Community Development Board - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. This meeting of the Community Development Board is called to order on August 20th. Welcome, everyone. Would everybody please join me? Can you hear me now? There we go. I'll say that again. The meeting of the Community Development Board is called to order on August 20th. Welcome, everyone. Please join me in your eyes for the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll be giving the invocation today. O Lord, our God, heavenly King and Comforter, we come before you this afternoon with gratitude for the community we serve. We lift up our prayers for our nation, our city,

Andrew Hupp. Please remember to turn off your cell phones so they do not become a distraction during the meeting. Please also refrain from having conversations in this room so we might hear all the testimony given today. To ensure a complete record of this board's actions, we ask that each individual wishing to speak, including the applicant, speak into the microphone at the podium in front of us. Clearly state your name and spell your last name for the clerk. And I will ask all those in attendance today who plan to speak to please rise and be sworn in by the clerk. Thank you. Agendas of today

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Next item on our agenda is for items that are not on the agenda. If there's anybody here today wishing to address this board concerning any matter that does not appear on today's agenda, please identify yourselves. Seeing none, we will move on. This board has adopted a consent agenda format, and the consent items are identified as such on the agenda. Consent agenda items are those items for which the Planning and Development Department recommends approval, and the applicant is in agreement with an

Motion made and second. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Those two items have been approved through the consent agenda process. Continuing on now with our case of one matter remains, which is a level two case. All level two cases, such as a flexible development, are considered quadraditional hearings. In a quadraditional hearing, the Community Development Board reviews the application, the staff report, correspondence, and all evidence presented today, and makes a final decision subject to appeal. This board has previously quali

Can you spell your last name for the floor?

Second. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Who else wished? I think there were three people total.

Anybody wish to move to grant party status?

Second? Second. Motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? We'll be granted party status. Have a seat. Ma'am? Good afternoon.

Anybody wish to move grantor party status?

Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Continuing on then. One more? Sorry, I didn't see you, sir. Please go ahead. Didn't mean to do that to you.

May I wish to move the grant project status?

Motion made and seconded. Did you say your last name again, Wes? I just wanted to make sure it was clear so we went to the next step afterwards. All right, thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Anybody else? One more person. Okay.

Two people from the same address, co-owners? Your thoughts on that, council?

Okay. Does anybody wish to move the grant party status to Mr. Jeffrey?

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Anybody else wish to seek party status? Got one more coming up.

Did you receive formal notice of the hearing today due to your proximity to the site or just how did you find about today's case? Yeah, I got a formal notice. Can you spell your name for the record, please?

Thank you. Anybody wish to grant Mr. Ceriani party status?

Motion made and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Okay. All right. Anybody else before I move on to starting the process? Okay. The Board has granted party status to Ms. Arrote, Ms. Cattarino, Ms. Welsh, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Jeffrey, and Mr. Ceriani. This entitles the attendees additional rights. You can personally testify. You can present evidence by documentary submittal. You can present witnesses. You can conduct cross-examination. You can present argument, and you have the right to appeal a decision of the Board. So we will now proceed with this matter. Staff wi

Do I have a motion to accept Ms. Dole as expert?

Do I have a motion to accept him as a witness? Expert witness, I'm sorry.

Do I have a second? Second. Motion made and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? All right. Do any of the parties that are here today, either those seeking party status, have any expert witnesses they want to qualify? You're the applicant. Do you have an expert witness you want to qualify? Myself. Yourself? Please come forward.

Right now we just need to qualify you as an expert based on your qualifications.

Just for the record, I want to jump in and state your name first. Oh, I'm sorry. That would be helpful.

Does anybody wish to move to accept Mr. Pensa as an expert?

Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Anybody else need to be qualified as an expert before we begin? The rest of the process goes smoothly. All right. Thank you. Ms. Dole, please proceed.

If staff could look up that code section to address Mr. Ushman. Yeah, I think it's relevant.

He's looking for that right now. In the meantime, the elevations that you showed, the one that showed the east elevation for Mars Avenue, That's as it would be right now after this site is demoed, but the property between Mars Avenue and that's still going to be for future development, correct? Correct. So that would be the current elevation, but it might change because...

But that would ultimately change as far as the street view from Mars?

We're driving our technology engineers crazy today. Sorry.

Does anybody have any other questions of staff?

Actually, I didn't know if there were other questions we could address.

So I'm correct. To the abutting street, but there's two streets here. There's three streets. Actually, three. There's three, but there's going to be a parcel.

She just read the code. I mean, it's up to us to interpret it. She read the code. Okay. There's three streets.

