Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the City of Port St. Lucie Planning and Zoning Board Special Meeting, Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Ms. Macerino? Here. Mr. Rosen?

Here.

Mr. Akenis?

Yes, ma'am.

Chair Norton?

Here.

Vice Chair Pettibon?

Here.

Mr. Prevot?

Here.

Mr. Spatara?

Here. Okay, we do have a quorum. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. We have no minutes to approve, no consent agenda, so we'll move right along to the public hearing. And item 7A, P24-185.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, Board, Mary Savage-Dunham, for the record. First, thank you very much for having this meeting tonight. We are here to talk about the comprehensive plan update and the evaluation and appraisal review, which we call an EAR. And so this is a public hearing. With me tonight is really the people working on the project. We have Pat and Gabby from Inspire Placemaking. We have Lauren Rushing from New Urban Concepts. She works with Jonathan Paul. And Bridget and Sophia are taking the lead on this project from the planning department. And so I won't talk for long, but I will just remind you that we've been working on this project for over a year. I know it feels like so long ago, but we did have public workshops and I know many of you did attend those. We're really now getting to the culmination of the work where We've done, or the team has done analysis, they've gathered data, they've worked with the internal department heads, they've reviewed what's changed with regard to state statutes, they've had public meetings, online surveys, assembled all that information together, and now we're prepared to transmit a draft to the state for their review. And so after today we go to the planning board for a transmittal hearing. This is just like a large scale comp plan amendment. So you do a transmittal hearing it goes up to the state and they have some amount of time to review it. They'll send back comments and then we move to an approval hearing. So With that, we did workshop this with the city council, I believe, on the 15th. We did get some feedback from them, and so we'll report out to you on some of their feedback. We're working to incorporate their comments into the text prior to their hearing on July 13th. The team is going to walk you through high level what our study, what we found, what we're changing. what we can't change and why. And then we're here for your feedback. And at the very end of the day, we will be hoping to get a motion to approve or recommend approval to the city council for transmittal with the revisions as recommended by council. And of course, if any of the comments or feedback we get tonight spur any revisions, we would incorporate that before city council as well. And with that, I will turn it over to the team, and we'll walk you through this. And looking forward to the dialogue.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Pat Tayeski. I'm with Inspire Placemaking. And I have a PowerPoint presentation that we can go through. Let me see. So the agenda. So we're going to talk a little bit about who is who in the introductions. Then we're going to give you some background as to why we're doing this update. We're going to tell you a little bit about the community input. I'm sorry. Then we're going to go through the plan changes at high level, like Mary mentioned. And then we'll talk about the next steps. So Mary mentioned so we have been working closely with Mary Bridget and Sophia on these changes since the beginning and from the inspired team serving as the project manager and Gabby has been the deputy project manager so we have been communicating with staff this whole time and we're also partnering with Jonathan from New Urban Concepts and they were in charge of the transportation element. So in terms of the timeline, we started way back in 2024, the end of the year. We started with a kickoff meeting. And in conjunction with that kickoff meeting, we had some stakeholder interviews, just trying to get input from those people who do development, are familiar with the development in the city. And we had three meetings. Then we started working on collecting data, analyzing the data, and in conjunction with that we had some workshops. So the idea was like we presented the facts, this is what we have found, and we talked to the public about where are we now. So the idea is like let's establish the base so that we can start talking about the future. THEN AFTER THAT, WE COLLECTED ALL THE COMMENTS THAT WE GOT FROM THE PUBLIC, IN PERSON AND ONLINE, AND WE CREATED A COMMUNITY VISION. SO IT WAS LIKE, THIS IS WHAT WE HEARD, AND THIS IS, YOU KNOW, HOW THE CHANGES, THESE ARE THE CHANGES THAT WE'RE PROPOSING. SO THEN WE STARTED GOING INTO THE GOALS, SUBJECTIVES, AND POLICIES. AND THIS IS THE PART OF THE PLAN THAT GETS ADOPTED BECAUSE THESE ARE THE STRATEGIES ON HOW WE'RE GOING TO MANAGE GROWTH IN THE FUTURE. The data and analysis doesn't get adopted because it's just a compilation of numbers, facts, figures, and it should be, you know, staff should be able to change it at any time. So the goals, objectives, and policies, we also went back to the public and we said, okay, so let's talk about, you know, we already talked about where we were. We also talked to them about where do you want to go. And then at this point, we asked them, how do we get there? Because it's very easy for people to come in and say, we want lots of parks. Okay, let's realistically talk about how we're going to get new parks and where. So after that, then came the unveiling. So that's when we issued drafts. And then now we're in the adoption phase. So the adoption phase included a workshop with council. And then it includes this hearing with planning and zoning. And then we're going to have the transmittal hearing with the council. And then it goes to the state. Oh, sorry. And then when it comes back from the state, then we do the final adoption hearing. And we're expecting that one to be sometime in October. So why are we doing this? So a little bit of background. So the comprehensive plan, it's above your land development regulations. It's the long-term vision. We always call it the blueprint for growth. AND WE HAVE VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS IN THE STATE STATUTES ON HOW TO DO THIS. SO WE HAVE TO CREATE ELEMENTS IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, AND WE HAVE, I BELIEVE IT'S TEN, NINE OR TEN REQUIRED ELEMENTS. BUT YOU CAN ALSO DO OPTIONAL ELEMENTS. AND THE CITY OF PORT SAINT LUCY HAS FOR MANY YEARS INCLUDED THREE OPTIONAL ELEMENTS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC FACILITIES, AND I THINK IT'S JUST TWO. OPTIONAL AND WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE HAVING THOSE. THEN WHY ARE WE UPDATING IT NOW? SO THE STATUTE SAYS THAT WE HAVE TO UPDATE OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLANS EVERY SEVEN YEARS. THE WAY WE'RE DOING IT NOW, IT'S A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT THAN THE WAY IT HAD BEEN DONE IN THE PAST, BUT THE LAST TIME THAT YOU HAD A MAJOR, MAJOR UPDATE WHERE YOU UPDATED DATA ANALYSIS, NUMBERS, YOU KNOW, COMPLETE REWRITE WAS IN 2012. YOU HAVE UPDATED THE PLAN SINCE THEN BECAUSE OF THE YEARS, BUT THIS IS KIND OF LIKE A MAJOR REWRITE, RECONSIDERING THE VISION OR RECONSIDERING EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING IN THE CITY AT THIS TIME. SO THE YEAR IS TECHNICALLY DUE THIS YEAR IN SEPTEMBER, AND THAT'S WHEN YOU SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE STATE SAYING WE HAVE LOOKED AT OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, WE UNDERSTAND THAT THERE ARE SOME CHANGES WE HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF, SO WE'RE GOING TO MAKE THOSE CHANGES. AND FROM THAT DATE, YOU HAVE ONE YEAR TO COMPLETE THOSE CHANGES. ONE YEAR IS TYPICALLY NOT ENOUGH, AND THAT'S WHY STAFF DECIDED TO START THIS EARLIER SO WE COULD HAVE A MORE ROBUST PUBLIC INPUT PROGRAM. SOMETHING ELSE THAT WE NEEDED TO MAKE SURE WE INCORPORATE INTO THIS UPDATE WAS THE MOBILITY STRATEGIES. YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING VERY HARD ON THE MOBILITY PLAN FOR SEVERAL YEARS. AND THERE HAVE BEEN OTHER STUDIES THAT YOU HAVE COMMISSIONED THAT WE NEEDED TO MAKE SURE THOSE WERE INCORPORATED INTO THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. SO WHENEVER WE DO A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OR AN UPDATE, THE FIRST THING WE HAVE TO LOOK AT IS POPULATION PROJECTIONS. SO IT'S LIKE WHERE ARE WE NOW AND WHERE ARE WE HEADED? BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR HOWEVER MANY PEOPLE WILL BE HERE IN 20 YEARS. So right now, we're at 267,000. The state says, very specifically, when you do your projections, you have to be at about the median projection of the county's share, or your share of the county's, not lower than that. So we start with a level that we have to meet. So we did a lot of calculations, methodologies, comparisons, and we came up with a population of 407,000 by the year 2050. So this is a little bit beyond the 20-year time frame. We decided to go to 2050 because 2046 would be kind of like a strange year to talk about. So we are calling it the 2050 Comprehensive Plan. So that means that we're going to have about almost 140,000 people coming to the city. Now, population projections, just like any other guesstimate, we do our best to figure out how much you're going to grow. But sometimes it's very close. Sometimes it's completely off. PROJECTING 20 YEARS AHEAD, BUT REMEMBER, WE'RE GOING TO REVISIT THIS IN SEVEN YEARS. THINGS COULD HAPPEN. THINGS COULD GET GREAT, THINGS COULD GO SOUTH. WE GET TO LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS EVERY SEVEN YEARS. COMMUNITY INPUT. SO AS I MENTIONED, WE HAD A ROBUST PUBLIC INPUT PROGRAM. WE STARTED IN NOVEMBER WITH AN ONLINE SURVEY. THEN IN DECEMBER, WE HAD STAKEHOLDER MEETINGS. AND WHAT WE CALL STAKEHOLDERS IS PEOPLE WHO ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE GROWTH IN THE CITY, WITH DEVELOPMENT. WE INVITED PEOPLE WHO HAD ATTENDED THE CITY UNIVERSITY PROGRAM, INVITED DEVELOPERS, LAND USE ATTORNEYS, CITIZEN ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS, REALTORS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL. 200 emails to stakeholders. And we held three of those meetings. In January, we had the first workshop. So this is when we said, OK, where are we now? We told them about population projections. We told them where the city is at this point in time. And then in February, we took advantage of the Citizen Summit because we had a captive audience. So we set up a corner with boards, input, exercises, so people were able to stop by and help us figure this out. In February of 2025, also we had the workshop number two. This is when we asked people, where do you want to go? So knowing how much we're going to grow, knowing what's happening in the city today, where do you want to be in 20 years? Then February of 2025, again, there was the FAMFest event, and staff did the same. They went, set up some boards, got some input from the public. And then in April of this year, that's when we had workshop number three. How do we get there? And then again in February of this year, staff repeated the Citizen Summit and got a little bit more input.

