City Council - workshop

Good morning and welcome to our City Council workshop this Monday, June 15th, 2026 at 9 o'clock a.m. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilwoman Morgan. Yes, ma'am. Councilman Pickett.

Yes, ma'am.

Mayor Martin. Here, ma'am. Councilman Bonner.

Yes, ma'am.

Vice Mayor Carvalho. Here, ma'am. Please stand for the pledge.

with liberty and justice for all.

NONPublic to be heard. Would anyone like to address the council? Seeing no one, I'll close public to be heard. Moving on to Resolutions 5A, Resolution 26-R42.

A resolution of the City Council of the City of Fort St. Lucie, Florida, approving the appointment of one special magistrate upon recommendation and advice of the City Attorney. Approval of the agreement governing said appointment, providing for conflict, providing for severability, and providing an effective date. Thank you.

Council motion to approve resolution 26 dash R 42 second with a motion in a second. All those in favor. Aye. Any opposed motion carries item six new business six, a P 24 dash 1 85 update to city of port St. Lucy comp plan.

Good morning. Good morning, Madam Mayor, Council, Mr. Manager, and staff, Mary Savage Dunham, for the record. We're very excited to be here this morning to have a conversation with the collective council and interested parties about our comprehensive plan update and EAR. which we're going to walk through today in the workshop setting. I want to be clear, this is just a draft document, so we're interested in taking any and all feedback that you may have. now as we get into it and we've been working on it with inspire placemaking they've been partnering with new urban concepts for our consultant team bridget keene is the project lead and sophia trail has been instrumental in this effort so i'll be turning it over to them shortly but i do want to stress to the council that first of all this update was done through the lens of sb 180. And so while normally with a comprehensive plan, it's your guiding document for the city to go hand in hand with your strategic plan and how do we get there, we also have to be sure that we're remaining compliant with the legislation. And so we can't make dramatic shifts, not that we would, but there's nothing in here that is a dramatic deviation or that we deem to be substantially more burdensome to the community. And of course, when it goes to the state, they'll review it as well and provide comments. What we did do is collectively review of many inputs, including what has the city been doing now? What are our current initiatives? Are they reflected within the comp plan? If they aren't, we want to be sure that they are. We also made sure to be mindful of the policy directives that we've gotten from the council relative to perhaps transportation connections or as we work through new developments, making sure we have those infrastructure commitments upfront instead of at the end of the project. and we look to make sure that we have goals and policies in the comp plan that support the directive that the council has given us similarly we've made some revisions that are supportive of the recommendations that came out of the planning and infrastructure study and the council's directives from that Other work that we've incorporated, made sure that we're consistent with is the mobility plan and the parks master plan. And then a recent add-in for us during this process is to make sure that we're poised to BE ALIGNED WITH OPPORTUNITY ZONES AND IF THOSE TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES COME UP FOR THE CITY, THAT OUR COMP PLAN IS CONSISTENT WITH THOSE AND WE HAVE TOOLS AND MECHANISMS IN PLACE TO REALLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY FUNDING OR GRANT OPPORTUNITIES THAT MAY COME OUR WAY. And so through all of those different perspectives and lenses, we now have a draft document. It is all in your backup. We're going to give a very high-level presentation because a lot of the changes were just edits or updating names of agencies or dates. So some of those things we won't get into. We're going to try to stay very high level. The team is here to answer any questions that you may have. And with that, I would like to ask Pat Dijewski to come up and walk us through this.

Thank you. Mary, just a quick comment before Mr. Teske takes the dais. I just wanted to talk more about the undue and burdensome portion of the requirement of SB 180. Because the public has an immense responsibility placed on the city and this council in regards to proper planning, planning the future of the city. We're criticized often for This quote unquote not planning the city properly and making sure that our comp plan is mirroring what they want, not necessarily what our council wants, what they would like to see. And in our conversations, I know that many of the things that I brought up, you were telling me that because of this vague language. SB 180 of undue and burdensome legal has said this provision this provision this provision Could obviously could potentially bring on future lawsuits. So what I would love counsel as well. Mr. City manager is Before we close out with the team for our comp plan I would love to have draft suggestions of what staff would have liked to have put into our comp plan because my goal would be that in next year's session, when we bring on, especially there's going to be an election, new legislators are going to be coming in. And I think it's important with them to share the challenges of this comp plan amendment and to see if there could be clarification provided in future legislation to clear up this undue burdensome issue, which is not just the Port St. Lucie issue. It's going to be a statewide issue. and it already is and in order for us to have appropriate planning and meet the expectations of our residents we have to get that clarified and so if council if you're okay with that i would really request that by the close of this that our our advisors provide us a draft of what would they have liked to put into this comp plan as recommendations that they couldn't if you guys are okay with that thank you i'm fine with that thank you good morning good morning

