Council Agenda - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everybody. It is Tuesday, April 21st at 530. I'm going to call this meeting to order.

Please bow with me. Lord, thank you once again for the wonderful city that we live in. Thank you for the staff that keeps it run smoothly, keeps it clean, and keeps it moving on. We ask that you watch over all of them and give them the blessings of their lives. We ask that you give the council good decision-making tonight and make good and honest decisions. We ask that you watch over all our citizens and do all we do in your name, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Congratulations 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. Thank you, Mayor. Kathy, can you please call the roll? All right, so announcements. Business from the audience. So if there's anything that anybody wants to talk about that's not on the agenda, please see Clark Haley, and she'll get you a card to fill out, and then we'll get to your comments after when the time allows. So, Councilman's concerns, comments, liaison reports. I'll just start with Rebecca. Mayor's report. Thanks a lot, Harrison. It's been a long day.

Harrison's first meeting, so good job.

Off to a great start.

I have nothing to report. Just a couple good events that we had. The Soda Fest was huge and Sipping on the Circle last couple weeks, so a lot going on downtown. Coming up, we've got the Jet Skis at Vets Beach. Just to announce that the Boat ramp will be closed from Friday till Monday morning. So if you're planning on boating on Lake Jackson, unless your boat's in the lake, it's going to be pretty tough to get in. You will not be able to access the boat ramp this weekend because there will be over 100 entries in this event. So it's a pretty good event, and it'll be on CBS Sports also in the near future. So it brings a lot of attention to our great little town of Sebring. Also, and I'm going to steal somebody's thunder about the fire truck that we got. And thanks to the fire department for what they did for building a 100-foot ladder truck, Tower 14. They had the... The wash down and the push in. And it was really kind of a cool event. The fire department now has an honor guard that's very professional and did a great job in showing what they did. So it was neat to see, especially with the guy playing the bagpipe. I thought it was real cool. We're real honored to see that kind of a thing happen, but congratulations to the fire department and city council for approving the purchase. So that's all I have. Thank you. Now, I'm back.

And I have nothing to say, nothing to add. Josh.

Just want to let everyone know the Rotary public restrooms are complete and open. We got a couple of little punch list items, but they were open before the Soda Fest and no big issues, everything working well. So happy that project is done. For those who don't know, they're located behind the Circle Theater, right off the Circle. I think open to the public every day from I want to say 6am to 10pm and air conditioned nice hopefully you don't have to use a portable toilet for an event going forward.

roll.

Yeah, I have a couple things I want to bring up, actually. We all got an email from a merchant downtown the other day regarding parking on North Ridgewood. My thought was on certain events, you know, outside of Christmas parade, Halloween, transporter parade, you know, the big ones. Maybe we stop the road closures at Wall Street. rather than go all the way to Pine and do Wall Street on every spoke. Just want to see what everybody's input. I mean, honestly, we just leave it up to the organizer and staff. We don't need to make a decision on every single one, but I don't see the need in closing North Ridgewood all the way down, South Ridgewood all the way down.

I totally agree, and thank you for bringing that up. A lot of these events are not even using those streets. Exactly. Outside of Halloween, Christmas, transporters. On that same note, I think, and I had a discussion with Scott about this earlier, um one particular vendor probably the same person complained to me that they were closing the street at like 2 p.m on a friday i think we should for events and i think confirmed that maybe that didn't happen you know i think steve was saying it's supposed to be 5 or 5 30. yeah there was a closure of two roadways that happened at 2 30. rested closed Okay. What we had discussed was maybe making it so events can't close, you know, especially Saturday events can't close before like 530 so that those businesses down there can have access at least during normal business hours before things shut down.

If you close it off at Wall Street, you still have, if you make it up there, you have an exit. Right. You can move around. You can go to Wall Street, which brings up my second point is maybe it's time we started talking about making Wall Street one way.

Yeah.

Yeah. It should be, because you can't. If I'm coming down, you're not. You're not making it the other way. So, it's just a thought. We'll engage everyone's interest.

I think that's a good idea.

And the road closure thing, just leave it between staff and... you know, the organizer. We don't need to give me a blanket rule.

Right.

Cool.

I think the only thing to add to that, too, if there's a possibility that we don't have to close a day early, too, so if the event's on Saturday, do we have to close on Friday night, too? So, something to take into consideration. It probably depends on the setup. Again, I don't think we need to be involved, but just let them figure it out. What do we need to do to make Wall Street one way, officially? Stop the steam. Maybe a conversation with DOT as well, just to verify that there's some concern.

Maybe it's something we do after the road transfer.

Yeah, if it becomes a problem. I doubt it's going to be.

So I think we're pretty close to that, aren't we?

And then I'd want to check with the fire department to make sure they don't have a concern about Wall Street.

I don't think that will be the case, but we'll investigate it and come back with you, come back to you with a recommendation of how we're going to accomplish it. All right.

On the...

event application is there where they want where they indicate when they want the roads closed that's a part of the application it's a part of our special event committee meeting okay uh there is a place for kind of events I want to say there might be a place for road closures uh I just don't probably go ahead sometimes but we'll I know we can't press that okay but we do that special thing

All right. I have just one more thing. This has been a thorn in my side every time I drive down 27, and I'm not sure what we can do, but where they've planted peanut grass come August, it's weeds. And I don't know what we can do as far as getting DOT involved. The county, I think, had something to do with that planting, but we cleaned up the lake real nice, and in three months, the median is just going to be... overgrilling with weeds. It's a very specific spray system that has to be put on peanut grass to control weeds. I don't know what we can do to control it, but it just looks like crap in the summertime. Anybody witness that? Where is it?

I don't know. It's in the median. Between public...

Between Sparta and Hammock Road.

Actually, it goes up a little further. Through the gauge station.

Yeah, I think you can spray. I think there is a chemical that you can spray on the peanut grass. Not kill the peanut grass, but kill it.

I don't know if it's something we just bite the bullet and do it ourselves because DOT is just going to take decades to do anything. Is this an expensive thing? Do you have any idea? I don't know. Okay. I mean, one guy with a backpack trailer can do it in an afternoon.

Unless the chemicals are wildly expensive. Exactly. It can't be that much.

Right.

It would probably be easier and cheaper just to do it ourselves. Correct.

You'd spend more time and payroll on the phone with DOT.

Well, DOT originally did it, so do we need to talk to them?

Just say, hey, this is what we're going to do. That's what I would do.

Probably another discussion.

Okay. I would be inclined to say this is what we did. Yeah. So sorry.

So sorry we got rid of those weeds.

All right, that's it.

Do we need any direction on that? Or Scott, is that something that you can talk about it? Okay, no more. Thank you. One thing I got is to echo what Mayor said. Thank you to the fire department, elected officials on the state side for making that aerial and that tower truck happen. It's a really big deal for the city and for all of our residents providing the best service that we can. It's a great thing that we have a $2 million project Hopefully we don't have to use it often, but it's nice that we do have it in case we ever need to. And I know, so the guy in the very back who does not want to be recognized, Jared Lee, he's a huge part of that as well. So thank you, Jared, or the guy in the back in the blue shirt. Make sure you do not acknowledge him or say thank you. Could not have done it without him. That's what I got. So moving on to the consent agenda. Hey, everyone. Moving on to the consent agenda, looking for a motion to approve.

I make a motion that we approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second.

Got a motion and a second. Is there any comments from the audience on the consent agenda? Kathy?

Yes, sir. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. There is no old business. So moving on to new business, we got Silver on the Circle special event with Ms. Gale. Good evening, good evening.

Thank you so much for allowing me to speak. I am Gail Yeager, and I'm the first vice president of Florida Suncoast Airstream Club. And our club has been around for over 17 years. And our motto is we rally together, and we think Sebring would be an outstanding place to do a rally. And that's what we're requesting. I have 25 rigs on the grassy lot that we've put in a packet for the weekend.

Any questions from Council? Any questions from Council? No, no. Three-day event, Gail? Wasn't that a three-day?

Yeah, Wednesday through Sunday.

Oh, okay.

But Wednesday would be, like, just a setup.

Setup, okay. Are you bringing in restroom facilities?

No, our rigs are self-contained, and I think there's public restrooms, too.

Okay. And so there's a dumping station somewhere else.

Yes. We're going to work on that.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Remind me again, how many people do you think you're going to bring into this? There'll be 25 rigs, so about 50 people. And we may add, sometimes people don't like to dry camp, so then we might invite them to do the hammock or a local, but it would probably be no more than 10 more rigs, so about 60 people.

Okay. This is going to be fun. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So, with all that being said, we have a motion.

Move to approve the event as presented with the event, excuse me, the event organizer providing a certificate of liability insurance listing the city as additional insured at least 10 days prior to the event.

Second. Do we have any comments from the audience?

Kathy?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. All right, moving on to 10b. This is a public hearing and resolution for the conditional use permit. So the purpose of the public hearing is to receive public input on an application by the City of Sebring for a conditional use permit for the development of a 100-foot tall tower for a quick space meter reading system and wireless communication for the city located at 100 YMCA Lane in Sebring. So I'm going to open up this public hearing and have Bob introduce the rest.

You have resolution number 2026-14 from the Dias we came in. That is the resolution at issue for this action item. Thank you, sir.

