Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the meeting to order. Can I have a roll call please? I am here.

Mr. Hale?

I am here.

Ms. Scherberg? Berg. Here. Mr. McKeon.

Here.

Ms. Fresca. Here. Mr. Jasper.

Here.

And Mr. Ferlagi will be absent.

Thank you. We have a set of minutes. Do I have a motion?

Mr. Chair.

Yes, sir.

I move to accept the minutes as presented for the 03/03/2026 regular meeting. Will second that.

Henry Jerry is a second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. All those opposed the same. The ayes have it. They've been approved. Any audience participation today?

No, not for general.

Somehow I suspected that. Public hearings. Up is Text Amendment, Petition No. Twenty six-eight a. M. Decision Criteria. The staff is Nicole Trembley. This is a legislative hearing, and I do have a memorandum to read. This is to certify that the public hearing for this petition was appropriately advertised on 02/28/2026, as required by the City of Venice Land Development Code. Proof of publication is on file in the Landing and Zoning Office. And we have that. And with that, I will open the public hearing. And you confirm speaker cards. And Nicole, you have the floor.

Thank you. For the record, Nicole Tremblay, senior planner for the City of Venice. First, I'd like to say welcome on behalf of the planning department to Ms. Fresca. Thank you. I'm especially excited to have another Amherst grad on the board. Oh. But anyway, we're very glad to have you. So today we are looking at the decision criteria which as you all know are kind of some of the most important parts of the code for you when you're looking at petitions. You have to use these to make your decisions and if you were to deny something you need to have a decision criteria to point to.

So with the help of the city attorney, we have gone through most of the quasi judicial petitions and kind of tried to make the decision criteria a little bit clearer, more connected to the code, more defensible when you need to deny something based on one of these criteria. Hopefully you've all had a chance to review the changes. They're not really asking anything new of the applicant as far as they don't have to provide any new studies or new information that they didn't before but we're trying to make the wording more consistent. For example, one of the larger changes would be we reference the actual wildlife and habitat protection assessment. So that's something they already do, it just wasn't explicit in the decision criteria.

There's another one about storm water that is kind of new here, whether it meets the city and swift muds requirements for storm water management. So these are things that you're already reviewing for but they give you something concrete in the criteria to point to when need to approve or deny something. If you'd like I can go through them in more detail but I know you've had time to review them so it might be easier if you just ask any questions that you have.

Anyone? Yes Jerry?

Okay. Yeah. I'm I gotta have a little guidance on one seven four two a two, which says that whether the zoning map amendment would create a drainage or flooding problem versus one nine four, which says whether the proposed development meets the city and swift muds requirements for storm water management. So in one case, I mean, I'll say okay, yes, five, it meets the storm water, but then that pretty well limits me up to as far as the one seven four two saying there's a drainage problem.

So I think it's important to think about the type of petition here. So 174 is for zoning map amendments. So at that point, SwiftMUD wouldn't have specific requirements that they have to meet based on their zoning, but 1.9 is site and development plan. So when they come with that they will have had to prove to the engineering department and to SWIFMUD that they're gonna meet specific storm water requirements. So 1.74 is a little more general because it is just the zoning stage and there's no specific measurement we can do at that point.

So you wouldn't be applying both to the same petition?

Right, no, they'd be one is for rezone, one is for site plan.

Thank you. Also, if I may, under 174, there's two item six.

Oh, sorry about that. We will fix that before it goes to council. Thank you. I know, you're good at that Mr.

Jasper. Anyone else? No, we're good?

No? Okay.

Do you want to just give a little simple rundown for the public?

Yeah, yeah of course.

I think that would be advisable.

So 174 is as we said the zoning map amendment. So we've added drainage or flooding problem. Some of these you'll notice are just kind of to make the wording parallel so instead of saying consistency with the comprehensive plan, we're saying whether the amendment is consistent with. So there's a lot of strike through and underline about that that doesn't actually change the criteria, just the phrasing. So whether it's consistent with a comp plan is still there.

Whether it conflicts with planned or public, I'm sorry existing or planned public improvements. And then these were kind of removed as being a little too wordy I think. So we've added this number six, the real number whether ingress and egress to the amendment and internal circulation would adversely affect traffic flow or safety or control or would create types of traffic deemed incompatible. So that is, it was up here in 5A impact on the traffic characteristics but it wasn't very specific and traffic is one of the most important things that you all kind of approve or deny based on. So this gives you a little bit more specifics about what is it about the traffic that is compliant or not compliant or that you approve or deny.