My name is Pat Chayeski. I'm a principal with Inspire Placemaking, and I'm going to take you through a PowerPoint that may seem a little bit repetitive, but for the benefit of the public, we're going to go through the whole process again. So in the PowerPoint, we're going to do a little bit of introductions, which Mary started already. We're going to talk about the plan update. What is a comprehensive plan? Why do we have to update it? Then we're going to talk about community input, what we have heard from the community so far. Then we're going to go into detail to review the plan changes that we're proposing. And then we'll close with the next steps. So as Mary mentioned, we have been working very closely with Mary, Bridget, and Sophia. And the INSPIRE team includes myself as the project manager and Gabriela Castro. She's here today. She's the deputy project manager. And we have other planners in-house that have been helping with collecting data, developing goals, objectives, and policies. We are also working with Jonathan Paul, who you know really well. He has been working with the city on the mobility plan and fees. So he was responsible for preparing the transportation element to ensure consistency with all the work that he has been conducting. So let's look at the timeline to see where we have been so far. So we started in the end of 2024. We had a kickoff meeting with staff and the department heads. And then we started collecting data and analyzing that data, all the facts and figures related to the city. Then, let me just go this way so we can see this. So just the line above with the colorful shapes, what it shows is that when we did the kickoff, we had some briefings with the council to get the project started. When we worked on the data and analysis, We had public input. So we had a few public workshops. The series where the first question was, where are we now? So helping the community understand the baseline. Where are we starting? The second question that we asked at the second workshop was, where do you want to go? Like in the future of the city, where would you like to be? And the third question that we asked them was, how do we get there? Because it's very easy to say, I want this, I want this, I want that, but we want to make it in a way that is doable. So after we completed the data and analysis, we created a document that we called the community vision. It summarizes what the community told us that they wanted to see in the future. Then we started working on the goals, objectives, and policies. And basically, that's the part of the comp plan that gets adopted, and that's the specific direction that you're going to have for the next, I'm going to say 20 years, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. Whenever you review development, that's what you're going to be looking at. And then the unveiling. So we have a draft. It has been revised, and it has been refined. And now we're entering the adoption phase. So the adoption phase, basically we had council briefings, and we're going to have public hearings, one with the Planning and Zoning Board, and then we're going to have two hearings with the city council. One thing that I need to notice here is that we are planning to have the first hearing with the council in July. Then you see that the next one is not until October. That's because... After the first hearing, we transmit that plan to the state. They take 60 days to do that review, and then it comes back for the adoption hearing. That's why there is a big gap between those two. So the plan update. So what is a comprehensive plan? So basically it's your blueprint for growth. It's the document that includes the guiding principles that you're gonna use for making decisions related to development. So the state statutes require every jurisdiction in the state to have a comprehensive plan, and it has a list of required elements. Now we have a couple more than the required elements, and those are the optional elements, but in total we have 11 in the city. And why are we updating it now? So in addition to requiring every jurisdiction to have a comprehensive plan, they also say that every seven years you have to look at it, assess it, and determine if you need to make changes. The way we do that has changed over time. But in the last few years, the way they are doing it is that they give you a date. Our date is September 1st of this year. You have to send a letter to the state saying, we have looked at our plan, and we have determined that we need to make some changes. And then the state tells you, OK, you have one year to make those changes. One year is enough to update a comprehensive plan, but it's not enough to have all the community input that we wanted to have. That's why we started way ahead of that deadline of that letter. The last time that you had a major update, data and analysis, the whole thing was in 2012. You have had updates since then, but it's more like adjustments here, adjustments there. But it was about time to do a full update. And then the statutes have changed a lot in the last few years. We needed to make sure your plan reflects those statutes. And then you have been working on that mobility plan. We needed to reflect those changes in the plan too. And you worked on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. You had the different plans that you have worked in the few years that we needed to incorporate into the plan. So that's why we're doing this update at this time. Whenever we do a comprehensive plan, and I mentioned we started with data and analysis and the baseline. So the first thing we have to look at is population. Where are we now and where are we headed? So your population right now is about 267,000. And the state tells us that when you do projections, you have to base those projections on what the state tells the county their medium projection is going to be. And that's the minimum that you have to use, the medium projection. So we do some calculations to figure out your share based on the counties, and then come up with that medium projection. But we also look at a medium high and a high, because the city of Port St. Lucie has been growing tremendously in the last few years. So we wanted to make sure that we had a more feasible number to plan for. So we decided to go with the medium high. And for the 2050 planning horizon, we see that we're going to be exceeding 400,000 people. Now, the state requires us to look at a 20-year time frame. 