Good evening. For the record, Marissa Barbee with the Central Florida Regional Planning Committee. for this item. This is a conditional use request by the city for the 100 foot tall tower. So this is the location of the property at 100 YMCA Lane, sorry, 38 acres in size, roughly. They are requesting a 100-foot tall monopole tower for their fixed-base meter reading system. It would also have wireless communication facilities that are city-only wireless communication facilities, the property by the tree line. This is the map that was provided as part of the application for the property and then the tower with the base with the 200 foot radius which is the drop zone requirement in the code for Wi-Fi ground is mixed use development. This is the power plan that was provided as part of the application as to what would be built on the site. This is a stock image of what that would look like. The land development code does not specifically address on a pole tower section due to the height of it The proposal application does meet all those requirements. There's standards for as far as the principal structure would have to be. They have to be accessible by service vehicle. The proposal meets all those requirements. And then there's visual compatibility requirements. The project is proposing an 8 foot by 8 foot vinyl fence to surround the base. The code The property line there is a property line between two city owned properties. So the fact that the tree line is right there, the applicant is asking to be waived from that requirement. And then also they're asking to be exempted from the required landscaping outside the fence area due to the location of the tower not being directly within the site There was a resident contact with city staff and asked about the Aeromed landings that happened there. So city contacted Aeromed. Aeromed said, while you're not required, we would prefer you to put an obstacle light on top of the tower and to coordinate with us so we know when you're installing it. So we are proposing that as a condition in here the Planning and Selling Board, next slide, did hear this item at their last meeting and did vote to recommend approval. To who? I'm happy to stand for any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments or input from the public on this? Hearing none, we're going to close the public hearing. Any questions or comments from the council? And if that's the case, looking for a motion.

I make a motion that we approve Resolution 2026-14 as presented.

Second. Any comments?

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Next up we have 10C. I'm going to do 10C and 10D together. Bob, do you want to introduce us?

These are proposed ordinances and they are addressing the land use and zoning. They're entitled an ordinance of the city of Sebring Florida changing the future land use classification for approximately 2.95 acres located at 2511 State Road 17 north from public use to medium density residential providing for severability providing for conflict and providing for an effective date. The second ordinance is entitled an ordinance of the city of Seedling, Florida, changing the zoning classification for approximately 2.95 acres located at 2511 State Road 17 North from single family district R1 to city plan development PD, providing for severability, providing for conflict, and providing for an effective date. So we're going to open up this public hearing. And firstly, Dr. Fuller.

Thank you. For the record, I'm Dr. Barmby with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council. I did do two separate PowerPoints. It's owned by Green Group Development LLC. The owner and representatives are here, applicant's representatives are here as well. The existing single family of R1 zoning is the zoning that is assigned to the property. The future land use assigned to the property is public. So those do not, they're incompatible with each other. They're inconsistent. So the applicant is requesting a future land use amendment to medium density residential to provide consistency. There is a Masonic Lodge and there's a single family house there. It's also public as it's a property that has church. Everything else around it is residential. This is the existing zoning, R1 single family, 4.3 block units per acre with a minimum of 10,000 square feet. Next slide. This is the view of the property from Segal Parkway from State Road 17. For the future land use, the compatibility is looking at the analysis of proposed maximum impacts under existing future land use in public. You cannot build any residential uses. The proposed median density residential would be five to 12 dwelling units, so a potential increase of 14 to 35 dwelling units on that site. Some of the impact analysis that follows is summary information that's provided to assist you in your review. any future language that is assigned does not right away to the south, which is undeveloped right away from Hawthorne Drive. Both the Department of Transportation and Highlands County have denied direct access to 17 and to Sigma Kappa. is capacity in those road systems to accommodate the maximum development potential of the community residency residential as an application moved forward through zoning insight plan a formal traffic analysis would be required and if there are any reduction in level of service the approval, the vote was four to one. So I will go through the zoning portion of this. Obviously this is our piece of property again. It is the companion piece to the Future Land Use Amendment. They are requesting to build a multi-family project. The medium density residential, as stated, would allow five or four growing units Looking at our compatibility with surrounding area, multifamily may serve as a buffer between larger lot residential and public uses. All of the property in this area, while zoned R1, does have a medium density residential future land use. So it too could, they could as property owners also request a zoning change to a higher use to build multifamily if they so desire. The analysis of impacts, excuse me, they're requesting 30 dwelling units. It would be an increase of 18 dwelling units from what they could build today under R1. Again, your impact analysis does not vest any rights or reserve capacity in any of your systems. There is water. I've mentioned both the state and the county have said they are not allowed to come is where that road would be extended. It is a substandard road, approximately with 21 feet.

So in relation to that photo, where is the entrance to the development?

So if you go all the way to the end, that's the church. And you're going to turn, and they have to build the road into their property. The applicant is proposing to exceed the open space requirements. They are providing... outside environmental and sensitive areas, but that would be further vetted through an application for development. Schools and emergency services will be addressed already in the future. This is the proposed plan for the planned unit development. As you can see, the 30 units are stored between six buildings. Hawthorne Drive will be improved have them connect or extend the sidewalk so it connects into that sidewalk system, that existing sidewalk system. Next slide. This is the site requirements These are the development standards that are listed on that site plan. buffers installed and maintained. required amount of recreation and open space as shown in the master plan must be built. We are also asking them to realign the fitness trail away from the existing for our code so we are

any questions for marissa before we turn it over to dana good evening dana riddell owner of stonehenge land development consultants for the record with me tonight i have jeff kennedy and reed fellows a traffic professional who will also be joining me for portions of this presentation i'll be representing green group development llc this evening And I wanted to just point out and make sure that council received, I believe there were six letters of support that kind of rolled through over the last two days. So I wanted to make sure you all were aware of those. In terms of the project, I'll try not to be too redundant with what Ms. Barnaby did. However, there were a lot of questions that came up at the planning and zoning meeting. So in addition to just filling you in on any of the gaps that you might be unaware of, I'm also going to try to address any comments or concerns that came up during the planning and zoning meeting. On the next slide, we have our project overview, which is basically what's already been stated. We know that we're working with the applicant of Green Group Development LLC. There's a current zoning of our one single family district with the proposed zoning of PD Plan Development District. The current future land use is public use and the proposed future land use is medium density residential. Right now, the zoning and future land use are not compatible, which means nothing can be developed on the property until either the future land use has changed or the zoning is changed. In this case, we're requesting to change both, first of all, for the medium density residential to be consistent with the surrounding area and for a planned development so that our specific development will be consistent and compatible with the surrounding area. The proposed rental range is approximately $1,375 per month, and the target audience will be rental and workforce housing. So I'll go ahead and go into that a little bit further on a few other slides in the future. I'm going to pull out some facts and information from the 2025 housing study. Thank you. Next slide. Thank you. As mentioned, the property is 2.95 acres and we're proposing a density of 10.17 dwelling units per acre, which is under the 12 dwelling unit per acre max if we were to maximize the medium density residential future land use. The minimum living space would be 850 square feet, which is larger than the minimum living space in your current multifamily dwelling districts. and an open space of 0.89 acres is required where we're providing 1.41 acres as mentioned access would be required from simpson ave and again i'll go into that a little bit later but to go back and address some of the transitional how this can be a really beneficial transitional area between what's now currently a public future land use and uh residential land uses is right now we have what used to be the Masonic Lodge. The person who occupies it now will probably likely have to come in for some kind of zoning or future land use change. I suspect it will be commercial in nature, just from my conversations with that particular, the realtor who sold them the property. Even if it didn't get rezoned to commercial, it would have a public use. And the public use that exists on this property now, if we had a rezoning for public, a school could be put in this location, which would generate a much higher number of trips. It was brought up at the Planning and Zoning Commission. Who would put a school here? And I'm not talking about the Highlands County School Board. I'm talking about a private school entity. Could be a 501c3. There are schools with that type of formatting that exist here in Highlands County today. Just like the Masonic Lodge was a public meeting place, they're a 501c3, so they were able to operate on public future land use. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a... a city entity, it could be a public entity of some kind that would operate in the public future land use. So I just wanted to bring that up. So on the next slide, I wanted to talk a little bit about the developers. Most of you are familiar with them, we're aware of who they are, but we have Roy Mengelgreen, his father, Mango. They're tried and true developers. So this is not going to be a flip. They're not just increasing the value of the land to resell it to someone else who might come in and do something different than what's being said today. Not to mention we're binding ourselves to a plan development, which means we literally cannot change the plan from what is being proposed today unless they come before you and ask for permission again. We know that this development group is in the process of developing Victory Plaza, which is super neat and has some beautiful lights, beautiful characteristics, really well designed. There might even be more parking to come in the future, because I think that's the only concern I've heard about this potential development. They've also gotten approval for Sparta Gardens, which is 30 single family dwelling units in the unincorporated county, but we'll be using city utilities. There's a couple other subdivisions that they've built out here in Highlands County. I don't have all the names off the top of my head, but what's most notable is Las Villas, is how they came in and turned around a defunct subdivision that was slated, platted, and recorded for 150 units. where 18 were built and it went belly up during the recession. At that time, for years afterward, the pool was green, the lights didn't work, the gates to the neighborhood did not function, they were in disrepair. In general, the neighborhood was in disrepair. When the Green Group development took over this particular area, They managed to build out all 150 units and sell or rent all of those units. Instead of having a defunct HOA, they have a 15-member, very active HOA. And they have fully functional pool, lighting, gates, et cetera. On your screen is a picture. That is a picture of Las Villas. I don't bring this up to compare what this development will be. what las villas is because remember las villas was created and designed by another developer the green group just came in and helped complete another developer's vision the green group's vision is in my opinion a little bit elevated right so If Green Group did it, they might have set the houses back a little bit further so that you could fit more cars in the driveway, things like that. That's why they work to provide so much parking in the plans that we've currently proposed. But I just wanted to touch on who the green group is, what they have done in Sebring, and just make sure that the council is aware of everything that they're capable of. So on the next slide, I'll go into the 2025 housing study prepared by Highlands County. Highlands County is the one who paid for it, but Kimley Horn is the one who actually did the study. That's who they paid to do it. so what's really interesting i find a lot of this study very interesting um but you have kind of what looks like a heat map on the screen and i just zoomed in and specifically focused it on the sebring area obviously the blue is lake jackson the smaller blue is dinner lake and where the purple gets darker there's a higher concentration of jobs and when they prepared the study they basically indicated that you want to place your market rate multi-family housing units in close proximity to job centers where there's a high volume of jobs available because that's where people will work that's what makes housing workforce housing more appealing and more feasible because If your car breaks, you can walk to the grocery store. You could walk to maybe just Dollar General or ride your bike to your place of employment. And that's hard to find here in Florida because we were developed on the principle of urban sprawl. And now we're all trying to take that back. So what this is, this is infill development. And I'll go into that again later. But on the right side of your screen, you'll see another excerpt from the report. On the north side of Lake Jackson, you'll see the numbers five and eight. The proposed development is directly between numbers five and eight, which are nodes that were recognized as places that would be beneficial for market rate workforce housing. And that's exactly what's being proposed today. On the next slide, they talk about in the study why we are where we are. There we go, okay. With our housing. they provided a breakdown of our population. And what's interesting is in the age group of 45 to 54, there was a 16% decrease of that age group in Highlands County, but that's because a lot of them were aging up into the 55 to 64% age group as the baby boomers begin to continue to age. With that, you'll see a lot of baby boomers who prefer home ownership, but some will seek higher density rental options, downsizing from higher maintenance family homes. And then on the flip side of things, you have younger homeowners who are having a difficult time amassing their down payments and paying the mortgage interest rates, so they continue to have to seek rental options, again, further driving the demand for multifamily and single-family rental options. On the next slide, we go into demand. Okay, so I've seen a lot of different numbers when it comes to demand for multifamily housing and market rate housing. And after I really did a deep dive into the study, I can see why that is. But in 2024, the county's median household income was $56,165, which was almost 25% lower than the state's median of $74,175. As of the 22 census, almost 75% of the county's households only had one or two people. That's very important. We're proposing one. Actually, all these units will be two bedroom units. So in Highlands County, that's something we struggle with is people have to rent entire homes, whether they're here for short term, long term, whatever the reason is. end up having to rent an entire home whereas this development is catering to the actual needs of highlands county where we only have one a majority of one to two family households and this again is influenced by the aging population and an increase in empty nesters and lower birth rates so on the right hand side you see the forecasted household growth and then What really caught my eye is under where it says new supply. So they have planned additions to the supply. And you hear a lot of talk of like, we have all this housing coming. This just got approved. That just got approved. All these things might have been approved at the planning and zoning level as people continue to plan for the future. But when this study was done about one year ago, there were only two developments that were active. And it was 2200 Scenic Highway. It's the one you see getting prepared by Bernie Little with the pipes coming up in the ground. And you'll see me come forward for that one too, because we have some zoning to clean up there. And then the Eco Moss Apartments out at Spring Lake. So those are the only two that actually had permits in hand ready to develop. And based on this study, there's a demand for 932 units. And at that time, there were 331 units actually being constructed with an excess demand of 601. We're trying to make a dent at 30. on the next slide you'll see i have 3.5 to 4 million kind of like flashing in the corner there because again i just want to point out the contribution that these developers have made to the city of sebring and the highlands county area their previous developments have resulted in an infusion of over 25 million dollars into the Highlands County economy, whether it be through purchase of building supplies, the use of contractors, subcontractors, things of that nature. But this particular development is expected to result in a cost of $3.5 to $4 million to the developers. And this is infill growth. We know it's infill because we have everything already in existence. Water, sewer, electricity. It's just a matter of connecting. It's all right there. We have residential development on either side. I mean, you know, across the road, home ab, we have our residential development. So this just slides right in there. What was found by Smart Growth America is that infill developments cost 38% less in upfront infrastructure versus greenfields. It generates 10 times more tax revenue per acre and costs 10% less in ongoing city service delivery as in roads, fire, water mains, et cetera. Other fiscal impacts that you'll notice are obviously the short-term construction employment and local spending, which is kind of what I alluded to with what they've done before. Long-term job creation through property operations. And you know, it's like incidental jobs. So it's not like they're going to employ a, exterminator, like full time, but they're going to be using companies like extermination companies, AC companies, property management companies to help come in and make this development be everything that it needs to be. And obviously it strengthens the city's overall tax base. So on the next slide, there was a lot of discussion over the surrounding area not really being shown in some of our renderings. Our renderings will come later. But essentially, on Simpson Avenue, and I'm starting to get into traffic right now, on Simpson Avenue, there's five existing developments. Four of them are homes. One of them is a church. And it was brought up that this particular property was used as a... like a landing pad for emergency services, like if Aeromed needed to come in and land a helicopter here. After speaking with the developer and even putting in a call in to Mr. Bobby Border today, what we learned is that yes, it has been used regularly on an unofficial basis for landings. It's not designated by the FAA as a landing space for these helicopters. But the previous property owner and even the current property owner who's with us today agreed to allow them to use the property as a landing pad as needed. However, that use stopped when the new owners of what used to be the Masonic Lodge came in and fenced the property because then they were no longer able to get in and out using the Masonic Lodge's property. And obviously right now there's no road constructed to Simpson Ave for fire services or emergency services to be able to get through. So it is not currently used for emergency landings. On the next slide, I just wanted to point out that interconnectivity to this property was always part of the plan. This plat was prepared in 1925.