Just one second before you move on to the next slide. I just wanted to point out that we also did include in the stakeholder groups the Treasure Coast Builders Association. So we also include the Builders Association, economic development, developers, other stakeholders, and then the residents who attended the Citizens Academy.

So we got a lot of comments online, in person, in writing. So if we were to put all those comments in just one slide, at first people were reactive to growth. A lot of people just don't want to see anybody else moving to Port St. Lucie, but we know that that's not realistic. We know that it's going to grow whether we like it or not. So they said, okay, fine, if we're going to grow, let's make sure that it's responsible and strategic growth. The second item was sense of place. Some people were complaining that there's no place in Port St. Lucie where you could say this is the heart of the city, this is where we get together, this is where we gather, and this is the place that we're very proud of. So we needed to figure out how we're going to address that. DIVERSIFYING THE LOCAL ECONOMY. A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE TELLING US HOW THEY HAVE TO DRIVE TO PALM BEACH COUNTY OR OTHER CITIES FOR WORK. AND THEY WERE UPSET, LIKE, WHY CAN'T WE FIND GOOD-PAYING JOBS IN THIS AREA? TRANSPORTATION. SO PEOPLE WERE TALKING ABOUT HOW NORTH-SOUTH SEEMS TO BE OKAY, BUT EAST-WEST IS KIND OF HARD TO DO. SO THEY WERE ASKING FOR CONNECTED AND INCLUSIVE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS. Housing affordability was a big issue. We have all felt it. And the conclusion, the comments that we got was let's look into housing diversity. Not everybody wants to live in a single family home. Not everybody can afford a single family home. If we were to increase alternative housing solutions, where would those go? And helping with the affordability issue. And then the last one was preserving and conserving nature. A lot of the people we talked to, they were very proud of the green spaces, all the efforts that the city has put into creating parks and recreation and nature preserves. Now, all those comments and the more detailed bullet points are on the website, so anybody can go in and take a look at the specific comments that we received. SO NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT WE'RE PLANNING TO CHANGE IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. SO IN GENERAL, ALL THE ELEMENTS, WE'RE EXTENDING EVERYTHING TO 2050, AND I FORGOT TO MENTION EARLIER, THAT'S ONE OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE STATE. THEY SAY YOU HAVE TO EXTEND EVERYTHING TO 20 YEARS DOWN THE ROAD. There have been a lot of state statutory changes in recent years. We needed to make sure we addressed all of those. The state is now telling us how we have to deal with compatibility. The state is telling us how to deal with mobile homes, manufactured homes. So all those things needed to be incorporated into the plan. AND LIKE I MENTIONED EARLIER, YOU HAVE HAD A LOT OF STUDIES DONE EARLIER, YOU KNOW, IN PREVIOUS YEARS, THE MOBILITY PLAN, PARKS AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN, THE PLAN AND INFRASTRUCTURE STUDY, YOU ALSO DID A HOUSING STUDY RECENTLY. ALL THAT NEEDED TO BE INCORPORATED INTO THE PLAN. A FEW CHANGES TO SUPPORT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND ALSO THE PRESERVATION OF OPEN SPACE. And then the last one here is one that you're probably all familiar with this, but one of the latest bills that the state passed was one that says that the cities and counties cannot adopt anything that would be more burdensome for people. What that means is you cannot tighten up your policies or your regulations. So we needed to keep that in mind. And the draft that has been circulating takes that into account. HOWEVER, AND I'M GOING TO TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT, COUNCIL WAS CURIOUS ABOUT WHY COULDN'T WE? WHAT ARE OTHER COMMUNITIES DOING? IS EVERYBODY JUST FOLLOWING THAT LEAD? SO I'LL TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT LATER. portion of the big item in the comprehensive plan is your future land use map. Basically in the future land use map, you have to demonstrate you have enough land to accommodate housing for the 139,000 people that are going to be coming this way, right? So we have to do this exercise that we call the holding capacity. Looking at vacant land today, how many people can we accommodate? How many units can we accommodate? And the housing demand, including the people that are coming in the future, we would need almost 45,000 units. however if we count all those little lots that the gdc created back when the city was created and we look at the entitlements all these plant developments on the west side of the city that have already approved development plans we already have 41 000 available lots for that growth so it's about 3,000 that we have to worry about. And between little pieces of land here or there, or incorporating mixed use in certain categories, and we'll talk about those later, we can accommodate that additional 3,000 units. So go ahead.

Can I ask a question? Yeah. Can you go back to those numbers? So if I understand correctly, aside what's already entitled to be developed, We're only short about 3,000 more homes to be sufficient through 2046. Am I understanding those numbers correctly? Yes. Okay. Just wanted to make sure I understood. Thank you.

I have a question too. So you said when you showed the projections, they could be accurate, could be high, low. Based on these numbers, the entitlements that are already there, it could potentially accommodate with no additional entitlements the actual numbers that we see in 2050, right? Potentially?

Except for the 3,000. The 3,000 are the ones that we have to...

Right, but what I'm saying is your projections may or may not be correct. Yes. So what I'm saying is that 3,000 may not even necessarily be needed.

That's right.

Because a lot of residents do not want any more, as you said earlier, they don't want any more building. You've already got entitlements for 41,000. An argument could be made that that's enough, right?

Yeah, at least for the next few years, yeah.

But you're talking about the need, right?

But I mean, is the need a self-fulfilling prophecy? In other words, if you keep entitling more and more and more, yeah, population will grow.

Or if you just cap the- If you cap it, what happens is that housing becomes more expensive because now you don't have availability. Supply and demand.

Right. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I understand that. It's just that there's a lot of entitled property already there. It's very significant. So 3,000, that's less than 10%. Your projections could be off by 10% easily.

And also, we have to account with the fact that all those little lots that you see,

Why haven't they developed? To the east is what you're talking.

Yes, it's kind of hard to see on the slide, but all the little dots, all the lots that were created, they're not as easy to develop. How many years have they been vacant and they're not developing?

So let me argue against that. They're not as easy to develop. What does that mean? I mean, you have a scattered lot. Why isn't it easy to develop? It's one house. Isn't it a lot more difficult to develop

500 acres there's so much more involved than just putting a house on a lot that's already established correct you are correct there are lots throughout the city it's not that they aren't easy to develop it's just a magic matter of when they become available because all of the property in the city of port st lucie with gdc was sold so you have different owners and whether they become available and at the price point, but it is a projection, and the population growth is a projection, and then this is an estimate of what, you know, it will be available, and that's based on all the entitlements still out in the southwest annexation area, approved developments that we have in the northwest annexation area, and then those lots that are available.