20 years would be 2046. It's kind of like a number. So we decided to just do a 2050 comprehensive plan. So if we look at the difference between today's population and the 2050 population, we see that there's going to be an additional increase of 139,000 people. So community input. I mentioned that we started this early because we wanted to hear from the community. So I'm going to go through a summary of what we heard. So we started in November of 2024 with an online survey. We had a dedicated project website. And we started with just a basic survey asking people their familiarity or how much they used the comprehensive plan, if they knew what that was. Then in December of 2024, we started with stakeholder meetings. Stakeholders are those people that are more familiar with the comprehensive plan, more familiar as their jobs. They do development in the city. So we invited people from different groups. Some of them were from city university. We invited developers, land use attorneys, citizen advisory board members, realtors, economic development council. So it was a very long list. We sent an email to all those people. Then in January of 2025, we had the first workshop. In February, we had the first citizen summit. So we had a captive audience. We had booths set up so that people could come and give us input. In February, we had the second workshop. So this is when we asked them, where do you want to go? In February of this, I mean, February 2025, we had FAMFest, so staff set up booths at this event, and they also had a captive audience, and they were able to obtain some input. Then in April of 2025, we had the third workshop. That's when we started working on the strategies, the policies. And then in February of this year, staff went back to the Citizen Summit and got some additional input. So what do we hear? So we have a document that staff has uploaded to the website. But this, in just one slide, what we heard was, number one, as you know, most people are afraid of growth. Some people told us just stop growth. We don't want to change. But we can't. People are coming. People love this city. And, you know, the only solution is we're going to have to grow, but we're going to have to grow responsibly and strategically. So that was, you know, people realized that, okay, if we have to plan for 400,000 people, let's make sure that we do it in a manner that is not going to impact whoever is here already. The second one was establish a sense of place. People kept talking about, oh, we don't have a downtown. We don't have the place where you have your events. And we understand why. I mean, you're a newer city. You don't have the historic downtown. But let's see how we can accommodate that in your city form today. Diversifying the local economy. We heard from so many people saying, I hate having to drive to West Palm Beach for work. I hate having to leave the county or the city for work and We would like to have a more complete community in Port St. Lucie. Transportation. So we heard a lot about people saying it's a pain having to go from east-west, the traffic, the delays. We need to make sure that our transportation system is more balanced and inclusive. And we understand that we have limited facilities, but how can we make it work? Housing, you know, everybody talks about affordable housing nowadays, and it's true. It's happening everywhere. So we talked about housing diversity. We knew that you have established neighborhoods that we're not going to be changing anything, touching anything. But in terms of, you know, where in the city could we accommodate a little bit of housing diversity to improve that affordability? And the last one was people are very proud of their parks and open space. The city has done a tremendous job making sure that you foster that creation of the open space and preservation of open land. So they wanted to continue that and expand it. So let's talk about the plan changes. So I mentioned it's 11 elements. So first we're going to talk about the comprehensive changes, and then we're going to go one by one. So the first thing we did was we extended the plan to 2050. And one thing that I wanted to mention, you know, going back to that 400,000 number that I showed earlier, so whenever you plan for 20 years down the road, you know that you may be way off or you may be right there, but there's a lot of changes that could happen in 20 years. That's why the state says you have to update it every seven. So even though we're saying we're going to grow to 409,000 by 2050, in seven years, you get to revisit that and see, well, yeah, it looks like we're trending that way, or no, lower, or maybe something happened that it's making it an increase. So don't get too scared with the 400,000 at this point, because we get to look at it again in seven years. But right now, we're planning for 2050. So we needed to incorporate all the state requirements. I mentioned that we needed to incorporate the mobility plan, the parts master plan, and the planning and infrastructure study. We also, throughout all the elements, we wanted to support economic development and preservation of open space, because that's what the public said. And we also needed to make sure we stay compliant with Senate Bill 180. That's the Senate bill that tells all the jurisdictions in Florida that you cannot adopt anything that is going to be more burdensome to somebody else. And they don't specify what burdensome means or to whom, but we have to be careful with that. So when we think about the comprehensive plan, it plans for 20 years down the road. And in order to know what we're going to look like in 20 years, we know we're going to have about 400,000 people total. Can we accommodate them with the land that we have today, with the housing that we have today? So we know that we have some large developments that have happened on the west side. And they have gotten some entitlements already, those planned unit developments. We also know that being a GDC community, we have a lot of single lots throughout the city. When you look at the vacant lands map, which is on the screen, you see the little dots all over the place. All those lots could be developed tomorrow if people want it. They don't need to go through any extensive process. They can just do it overnight. So we know that based on the 400,000 people we need 44,000 dwelling units by 2046, but we already know that there are 41,000 already committed, already coming online. So we only have to worry about 3,000 units in the future. So starting with the first element, this is the future land use element. This is the element that tells you how you're going to grow in terms of land use, where residential is going to be, where industrial, commercial, where the jobs are supposed to be, open space. And the changes that we made to this element refer to the land use categories mainly. So as you know, the future land use element has a future land use map. It's similar to the zoning map, but it's a little bit more generalized. In one land use category, you may have several zoning districts. So the zoning goes in way more detail. But one of the land use categories that we already have in place is the planned industrial park. So basically what we're doing with this category is opening it up so that we can accommodate more industrial manufacturing, logistics, warehouse distribution, reception and development, and some of the industries that the city has decided that those are our targeted industries. SO WHAT WE WANT TO DO IS TO EXPAND OPPORTUNITIES TO DO SOMETHING SIMILAR TO WHAT SOUTHERN GROVES HAS DONE BY OPENING IT UP FOR OTHER PROPERTIES. AND GOING BEYOND JUST WORKING WITH THE CATEGORY, STAFF PLANS TO CREATE A ZONING DISTRICT TO GO WITH IT SO PEOPLE DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH PUD NECESSARILY TO BUILD IN THIS CATEGORY. So some of the characteristics, you have to have at least 30 acres to do anything with this. We would be allowing a maximum height of 75 feet and up to 15% would be multifamily housing. When you have an industrial category, you don't want to open it up to all commercial because you want to preserve it for industrial. So there are some limitations to that. ANOTHER LAND USE CATEGORY THAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT, AND THIS IS ACTUALLY TWO, BUT THEY'RE GOING TO BE BRAND NEW. WE DON'T HAVE THIS IN OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TODAY, BUT WE'RE PROPOSING TO CREATE ACTIVITY CENTER ONE AND ACTIVITY CENTER TWO. SO ACTIVITY CENTER ONE BASICALLY IS TO IMPLEMENT THE WALTON 1 MASTER PLAN. it's