Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Member Alloy? Here. Member Doris Gonzalez? Member LeBey? Vice Chairman Goldich?

Here.

Chairwoman Gonzalez? Here. Alternate member Jones? Here. Alternate member Zacharias?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Okay, next we have to do selections of chair and vice chair. So I would ask for nominations for chair.

You want to keep it? You want to keep it?

Sure, why not?

Should we do it when we have two members not here? Have a If it's

the agenda, we ought to do it.

Right, but not the permanent members.

Can't make it right.

I have to ask the attorney.

Madam Chair, there's no legal requirement for any regular member to be here or not. You could do it if, just so long as you have a quorum, that's really the only thing that would prohibit you from taking action on these two items.

Okay. I'll nominate Linda Gonzalez for chair. I second that motion.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye. Nomination for vice chair. Nominate Member Goldich. I second that motion. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. That was easy. Okay, anybody have lobbying disclosure forms to submit?

No.

No? I need approval of the minutes from September 11, unless there are any additions or changes.

Make a motion to accept the minutes from September 11. Do I have a second? I'll second that motion.

A motion made by Member Goldish, seconded by Member Alloy. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. New business, our new businesses are all consent items. Are there any members of the board that want to pull an item? Any members of the public that want to address any of the consent items? Seeing none, can I have a motion to accept the consent agenda items?

I'll make a motion that we accept all three consent items as they stand.

Do I

have a second?

I second. Second by Member Zacharias. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously.

Items at the request of the board.

Okay. The people who are in the audience for the items that were here tonight, you all got passed. So you can stay with us. We'd love to have you, or you can head out.

If you don't have an umbrella, you might

want That was easy. I'm glad they came though, just in case. Thank you. Thank Thank you for coming.

I'm glad you came. You're not staying for the meeting? Come

on. You

can stay.

It's pouring rain out.

So I said, as long as they haven't enrolled.

No items at the request of the board?

I just have one thing I for am not going to be here for November and most likely will not be here for December, although I'm not sure about that.

Okay. Items at request of staff, we have discussion and review of the land development codes.

Make a motion to excuse Member LeBate and Member Doris Gonzalez. Doris Gonzalez for tonight. Do I have a second? I'll second.

Motion made by Member Goldich, seconded by Member Alloy excuse Doris Gonzalez and Rosalie LeVeigh to ask for excused absences. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we're up to discussion review of the land development codes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So tonight we're looking for consensus from you all. We sent you all a packet of changes that we're doing for the land development code. And why are we bringing these items forward now? Well, we have a couple of state statutes that passed in July, and we need to pass them by the end of the year. So we're going to bring this to commission in November and December. So these are items that we've been working on. We kind of upgrade the code every year or so. And so these were some items that we had. Strange thing happened this year in the Florida Senate.

Senate Bill 180 passed. And for those who don't know, that's a disaster bill. And in this disaster bill, put a certain provision which affects cities. And it basically says that you can't pass a land development code ordinance or land development code regulation that's more stringent than what you have currently. And that law goes till October 2027.

And it actually is retroactive to August 2024. So that means that if for some reason this board decided that they wanted to put a new regulation in our code that was more restrictive than what we have right now, we can't do it until October 2027. I think the thought process was because of all the storms that came through, there were developers who were concerned that cities were going to put a lot of regulation on development. And they would not be able to build back what they had before the storm was there or it would cost a lot more money to do so. Ironically, some of those structures probably blew away.

And there's probably reason for new codes to reinforce for hurricane resistance. But this is what passed. And so you'll see here our list of changes that we had. We had many more changes on there. But those changes will have to wait till October 2027.

One more caveat with this code. If a hurricane hits within 100 miles of the city, they'll add on another year. Another what? So if there's a hurricane that hits this year, for instance, that extension may go to October 2028 and so on and so forth. So this is a very tough code for us. It had good intentions in helping people to rebuild. But it's a tough code. And it's not just for the city. It's for the whole state of Florida.