Yeah, understood.

So if I may just piggyback on what Ms. Keene is saying, also going back to your previous question, You're correct. We're presenting a 20-year plan. As Ms. Tajewski said, we do the year every seven years. So this is our projection now, which we're required by state statutes to present like this. When we do our next year, if things slow down, that will be our opportunity to then adjust. And you're 100% correct. If things slow down and our projections are, you know, get modified, we may be over capacity. But according to the state statutes, we have to provide a 20-year analysis and show that if we grow the way that the state wants us to do the analysis, here's what our delta is. And so we're checking that box for the state, but we all acknowledge that we'll be back here well before then and fine tune this.

That makes sense. And then for the public standpoint, they know that, okay, this will be reviewed in seven years and we go through the process. That's fine.

And we don't even have to wait seven years, right? If there was some dramatic downturn or a desire, you know, we could adjust our projections at any time. But, yes, that's a great point. Thank you for bringing it up.

Yeah, yeah.

Great. Thank you. And when we looked at the population projections, we picked the medium-high. We didn't want to go to the high because it was just exaggerated. And also when we were looking at 2050, If it was exactly 2050, so 24 years, we would have had to find more places for homes. So that's why for that calculation, we decided to just keep it to 2046 because we didn't want to have to increase densities all of a sudden and being so far down the road.

And I think erring on the side of more growth is better. So you're prepared, right? So you can have entitlements to have enough residential space housing, if you don't need it, you could potentially scale back because there are a lot of businesses that are moving to this area. There's a lot of Um, industry coming here, so it's it is very critical and that's why the state wants every city to be prepared for that.

And it's also, um, like a balance. Like, if you project too many people, then all of a sudden you're going to have to start creating parks. You have to start updating your water treatment plan.

You have to start updating more importantly roads.

Yes, exactly.

So so yes, and and that's a good point of. on the side of on the higher end so that you're prepared. Because you can't all of a sudden put that infrastructure in in a year or two. You have to plan way ahead of time.

Okay. Member Reineckes? Do you have a question?

I just wanted to understand a couple things to clarify. It says housing, 2046 housing demand. So I assume all these lots that are highlighted in either black or red are all residential. There's nothing commercial considered in here, correct?

Oh, the red is just residential, yeah.

The red and the black as well are just all residential?

The black is inside a DRI. So that's where they have all their entitlements. And they can have so many units already. They already know how many units they can have. And the red is outside a DRI, but vacant.

Okay. And how current is that map, actually? Because I asked that question, and I don't want to ask a trick question. I do see, you know, known conflicts with what we're proposing or stating as inside of the DRI as vacant residential. Point of example is we show a lot of the Southern Grove area that's under extensive commercial and warehousing and other uses. IS VACANT RESIDENTIAL INSIDE OF A DRI. I WANTED TO DISCLOSE WHERE I'M GOING WITH THAT. IS THAT A TRUE QUESTION?

SO THAT'S THE DRI, AND WE KNOW EXACTLY HOW MANY UNITS. SO WE WERE NOT TRYING TO MULTIPLY ACRES TIMES INTENSITY. WE ALREADY KNOW HOW MANY UNITS. SO WHEN IT'S COLOR, IT'S NOT FOR CALCULATIONS, IT'S FOR EXACT NUMBERS. LIKE STAFF KEEPS A SPREADSHEET VERY DETAILED PLANNING AREA BASED AND FOR EACH PLANNING AREA THEY KNOW WHICH PROJECTS HAVE COME IN FOR APPROVAL AND HOW MANY UNITS THEY ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE. SO YEAH, THE NUMBERS, THIS MAP Probably the last time we updated it was late last year. But, yeah, the numbers are what matters, not so much the area that you see. For the black.

I'm actually good.

Thank you so much. I'm all set.

Okay. And, Mike, any other questions? The majority of the 41,000 right there is probably in the southwest and northwest corridors, correct?

Yes. OKAY. SO NOW WE'RE GOING TO GO ELEMENT BY ELEMENT. SO THE FUTURE LAND USE ELEMENT, SOME OF THE CHANGES THAT WE'RE PROPOSING HAVE TO DO WITH THE LAND USE CATEGORIES AND THE FUTURE LAND USE MAP. SO WE HAVE ALREADY A LAND USE CATEGORY CALLED THE PLAN INDUSTRIAL PARK, THE PIP. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE A MIXED USE TYPE OF CATEGORY, AND WE WANTED IT TO SORT OF LIKE REPLICATE WHAT HAS HAPPENED WITH THE SOUTHERN GROVES JOBS QUARTER, BUT IN OTHER PARTS OF THE CITY. SO PROVIDE MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THOSE TYPES OF BUSINESSES THAT WE WANT TO ATTRACT TO THE CITY. SO WE'RE MAKING IT MORE ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOPERS, AND STAFF HAS TALKED ABOUT EVEN CREATING A ZONING DISTRICT TO GO WITH THAT IN THE FUTURE. SO THAT THERE WOULD BE A MINIMUM SIZE OF 30 ACRES, BUILDING HEIGHT WOULD BE 75 FEET, AND THEN THERE WOULD BE A REQUIREMENT OR A CAP ON HOW MUCH MULTIFAMILY THEY COULD PUT IN. BECAUSE WE LIKE MIXED USE, BUT DON'T LET THE RESIDENTIAL TAKE UP THE INDUSTRIAL AND NON-RESIDENTIAL LAND USE CATEGORY.

JUST AS A SIGN, MAYOR, THE MAXIMUM HEIGHT SAYS 75 FEET. IS THAT TO CODE?

So this is future land use. And so just as Pat's saying, we already have the PIP category. The current PIP, I believe, allows 35 feet and then you can get up to 75 with a PUD. This is an amendment to an existing land use category. It's being proposed due to the analysis by the team and staff. And what we're seeing is that Southern Grove was so successful. Where's our next job quarters going to be? And are there things that we can do that will make THINGS EASIER OR MORE SUPPORTIVE OF CONTINUED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PARTICULARLY COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL. BECAUSE AS YOU KNOW, WE'RE PREDOMINANTLY A RESIDENTIAL TAX BASE. AND SO THIS IS 75 IS THE NEW FUTURE LAND USE. AND THEN COMING SOON TO A MEETING NEAR YOU MAY BE A CORRESPONDING PIP ZONING TEXT AMENDMENT. and then that will provide the full support if someone chooses to use it. Right. And so these next few slides the team's going to walk you through are highlighting the changes that we're proposing for the comp plan. We're very excited about these. We think that SB 180 restricts us for becoming more burdensome, but I think we would all agree that this isn't more burdensome. Right. this would likely be beneficial to the city.

That would be great. And probably create more affordable housing.

So this particular district is...

This is industrial, right?

It's a planned industrial park. We did hear that there's an interest in having workforce housing. So you'll note that we did incorporate up to 15% of the gross, I think, land area could be used for multifamily. Not required, but if we get a big... and they want to provide some housing, they can. We did put in the cap on the area because, as you know, people would much rather build housing than commercial or industrial.

So in my opinion, I work a lot with manufacturing, so this is very exciting because there's a massive need for it. Manufacturing in Florida is booming, so this plan is absolutely on point. in providing this new land use. So this is terrific.

I'll just add to that. And the reason why we looked at this land use and wanted to expand on it is Southern Grove is very unique in the sense that it's in a DRI. It has a certain land use that allows for more development intensity than our citywide zoning, warehouse or industrial zoning would allow. So that's why when, so you can't really take that and apply it to another part of the city because it's specific to that western annexation area. So that's why we kind of looked at this and let's try to create something where...

Conceptual.

Right. You can have this in other locations of the city.

Right, right. So that's why you're establishing this is so you can use it in other areas. Yes. Okay, good.

Outside of the Southern Grove area.

Right, outside of Southern Grove. Okay, awesome.

