Local Planning Agency - Regular Meeting

Thursday, February 6, 2025
Transcript
Video
Agenda

About this meeting

Government Body
Local Planning Agency
Meeting Type
Local Planning Agency
Location
Stuart, FL
Meeting Date
February 6, 2025

Transcript

73 sections

0:28 – 2:280

e e jff you ready we're ready this me to order roll call please chair larine here Vice chair Peterson here board member Warner here board member Brumfield here board member Strom here board member Bogel here thank you everyone let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all would someone like to make a motion to approve the agenda for this evening I'll make that motion all in favor any post fantastic approval of minutes from our last meeting would anyone like to make an approval for the minutes from our January 16th meeting so move second all in favor any opposed all right um any comments from the public on non-agenda related items do we have online

2:24 – 4:230

today Mary do we have online don't oh okay all right just want to make sure okay yes thank you this is on an agenda or non- aend this are you speaking on the agenda item or no non agenda okay fantastic all right James Christie you are up sir good evening good evening pleasure to be before you today I'll be real brief um myself and several residents in E Stewart uh we have some concerns and I think I've expressed some of that to you before and basically we submitted a plan to the City commissioners okay that plan talks about protections for the community for the residents current residents of East St um we sent the information in general and then we actually sent a plan that plan was just sent to you guys the lbaa board and it was also sent to the crb okay and then we asked for it to go to the c or a and we know that's a little redundant because the board members are the City commissioners East St is feels it's on the precipice of being disenfranchised by decisions being made by the City by outside investors by everybody and we feel we don't have the voice that we need to protect our community we want to be there we want to be in its stward and we want to be an e store and want to be able to do that without the threat of everything always coming down and decisions being made one decision that will take away the culture or make it hard for us to

4:20 – 6:190

live there financially or whatever so you guys got that plan I you look it over we're trying to work with the city and with the planning board was to come up with some kind of resolution um we feel that that area we should have a greater impact in making decisions than we do so that was all I had today thank you very much for your time okay and I would like to share that um we received this email from the city forwarded to us or your note forwarded to us at February 6th of this evening so I actually started to look at the front part um if you don't mind since I think it is important for what we're discussing tonight I would like to read kind of the summary statement that you it so I I'm going to read the summary statement that he sent since we haven't had a time to really look at it and I thank you for coming forward um this is the statement that went along with it there is a matter of profound urgency and importance the gentrification of East Stewart historic neighborhood with deep roots in the black African Community black American Community excuse me for years residents have faced systemic challenges from redlining to negative s Stig stigmatization and disparate treatment these injustices have caused many to be in a condition of less wealth and less ability to impact our own Community for our best interests many of the current encroachments are threatening to destroy our community gentrification is not just a change in demographics it is a continuation of the cycle of Oppression and displacement that have long affected black Americans as we witness the rapid transformation of East Stewart it becomes alarmingly clear that the cities in action raises concerns that Echo throughout our shared history we are confronted with the reality that without intervention we our Beloved Community may be irrevocably altered pushed aside and forgotten it is imperative that the city takes a stand a stand that safeguards the Heritage

6:17 – 8:170

dignity and future of East Stewart residents I propose creating a proactive area in East Stewart mirroring the mechanisms established for indigenous reservations where the rights of the community are prioritized in the development in major product should only proceed with the approval of a community elected and Community directed group the community should also be afforded certain protections based on the exclusive history of damage levied upon by the actions and actions of entities that were responsible to protect its residents these protective measures would Empower those who have long been marginalized and silenced it acknowledges the historical and ongoing struggles of black Americans advocating their right to protect their homes their culture and their way of life just as Wildlife vegetation and other groups are afforded special protection so too should the East Stewart community be shielded from external forces intent on disrupting their lives we ask for your commitment we ask for your understanding we ask that you listen to the voices of the people who have endured too long without recognition and support let us unite to ensure that East Stewart remains a vibrant resilient Community where residents have a say in their future please indicate if the city would be interested in providing representation to discuss the above proposal we have a preliminary plan in place for this urgent project and together we can establish a blueprint for justice that honors the past while fostering a hopeful and inclusive future and then you state the the project which I won't read that but I did think it was important since we just received this at 505 that we made sure that the voice of what was sent was heard as part of our meeting this evening so thank you for joining us thank you very much alrighty do we have any comments by the board member on non-agenda related items I have a comment yes ma'am um these are my thoughts my feelings um we are right now living in unprecedented times as we all can see and I just want to

8:12 – 10:100

say that um as we sit here representing the community and representing um voters um we should never let our theology or ideologies our philosophies outweigh our humanity and it starts with each and every one of us and we really have to take responsibility right now to do the right thing each and every one of us for our neighbors for those who service we just have to really Endeavor to every day that we get up put our Humanity first above everything else that we may be experiencing in in society right now thank you thank you very much um I would like to also make a comment it's somewhat on the action items but before we start on the action items because this is such a large piece of information um and honestly after having cancer I can't stay up till hours on end because I get too tired so what I would like to recommend is that we have a presentation in full so we understand this then we will deliver our comments get our question well have any public comments we will then deliver our board comments um and I would like those to be taken and noted for the city commission so that they can see the representation of what we feel is important as we go throughout this process is everyone okay with doing this instead of going through line item after line item as a large presentation and we provide the comment once the full thing has been presented thank you for organizing yeah I like that and and I think that exhibit a is a good template they probably going to use that to do okay

10:08 – 11:560

all right um now for the fun the action items zoning in progress Land Development code text amendments implementation but this is not quasi judicial correct corre all right ordinance number 2539 d202 an ordinance of the city Commission of the city of Stuart Florida amending and restating the city's Land Development code chapter 2 zoning District uses allowed density intensity chapter three special zoning codes chapter five resource protection related development standards and chapter six on-site and offsite development standards which were determined during the zoning in progress under Section 1. codification providing for an effective date and for other purposes um before we get started I do want to make sure that I reveal that Miss Marcel kemore who is here did present a presentation to me about her concerns with the issue I also would like to ask understand do we have an are your presentation going to include all documents and concerns that people have sent in regarding this because I did not see that in our presentation that was delivered earlier so from my understanding you have received letters from lawyers and different people concerning this item and so I want to make sure that we have visibility into everything before we provide our comments do we have everything today no then we need to see it table move to table what are we missing I search for every sing

12:19 – 14:160

well my concern for this is the understanding that this ZIP did not follow traditional process when being developed that traditionally this would have gone out out for public comment it would have hired an expert to review provide comment is that correct did this not follow the normal process Mike mortell city manager well so the procedures for adopting code historically have been if a if the community identifies a problem like for example in the 1980s the problem was that there was no businesses downtown and so it was vacant so they say oh my gosh we have a problem they get together and hold a charat or they get together and have workshops and then from the workshops they hire um a consultant that would come in and make recommendations as it relates to what needs to be done to change that problem and then that would be presented to the city commission or the boards as a proposal moving forward in this instance uh the city commission following the election raised the issue and said it voted that it belt strongly that the code had been too lenient and that it wanted to change the code and so it moved for a zoning in progress which public hearings were held to vote on the zoning in progress on I think September 9th or something like that or 13th and then following that hearing there were either two or three public workshops held and again like I said we received email and other public input and letters and public comment at all the workshops and then following that the city commission held another public hearing where they passed a resolution and went through each of the items that they had directed staff to change in the code today and they held public hearing again

14:13 – 16:130

at that as well and now they also went to the crb on Tuesday of this week which again the code requires it to go to the LPA but they went to the crb As a matter of public Outreach um and then it's before you today it is not drafted by the Treasure Coast Regional planning Council because the city commission specifically told staff they didn't want to hear from the Treasure Coast Regional planning Council and they didn't want to hire an urban planner because the philosophy of the of the commission was they wanted to get away from the mixed use and they wanted to get away from the shared parking and they wanted to get away from residential development in its entirety basic you know from a standpoint of the approvals and so what they did is during the zoning and progress hearings or workshops they literally went item by item by item through the code and directed staff to make the changes is that fundamentally how the city has done it in the past no it isn't in the past whether it was the 1980s the 1990s or even in 2003 City held a charet had all the people give their public input and then from the public input the Treasure Coast Regional planning Council took that information and did it two years ago the city adopted the East Coast or the East Stewart uh overlay Zone and the um Creek District overlay Zone hired Jessica from the Treasure Coast planning Council through the CRA had multiple public hearings multiple public input and then drafted a fairly extensive document and had the public hearings during which the public was allowed to comment on and and it went forward and was adopted in this case the commission was saying we've already heard from planners we've already heard from proposals to increase

16:10 – 18:090

density we want to do something to decrease the density or decrease the activity and development or decrease the mixing of uses or sharing of parking and as a result especially because of the timing of it when you do a zoning in progress you only have 180 days to do the entire thing because the normally zoning in progress is a single item like setback or a you know some issue that's doing it or parking and so then in that time frame you can address it very easily when you do a comprehensive overhaul of the code in 180 days it's very difficult um and I think when you hear the presentation today you're going to hear that there's stuff that the staff has put in the proposed code code that actually the commission originally had given direction to do and then has changed their position on it so it's somewhat um altered or changed the the real purpose for the LPA is not to go through every single letter that was received from every single individual in the city but really to get the feedback of a makeup of the community members and and of what your understanding of the community and what your belief is and what you believe should be transmitted forward to the city commission based upon your personal experiences as a resident of Stewart or participant in the process yes the um feedback from the community is probably the most important part and you're going to have the benefit Marcel is here of the letters that her attorneys wrote one of them has to do with setbacks one of those issues has is they in the proposed code it included a modification of set acts but at the last zoning in progress or the not the last zoning in progress Workshop but at the resolution hearing the city