What bill number was that? What number was that, Bill?

Senate Bill 180. So what you'll see tonight in front of you, and we'll kind of talk about briefly and I know you guys have all looked at the backup you'll see codes that we're providing to you that are not more restrictive. So what they do tonight is they're clarifying existing policies that we have or they're less restrictive than our current code because you can adopt something less restrictive. So we're going to go over them quickly. I'm looking at this page here, which is the chart.

I believe you guys all have it. And the backup obviously has the detail to it. I'm not going to go through those particular things. The four things I will tell you that are the four items that are missing from here are definitions, development applications, which is 155.301, 155.314, which is live local administrative process. If you guys are familiar, live local is the law for affordable housing.

And if you qualify, you do not have to come in front of any board in the city. It just goes through staff review. That was another state statute that was created in order to promote affordable housing. And recovery residences, which is at the bottom of the chart, That is sober homes. There are certain requirements for submittal, certain timetables for submittal. All based of these on state statutes. And all of these we're working with the city attorney on. We wanted to bring the ones that we knew that you guys could look at and make corrections to. What they're doing for the state statute one is they're basically mimicking state statute. There's not a lot that we can do to change those codes.

So when we're talking about acronyms, you'll see in the back up there's a couple pages worth of acronyms that we put in our land development code. These are helpful for people. These acronyms are widely used in the building industry. And so the underlying ones, such as LEAD and many of you know LEAD because if you're environmental, it's leadership in energy and environmental design. It's a standard that buildings can certification that buildings can obtain.

There's also other things like FFE, which is a finished floor elevation. That's kind of the floor of your that's the elevation, the height of the floor of your house. And sometimes it's determined to see if it meets flood resistance. And then there's a couple other items in here errors in emission, E and O. Let's see what architecture of record, AOR, and NTS, not to scale.

I think that and level of service. These are just, like I said, acronyms that we use in the building industry all the time. But we try to put them in because some people see them and don't understand what they mean. Moving on, we were talking about application submittal procedures. So when you submit an application in with the city, there's something called completeness.

It means that you have to fill out a complete application with us, and we have to make a determination that it is actually complete, meaning all your paperwork has to be filled out, all materials have to be there before we provide a review. This is very important because there are certain state laws that allow us only a certain amount of review time. And that review time begins when completeness is established. So there's a couple guidelines in there that we were asked to put in there by the city attorney. It's underlined for you guys if you have any questions on that.

We have the application appeal process. We have an appeal process that currently exists. The only thing we added in was that there's a fee for an appeal process. It's not a new fee. It's an existing fee. So we just put the reference to the fee schedule so that people knew because many people would come up during an appeal and ask us, what's the fee? Why doesn't it say there's a fee in the application? It's in the fee schedule. It's just clarifying the existing fee that's already there.

Well, here's the can I stop you on Because I had submitted earlier in the year when I was on the board of adjustment, and there were a couple of appeals to the commission that were really, really not good? It was really a horrendous experience. And the commission just wasn't prepared. So I had written up a whole, worked hard to this 155.311, make changes on that. And I submitted it to everybody on the commission, the mayor, and everybody like that.

And the mayor forwarded it to, I think, Michael Stam to review and I think the city attorney's office. And then a couple months later, on board night, the Board of Adjustment, the chair endorsed that and asked them to please continue to work on that. And just sort of clarified the process, made everything a little because this was very vague and has been around for quite some time, I think and just kind of updated technology wise to make it clear for the commission, make it easier for the commissioners to have all the information they need to make a truly educated decision on it. And so that's been floating around or something, I guess. And then I saw this in the package.

And I'm like, it's like all that never happened. So I would ask that we just follow that we curb this particular one and see what can happen with that from what I put in.