And in terms of consistency, so once the comprehensive plan is adopted, then staff has about a year to update the land development regulations to make them consistent with this. And it doesn't mean that the zoning district would say 75 feet in height. They could have a scale. Right. Maybe it's 50, but if you do this and this and that, you can go up to 75, something like that. Okay, now also in the future land use map, there are two new categories that we're proposing. They're called activity center one and two. Activity center one, the idea is to support the Walton and one master plan. So we know what the city wants to put there. So it's hotels and residential and commercial recreation. So we are writing it in a way to support all those uses. AND THERE WILL BE A MINIMUM REQUIREMENT OF THREE USES, ONE OF WHICH HAS TO BE RESIDENTIAL. THE MAXIMUM HEIGHT IS GOING TO BE 120 FEET AND THE MAXIMUM DENSITY IS GOING TO BE 25, 20 UNITS PER ACRE. SO IT'S SPECIFIC TO THAT CORNER, RIGHT? NOW, ACTIVITY CENTER NUMBER TWO When we were looking at Activity Center 1, we were like, that would be cool for these underdeveloped shopping centers like along US 1 where you can see a lot of potential. There's a lot of parking, a lot of pavement. What if somebody just demolishes all that and does like a little town center, like a little mixed-use development?

Like a Meisner Park.

Exactly. So we said, let's draft a new land use category that could allow something like that. So this one, it would be similar to activity center one, but a little bit lower in scale, smaller in scale. So it does have the minimum of three uses also, but the height would be 75 and the density would be 15 units per acre. And the land development code would have all the details on how you do this. The mixed use land use category this one is existing just like the PIP But what we're doing in this case is that right now it says you have to have vertical mixed use and as we know In Florida, it's very hard to get people to do a vertical mixed use. So we're opening it up to vertical or horizontal So that's the the only change that we're proposing there.

Can they do both?

You can do both.

Yeah a member

Can I just ask for clarification? I mean, it seems obviously no vertical to horizontal, but what would be the difference between the two and how it would affect the community and surrounding and planning and those types of things?

So like what you see, the two photos that you see, like the bottom left, that's your typical vertical mixed use where you have residential commercial restaurants and the ground floor apartments above. When you look at the one on the top left, you could do like one portion of your site is going to be your commercial. And then maybe next to it, but not mixed in, your apartments. And maybe a little bit away from that, some single family or town homes. So they don't have to be stocked up. And some developers prefer that. and others prefer the bottom one, the bottom option. So it would be opening it for both.

So both would use the same amount of land, if I understand correctly. It would just be segregated between commercial and residential, is that right? On the horizontal?

I would think that they use more land if they do the horizontal mixed use.

Okay, yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Yeah, and we like to encourage the vertical, but at the same time, we want to encourage the mix of uses. Because once you put the commercial next to the multifamily, next to the townhouses, there is more walkability.

So it's more beneficial for a municipality to offer options to developers, do you think?

yes i think so yeah okay and if i could if i could add to that we did add the mixed use land use back in 2012 and no one used it because it was specifically retail on the bottom residential on top more restrictive that's what you had to do right and then you know we looked around and just saw well why not allow people to just have a mixed use zoning so also in a way it'll get people away from in the city you know we have an issue where people kind of use a

institutional land use slash a general commercial land use slash an rh land use so they're trying to combine three land uses onto one property and this would allow you to just have one broad mixed-use land use and get away from those kind of slash slash slashes so how high could a mixture of a multi-family building go in these like and and not necessarily in terms of feet but how many stories well we go by feet i'm sure to understand we go by feet but can we Give me equivalent stories of the mixed use land use category. The mixed use land use. Is that what you're asking? Wherever it is we're planning on using these. I was just wondering.

Board Member McKenna said the maximum height for mixed use would be 75 feet. And that would be with the incorporation of a planned unit development. So a regulation book in addition to that land use category. and zoning district.

So is that about six stories, seven stories, somewhere in that ballpark? Yeah. Okay. Is there any intention at all to change that and even go higher at some point with these?

I think where we went higher was just for the Walton and 1. That's the one that it's probably the highest.

Okay. And that was six stories, right?

That was 120. 120. Okay.

120 feet for the activity center one, which is for Walton and Warren.

Yeah. Okay.

And so if I may, Board Member Rakenis, I'd like to just state that, you know, activity center two, which was for... older developments along the major transportation corridors for the mix of uses, you know, kind of mimics the mixed-use development, the mixed-use land use category as well. So they kind of go hand-in-hand with one another. They follow one another.

Great. Jim, I have a couple questions.

Can I just, if I may just add one other thing. The mixed-use, Ms. Trail is completely correct. mixed use and AC2, activity center two, those could also be used in a location that are immediately adjacent to some of your single family neighborhoods. So Walton and one, 120 feet, you know, sounds good. Northwest annexation area, maybe a greater height. But when you get into the redevelopment of some of these older corridors, we also have to be sensitive of if you're looking at a public plaza or something like that, we have to think about the scale a little bit. And I think that the team did a good job of weighing what made sense where. We don't want these dramatic transitions you're going to have all these single-family houses in shadow, and we certainly don't want to do that either. We want to be thoughtful about it. If there was a real demand for a greater height due to extraordinary circumstances, someone could apply for relief if they really needed to.

Member Rogan? Thank you. I just have one question. You had stated, if I understand you correctly, that we had created a PIP for a residential on the top and it was a commercial on the bottom. And we didn't get a lot of interest in that. Did you get any feedback, negative feedback, from developers stating why they didn't like that?

We just know that no one chose to use it.

That was back, just as an aside, that was over 10 years ago. 2012, right.

It just never has been picked up.

And if you start looking at other cities, they are picking it up. It's starting to become more popular now, only because, as Member Rickens said, it's walkability, accessibility, people don't want to get in the car. And again, it's in certain corridors of the city. It's not... you know, in certain areas. But when we look at, I think what we're looking at in the future is redevelopment areas along US 1 to create opportunities for our residents to have a place to go that they can walk to as opposed to have to get in the car. Is that accurate? That's right.

And it took a long time for Florida to get on the bandwagon.

But if you look around at other cities, other cities that are growing like ours, where we are at, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, it's already developed. Yes. And now they're looking to where they can go next.

And this idea of offering both alternatives is like if somebody's going to come in with a great development, awesome. Now if they're going to propose this vertical, let's roll out the red carpet because we want to see that.

And it's all to the benefit of the city in the end because we're going to have areas of our city where it may not have been as desirable will become more desirable. Right. Yes, great point.

Okay.

OK, now we have a series of policies related to voluntary annexations. And this is where 180 doesn't really apply because nobody's asking them to come into the city. But if they want to come into the city, there are certain things that the city would like to get or that will require from them in order to come in. Preservation of wildlife quarters, open space. We want to make sure that they have a minimum of 20% dedicated to non-residential uses. And that was a recommendation that came from the planning and infrastructure study. We need to know what the future land use categories will be on the land. Don't come in with just a blank map saying we'll figure it out in the future. We want to get a fiscal impact assessment from the proposed annexation. It's how is this going to benefit the city, not just the developer. MAKING SURE THAT PUBLIC PARKS AND RECREATION DEDICATIONS ALIGN WITH THE PROPOSED LEVEL OF SERVICE AND THE MASTER PLAN, THE PARKS MASTER PLAN, AND WE'LL TALK ABOUT LEVEL OF SERVICE IN A LITTLE BIT, BUT THE PARKS MASTER PLAN LEVEL OF SERVICE IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE HAVE IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. AND THEN REQUIRING AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EXPECTED INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS. SO ALL THIS WOULD BE APPLICABLE TO VOLUNTARY ANNEXATIONS IN THE FUTURE. Then we go to transportation. That's the second element. So it's continuing to implement the mobility plan and the mobility fee. We are not proposing any changes to the levels of service for cars. And if any changes are considered in the future, they would have to be coordinated with the Transportation Planning Organization, FDOT, and St. Lucie County. And we're making some minor changes to documents. SOMETHING THAT WE ARE INTRODUCING THIS TIME BECAUSE IN THE PAST WE SAID SOMETHING LIKE THE CITY MAY CONSIDER ESTABLISHING MULTIMODAL QUALITY OF SERVICE STANDARDS. INSTEAD OF LEVEL OF SERVICE WHICH IS A, B, C, D, E, HOW FAST YOU CAN GO ON THE ROAD IN YOUR CAR, QUALITY OF SERVICE refers to the experience, not just for the cars, but the pedestrians and the bicyclists and the cars. So putting a lot of focus on that in this element, they are not going to be mandated, just like LOS, but the city wants to work with the development community and with the city itself to make sure that the streets become complete streets in the future.