Chair Greg Musil? I think for today's purposes, though, I would like some input from staff on that same topic of how a budding street is defined. Is it defined by the street that the entrance comes in off of? Because it's on the corner here. So you've got front. It's defined by how much frontage there is. Is there a definition of that that would be instructive to us when we deliberate and vote?

So the definition, and I caught that because I was looking at the definition before. Definitions are special. I caught that, and it's interesting because from my perspective, we'll deliberate afterwards in terms of abutting, but it could be either one of the streets, either one of the three. While one of them is not going to be directly abutting in the future, whether it just be the access off Mars, you still have two streets that are abutting. That's the definition. We'll leave it at that. We'll have our discussion afterwards after deliberations. Does anybody have any other questions for staf

Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for staff before I move on to the applicant's presentation? Seeing none, if we have more questions, we'll get it on cross-examination. Thank you. Does the applicant wish to make a presentation?

Gave them roughly about two minutes. So I'll give those with party status about one minute since they have half the amount of time for presentation that you normally have. Okay. Does anybody have questions of the applicant?

As for today, it's still considered a vacant parcel as for today.

Oh, I understand. It's good to note. Yeah.

Anybody have any other questions of the applicant before we run out of party status?

Thank you. We may have more questions for you on cross-examination.

Appreciate that. Thank you. All right. I'm going to go in the order in which you all sought party status, just because it's easier to follow my notes because then I can read them. Ms. Arete, do you want to come forward? We'll allow six minutes instead of five, just because of the additional time allowed to the applicant.

You need to be speaking into the microphone, I'm sorry.

Got it. Thank you very much. Before you go, does anybody have any questions?

It seems to block the road. It seems like it's left only. That's the left where it goes down that way. There's a cut that's not lined up in the street.

Left into Saturn from Gulf of Bay, but not left out. Right. Right, so anybody leaving. The median goes too far.

Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Where did my list go? Sorry about that. Of course, I mixed up the notes, so now I've misplaced my list. Give me a moment, and I'll get it here in a second. It was a lady whose last name began with a C. There you go. Ms. Caterino. Thank you.

My last name is Bucica, so, you know, have some practice with difficult names.

Can you confirm that you were sworn in just...

CHAIRMAN BRYANT ROWE. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you very much. Next, we would have Ms. Welsh.

Put them there, and they can zoom in a little bit.

Can I make a suggestion for you? Those are great questions to ask on cross-examination of either the applicant or the city and their analysis of the sound report. So that would be very good to keep in mind. I'm not giving you legal advice. Yeah, I understand. There's stuff in there that I would have the same questions about. And they have a report so they can do that. Do you have anything further? I didn't want to cut you off. Does anybody have any questions of Ms. Walsh?

Next we would have Daniel Jeffrey. or Welsh as he calls you, but you know.

CHAIRMAN BRYANTLE. Does anybody have any questions of Mr. Jeffrey? Seeing none, thank you very much. CHAIRMAN BRYANTLE. Thank you. CHAIRMAN BRYANTLE. The other Mr. Jeffrey, Fred Jeffrey.

Anybody have any questions? Seeing none, Mr. Sirianni.

That takes care of our Presentations of party status individuals. Does the city have any cross-examination it wants to do?

Does the applicant have any cross-examination it wants to do? And so we're clear. Cross-examination would be asking those who spoke to clarify some of the things they said. It's not the second opportunity for you to test. I know that. And that was my hesitation. Too many people come up and do the wrong thing.

Thanks. Do you have any further questions?

Ms. Larocca, did you have any questions for any of the people who presented today? Ms. Caterino? Ms. Welsh? Come up to the microphone, please. Can't do it from there. We've got to make it a part of the public record.

That would probably be the applicant since they're presenting it as part of their package. Applicant, okay. So Mr. Pence, she has some questions about the acoustic study.

Well, the applicant comes forward with that as far as what's in our materials. It was kind of blurry in his presentation, the handout that I got as far as the numbers, the decibels and so on. But if you go into the public set documents starting on page 150, three is where the sound study stuff really has data that would be relevant to her question. Because I was looking for that myself when she asked her question earlier. So if you go ahead and pose your question. Because he's right behind you to answer.

And for us in our paper, that's page 154, the PDF that we have.

There's a duplex there as well. What's the address of that duplex? I believe it's 308 or 312. Yeah, 308. 308. Because the location seems to be right between 308 and 312, right between her unit and that unit. Her unit seems to be to the left of the device that was capturing the sound, and the other one seems to be north of it, just from the way I'm looking at the images.