So just to answer your question, I did see your paper today for the first And it came across my desk. Believe there was some communication. It was, I guess, missed by our group. I will tell you on some of the items and I won't get too much into it other than the fact that Ms. Jones was advocating that we not only include in appeals the written account of the appeal, but also video account of the appeal. I would have to talk to the attorneys to find out with the addition of the video.

Meaning that, just to clarify further, that the commissioners be required to watch the actual meeting, the video of the meeting, either adjustment or P and Z, that is a question.

So the conversation there is and obviously, we can talk about that. We can talk about that. We'll look in to see just to make sure that we're not adding additional requirements for based on 01/1980 right now. Have to talk to legal about that. Obviously, I can only speak for staff and have your opinion on it.

I certainly am very careful in directing a commissioner on what they need to do to come up with their final decision. But I will tell you that on appeals right now, when possible, we do count video. We do provide video. What I would suggest even further than that, because I think in your comments and please forgive me if I paraphrase it wrong, but I think the video was something that Ms. Jones had brought up.

Because when you see something on paper, you may not understand exactly the trials and tribulations that the board went through and the cross conversation that may be that you would catch on a video. Am I

Yes,

And pretty also that the one very important point of it was to emphasize that the purpose of the appeal was to if it was more procedural thing, which is what was intended even in this version that currently exists, And it's not a rehearing of new there's no new evidence. It's not a rehearing. It's not getting a second opinion. It's not questioning the board. We work very hard here volunteering and put a lot of time into studying these things.

And when people are here, we ask a lot of questions. So when they go to an appeal, it should be just like any other appeal on procedure and not getting a second opinion.

The other parts of this that I think a lot of everyone misses when they're on an appeal is the board members can attend that commission meeting. And particularly the ones that are prevailing may be able to attend that meeting and be able to explain their process. This is not new information, but their process in how they came up with the determination that was and to me, it would be the prevailing side because the ones that are not, there's no appeal for. So on the prevailing side that they're questioning, they could give their side and be able to do that. Again, anybody can show up to board members can show up to the meeting, they can fill that space that you're

Well, on that, I think we weren't given much advance notice. I mean, it's just kind of there if you don't happen to see the agenda. And then there was one recently for this board about a decision just prior to when I joined.

There is some language in an appeal that requires that we bring it to appeal as quickly as possible. And there's verbiage to it, but it's Right.

And there's no time. I would think that was another thing to put some time on it. The current one says as soon as practicable or something that's not?

Well, again, would suggest that at this particular time, we continue with this. And then we'll the full information. And we can bring it back and sort of have that conversation. And then also, like I said, I want to make sure that we're not this is fresh tonight for us, so I just want to make sure. I read it earlier today, to be honest with you. So I do want to make sure I'll get together with legal. We'll have some discussions on what we can do given the rules right now.

Right. Yeah. When I saw this, I pulled I have a couple of copies, if anyone's interested. I don't think I have too many copies. But I brought a couple of copies of that I can share with you.

But yeah, and I'm certainly not saying, hey, do what I say. But I'm saying, I put this out there a long time ago for a discussion, and I was kind of shocked to see this just there. I understand the Senate Bill 180. I don't really understand why I mean, because that has to do with the development code, Marla. I'm not so sure why the appeal process is part of that.

We'd have to talk to again, it's in the land development code right now. So I would be very cautious to make a decision on that. I'll let these guys do that. As far as the papers that you have, Legal just said you can give it to Cheryl and she can distribute it out to the

Okay. Yeah, I think I have a copy. I don't know if I have enough for everybody. Have three copies.

Okay. Moving on on this, if it's Okay with you all. Residential multifamily I don't know if you all are aware, but currently our multifamily districts allow a minimum of seven fifty square feet in size per unit. Chair Gonzalez knows this. We were at our affordable housing advisory committee meeting.

And in order to end the discussion at the affordable housing advisory committee was to reduce the minimum unit size for the city to five fifty square feet, the idea being that the smaller size, the smaller price per square foot. And we may be able to sell some units that are less than current or rent units that are less than current, which would then help us towards our affordability. And because that's less restrictive than our current code, it's allowable by Senate Bill 180. On shops, was a typo in there. I think there was a number four that was in there that we had to get rid of.