I have a question.

I'm just reading in this top bullet point to remove, you remove the policy that may consider establishment of multimodal quality and you add the objective to evaluate quality of service for streets and multi. So does this mean that this multimodal facilities, including on-street bike lanes, which is very important to me, meaning is this getting moved up in the level of priorities? Yeah.

It's not may consider, it's like we're considering that now.

It is now a priority. Yes. Excellent.

Let's see. What else? Just making sure that, you know, if there are bike lanes, that they are the correct type of bike lanes. We're way past the bike lanes that are shared with the trucks and the cars going 45 miles per hour or more. And then... POLICIES MAY ADOPT IN THE FUTURE TRANSIT QUALITY OF SERVICE STANDARDS. IT'S SOMETHING THAT WE'RE NOT READY TO DO IT AT THIS POINT BUT THE CITY MAY CONSIDER IN THE FUTURE.

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT BIKE LANES. HOW DO THEY GET ASSESSED? WHAT GOES INTO THAT?

New bike lanes?

Yeah.

The city needs to have, and I don't know if they already have standards in the technical manuals, when, you know, if there is a standard that the city says this is how they should be, they should be buffer or maybe part of the sidewalk, maybe a multimodal trail, that's to be determined when those projects are built. But there should be standards in the city technical manuals and land development code.

Yeah, what point does that get assessed? It's part of this process or...?

So if I may just jump in. And we also have Lauren, who's an expert on bike lanes way more than I. But a lot of the technical details about roadways and bike lanes and the specifications, those are actually in a fabulous document called the Engineering Standards. And so this document is really like the high level policy. Here's what you should think about. And then there's goals and objectives. And then we have other documents that show you how to do it. the zoning regs, the engineering standards. But Lauren is our traffic consultant, so.

Good evening, thank you for the question. So the purpose of the multimodal quality of service standards is just that, to create sort of a performance metric to measure how your system's performing over time. So you all are familiar with level of service standards, I'm sure. Those are standards that have been used by transportation planners and engineers for years to measure how your transportation system performs from the perspective of a driver. So how much congestion am I experiencing? How fast am I going? What volume of traffic are we moving? What we haven't had in the past is standards to tell you how the system is performing from the perspective of someone riding a bike or walking or riding a scooter and so this establishes just that so we have standards for the street itself for on-street multimodal quality of service which would be like your bike lanes off-street facilities which would be your sidewalks and your shared use paths And those things are based on the width of the facility, the type of the facility, the degree of separation between vehicle traffic and multimodal modes. And sort of the basis for that is we're looking at not how many people were moving necessarily, but how safe the street environment is for all modes of transportation. And so these are being proposed as part of the comprehensive plan so that every time you update your mobility plan, which would be once every four years, you're doing a new evaluation on how your system is performing as a whole from the perspective of these quality of service standards. So as part of the comp plan and the data inventory and analysis, we have provided that baseline analysis for you.

Great. That was a lot. Thank you so much for your response. That was very thorough. What does that mean we're doing for bike lanes? Is this part, because I just want to make sure.

Can I kind of abbreviate it? It sounds like we're creating standards before it's being built, correct? You hear this is a standard. It's not built.

Right now, we have streets and bike lanes that don't meet the standards that we want to adopt. It's not like tomorrow the city is going to go and update everything. So it's more as roads get repaved, repurposed. New roads come on board. That's when those projects start coming in line. Or when you have annexations and they have a greenfield, That's when we say, okay, we have standards. You're going to put bike lanes, and this is what they're going to look like. So it's going to take time, but the idea is that within the existing system that we have, it's going to be more difficult for new development. It's going to be implemented immediately.

Sorry to harp on the subject of bike lanes, but it's personal to me because I ride my bike throughout the city, and I don't feel safe. And not to mention that we have the new emergence of kids riding around on e-bikes and a separation, some sort of demise. I just rode around Washington, D.C., and they have an incredible bike lane system. And I don't know if it's even possible here, but I just didn't want to miss the opportunity to try and put my two cents in on what I feel should be, you know, we should promote the, you know, for the citizens to have. safer options to ride their bikes, e-bikes, and so on and so forth. Absolutely.

And this is something that would help you also understand how to prioritize certain corridors so you could say, well, this corridor is a quality of service E, so we should prioritize that for a bike lane.

Thank you so much. Mr. Pitara?

This seems like a little deja vu to me because in West Palm Beach, they tried to push for bicycles and walking traffic and And I'm going to tell you, if you do it, you need to up your services so that those lanes and streets and sidewalks are maintained to make it pleasant for people. That's just my input. Because I know that they didn't allow me enough people to take care of the improvements that they made. And the bulb outs and all those little STREET THINGS WENT TO HELL.

MY INPUT. ALL RIGHT. IMPROVEMENTS WITHOUT MAINTENANCE DON'T GO FAR.

IF I COULD JUST ADD, SO THESE ARE ALL SAY MAY. SO THESE ARE ITEMS THAT ARE INTENDED TO SUPPORT THE CITY'S MOBILITY PLAN AND HAS THE MOBILITY PLAN IS UPDATED. SO IT'S ESSENTIALLY KIND OF TO HELP SUPPORT THAT DOCUMENT. AND THEN THE ENGINEERING DESIGN STANDARDS. You know, they're not exactly being adopted as level of service. They are being proposed that that's something the city could look at in the future.

Great. Is there any, if I may, on the transportation side, stepping back to that, I'm very much in favor of multimodal and bike and other forms of transport and, you know, mass transit as a whole, right? All wonderful things. And again, I know that this is, and I might misname it, but seems more of a form-based set of ideas and somewhat aspirational to be implemented by other means, zoning, engineering standards, et cetera. Is there any proposal, and I know further ahead, is there any notion about offsetting cost of these items? And again, building a standard roadway section is quite expensive. Adding an additional bike lane to it is even more expensive. So on one hand, one of the main goals of a lot of modern government is pushing affordability of homes and also pushing for roadway networks to be expanded and improved. And the two sometimes don't correlate to an actual COST PER DEVELOPMENT THAT'S ACHIEVABLE TO DELIVER AN AFFORDABLE HOME, RIGHT? SO IF A DEVELOPER IS BURDENED WITH AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF ADDITIONAL BIKE LANES ON TOP OF IN MANY CASES BUILDING A SIGNIFICANT ROADWAY, ADDING AN EXTRA RUN OF CURB and protection and an additional four feet or so of pavement, that's real cost. It adds 15, 20% of cost to the roadway itself. Is there any notion about as these quality of service items are implemented, any offsetting cost for the development or the structure of how that's considered or just... hey, these are great, we'd like to do them.

So if I may, that's not something that would be contemplated within the comprehensive plan. When it gets down to actually building infrastructure and what may be required, whether it's eligible for mobility credits or not, that's a separate discussion. And this document doesn't speak to that. We have the mobility plan and other policies in place. So yes, that conversation would probably be approached at the time of development. And whether it was a new development, an annexation, what had been negotiated, was it an old approval? So a lot of moving parts there. But contemplation of credits, not incorporated in the comprehensive plan.

Okay, and the only reason I ask is looking ahead, it looked like there was a portion that was talked about with, you know, and I might have obviously skipped to read that section where it talked about economic development and other components. I didn't know if that was captured in any of that. So, understood, thank you.

So, again, just to piggyback on Merrick, we're not contemplating the financial impact. We're not contemplating tonight. It's the standard that we want to use moving forward.

Yes, and the comprehensive plan does have one element that talks about capital improvements, but in terms of transportation, we didn't have any specific projects that would say we're going to improve the bike lanes here, or we're going to, and something, and we'll talk about it in the next slide, but the right-of-way constraints that we already have. We don't have wide right-of-way width to deal with all the different components that we would love to put in there.

One last question.

What would change the word may, back on that last slide, may adopt street? Does that mean that, sorry for asking again, the may adopt street quality of service standards based on posted speed limits, these are things that you said that we may adopt in the future. It's not necessarily a matter of going to happen. Is that correct? And if so, what would trigger the word may to change to will?