On this table here, the last column, the one that's furthest to the right, is what they're picking up now? I just want to make sure that we're understanding it.

If you look, I have a different question that I'm going to come to after we kind of get yours clarified because I want to make sure I understand it. So staying on that line six, if you go back a little bit just over so we're kind of following along. So the first dark blue column, calculation 1-1, that would be where it would go to... if there was no sound mitigation. So instead of being in a range of 49 to 55, it would be 55.4. So it would be going up with the addition of the car wash sounds. But then with the sound measures, it would be, it would come back down to around 50. The numbers in the packet, I guess that chart might have been updated because... There were my line six looks different.

Okay. And just so we're clear, because I mentioned page numbers before, there's an earlier – A newer study is earlier in that PDF. It begins on page five. And the chart that he's got there is on page seven of our PDF with those numbers there. And the rest of the study follows it. So that was, I was looking at the, it was in the packet, but it was the older study, but it was later in the packet. So I guess it would have been.

So that chart consistently moves on page seven of what we've got here. Okay.

Thanks for responding to her question. Ms. Welch, did you have any additional questions? Yeah. You have to come to the microphone to ask, and I'm sorry. You can sit in the front row if you have more questions as a follow-up. That's quite all right. I don't want to make you go back and forth, but we need to record it and capture it in the microphone.

So the location of the sound monitoring device would be on the side of your unit or building that you're in that's closest to Mars?

It'd be right between that unit that goes north-south and your unit that goes east-west.

I'm just answering your question about where.

Did you have any other questions? No. Okay, thank you. Cross-examination moving on then to either Dan or Mr. Jeffrey. Daniel, did you have any questions for anybody else that's presented testimony today? Fred Jeffrey, did you have any questions for any of the presenters? And Mr. Sirianni, do you have any questions for anybody? So that wraps up the cross-examination portion. Is there anybody here from the public that has not requested party status that wishes to address the board? Ma'am, come forward.

When I asked why, he spoke not only- I'm going to need you to wrap it up quickly, because your three minutes is actually up, but I'll give you another 30 seconds.

Anybody else from the public wish to speak? Sir, come forward, state your name. Let us know if you've been sworn, and you've got three minutes.

Does anybody else in the public have any comments they wish to make to the board? Seeing none, close remarks by planning and development staff.

Thank you. Any closing remarks by people with status? Ms. Arrete, any closing remarks? You have three minutes.

COMMISSIONER MAYOVSKY- Ms. Caterina, do you have closing remarks? You have three minutes.

Thank you. Ms. Welsh, any closing remarks?

Fred Jeffery, do you have any closing comments? No comments? Okay, thank you. Mr. Soriano, do you have any closing comments? None? Okay. All right. Closing remarks are done. That would conclude the public hearing portion of this. At this time, discussion and vote by the board. We can either start with somebody making a motion or we can start with going around the table and having a discussion about it like we've done in some matters in the past. The amount of evidence here or the amount of testimony here, I should say, we should, I'm open to either way as far as the board goes.

No. Lights at Duncan and King. Duncan. um what's your let's discuss it first and then if we need to go to statement um at the testimony many of the applique of the third party or the uh grant party

Yeah, and the reason why I want to hear your question first is that's kind of part of their presentation. And it's a good question because... I felt that one of the emails that came in, and I believe it was Mrs. O'Rourke's email, I tried to address the city's points on compatibility one by one. And I thought it was a well thought out email. And I think the city, in putting their presentation together, was addressing that. So the report from the city that we have as part of our evidence has addressed all those points and that's part of what we should have read in advance here and i think we all

Anybody have other comments? I have a few comments I want to make, but I think I'll go ahead and make an additional discussion or go to a motion from there. clarify something because I think and I understand some of the offense that may have been taken by the city attorney's comment. While our rules of evidence and our rules of procedure are, I don't want to say loose, they allow us a bit of flexibility, the reality is, the expectation is if there's expert reports that they're rebutted with expert reports because I think Ms. Welsh's point was really important to me, and it concerns me, to be h

Combined two to make it one. Right. But there was a curb cut there. There were two curb cuts there. Right. A new curb cut is a little bit different. And you're more of an expert on that. I know from my clients coming to me as a commercial real estate attorney, one of the biggest impediments is getting a new curb cut as compared to combining and reducing curb cuts, which they're reducing a lot of the significant impediments that just wouldn't be allowed in today's scheme of development.