Nothing changed substantively. Minimum off street parking requirements. We got rid of a repeating reference in there. I think that was place of assembly. And then we lowered outdoor dining requirements.

So instead of 15 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet, we are down to five parking spaces per 1,000 square feet. Again, a reduction in the requirement, so therefore, is allowable under Senate Bill 180, we believe. Parking space dimensions, we added compact parking spaces to the code. You all have seen compact parking spaces before. They've been in some of our PUD's.

They seem to be working Okay, so we added it to the code. And there will be a certain percentage that are allowed in the code. Drive through stacking spaces so currently, our car wash parking for automated car washes require 18 parking spaces per lane. We reduced that. We made 18 parking spaces 18 stacking spaces in total.

It was just one of those items that if you had like two or three lanes, there's no reason to have eighteen, eighteen, and 18. It just didn't make much sense to us. Let's see. Accessory buildings and structures, turf, artificial turf. One of the things that occurred this statute was they eliminated our ability to regulate artificial turf for now. There may be some regulations that will be in the future. So we will be leaving that open as a reference.

I have a question about the artificial turf

business. So

the section of the Florida statutes encompasses all the things that you crossed out pretty much?

Yeah, basically my understanding and I'll let legal answer it I believe it's just right now a restriction in turf itself, just any regulation on it. But it does make reference to the fact that they are going to be doing some additional study or something like that. And there may be an amendment to allow us in the future to have some regulations. But as of now, we don't.

Madam Chair, as it pertains to artificial turf, there was a directive within that specific bill that directed the corresponding department to come up and provide specific guidelines. So state staff is working right now to provide those guidelines. There have been some drafts that have been circulated, but no official guideline has been issued yet. But once we have those guidelines, then we'll know our parameters and what we can and can't do specifically.

The other question I have is it says it applies to properties that are one acre or less. Are some properties out west that are more than an acre. So what happens to them?

Well, I mean, if they're beyond the if they're not within the scope of the bill, they're not impacted by those requirements, neither would the city be. I think and it was residential, right? Yeah, this is applicable to residential properties. I think that if you have a property that's one acre or more, then the city would be allowed to regulate it and wouldn't be preempted from enacting or imposing such regulations under this specific bill.

So Madam Chair, if you so desire, we will add back in that this occurs that for over an acre we will regulate, if that's Okay.

I say that because I know one person out there that wants to put a soccer field for his kids in the backyard with artificial turf, and he has more than an acre.

I was a little surprised on that, too, that there weren't more studies or things done as far as the toxins and runoff.

Well, I think that's kind of what spurred this. So I think at the beginning, were a lot of toxins and a lot of the discussions on toxins from the environmental side. But then also and we had a very strong discussion on this when I was on the environmental advisory board. There are some advantages to having turf. You don't need to water it. It doesn't require fertilizer. And it's also cost effective for maintenance purposes. So I believe the state probably, with development in mind, precluded that so that people could take advantage of it.

I wonder if we it occurred to me when I was reading this, well, let me look at a city that has a lot of bad. And I looked at Phoenix, Arizona. And they classify artificial turf as hardscape. Do we?

So I believe at the time yeah. So we did. We call it non livable landscape material, hardscape.

But is that? Or is it its own category?

Hardscape kind of is its own category, rocks and other type items. Anything that's nonliving that's

Anything that's nonliving, our definition of hardscape is Correct. And yeah, they were saying that they still require equal to or greater than 50% live plant coverage on most of the lots the artificial even with artificial turf.

I bring to your attention that that climate may also demand certain items that

Yeah, it's a different climate, but it's

Yeah, but you're right.

I think same.

We have 25%.

Anyway, I guess we can't do anything with that.