So one of the ways that we structured this is that it's not at this time meant to be a regulatory tool the way level of service is. It's just a standard that is available to the city to measure certain transportation projects, to understand how to prioritize multimodal. But the city is not beholden to it the way they are to LOS standards. Now, there is a policy here that gives the city the ability to consider eventually replacing level of service with quality of service. But that's sort of a future step, especially given that you all are still contemplating a lot of road capacity improvements in the future.

Okay, thank you. No more questions, I promise. That's what we're here for.

Another slide related to transportation. So there are a few other new policies. One talks about pursuing the acquisition of property for increased connectivity. We all know that the easier it is to get through, the more efficient the system is going to be. Assessing the unique roadway design for constrained areas. We were talking about that. How are we going to be able to fit in all the pieces that we want to put in? Looking at access management for all those planted lots. We were talking about why some of those have never developed. When you have a single family home on a four lane road, it's kind of hard to sell it. It's hard to develop it. looking at ways to add multimodal features to residential roads, increasing accessibility to public transportation related maps and more map updates so that we can see the changes in the city. And there's a new objective and policies that IT TALKS ABOUT JUST MAINTAINING THE TRANSPORTATION MAP SERIES AND UPDATING IT TO INCLUDE, YOU KNOW, THE LEVEL SERVICE REPORT, MOBILITY PLAN, AND THE PROGRAMS AND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS. IT'S ALL RELATED TO THE MOBILITY PLAN. The next element, so the housing element has two main goals, you know, purposes. One is what I mentioned before. We have to have enough land in the city to accommodate a specific number of dwelling units. The second purpose of this element is to look at affordability. How are we doing? How are people managing housing payments? So there's a whole analysis of that, and the data comes directly from the state. So in terms of policies, We have a policy that talks about amending the land development code to allow a wider range of housing types in appropriate zoning districts. So that doesn't mean that we're going to go to establish single family home neighborhoods and say, OK, now you're going to have townhomes. This is more related to, OK, Walton and 1, apartments. Maybe one of these redevelopment and activity center, too, maybe some townhouses. So it's trying to figure out where we can put the missing middle housing, the one that becomes a little bit more affordable than a single family home. Bonuses and incentives, you know, consider adopting that in the land development regulations so that PER STATE STATUTE, WE CANNOT ASK A DEVELOPER TO PROVIDE 20% AFFORDABLE HOUSING. WE CAN'T DO THAT. YOU HAVE TO BALANCE THAT. YOU CAN SAY IF YOU GIVE US 20% OF YOUR UNITS AFFORDABLE FOR THIS TYPE OF INCOME, WE'RE GOING TO GIVE YOU ADDITIONAL HEIGHT OR ADDITIONAL DENSITY OR LESS OPEN SPACE OR WHATEVER. SO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ESTABLISHING A SYSTEM TO ACHIEVE THAT IN THE FUTURE. And then, of course, continuing partnerships with Habitat for Humanity and other agencies that help with the provision of affordable housing. For the infrastructure element, this includes water, sewer, drainage, aquifer recharge, and solid waste. So the levels of service have been updated just to reflect how the city is functioning today. We have a requirement that if you're within the utility service area, you have to connect to the central sewer system. And this is a mandate that comes from above, from the state. ENCOURAGING DEVELOPMENTS TO INCORPORATE INTERCONNECTED LARGE OPEN SPACES INTO SITE DESIGN, AND THIS HAS TO DO WITH AQUIFER RECHARGE. WE ALL KNOW HOW IMPORTANT WATER IS HERE, THE QUALITY. IF WE PAVE EVERYTHING, IT'S DETRIMENTAL TO OUR WATER.

AND NOT TO STOP YOU, THE STATE IS STARTING TO REQUIRE PEOPLE TO MOVE FROM SEPTIC TO CITY SERVICE. THAT'S CORRECT. THAT'S A MANDATE. YES.

And then we removed policies that talked about projects that had already been implemented. Conservation and coastal management, these are two elements that are combined into one. And here we're just stressing the need to protect habitats, restrict harmful activities, partner with the county to figure out what to do with hazardous waste disposal, prioritizing low impact development or conservation when you have poorly drained soils. STRESSING VULNERABILITY TO NATURAL DISASTERS. AND THEN IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATURAL PORT SAINT LUCY GREEN SPACES AND PLACES INITIATIVE. Intergovernmental coordination. Basically, you cannot do all this by yourselves. You have to coordinate with agencies, whether it's the county, water management district, FDOT. It's something that is stressed in this element. And there are specific agreements that are listed so that you know where we're already coordinating and some that are proposed. AND WE GOT RECOMMENDATIONS OR INCORPORATED RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE PLANNING AND INFRASTRUCTURE STUDY. RECREATION AND OPEN SPACE. SO THIS IS ABOUT THE PROVISION OF LAND FOR RECREATION. SO HERE WE DON'T TALK ABOUT WHETHER IT'S A SOCCER FIELD OR A BASKETBALL COURT, WE JUST TALK ABOUT ACREAGES. WE DO GET INTO LOCATIONS, SO WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE DATA AND ANALYSIS YOU CAN SEE WHERE THE PARKS ARE LOCATED. you know it's not unique to ports and lucy many communities in florida have this where you have public parks versus private parks so if you have a whole pud with their own private facilities you're not going to go put a public park in that area because they're already served so we incorporated directives from the parks and recreation master plan we removed some outdated language from the gdc and we added policies related to looking for funding to acquire conservation lands and implementing a wayfinding program. Now, I mentioned level of service earlier. So when the Parks and Recreation Master Plan was completed, they came out with a recommendation that said we should have eight acres of park for every thousand population, every thousand persons in the city. Your current adopted level of service is five acres. So it's a three-acre difference. So we're looking at it and trying to figure out, should we change it to eight? If we change it to eight, your deficiencies are going to start sooner than later. Also, if we think about Senate Bill 180, then all of a sudden we're going to have to require more parks and recreation from developers. So we decided to keep it at five, the way you have it today. But for new annexations, we're going to apply the eight acres per thousand population. So that's how we're addressing the level of service discrepancy between the two elements. Economic development? MR. Pat, I'm going to take you back.

Sure. MR. And parks don't mean parks that have soccer fields, baseball fields. They could be passive parks, right?

They can be passive parks.

They can be – MR. Could that also include walking trails?

IF NOT NECESSARILY IF THEY ARE LIKE NEXT TO A ROADWAY, NO. AND WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE DATA AND ANALYSIS, THERE IS A TABLE THAT CLASSIFIES THE PARKS, WHETHER THEY ARE NEIGHBORHOOD PARKS, COMMUNITY PARKS, NATURE PRESERVES. SO AND IT EXPLAINS, YOU KNOW, HOW MANY ACRES OF EACH AND, YOU KNOW, SO THAT'S WHERE WE DO THE WHOLE ANALYSIS OF WHAT'S CONSIDERED A PARK. RIGHT.

OKAY. MR. CHAIR. MR. MEREGAS.

SO CAN YOU JUST CLARIFY FOR ME AGAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHERE THE EIGHT ACRES VERSUS THE FIVE ACRES

Could I speak to that? So under the comprehensive plan, it's five acres of developed public parks per 1,000 population. So in the parks master plan, they also looked at the ability to maybe to provide more amenities at like a stormwater pond or different smaller city parcels to add more amenities to those places. So people will have some more walking trails. So that's kind of the difference of why

they're recommending an eight acres but what they would classify as a park might be a little bit different than what the general public think of our developed parks are yeah it's not the general public when you say a park it's like there's fields there's playgrounds there's other things it's not generally speaking that it could be something more passive

Or just like adding, because in some areas they are trying to work with some existing stormwater ponds that have some green areas in front of them and to put facilities there for people to enjoy walking, just walking your dog or fishing or bench. So that may be what the bit of the discrepancy is, is just how they classify a park versus the... more developed parks that's in the comprehensive, public parks in the comprehensive plan? I don't know if you.

Well, I think I would say the Parks and Rec's goal is aspirational, but as you've heard the team tell you is we also have to have a level of service that we can say that we can meet. Right. And so that's why for the plan, the level of service is staying at five. per thousand, five acres per thousand population. However, for voluntary annexations, we're defaulting to the higher amount because someone's asking to annex in, the city has broader discretion if they wanna figure out what makes sense for the city. And I would also just say that the city is starting to, a lot of the land is being developed, so if you want more parks, we have to buy it. How do we fund that? Right, so that's another question. Now the city is looking at parks impact fees, that's one way to fund new parks. Those will be evaluated I think in the next year. So there's a lot of different moving parts, but we don't want to send something to the state committing to something that our analysis shows that we may not be able to achieve. We want to be rational and reasonable too.