supposed to include a mix of uses so we're going to have large scale recreation we're going to have civic hotels multi-family retail restaurant restaurants it's intended to be your the heart of your city like the place to go the place that could become the that identity that people are missing And then the types of parameters that we have for this language category include that you have to have at least 3 uses one of them has to be residential maximum height is going to be 120 feet and the maximum density would be 2520 units per acre so this one is specific to alternate one there has been a lot of planning going on into that property so we know. THAT THESE NUMBERS WILL ACCOMMODATE THAT DEVELOPMENT. BUT AS WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THIS CATEGORY, WE THOUGHT, WELL, THAT HAS BEEN SUCH A GREAT IDEA TO DO THAT AT THAT LOCATION, Why can't we expand this to other areas along US 1, along some of these older corridors where you may have underutilized shopping centers, you may have large pieces of land that shouldn't just develop with big boxes, right? So we said, let's create activity center number two. Now, it's not shown on your map, but it is going to be available for anybody who wants to come in, maybe purchase one of these large properties and do another one of these mini town centers. So again, similar to activity center one, it would include residential, commercial, office, some recreation. And the parameters are a little bit lower than the activity center one. So it would be same three uses, but 75 feet in height and 15 dwelling units per acre. The next category, the mixed use category, that one is an existing one again. What we're doing to this one is expanding it so that it doesn't just require vertical mixed use, meaning like for instance retail at the ground floor and apartments or condos above. We're opening it up so that it includes horizontal mix of uses. Annexations, it's a topic that we hear about almost every day. And we know that a lot of land, especially on the west side, we have people who would like to annex it into the city. And most of the community, they are concerned that if you annex these people, how are they going to impact our quality of life? you know, it's expanding the footprint of the city, how we're going to expand transportation to those areas. So we're including some new policies to address new annexations, and these are voluntary annexations. So we want to make sure that they do a traffic study and a right-of-way needs assessment so that we know how that transportation network is going to grow. We want to look at the mix of uses. We don't want it to be just residential. We want it to include some non-residential uses. And we're putting that at 20% right now. And it was a recommendation that came from the planning and infrastructure study. We want to encourage a grid roadway network, not so much the cul-de-sacs and the spaghetti subdivisions that interfere with connectivity. We want to make sure that wildlife quarters and open space are preserved. We don't want properties to come in and develop from one site to the next. We want to make sure that they include that open space. The future land use designations that they want, we want to see those in the annexation maps. A FISCAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE PROPOSED ANNEXATION. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT THE CITY WOULD LIKE TO REQUIRE. AND THEN ENSURING THAT THE PARKS AND RECREATION LAND IS PROVIDED AT A LEVEL OF SERVICE AS IT WAS RECOMMENDED IN THE PARKS AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN. WHEN WE GET TO RECREATION, WE'LL TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN. BUT SO WE'RE SAYING VOLUNTARY ANNEXATIONS SHOULD COMPLY WITH THE LEVEL OF SERVICE OF EIGHT ACRES PER THOUSAND POPULATION, WHICH IS WHAT THE PARKS AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN RECOMMENDS. So let's move to the second element. So it is the transportation element. And this is probably one that you have been more familiar because you have been talking about mobility for the past few years. So number one, continue the implementation of that mobility plan and mobility fee. We're not proposing any changes to the level of service, which level of service when we think about that is how fast, how comfortable cars move on the roads. However, in the future, if any levels of service need to be changed, it has to be coordinated with the transportation planning organization, FDOT, and the county. Now, something that we're introducing is the quality level of service. It's not going to be a requirement, but it's going to be something that you can use whenever an annexation comes in or whenever somebody's going to develop a subdivision. Making sure that streets are designed for all modes of transportation, not just vehicles. It's not about just moving cars fast. It's making sure that everybody's safe, whether you're walking, biking, or driving, or taking public transportation. BUT AGAIN, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE LIKE A REGULATION TYPE OF STANDARD LIKE LOS IS, LEVEL OF SERVICE. AND THEN SOMETHING ELSE THAT WE WANT TO MAKE SURE IS THAT THE TRANSPORTATION MAP SERIES IS MORE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC AND THEY'RE KEPT UPDATED SO PEOPLE KNOW HAS THE LEVEL OF SERVICE CHANGED, DO WE HAVE NEW INTERSECTIONS, DO WE HAVE NEW ROADS, SO THAT'S SOMETHING THAT STAFF IS COMMITTING TO DOING IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS. We are proposing a series of new policies. One of them has to do with acquiring property for increased connectivity. You know, when you have a roadway that only extends for a few blocks and then you have development and then goes on the other side, it sends people to roads that are already very busy. So I want to make sure that connectivity is a priority. We have a lot of roads and most of them are constrained. We have development on both sides. We don't have room to put more lanes. So we have to keep that in mind and looking at unique designs to accommodate traffic. Same thing for access management. So we have lots that were created when the city was originally developed or planted. And a lot of those roads have access to major roadways. So it's like driveway after driveway after driveway, trying to figure out unique ways to address that, including multimodal design in residential roadways and increasing the accessibility of the public to public transportation Moving to the next element. So this is housing. The purpose of the housing element is number one, to let people know whether we're going to have enough housing units to accommodate that projection. And number two, to address the affordability of housing. How are we going to figure out the problem that we're living now? So just as we were working on the comprehensive plan, the city was working with a consultant and a grant to do a housing study. So we took a lot of the recommendations that came from that study and incorporated them into the comprehensive plan. One of them is a system of bonuses and incentives. We did not implement it in this comprehensive plan, but it's something that needs to be looked into. And it may require changes to your plan later on. So the idea is that we cannot say, hey, you developer, you're going to give us 20% of your units as affordable. It has to be a give and take. It has to be something more like, if you give us 20% of the units or 15% and you can decide what kind of income level, we can give you additional density