Okay. So let me see where was I here. Buffy Buffy yard between residential and non residential, we just clarified new applications versus existing site plans. Guidelines remain the same. Fences, walls, and hedges, we saw a Scribner's error. There was a requirement for shrubs in internal parking lots to be 30 inches when in fact we changed that years ago. It was 24 inches. And it's actually in the landscape section of our code for that. Landscape plan requirements, there were some duplicate texts that we took out. Irrigation standards, we just clarified a reference of non potable water for irrigation.

Let's see, duties of property owner for general landscape maintenance. We have always, but we're now formalized we've kind of put it in this section that we need a permit if you're going to remove invasive species also, invasive trees or shrubs. Standard for tree removal, another write up where we kind of had them select one of the following. I don't know if we said it was one of the following where we just put out all the qualifications relocation, and we necessarily say one. General lighting standards.

This was, I think, a meeting or two ago. You all passed a variance for private recreation facilities. Do you remember that? It was Pembroke Falls. So we decided, because we didn't address this, we decided to put it in our code. And basically what we said is that we could approve it as long as they gave us a study very similar to what the gentleman had from an authority that was available to do so. And as long as they fell within the provisions of that, we would allow them to install those lights at that level. Permanent signs.

Oh, ahead. I just didn't want you to go. I had a lighting thing for you. Yeah, don't know you can do, but it's not really specified in here. I mean, I'm sure it could roll in there somewhere, but I wanted to see it as a separate thing.

At some point, becoming more popular, these soffit lightings on residences, where the lights all along the roof line that they generally put in the soffits, that there should be maybe a different brightness limit for those because they can be quite bright. And depending, they can be very close together. And it gets quite bright. And if you have a couple of homes in a row that have it, I mean, it can illuminate the whole area. I've noticed it as a bigger problem.

I call it a problem. In Miramar, there's some sections, like even in Sunset Lakes, million plus dollar homes, that I have some photos. I mean, it's just glaring, absolutely glaring. And I'm thinking, we cannot let that happen here. Mean, that can't be it's got to be some light pollution or something. It's just too bright. It's just like.

Yeah. Mean, along that line, I have a few of my neighbors that have it. They're fine. They're bright. They're LED lights. But you know what? I'm loath to tell somebody that they can't keep their house secure. And that's why most of these people are putting them in for security reasons. And Lanning, I know that's why my neighbors have put them in. And I don't

think that we should be

didn't say so. I'm talking. We shouldn't be regulating how these people keep their houses secured, how to keep their property secure. Commercial is one thing. If it's bothering the neighbor, whatever, fine. But I'm not going to go tell my neighbor, hey, listen, your lights are too bright. You can't have them on. And they're not adjustable anyway. They're pocket lights, they're puck lights. They're not adjustable for the most part.

Well, I can tell you as far as residential code goes, there is a lighting requirement. We don't specifically talk about soffit lights. You can have soffit lights or any other lights that you want. But there a lighting requirement at a certain level of color temperature that is in residential communities. And so usually that'll handle it. Again, regarding soffit lights, we can certainly look at regulating something like that in the future should you all desire to do so. But as of right now, we can't because

Right. You can change code it.

But if you have any questions or if you see any lighting on somebody's house potentially that looks extremely bright and again, I worry about security just like Member Goldich does. But if you see something that's really bright, we can talk to code and maybe something where maybe the brightness level being that they're too white as far as light goes. It gets more towards daylight a soft white type situation, which are usually required for residential properties. We can certainly look at that. But again, we don't really restrict the locations for the same reason that Member Gould was just talking about. They usually light their house or

various I'm wondering when their permit when you have the permit, is anyone checking that brightness level, that temperature, that it is within the code? I mean, I assume they have to get a permit for that.

Correct. I think the electrical inspectors downstairs are supposed to be checking those particular items. So again, if it's something, please, I encourage you to talk to our code compliance on that right now. But even still, even if we were to delve into it and I'm just saying at this point because of 01/1980, I don't think there's really much we can talk about. We'll keep it in our records.