Okay.

What determines that factor of 1,005 acres? Is that by the state, by the city rule?

No, that's 1,000 persons, people.

And I guess they check the usage. Is the way they figure that out? Because I see our parks are empty.

Depends on which ones you look at. Really? Yeah, a lot of them are being used.

And sometimes the parks also serve as open space. So the more open space you have in the city, the quality of life, the pollution, everything is different. Now, there used to be standards that the state had adopted, and we would use those as guides. IT WAS THE STATE RECREATION MASTER PLAN OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. WE DON'T USE THOSE ANYMORE BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KEEP IT UP TO DATE. BUT EVERY COMMUNITY HAVE THEIR OWN. AND WHAT WE HAVE SEEN IS THAT IF FIVE HAS BEEN WORKING FINE FOR THE PAST HOW MANY YEARS, LET'S KEEP THAT SAME NUMBER. LIKE WHAT YOU'RE SAYING, IT'S NOT LIKE WE ARE EFFICIENT.

SO WE'RE NOT BEING HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD EITHER, CORRECT? YOU WANT TO CREATE A STANDARD, YOU HAVE TO BE HELD TO AND YOU CAN'T.

YEAH, EXACTLY. Yeah, if we all of a sudden bump it up to eight, maybe by 20, where are we now, by 2030, we start being deficient. Right. And then what happens at that point? How do we approve development when we don't have enough parks to serve?

Right. Mr. Privett? Thank you, Mr. Chair. So do we, with all of the feedback that we've gotten from the residents at all of the events, do we have a breakdown of what they're looking for in parks, like you know, they want more fields, they want more kiddie playgrounds. I mean, do we kind of have enough?

Yeah, we didn't get into that detail with the comprehensive plan, but the master plan is where you have that information.

That's a different plan. Okay. Sophia, you want to say something?

If I may, Mr. Chair. So there is the Parks and Rec master plan. which I know that they did do workshop and public outreach to develop that. For the purpose of the comprehensive plan, it's really the data and analysis portion of what is currently existing. So we did include the data analysis portion to support the goals, objectives, and policies, the changes that are being made. So if you were to look at that, there is an inventory of the current parks that we have, and they are categorized by neighborhood parks and passive parks, community parks. And it includes their acreage in addition to what amenities they do have. So that is included in the data analysis portion if it is something that you would be interested in looking at.

Okay, great. I think it is important for the public to understand what a park is. Correct. Everybody has different... expectations of that, right? So some people might love a certain park that's just really open space and you can walk around and others are saying, where's the playground for my kids, you know? So we just need to make sure. And I know that there is a great analysis of all the city's parks, and it has all the amenities. So we have that there.

And we define what we mean by neighborhood park versus a community park. So neighborhood park, it's closer to your house, and it includes maybe some fields and courts. When it's a regional park, that means you're going to have a lot more for the whole region.

Football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields, softball fields, a multitude of fields and uses?

What's the total acreage that we have now? And just do we have a ballpark of Because if we have 250,000 times 5, that's 1,250 acres.

We have a total of just over 1,600 acres of park space. Of what you consider park space. Correct. So that includes your special purpose, your nature preserves, your regional parks.

Passive parks. So we're beyond the 5,000.

And then we also in that data analysis we included those parts that we know are coming they're coming so right so that includes Torino and traditional yeah and and so we go you know every five years we look at the population projection compared to that acreage to see how where we are and when we were trying to Playing with the A, that's when we realized like, oh, no, when we get to this year, we're going to be deficient. So let's backtrack.

Great. Excellent. Thank you.

And if I may, the city does have a very good parks and recreation website. It has a great interactive map showing the different parks, what's available at certain parks. And what's coming. Absolutely. So we do have that for our residents as well.

I think the city does a good job with the park system. But as Mr. Spatera said earlier, And the residents have to understand is that all of the additional parks have additional costs right for maintenance. So now the budget's gotta go up. So, and then potential tax increases and stuff. So, um, so I, I think the parks are really critical for people to get out and enjoy. but there's other requirements for them.

And again, here we're creating the standard that we're going to be holding ourselves to and telling the state what we're going to hold ourselves to. We don't want to create a standard that we can't fulfill. Pat, go ahead.

Okay. So economic development, we're going to continue to protect industrial and commercial land from conversion to residential. That has been a priority for many years for this city, so we'll continue that. And just, you know, with the activity centers, the mixed use, promoting that infill development and redevelopment. Supporting the employment quarters, which is, you know, we talked about the PIP. And then focusing on that targeted industries list that is included in this element. That's what we want to attract to the city and creating clusters of the industries. And continued support for workforce housing and small business development. Capital improvement, so this is the element where you say how you're going to pay for all the commitments that you're making. So like if we were to change the level of service for parks, then we would have to say here, okay, how many acres we're going to be adding in the future. But all the levels of service from all the different elements are repeated here. So this is the place to go if you want to see what the standards are. And then one deletion, it was in the old days, we were supposed to have a financial feasible plan. And we needed to show how much money is coming in, how much money is going to go into these capital improvements. Now we just have to have a five year schedule that talks about just the next five years. Public schools. This one is not a required element. It's optional. But the city sees that it is very important to coordinate with the school district to make sure our residents are served appropriately. And in terms of land use, we want to make sure schools are located in the right places, accessible from your residential neighborhoods. And for the data and analysis, we reduced it tremendously because there was a lot of information that you would find in the school district plan. So we just trimmed it to just what's relevant to the city. WHICH SCHOOLS SERVE THE CITY, HOW DOES IT WORK, YOU KNOW, HOW DO THEY PLAN FOR, YOU KNOW, FUTURE SCHOOLS, WHICH SCHOOLS ARE COMING IN THE FUTURE. SO ALL THAT IS IN THE DATA AND ANALYSIS. AND WE ADDED SOME POLICIES TALKING ABOUT DOCUMENTING AND MAPPING ALL THE DEDICATED SCHOOL SITES. WITH ALL THESE PUDs, DRIs, IT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW WHERE THOSE SITES ARE. AND THEN ENCOURAGING THE LOCATION OF SCHOOLS WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF RESIDENTIAL AREAS. Property rights, you've had this one for not very long. It's a required element. We're not making any changes to it, just a cover. But the idea is that with all the other elements, we are committed to protecting private property rights. So we had the workshop with the council last week, and then they had a very interesting conversation. Number one, the annexations. They were very adamant that we need to make sure that if we're going to annex all these properties that they come in the right way to benefit the city and not to hinder what the residents are already enjoying here. So the idea was required developments in newly annexed areas to incorporate a connected local grid network with multiple connections to roadways and stop outs to adjacent parcels. This is talking about making sure that you can drive through the city without a lot of interruptions. Another policy to establish connectivity and street network standards for development within annexed areas to support mobility. adding a policy to require roadway and multimodal infrastructure improvements to be constructed in advance of development impacts. So it's not like, here are all the houses, we'll deal with the bike lanes later. No, we want all that to be done upfront. And then in the transportation element, adding a policy to incorporate emerging mobility technologies, including autonomous and aerial transportation into the mobility plan update. The next time we update that plan, those should be considered. Right now, they're not that popular, but we have heard about the taxis, like helicopter taxis that go from one airport to another one. So we need to start planning for that.

And Pat, before you go on, for the public's general knowledge, this is for prospective areas that may be annexed in the future, but are not currently developed.

The top future land use? Yes. Yes. Yes. And then we also had a request and you'll probably see the report later on. What if we didn't have 180? What could we have dreamed about doing with this comprehensive plan? How far could we have taken it if we didn't have to worry about not adopting anything that is going to be more burdensome to somebody so we're working on that one and you may see it in the future it's not something that we know for sure will be incorporated it's up to the city council to decide that but you'll be seeing that one and next steps so we have the council public hearing this would be the transmittal hearing on july 13th After that, we have 10 days to submit the plan to the state for review. The state will just, or the plan gets distributed to all the agencies, and then they issue objections, recommendations, suggestions to the city. Then we'll have some time to adjust the plan based on those recommendations, and then the hearing, the final hearing, adoption hearing, we expect that to be sometime in October of 26th.