And you can see on your left side for the bottom, popcorn dry.

It was left open so that it always could connect to our property or the property that we're discussing today. On the next slide, we have a visual of the proposed development. You already saw this with Ms. Barnaby. So I won't bore you too much with that. But we can pull it back up if we need to for reference. And on the next slide, we have it in writing from Florida Department of Transportation. From Samantha Irvin, it specifically says, if they have alternate access, which would be Simpson Ave, we would not approve access to the state road. Additionally, we would not approve a right in, right out on a right turn lane. On the next slide, we have our denial from Highlands County in terms of access to the property because we asked them if we could enter through the parkway. And they said access to the property, excuse me, will need to be from State Road 17. Access from the parkway will not be permitted due to the turn lane for home. So both the county and have stated basically clear as day that they won't and there was some speculation during the planning and zoning hearing that didn't like our development or the county didn't like our development or that the traffic counts would be too high and that's why they. denied it but fdot denied it specifically because of the distance to the intersection we could not meet their standards but simpson avenue does and highlands county has their turn lane issue as well as simply just not allowing any new access points on the parkway if they can help it so on the next slide i want to provide a little bit more information about the rights of way So as Ms. Barnby indicated, I think she had a measurement of 21 feet. We have a measurement of 18 feet for the width of Simpson Avenue. And the applicant asserts that road widening isn't really necessary, but they will widen it if they're required to as part of the commercial review process. But I provided additional analysis of other roads throughout the county who have two, three, four, five, six times as many trips as this road would have with the same width. And I think at the planning and zoning hearing, there were comments that, okay, well, that's a dead end street. And I think that's a benefit. If we have a limited number of trips on a dead end street, we know that there's not going to be any additional through traffic. One of the like you could ask us or it's been put on the table. Why haven't why wouldn't you construct the rest of Hawthorne? Well, first of all, we only need the one access, but second of all, that would also generate additional through traffic in this case. I mean, traffic studies are not like a perfect science, right? So I can't say for sure there's only gonna be this many trips per day, but we know there's only gonna be 30, a maximum of 30 units, right? So that automatically limits exactly how many trips are going to be able to come down to the end of the road. And the way that I can think of it as, sorry, it's just like a cul-de-sac. Why wouldn't a fire truck be able to turn around on a cul de sac in the same way that they turn around on a stub out. I mean, it's like a three point turn. But they can get to the end, they could turn around and they can go back up. So because that's been part of the concern is emergency vehicles being able to access the road and drive on those roads and things like that. It's not really a consequence If it's private property or public property for the fire truck to turn around, they're currently using the church to turn around. And what we would be building is two stabilized surfaces up to today's code for the fire trucks to be able to turn around or any vehicle to turn around. And at this time, I just have two slides more concerning traffic. I'll invite up Mr. Reid Fellows. He'll go over some of those items and I'll come back up to finish this off.

Good evening, council. My name is Reid Fellows. Good evening. I work for TR Transportation Consultants and we're the one who conducted the traffic study, which was part of the application. I'll step through it real briefly and then I'm here to answer questions. But we did the traffic report consistent with Highland County's minor traffic projects requirements, generated the trips for the 30 additional residential units, applied those to the area roadways, and then we looked at the level of service on all roadways that currently have measured concurrency or level of service, and there's adequate capacity on all the roadways. That includes Sebring Parkway, State Road 17, Home Avenue as well. Now on Simpson Avenue, there's currently, we did traffic counts at the intersection and looked at Simpson Avenue. There's only three peak hour trips in the a.m. and, excuse me, five in the a.m. and three in the p.m. So there's very, very minimal traffic, which is to be expected on this local roadway. Now when we add our traffic to this, we're looking at, from our traffic generation, It is more than what's there now. But if you take that into perspective, and if you look at the traffic included, the existing and the proposed, it's about one car every four minutes. So there's very little side friction. You know, most times, you wouldn't even be encountering another car coming the other way. But even if you do, there's 18 foot of pavement. This is a very, very low generating trip along with very little traffic on the roads. So in my professional opinion, there's no issues for adding additional trips to Simpson Avenue. It was already stated before that FTOT would not allow any access to their state roadways, and that makes sense. That's what's been planning. State highways are generally for moving traffic and arterials here, and this is general practice. try to get local traffic off of local roadways. And this is an example of this exactly what we want to do. You don't want to inhibit turns if you cannot. We will have to do a little more analysis on this, but pretty much all of it was done as part of this application and as part of the study that we did for it. But we'll look at it again when we get to the site development process as well. I'm here to answer any questions.

