you know, we have a police officer in here to help protect us when those people, you know, get obtuse. I learned that word from watching the Shawshank Redemption case. It also applies to triangles, I think, but I'm a lawyer because I was not good at math, so I could be wrong on that triangle thing. So perform your duties in accordance with the processes and rules of order. Moving on. Be prepared for your meetings. Try to focus on the business at hand. A lot of these bullets are what I just informally said to you guys over the last minute or two. Do not send texts to each other during the meeting. If you have something to discuss, we're in the sunshine. You all should be discussing it publicly where the public can hear it. Do not take phone calls. A lot of this is common sense stuff. Do not use inappropriate language. Do your best to not arrive late to scheduled meetings. You all seem pretty good about that. It's tougher for the 6 o'clock meetings with rush hour than, for example, the community redevelopment agency. They get off easy. Granted, they might have to leave work early if they have a 9 to 5 job, but their meetings start at 3. The traffic's not as bad at 2.30 as it is at 5.30. But try to get here on time. I'm intentionally going slow because at last week's meeting, Kristen talked for 80 minutes before I was allowed to speak, so this is just payback for him. That's a joke because that would probably be unethical of me. If I did that, I'd probably violate this policy in some fashion because it's that detailed. So base your decisions on merit and evidence. You all know, I assume, if not, Kristen will cover it a little bit more later tonight, that If you have any ex parte discussions with an applicant coming for you in a quasi-judicial hearing, which you have the right to do so because Florida law allows it if we pass a resolution, city council passed a resolution 20-something years ago. But you do have to briefly disclose that on the record at the beginning of a quasi-judicial item. So make sure you disclose your ex parte communication. It's in the ethics code, but it's also required under state law. Do not participate if there's a conflict of interest. We went over that in a little bit of detail five or 10 minutes ago. Comply with the gift laws. A lot of this stuff is what I already went over in state law. It's also in our local policy. I'll just give you guys 30 seconds to read that. The second to last bullet. This applies more to city council members. You all shouldn't be using, putting out letters on city letterhead as a volunteer board member. But for city council members, they can in certain instances, and I would tell them to come to me. We would review state law and ethics opinions, kind of similar to the theme I've been talking about all night. Come to me ahead of time. We'll look into it. We'll reach out to Tallahassee if we have to, and we'll make sure we comply with the law. Last bullet also kind of informally came up a few minutes ago. Do not appear before your own board and do not appear before city council on behalf of a private third party because you're on this board. You know, I've seen members like yourselves in other cities. I've worked for two cities and one county elsewhere in the last 25 years. I've seen members in your seats decide they had to resign. you know, because they wanted to volunteer, but ultimately because of their expertise, similar to the expertise you all have, they could make a lot of money representing the type of people who come up here before this board. It's unfortunate, but I get it. But if at any point you all decide, you know, I need to go back to the consulting side or the representation side, you know, you would just have to resign your position here, which we'd hate to see you go. But We would understand it, but you cannot do both. You cannot represent someone before your board and you cannot represent someone before city council because you're a member of this planning commission. If you ever go speak at another public meeting and just as a member of the public, that is allowed. It's okay to say I'm a member of the planning commission. But if you do so, you should probably then say, my opinions right now are my own and not those of the board. An exception to that would be, and I haven't seen it here, but I've seen it elsewhere, where the board takes formal action that they want to convey a position to another board for some reason, and they nominate one of their members to go show up to that board. If you all ever passed a motion, you know, authorizing one of your board members to go speak to another board with your concerns. In that case, you would say, I'm a member of the Planning Commission and I'm here on its behalf speaking what we debated and what our policy and thoughts are on this for your information. But unless that happens, if you go to another meeting as a member of the public, again, you're welcome to say you're a member of the Planning Commission, but you have to say that what you're saying there is not your personal thoughts and not representing that board. No offensive or inappropriate behavior. I know a lot of this is getting repetitive. I apologize for that, but it just kind of shows you how important it is. Last bullet's another way of saying be nice and just. All right, so penalties. Any potential violations of the ethics code can be reported to the city council, the city manager, or to the city attorney. And then, you know, if it comes into the city attorney or city manager, we would bring it to the city council's attention. And if it comes straight to the city council, they would obviously discuss it at public meeting. But city council then has the power to investigate or direct the city attorney or city manager to investigate. And it's usually the latter due to the Sunshine Law. They'll appoint the city manager and myself and provide a written report to the city council for consideration. You all may recall we had one ethics case. It involved a former member of this board. And it related to their conduct with the public. It didn't relate to something they did at a meeting. I'd be happy to talk to you guys offline. If any of you don't remember or don't know about it and want to learn more, I'd be happy to talk to you one-on-one and give you more background on it. But in that case, I worked and I utilized our, I coordinated with our deputy city manager. The city manager delegated his role to her. Her and I worked with also our HR department because they have expertise in doing investigations. We interviewed the complainant, the member who, whose potential violation was at issue, as well as other witnesses. And ultimately, we came back with a factual report of what happened. And this was our first case. So we decided to do it factual. That's what we thought what the policy required, because ultimately city council would make the final decision. So we did not give them a recommendation. We just provided all the facts to them. And then the legal advice I included to them was their range of options. And these were the range of options in that case. City Council had the authority under the policy to give a... If they found a violation was made, and in that case they did find a violation, they could do a verbal reprimand, a written reprimand, a suspension, temporary suspension of the member of the board, or forfeiture or removal from the appointment or position. And again, just keeping it very... vague, I'd be happy to give you more specifics, you know, in a non-public setting. They gave, in essence, a verbal reprimand. And then that was it for the ethics matter. That person's term ended soon thereafter by way of whatever their actual term was, the time on their term. And that person was not reappointed to the position once their term was up. but a verbal reprimand was the penalty in that case we had. So any questions on what I've covered tonight?