18:06 – 20:060

commission reversed itself on that and changed its position and is not altering the setbacks so that particular letter won't really apply the other another letter I think um addresses the shared parking and they claim that it violates the comp plan well whether it violates the comp plan or not dep depends on what gets adopted um as of right now nothing's violating the comp plan because nothing has gotten adopted um but if in fact some of the things get adopted that the commission is moving forward on you'll hear from the city attorney as well as me on Monday night that there will be comp plan changes necessary to meet those standards that they're um requesting that the uh staff draft and adopt but didn't put together and and and quite frankly never have when the Costco project went before the LPA we didn't have an attachment of the 800 emails that we got in favor of it when the right line project came before the commission we didn't put together the 800 or a thousand emails that were in favor of it just because it was too much and it didn't it didn't really affect the substance of the issue that was before the board which really before you guys is number one you're from the community you know how the community feels you know what you want to see you you know what what you're looking for and it's really to give staff some feedback on what the LPA feels and individually as well because you'll be during the hearing you'll be commenting yourselves to us and a staff will hear that but at the end the board's going to vote to transmit something back to the city commission and what that is is yet to be seen because it'll be based upon the comments and uh the consensus of the LPA board but we're happy to share whatever

20:03 – 22:010

letters we have with you as it goes forward I think probably you'd be better off just hearing the presentation from um the development department and then public comment or whatever other comments you want and I'm sure the City attorney can chime in on some of the correspondents because I know he's been speaking to the attorney uh regarding the issue and one of the issues has to do with minimum lot size but what the commission had directed staff to do is said that every single lot in Steward as it existed on September 4th should be deemed to be a legal lot as it was on September 4th but that moving forward they want a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet meaning that if I own a 10,000 square foot lot I couldn't divide it into two lots because that would equal two 5,000 foot Lots so moving forward I wouldn't be able to do that lot split and do it if I own a 12,000 ft lot in theory if I could meet the other setbacks and the street Frontage or whatever it is it would still be legal for me to do it right now the comp plan says the minimum lot size is 4365 feet and so and that's based upon R3 zoning the commission is saying they want to revert back to the 6,000 it was in 2003 and essentially whether that violates the comp plan or not yes it would violate the comp plan to the extent that the comp plan says you can have a minimum lot size of 4,300 but it doesn't violate the comp plan because in the zoning they're saying you can't make zoning any smaller than 6,000 square feet that's not less than 4350 ft it's more than so they made

21:59 – 23:580

if the zoning allowed somebody to reduce a lot to 4,000 ft that would be violating the comp plan because the comp plan limits the reduction to 4350 ft but the neighborhood I live in the minimum lot size is 10,000 square feet so the 6,000 is across the board doesn't violate the comp plan it'd be like saying we don't want any buildings higher than three stories well if the comp plan only allows the maximum of four story building that doesn't mean they the city can't have height restrictions of 36 feet in neighborhoods it means they can't have anything over four stories because that would violate the comp plant but doing a zoning that's less than four stories doesn't necessarily violate the comp plant I'm not saying that that's happening right now and it might ultimately in certain circumstances create what's called a birt Harris claim because it diminishes somebody's value of their land but if it the question is does it violate the comp plan I think on a technical basis the answer is really no because the comp plan is showing the bottom threshold and if you're not violating that you're not going to 3,000 feet then you're not violating the comp plan so it's you know there's a lot of opinions and mine's probably wrong but that's what mine is so I just want to make sure that one other point so when they had like you said in the past it's been the Treasure Coast Regional planning Council from my understanding you're supposed to release an RFP for the planner so to speak to be able because the part of the plan from my understanding is to do the sanity check on the document to say are we following Florida Statutes are we doing what is standard in order to hire a consultant to do whatever it is you're going to do you normally identify that Vision up front so in this instance it there wasn't a vision that the board adopted and said to staff bring us back

23:57 – 25:560

a code that meets this Vision instead what the board said is we want to just go through the code item by item and pull it back and so that's the way this process went it didn't have a we'd like to see a community that was made up of 21 foot tall buildings or whatever and therefore we want to draw a code that says that it was more of we want to look at everything thing and pull it and pull it back and so yes there is there we did not hire a consultant because we couldn't give them a charge we couldn't say to them this is what they want because the consultant would have just been paid to then sit through the zip and said go what do you want to change on this page or on this page but the consultan couldn't have given a sanity check to say that isn't what normal plan or good planning is well so it's interesting because if you hire an urban planner and tell them to create a high density Urban environment they can create a high density Urban environment that's really good planning that might be contrary to what the residents want or if you hire a planner and say create a very rural low density environment they could do that too but that too might be contrary to what the community wants and as a result what we didn't get upfront from the commission was what they wanted the outcome to be other than they wanted the outcome to be that we want to go through the code and re everything back I should

25:52 – 27:520

mention another really significant portion of this puzzle is that the city of Stewart has less than 200 vacant Acres it has zero Acres of multif family it has Zer Acres of neighborhood special district it has about 20 acres of single family residential it has about 20 acres of downtown which is essentially mixed use and it has about 120 Acres of commercial and then some I think two acres of industrial and um less than 10 acres of institutional so if every single parcel in the city of Stewart was built at the maximum density that it is right now you'd be talking about 2,000 people maybe maybe probably less than that all right thank you for providing the clarification that's what I want to question for Mike go ahead why would a zip be necessary when the Commissioners could just not approve a project they don't like what and do the workshops in the mean time what was is something you have to ask them because I mean obviously the point of a the point of a zoning in progress is to prohibit applications from coming in that continue to to do whatever it is that being prohibitive our code already had a fairly restrictive parking and fairly it was designed by its very nature that most projects could not get approved without having some deviation so that they would have to get board approval what happened though is that the public perception became that the board kept approving everything but by its nature the code was designed for the board to approve everything rather than it being straight zoning it was just so that they could tweak it and make it more like

27:49 – 29:480

Steward if you want to say what that is whereas in the county and in other communities they have straight zoning where it doesn't go in front of the boards and it just gets a permit issued and gets built and as a result the public doesn't see the board approving everything so the perception on social media was well look at the board keeps approving everything but when the code was written and those that were there when it was presented it was intended for everything to get approved just for there to be a negotiation and to get some public benefit and and uh you know use an example of let's say somebody wanted to come in with a a four story hotel with 100 rooms in it well if they were in the CRA or in the downtown district and they had to have a conditional use hearing the intention isn't to deny the hotel it's to say hey how about if you build a three-story hotel we'll give you 120 rooms and make it an l-shape and we'll wave the setback over here so you can put this L branch on and add the other 20 rooms so your Spreadsheet will actually give you more room nights but the community be happier too because it'll be only three stories and therefore although you have more rooms it's less than four stories and so both sides are happy and then you get this compromise but of course it still has to get a waiver of some parking and a waiver of a setback and a waiver of some other stuff because of the l-shape of the hotel now added but what happened in social media was it became oh my God the City commissioners are just giving away everything because nobody understood that it was intended to to to bring stuff back Costco was another perfect example of it Costco was entitled by right to, 1500 apartments in 4 million square ft of commercial space they built a little under 200,000 Square ft of commercial space and 378 apartments and dedicated 16 acres to Upland preservation they built a $9 million Boulevard and put the highest

29:46 – 31:430

performing water treatment system that we've ever seen in for water treatment but what everybody heard was that the city commission waved 23 Acres of wetlands but the D had said there were no Wetlands on the site and so it's more of a public perception of what you hear and in this instance as it relates to the zoning and progress a commission doesn't have to do a zoning in progress to change a code for example on Monday night there's a the straw ordinance on the code that's not part of the zoning in progress at all and they're yet they're able to hear it and address it and do it without a zoning in progress this instance probably is going to have comp plan amendments and other changes that have to take place after the zoning progress expires on March 4th just because they won't be finished and the commission's instruction to staff was to get as much of it done as we can before March 4th because the Commissioners believe that on March 5th if it wasn't done that there would be a demand for developers to come in and build under under the old code now I have to tell you there might have been if the interest rates were still at 2 and a half% but at 6 and a half% there is not you know it's just not happening right now but that's not to say it's not going to happen and the instruction is still to to get it done okay so that's brings us where we are and then one last question I had for you so the document that we received on January 27th 2025 that is the final in the document that was advertised for the five day you know proper you know I think it's five days the notied that document is the exact same document that is in what is today where there are no changes uh no ma'am there's been changes in updates as does that violate the five day it doesn't at all because

31:40 – 33:380

the intention of the notice is to intend to provide notice of the subject matter of the entire code is at issue if on Monday night if the city commission decides to change something from a five- foot setback to a s foot setback or something of that nature that wouldn't violate it at all that's part of the hearing process so the revisions are part of the process and it's very likely that based upon your comments and feedback staff will make even further revisions before Monday's hearing because one of you might remind us and say well wait a second during the hearings didn't we talk about this that or the other thing and then all of a sudden we're like oh you're right and we're it'll get tweaked even further okay and again I think that you're going to find when although jod says that there's been changes there are changes but substantively there's no sweeping completely different than what you thought was coming it would be more like one of the changes was that it included that there was going to be 10- foot setbacks in all houses in the city that's now been changed and it goes back to the ones that had five feet setback are going to be allowed to have five foot setback so that change is now in there but in the document you received it was 10 feet okay and I just want to make make sure that anything that's changed from the documents that we receed to review I want to make sure that we get told as this presentation where it is different from the documents that we originally received I think that's fair and I think you'll be able to see it because of the red lining oh there was a lot of it had red lines so I just want to make sure that like the specific things that were different because I know all of us have spent you know the past few days really reviewing this in detail because as members of our and respective people of Community we know what an impact this could have so if there are changes that we were not able to review We want to make sure that

33:35 – 35:330

it is annotated so that we can provide the feedback with all full information okay thank you all right you may does anybody else have any other comments before she starts it for after all right sounds good you're up thank you uh my name is Jody cougler I'm the development director uh thank you for uh taking the time for this presentation tonight tonight I'm just going to go through um some of the changes that you see in your document are a lot of cleanup language like we we one of the requests was to change it from uh lots to parcel or lots of or platted Lots versus uh parcel record so we you'll see a lot of that changes throughout the different uh uh chapters so that was a cleanup and we did Define what a lot of record I mean a parcel record is so um um that's going to be in chapter 11 but we did provide you that document so the one of the first changes that the board requested was that we do away with the half units um that's in the uh plan unit de the urban plan unit developments so this is one of the changes that you see which which is the uh potential bonus allowable units so they feel like that was not a um thing they want to see in the future so that would that has been strike through and I apologize if I go too fast and or make you dizzy um I do apologize and some of this is just some cleanup language like this right here it's just it should be units so I just cleaned it up a little bit um again in table in table 3B um there was this also is the cleanup language for they didn't want any density bonus available for mixed use plan unit development so that has been strike through um again this is in table four from lot