or intensity or you know, incentives to make it happen. So that's something there are policies that say that we want to look at that and implement it in the future. THERE'S A POLICY THAT TALKS ABOUT AMENDING THE LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE TO ALLOW A WIDER RANGE OF UNITS IN THE APPROPRIATE DISTRICTS. SO IT'S NOT LIKE WE'RE GOING TO GO INTO AN EXISTING SINGLE FAMILY HOME NEIGHBORHOOD AND SAY NOW YOU CAN HAVE TOWN HOUSES AND APARTMENTS AND CONDOS. NO, IT'S LIKE LOOKING AT THE ZONING, TRYING TO SEE WHERE ELSE WE COULD ACCOMMODATE SOME OF THIS DIVERSITY OF HOUSING. AND SOME OF IT IS BEING DONE WITH THE ACTIVITY CENTER ONE AND ACTIVITY CENTER TWO. Another policy is to continue supporting partnerships with other agencies that help with the provision of affordable housing, and then also using that incentive tool along the corridors that we talked about earlier. So this element talks about water, sewer, drainage, solid waste, and aquifer recharge. So as you know, it's not just one entity, one system of utilities. You know, the city serves areas outside the city. Other providers serve areas within the city. So this is the element where we explain all that. Two main things here. Number one, we have to look at availability of water, and that goes in conjunction with your water supply plan. And number two, levels of service. And that is something that we have been working with the utilities staff to update the levels of service. So we are updating the water and sewer levels of service. There is a new policy that talks about requiring new development within the service area where the services are available to connect the central sewer. And this has been a directive that came all the way up from the state too. Encouraging development to incorporate open space. And then we removed the policy related to a project that had already been implemented. And we did that throughout the plan. The next element is actually a combination of two required elements, conservation and coastal management. So here is just continuing to protect, continuing to make sure that we protect those valuable resources. We had an issue with hazardous waste disposal capacity, so we need to be working with the county, trying to figure out how that's going to work in the future. You know, 20 years is not a problem in the next few years, but it may become an issue later on. PRIORITIZING THE CONSERVATION OR LOW IMPACT DEVELOPMENT OF AREAS WHERE YOU HAVE PURELY DRAINED SOILS, LIKE FLOOD PLANES, WETLANDS, OR NEAR SURFACE WATER. SO IT'S CONTINUING THE SAME REGULATIONS THAT WE HAVE HAD BY MAKING SURE THAT THEY'RE ENFORCED. AND THEN ADVANCING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE THE VULNERABILITY TO SEA LEVEL RISE FROM SURGE AND FLOODING, AND THERE ARE, AGAIN, directives that come from the state that talk about density in coastal areas. And even though we don't have a coastal-coastal on the ocean, we do have propensity to get effects from the ocean and in the river. And then the last one here is just incorporating the natural APSL green program into the comprehensive plan. Intergovernmental coordination, we're almost done. So this is the element where you talk about how you cannot do it all by yourselves. Even though the city is responsible to their citizens, they have to work with regional agencies to make sure we get it all done together. St. Lucie County, school board, regional state agencies. And of course we had some recommendations from the planning and infrastructure study related to that that were incorporated here. recreation and open space. This is making sure you have parks and recreational facilities. And in the comprehensive plan, because it's a big picture type of document, we don't talk about whether we have soccer fields or basketball courts. We talk about acres and types of parks, whether it's a neighborhood park, community park, or regional park. So we incorporated some of the recommendations from the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. We removed some outdated language related to dedication of park sites by the GDC and then added policies to seek funding for conservation and looking into a way finding and signage program. I mentioned earlier something about level of service for parks related to annexations. So our current level of service is five acres of park per thousand population. This is one of those items related to Senate Bill 180. We could have gone to eight based on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, but guess what? That could have translated into something more burdensome for people. With the five acres per thousand that we have today, we have enough parks to serve the population, including some of the already planned parks, to serve population through the planning horizon. Economic development. So this one includes some overlap with the other elements because they all relate to helping people be able to live in a sustainable community that has the jobs that they need. So the main priority, and it has always been like that for the city, is protecting industrial and commercial from conversion to residential. promoting infill development and redevelopment, supporting those employment corridors. And that's why we're expanding that PIP land use category. Continuing to use that targeted industries list to attract jobs to the city, establishing industry clusters in the city, and then, of course, providing continued support to workforce and small business development. Capital improvements, it's one of the last elements. It's about how we're going to pay for any improvements that came out from this comprehensive plan. This is where we restate all the levels of service, because this is where we know if you continue using this level of service for park, we're going to be OK. If you use this level of service for water, those improvements that we talked about are going to be adequate for the next few years. So this is where we put it all together, basically. Public schools is not a required element by the state, but it's something that the city has had for many years and feel that it's important to coordinate with the school district on the provision of schools. So we don't get a lot into the details that the school plan will get into. Basically what we do here is coordination in terms of location of schools and coordination related to the growth of the population. Property rights is the last one. It was an element that was adopted not too long ago as a directive from the state. Basically, it says we're not going to interfere with people's private property rights, and we're not making any changes to this element. So next step. So what happens after this? So we have a hearing with the Planning and Zoning Board later on, but then we're going to come back in front of the council on July 13. That's going to be your first hearing, the transmittal hearing. That's when you make a motion to send it to the state. And then the hearing for the actual adoption is planned to be sometime in October. When the state looks at it, they may give us comments, suggestions, and then we may have to make some changes, and then we'll bring those changes to you in October. And then the website is still active if anybody wants to look at the schedule, information related to the board, and that's the address to the website and the QR code. And that's all I have. If you have any questions, Gabby and I are ready to take notes and give answers.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Comments, questions? Go ahead.