Mr. Chairman, I have one question that's scenario-based. I had the opportunity to participate in the Citizen Information Academy this year, and now we've started our alumni program. It's pretty straightforward, and we have our own code of ethics, the group that may become the Connectors, which is the K of part of SPARC. But as walking through some of the bullets that you pointed out, I don't know if there may be not a conflict, but perhaps confusion created if I were to participate in that role. So maybe don't give me an answer now, but we should think about that. We have our, we attended our, I attended the kickoff meeting last week. We have a code of ethics and all of this, if people are selected to be connectors. But as you're walking through that, that came to mind that it may be, It may fall in that category of attending other meetings and you simply say, I'm not here representing the planning commission because we're there to share other information that the city gives us.

All right. Thank you. I'll reach out to you in the next week or two and we'll talk in more detail and I'll look into that. I appreciate it.

Great. Thank you. They haven't selected me, but okay.

Any other questions, thoughts? Well, then let me conclude by repeating what I said earlier. I'm going to come back on September 28th. And it may be that you all say we have nothing to add. That's fine. But I do want to be here to answer any questions you may come up with between now and then. But you all are also welcome to email me. I guess I got to start over right now. My sense of humor is borderline unethical and I apologize for that. My apologies again to the weasels. But please try to have a read of the six-page policy and feel free to email me any thoughts or just tell me verbally on September 28th. I know you're a veteran of this board. You know a lot of stuff I just went over. But I'd be happy to talk to you sometime in the next few weeks on this matter if you want a refresher on ethics or Perfect. Thank you. I, I hope to, I hope to not see you guys that often because it's usually less controversial stuff if I'm not here, but, but thank you for the work you do, whether it's controversial or not, it's important. Um, and by controversial, I just mean, you know, obviously the, the fun cases. Again, I'm going to stop talking because my sense of humor is not unethical, but probably gets close to the border. Um, I can't talk for 40 minutes about being ethical and then make some borderline unethical zinger, so I'll stop. Thank you all. I'll see you all in a few weeks.

I'm waiting on that.

All right.