So I've already touched on the emergency access benefits, but again, when we add two additional turnarounds, they'll be more structurally capable. They will be able to meet the turning radius requirements, which has been some of the concerns voiced by the community. It will be unobstructed and reliably available, and it will meet all IFC and NFPA standards. Children's safety has also been a major concern. You know, in general, there's going to be speed control measures if necessary. The applicant is willing to even install speed tables if that satisfies any concerns to the residential neighborhood. And we are also extending the sidewalk for pedestrian activity to occur in a safe manner. terms of tenant tenant quality and management it will be professionally managed there will be on-site oversight strictly standards and background checks i find this to be um i recently moved into this is a little anecdotal but i recently moved into a secured gated neighborhood where background checks are required to move in and i'm much more comfortable allowing my children to play outside knowing what's approved and what's not approved through the background check process. If this were a single family residential neighborhood, which would allow 12 single family homes, there's no guarantee that there would be background checks for anyone coming into the neighborhood. Anyone can move in at that point in compliance with any other state and federal regulations. And then also in terms of securing our development, it will be fully fenced. That's a condition of approval. It will be fully fenced and secured with the white vinyl privacy fence. So it will help mitigate any noise impacts, any visual impacts, and it will also help contain any children. You don't even wanna know what my kids are up to these days. I didn't even know you were outside. But yeah, it should help just keep the neighborhood contained in general. So quickly, because we've already been over some of these things, but I really just wanna come in and hone in on some of these things. When it comes to environmental and flood management, there are no wetlands indicated on the National Wetland Inventory Map. There's approximately 0.08 acres of Zurich upland shown on the Highlands County Interactive Map, which is great. Zurich means high and dry for the most part. The Florida Natural Areas Inventory indicates no known endangered animal species, and it is outside any special flood hazard areas. The Natural Resource Conservation Service indicates a statue of sand at zero to 5% slopes, which drains extremely well. And we've heard some concern that there might be some drainage issues in the area, but due to the water management district requirements, local requirements, Post-development runoff cannot exceed pre-development runoff. So we cannot exacerbate any existing issues. And if there are any runoff issues on our property, they will be handled at the time of development. And yeah, I wanna finish up for y'all, but I have like two more slides left. Okay, so compatibility, I think this is really important. In terms of medium density residential future land use, it is consistent with the adjacent properties to the south and east. We know this. The Regional Planning Council stated this as well. More medium density residential properties exist in the surrounding area, so maybe not directly adjacent on the north side, but yes, across the road, further down, we have lots of medium density in the area. There's no question that that's compatible with the area. Medium density residential land use allows five to 12 dwelling units per acre. proposed development is approximately 10.2 or 10.17 dwelling units per acre and this is the part that i think uh brings such shock i want to call it sticker shock but it's not really sticker shock it's just um fear right because we're talking about 10 dwelling units per acre adjacent to properties that are developed at an intensity of one to three dwelling units per acre when you factor in all the roads and everything like that. But multifamily development, and some jurisdictions call this single family attached development, is not inherently incompatible with adjacent single family development on 10,000 square foot lots. It's not just automatically incompatible The way you achieve compatibility is through design, not use alone. And that's where you see a lot of municipalities switching over to something called form-based code, where it's all about design. Does the design, is it going to create a nuisance to one another? Is it compatible in the way that it's designed versus just because it's considered multifamily and they're attached? But this person is doing the same thing every day, waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast, and going to work. And as the person one lot over on a single family lot doing the same thing, the uses themselves are not incompatible. People are just living their lives. It's just to what intensity and what density. But there's design factors that can be used to mitigate anything that would be considered more of a nuisance. So for that reason, the development is limited to one story to alleviate any concerns regarding scale and privacy. And home separation really only affects those residing in those developments. So if I have a single family attached home, I need to be quiet for my neighbor, but next door, they still have their 25 foot front and rear yard setback and seven and a half foot setback, we have the same setback, we impose setbacks on the building from the property line, so that there would be a generous distance, the same amount of distance that you would see in a single family residential neighborhood. Privacy fence won't close the entire property as mentioned. And again, this provides adequate transition from non residential uses to residential uses. And on the next slide, Ms. Barnby already went over this, but I just wanted to make it explicit that there is a 10-inch force main on the east side of State Road 17 and an eight-inch water line on the west side of State Road 17. There were questions about you know, essentially why we hadn't engineered plans yet. The site plan has been developed through a CAD program and these are simple connections. It is not expected normal or typical for a full blown engineering design to be done at this time. But the property owners have done their due diligence and they're aware of what utilities are available. And they're happy to meet the city in the middle on any of those requirements. So after this, or just the renderings, I'll ask Scott to go ahead and scroll through them. To be clear, we came to you with these renderings way back in December. These are the same renderings. So conceptually, overall, more or less, they haven't changed. But one thing you don't see on these renderings is the fence. So there will be a fence. Outside of the fence, there will be a two foot buffer for maintenance, like a two foot grass strip. And essentially, at this time, we're going to turn it back over to you. I'm going to ask to reserve some time at the end for the owner to provide a statement. And we simply ask that the council consider this decision with competent, substantial evidence, like the evidence we brought before you today, and not really on a not-in-my-backyard basis or an emotional basis, although we do understand the concerns that have come from the surrounding area. I'm available for any questions.

Thank you very much, Dana. I'll open this up to the public for questions. So come on up.

For the record, I'm Jennifer Murphy. Good evening, I live at the dead end right beside the church off of Simpson Avenue. And I'm here to respectfully ask that you deny both the future land use and the zoning request for this property. The Planning and Zoning Board already denied the rezoning because of serious concerns that they noticed regarding access, infrastructure, drainage, and the site suitability. And they're still unresolved and this is gonna be an ongoing concern. While the board recommended approval of the future land use change, maybe because mostly of the uniformity around the surrounding area, it shouldn't override the site-specific conditions. And the denial of the rezoning clearly shows that the fundamental issues with the site remain unresolved. And approving the future land use change is not a neutral action. It establishes development rights that remain within the property, regardless of whether zoning is approved. Even if zoning is denied, the developer can return or pursue development under the new designation. That means approving the land use change continues the development pressure on a site that has already been identified as constrained. The limitations of the site are significant and again, unresolved. In regards to access, traffic, transportation, In the traffic study, which we've seen earlier about Corvette, these other streets, none of those are dead-end roads. And I'm assuming, I forgot your name, I apologize, but with the TR consultant, we noticed, and my husband comes home, he's self-employed, so it was like dark, it was, I don't know, six o'clock, eight o'clock at night, and these little white things that look like a TV remote, essentially, was attached to the stop sign at the end of our road, and... We don't know who did this, what this was. I mean, it's a bus stop. It was kind of alarming, but these are just there watching our kids. It looked like kind of maybe a camera. Not sure if that was you or what that was, but we did pick up on that, and the next day they were gone. So when you're stating 5 a.m. or 5 in the morning and 3 at the peak, was that device used? If so, you really didn't have a full picture there. Regarding the turn radius, when you're seeing, because we brought up in the planning and zoning another concern was having firetruck semis. I've had stuff delivered and it came on a 53 foot semi trailer. And with that, they have nowhere to go but in the church parking lot, back all the way up, pull back up, same way. And they mentioned specifically that we were able to use their access. Well, if it's gated and it's fenced and all these securities, they're not gonna still be able to use that. And when you're talking a grassland that's roughly, if you're 18 and 21, I'm not sure what, you know, really it is, when I measured it, and I do work in this field, 15 foot, because what are you gonna do, cut the grass slope off where the parking lot is at the church? Or are you gonna cut into the neighbor's property? It's 15 foot, because where's the drainage gonna go? And that's another concern. And when you're talking some of these like sewers, water, et cetera, at the time, currently it's in capacity, you know, it has the available capacity, but what about, when the development actually happens. Could that be five years? Could that be one year? Is that capacity still gonna be available? Drainage, flooding, ponding, they already occur. And in the planning and zoning, you have stated that they will comply with DEP requirements and so forth, or they could be kept defined if these issues occur. However, compliance and penalties don't prevent harm. They address it after it has already occurred. And if you wanna look at one of their examples, go to Ramona, it's off of Ramona by State Route 17, Ramona intersection where it works. Those roughly eight houses and eight parcels, that's some of their examples of how their drainage works. There's a house and a ditch. Where's all it gonna go? Blood. You can look also at the topography, the elevation, and see how it definitely would be doing that. And we drove by and witnessed it ourselves. Also in her presentation, table four, the population by age specifically, it's very minute within the target audience that they're claiming that we'll be utilizing these particular units. So I guess I don't understand some of that either. So to sum it all up, these are not minor details. They are fundamental factors in determining whether this site is appropriate for development, considering it's not quite three acres. It's not a question of whether development should occur. It's whether this site is appropriate and ready for development. Based on this information that's been presented up to this point, it is not demonstrated that it is ready for such. For these reasons, I respectfully ask that you deny both the future land use amendment and the rezoning plus. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Anybody else would like to speak on this? Come on up. You could tell us who you are. Take your time. Maybe a half hour.

Christopher Tuffley, Sebring resident. I'm opposed to this particular development. to a lot but this is just a space that is too small for so many people I was noticing that the apartments are roughly eight hundred and seventy five square feet that's a very small space that's the size of a tiny house if you think about it the rent is going to be over a thousand dollars so I just think you're going to have a hard time finding people that be willing to pay that much money for that small space and I think the people in the neighborhood have made it very, very clear. And I think with good reason, that access in and out the traffic situation. I just don't think it's going to work the way it's, it's been presented that you're just a suit that's too small for the body. Come on up.