35:31 – 37:300

to parcel so this can I'm sorry interrupt you do you have anywhere in this document I didn't see it where you're defining what a parcel is so Parcels in chapter 11 um I can if you want me to move to that real quickly I can just because you CH you're changing that for like its entirety from lot to parcel so I think it would be good sure to hear what you're using as a definition for parcel sure let me get that for you um I apologize so I'm just gonna move this over here so it's not like scrolling quickly just okay so this is in your definitions which is chapter 11 um prior to uh doing a strike through it used to say C lot but we actually added the rec uh what a parcel record a parcel record is a piece of land that has been recorded in public records and is defined by its boundaries and locations parcel of record is also known as lots of Records or tracks okay and I actually uh stole this definition from Martin County and from the property appr appraiser This Is How They identify it as well okay all right I just want to make sure since we're changing everything from lot to parcel that we understand what that definition is okay um so you'll see a lot of that clean up language um one of the uh

37:28 – 39:230

larger changes that we did make or the board requested us to do was to um reduce some of the density that's allowed in a mixed juice or multif family type development so for example uh Costco um if you had to do a floor area ratio any it's if you whatever floor area ratio say if you had a 1acre lot and you had 5,000 ft building you would divide that by 800 and it would come up to to six units that you were you would had to deduct from the one acre parcel that you would be allowed to have 15 units so you wouldn't be able to count the density in in commercial the same amount they're trying to break it up so you have to break up some of that density they're not changing the floor area ratio but they are changing the if you already allocated space over to the commercial side then you have to take away the number of units by 800 square ft equates to one unit to be removed Jody where did they come up with that number 800 square F feet that is uh something the board started out just kind of hey let's there's no data that supports why there was no data as to 900 was entitled to either but what they did is that was part of the subject matter and it was that had gone from 900 to 600t and they were trying to come up with what a fair unit is and so if you went to an apartment complex right now and said what's the medi size most new apartment

39:19 – 40:300

complexes a two two comes between 9 and a one bedom comes so you the8 reality buil div r

41:18 – 43:170

um I I have a question um when it kind of comes to that so for a long time those of us who have been on the board for a while we heard that the commission was really focused on a aable housing affordable housing doing these changes might change that kind of idea is this Commission because it is a very different makeup of commission is that no longer the priority that it once was because for a long time that's what we heard that and that's why I'm asking the question because I know that it was like of utmost importance for probably the first two years that I served on this board so I didn't know if the overall mindset of the commission which I think is important for us to understand as we go through this has changed from that mindset that it was in the past can I ask so are we going to go through each of these items and discuss them as we go or are you going to do your presentation and then we're going to have a say on each one and have public comment as well like what is the how are we voting on this what is the protocol here because I don't know I mean there's a lot going on and on video okay right so that's kind of what I'm wondering remember I can explain so I can quick though um City attorney Lee bagot for the record um chair Len you got a consensus from everybody that you wanted to go through the presentation and then have comments after that that's that's fine it's not yeah I thought you guys already had a consensus on that's what I thought all right fine go ahead okay so the the next change was um and and the manager did touch a little bit on this was in um talking about the parcel sizes and the only change that was made the board did uh recommend that they go back up to 6,000 squ ft um as you can see R2 and R3 would no longer be 5,000 square feet it would be up to 6,000 square feet for a

43:12 – 45:110

minimum lot size um and there is some language that we did add to talk about that um these changes um for existing Parcels with assigned parcel ID numbers at the effective date of this code honor before September 5th 2024 is deemed legal Parcels of record any newly created parcel records after September 5th 2024 shall have a minimum parcel size of 6,000 square fet this is a change from your information that was provided um when speaking with the city attorney he recommended that we added a little bit more um some of the sentences were not making sense so we went back and tried to make it look a little bit more so essentially um in R3 uh we do have a project that has 4,300 uh uh 96 is it 4,000 4,356 home lots there's 10 Lots um I think one of the concerns that they did have was um once these are built and they're being added on or anything like that in the future how would someone know that this was a essentially deemed uh legal law a record or legal partial record so that is one of the concerns and one of the things that we did receive from um uh the Mrs um Marcel in the audience so I will have her speak to that whenever we get done with the presentation um so this so one of the changes and we went back and listened to the um December 9th the 50% is not going to be one of the changes is going to stay at 65% so this will be changed where your maximum perious for commercial areas will be revert back to your 65% so that will be a change that will be

45:09 – 47:080

updated again a lot of them is same thing here um a lot of these are clean up from parcel to from lot to parcel so if you see some Reds it's just because I'm scrolling through again this is another thing um we no longer have a board of adjustments uh they all variants are we heared from the local planning agency so we did strike out this language to make it consistent um again on the supplemental area requirements but there still parting your setback requirements and your lot sizes uh that language again was expressed about that if you have um a parcel record shall contain less than 4,356 Square ft that existed honor before September 4th 2024 and it's in consistent about the date I do apologize it is the 4th so I will go back and change that and any newly created parcel record shall contain not less than 6,000 ft after September 4th 2024 uh again these are just some cleanup uh clean up language same thing most of your changes happen in Chapter 2 and in chapter six so you I do believe there was some in your packet there was has provided some language about the um detox center after going back we are holding off on that def on making any changes to that definition at this time so any language that you have in there as of right now it is we are not considering that as of today um again these are just some cleanup language about parcel records or parcel so and if I'm going too fast I apologize I don't mean to make you dizzy um I do believe that was all in chapter six those are all the changes that happened pretty much your lots of Records your parcel records the date to

47:06 – 49:050

make sure that they are legal conforming as of a certain date so in in the case of of the 10 lot subdivision um if they were destroyed or if they wanted to add on or if they they can still rebuild that property based off the setbacks that were approved at that time so so um I'm going to shift over to chapter three which is your urban districts why you doing that may to speak um I wanted to address a couple of things so there were uh several hearings public uh hearings where we went through this um there were three workshops and in multiple regular scheduled um commission meetings where this came up there were some instances where the board U voted and wanted us to do a particular change and then when we went back through numerous hours of the videos we found that then they retracted on some of them so she's mentioned that a couple of times and I don't know if it was caught like it went from the 65% back to 50% they retracted it at a subsequent hearing so okay U when we first drafted this we went based on our notes that were from but we didn't when we went back and looked at some of the other hearings they retracted it and voted against it so some of them they said hey we don't want to do that we changed our mind we'll just leave it the way it was when she said said 50% and 65% under the commercial uh that was an example and the setbacks will come up here in the near future and that was another one that they retracted and went back on so okay want to point that okay thank you so in your chapter three are your urban districts and then you're also your uh newly uh adopted form based codes which is your e St code in your uh Creek District that was adopted in 2023 again those were codes that were worked on for over two years with the Treasure Coast planning Regional Council and our CRA director um so there were some

49:02 – 50:580

changes in this code uh one uh the board doesn't feel like we should be honoring shared parking um at this point you should be if you have commercial property you need to park it at commercial or if you have residential you need to park it at the residential uh requirements um if you have that mixed use and you have to park them at each different type of uses uh so you'll see some of the language in here that's just some of the verbage in here that's been stried through it says shared parking um this is your Urban code not too many changes were happening your Urban code uh one of the concerns was in your East Stewart um with making the lot sizes at 6,000 square fet we wanted to make sure that that language was in there to protect the existing parcel of Records um that they can still build on those parcels or they can if the if the structure gets destroyed or they wanted to do the addition they can still add on to that that parcel um based off today's uh based off prior to the September 4th date so um you'll see some of those changes in here as well um I do apologize in Chapter 2 we did add some language about the adus which is the accessory dwelling units they want them to be on one meter for Water and Electric and Sewer um um they wanted the owner to live on site so either they can live in the primary or they can live in the Adu but they didn't want to see the it's it's single family residence with an accessory dwelling unit not to turn it into two dwelling units so you can rent the dwelling unit in the back and you can rent the dwelling unit in the front so the primary owner has to be living on site whether it's in the accessory dwell unit or again or primary so that was done in Chapter 2 I do apologize I

51:00 – 52:590

um let me just move this over here for a second just so don't make you uh crosy trying to move this so there was no parking changes in the exempt area which is in the downtown area which is a little the core of of the CRA um however uh there was some changes to the parking C calculations for um duplexes and for multifam uh for duplexes uh they've increased it by .5 so any duplexes instead of 1.5 parking per unit they're requiring two parking spaces and the same thing with dwelling units for in the uh res in the urban District um I think the other biggest change is when we get into the East Stewart um zoning District there's a district called grow and then a bmu which I'm just gonna move this down here let me see here for a second just move this over here one of the changes they requested us to do was to um have the uh do the single family homes with those districts to be permitted by right anything else would require a board action by the city commission um and I will show that to you in just one moment um and I do believe Lance you did bring this to my attention thank you um so here is the chart if you're in the East District area um these are the requirements if you have to go for a variance or any major development plan or zoning changes um instead of the um

52:57 – 54:550

uh zoning uh the Community Development Redevelopment board for a variance it would be heard underneath them it would be heard under the local planning agency in your packet I had it as the community redevelopment agency so uh thank you Lance for pointing that out to me um and then also we did do some clean up language here if you needed a zoning change or a future land use Amendment uh you were required to go to a pre-application the community redevelopment agency the local planning agency and then two other public hearings it just felt like that was a little bit extreme to go to all those boards um the crb can act as the local planning agency so we're just uh striking through these two check marks right here that you're not required to go to all those boards it's just and I didn't realize this was just E Stewart when I emailed you so I'm fine with that yes and I I I appreciate that um so some of the other changes this is just some cleanup language right here um when the form base code was adopted they they cited the wrong uh section for a conditional use so we cleaned up that language it's really should be 11.01 point11 not 10 so we did clean up that language um so this is where a lot of the changes happened um in these two districts in East Stewart the bmu and the grow District if you can see a lot of these were permitted by wri and the board felt that anything other than a single family residential should be approved by some type of board action through a resolution so it shows the the check mark crossed out and then a which represents on number four allowed through a city commission public