You guys ready? Are you excited? No? All right. So we're going to do... It does not, and you don't want me singing, so... Most of this is going to be a review for most of you guys, but in essence, we're going to cover the... um, basics of, uh, what you guys do, um, what your responsibilities are, how your, uh, process works, competence, potential evidence, and then we'll touch on the sunshine laws just a little bit because David kind of overlaps some of that stuff. Um, Some new stuff that we haven't got over before, but was stuff that we should have been, I think, to a degree, is Burden of Proof. I've provided a memo for you guys, and it's got some case law summary. Those are pretty much the foundational cases for a lot of stuff for Florida and land use, but you can look through those if you find it exciting. I do, but, you know, I'm a nerd, so... You guys have a long list of things that you do. A lot of it doesn't come up very often. You are the official local planning agency as designated under Florida statutes, which means you guys are the keepers of the comp plan. All amendments, changes, workshops kind of start with you guys for comp plan stuff and generally the LDC. is an extension of the comp plan. Generally, you're going to make recommendations on changes to the comp plan in LDC as we just did last year. There will be, you know, the periodic updates like we just did this year to the LDC, and then, There are a couple of different types of changes that you will get requests for from applicants. It doesn't happen very much here, but it can. That can include things like textual changes to the comp plan to basically amend the different policies that we have to address a specific property. Land use changes, which are the future land use designation that talks about the uses you can have, the intensities, the densities. The most recent one that we had was the Marina project where we actually created the Marina mixed use in the new comp plan and designated them under that. But most of our land uses are pretty well set in our code, in our comp plan. And then obviously you'll get, you've seen these before, but planning developments and then RD, which is redevelopment districts, which are PUDs downtown. Those are site-specific zoning that has unique elements to it for that specific project. And then larger development applications are usually tied to that, things like Adventure Landing, which came in as a PUD. And then, of course, your conditional uses that you approve, approve with conditions or deny. And then your bylaws that you adopted and can amend. So, there are basically two categories of things that you guys do. There are quasi-official, which are the official things that you decide. And... stop here. So if anyone has any questions on those or wants to make an appeal, they do not go to city council, they go to court. For non-quasi-judicial, this is a bulk of the things that you guys don't see very often. All those are recommendations that you make to council. You still hold a public hearing, but it is not technically quasi-judicial because it's just a recommendation. So quasi-judicial, which for you guys, again, is conditional use applications. It's based on competent substantial evidence. It's reviewed against the LDC criteria. It's based on the facts that are present and in the record. And then again, you're the final arbiter of those applications. Non-quasi-judicial, it's based on criteria in the comprehensive plan. It's rooted in state law and our comprehensive plan. basically covers types of uses, residential densities. There is no guaranteed right to change a comp plan because that is something that's crafted by the community and is basically the constitution of land use in the city. So people can ask to change it, but unlike conditional uses, there's no inherent right for you guys to basically do anything but hear the case. Non-quasi-judicial, which are all the things you make recommendations on, those can be brought by a property owner or an applicant, city council, us, staff, which was the current complaint in LDC. Or you guys can make recommendations that we can take to council, and those may result in changes that come back to you for consideration. Excuse me, continuing with that. So applicants may request amendments to the future land use. Those are the categories and the uses. We have a couple types of residential single family, medium density, high density, and then several commercial categories. That would be the kind of changes fundamental aspect of that property.

Let's see, covered future land use amendments.

So there are things that are basically site plan specific comp plan amendments. We don't, again, see them here very often. The marina is probably the closest thing, but that didn't have any specific site plan associated with it. And then mostly this comes up during PEDs and RDs, which are rezonings that have a site plan attached to them. They'll have a list of uses, either permitted, prohibited. There may be unique parking requirements. There may be unique setbacks or signage. Those are all things that are, in essence, unique to that specific property. So for Adventure Landing, they have certain... densities and they were able to move their green space around to be internal to the buildings that they're constructing because it's really an amenity for the people that live there. Those kind of things that are outside the strict boundaries of the code but still meet the general standards of what's supposed to happen and how it relates to the internal residents and then the outside to the rest of the city. Again, you're going to make recommendations on these, but you guys have... sort of the first crack at it and your discussions can influence what happens with council if people come and make some points to you guys that are really valid and they don't necessarily go to city council that's where you know the minutes from your meeting and the report that goes to council with the recommendation or potential conditions um can have an impact so i know it seems like because you just make recommendations they go unheard but that's not true they have resulted in a lot of uh lively discussion at the council level. There are those that watch all of your meetings and they come to council with questions after they watch your meeting. So you're not ignored. So burden of proof is basically who has the ball in the game and is trying to score, in essence. So it is basically the role of somebody in the process, be it the applicant, the public, or the board, to demonstrate compliance with your criteria based on evidence and testimony that they present. So that generally starts with the applicant. They come in with their application and they have their supporting materials. They have maybe some experts that they've hired to testify. They may have some surveys or architectural renderings. That's all evidence they're presenting to meet their burden, which is demonstrate to you guys that they meet the criteria in the code for what they're applying for. We've talked about this before, but some of our other boards struggle a little bit. Generally, it's a good idea to let the applicant go through their entire presentation, make their points, and then ask questions afterwards. Because one, that's really their opportunity to present their evidence. So we don't want to get them sidetracked. And two, you guys see a lot of just general citizens. And they're not used to being in front of a microphone. And a lot of them get nervous. And when you start asking questions, they get flustered. So it's best to let them go through their whole spiel. And then you can ask questions after. Yes.

It came up in the last meeting when the applicant is doing their presentation. Is there a time limit on that presentation?

Generally, no, because they're the ones who are investing the time and energy. I mean, if it goes on for an hour, it's up to the board's discretion, but we generally don't have a set time limit on what they can present. Okay. You know, the last one's like, it got a little...

It's like, oh, we've been doing this for 45 minutes, and we're not talking about anything.