Thank you for the presentation. One thing I'd like to see changed, I think I like everything that's in there, but I would like to change the words encourage to require. Because the require has a little bit more teeth than the encourage. We are at the encouraging phase now with some of our developments out west, and they're not so forthcoming in putting the roads in. So I would like to see those words changed from encourage to require. That way we get exactly what we need up front, and we're not fighting the battle long term. I don't want to lock any other council's hands, tie their hands, where we have the opportunity to make that change now.

I agree with you. I don't like the word encourage. Having worked in the public sector as staff, I hated that word because it was like I can ask them as many times as you want, but if they're not going to do it, I don't have anything in my hands to do it. Senate Bill 180. If we start requiring things, people are going to be flying here with lawsuits saying you just made that more burdensome. We wish we could make a lot of these things more, you know, like with the voluntary annexations, we can do it because you don't have to come. I mean, it's only if you want to come.

I'm willing to fight that battle because we're fighting it now. So I'm willing to fight that battle. I would very much like to see encouraged to require.

And that's something that, you know, we worked with several jurisdictions in the state. We have seen different positions. Some communities are like, we don't care. We're going to do it that way. Let the attorneys handle that. Other communities have said, no, we don't want to get into a lawsuit. Let's leave it that way. So it's a directive that we can get from the council. If you want to start changing those words to required, you know, we can certainly do that.

I'm not sure how everybody else feels, but for me, I would like to see it changed. Okay.

Thank you. To your point, as we were going through this, I wrote the same thing down. I also in my one-on-ones said I did not like encourage. These are related to voluntary annexations. We cannot go back on what was done in the past and have the Uh, the infrastructure go in based on trip counts and, you know, rooftops. Those are all baked in. We can't make those changes, but this is where we can make the biggest change in the biggest impact. And I agree with councilman picket. And I'm willing to fight that battle as well, because we have to talk about dealing with. making sure we're providing for our existing residents. And if someone wants to come in and do a voluntary annexation of any kind and we have to go through that process, you are going to put the infrastructure in first. Martin County does it with their new development, the new field development that's out there. They had to put the infrastructure in first as they were allowing the rooftops. So I agree with you 100%.

These are the slide, it's not on the screen, the one that relates to the voluntary annexations. A lot of them say require, require, require. The only one that says encourage is the grid roadway network, but that can certainly be changed.

That's the most important part. It is, and it's the battle that we've been fighting for many, many years. So to not make that a requirement is, to me, it doesn't make any sense.