54:52 – 56:510

hearing process as marked with a by resolution so if you wanted to build any type of multifam or if you wanted to do a a daycare facility or accessory dwelling all those would have to be approved through the city commission and that kind of goes down the board some of them are conditionally used to was originally so we just it was very confusing to have the check mark and then conditional use so we're just going to say it's a conditional use because that's what it was um other than in chapter chapter three was just anything that said shared parking was strike through um you will have to park if you have commercial you have to park based off your commercial use within the parking table and if you have residential you'll have to park accordingly to your residential requirements and then chapter six is where um a lot of the other changes took place and your chapter five and four just some cleanup language with parcel versus lot versus parcel so chapter six is more your um if you're going to develop in the city of Stewart uh this is the chapter that you go to if you're not in any urban area or special Urban or Special Districts this applies to along us one and things like that so um we did make some changes here that was pretty much consistent that the board had asked one is the shared parking um you will no longer be able to do shared parking again you'll have to park it based off the type of use um the other the other changes were if you get down to the uh Park we did put in here stipulation about uh parking code so if you have an existing structure today or if you had a vacant lot um you could still utilize the

56:48 – 58:480

parking um the parking code will apply as of September 4th of of the of last year so we wanted to give it some language that basically I don't like to your word grandfathered but it's cons considered uh legal conforming so we did add some language in there as well um again this is the shared parking requirements that we're striking through um the board did ask us to look at um some parking Alternatives um so this is probably more applied downtown where if motorcycles are parking they can use two motorcycles for one space um the golf cart you can put two golf carts in one space so you wouldn't have to keep building all those parking spaces for those type of uses also um if you wanted to do a Transit uh pull off stop it would be just considered for four spaces um this is also part of shared parking so we had something in our code it says if you have a principal use within less than 500 ft that you can share uh you can use a parking offsite through a parking shared program and um again uh if you can't park it they they you won't be able to build it um Again part shared parking this all is striking through for shared parking the off street parking requirements has changed as well um your multif family is 1. five now two any type of one bedroom you're going to have to have two parking spaces per unit and multif family with two or more bedrooms you're going to have to have one 2.5 parking spaces and I think the other language that we

58:43 – 1:00:420

just modified was um EV Chargers so we wrote language probably about five years ago stating that you're required to put in EV Chargers the state has now preempted that local governments cannot mandatory EV Chargers so we did take out we did strike that language through just to make it consistent with the state statutes um let me just look at my notes real quick and I do believe that is the changes that we made based on what we heard and through listening of hours of of redundant meetings um again at the December at the uh meeting on Monday if there's any changes the board will request us to make at that time okay do we have comment from the public good evening Madam chair members of the LPA uh Marcel camblor for the record um property owner business owner my office is 47 West Oola Street here in Stuart Florida um you should have as the LPA three letters of objection from my attorneys one was submitted in December and didn't make uh I guess this meeting and two were submitted um this week just in case I will present another copy for the the record and the problem is that these amendments are um threatening my investments and threatening my reasonable development backed expectation my first letter objects the proposed lot size reduction in R3 there's there's talk about lot size reduction all over the code I'm not

1:00:40 – 1:02:390

talking about anything but R3 I would like Mike afterwards to clarify for me please where in the comp plan was this explanation about 4356 and therefore it's a minimum and I'm not violating the comp plan because I can't find it um but I legally platted 10 Lots in 2022 in R3 zoning where I was entitled to build 30 units to the acre and four stories and the city put out an option it was an incentive for people to self down Zone and instead of building a fourth story building with 30 units I built I decided to do 10 single family homes in small lots more in tune more in character with the community uh this proposal which has been changing thanks to all the letters I have been submitting and the the little few minutes I get to talk in front of uh the commission um is changing the lots to now a larger size not only am I the only person in all of our three one who has done this but this is doing a way with the only opportunity and the only program that the city ever put out to allow people to self down Zone to self reduce their density I thought we wanted less density not more so we're taking this away apparently my Pro my only project is a very big problem um so I know staff has done an attempt to put some language uh the way it has been written twice now because it was changed in this um version still does not protect my property rights so I urge you being that I'm the only one being that I don't really understand why this is being done to me in R3 if I could respectfully ask you to get the board to either eliminate this thing that affects

1:02:36 – 1:04:340

one person or use the language that is being proposed by my legal council which is very simple uh the second uh letter uh is regarding proposed parking changes increase in parking requirement for apartments where we're going to ask for Studios to have the same amount of parking as a single family home out in Palm City and a two-bedroom to have more parking than a house out in Palm City uh in my approved cpud these changes from what I am intending to do would take me from 45 parking spaces to 85 parking spaces um your um ordinance says that um you know that we need to meet Florida Statutes and we to meet the Cod this parking change by my professional analyses because I am a professional I do this for a living it um affects at least or is inconsistent at least with three comprehensive plan policies and they're in the letter that my Council has supported uh none of this parking has been vetted with any professional your ordinance says that you have that there are professionally acceptable materials that you and the board have reviewed I have done a public records request for that information and it turned back empty um so finally as stated I I would love to talk about all the other portions but I unfortunately have to only talk about what concerns me because I have three minutes but as stated in your ordinance it requires that Land Development regulations align with and implement the can I please finish I have two just one more paragraph okay one more paragraph um my analysis shows that the changes that are being proposed and by the way all the ones that were presented initially are not here and they're not just changes to setbacks um I found 27 inconsistencies with goals policies and objectives of the comprehensive plan and um I ask you

1:04:32 – 1:06:320

please transparency we can't come to a meeting and discover that F and density is changing and and and it's changing in all the puds and all these other things this is not transparent thank you thank you Mike can you address her concern about the comp plan and the 4,000 something 65 43 65 I think okay um probably a better question for the City attorney but seeing how but seeing how I said that I might as well right my mouth if you go to the comp plan prior to 20120 the minimum lot size in the city of Stewart was 6,000 F feet with the exception for cottage lots of 5,000 ft and in 20 the year amendments went through and because R3 which is a zoning standard is 10 units per acre the development director said 10 units per acre equates to 10 units or 10 houses but that really wasn't what R3 was designed for R3 was designed for tow houses apartments condos and that form of housing it wasn't intended to be single family resid residential so prior to 2020 4,300 ft Parcels were not allowed in the city of Stewart they had to be 5,000 square F feet and they had to have been created on or before December of 2010 so any lot created after December of 2010 that was less than 5,000 sare ft would have been deemed nonb buildable and not allowable however a comp plan change was adopted by the city

1:06:29 – 1:08:280

commission that made the minimum lot size 4,365 based upon the R3 10 units per acre and as a result if you owned an acre of land you could then if you met as Marcela did the 50 by 100 or whatever the dimensions were the 4,300 Ft plus you had 50 foot of Frontage you could Tech technically plat 10 single family lots which is exactly what Marcela did this the commission isn't isn't by any means targeting or trying to discourage uh Marcela project it's already been platted it's already underway the Commission in fact instructed us and as jod said the word grandfather but it's not actually grandfathering they instructed us to deem her par Els as valid Parcels that even if they get knocked down in a hurricane or even if they burn down to the ground they're not non-conforming that they can't be built back they are deemed all Parcels prior to September 4th that are 4365 feet or more are deemed valid and legal and can be built on in perpetuity and as a result the question that she asked was show me in the comp plan where it says that it's not a violation of the comp plan again if you came in for a permit for a single family home and in my neighborhood 36 feet tall is the height of the tallest house you can build our comp plan says you can't build a building over four stories now nothing in the comp plan says my 36 foot house violates or doesn't violate the comp plan however the zoning in my neighborhood limits the

1:08:27 – 1:10:220

height to 36 ft it doesn't violate the comp plan because it's less than the four stories in this case the comp plan says you can have no lot smaller than 4365 ft well what's it say what's the minimum lot size it says the minimum lot size is 4365 ft show me the poliy okay I'll sit down and show her if that's all it is that's easy I can show her the 4,365 Ft so am am I understanding correctly that your lots already have a parcel ID yeah so if they already have a partiel ID then this doesn't apply to them correct well the version that is printed that I got to read the version we're talking about hold on I'm sorry the version that the public received which is posted which is also the same one that is posted for commission essentially reads like every lot that was platted prior to 2024 is essentially non-conforming and the ones that are out of 2025 onwards or this onwards and the sentence is incomplete so you can imagine yes there has been discussion about um protecting me uh that language when I met with my attorney and um and the attorney here essentially I was told that we've taken care of that you're going to be a cottage lot what a cottage lot reduces my height I mean this is really confusing we're doing so much around something very simple we propose language that keeps us very clear with the set by it's like if I'm the only one and if they TR want to protect me why are we going around so many things over one my other question for you is this the only R she's saying she's the only one so is this really the only R3 lot that exists in the city of Stewart so she's not the only one she the only one with platted 4365 foot loot but she will be I know we are saying we don't like the term but she's going to be grandfather den and so

1:10:19 – 1:12:190

she's okay correct that's the intention okay grandfather Den is not a good term deemed legal all right well that's not the language that is posted on the only thing I had accessible which is the notice and which is the same notice for the commission so thank you for the clarification and so we can be assured that the language as it sits now is that those prior I haven't even read it I can't read from the from the chair to that wall my attorneys will see it I am like I said asking we proposed a very simple solution for that table where I am not going to be thrown into staff having to write a special policy for what my setbacks and Heights are going to be which is what their proposal requires it requires an additional policy they just need to leave me on that table and said if you were prior 4356 only applies for people before this you still have the same height and the same setback it's not that complicated so I would ask if we can please just leave it or create a section that clearly states what my setbacks are and not as I was told yesterday I become a cottage lot but maybe not and we don't know what your setbacks or Heights are going to be the rest of the lots I'm sorry for the people that are in that situation and have not hired counsel someone's going to have to deal with that so I just want to make sure that we are understanding that the intention now with the new language that has not been posted but has now been changed in the document like you're presenting to us this evening is that those that were ploted prior to I think it's September 6th Seth day zoning in progress fourth or fifth doesn't matter doesn't matter