The next couple are just wording. Like I said we got more specific about what the environmental report is called and what it needs to do which is provide for protection methods if there's anything significant that needs to be protected on the property. And then 10 was removed as just being too general. 1.83 has to do with conditional use. So some of these, again satisfactory provision and arrangement is too general, there's really no way for y'all to say what is a satisfactory provision very easily.

So these were just reworded really. Proposed development is compatible instead of saying general compatibility. 194 are the site and development plan criteria. And so these kind of remove some extra excess wording, includes LDR as part of the compliance regulations, whether it achieves compatibility with Section four but we also added 1.2, point C, point eight which is the ones that used to be policy 8.2 in the comp plan, that list of eight things that you all look at for compatibility. We kind of combined some of this stuff down here, five through eight, into the layout section where it makes a little more sense, whether the layout provides for access, safety and traffic circulation rather than having that be two separate criteria.

Let's see and then we added the city and swift muds requirements for storm water management and then this one's kind of your more general whether the layout design and appearance adversely affects the health, safety and welfare. So that's kind of a catch all but it's something that you all can make an argument for that this would affect the health safety and welfare so we wanted to keep that in. 1.1 preliminary plats, let's see some of these again are just wording adding section 1.2.C8 for compatibility and then adding one for plan developments whether the recreation and open space are compliant with the binding master plan. That was in there for all preliminary plots but not all preliminary plots have those requirements so we just made that more specific to when it becomes relevant which is with a planned development. And the rest are just grammar.

1.12 is for height exceptions and these are kind of all the same changes, adding the compatibility, adding the LDR to the compliance review and changing the wording just so that it's more grammatically correct and easy to read. And then we've added again this health safety and welfare instead of the you know general catch all that some of them have just any other items, this one is, it's general but it's enough that if you have an argument for the health, safety and welfare of the neighborhood you can point to this criteria. And that's really all we've got.

Okay.

All right.

Any other questions for Nicole? No, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any audience participation signed up for this?

Yes, we do. Jim Collins and he has five minutes.

Thank you. Mr. Wilson and congratulations on your ascendancy to the big chair.

Well, it's not official yet.

Okay. Ms. Fresco welcome to you. Jim Collins for the Boone Law Firm Planner. Can I have the overhead?

I'm just going to move it around so I don't mess up the zooming. I've color coded some of my issues here just to help organize my thoughts. And first I want to say, I don't think there's anything major here but there are a few things I wanted to call your attention. And so first let me acknowledge that for 1.74A, it acknowledges that these criteria are as applicable and in some instances they are not applicable. I would suggest that for the ones that I've highlighted in yellow, which are regarding drainage and flooding and regarding ingress and egress for a zoning map amendment other than a planned development, those are never applicable.

And I would suggest that you add to those criteria the words for planned zoning. So that there is no confusion that those things are not applicable to a straight rezoning. With respect to the item I have highlighted in pink, nothing, no real concern with that recommended revision. I would just point out that as you progress through the document, you haven't changed it in the other sections where it still refers to all applicable elements of the comprehensive plan. I think I understand the reason for the change and I think it was because we used to have elements in our comprehensive plan and now we have intents and strategies.

But I think this was a, the way it was written with small e elements just means part of, not an element of the comprehensive plan. So not sure that change is necessary, but if you want to make the change, you should at least be consistent throughout the document. Next. Similar situation for the item I have highlighted in blue and this has to do with compatibility and in 1.83 talks about compatible with adjacent properties and other property in the district. And then in every other instance as you go through the different application types, it refers to achieves compatibility consistent with Section four and Section two 1.2C8 of this LDR.

I think that language is good, the addition, but I think it ought to be used in 1.83 as well rather than the old language which refers to properties and other property in the district which frankly I don't know what other property in the district actually means. Next item I have is bottom of 1.94 where it regards whether the proposed development meets the city and swift mud requirements. It's at the very bottom of the page. Okay. So the intent of this requirement is that a swift mud permit needs to be in place, then I think that's contrary to state law.