Anyone else have any comments? OK. You know, I think that's just to kind of close out the discussion. I think that's something that we have to make the decision on as a board is, you know, the reality is, is any of those items that we put in could be challenged legally. And some of them, I think they are a fight worth fighting for. I think if if because of the vagueness of the language from the legislator, provides anything in the gray to be challenged? Does that mean that we should sit with our hands tied and not do what's right? And let the burden be placed on them to prove that this is burdensome in a sense. and let them tell the residents that, oh, by the way, I'm not going to do what I need to do to build that road because I think this is burdensome. I want to come into your community. I want to make money. I want to profit. But no, that's too burdensome for me. So I welcome that future conversation, and I'm willing to look at some of those changes. You know, I did request the draft recommendations. You know, we're going to put it before planning and zoning. We're going to put it before us again. If you could provide those recommendations and allow us and the Planning and Zoning Board to go to that process, if we look at them and decide if we want to add back any of those, that'd be greatly appreciated. Because I, like you, Mayor and Councilman, I was very frustrated by some of the things that I know that we've discussed wanting to see change in the comp plan. And because of this vagueness of the language, and I appreciate legal taking a conservative approach. we might need to push back a little bit while we continue to ask for clarification on the language. And I think both is fair. Some other comments that I have is, As we meet with the public, and I know you're limited, but this doesn't just go for this particular meeting, it goes for future meetings. How do we approach the subject of asking them open questions and then not providing them clarification of what the outcome is gonna be? So for example, there's this huge discussion in the state of Florida right now about affordability. And you could point to property taxes, and you could point to insurance and all these other factors. But most of the affordability comes with what capitalism is. It's demand. If there's not a demand, housing price is going to increase. How do you deal with demand? You increase the number of units. So in one sense, our residents have clearly said, to me, to everyone, to this particular discussion. We don't want any more growth, right? But at the same time, we're making a commitment within the actual comp plan to address affordability, and the only way to address affordability is by increased density, as you just said. So first of all, how are we having that conversation with the public as we're going through these exercises? I wasn't there. So are we telling them, hey, you don't want any more growth. By the way, that's going to require density. And maybe asking the question for affordability, if it requires more density, are you willing to grow to help affordability? I mean, are we asking those questions or are we just asking them a blank question of what do you want? I'm just wondering.

No, we had educational sessions explaining, you know, the alternatives. And I remember being at one of those tables when we were talking about the strategies. And it was like, you know, I don't want to see, you know, apartments in my neighborhood. It's like they don't have to be in your neighborhood. Let's talk about the activity center one, activity center two. Would you have a problem if a shopping center that's been vacant for a while turns into a mixed-use development with apartments or condos or something smaller than a single-family home? Would you have a problem with that? And a lot of people started realizing that that's an alternative. That's fine. Or even the annexations when they come in. You know, people's problems, typically, it's like not in my neighborhood. I don't want to see it where I live. And yes, it's going to make traffic worse because that's the other fear. Going to bring more people, going to bring more houses, traffic is going to get worse. That's why we have to look at mobility. There is only so much we can do with cars. At that point, you have to translate our transition to some people are going to have to use the bicycles, some people are going to have to walk, and some people will have to be using public transportation. It's that's how cities grow. But what you were saying, we cannot stop growth.

Yeah. And I think it's well, first of all, we're entitled. So I want to make sure that's clarified to when we say we're going to grow strategically. That's I think future annexations, if if that comes into play or not. But the reality is, is that we're entitled. So we're going to grow based upon the fact that we have requirements that we have to fulfill. But I think the further discussion on affordability and understanding, for example, Port St. Lucie, unlike the 411 cities has very little commercial and industrial space. So the truth and the reality of us saying this is never going to be in your backyard if you want to have affordability is kind of like saying, well, we don't really have a lot of land unless we were to annex. And so I just think that there's been a lot of discussions about affordability right now that I think we're all dealing with. And I just feel like we're not looking at the entire picture of what that actually looks like. And I know that I have fought and I know many of us have fought for ensuring that we're not growing any more than we need to legally grow to preserve the integrity of Port St. Lucie. But that does come at a tremendous cost of what affordability looks like in our city. And I think that discussion is fair as we continue to have the discussion with the public. A couple other points and then I'll shut up. The other one is, do we transmit, like, I know we transmit to the state, but then once we complete the process, do we provide copies to the county and to the TPO? And it's because I know we're planning on having follow-up discussions with the county. So I just want to make sure that we have that conversation.

Like when it's transmitted, they get copies too.

And then when it's adopted... And good. The reason why is because when we have our follow-up meeting, I really want to discuss, Mr. City Manager, if the council is up to it, I would like for consideration for council to discuss the comp plan with them. Because again, you said voluntary annexations. It's my hope we don't ever have to annex, ever, right? But what the challenge is, is that no matter what, that border means nothing, right? Whether it's county border, city border, it means nothing. And if what's going on across the border is not meeting the service level, it's going to impact you. It's going to impact our city. Meaning if growth isn't actually addressed, transportation is not addressed, guess whose roads are going to be damaged because of that? Ours. And so I think the county and the board that we have currently is actively looking at how do they ensure that they're dealing with their obligations and developers. But whether or not annexation comes, it's my hope we can partner with the county to make sure our comp plans and our visions of that regional transportation network are as close as possible, whenever possible. So I really want to see that. And then the last thing is 2.7.16, which is the connectivity and the future annex acquisition. I'm all for that because I do think we need to look at connectivity. But Mr. City Manager, I think we need to look at the future of connectivity. I know people are talking flying cars and stuff like that. I don't want to stick my head in the sand, but that stuff will come faster than what we believe. And where we're looking at the taxi models that are occurring in certain parts of the world. I think we've made jokes that I'll never take a little flying helicopter taxi in my future. But the truth is, those things are coming. And that is the future of transportation. And as we get acquisition of lands, I want to be thinking 2040.