I understand your comments, and I'm not going to disagree with you on this. So I was going to get to curb fence as being a challenge, and you're saying it may not be such. Great to know just from that context.

limiting what the property can be used for and and the fact that properties abutting it are all commercial properties regardless of how they're using it that's a choice of the owners of that property and how they use it with their zoning and that that's where the dilemma becomes arises that's where it becomes difficult for these things since how do you limit somebody from property use that otherwise and i don't know that we can actually impose upon this developer to put sidewalks all the way up the street on both sides of the street they're putting sidewalks that are wrapping around the proper

Can you get out from Rainbow? Well, from Rainbow you can.

No, I think you have to go up to Cleveland to get to the Cleveland. So you'd be going through that? Yeah, you'd be going up to Cleveland to turn right, then turn right on Keene to go or left on Keene.

A U-turn or... Or go down to, if you want to go that direction, go down to Saturn where the light is and go north that way. There's, you know, and the neighborhood north of that, because on my way here I drove through, on Saturn's side, I came down to Saturn from... from Keene on Cleveland, just because it was worthwhile of you on the way here. They already have traffic calming devices with some of the islands and the narrow curbing so that cars are limited to go

I think there's some things that could or should be considered that would help enhance safety that are abutting this property so that people are already going slow before they go up the street because they already have it further up the street. There's at least two of those going between Cleveland and the north side of this property at Rainbow that have the narrowing of the yacht, the circle in the middle.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. So those are my general comments on this. I'm not kind of suggesting which way I'm voting on this. I'm looking at it from the standpoint of just some of the factors that I'm looking out there. It always does irk me, being that my daytime job is a lawyer, even though I don't go to court anymore, that expert testimony isn't met with expert testimony. And that always makes it difficult for me because that burden of proof to me is significant. Those are my thoughts on it. If anybody else wanted to share any thoughts or if anybody wanted to make a motion o

If DOT comes back and says... To add that as a condition. I mean, that changes the whole...

Can Pete answer the question? Before we go to Peter, let me ask you, before we go any further on that part of it, just so the board is clear in terms of our options, We either make a motion to vote to approve it, make a motion to deny it. Could we also, on our own, ask that it be continued to get more information with some of the stuff that we're looking for? Or are we limited to approve or deny?

He feels that it's feasible. So I'm not going to, don't take my comment on that.

I think the problem with that is that the plan changes if you do that, so it couldn't happen. Just please wait. But I think that the plan changes if that were the case. So we wouldn't be approving the plan they gave us, and that's not really a condition that we can impose. I appreciate that. We'll come back to some other stuff while she's looking at that. Did you have any comments?

Thank you. I appreciate clarifying that so we all kind of know where we stand. So a condition, and that's a question we would have to ask, I think, of staff more specifically than you, but the condition of doing some traffic calming type something in the street as a condition, that's something that we would, I don't know to what extent we can add that as a condition or not. I don't either.

Okay. Would you like a clarification from that on whether that would be a permissible condition for us to add that there needs to be some traffic calming in the streets abutting it so that way as they go north on that street and they go into that there is not, it adds an element of safety for the pedestrians and so on.

feedback from these two gentlemen. I think I'm going to come to you last because you have some good stuff. Not that you don't, but I really started to hear what you had to say, so I think that would be impactful. That way you hear all of our comments, and then we'll take a brief recess, and then we'll come back to it. Aubrey, did you have any...

Thank you. One comment I have on what you just said, though, is I'm looking at the rule maps image, which is not that old because it looks the property has not it's not really being used in this picture. There are no curb cuts on the present. Correct. So. Well, I understand that, but I'm saying on this property, they're not giving up a curb. There is no curb cut on Gulf today. They would be applying for a new one, just so we're... Correct. Okay. Okay. I'm just... It sounded like you were saying they were... No, there's not one now. Okay.

That's all I wanted to clarify. So the question is whether we can add a condition, and we'll take a brief recess, maybe five minutes, maybe get drinks of water for staff to confer, and maybe confer with the applicant about whether... there could be a condition added. There would be consideration being given to condition added for traffic calming and or sidewalks.

I don't want to limit the options. If they're going to have to talk about it, let's give them all the options they've got.

Yeah, I mean, if it's traffic coming, it clearly would be on Saturn Avenue and Mars Avenue. And if it's a sidewalk, I don't know how far. They already got sidewalks on what they're proposing, so I don't know that there's much more that we could do there. But since it was brought up by one of the board members, I wanted to address it and leave it. Since you're going to talk anyways, tell me what you think is feasible. If you can have a conversation with the applicant.