1:12:16 – 1:14:130

progress was September okay prior to that yeah it's on the screen what okay they are now going to be deemed okay basically yes okay that is correct all right and I need my but they've removed me from the table so now I'm a conforming lot without any setbacks or height or I don't I don't belong anywhere so we proposed a very simple solution and I'm asking unfortunately you don't have it I have it here I've shared it with staff um you know is there a reason why they got removed from the table I don't know that there was a reason that she would have her own okay that's what I'm wondering too because if she's R3 and she's not the only R3 then anywhere that it says R3 that would be her correct I don't know what the issue that she's talking about is that table right there that changed from 4356 to 6,000 that's what she's saying removed her from the table but she goes to the table that was in place September 4th which had the 4356 I just want to make a point we changed it to help her M her attorneys called wrote letters emails so we changed the letter she's complaining that we changed it from the original but we changed it for her benefit so you see well I'm not going to argue with no well I have to because it's my livelihood and so the problem with removing the reference to 4,365 tied to my setbacks are five and 20 and 10 and then leaving me as a parcel smaller than the norm the code and as you interpreted in my meeting with our attorney the the code then naturally takes you into what is called a substandard cottage lot which has larger setbacks than what I have it's

1:14:10 – 1:16:090

also our three and it has one story less all I'm saying is figure out a way whichever one you prefer that makes it very clear that my setbacks remain what they are and my height remains three stories and if you want to write a new paragraph for it it Clarity and we just proposed a simple note below the table on lots that size prior to September 4th it's it's not designed to be the Marcel CER code right yeah there is marcela's concern sure that applies but in a more generic basis it's not just R3 it's not just R1 it's not just downtown east Stewart has lot that had no minimum lot size because the St has its own overlay Zone yeah it's meeting the minimum lot with minimum setbacks of whatever zoning you had and her zoning in the R3 was 5T perhaps in R1 is 10et so if we put Elric and said Marcel gets 5 foot zoning i' need a l Asters it says Mike mortell gets 10 foot zoning so could we could we to address this can we request that you have a meeting with Marcel and her attorneys okay to correct it and make sure that it says what she wants to say and protects her however it's fluid we had a crb meeting on Tuesday night we have this meeting tonight we have a meeting on Monday night with the city commission the is not going to be aded until the second reading of the ordinance on February 24th I'm hopeful that between now and then get everybody's com yeah

1:16:07 – 1:18:060

and that we're alling we're agree we're just figh over well that's silly forward us say we're do it end okay we to okay as long as we do we we just want to make sure we have the assurance that you will work to help resolve this issue the commission yes okay okay I think sounds good all right do we have any other public comment at this time and we're not taking anything from online now right no okay just wanted to make sure I understood that okay I know there is a lot to probably go through here who wants to start can we stick with that one real quick then just to clarify what what this change is going to do if this gets implemented because I know one of the concerns I believe is by with the reduced lot size you're asking for people in that zoning District to tear down existing residence and then subdivide and build two like I think that's one of the original concerns but at the same time in her example from a density standpoint on a new lot you're not really allowing more density you're just allowing more freedom of doing like individual houses instead of like town houses is that correct no I think they were always allowed to do that it's like it's just that she chose for her project instead of doing tow houses which was allowed she did single family I thought the the reduced lot size allowed her to have the freedom to do that yes but then by changing it back to 6,000 then you're you're pretty much saying all right you can only do town houses on that a lot so

1:18:03 – 1:20:020

you're now restricting you're allowing less freedom but you're not increasing without a doubt that's restricting R3 to multi family and townhouse because no one will in our three will ever be motivated again to divide a one acre parcel into 10 Lots because they'll really only get about if it's 6,000 square ft each seven Lots would be 42,000 Square fet so the maximum they could do is seven where they could build 10 tow houses right so yes your observation is correct it has a uh counterintuitive intent right yeah without a doubt just like the increase in the parking requirements for the multif Family Apartments we don't actually have any people that live at Mason or at Indigo that come in and say there's a shortage of parking so it's it's likely that a big developer will still build a multif family apartment he'll just build more asphalt to meet that parking requirement yet the parking downtown is still going to be tight because it's parking exempt so the increase in those parking requirements is not going to create parking in downtown Stewart in any means it's just going to create bigger parking lots at apartment developments but with parking it would have made a change to like the um parking uh the apartment across from the courthouse because that's uh 58 units on it didn't meet the parking already so the commission waved the parking so the code as it existed gave the commission the ability to deny the unit across the street from the courthouse in that in theory if that same commission were sitting here under the new code they would just wave five more parking spaces and it would then still be the same project with the same waiver it just would be a higher number of spaces waved because it's not in the comp plan it's in the code which is wable by three members of the board as long as it doesn't violate the

1:20:00 – 1:21:570

comp plan but in response to Lance's comment on the issue specifically as it relates to the intention or the freedom of what to use yes you're right the intention though of the commission was that what they were seeing and a perfect example of it was there's a big lot that had a big historic home on it over off a Palm City Road and a guy bought that big house house and it was a 100y old house and tore it down split it into two and sold the two lots off now the truth of it is in that case the lot was 25,000 square feet so the two lots that he sold off were 12,000 square feet each so wouldn't have applied there but as you go through East Stewart and you go through the Riverside Drive area and things like that there's lots of lots that are 12 you know 10,000 ft that if you had a 5,000 foot minimum could be split in half but those are R1 and r1a so their minimum lot size was 7500 square feet already anyway what happened in the Commission in the workshops one of the Commissioners the first Workshop said he thought it should be 6,500 Square F feet then at the last Workshop they came back and said it should be 6,000 square feet the correlation to again this we have a built environment so the inventory of how many houses we have now versus what's out there isn't what the commission was worried about because as you talked about they what they're really worried about is people knocking down houses and then splitting them into two and making them you know multiple houses which is why the city's code prior to the prior to 2020 said the 5,000 foot Lots were IGN

1:21:54 – 1:23:530

knowledged as cottage Lots if they existed prior to December of 2007 I believe off the top of my head and as a result all the other Lots really would have had to meet whatever standard uh was the zoning that they had the R3 when when the ear amendments went through and the city acknowledged the lot sizes of this chart was adopted too the fourth , 356 is the minimum lot size in an R3 the Commission in reacting to it really it it as I'm looking at the chart it probably was also reacting to the R2 as well and probably being 6,000 across the board um rather than the 4,000 and the 5,000 but they believed that that was going to prevent people from doing lot splits in those areas um I honestly I don't have an opinion on I don't know if it will prevent it or not prevent it I didn't do a number of calculations to determine how many Lots were 12,000 Square F feet or more versus less than 12,000 square feet because if all the lots that were going to be split were 12,000 they're still going to be split because they would meet the burden of it but you're right the answer is in R3 a person intending on developing 10 units will not do the um 10 single family 50 foot wide Lots because it'll be prohibitive is there any way to put language in that um basically requires any parcel that has an existing residence on it to require board approval to subdivide well yeah minimum LW size I mean so without encouraging the

1:23:49 – 1:25:490

multif family right so it's or the tow houses it's you can't you if you say your minimum lot size is pick the highest one 10,000 square F feet if I live in an r1a neighborhood and I have 400 feet on acola you know of Frontage and I have a 40,000 square foot lot I can by law divide that into four 100 foot wide 10,000 square foot square 10,000 foot Parcels that would meet the code and I'm exercising my uh property rights and I'm complying with the code and doing it so when you think about these things the 6,000 square feet is one ingredient in the stew in addition to that 6,000 square feet you also have five or 10 foot setbacks depending on what neighborhood you're in in addition to that you have a 50 foot wide minimum lot Frontage so my house where I live is just shy of half of an acre so it's about 21,000 square feet but my lot Frontage is just barely at about 100 feet wide so even if I wanted to split my lot into two lots I wouldn't have 100 feet of Frontage on the street so even though I could create two 10,000 foot Lots one of them wouldn't have 100 feet of Frontage on the street and therefore wouldn't be a legal lot and wouldn't be subject to a lot split because I couldn't meet that other ingredient in the stew and when we do these exercises a lot of times we we are doing this in a vacuum like one piece at a time rather than literally looking and saying okay well what's necessary to build on that it's not just the lot size but it's and

1:25:47 – 1:27:450

as as Marcela correctly pointed out she's entitled to do a 36 foot high house if it was a cottage lot I believe it's 25t high so that's a significant reduction in that second or even third floor that somebody might build in a house and that all depends on what what where your Zone and what it is and the rest of the code being applied to that issue this singular issue that they're applying is moving forward the city commission does not want any lot blits that create Lots smaller than 6,000 ft so if they were sitting here they would say correct we don't want the person to build 10 houses on that parcel we want them to only build seven and they've also increased the parking because it is their intention that by right this this person isn't going to be able to do 10 tow houses either because they won't be able to park it and won't be able to meet the setbacks and won't be able to meet all the stuff so the only way to to achieve that would to be come before the commission for a vote and to ask this the commission for a for a conditional use or a PUD approval subjecting them to deviating from the code whether it's parking setback height Landscaping permeability whatever it might be in that ingredient can you also just real quick clarify the affordable housing thing just because we heard it for so long that that was going to be such a priority is this city commission that's not as much a priority because of the changes that will then I mean I would think make it so that it's less affordable and it's just I'm just curious what the current state and mindset of the commission is I would recommend asking each one of them okay

1:27:43 – 1:29:410

that's fine I was just wondering there the the truth of it is is that in 200 14 15 16 17 18 and 19 every time we had a sit commission meeting it was half filled with people telling the city commission that they need more housing and we need to approve more housing and why don't we have enough housing and then housing got approved and then everybody said yeah but you're building the housing in Stewart and they all got angry and then all the meetings from 20 21 22 and 23 were why did you build housing in Stewart and I you know that's how it went I mean it just is there's no way to change that okay I just wanted to to make sure if I understood just because we had heard it for so long okay did you have any other questions and comments you're good y want to go down the line you have oh no you have no on the whole document I'm making sure um not just this CH back in that's okay all right and so I'll chime in if I need to all right yes ma'am so I I have um I have a question or a couple of questions because my concern is how is all of this these changes affecting the residence of Stuart East Stewart and have we gathered a consensus of the people I know in 2004 there was a shet that was done and as I Was preparing and going through this tons of so much information I just stopped and said to myself you know what I know E Stewart and I know there has not been any development done so I don't need to read all this report to see what was done cuz for 30 years I've lived here with all the charettes and with all the meetings and with all of what the People Want it just seemed to me like when I walk through E Stewart my son is 30 years old I've lived in Stuart for 30