50 years out of what we true what the needs of the city are going to truly be not just clip cuts for additional lanes etc etc thank you and and to that point um going back to the the requirement of the roadway network i also wrote down requiring those multimodal facilities sidewalks and bike lanes because That's what we talk about in TPO. We can't all the time. We talk about the long range plan and where we can address pedestrian and bicycle issues as well. And we know we're very limited here. because of the way we were planned and our roadway network is, but we have added those bike lanes and multimodal paths in other areas where we can add them. And so if we're going to be requiring a roadway network, we need to make sure that we require those other facilities as well. And I agree that the transportation is going to change. We have already seen it change. We're going to continue to see it change as more technology advances. So we have to get ahead of that going forward. Any other comments, questions?

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes. Madam Mayor, if I may, Ms. Keene would like to add a few comments in response. Sure.

Good morning. I wanted to just address the issue of the density. So we didn't look at changing density in your RL or the existing land uses, but when you get to the activity center, It's activity center one is 25 dwelling units per acre. Activity center two is 15 dwelling units per acre. And then the multifamily would allow 11 dwelling units per acre. And obviously the out in Southern Grove or the tradition area, that's one to 35 dwelling units per acre, depending on which land use sub-district is in. But we didn't look at our, like trying to change the RL because those are existing neighborhoods. So we did try to put it into the newer, land uses or the land uses we could make changes to.

Madam Mayor. Yes, and I appreciate that, Bridget. I just think, and you did exactly what, number one, you would normally do, right? You'd create density and intensity in the areas that make sense. And I think that it's a very real conversation we have to continue to have because, for example, with Walton and 1 we have, I think it's up to 10 stories that can go in Walton and 1 according to what's been approved in the master plan. Looking at it that way, I've already had residents say, well, I don't want to see us go up. You know, I don't want to see height. Well, how do you deal with this affordability issue that everybody wants us to deal with and not deal with the fact that you have to look at density? You have to look at these things in order to be able to create affordability or to do those transactions that you just said earlier in regards to density bonuses and all these things that people would like to see for affordability. There is a seesaw. There is a balance. It's not all. It's not nothing. It's got to be something in between. And I just think as we continue having the conversation, we have to be honest with the residents. You know, if you want affordability, we're doing everything we can as a board to keep, for example, taxes as low as possible on our residents. But affordability goes way beyond the discussion that we're having. it goes to how many units do you have and the more that you have the more the less things are the the cheaper things are because there's more product out there for people to purchase and that's with anything right you know i mean that's with anything you i if you go to the dollar store you you see a hundred of those one dollar things that's a lot cheaper than buying something that's a little bit less harder to find that's just that's just the way the nature works of the beast And I want to make sure that we're honest in those conversations. And then once we run out of land, because not every piece of land is going to be able to do that. Our industrial land in Southern Grove isn't going to be able to do multifamily residential on top of it unless it's specifically prescribed for that. But you're not going to be able to put it in front of on top of TAMCO. You know, so there is very limited land that we have to be able to make this approach. Then what's next? And I think if people don't want to grow, which I lived in my city my whole life, I don't want to grow. then we have to look at what the cost and effect of that is. It might mean that things are more expensive here. So I just want to have the conversation.

Well, to the point, we had a planning and infrastructure study, and it distinctly showed us what that would look like in terms of cost, right, if we don't make considerations for potential growth in the future. Right? It showed us distinctly that. So we have to be really mindful of that going forward. And then also, with regard to the affordability and the density, we did specifically designate the Walton in one area for that. But we do not have policies in place as to what that looks like for potential incentives. So instead of saying considering, we should be getting those policies in place. Now, we should be having those discussions now so that as Walton and ones continues the redevelopment, we're ready to go. So when the multifamily aspect comes in as part of that master plan. Yeah, here we go. We already have. what our policies are and it has to fit this mold. Obviously, there may need to be some flexibility because it hasn't been done yet, right? And there's all different variables. But unless we put some base policies in place, it's going to be, you know, trying to figure it out and starting from scratch. Let's not do that. Other cities have done it. Let's get some base policies in place and then we can go from there. Because if we don't do it now, it's going to hit us, and then we're going to be going backwards a little bit. And I don't want that. I don't think any of us want that. We want to get ahead of the game. We want to be ahead of the game with this. Because it's going to come. It's just a matter of time. Anything else? All right. Thank you. We'll go on to item 6B. Request for attorney-client session with the City Council to discuss pending litigation in the matter of ACR acquisition LLC for City of Port St. Lucie case number 2025-CA-001165. Is there a motion? Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 6C, request attorney-client session with the City Council to discuss pending litigation in the matter of ACR acquisition LLC and Lewis, Longman, and Walker for City of Port St. Lucie case number 2025-CA-001355. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. If we have nothing else, we're adjourned.