Okay. On Mars and Saturn. Gulf to Bay, they're wadding the sidewalk already. The plan is there. There's no curb cut on Gulf to Bay. I think the pedestrian issue is more and the safety issue for the folks who are maybe not in vehicles on those roadways is going to be on Saturn and Mars.

And the nearest traffic calming device is at Rainbow and Saturn. I don't know if there's one on Mars. I didn't come down Mars. I came down Saturn. I didn't have time to drive through all of them. So give some discussion. It's 315. We'll take a break for 10 minutes. Start 325. Okay? Rest assured. Procedure we're going to do is I'm going to reopen the meeting so the staff and the applicant can address what we asked them to consider and discuss. And I'll ask staff, Ms. Matske, if you can give us a summary of what you think. And then we'll go from there. Are there any conditions that you think you

So particularly that third one then, the last condition that was added. That one is really subject to whether it can be done more than anything else. The other ones, there's degrees of what can be done. The third one is there might be utilities there. There might not be enough right of way between the curb and the lot line to allow for a sidewalk and those kinds of things.

And the applicant accepts those conditional conditions?

Thank you. All right. Thanks. Then I'm going to go ahead and close the public part.

So the parties who had party status, there's two, three, four here still. Do you have any conditions or questions on these conditions that were just mentioned? address. If you do, you have to come to the microphone so we can hear you. If not, you can just shake it.

Easter 8, yes. It's the only thing that's open for right now. Okay. Okay. Mr. Soriano, again, either of the, Mr. Jeffries? No? Okay. All right. Then I'm going to go ahead and close the public side of it again and We have a staff report now with three additional conditions, and we've had discussion. Does anybody have a motion on this matter, FLV2026-02005? Remember, our options are approve, approve with conditions, and we have these three additional conditions, or deny. Is that what our motion would be?

Motion made and seconded. Do we have any further discussion amongst the board on that motion?

All right. Then there are no further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. All right. That concludes that matter. Next on our agenda for today are the director's items.

Just curious about where we're timing on that. Yes. It will be here, so by then we should be in a new city hall. You've got to get the bugs worked out, the technology set up and everything. I get it. Okay. And we definitely don't want to see anybody get a bug.

Thank you. Thank you. Very nice to hear all that.

So before we adjourn, usually be board members. One thing I wanted to bring up to the board and also for you, Lauren, in case there's any feedback or input, your information materials, you want to give me the, um, the Clearwater neighborhood coalition asked me to present on what we do as a board at their September meeting. And so far, I don't have any conflicts. I told them, yes, I blocked it off. But here's a closing I might have to go to Atlanta for. So if that happens, I may end up missing it. But at the end of the day, it sounds like it's going to be brief, and they want to know a few thin

I agree, and that's why I kind of welcome the opportunity to speak. And so I thought I'd share with you all that I'm going to be doing that, but if anybody has any input they want me to share or if staff thinks it's not a good idea, let me know. You can hold my own, but it should be interesting to do. And it would be great to kind of share my perspective of what we do on the board as compared to their conversations they have with staff.

a good practice if you don't already do it would be that if you get an email like in this one we heard today without talking about the facts of the case there were emails from at least two people that i saw and i saw them early on because i was copied on them that the first communication you get from somebody in the neighborhood objecting to it they should be sent the pdf of that understand, is that something that's happening? It's probably a worthwhile thing to do, because all of a sudden, you've given them a tool that they don't need. Just because it's on a website somewhere doesn't mean the

But as long as they're getting access, they're being told, directed someplace where they can see it as compared to saying there's resources available to understand how this works.

I haven't been to one of the meetings before, so I'm looking forward to things a lot.

I'll say it now so we'll be on the record. Pretty certain I put it on my calendar. Someone help me. It should be on my work calendar right now. To add into that, maybe your IT department can just automatically. Monday, September 14th.

That's great. Well, I'm glad. I was on the board when we talked about doing that, and that was done. I'm glad to see that it's still being done. We thought that there were a lot of people showing up. And they couldn't find the information before. Now they don't know where to look, but we know it's out there, which is a great thing. This will help as well.

That's great. That would be helpful, though I do think some of that, they have to learn on the fly, it would go over their head. They're going to come to the meeting. You can tell to them in advance. And just like I guided the one lady, that's a great cross-examination question. Why don't you leave it for that? Because that's really when it should have come in, and it would have taken us down a rabbit hole. So I didn't feel like I was giving her advice or helping her. I just said, do it at this time, and we'll come back to it. I'm glad she – because I've had – I've done that before, and people