Planning Board - Regular Meeting

All right, we're going to go ahead and start. So I'll call to order the meeting of the planning board of June 2nd. Everyone please stand for the pledge to the flag. All right, let's do a quick roll call starting to my left.

All right, I think we have a quorum.

All right, so first order. Anything administrative? I don't think so, right? No, I don't have anything at this time.

When do we have elections for? I can look to see, but I think we did it in July of last year. OK. So I'll check it. So I'll put it on the agenda.

OK, great. Thanks. You're welcome. All right. So just for everyone in the audience that's interested, we're going to cover item one, because I think it's the only item that remains. Items two, three, and four have been deferred

Pardon me, Mr. Chair. It's items one through three are the ones that are being deferred.

Got it.

And those are deferred to a date certain of July 14, right?

Which is our next regular meeting. Correct. Yes. OK. So so much for summer break. OK. So first three items are out. And we will go now to item number four. Marcus?

Yes, item number four was PB-2026-015, the ordinance of the Mayor and City Commission of the City of South Miami, Florida, amending Article 4 of the regulations, Article 5, procedures and applications, Article 12, downtown-soming district regulations, and the land development code to reorganize and amend notice requirements for public hearings, providing for corrections, severability, conflicts, and an effective date. So periodically, the city commission finds it necessary to amend the LDC in order to update regulations and procedures to implement planning goals and objectives. To accomplish this, the city is proposing an amendment to the LDC, those articles that I mentioned, which are Article 4, Article 5, and Article 12, to modify the city's public notice requirements when filing a public hearing application with the city. So currently, noticing requirements found in those sections require that all public hearing applications satisfy the following noticing requirements. The city has to mail a copy of the public hearing notice and location map to all property owners within a 500-foot radius of the subject property. We have to post that sign on the subject property identifying the nature of the pending application, time of scheduled hearing, and telephone number for further information. And we have to publish a legal notice with the scheduled hearing date, location of the property, and the nature of the request. However, this is required under section 166.0 for one of the Florida statutes. That makes that requirement have to be satisfied at least 10 days prior to a public hearing application being heard by either the planning board or the city commission. These requirements apply to both of those bodies. In practice, the city has found that meeting that requirement has placed a significant impact on staff resources that can be better utilized in application review and agenda preparation. Additionally, the expense of publishing a notice in a newspaper of general circulation is costly and requires notice be provided to the publisher well in advance of the publishing deadline provided under the Florida statutes. To address something of this nature, the Florida legislature enacted amendments to the Florida statutes, one of them being that they allowed for publishing a notice on a website I believe Miami-Dade County has started using for other municipalities and the county themselves to publish their notices. PURSUANT TO THIS CHANGE, THE CITY IS PROPOSING TO REQUIRE THAT THE MAIL AND PUBLIC NOTICE REQUIREMENT BE MET BY THE APPLICANT SEEKING LAND DEVELOPMENT APPROVAL FROM THE CITY. THE CITY WILL CONTINUE TO PUBLISH THE NOTICE AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE SO BEFORE. We're asking to be allowed for publishing notice in a manner that's permitted by law, which will increase efficiency, decrease costs, and enable visibility to populations who actually favor websites versus printed paper. Therefore, staff is recommending approval of this item before it's in the commission for further review. Thank you.

OK. Any public comment out there? I don't know if we have anybody on the line. We have a few people on the line. If anybody wants to speak on this one, please raise your hand virtually. And if you would wish to comment here in the room, please stand up and come up front to the podium and we'll swear you in. All right, I don't see anyone in the public, so we'll close it to public comments. Questions or comments from the planning board? Well, Marcus, I have a couple things here. Is how are we going to inspect that the applicants actually do what we require?

One of the things we could do is we would require them to provide photographic evidence of the property being posted. Also, the post office provides certifications that we can require to show that the mail-out was performed.

And we'll have to have a process so that you look at that in time to know whether we can actually hold these meetings.

Yes. OK. And then my other question, which is probably- Just so you know, the 10 days, that's the state law. 10 days are still required, so we would have to do it before that 10 days and make sure they satisfy the condition. We'll also require an affidavit, Mr. Chair.

Okay. And we can make it sort of spot-digging so that the applicants who aren't always as professional as some groups know exactly what they have to do.

Yeah, we'll walk them through.

And while I think it's interesting or a good idea that we have it, Available online for people to look at for those that are more inclined to look there than paper. I'm at least just concerned about Putting in the paper where people are going to find it from a practical standpoint And as we all know South Miami has a bunch of people who live here lived here for 20 30 40 years They're still reading the paper And so I would love to be able to say that consistently, if there's something going on, it gets advertised in this, this, and this. Neighbors, buy, something like that. Is there any way to do that?