Yeah, I mean, I think the chair has the discretion to say, basically, you guys have repeated yourself three times. If you don't have any new information, let's move on. When it goes from information to sales pitch. But, you know, for the most part, if they're going through their presentation, they've got a slideshow, that kind of thing, they should be allowed to complete that. So once they make their presentation, you guys have asked your questions, you open the public hearing. The public hearing is the opportunity for the public to then present their burden of proof, which is we either agree with the applicant and here's why, or we don't and here's why. They have to meet the same burden, which is competent substantial evidence, you know, expert testimony. It has to be, it can't just be an opinion. What do you call it? Signature sheets and those kind of things don't really, I mean, they carry a certain amount of public perception, but they aren't generally considered competent evidence. If you're going to make a comment about property values, it's easy to say, but you need to have something that is evidentiary to say, yes, this will affect property values. I'm a real estate agent or I'm a licensed appraiser, and this is what I think will happen based on my experience versus I live next door and this shit is going to ruin my life and wreck my property values. Maybe relevant, probably not competent evidence. Now, they can bring pictures and they can bring other information. There are plenty of smart, intelligent, well-educated people in this city, so that's not to say that they won't have stuff, but just because you're upset doesn't mean that what you're presenting rises to the level of evidence. Once the public hearing is closed, this then reverts to you guys as the sort of final burden of proof. You have to take in all the evidence that you were given, which includes the staff reports, the applicant's information, their presentation, anything that the public brought forward. And then from there, you guys have to decide whether all of that results in meeting the criteria in the code or not. And so, ultimately, that decision is going to be based on what you gathered as your packet that we give you, and then information that's collected at the meeting. It's important to recognize that information that's gathered outside the meeting, even by you guys, if you go to a site and look at it, or you live nearby and you're really familiar with the traffic, you guys can't generate evidence. You guys can have your opinions, but evidence is something that comes to you. The only time you would be relaying actual competent evidence would be something like ex parte communication because that happened outside. But your expertise as someone who lives in the community or someone who's had a problem with this site before, that's not your role to kind of create that evidence. You have to base your decision on what's in front of you. And part of that is the public needs to have an opportunity to hear that and respond to it before the meeting. It's not really part of the record if it's your opinion or your experience. There are definitely some cases where that might not be true, but for the most part, your job is to hear and decide, not create the supporting information. Just to breeze through these really quickly, we are required by the state to have a comp plan, which we do. We're required to review it periodically. We kind of redid the whole thing this time, but every five to seven years, you have to go through a review. When you have a comp plan, you're obligated to adopt a code to implement that comp plan. Because again, the plan is very general. The LDC is all the specifics. Your land development code has to be consistent with your comprehensive plan. So that's why we did the plan first to kind of set out the rules and then the land development code implements all those policies. The land development code is open to interpretation. Not everything is perfect. That responsibility falls to the planning director. They have a certain procedure on how it's reviewed. There are some guardrails, things like we have a national... What is it called? Basically, it's a... collection of types of businesses and how they are classified. It's a national standard. We use that if we have a use request that seems similar, we can kind of find a comparable and see if it fits. But for the most part, the planning director is the one who is in charge of the land development code and they make the interpretation. So that is not the mayor, it's not the city manager, it's not even the city attorney. It's just the planning director. That's the one. Yes. Thank you. The blue book is what we call it. Although it's online now. Our land development code has what's called exclusive uses. That means if a use is not listed in a zoning category as either permitted or conditional, it's considered excluded or prohibited. Obviously, like I said, there are some interpretation about what a use is and how it fits into the category. But as an example, if you're in a single-family zoning district, you can't put in apartments. Multifamily is not a use listed in that category. You can't ask for it, and there's no way to basically put it in there through some kind of... variance or you know uh conditional use or anything like that there's no relief valve it's not allowed in that district so if they wanted to add that use they would have to pursue some kind of rezoning um which we'll get into in a little bit but uh it's helpful because if you are going through like some of our light commercial districts will have general uses like professional office. If you go to a more intense category, you'll say professional office with storage, which means that storage and materials and equipment and vehicles isn't allowed in those lighter categories because it's not specifically noted. So you guys have your outlined authority and You can, again, for quasi-judicial things where you make the final determination, you can approve them, you can approve them with conditions, or you can deny them. But for your recommendations, you can basically suggest conditions. Conditional uses are, again, in the zoning districts are a list of uses that are allowed. The first part are basically uses that are permitted without any additional oversight other than meeting the building code and parking and all that kind of stuff. Conditional uses are also a list of uses that come to you guys. They're generally things that might be more intense or might have the potential for creating a nuisance. So you guys have the opportunity to look at that as a public body and decide whether or not it's appropriate or if it needs some mitigation through conditions, basically to tweak it to make sure it makes everybody generally unhappy but not miserable. There are specific standards for conditional use approvals. You guys have seen them a million times, but those are the standards you judge things against, again, based on the information that's presented at the hearing. I'm just going to kind of blitz through these really quick because you see them all the time. As I mentioned, the land development code has to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. So if an application meets the criteria and is basically allowed to be used conditionally, it should be consistent with the comprehensive plan. If somebody is suggesting something that for whatever reason may be inconsistent, not just the use, but there may be environmental aspects or transportation aspects that are other parts of the comprehensive plan. We will tell you that we don't think this is consistent. And these are the strategies that we think it violates. For the most part, what you guys normally see doesn't really get sideways of that criteria. In my report, I always talk about the surrounding uses and what we think they're going to be consistent. Obviously, when you get commercial next to residential, you can have some complications. You get industrial next to multifamily, those can cause some complications. Obviously, we're going to make a recommendation based on that. We generally look at the properties in the vicinity, but if it's something that's going to be really intense, it may have effects that reach beyond just the immediate neighbors. But again, that's part of what you guys are here to determine, whether or not it is going to create a problem or not. Basically, this is where you can put potentially conditions on things. So if you have a use that might be a little bit problematic for the surrounding properties, but isn't to the level that it's actually a full nuisance, you can propose things like for outside seating, additional landscape bumpers or hours of operation to help mitigate some of those impacts. So you guys have a lot more flexibility than we do at the staff level. We say, this is the rule, you have to follow it. You guys can say, you can do this, but you need to do these other things to really make it work with where you're putting it. There are generally uses that are allowed inside the zoning district, which may be fine in that zoning district, but not necessarily in the same place because of other surrounding uses. We have some things that are specifically excluded, like bars and churches can't be next to each other, or multiple bars technically shouldn't be next to each other. Don't worry about the downtown, it's a lot of pre-existing issues. But in essence, there are some uses that aren't compatible, but there are also inherent vested rights to have those uses. So again, you guys have the flexibility to sort of decide whether it makes sense where it is, and if so, what things might need to be done to make it more compatible.