1:29:37 – 1:31:360

over 30 years nothing has really change and before we have the Commissioners changing all of this we need to gather again with the mass of the people and this is why the people of East Stewart are usually um you know they're not trusting what is happening because they don't know who have their best interest at heart and when you know it's always like well we didn't do that we are here now so let's look from here forward but we have heard this story for so long that it's never going to be anybody who's responsible because that happened 30 years ago and I wasn't here well I mean as I was looking through the documentation and look through the pictures it broke my heart to see how many people that I see in those pictures that I know are now dead they're like Moses they only view the promised land from afar and they have not seen any changes in East Stewart I sent my son to Gert Walden because I wanted to condition him to say you know your dad's family is from East Stewart and I live here I want you to go to school there and see what the neighborhood is like see what the community is like because I'm hoping that he would grow up and be a changer and he looks me in the eye and say Mommy what am I going to come back to steuart for what is in Stuart for me he now lives in Jacksonville that's where he went to school so I am saying that we still have to consider what works for the mass the people of East Stewart so there need to be another presentation I'm glad Mr Christ is here standing up for his community because a lot of times the meeting goes yes we have the public notification the documentation is confusing to me who consider myself an educated person it's hard for me to read all of that stuff and understand what's happening there I got to the point where I said you know I don't need to read all this I just need to look again see if I can visually see what has changed and nothing has

1:31:33 – 1:33:250

changed I would agree I'm very concerned with the direct impact on the East Stewart Community which is a very unique Community with a long-standing Heritage and I think of all these documents that is one of my greatest concern areas specifically because it's as if you're changing everything that just in Stewart all of a sudden has to be approved by a full commission and that's very concerning to me and so there are some document there are some language also that is for instance uh there was a daycare run from the home but there's a Florida State statue that said local governments may not enact or enforce any ordinance regulation or policy to take an action to license or otherwise regulate a homebased business so how could we like that doesn't make sense to me can you explain that because a homebased bus can be something operated by a computer but just because flid says I can't bring that yeah operated by somebody who has an infant as well or young child as well less than five other kids at the dayare probably isn't to be noticed or have any significant impact in the community or on the infastructure of theun opens out of Ando every morning at 7:30 and 40 children picked up every afternoon at 3:30 that's going to have a negative impact on the infrastructure the traffic the rest of the neighbors and the community

1:33:46 – 1:35:460

is I don't know if that's good bad or Indi because I know that I've been ibody theyed us toes they in these St and now the residents of the Stewart are saying whoa I don't like people calling want to buy my house I don't like people showing an interest in my neighborhood so the commission is trying to provide they not those are those AR accepted as you know that exist exist I thec familyid wide excuse me city manager we go to the mic thank you it could have resulted in having two single family homes on it but once this gets adopted dividing that in half would be would result in lots that are about 5,000 square feet each which won't happen so that one lot will stay as one lot but if it stays as one lot in order to make a the best use of the land

1:35:42 – 1:37:400

you're not going to build a, 1300 square foot Bungalow instead because it's such a big lot you're going to build a 3500t house which all of a sudden is going to be 9 00,000 to purchase which is probably not going to reconcile with what the vision is for the folks that are currently there but again I I don't know that that's going to happen or not happen but the purpose was to try and secure and maintain the single family feeling and then over kind of toward Martin Luther King Boulevard and Lake Street to continue with a uh mixed use or business um environment but this was intended at least by the commission to by their claims to maintain the stability of the single family neighborhood so when since there is such a big area that does affect East Stewart was there meetings held with the residents of that Community BEC and that is problematic to me exactly is the fact that that meeting did not occur since that specific area is being so influenced the the meetings there were meetings held at City Hall and anybody was obviously welcome to attend them the timing of it was such that I mean you in the 90-day periods there was no possible way to organize and and schedule additional workshops um with them that is that I would like to go on record is extremely troubling to me that since this impacts their community so much and it's very singled out that we would not have had a more of an effort to really understand their community and that issue I believe was raised by commissioner Clark as well but the the consensus of the commission was to not hold the workshops and to move

1:37:37 – 1:39:320

forward okay I will go on record as saying I disagree with that decision do you have other comments um you know uh about a year and a half ago I was walking through the East T Community one morning and I just started looking and I'm like there is no other place in Florida that I see that they have every single House have a little window unit they don't have Central AC do you know how much people in East Stewart pay for those tiny little houses how much they paying for electricity probably three four times what I pay for three times bigger house we don't understand how much oppression the people of East Stewart are under you know we can sit up here on this Di and talk but the reality is when when when we go through East Steward and just look at the it's the first time I noticed I'm like why is it that these houses don't have Central AC and then I've talked to people that I know and they said oh my my bill is $300 I'm like for what so the people of e with all we sit around here and talk about if we're not talking about something that could improve their Community like every everybody gets Central AC improve the people there we're going to put these restrictive coding on people that is just going to create more problems for them because I can't even understand these code I can't even understand all this stuff anyway and these meetings are called or presented and the people of e don't even hear about it until something affects them and if every move they have to make they have to come to City Hall that's even more pressure and more restriction if we truly care about e it's it's a hard it's a hard case but we

1:39:30 – 1:41:280

have to listen to the people and we need to put forth some if we really think that we're we're going to help start by helping let the people there feel the help it's been 20 years 21 years since that shet was held and like I said before nothing has changed I think my I obviously concur with Mike it's a pendulum um and it was a reaction from the community oh there's too many multif family in the county in the city so we have to do something this is what they chose to do I don't agree with going through this process to get it done regardless we are we are we are where we are now I don't like the increase in the parking ratios in the shared parking I think more asphalt is what nobody wants and if you're going to try to control density and units by more parking I think that's a pretty poor way to go through planning and I don't like the uh change in the floor area ratio because I don't really think there's has been there's been some thought behind it but I don't think there's been enough thought behind it so I think if we're going to make parking changes floor area ra ratio changes I think more needs to happen before the commission just signs off on a 800 number and and doesn't know how that affects everything in the end and I also think this in reality isn't going to affect that many people in our city we're almost built out so we're playing a game of showing the public we care about all these changes and we're really not doing a lot in in essence when it when it comes down to it that's all I got in the same area uh Mike you mentioned based on the existing land

1:41:23 – 1:43:220

there could be 2,000 plus units is it built on the existence bacon property what I said was remaining in the city of Stewart is about 200 Acres 120 of those Acres have a future land use of commercial which is a maximum of 10 units per acre so that'd be about 1,200 units right and then the remaining 80 AC acres is broken up of office mixed use or office residential single family residential and as a result you don't get 10 units per acre or even close to that you get one house per 6,000 square foot parcel it's not that all these little things are chopped up into individual Acres they're chopped up into lots and plats so I estimated that there could be roughly 2,000 people that would result in the entire development if all of it got developed at its maximum density now well a lot of the a lot of the parcels could be somebody's side yard that's fenced in and never gets built well what I'm kind of leading up to is would you or can somebody make an estimate if all these changes were approved what that new number would be instead of 2,000 it would be right around 2,000 yeah there is nothing the there is nothing really the only thing that's changing it and it's ironically I don't know what the effect is but we're changing the ability like we're not we're not reducing density we're not changing like R3 is still 10 units per acre so it's not changing the number of

1:43:19 – 1:45:190

units when I increase the parking and I say you used to be one and a half spaces per unit and now it's two or two and a half whatever the number ends up being you still can build the same number of units if you're if you have enough land to build the parking but I could make an argument that it's not actually causing uh heat island and it's not actually causing us to do more pavement what we're really doing is incentivizing these dyes to finally justify decking the parking so if they needed to build enough parking that they didn't have it and they had to build 20 spaces onto a second floor so now they've gotten to the point that well we're going to have to build a two-story parking deck where they're not going to have 180 on the ground and then 20 on a second floor what they're really going to do is chop that 200 into maybe a three-story taring Deck with 303 35 35 and 35 and now if that were to happen you somebody might like the not like the three story parking deck but the truth is it's two stories with parking on the roof and it's only taking up 30 parking spaces because they're stacked instead of 200 sparking spaces that would be on Surface now is that going to happen probably not but I could make the argument but is it going to reduce the number of units that Mr giant developer makes with Deep Pockets no if he's intending on building 300 units he's just going to build more parking and build 300 units so it's not going to change the ultimate out output of units that are built it's just going to change the cost to the guy building them I was trying to get it does this satisfy the vision that the Commissioners might have in trying to do all this it just running through a big

1:45:16 – 1:47:150

complication I I think it I mean you'd have to ask them I mean they've instructed us to move forward on it because believe that they feel that it meets the needs that they see that it meets and you know I I'm here shooting from the hip because I don't go out and talk to people as a City Commissioner every day and get the feedback from anybody so I'm kind of guessing at what they hear or do you know so I'd really recommend you to speak to them individually as it relates to these particular issues as to the why is uh not being that familiar with it because I haven't been building for a long time but is there any incentive for someone to build quote affordable housing and I guess that could vary how you define it close to the places the people might be employed in order that their cars would not be transporting during the work hours they'd be sitting at home technically um no because they're if anything it's kind of the you could make an argument there's a disincentive because they're going to remove any potential for mixed use which would put the uses together or in the same location um but again it doesn't mean that they're not going to happen it means that they're going to be required to come before the board in order to get those types of approvals as far as where I live and neighbors where I'm living the only thing I ever hear of is traffic is somebody going to do anything about traffic so let me tell you something about traffic real quick we are now in what's known as the Port St Lucy urbanized area when grew up it wasn't that because Port St Lucy didn't really exist in 1974 we had 300 residents in Port St Lucy however they're projecting in between the year 2050 and 2060 Martin County will build out from 170,000 to 200,000 people and the Port St Lucy urbanized