We can still do that. Prior to, I guess, a year or so ago, we were using the Daily Business Review as well as the Miami Herald. And we were using the Daily Business Review to meet the 10-day requirement. And we were still publishing in the neighbor section of the Herald. David Business Review no longer publishes a paper. So that's why we result to the Herald full time. And the deadlines to meet the neighbors section are very difficult to meet with their advertising requirements. So a lot of the times the paper that our notices end up going in the regular paper, which is more costly, significantly more costly than it would have been the neighbors. But if we were to, say, rely on the website for the 10-day notice that the Miami County has and then still publish in the paper, we could get it into the neighbor section, just like how we were doing before, which would allow people to see it from the paper as well as on that website. That's something that we can definitely look at if you wish.

I would just love to be able to say to my neighbors, to our neighbors, that if there's something going on that involves their neighborhood, they're going to get notice if they're close enough. And if they're not close enough, they're going to see it always by the neighbors two weeks before. Or in whatever section of the paper we can sort of agree we're going to get it published. They need to know where to look to. Yeah.

We could increase the level of... Right now, we have it as U.S. mail if you're within the 500 feet. We could increase that to registered or certified, get a higher level of...

I think you'd have to if you're going to have receipts that you sent in.

Yeah.

Because I go by also the mailing I got yesterday for the public hearing on Tuesday. Yes. Uh, the first official notice I received on it. Which would certainly, I don't think is within that 10 days since, you know, 8 at best. And so I want to make sure that people are getting notes. They don't feel like, you know, the big concern in the community is you're doing this and we don't know about it. And that should never be the case. We should be able to say it was in neighbors last week. That was the easiest, frankly. But if we can say it's in the neighbors or it's in the front section of the Herald and this website, but it'll take some time to educate them on the website, right? Right. Those that aren't inclined to look for it.

So maybe like a phase-out period for the newspaper?

Maybe or just, yeah, just making sure there's a phase-in period for relying on the web.

Got it. Like a time where there's two, where there's both notices. Exactly. Okay. So a phase-in period?

Yeah.

Number one, and a heightened level of mail, registered or certified.

So this would be beyond the legal requirement. This would be sort of from a practical standpoint. So no one's going to wake up Monday morning and say, gosh, I read the paper yesterday. I never saw anything about it. And the Sunday Herald is about the only part of the Herald I think you can rely on them looking at. That's just my opinion. I don't want people to feel like we're doing any of this stuff without them having a chance to know it's there and show up if they want to. Other questions and comments?

I would agree.

I would just add that how does this compare to what's being done in other municipalities? And I don't know if it's a phase in or phase out period, but I don't know that I want to promote one certain publication to be the one that people should be buying so that they can get notice. I like the idea of it being available in electronic form where people can go check. And learning to do that, but I agree it needs a phasing again where we call it phase interface out. But you know it definitely needs a phasing.

Yeah. So you asked the other municipalities. Many municipalities have converted to the website that was authorized by Florida law, maybe 2 years ago. So the county set up the website, and it's a county website, and you can go for any notice in most cities there. And they've had a lot of success with that because they can post it a lot later in the process, and it's a lot cheaper. We just have to get that word out. Correct.

That's my point. Is that website passive, or can you set it up to send you alerts based on your address?

I think it's passive. I think you have to go check it. Yeah, you have to go look.

So that actually leads to another question, which is, Marcus, our ability to inspect what they've done in terms of noticing residents about what's going to go on in their immediate area, we have an ability to monitor how well they do that?

Well, we would still require them to put the notice up. If someone has questions, they would still if they drive past property, they would see the sign, the hearing sign.

But I mean, in terms of, how do we inspect their direct mailing to all neighbors within 1,000 feet or whatever the rule is?

They have to give us an affidavit to the main label. A lot of the times, even in the public hearing package that was deferred, we require them to provide us an affidavit attesting to the validity of the labels. And our code requires it to be within 500 feet. We also require them to give us a location map showing that radius. So we rely on that affidavit to make sure that they're truthful and accurate.

OK. Is that 500 feet as the crow flies? Danny's going to want to know this. Yes. The crow flies, or is it linear down the street? That's the crow flies. Crow flies, got it. Any other questions or comments? If not, do we have a motion with Tony with the modifications?

With those two modifications, yeah.

I would motion for approval with those conditions.

I'll second.

All right. All those in favor? Aye.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. All right. Public comments. Any new business? No, I have none. Minutes of April 14th and May 12th are in the package, I believe. Yes, both of them are in the package.

I move we approve minutes of April 14th, 2026.

Second. Questions or concerns? If not, all those in favor? Yes. Any opposed? All right. The minutes of May 12th.

I move we approve the minutes of May 12th, 2026.

Second. We have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Yes. All right, future meeting date, July 14th. And so that becomes important because we think what was here today is coming back, modified. So just out of curiosity, do most people feel like they're going to be in town for the 14th? Any known conflicts? I'll save some time. If you have known conflicts, let Marcus know if you would in the next few days if you think that's going to present a problem so we can try to deal with it and figure out if we have any quorum issues. Does that seem fair?

Yeah. If you want to set a special meeting, you can. Yeah. In place of that one. That one's in the way.

It's going to be like dodging bullets there. So the 14th works. That's probably right. It works today. All right. With that, meeting adjourned. Thanks, everybody.

Bye.

Bye. Thank you.