So...

Property values, like I said, generally requires some kind of expert to demonstrate that. I don't think anyone here at the city is really qualified to make those determinations. We may kind of allude to it in some capacity if it's obvious, but for the most part, no one here is going to be able to give you expert testimony, but the applicant might or the neighbors might. Public facilities are really going to come down to... City water sewer reuse. Power it can look at things like street capacity or sidewalks those kind of things if we think there's an issue it'll be part of our report generally speaking, we have enough capacity and all of our utilities to cover. almost anything in the city, particularly water and sewer. Electric, there may be some areas that need to be, may have some upgrades or things like that, but for the most part, we have pre-application meetings for bigger projects before it ever gets to you, so we'll identify those problems ahead of time and usually discourage them from even applying until they've worked out those engineering-related issues. Ingress and egress. That's one of the things we actually do quite a bit on the staff level is look at where projects are going to enter and exit. The Dick Mondell's on the south side is a good example. DOT basically says you can have one driveway on 3rd Street because it's a state road. And we work with them to figure out how the traffic flow would work, where they could have cars stacking on site. if they were wildly popular where the cars might back up into the street. Um, all of that was before it got to your level. Um, and then once it gets through your level for like the outside seating or they were serving alcohol, it would then go through a full engineering and building review, uh, for the construction of the project. And we'd look at it even further and they would have engineers and we would review their information. Um, we charge mobility fees for traffic impacts, that kind of thing. So, um, Again, if we think it's a problem, we'll mention it, but the public may bring up things that we're not aware of. So these are all criteria you guys get to consider. There are a lot of things in the land development code that are not related to what you guys do, but are related to the project. We have parking standards, landscape standards, we have protections for wetlands, and we have protections for estuary properties near the river. making sure everything works under that category may involve, especially for like older commercial properties, getting a variance, which you guys don't necessarily see, but we will obviously say they're also gonna go to the Board of Adjustment to seek a variance. If they get through you guys, but don't get through them, they may not go forward. There's sort of different parts of the equation, but it's something that we look at. And if you think there's a problem that may not have been addressed or you require something in a condition like a buffer that they generally can't meet on site or would need to adjust their design, that may result in something that they have to go to the board of adjustment for after your meeting. But the layout isn't... It's a big part of how things work here because we're very small and the lots are very small. So making sure that it meets those requirements, we generally, again, talk about it at the pre-application meeting, but we may raise those points to you guys as well. There are things in the code for bigger projects related to things like open space, stormwater, recreation. As I said, with Adventure Landing, they had a bunch of those requirements to meet. When they did their PUD, they were allowed to kind of adjust some of the locations of those and how they were concentrated to sort of better serve the residents that are going to live there. But for those big projects, again, we'll go through those elements in our review and kind of bring them to your attention. But they're all things that are scattered throughout the land development code. With the new LDC, we created required conditions, basically, for certain uses that we thought were always going to be intense and always potentially cause issues that needed to be mitigated. So right now, there's only, I don't know, seven or eight. uses that have specific criteria, but the example is things like the accessory dwelling unit. There's about seven criteria that they have to meet without even coming to you guys as conditions to even be able to get that use. You may say there's additional things they need to do, but they have to at least meet those as part of their application. So that was a way to kind of prevent the sort of constant discussion and potential conditions and considerations by you guys when we know these are going to be an issue, we know the neighbors may not like them, how can we mitigate that up front? I think there will probably be more that get added to this as we go along. There's been some discussion of things like smoke shops that may have some additional criteria, hours of operation, things like that. So That list will probably expand over time. It's a pretty common element of a lot of land development codes. I don't know why we didn't have it before, but we do now. And it gives us the ability to sort of control these things up front and saves a little bit of the debate and pain on your side. Okay, so we are required to provide you with a staff report. The staff report, as you're aware, covers the criteria, gives you general background on the property, what the use is, what may have been there before, if there were known code issues. But you obviously get that ahead of time. I say this a lot, I don't know that It really becomes, there's really a need in a lot of cases, but when you guys get that staff report, you're welcome to call me if you have questions. Some of you email me all the time. I don't necessarily hear from everybody, but I mean, you don't have to wait for the meeting. Talking to staff is not a sunshine violation, and we're here to provide information and sort of clarification on things. So feel free to reach out. That's what we're here for. Obviously, the application and staff report is going to be available online to the public and the applicant at the same time. you guys get to hold a public hearing. And as