1:47:11 – 1:49:110

area we will build out from 522,000 to 950,000 people so we're going to add another 400,000 people to our surrounding neighborhood while we add 25 to 30,000 to Martin County those 400,000 people to get to the beach are going to take East Ocean Boulevard or Jensen Beach Boulevard because they're not going to drive to Fort Pierce because that's really far out of the way they're going to they're on the southern end of St Lucy County and the Northern end of Palm Beach County so it's Bridge roads East Ocean and Jensen Beach Boulevard is how they're going to get there so if you think for a second that you're going to see an alleviation in traffic the truth of is right now that since 1974 the city of of Stewart has grown at a rate of 130 people a year since 2001 the city of Stewart's grown at a rate of 166 people per year yet 58,000 people a day go over the Roosevelt bridge in 1974 the city of Stewart was 12,000 people in Martin County was just about 48,000 which made us 25% of the population which meant the city got 25% of the gas tax 25% of the sales tax well when Martin County Grew From $48,000 100,000 the city of Stewart should have gone from 12 to 24 and then when Martin County went from 100 to 170 the city should have gone from 24 to 35 or 40 to keep up with the same ratios but it didn't the city was the slowest growing community in the county other than Jupiter Island it grew at no rate at all it Martin County grew at about 1% the city grew at less than half% per year so the traffic you feel and see and hear is not coming from within the city it's coming through the city it's coming from Palm City in 1990 Palm City had 2,300 residents it's now got more than 27,000 residents in 1990 the city of Stewart

1:49:09 – 1:51:070

had 14,000 residents and you know we've now grown to 18,500 so we've added 4,000 in in the 34 years but Hound Jensen Beach and palm City have taken Martin County from the 60 to 70,000 range to the 170,000 range and taking Port St Lucy from 300 to 247,000 people the traffic's not Steward and if you know I hear every day about oh my God have you been out on caner Highway at five o'clock well no you know why because I live in Stewart I don't need to drive out on caner Highway at 5:00 cuz I'm not driving home to the house I live in the sprawl lands I live here and I don't drive in that so I don't see it but those people that are driving in it don't live here they're driving in the sprawl because they're living in one of the places that were built in an area that created traffic it's a simple as that course one of the reasons they're out of town is because of cost of housing they had to go out of town I don't I don't I don't think steuart's median housing cost has ever been above or even close to 75% of the median housing cost in Palm City Stuart's median housing cost is about a third of what Palm City Medan housing cost L maybe Port St lcy true but not not you know not down Cove Road and not down caner highway and not off slno road and not in North Jensen and not in Palm City those houses cost five times as much as steuart houses because they still consider themselves Steward they call themselves Steward anyway so that's thank you um I I have a question for I think it was page 70 and maybe this is the thing because I don't sometimes I don't hear very well that you said is it now going to be included where it was talking about treatment facilities and inpatient the number that

1:51:04 – 1:53:030

was inpatient treatment is that is that still included I uh not at this time is what it is not included at this time okay so that got taken out all right I just wanted to qualify clarify that um also I was a little confused by the accessory dwelling unit and when you say must be owner occupied so does that mean they could not rent the bill like they can't just rent the accessory unit or are you saying like because that language and then I was confused because I know in my neighborhood we have several people that the accessory dwelling units are elderly parents child children adult children with special needs so I was just a little concerned with the way that the language currently reads and I do believe uh yes thanks chair uh we will be uh modifying that Lang which to state that either the primary can be used by the owner or the accessory can be used by the owner so you can rent out the other unit or you can but it still has to be on one meter so okay and is this in part I'm wondering to try to curve the outbreak of kind of a orb andb units throughout the city I don't don't believe that was the intent I think the intent is to not make two dwelling units off of one one sneaking in multi family on a single family lot have somebody live in the thing but it's to discourage the guy from Miami to buy up all the Lots up here and rent the front yard backal and inome neighborhoods okay thank you for that clarification yeah the single meter was an attempt to help that as well but it's also hurting the person that lives in their house you know is looking to rent that out to be able to get some additional income and then they don't you know they don't have control over

1:53:00 – 1:55:000

their renter is keeping their AC at 60 degrees every day they can't charge them for that so like you or I in our house taxes go up everything goes up we want to be able to still live there to be able to rent out the Adu it makes it more difficult with forcing it on a Shar meter okay all right so my question is how do do we need to votee on something are you taking our comments back how are we supposed to address the finality of this meeting chair if I may address that if you could formulate a vote to make any recommendations to the city commission that you feel necessary uh either express some of the concerns um or if you like to make some recommendations that you see some language changed okay um I will start I would like to make a recommendation that the section on East Stewart is handled in a separate fashion and that a meeting is set up in the community to gain feedback from its residents I do believe if you're going to make a motion you may have to pass the gavel okay pass the gavel okay there you go and you don't need to repeat that I do have that okay sounds like a plan okay um so do we have a second I'll second just the record clearly State your motion I move okay say it again okay and and if someone wants to Second it they can second it and then you have a vote okay so I make a motion that we pass forward to the city commission the comment that the East Stewart section of this should be taken into to consideration and kind of separated out at this point until they

1:54:57 – 1:56:570

have an opportunity to meet and gain feedback from its residents would anybody else like to add anything because do we need to make can we make more than one motion about this I guess is my question um well first off there's a motion um and you're no longer the chair okay uh we now have chair Peterson uh okay who's control of the meeting but you would make a motion um and if someone wants to second that before someone seconds that you want to amend it you can amend it if someone does second it and you want to amend it um they would the person or would have to SEC who second it would have to be agreed to the amendment okay so um I would get a motion in a second and then you can discuss it okay would anybody like to second the motion I'll second okay I would like to amend um I I would like the commission to at least review the floor area ratio number they came up with and provide a a better justification and I am not in favor of the shared parking or the increase in parking ratios and this is just as it we're just talking the East Stewart Provisions at this point can we do multiple this is a motion just for the East Stewart I believe yeah can we do multiple motions and address the other item this is a this is a motion just for Stewart okay I retract that a minut I'm going to need a little help on my part too I don't blame this is just an E Stewart motion as far as I understand the motion for each one please I would appreciate that so do we have do you have the first motion that I made I do have your motion um I'll repeat it so that we can see if we're on the same page um make a motion that we fast forward to the city commission the comments that the Eastward section of this be taken into consideration as a separate section

1:56:54 – 1:58:510

question on that would that in any way if the commission did do that would that in any way affect the timing that they're trying to accomplish it aside well the zoning in progress will uh it ends on March 4th so they're they're trying to complete everything by then well that's why I asked the question you know if they treat this separately so if they wanted to extract the E Stewart stuff um which that that appears to be the most important part of what they're doing so I you know if they extract it then it it'll it's it's not potential it'll be beyond the March 4th deadline so just so I'm clear there have been how many zip meetings and how many commission meetings and how many and there's been a crb a commission meeting the LPA meeting and then there'll be two more because there's going to be a first and second of the zip so there have been multiple opportunities for this to publicly be heard by both East Stewart and not East Stewart um there was the initial meeting um on initiating the uh zoning of progress we had three subsequent and that was at a regular commission meeting we had three subsequent workshops which were during the day um earlier in the day and and there were lots of people here there were people from East Stewart there were people from all over the community and I would say at the beginning we had a much Fuller House of uh Community involvement as we went along we had separate times where we would accept something from the zoning in progress initially it was zoning in progress for everything except for single family and government buildings if I recall and then as we went along they kept taking certain things out of the zoning in progress um and so the the freeze on new development applications got smaller and they I think towards the end they accepted all

1:58:49 – 2:00:490

commercial activities that did not involve residential components so um there was a lot of people here upset about the you know the zoning and progress being applied to commercial application so just so you guys are clear once they initiated the zoning in progress you weren't allowed to put in a brand new development application the stuff that had already been filed can continue to move forward but anything new unless it was accepted went along they accepted more and more so um it seemed like that the crowd got smaller and smaller because it affected less people that makes sense and then we had the three workshops and then we had a follow-up regular commission meeting where we did a resolution where we outlined everything uh all the issues that they had touched to get a resolution yes we want to move forward with this we want to move forward with that so as I mentioned earlier during the workshop they might have said hey we want to um increase the setbacks from 5 feet to 10 feet and that was said um and that was in the original draft but when we went back to a subsequent meeting someone brought it up up came up again and they retracted it so and that was one of the concerns that Marcela camper had in her initial u letter with her attorney and um we've corrected that and resolved that so because we went back and listened to a bunch of the tapes and and they they voted on to just ex leave it as is so they're not even touching so when you have public notice of these meetings so I know that like if there's going to be a project that's going to come before us there's a sign that's put out so everybody kind of sees it do so because some people particularly those who may online H and online correct but for those who may be in a lower income community that may not have regular access to certain things I know that that visual sign can help drive people to see okay this is happening so you

2:00:47 – 2:02:460

don't have to do that with this type of thing so like even though there's a lot covered with East Stewart you don't have to put basically a more visual sign letting them know that this is happening right I think you're you're referring to someone who's bringing a development project particular but like I'm just curious is there I see online but is there any I guess more visual particularly for people that are in that local community to see that something's coming that's what I'm just asking I'm unaware of them posting a sign in East Stewart something to that effect for or zoning change because I since it impacts their community so much that's why I just I know there were a lot of meetings but other than the online was there a way to kind of notice the people there no sometimes in development applications the people that live around that development they have mail outs but that was oh yeah that's what and I guess that's my point is that was is online the only mechanism they would have known to do these meetings if I can answer that yes uh so according to our requirements any LDC changes uh they're required to put a notice in the paper which we did for the LPA we did and that's the only notice what what paper though is hard copy anymore is there one that like people get regularly because I feel like that's somewhat of an Antiquated idea because so many are digital but statute requires that no but I guess most people just don't get the paper anymore so like for instance if it was the hometown news that gets delivered to all of our mailboxes that's a different story but if it was the steart news where you have to go to a shop and buy it then that's different didn't we uh hear in the beginning that gentleman from East Stewart said a plan has been submitted that is what came in today at 50:05 well what I'm trying to get to is obviously

2:02:44 – 2:04:430

that's accessible to the Commissioners and I should be looking at over and seeing what to do with it that's valid and that is a a plan that was made up for members of the community okay well I think that's an excellent point thank you sir you look like you have something to say you know when you talk about this ZIP meeting and all these meetings even these Commissioners keep going back and changing their own whatever they're trying to do so how can the community even keep up with what's happening I concur with Kelly that before we make these r rules and changes that affects people's lives and they will not know until something happened and they have to rebuild and that's when they're going to know so we need to get the information to the people where we know they got it in a another chared another meeting locally and at that point you know then the owners is off of us but the opportunity needs to be presented clearly can I amend my motion yes you the second you can do an amendment but then the person who second it would have to agree to amend to seconding the amended okay um I would like to amend that based on what Mr BS just pointed out which I think is a very valid statement and based on what was presented to us earlier that I asked the city commission for the E Stewart portion to either hold a meeting or take into consideration and discuss the plan that has been presented that was emailed today at 505 um for the E Stewart Community do I have a second second and if there's any discussion now would be the time you could take public comment and then um vote any comments so the only thing I