Thanks, Tim Maness. I'm with Hope City. I'm assistant pastor there. Pastor Taylor couldn't be here tonight, but I'm here as a representative for Hope City. We have several members in attendance here. We have some concerns as far as where we stand as a church because Simpson Avenue is a dead end, straight into the church parking lot. And a lot of times we have a lot of U-turns and turnarounds that happen in that church. There's a couple things I want to bring up. One, the sewer connections versus the septic systems, which the surrounding areas of residence, we have most of those around there are septic systems. And for the statement to make it's a simple connection that's across the highway, I just don't see that being plausible right now. Our parking issues or the parking issues they're going to have there, how is that going to impact the church's parking lot? What we're foreseeing is if there's not enough adequate parking spaces or they become out of capacity, that the church parking lot is going to end up being an overflow for them, which is going to add additional cost maintenance for us to maintain our pavement, that landing, and everything else. Also, that turnaround on the undeveloped Hawthorne Ave, or that turn for the undeveloped hop on a half, it's going to cut into the slope and the gradient that is already up there for drainage purposes. Plus we have a swift mud pond that's attached to that, that we maintain that we have to have certified on a regular basis. So once they cut into that gradient, that's going to change the dynamics and impact that footprint of what that drainage system is already. No proposed safety barriers for increased traffic for right against the parking lot. We didn't see anything in that. No consideration for the neighbors, which they're talking to extending the sidewalk into connecting the other sidewalk. But again, that's going to be a footprint that's going to have to be added into making that not a substandard road, but a standard road that they can have a throughway. Not to mention, y'all just talked about having a 100-foot ladder fire truck. What's the possibility of that fire truck being able to turn into that without having to do multiple point turns or even getting access into that? So our emergency services are not able to have a right of way or access into that as it stands right now. As Jennifer said, increased deliveries coming in and out of the property. And then again, the comparable roads that were up there, those are all through streets. And then the traffic study, you're saying you did it from this time and this time. However, the church, we do have multiple events that are regularly scheduled, that we have multiple days that we have activities there. We do have annual activities that are scheduled there. So those traffic studies aren't accurate as far as the traffic that comes up and down that road that's already a dead end road. And then the potential hazards that are there for the children that do attend this church and the surrounding neighbors. And then to not include the neighbors into your rendering, that is just not a consideration for even getting their interest or showing them the interest that you have for them as well. I understand this is business, and we understand and we support development and growth. We do. But the thing we stand on is just grow responsibly. Let's make good decisions that's going to impact or have minimal impact to the neighborhood but our benefits to those that are all involved. I thank you for your time.

Okay, this was a town, and it's still, to me, it's small, but still beautiful, and it now is a city. I love growth. Everybody sees growth. We see it when our children, we see it in our neighbor, we see it and we love it, and we treasure growth. But when you're building so much, it can explode. The aftermath is what our community, our residents, and our neighbors are stuck to deal with. Yeah, adding 30 more apartments to that road would require more police officers to go out there. Because, I mean, you don't know what's going to happen. It's a possibility something's going to happen. And you say 30 cars are going to go through there? Okay, I have a car I drive. My husband has a car because we both work and my son works and goes to school. He has a car. That's three vehicles that travel. So I know these houses have two bedrooms. What tells you they're not gonna have four people living in there? That's four vehicles per car or house. We don't know. We don't know who's moving in or not, but this is our, my concern is it's just too many apartments for that small of a property. not even three acres and you know they bought it knowing that it was in zone for it because when the conservation army sold it for 67 000 the pastor and lutheran bought it and resold it for 169 000 so don't come and tell me this is not about money this is all about money money moves everything But we have to worry about the safety of our community, the ones living here already. You know, we are living here. We've grown up, our kids are growing here. Yeah, I mean, who doesn't want other people to come and move in and make Seagram better and beautiful? I mean, we all do. But this location right here is not the location. The safety of our community is a lot more important than bringing more you know income to the landlord because that's what rent is you're paying somebody else's bill when you are renting those boomers she's talking about that was me that is me but i wanted to be able to buy something in sebring and grow my roots and have my children one day say, we can come back to Sebring. Sebring's beautiful. I go to Orlando for my son for his therapy every month. Every month I go to Nemours. You know what I come, when I hit Sebring, I'm relieved because I left all that craziness behind. And I mean traffic, I mean accidents everywhere. We don't have that much here. We do have a few, and that's why that emergency landing was so good there when the city of Sebring rented it out to Salvation Army. That's why it was there. But it was so efficient because we've seen, I mean, I've been there for about nine years and I've seen so many landings there. So many lives probably been saved because there's an emergency landing there. I'm not saying it should be an emergency landing strip or anything, and I do wanna see growth. I wouldn't mind to have neighbors. Not 30 apartments in the back, that's just too much. And the school bus that stops right there on 17th, that is a very dangerous place for all those cars to get out, because most everybody goes to work by 8, 8.30 or nine. That school bus stops there at 745, sometimes 750. So if, I mean, if anything is important, please make it our neighbors, our residents, our community, and our children. That is very important to all of us. Growth is beautiful. We love growth, but it can explode. And I do see that happening on that little small problem. That's all I have to say. I hope you deny, you know, for future neighbors and everybody. I mean, help us, you know, help our community. Because I love Sebring. Everybody, my kids call it Se-Boring, but they're one day will come back and they'll say, mom, you're right. We love being in Sebring. Sebring is all neighbors. We help each other. We're all together. This is, this is our piece of heaven. This is our piece of heaven, and you would be taking it away from all of us, all of us that are here against us. Please consider all of us in your determination.

Thank you. Anybody else that would like to speak?

I'm Randy Sweeney. I've been an employee of the city of Sebring for over 27 years now, 28 years there. And like the off-going thing there, the church on one side and us on the other side, and Walter and us on this side, we've been maintaining that road for 20 years. I've been there 21 years now, or 25 years, I'm sorry. Maintained that ourselves. The city don't maintain that. We've been doing it ourselves. Mowing the grass, doing all that there. I don't know how that happens, but we've been mowing it and all the main things that move. Over here, you've got Stone Ridge subdivision. You've got Waterside RV Resort. and they're fixing to expand that to make it even bigger. You got the house developed behind Bernie Little's. That's a lot of houses coming in here pretty shortly. And not to talk about the dollar store, I don't know what's going on there, if it's housing or not, but the dollar store there at the home avenue and all. But that is a lot, a lot of people coming in here for that. I mean, we got the infrastructure for that. I know she said something about the schools, but the hospitals and jobs and stuff like that. And like she said, Ramona, man, I want to look at that. That's ridiculous. Little cracker box houses. I mean, they look rough. And on State Road 17, it's 1709. State Road 17, right at the end of Fionn. The state had to come here several years ago and put a drain in there, paved the road, and put a guardrail because they was wrecking there because water was going over the road there. And several people's houses and stuff like that. You might remember that stuff. I don't know. And, of course, at Embark Street, Simpson, the water goes almost to their house there, on Miss Alicia's and Mr. Tarter's. And, of course, the school bus stop there, like we said, there's a lot of kids there moaning and everything, getting that up. And I guess another thing I just was paying attention to is they said that this 2.95 acres, and they're talking about 1.41 acres of that, it's going to be trails, this, that, and the other. Well, where'd you, through teaching ponds and the house, that's half the property right there. I mean, I don't know how you're going to put that all in that little spot, you know what I mean? It just, it ain't feasible for what I'm concerned, you know what I mean? And I hope y'all really consider this real good, and I hope y'all do deny both of them, but it's up to y'all, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you. Any other public comment? Okay.

Come on up. It's Brent George. I live in Las Villas community. I met the builder that's asking for this three years ago. When we came down, we looked for houses from the state line, Tallahassee, Danelle, and Ocala. And we're going to do it. You can see we fell in love with it. I moved here because of my witness to the commitment this builder made. I moved there, I was concerned, mainly with could he bring the old neighbors and the new neighbors together. I've been there for three years. He is committed to it. He's on the board and I want him on the board because of his experience. I truly believe he deserves it. tighter building because of how much square foot costs in taxes. You can't. People can't afford those big yards anymore. You've got lots of people who can. But you need low rent. And this gentleman said he couldn't see how much they could pay. People are telling me that's low for rent. I can't believe it. I'm lucky enough to own my house. But people need low rent. People need good spaces. And they shouldn't. most of the thing i hear here is fear and not my back they can't take care of this and that's what i know thank you very much thank you

Good afternoon, everybody. How are you all doing? Good afternoon. So I came across... Oh, can you state your name for the record? I'm sorry. Julian Surrett. I'm a local contractor. So that's how I came across, you know, the Green Group development. And at first, you know, there were... They're very welcoming, very trustworthy, so on, you know, and they gave us, you know, they gave us the opportunity to work at Las Villas to help them complete their final phase. Everything was nice, you know, everything went well. I can't say anything better. So not only, it just didn't end there. He also, you know, he had some issues with his own personal home, which then he reached out to me for me to help him out. Which I thought was awesome. Along with that, when I was there at his house, the contractors that were helping him out were contractors from Highlands County. He didn't outsource not one bit of anything that he ever did. Um, you know, along the way, I met his wife, his kids, his brother, his dad, and everybody all has that same family orientation. You know, they, you're not just a number to them. You know, I've seen and witnessed that, you know, whatever needs to get done to please, you know, what their ultimate goal is. extremely valid, and they do take this as a point. I know this for a fact, they're not just gonna blow it off. To them, right now, I could imagine that they're actively thinking, how can we improve this for the residents that are there? They are really great people, and I'm not just saying this just to say it. I came out here specifically for some stuff outside of that. But ultimately, they're here not, you know, you say, oh, they're gonna make millions of dollars, billions of dollars. No, they're here to provide work. They're here to provide space So that allows, that facilitates that, plus the schools, plus the hospitals. And so, I believe it's a good idea, and I believe that they will 100% adjust and create the fixes to what the concerns are from our federal guidance calendars. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening fellow council members and attendees this evening. My name is Asaf Ace Mengelgreen. I am one of the partners of Green Group Development. That is my father Mengo and my brother Roy sitting in the audience. quick background on myself because we've heard a lot of technical details this evening by the professionals and i think all that has made its point i want to take things a little bit more on the personal side a little bit about my background i've served on numerous boards past president and vice president of alliance club done a lot of charity work past president of a toastmasters club past president of a scholarship fund gave out a lot of money to high school students current president of the las villas board I know the value of serving on boards and how important it is to support the right people and the right projects because that is what directly impacts a successful organization or a successful city's development. I think it's important that we understand that growth is inevitable and all the data supports that Sebring is growing. When I explain Sebring to people who don't know much about this town, I explain to them Sebring is a slow-moving freight train. It's growing. It's not booming. It's growing. It's unstoppable. We as developers have been here for five years, and we don't plan to leave. We own a home in Las Villas. We live here year-round, week to week. We call it home. We take personal pride in the Las Villas project. I personally love Sebring. I don't intend to leave Sebring. This is a great, great city to be a part of. Development is inevitable. The facts speak for themselves. But I think selecting and approving the right personnel, the right people to be developers in this community makes the right long-term vision turn into a success. That is what we are here for. We are long-term visionaries. We haven't sold anything off that we own here. We personally manage everything and will continue to manage everything, including this project. We run a very, very tight ship. We are all of just three people. My father, my brother, myself, and a very small team of people that help us. We are not a big conglomerate. We've had numerous opportunities to sell off to investors or partition and have other people join us for millions of dollars, and we always say no. My father likes to say, if partners were so great, God would help. But we don't like to do that. We keep everything in-house. We believe in what it is that we do. We love this town, and I think the track record shows that we don't just walk the walk, but we talk the talk. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