I mentioned with the burden of proof, it kind of goes through those stages, but you're going to allow the applicant to speak, you're going to allow the public to speak, and then you're going to look at that request and decide if it's approvable or if it needs conditions or if it should be denied. All of that's going to be based on the standards that are in the code that we just kind of glossed through. So... City Council. I'm not sure what this slide was supposed to be, but I think it's incorrect. Basically, I think these are... Yeah, we're just gonna skip over that, because I don't know what it's about. So these are, I'm guessing, amendments to the LDC itself. Hang on, let me just... Yes, these are rezonings. Okay, sorry. So you guys make a recommendation to the council based on the same criteria that they review for amendments to the zoning map. So the first thing is, can you do this zoning designation in this land use category? So if it's residential and they want to put in the commercial zoning, they would have to change the land use and the comp plan as well. Again, you guys don't see these very often, but there are some spots downtown that will probably require an RD rezoning, so these will come up. The rezoning can't necessarily conflict with the other portions of the LDC. For standard rezonings that can address things like setbacks and lock coverages that may be different in RDs and PUDs, that may be something that gets tweaked as part of that process. You can't basically implement a zoning that would conflict with the existing uses on the property. So if I have an existing multifamily building and I want to rezone it to commercial and there's people that live there, that may not be appropriate. The impact on public facilities, again, these are things that we're going to go through and get letters from the various utilities to say, yes, we have capacity. No, we don't have capacity. This may require additional infrastructure investments. Adventure Landing and the Marina are both going to be contributing to a new lift station that's going to be needed to move sewage from those facilities to the wastewater plant. So those are examples where, yes, there would be an issue, but we're addressing it through the development process. So they would basically contribute fees that would go towards building a new lift station. It depends on the project and how Public Works chooses to do it. I think in this case, because initially there was some hope that the timing between the two projects would be a little bit more consistent, so they were going to basically share the cost and build it. The marina's kind of fallen behind, so at this point I think Public Works is going to take on sort of a two-stage redevelopment of that. There's the pumps and the size of those pumps, and then there's the actual well that collects the fluid. Those can be adjusted to... help with capacity and moving the sewage. So they may do it in sort of two stages where they upgrade the pumps now and make a bigger tank later. But the developer is responsible for those costs that are incurred. So either way, however, it works out best for Public Works and Silas, of course. We have a lot of very strict environmental standards. They are contained in the comprehensive plan and the land development code. There are obviously general standards like protection of water, air, that kind of thing. But given our delicate ecology here between the oceanfront and then the Riverside, we have a lot of wetlands and natural estuarine grass areas and lots of different ecosystems. So there are very strict protections built into the code to provide buffering and limitations on what you can build in those areas. So that would be something that we would look at as well and you guys would consider as part of your request. Not to keep beating on Adventure Landing, but... They had to go through a process with FEMA to have their sort of flood zones adjusted. And then they have a bunch of conservation land that they had to buffer as part of that project to make sure they weren't having any impact on it. Part of it is a nearly two-acre stormwater pond they had to build so none of their stormwater goes into the creek but goes into a pond where it collects all the bad stuff from the sidewalks and driveways and parking spaces. Again, property value is one of those things that for a big project, citizens may get an expert. The condo buildings might say, hey, this project is going to have a dramatic impact on us at the beach because now we can't see the ocean. So that's, again, not something that we really get into, but it is one of the things you look at, and that's the kind of information that would be provided by the applicant or the citizens through expert testimony or studies or appraisals. oh so um again not a huge thing here because we don't have a lot of undeveloped land um there's a sort of a standard of not having um leapfrog development where you start having urban sprawl where you develop into areas where there's not really all the infrastructure and all the roads and there's not really a need for all those densities but It's an area that's easier to develop and cheaper to develop, so things start to move out in those directions. We're pretty well built out. The only time this really becomes an issue with consistent development is we get people who want to come in and rezone one piece of property because maybe it had a duplex on it historically, but it's always been zoned single family and they want to rebuild that duplex, but they can't under that zoning category. So we're like, hey, can we change this one lot to multifamily even though I'm in the middle of a neighborhood? We call that spot zoning and we generally say no. Technically, if they really wanted to pursue it, they could apply and go through the process, but we strongly discourage it, and I don't know that there's anyone who's really spent the money to do that. Now, for P&Es and RDs, especially downtown with RDs, these are single lot projects, but they're intense commercial projects that are filling in a spot in the downtown that's vacant. So it's actually encouraged in the CRA plan to go through that process because the city gets a little bit more say on the design and the impacts and the CRA can talk about the