2:04:41 – 2:06:400

want to say is that this deadline of March 4th or whatever the people's the people's um ability to decide is more important than keeping the commissioner's deadline what's the big rush so zoning in progress um only allows 90 days uh technically actually I think it says three months but so we have a zoning in progress ordinance and it says you can initiate it and it can go for three months um and then you can extend it for good cause for another three months so when Mr mortell mentioned yesterday earlier six months or 180 days that's what he was referring that's the maximum amount of time you can do for a zoning in progress the reason why that is the case because as I mentioned to you before they put a freeze on new development applications to put a freeze on it for more than that is a burden is what the law says so you can't do it for five years otherwise there would be some commissions out there that just do a zoning progress for five years and shut down all the developments so they have a Time deadline and that's the deadline so if we don't meet it by that deadline then new applications can start up be filed if we don't finish it by that time and and and we you can't freeze that issue except for up to six months basically at maximum do we have public comment sorry can I give you the paper and this is about East Stewart the motion that's on the yes about East Stewart I appreciate the motion I attended it's about East Stewart and what was just commented about um you mentioned how many meetings had happened um I attended every one of the zoning meetings um during the day where it was repeatedly stated by commissioner Collins that we did not need to bog down the process with public comment where in

2:06:37 – 2:08:370

the first meeting we had to beg to have three minutes um none of these things that we are seeing here today about East Stewart were presented in any of those three meetings or in the commission meeting where there was an ordinance said to move forward uh so thank you this gives the community an opportunity to have a voice they would have never known this was coming I saw it for the first time posted last week um because I had a special interest either otherwise I wouldn't have looked but thank you so have we received any letters from members of the East Stewart Community because it's sounds like some were more there was more attendance at some of the earlier zip meetings have we had any emails concerns about any of this from the community or any feedback uh Vice chair I have not received any letters other than Miss marcela's I'm not I don't have Mr Christie's uh email okay but we did receive one today yeah that you sent yes I think there might have been some earlier emails uh um about the zoning in progress there were a lot of developers but I guess about East Stewart I'm trying to stick to the motion at hand um I I I want to say um duet price had emailed and his was about East Stewart right Mr mortell yeah so I know he emailed a couple times and the times that he emailed were to the commissioner's email um the general Commissioners so they all got so they sent the email and I guess I guess I have a hard time because I'm hearing that okay we said this then and then it changed but that's the point of this process correct that the Commissioners would meet they would make suggestions it would go before the CRA come before the LPA they would have these zip

2:08:34 – 2:10:330

meetings and we would hope that with feedback from the community and letters and attorneys and whatever that they would go okay that doesn't make sense let's make these changes and those will continue to happen until these after they hear from us so I don't know I I'm I'm not sure maybe I'm just not understanding like I I I think that's the point of this is that it should change as it's going on um that it's it's not a static thing they didn't just make a decision on day one you know by edict and then vote on it that same day and it's done I D you only get minut do I get D too so sorry I didn't think I'd talk that much today uh am I like am I understanding the process correct because it does sound like this is a fluid until it's enacted into that that is the point of these changes I think that's a fair assessment it's a zoning in progress so they did it in progress initially it was for 90 days and then they extended it for another 90 days um and and and it it was fluid I I agree there was input it was fluid this week when uh Marcel and her attorney contact that assum we're still changing it it is not final until um technically to adopt an or after right technically you have two readings so two readings equals two hearings two public hearings with the commission and we've had multiple hearings before we even get we've had it with the crb and with y'all tonight um technically the city commission at the second hearing could say we want to continue it for another hearing we want to make more changes so until they finally vote on these issues um it's it's not final until then and then 30 days after that so and just as of record they don't actually have to take our recommendations but that's why we exist to give them what we hear is the voice

2:10:30 – 2:12:280

of the community correct you are an Advisory Board to elaborate on that so I followed this whole process watched every zip meeting and I get the intent I have the same concern the concern is bright lines coming in that it's just going to happen so fast east Stewart's just going to get overwhelmed with Developers coming in it's going to change before anyone even blinks an eye and I have that same concern but coming through and make these changes and is drastic as they are the concern is that you're now tying the hands of the people that live there now and then they can't do their projects they can't do something that allows them to still afford to live there and then you're just asking the developers to come in so it almost backfires on you how do you make the changes now if you can't like you know what I mean like if you if you want to protect the people who live there but then by giving some leeway to them then they could turn around and sell their so now their one lot house is really a two Lot H you know a two lot so they can make more money and it's going to increase the chances of them selling to a developer who comes you know what I mean like I think it's a double-edged sword and they're the way they put it in there correctly if I Wrong Jody where they're they saying like this can be allowed but it has to be approved this can be allowed but it has to be approved is their way of trying to protect the people of East Stewart where're essentially saying like you can still do everything but it it needs approval in attempt to try to prevent the outside developer from just buying everyone's property and throwing something up is there is there a reason why now it's changed to full commission approval instead of some of the administrative approval that was in the past because I think no matter what it always has to have an approval right depending on what it is I mean there are there are in the code there are certain things that the development director has the author to approve without a public hearing but as Mr mortell said it the way the code has

2:12:26 – 2:14:240

been written over the last decade or so was to encourage having a public meeting where the the commission voted unfortunately there was just like everything else there was a side effect where they were getting blamed for everything yeah and and even though they voted to approve it in a lot of cases in a lot of instances they had to there there was no reason not to yeah if that makes sense um but it still had to come before the board and I I think as he mentioned you know when so we talked a lot about straight zoning and you've heard the term PUD and some of you might know what PUD is but basically that's like a custom zoning so um we allow puds here and and by a developer coming forward with a PUD they get to do custom but that also the commission gets to get involved and ask for extra things that they wouldn't normally get so um and and that's he gave Mr mortell gave an example of the Costco project which is a PUD so so um you know anytime you can bring something before the board they they can ask for concessions and get stuff that wouldn't necessarily be entitled to to encourage the developer to do that um and then they give something back that makes sense so that wouldn't happen if everything was straight Zone you know so far as the motion can I call the question uh yes and then then you could vote and if Mr sh I think he has more motions he would like to do but uh after that we can go okay so are we ready for a vote will you reread the motion please well I are yeah I mean the motion was made to pass comments onto the commission that East Stewart be handled separately until they meet and gain feedback from the residents and then it was amended to State based on Mr Bull's statement ask the city for East steuart

2:14:21 – 2:16:200

to take the plan emailed today at :5 and act on it or or no to take it under consideration but if they can't hold the public that they would take the email planned as under consideration does that sound correct that sounds correct and then we had a second by um uh Mr vogle do you agree with that board member strong yes I'd like to make a make a motion for the wa no we're voting we're vo on the first one yes yes you yes v no you're just jumping the gun tonight yes was that a yes okay okay board member Bromfield yes board member BS yes Vice chair Peterson no chair Loren yes and board member vocal yes okay I guess I'll take this back don't really like it okay is there another motion that we'd like to present yes I would make a motion for the commission to reconsider increasing the parking ratios and the uh removal of no shared parking and reconsider the floor area ratio deduction reduction so the no shared oh sorry go ahead sorry does anybody want to make a second and then we'll open to comment can we just clarify um reconsider increasing parking ratios no show ratios and what

2:16:17 – 2:18:160

was the third no no Shar the no shared parking currently they're eliminating no shared parking so reconsider that and then the third one was a floor area ratio is the motion just what you want them to do yeah rather than just reconsider yeah okay I would request that they do not change the existing parking ratios do not eliminate the no shared parking and I don't know what I would recommend for the floor area ratio because I don't know the science behind their analysis I don't know how I recommend further analysis further analysis on the FL a ratio I'll second okay is there a discussion comment I guess you know talking like uh Mr mortell said before I mean I think the example that I remember the first thing that came to my I'm been in Martin County for a long time but have been in the city of Stewart for six years um and one of the first things that came to my attention with this parking was that uh apartment building or that's going to be built across from the courthouse and I think that this is again the commission's intent though I don't speak for them obviously is that we allowed one and a half you know units you know one and a half parking per units and then also waved some of it that they were going to use street parking anybody parked down by the courthouse like where are we sharing parking like there is no parking to share it it doesn't exist and so I think that if we don't require some of these Parcels to keep some of the parking on their lot I understand there can be waivers there were waivers there that the commission at that point said no we're going to

2:18:14 – 2:20:120

we're going to wave your requirement I think he said maybe it was five parking spaces and now maybe you'd have to wave 10 parking spaces but I think it would get harder with public sentiment so you do have to start somewhere so I do think you have to start requiring some of the parking to stay on the property because in certain areas now there's some areas that they could wave because there is plenty of parking and there's street parking and it's not being used but there are other areas like across from the courthouse where the commission really could have used stricter guidelines and then you know maybe not have had legal maybe you know preempt legal challenges or challenges from developers saying well that's not fair you're not you know we we should get this waiver so that's kind of my thinking on the parking is you do have to we can't share what's not there okay does anybody else have comment okay can we call a vote please board member Bogle yes board member strm yes board member bramfield yes Vice chair Peterson no board member BS yes chair Loren yes I believe that's everyone does there anyone okay do we have anyone else who would like to make a motion I have one question do we need to make a formal motion regarding because the language as it sits doesn't talk about the grandfather thing that we were talking about earlier do we need to make that as part of a formal motion or will that already be taken care of I I think that's already been discussed it's going to be it's going to be taken care of okay I just didn't know

2:20:10 – 2:20:550

if we're try resolve it the best we can and it's probably going to be a in a progress in motion you know as time goes on so okay okay we still have multiple meetings to go for it so okay all right I just wanted to make sure okay so do we have any further discussion or motions that want to be made on this topic okay do we have any other staff discussions that need to be stated tonight uh no ma'am okay so I think checking my thing I think we're good call this me no what oh perfect I forgot that part do I have a second yes all in favor I all all right there we go

This transcript was automatically generated from the official public meeting video and is presented unedited. It reflects remarks made on the public record by elected officials, staff, and public commenters. Transcript accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.