Mr. Chair. You mentioned something about September of 26th to the state. So where does that fit in?

So that is when the mayor will send a letter to the state saying we're supposed to assess our comprehensive plan and let you know if we're going to make changes. So yes, we're making changes. So you will have the changes coming to you shortly after.

Okay, so that's just notification to the state that changes are coming.

Yes.

And then we have so much time. You said six months?

One year.

Oh, it's one full year. Okay.

But, you know, like again, we have had some communities that just use that one year and that's not enough. So we're way ahead of the game.

Just just to clarify, this is the first part we recommend or not to the council. The council then moves forward with their approval to the state. And then at that particular point, the clock starts ticking for a year to implement whatever

No, once you submit to the state, then there is a 60-day period for the agencies to review.

Okay.

In 60 days, then they send comments back to the city.

Okay.

And then that's when we go to adoption hearing. There are overlaps with things, like one overlap is the letter that we send. It's just a letter that goes, it says we're amending, and instead of waiting for a whole year, we're going to send it to you in one month. And then the other thing that I mentioned is typically when you update a comprehensive plan, nobody's checking, but typically you're supposed to amend your land development regulations within one year to make them consistent with your plan. So if you change densities or height or uses, you're supposed to do that within one year. And again, land development regulations don't get submitted to the state, so it's not like they're going to ask where they are, but typically that's what we try to do. Right.

We follow the guidelines.

Yes.

Is there a preliminary way to work with the state to ensure that they're going to approve everything? I mean, there's a guideline you follow, and you just make sure you follow it, and if there's something that's not following guidelines, they'll give you a ding, and then you have to...

The main thing that they're going to be... So we submit a strike through and underline version, so they can see what's there today and how we're changing it. It has become more challenging nowadays with the Senate Bill 180 because in some cases we have seen that they just take a magnifying glass and try to find those. There are lawsuits going on in the state related to that because there is the belief that the Florida Department of Commerce, the state agency that reviews the plan, their job is to make sure the plan meets Chapter 163, right? Now, the Senate Bill 180 is not in 163, so why are they deciding whether we are more burdensome or not?

Right. Overall, though, the state is trying to remove burdens on development, correct?

Yes.

Right, okay. Yes.

And then they're going to be checking to make sure that we have addressed all the statutory changes from the last few years. Got it. So like, you know, compatibility, they addressed that. Yeah, policy one, two, three, that's done. So they'll be checking for those.

And you said that they commit to a 60-day turnaround? Yes.

Okay. Mr. Rankas? I was just wanting to acknowledge the comments that were emailed in by Angela Vasquez. I read what she wrote here and I tend to agree. I'm just gonna read the first bit of it. I am writing to formally submit my comments regarding the Conference of Plan Update being evaluated at tonight's special meeting. goals objectives and policies outlined in our city's comprehensive plan must serve as a strict shield against the rapid urban sprawl threatening our community right now uh threatening our community right now our infrastructure and local roads and natural ecosystems are under immense strain well understand the pressure yada yada you know you guys have read this i tend to agree it seems like it's well written well thought out and um i just wanted to verify that her concerns in this are being addressed and are reflected in our comprehensive plan. Is that correct, urban sprawl?

I think all the policies we talked about related to voluntary annexations, I think those are the strongest policies that we can put in to address that urban sprawl. yeah because um you know like these annexations they they need the services that the city provides well if they need the services we want to make sure that they're going to be growing the seed in a responsible manner so it's she goes on to say the board prioritizes preservation of our remaining green spaces and wildlife corridors over high density development

We are doing that. If I understand correctly, the city has an initiative to preserve green spaces. And although we've discussed the reduction of park spaces from eight acres to five acres, it was not a reduction. It's a maintenance of what we have. So strike that. Yeah.

related to ensuring the preservation of open spaces. And we're putting the density, according to the land use categories that we talked about, we're trying to focus that density in areas where you already have infrastructure, where you already have the services. rather than sending it to the periphery of the city. So we're trying to encourage the intensification of those areas rather than growing horizontally.

Urban sprawl is not a good concept, if I understand correctly, right? It's not.

We would be paving the state if we go that way.

Mr. Chair, if I may. One of the things that we did was that we did strengthen our coastal management and conservation element of the comprehensive plan. So we made sure that we use language that would continue to, you know, address concerns such as Miss Vasquez had. regarding conservation of open space and our coastal shorelines that we have along the St. Lucie River. And then again, to Pat's point, trying to prevent urban sprawl as best as we can without creating more requirements that would be considered burdensome based on Senate Bill 180.

Great, thank you. And understanding that that doesn't mean we're taking away any entitlements with this new comprehensive plan, correct?

Correct. Correct. So Mr. Chair, if I may, piggyback on that, I think the team, at least speaking for myself, we're very excited about this product. As Pat said, we can't stop growth. There's entitlements out there. But there's a desire to make sure that that growth is done thoughtfully and strategically. And so while we cannot be more burdensome, I think that the changes that the team has as revisions in this are thoughtful, such as looking at existing land use categories. Where can we encourage the development to want to be there instead of picking a different location? If we already have mixed use, how can we offer a different kind of a toolbox, so to speak? So we just want to make sure that the growth that we have is the type of growth that our leadership desires and our residents desire for the city. And if we can concentrate that into making redevelopment more attractive and trying to figure out smarter ways to grow, I think that's really where we're focusing on at this moment. And then, of course, there's been a ton of statutory changes that Pat's team had to make sure that we acknowledged in here.

And to help redevelop some areas in the city that need it, correct?

I mean, we can provide the toolbox and the council and your board provides the framework and the leadership. And then after that, it's a partnership.

In my opinion, this is extremely well thought out. I mean, you guys didn't do this in a month. I mean, this has been years in the making. For me personally, the PIP is unbelievable. I think that's fantastic. And the other challenge, too, as you mentioned, the statutory requirements. I mean, you're constantly battling that. There's a lot going on at the state level. So I think the recognition that Florida is going to continue to boom, we have to figure out how to accommodate that. This plan, to me, is excellent.

Pat, did you have anything else for us? Okay, with that, I'll just go down. Are there any further questions from any members of the board?

No, I just think you all did an excellent job. I love the mobility plan I worked with on that with my city, and excellent job. Thank you.

Mr. Rogan? No, yeah, thank you so much for all your hard work and an incredible explanation in answering all my questions.

Mr. Patera? No comments.

Mr. Patera? Thank you. And make sure you maintain whatever you build. That's my big deal.

All right.

This is a public hearing. I will open it up to the members of the public. And also, as Member Renekas pointed out, we do have a comment from Ms. Vasquez, which is being entered into the public record as well. Any members of the public wish to speak? Seeing no members of the public. close the public hearing do need to entertain a motion or discussion from any members of the board and when you do make the motion make sure you make a motion with the revisions is that correct

I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO RECOMMEND APPROVAL TO CITY COUNCIL FOR ITEM NUMBER P24-185, CITY OF COURT ST. LOUIS CEAR BASED COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENTS 2046 WITH CHANGES. WITH THE REVISIONS. WITH THE REVISIONS.

I'LL SECOND IT. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ANY DISCUSSION? ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. ANY OPPOSED? AYES HAVE IT. I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A POINT OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE AS WELL TO THANK THE TEAM, MEMBERS OF OUR STAFF DID A GREAT JOB NOT ONLY IN PULLING ALL THIS TOGETHER BUT ALSO EXPLAINING IT TO US LAY PEOPLE. AND TO INSPIRE, YOU INSPIRE US. YEAH, FOR SURE. This is one of the more comprehensive plans I've ever seen. And I think it's taking us in the right direction and keeping us moving forward as a city. And I think, you know, I'm just feeling that this is going to elevate our city to the next level and beyond. So I'm looking forward to the next 20 years and seeing this come to fruition. And I think this, again, CREATES AN ENVIRONMENT FOR PEOPLE TO WANT TO LIVE, WORK, DO BUSINESS HERE, RAISE A FAMILY, RETIRE, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, INVEST IN OUR COMMUNITY. WITH THAT, IS THERE ANY NEW BUSINESS, MAYOR? ANY OLD BUSINESS? AND BEFORE WE GO, ANY PUBLIC TO BE HEARD? SEEING NONE, WE'RE ADJOURNED.