architecture. So generally that's a good thing. It gives us a little bit more control. So one of the things that kind of a standard land use criteria, but without going into too much stuff about takings and Burt Harris, we'll cover that in a little bit. But generally speaking, when you're looking at a piece of property that they want to do something, you ask the question, is this the only place they can do it? And should they get a rezoning because of that? Or are there other properties that make more sense that they could either rezone or move to that are already zoned appropriately? Again, we don't have a lot of big projects where this really happens, but there are times where people wanna come in and do things that are not allowed in the particular commercial or residential category that they wanna do. So it becomes a question of, should we allow that rezoning or should we tell them, hey, there's plenty of property over here. You should go look at that. Zonings can't be conditioned unless they're PUDs or RDs. You can put conditions on them. But if somebody says, I want to make this property multifamily and it's currently single family, you guys can't say yes, but only if you do these things. It is yes or no. I can approve this or I don't. So this question of appropriate locations and whether it warrants the rezoning is important. One of the things that's come up in the last couple of years is called the Live Local Act. That takes some of the ability of the Planning Commission and City Council to have a say in some of these projects. It falls to the administrative staff to basically review them, make sure they meet these criteria the state set up. and then approve them without going through a public hearing. So there will be cases where they sort of seem like they're rezonings, but they're very specific projects that fall under very specific criteria that we have to do at the staff level. So I'm just gonna breeze through this really quick. You're familiar with eminent domain where somebody buys a house and then pays the person and builds a highway through the middle of it. Very traditional sort of governmental taking. The state of Florida has a bit broader definition and in essence it says that you can't create a bunch of laws and restrictions on a property that prevents them from doing what they should be allowed to do on that property normally. It's not a hard set rule and it's not clearly defined because it has a lot of flexibility and has a lot of interpretation built into it. The long and short of it is you have to demonstrate that you're going to be able to do the thing that you're saying you're not allowed to do. and have made some kind of steps to move towards that. The best example here are the height entitlements. So you had a handful of properties that were in some process of review. They had submitted site plans. They had gone through engineering. They had done something to seek approval from the city. And then in that process, we changed the height requirements. And so there were, I think, nine properties in total that all basically sued us and went before a judge and said, hey, we were doing this project and they changed the rules on us. And they're basically, through a Burt Harris Act, taking our property rights. And the judge agreed. So we're down to just a handful, but they all have height entitlements. And those entitlements are tied to the project they had at the time, which is why things like Margaritaville are 80 feet. And then the property that's where Delicombe is, I think is 55 feet because those were the heights that they were entitled to. because of the projects at the time. Again, we worked very hard to not trigger this when we go through the process. So we're going to basically, the attorney and I will come through and say, hey, here's what we think is happening. Maybe we should look at this in a little bit more detail. Again, that's just talking about actual investment in time and money to... So... Important takeaway is there is no inherent right to get a conditional use unless they provide evidence that demonstrates they meet the criteria. If they demonstrate that they meet the criteria and nobody provides evidence to the contrary, you have an obligation basically to approve it if it meets the criteria. you get to determine if it meets the criteria based on the evidence that's presented. But arguably, if it is a very clear case that yes, they meet all the requirements, you guys can't invent a reason to not approve it. Again, we're gonna provide you with as much information and interpretation as possible. If it looks sketchy, you'll see David here and you'll know. Very quickly, if somebody doesn't like what you guys did, they go to court. And when they go to court, a judge is gonna review what you guys did and decide whether or not you did it correctly. Very infrequently does a judge look at the contents of what was requested and say yes or no, you can't do that in the city, because we're a home rule state, so you guys are the authority on what is allowed here. The only thing a judge is really gonna look at 95% of the time is whether you followed your procedures correctly. Did you address the criteria? Did you base it on evidence? Did you allow the public to speak? If you check all those boxes, more often than not, a judge will say, yeah, you're fine, you're good. If they find for some reason that you didn't do everything correctly, it almost always comes back to you as a second hearing. This is one of those areas where if David was here, he'd probably be lecturing you on the fact that the important thing that you guys can do to help yourselves and help us in situations where there's a challenge is make sure that you have a robust discussion that ties the evidence to the criteria. So if you can say, hey, this isn't something we should approve because it doesn't meet this criteria based on this piece of paper, clear cut and dry. Judge is probably not gonna mess with it. If you guys just say, yep, we approve it, and don't talk about it, there might be a chance that gets pushed back to you if a citizen decides to challenge it. So it's just important that you have that discussion and make a logical connection between what you have to review and what the criteria are. I'm just going to go through that.