anybody else come on up my name is walter garcia i only really have one one thing one One point to state in this request for denial, and it's safety. Safety not only of the community and the neighbors, safety also of those first responders, whether they be police, fire, rescue, or any other. My wife is an ICU nurse. Time, seconds, cost lives. Having a fire truck that has to make a three-point turn to get into a development like this will cost someone's life. A fire truck that is speeding down a 15-foot wide road where there's a church at the end of, on a Sunday, will cost someone's life. It is just that simple. I know this because this has been part of my life for the last 10 years. We lived in Miami. We moved here to Seabrook to work at it. My wife would work at that. She works in ICU. She also works in what they call ED, which is the emergency room department as well. So I can attest to how these things, unfortunately, tragedies are unavoidable. Every time that helicopter would land, I know it was exciting for the kids to watch the helicopter land. It wasn't good news for someone. Whoever was getting loaded into that helicopter or whoever was that helicopter was coming. From my standpoint, it is really a matter of safety. That's all I have to say. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Anybody else?

for the record i'm cheryl humphrey i'm a resident i live on the other side of the parkway from the proposed development and i heard some things tonight that actually concerned me was sitting in the back of the room and when they were talking about the traffic they were projecting how much traffic they're asking for 30 units and i couldn't hear whether he said 15 or 50 additional trips But I'm sitting there doing the math thinking how many times we drive in and out of my driveway. And if there were 30 people like me living in there, it would be 250 trips in and out of that place. Because every person who lives in my house is an adult with a driver's license. Every one of us owns multiple vehicles. And we stay busy all the time. They're talking about young working people being in that development. Well, to begin with, I'd like to know where those people are because I haven't seen them around Sebring. Most of the people I know in Sebring are closer to my age. But those young working people, they're not going to stay home all day either. They're going to be in and out of there a couple of times a day, every day, all the time. So the traffic that they're looking at, projecting on that road, will be more than the projection, not less. That is a very narrow road. It is a dead end. It goes straight into the church and then splits at a 90 degree turn with a narrow street running onto a narrow street into a 30 complex. That makes no sense to me. Now, we're hearing we've lived in Sebring for five years, we've lived in Sebring for three years, grew up in Sebring, born in Sebring. I moved to Sebring in 2010. I moved to Highlands County in 2004. I'm probably the only person here that moved from a less dense population to Sebring, right? I am looking at the rest of the neighborhood and changing from public use, changing the map, changing the zoning to allow even 12 houses or 12 units to be put on that property does not match the rest of the neighborhood. We might be zoned for it, but look what's there. We have single family houses on double or triple lots. On my side of the road and on the other side of the road, there is not one multifamily. You have to go like across Home Avenue, down the street, and then there's a couple of duplexes, and even the duplexes have big yards. So for somebody to come in from wherever they came from and say that we have to get used to smaller yards, no, we don't. We bought the property we have. And we don't need to have, in the middle of our neighborhood, something divided up into little tiny parcels, and their numbers don't make any sense. The numbers make no sense at all. They had, was it 4.1 or 3.95? And then they're talking 2.1, and then it was 1.34. Wait a minute, they're talking about one little sidewalk that runs around the outside for some sort of walking track. They named it Veterans Walk to pander to who? That didn't really sound very, that didn't sound nice to me at all. You're gonna put who in the, they're not building this for veterans. These could be the best builders on the planet. They could be the most reputable people. They picked the wrong spot. They picked a lot that had been designated for public use for single family homes at most and they're trying to put in a multi-million dollar apartment complex. There's plenty of land available in Highlands County and that lot is not walkable to any employment source other than the Dollar General across the street. You know how I know? I live there And I know that there were very few days that I could drive across town to Harlan Christian Academy, which was two miles from my house, right? Half the time it was either raining or it's too miserably hot to walk two miles. So who, where are they going to walk to? They can walk to the Dollar General. and that's about it. So thinking that we're building this for working families and they're gonna walk to work or they're gonna walk to, they walk to the Dollar General like everybody else in the neighborhood does and that's about it. So think about how much are you looking to be consistent with the neighborhood or how much are you looking to uproot and totally change the structure of our neighborhood? If I wanna go buy a piece of property for development, it would not be wise on my part to go buy property that I'm gonna have to request a difference in the land use and a difference in the zoning, and then I'm gonna be concerned about public access and the road and the water and the sewer and the drainage and the schools. And sure, Highlands County can absorb 30 families in a blink. Woodlawn Elementary cannot. That's Woodlawn Elementary, and they're full. So please consider current conditions before you start looking off to future conditions. Think of the residents that already live there. And this is not about not in my backyard. You know what's also not in my backyard but is right across the street is that big citrus grove that is going to become something. And what it becomes is up to you. the developers will come and they'll ask for some use over there. That's a great big plot. Do as you please. This is a little tiny spot in the middle of a residential neighborhood that has been a residential neighborhood for 75 years, long time. Why do we have to be the ones to accept that kind of change? Put it across the street. There's lots of room. They did a wonderful job at Stone Bridge, whatever it's called over there. Yeah, we all watched that. If you lived in Sebring, you watched that. It was going to be grand, then it collapsed, and then finally they came in and they fixed it. And good job. We appreciate that. Do that again. We think it would be a great idea. But do it on an appropriate property because this is not that property.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else like to speak?

Hi there. My name is Rob Bullock. So I do not live on Simpson or anywhere near Simpson. However, I've driven up and down Simpson several times, and I've had to do three-point turns multiple times, sometimes four-point times, because I own just a regular pickup truck. so what i am is a public safety consultant and i'm not here to say not in my backyard although i can understand where the neighbors may feel that way um i'm not here to say anything negative about the developers i'm here to also say um it would be great to have development or more growth in sebring however the concern i have is the one way in and one way out for 30 extra units on a little more than two acres um the concern i have is the fact that you have two denials from two governing agencies for entrances into that property for whatever reasons that they may want to say off of 17 and they want to say use Simpson since it's a very narrow road utilizing math as other speakers have said and going by the facts in the presentation 30 units they said would have two two spaces each that's 60 cars adding to the neighborhood currently there, the neighbors currently there. I currently live on a dead end road with just six houses. I'm in and out of my house multiple times a day, and just my one neighbor's wife alone, I pass her four times, at least four times a day. So if you have 60 cars, two per unit, and they're in and out on top of the regular neighbors on a small narrow road, you're going to have multiple trips. And just say Simpson Road, I've not mapped it out, I've not measured Simpson Road, but it's a small short road, say it's 900 feet, that's about... 30 cars, 40 cars, I could be off with math, depending on if they're small coops or full-size pickup trucks. That kind of traffic is going to back up at that stop sign on 17. Not to mention, if you have half of those units full of kids now waiting for school bus, that's going to increase the amount of time the school bus is going to be stopped there, increasing the amount of traffic that's going to be backed up on 17, possibly multiple times, depending on how many school buses there are going to be stopping there. I don't know if any of that has played into a factor, but all of that could play into the safety of that neighborhood. As one of the speakers said, you've got to factor in the additional deliveries. I've seen neighbors, including my own, that there is UPS, FedEx, and Amazon wars several times a day at just one house alone. Imagine 30 units having that on top of the existing neighbors. That's going to increase the traffic up and down such a narrow road. Now, where does that fit in when you have regular emergency services? In a fire truck, do a three-point turn. Yes, it's not fun. I know that they're saying that they're going to put in a platform surface where they can do it. It'll be able to withstand a fire truck being able to do the weight of a fire truck. That's great at the end of the road. Now, what happens when there's a multi-alarm fire where you're going to be stacking multiple units in there? What happens when it's just a basic medical call on that street where you have an ambulance and a fire truck responding and now it's clogged up the street for 1520 minutes 30 minutes and now you have 30 or 40 neighbors trying to go up and down that street and other stops because you've got a couple of units just waiting there tending to a medical emergency. Now, let's bump it up one. You do have a structured fire on that street and say it's at the beginning of Simpson. Now you have 30 units plus the church, if it's on a Sunday, how are they getting out of there? You have all those people stuck in there for hours until they get a fire under control and enough to get that scene cleaned up to where it's safe to get those people to be able to move back and forth with traffic vehicles. So just food for thought. I'm not here for the not my backyard. I'm just here for the small narrow street, the fact that you have two governing agencies saying we're not gonna give you two ways of ingress or egress off of major roadways where it would be larger entrances into this development. That would be safer. Most developments usually have a divided entranceway They're saying that probably for a reason. So I would take that into deep consideration. If something were to happen on a disaster level, how are you going to get all those people on the other side of Simpson that might be in there, all those other neighbors, how are they going to move in and out to 17 to get out of that neighborhood? Convenience, inconvenience, and the public safety part of it.