And if it's something that this board decides that they want to look at later on, we'll bring a big list up before we start looking at them. And you guys can just mark them off as you see fit. Going back, permanent signs. We've been getting a lot of variances for pre menu boards. Those are the menu boards that are kind of like seasonal where a restaurant may be showing through a drive through.

Are flurries or whatever they make Christmas. What is it now? It's pumpkin spice, whatever it is now. So we've decided we were going to add those to the code. But we do put separation requirements from the menu itself so that it's not like they can just add it to the size of their menu board right now.

But you're allowed one, and they have to be a minimum of 20 feet away from the sign. Because the intent is that your car would be looking at the menu and 20 feet back would be the next car that was waiting in queue. And then let's see here. Prohibited signs, we've always had this clarified. You all know that we don't allow people to put vinyl straight on a hard surface.

In the past, we had people that would take existing sign faces, and they would just rip off whatever the vinyl was and put the next thing on. And it was not a professional job. So we took that out, and we're just clarifying that. And then like I said, recovery residences, which are sober homes, we're working with the city attorney on.

I would ask you very strongly I would beg you I'm not too proud to beg on this one to not stop prohibiting box signs. I don't know why you would start allowing box signs once they've been prohibited. But that was item number nine on that page.

Yeah, so box signs are permitted. It's the box signs with the flat vinyl on them. So your sign like when you use a box sign, there's a face up front. And so they would have to get it either routed Just

with the use? Oh, so that was only referring to the vinyl aspect on the

box sign. So your sign face would have to be routed professionally or would have to be pan formed, which is kind of another way. So again, that prevents somebody from just taking a couple stickers and resticking their sign. It's a professional way in which it has to be done. And that ensures that we get a quality product throughout the city.

Well, I hope we can it's a shame. I hope we can get to a point where we can disallow box signs altogether. It really brings down the aesthetic. And honestly, it's not fair to businesses trying to upscale. And then the next block, there's a whole thing of box signs.

Just remember this also. Box signs also hide a lot of things. When you put box signs on a building itself, when you take down channel letters, for instance, a lot of times the connectors that are back there now have to be hidden and they have to do a bunch of things in order to make the next sign work. Boxes and raceways simply go over the top of it and it's more of a cost effective way for people to replace a sign without affecting the aesthetics. But I understand where you're coming from.

It's a one time investment.

We have a handful of shopping centers left that have box signs, they're slowly migrating their way over to channel letters because, again, it's kind of the industry standard now.

Do we encourage that? I'm wondering. When you get a new business coming in, do you encourage that?

So we deal with the shopping center owner in this particular case. And the shopping center owner creates a uniform sign plan. When they come through and they do facade changes with you all, that's when we encourage it because that's when they're changing the structure behind it. So we kind of bring to their attention that this might be the time. If you're going to spend that kind of money to fix your facade, you probably need to move into our century here with the type of sign that you're looking at.

And most comply. It's just a couple, I believe, in the East right now that have not done facade changes in a long time and probably stick with the box signs for cost purposes. No other questions regarding these items. If I can just get consensus from you guys, and we'll move these items forward, including the four. And then you can all go home, or you might want to stay till the thunderstorms lately.

Yeah, not such a hurry to go home right now.

So you need a motion to pass this on to the city commission?

That right? That works, too. We'll take a motion or consensus from the board just saying that you understand we brought the items forward to you all and that we've heard them and we're going to bring them to commission. They'll have two readings at city commission on them as part of the ordinance. So you could do a motion to transmit to city commission with favorable recommendation, if

you want. I'll make a motion that we transmit the new land development codes to the city commission with favorable recommendation.

Do I have a second?

Anybody got a second? I'll second. Motion made

by Member Goldstein, seconded by Member Alloy. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Anyone's got gold Thank in

you all.

Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Second. She just called you Goldie.

That's all right.

So where are you going in November?