That's all the same.

You guys can read this stuff. But again, the long and short of it is it's going to come back to you for a hearing if a judge doesn't like it. Real quick, because you've been through this a million times. Sunshine law. Don't talk to each other unless you're at a meeting. You can have breakfast. Don't talk about board business at the meeting or about board business outside of the meeting. the whole concept of Sunshine is that the public gets to participate in the process and they know what's going on. So if you guys meet, make a decision, and then show up and just vote, then they didn't get to participate. As David talked about, you can meet with council people, but it shouldn't be two council people because they're not supposed to meet outside of a meeting and talk about city business. Generally, if you're not up here, just don't talk about city business or at least business that would come before you. If two of you get together for some reason, we have to advertise it as a meeting. If you do some type of communication that doesn't happen in person, including things online, texting, emailing, all that kind of stuff, that also constitutes a violation of the sunshine. David made the comment about not texting on the dais. Jacksonville got in a little bit of trouble a couple years ago with council people texting each other in a third party in the audience. So, yeah, generally just don't. do that. Don't text while you're on the dials. That way no one can ask the question. Don't represent the city on any social media or the board as some kind of expert in the field. Again, you're allowed to talk to each other about football games or whatever, just not material. And you can't have me take what you say and give it to somebody else that's considered a liaison. So can't go around the rules by having a third party. Let me just cover that. Oh, again, you can always talk to us. Staff is not covered under Sunshine limitations as we're not an elected or appointed body. We're staff. We're here to help you guys answer questions, that kind of stuff. Yeah, again, you shouldn't represent yourself in front of the board as the planning commission unless you go through the process David discussed. Again, you make a formal recommendation to the council, so it's rare that you would need to go and speak as well. And then, you know, if you see three councilmen together discussing something, maybe just don't talk to them because that might be a problem and you don't want to be involved. Yeah, so don't text or email during the meeting. Don't text or email each other about city business because everything you do is potentially a public record when it concerns what you do on the dais. So if you guys email each other and we get a public records request for your emails, that is a potential violation. So if it's not city business related, fine. If it's about applications that are coming before you, don't talk about it. Obviously, you get your applications and staff reports electronically, so you can use your computers and stuff while you're up there. That's the extent of what I had. I know it was a lot. I was trying to go quickly. We were here until like 8.30 with the last meeting, as David mentioned. We had a lot of questions, to be fair, but that's why I let him go early.

This is it. It's your big chance. Just one. Quick, easy question. In the last meeting we had, the applicant mentioned being surprised by the staff's opinion to approve or deny the application. But you just said that you shared that information with them. They're not surprised by it in this meeting, right?

They did not read the email.

That was what I thought.

Yeah, and there was some debate about it, and I had to pull up my email after the meeting and say, no, no, here it is. So we generally try and do that six to seven days before the hearing, so there's plenty of time. But yes, they get a copy. Doesn't mean they like it.

Y'all are awesome. We appreciate your help. Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Yes, thank you.

We do not have a meeting on the 14th. We will have a meeting on the 28th, so you can talk to the city attorney about ethics. I didn't really have any other announcements except I just learned that our former planning director, who you all, I think, know, has been named the local government official of the year by the Florida Planning Association. So she will be recognized in Miami. They give out about four awards a year. The last local person that won this was Lori Boyer. That gives you some context. So it's a big deal. So, yeah, I wasn't going to go to the conference, but then, like, I'm kind of obligated now.

And, of course, she's no longer with us.

Yeah, you know, it's an unfortunate situation. But I think she's recovering. She's doing better. So that's good.

Do we need to close this or we just move on?

Yeah, this is a meeting. Yeah, we'll close it.

Yeah, close it out. Meeting's closed.