Thank you for sharing. I think we've heard, I mean, unless anybody wants to speak, I think everybody covered their bases. Dana, do you want to have some time to respond to some questions, concerns before we close the public hearing?

No, I think our presentation really addressed a lot of these concerns as they came up. We're available to take any questions Is there anything in particular, traffic-wise, that felt needed to be addressed?

Yeah, a couple quick items to note. It was kind of an original presentation, and I thought I would just hit a couple bullet points. One of them came up a couple times when they were saying, I find it interesting that two agencies or the FDOT is not allowed to And that's not meaning they're for the project or against the project. It's just good traffic planning principles. You don't try and put driveways on an arterial on a state route. Plus, we were inhibited on Sebring Parkway by the turn lane into home. And then also, if they could avoid it, they would like traffic off of the... Another item, when we do our traffic studies, we go by the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual. And that surveys thousands and thousands of pond sites all around the country. And it comes up with a trip generation scenario based upon the use and the number of units. What we found out, engineers recently updated their manual and they found out in developments such as this, the actual number of trips have come down over the years. Everybody thinks it goes up. COVID had something to play into that. They also, other comments were about, you know, I drive several times a day So yes, you may come and go several times during the day, but it's not always between 7 and 9, between 4 and 6. You're going to dinner other times, you're picking up your kid, you're going out to lunch, you're going shopping, you know, things on the weekend. So I venture to believe that the trips that I had in my report are actually considerably high, and they're probably less, even if they were triple of what we were estimating. There's still a low volume contributor to a small low

right i'm going to go ahead and close this public hearing time for council's comments remarks notes

One question on traffic for you real quick to make sure I understood. You said that the study showed about 15 trips per hour at the peak hour. Did I get that right?

15 in the, I believe it was the PM peak hour.

Okay, and that was the highest that your study concluded? Okay, and that's where you said one car every four minutes approximately. Okay. That was the only question I had for you. Okay. I would assume part of our permitting process would include a confirmation that our emergency vehicles could turn around in there. Correct, Scott? Okay. That's all I've got as far as questions at this moment.

Rebecca? David Rowland.

no i got one more so the open space calculation um dana to clarify maybe for for the public that includes any retention that includes the walking trails open space your calculation is not just the walking trail it's it's all open space so non-pavement non-buildings

Correct. And so open space doesn't automatically mean recreation either, because I think that's sometimes the insinuation is that you think when it's open space, you have to be able to actively use it, you can passively use it as well. So it's just land that is not developed with a parking lot or building or anything of that nature. So that includes the fitness trail and the retention areas.

Okay.

i had one other question for you i think it was noted at the pnz meeting um that originally you planned for more parking and um central florida regional planning council asks you to reduce it correct is that accurate yeah and i think some of it has to do with the the positioning because the parking is in the front of the neighborhood where people will be entering and so there could potentially be some conflicts there but we're happy to leave it or um remove it whatever the board would prefer okay all right what do you mean by that you you said you could still add more parking in that well the site plan as it stands today shows i think 70 something thank you 72 parking spaces and as part of the review the central quarter regional planning council asked us to reduce it to 60 which is one of the conditions included in the approval so You can agree to that condition or you can ask for that condition to be stricken and then we would continue with providing 72 spaces or, you know, we remove it because that's part of the condition. So right now, as the conditions are written, it's written for only 60 spaces instead of 72.

I had a lot of questions after hearing the P&Z meeting. You've answered really all the questions that I had. You did an excellent job of addressing those questions and concerns. I think one of the things, too, is I know that Lost Villas is a different development, too, but one of the issues I do see at Lost Villas is the comments I get is parking. But it sounds like, again, two different developments. It sounds like the developers are being a lot more specific of who they're going to allow in with the background checks and everything else too. So do you foresee parking being an issue with the two spots per unit?

I mean, in comparison to Las Villas, I don't. You know, Las Villas is three-bedroom homes and you could fit one and a half cars in the driveway and maybe one in the garage. And then when you look at two-bedroom homes, And I think back to a lot of these developments that exist in Lake Placid, like Thornberry Apartments, and there's another one I can't name right now. not only do you have young families, but you have older people, people that are living alone. And then you have people who are living alone who can't drive at all. These are really good, affordable apartments for people who are on a fixed income. So you have people relying on public transportation as well to get around, especially when you have Medicaid. Now they even offer five trips per month for personal use in addition to all your medical appointments. So I just see where it's not when we're talking about parking a lot of people are looking at worst case scenario of every room or every unit had two drivers and that won't always be the case some units will have zero drivers some will have one and some will have maybe more than one but yes I believe that will be regulated as part of the approval process what was the uh the one opposition to the PNC board

To the future land use? To why they dissented. It was Jeff Carlson. Maybe it's just that. For the record, I think that the opposition on the zoning, I think that actually was unanimous. The one voter who voted against the denial like corrected himself in the recording he thought voting no meant voting no like i'm gonna deny this okay so i think they unanimously voted on a no on the zoning denial but full one in favor of future land use that did happen um but that was laz who mixed up his vote but mark wilson did specifically vote okay okay

I mean, this is why we have a P&Z board.

Yeah, yeah. I guess I tend to agree with their vote. I think that the future land use, it only makes sense to change it. Why it's public, I have no idea. Same reason why I have no idea why the house on the corner that is clearly not public use, it has a future land use map of designation of public. land should be able to be developed in some aspect that makes sense i don't know if i agree with the pd for the density um i i guess i would lean towards planning and zoning's decision of keeping it r1 so they could still develop build houses on there just not the density that we're discussing the access would still be through through hawthorne and simpson But I think the amount of homes they could build if we changed the future land use map to match the surrounding areas but left the zoning in place would probably end up being like eight or nine, maybe, once roads and setbacks are considered. I always say I don't know that for a fact. I'm just guessing based on the size. I would love to hear the rest of your thoughts on that.

I think it's a lot for that area. So it's just a lot of homes is what my only concern. A lot of residents.

I agree. I mean, I think it's a, you know, like the project, I think it is kind of the wrong space for that area. It's, you know, a confined area and it's just too much for that one area.

One more question, too. So Hawthorne, I'm pretty sure it was not going to get developed, right? Or built out and extended?

Correct. The connection from the development to Hawthorne wasn't proposed to be extended. Just from Simpson to that little segment of Hawthorne to the development.

So in the P&Z, and correct me if I'm wrong on this too, I think they said, well, maybe if we can work on some of the issues or work through some of the concerns that P&Z had, could we work together on that? Is that something that would be amenable to bringing back before we vote on this?

If the board is open to us exploring other avenues and is open to the idea of us potentially extending Hawthorne as a solution, I would ask that you all vote yes tonight so that we can come back for second reading because this is just first reading and we can further negotiate and determine if that do some calculations and determine if that's something that would still be feasible for the developer but if everyone votes no tonight then we can't come back with the zoning on second reading But I believe, you know, the developer is open to exploring all options to make it feasible.

Are you talking about extending Hawthorne through to Simpson?

I felt like one of the concerns was just having that one access point.

What if we had… I think that would… maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I think that would make… The problem works. Yeah, because it's going to allow through traffic.

Yeah, it opens up through traffic. I'm sorry, I thought I heard my name. Yeah, it opens up the potential for more through traffic, but it does make it so that there's more than one entrance. By engineering standards, second ingress and egress isn't triggered until you hit 75 units. So 30 units plus the four that are existing is still considered safe number.

So I agree with changing it from public. Developers should have the right to develop. I have no issues with that too. So when it comes to the second part of this, either we do as Dana recommended, or we do a continuation, say, hold on, or table it in a second motion. So what I don't want to do is stop any kind of change.

Well, so if we voted down, what they're asking for is a zoning change from R1 to PD. If we want it to be R1, we can vote no, and it just remains R1. Personally, just speaking for myself, extending Hawthorne through does not change how I feel about this, and I think it probably makes the neighbors feel worse. And to me, it's a density issue. It's not really about the access point. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really how I feel. It is kind of spot zoning. You know, it is R1 right now. Future landings map doesn't match. We can fix that tonight. I guess after just hearing it and considering, you know, all these options, I think that R1 is probably applicable. I mean, maybe if they were open to a PD that was slightly higher density, that could make it work for them, but not anywhere near the 30 units that have been proposed.

And for clarification, if we vote no on the rezoning, they could still come back with another PD request that was different and more in line with R1, right?

Does it trigger...

A lockout time frame? They would have to wait a year, but they could come back and ask for any zoning designation that is permitted in medium density residential land use, which is up to R3. Okay. And NUQD, I believe.

So they wouldn't be allowed to request another PD. They could request something.

They could ask for another PD after a year, but they could also ask for any of those other things. And candidly, you would have a hard time denying a request to something like R3 if you change the land use designation, which would otherwise allow for R3.

So help me understand, because I don't, why the future land use map for the entire neighborhood is medium density residential, but they're all R17.

right that's the existing but you're saying if we if we change the future land use map to match that there would be issues with us turning down a zoning that would be higher than r1 you have a harder time turning down a requested rezone for a zoning district that is permitted in the land use for the property you have an easier time turning it down if they ask you to change the land use to make it happen I don't know what the medium density residential allowed for back when that was designated as medium density, however many years ago. Certainly don't know why that's publicly in use at the moment. That's a long time ago, I presume.

If we turn down the change of future use, that triggers the lockout as well?

Not sure if there's a specific lockout on change of the land use. Bruce, if you have to know that, I'll stop you here. Not sure. Certainly tabling it as one of your options if that's an important issue to you to allow us time to determine that. Not that important.

So I guess the end result that I am thinking is appropriate — obviously I'm looking for feedback here — is the site should be able to be developed, right? It shouldn't have to remain in this weird zoning future land use limbo that it's in now. But I don't think it should be a higher density than R1, or at least not much higher. You know, if there's something — slight changes under PD I would be okay with, as long as the density is not much higher than R1.

This is the applicant's request to you all. You can't force them to take something different than they're asking for, but you don't have to approve that.

We could table both motions.

You could. If you did, it would require another advertisement for the shift in the hearings, but that's not that big of a concern.

If you voted for both the zoning and the land use change at the first hearing, that gives them the opportunity, they understand where you're gonna do with the second hearing. Because you could deny both at the second hearing if you wanted, correct?

You could. It looks a little weird to say yes now and no later. But, I mean, yes, it's not final until the second.

And you're giving them the opportunity to come back with something else that kind of fits what you all are talking about, correct?

You could be done, yes, sir.

This is a binding site plan that they have though, right? Are we going to have like a reasonable amount of time to vote on something that if I'm hearing the rest of council correctly, that site plan is not going to be voted in favor of, which is the basis of their PD. So is that timeframe enough for them to make a change that we could even vote yes on?

I think that would be a question for retain developers. What I do know is I really love working with Green Group and what they're doing for our city and county is phenomenal. These are the type of developers that we want to work with. But hearing all the concerns of PNZS, too, I just want to keep that into account. But a lot of work with you all on development of some type.

works well for what we want to see for the future before you answer okay but what are we looking for are we looking for 15 are we looking for 10 are we looking for 20. i mean because if they can't go back more than 15. right so if they can't back up to that then we could if we just make that clear then there's either no way to move forward if we can't go past if we're not going past 15.

Yeah, so I'm just conferring with the owner just a moment ago. Of course, we'd like to get out of limbo. So amending the future land use, we would really appreciate that so that this property can be developed. But at this time, really, it has to be 30 for it to be feasible. We really appreciate the council willing to consider lower number than we have, higher number than what the R1 zoning would allow, but it sounds like we're probably just gonna have to go with a yes or no on the zoning today.

So that means we have a chance to fix future land.

No. We can only vote yes or no. Right? We can't. We can't. So what Bob is saying is if we vote yes to change it into R2 for the Intensity or Essential, that it means we're somewhat beholden to consider a zoning change that matches in the future.

Yes, sir.

So if we vote yes tonight, it means that we are setting ourselves up to vote yes on a zoning change that matches sometime in the future, right? They're not asking for our one. They're asking for me, Denzy residential. And while I don't understand why that neighborhood exists in that form, I don't want us to think we're doing one thing and we're setting ourselves up for something different down the road.

the city changed the zoning from public to R1 and low density.

Am I saying that right? I still have to request it. The city can change it. It's just not done, it's not common. You can say, again, no to both tonight. You can approve the land use change if you want. Or you could table it. You've heard the applicant say they're not doing If you're seeing that as a problem in the density, then you can't make it.

Oh, yeah. Come on up.

I just kind of want to explain the reason that there's a 30 is the request. The cost of today to do site work and underground work is so expensive that for that to be a feasible project, you have to have volume. And if we were to do 15 or 12 or 20, the rental price is what we meant to It's impossible. So that is the reason we went with volume, to keep the rent slow. Because the underground costs today are extortionate. We already have prices, rough prices from excavation points, about $600,000 plus. That's just to get the underground in the ground. So that's the reason we needed the volume, to make the numbers work. Any other comments?

I guess I would ask the app if, if we're, if the board doesn't vote to approve the future land use as requested to MDR tonight, would you prefer we vote no or table it so that you could ask for something else?

In terms of future land use, if you aren't going to approve future land use, I mean, it doesn't matter. We could close the case and say no, but I would say don't get mad at me, Bob. But I disagree with Bob a little bit on this because medium density residential is consistent with the R3 zoning. but it's also consistent with the R1, the R1A, the R2. It's like this middle ground, this flex space. R3 really should pair with high density residential, but also in the city of Sebring, you all allow like a very high amount of residential if you do a planned development, depending on where it is and things like that. So how tonight I made the case of it's not just the zoning, it's also the design. There were conditions imposed in the zoning that would have controlled the design, which made it more compatible with the adjacent single family residential home. If somebody came forward with just an R3 zoning request, They could not condition the zoning, meaning they could not agree to additional landscaping or adding additional sidewalk and make promises that like we made tonight. So. I still feel like you would have a strong basis to say no, R3 zoning isn't compatible adjacent right next door to the R1 zoning that exists. Because the city of Sebring does subscribe to Euclidean zoning. So you know how I was saying there's like form based codes, and then there's Euclidean codes like Euclidean is saying the use next to the use. And is multifamily right next to single family compatible? According to Euclidean zoning, no, not really. But according to form-based zoning, which is what I was kind of trying to push tonight through the PD, it can be compatible so long as it's designed a certain way. And that's what we were trying to accomplish with the PD. So again, just a difference of opinion here and Bob is great legal counsel and I respect him so much, but I just would also say that it wouldn't give me the same fear that they could come in with an R3 zoning request it does make their case a little bit stronger but you could still stand strong in saying no to an r3 zoning because it's not compatible and consistent with the surrounding area that's it thank you thank you i move that we deny the ordinance on first reading

There's no numbers on it. 10-C or 10-D or both. Well, you're going to do them individually? Yes, sir. Let's do 10-C. 10-C.

I second.

All right. Motion? We got a second?

We're going to score a no vote, correct? Okay. Bishop?

No. Hold on.

So what does that mean?

You're voting against the motion. Okay.

So it's going to be a yes vote on the notebook.

Right.

Corker Shatz. Yes. Lydell.

Yes.

Stewart.

Yes.

Havery.

Yes.

All right.

So the denial, just to be clear, the denial passed on 10C, which was the... Each of which. Each of which, okay.

All right, moving on to 10D.

This is zoning.

I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion that we deny 10D.

Motion, we have a second? Second.

Kathy?

Bishop?

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. All right. On to 10 E. Thank you all. This is another public hearing. So we're talking about, well, Bob, go ahead and introduce this. 10 E. 10 E.

And E. We already did it in ECHO.

You did D. We're going to ECHO, which is not a public hearing. This is the exception to the landscape ordinance. You may want to give folks a moment to clear it out.

I'll take that. It's been a long meeting. You've got your two and a half hours, Andy. Does anybody need a break? No. Let's get it. Thank you. This is not a public hearing. But 10-E, we're looking for the exemption to application.

Is it about the parking lot? Yes, it is. Good evening, Council. My name is Vlad. I'm an assistant county engineer and my full name is Vlad Belukha. So I'm here basically on behalf of the county. So we want to request a variance of the landscaping requirement for a parking lot that we are going to construct and we hope we are going to construct. So I can tell you a little bit more about that. So as you all know, the city of Sebring and Collins County, we do experience some issues with the parking area downtown. So at some point it was decided that If we can, we would love to build a parking plot where we could maximize parking spaces as much as possible. So in this particular project, we came up with 37 parking spaces. But the problem is that if we want to do that, we will need to take some of the green area, which is landscape area and irrigation. so yes yes that's the sketch so in order to maximize parking space we just want to ask you for a balance in uh for this project and also i think it's gonna benefit the city it's gonna benefit the county and as far as i know you have So maybe this year I will visit your parade. As you can tell, we do have some green area, but it's minimal. It's gonna be just up front and the retention pond area. But pond area, it's basically grass and sod. You don't need to have some shrubs and things like that there. It's sad, but it's not going to be like St. Augustine grass that's going to die if you don't water it. I think we will try to put something drought tolerant and something that's going to be okay only getting the rainwater. Also, I want you to remember that we as the county, we are going to maintain that and we are going to make it look nice and clean.

Any questions on this? I just have one. The blue building that's existing that you're not removing, what's the use for it?

Yes. This building, there is a department, housing department.

Okay.

Yes. It's also a county building and people work there.

Correct.

There will be another building, but it will be removed.

Right. In this yellow one. Yes. Thanks for tearing down my dad's building.

Yeah, people are there right now anyway. So what we are trying to do just to make it better for people. If you have any questions, please, I'd love to answer them.

I move to approve the landscape ordinance for the property in question. I don't see anyone else anywhere.

I'll second. Any comments from the audience?

Correct.

And I second that. Anything from the audience? Kathy?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. There is no business from the audience and no city attorney's business, so Scott, you're up. Good evening, council. The only material change, I believe, to the project report is sent to a board in an email from Chief Hoagland earlier this week in reference to the foreclosures that Wheaton and Longhorn have been with. Thank you, Scott. Kathy, you're up.

Do you want to pay some bills?

So moved. Second.

Anybody have objections about paying bills? No?

Kathy?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Kathy, you're up again. CRA.

14B. I'm going to try to scan. We have three people who have submitted an application to serve out Mr. Waddell's term for the CRA. It will be to go out as an unexpired term, which is to September 30th, 2027. I'm going to read the names in alphabetical order. You only get one vote.

One yes vote.

Sir?

One yes vote.

One yes vote. Sorry. Yes, sir. Yes, yes

working c report authority at long last yes i can't believe you're still here yeah two members are here dedication it is way past both your bedtimes this term um the appointment will begin may 1st um

20, 30, so this is a four-year term. So we have two vacancies, and so I'll read the names. Again, you get one yes vote for each vacancy. The first name I'll read is Steven Brown, Bishop.

Pass.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass.

Pass.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Kogachatz? Pass. Lidell?

Pass.

Stewart?

Pass.

Pabry?

Pass.

The next name is Craig Johnson. Bishop?

Yes.

Kogachatz? Yes. Lidell?

Yes.

Stewart?

Yes.

Pabry? Yes. Okay, that's for vacancy number one.

Can I pass on that one? Sir? Can I pass on that one?

You have to be careful with that guy.

Pass.

Okay.

Pardon us.

Vacancy number two. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass.

Pass.

Pass. Pass. Pass.