And so I don't know how anybody could consider swift mud requirements when a permit is not required to be in place at the time of these applications. Mr. Wilson, since we're all here and since it's a short agenda, may I

have another minute? Please continue.

Last one, this is in 1.10.16 where it says whether the general site arrangements, amenities, convenience and appearance are adequate. I have no idea what that means and I don't think any of you do either. And further, if you read the memo about why we're doing this, I think this is exactly contrary to what the proposed purpose of this amendment is. This is not clear and it doesn't refer to any code. So I don't think it's necessary at all.

Those And are my comments. Let me just say also, this sort of snuck up on us and generally we would have reached out to staff and provided our comments ahead of time. So no criticism of them, we just hadn't had a chance to talk about it with them and share our thoughts, so I'm sharing with them directly today.

We do appreciate your comments.

All right, well I will say I agree with all of those. I think they're all very reasonable. Thank Mr. Collins for bringing them up. He works with the code and comp plan almost as much as we do. So I think those are all pretty reasonable. I was kind of laughing at the our adequate thing because we all talked about we really need a better word for this and no one could come up with one. I'm still not sure what we can do with that word but I agree it's a little too vague and the purpose is to be as specific as we can. But all his other changes I think we could reasonably make. We worked very closely with the city attorney on this so I'm not going to necessarily speak for her.

Hopefully you know we'll find out if we can all agree on that but I think that they're reasonable for us.

I think what you as a planning commission can do today we have time obviously before it goes to City Council so if you want to just approve it and then we will as staff take a look and see if there's any revisions we can suggest when it's brought to City Council to

Can we approve with the stipulation that the items that were discussed are reviewed by the Planning Commission before it goes to council or something to that effect?

If you want to see it again, yes.

No, we don't have to see it.

Okay. I would just say that you just what I'm telling you is staff will take a look at it and see if as appropriate if there is adjustments we can make prior to it being brought to the City Council.

So we will just do it as it is and you will review.

And we will make some Thank you.

All right. I am good with that. All right. So with that, I'll, close the public hearing. And do I hear a motion?

Mr. Jasper?

Based on review of let's see. Based on review of the applicable materials, the staff report and testimony provided during the public hearing, the planning commission sitting as a local planning agency finds this petition consistent with a comprehensive plan in compliance with the Florida statute chapter one six three part two and therefore, based on further review of comments made by staff, we recommend to city council approval of tax amendment petition number 20Six-08AM.

And do we have a second?

Second, Mr. Chairman.

Okay. Mr. Hale has a second. We have a motion and a second. Thank you. Can we have a well, there any further discussion? Seeing none, can we have a vote please? Jerry? There you go. There you got it. Thank you. And the motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And that's the handle there. And with that, welcome Roger.

Thank you, sir. For the record, Roger Clark, Planning and Zoning Director. And as Nicole indicated, I want to reinforce our welcome to Ms. Fresca on the Planning Commission. We're great to have you here and I know you'll contribute well to the group. So we're excited about having you on the board. So welcome. You will have a meeting, next meeting is April 7. We do have an application on that meeting as well. I believe at that meeting we're probably gonna have election of officers.

And I think the mayor is going to visit for a little presentation possibly. So I think that's still in the works. And then I think we're going to revisit the rules and procedure for Planning Commission. It's been a few years since we've looked at that and there may be some changes but we'll definitely put that on the agenda so you can review it prior to the meeting. That will be coming up at the next meeting.

Just to give you a little heads up, I know that the city attorney has been paying attention to the legislature and different legislation that's going through and there's been some interesting bills that have moved forward to potentially being signed by the governor that are gonna do some really interesting things to local government. So we're gonna pay attention to that and see where that goes. There are a couple that are gonna affect planning and zoning. So we'll see if the governor signs those and if he does, we'll adapt to whatever changes need to be made. So that's something to look, I wouldn't say forward to but ahead to.

As you know, I typically rail against Tallahassee but I'll save that today. I didn't mention last meeting but I don't think you probably all know, we have a new member on our Historic Architectural and Preservation Board you may be familiar with, Helen Moore. So pretty exciting to get her on the board and her immense amount of knowledge from being on this board and being on City Council and so we're really excited to have her on that board. I just wanted to kind of pass that along to you as well. With that being said, it's a pretty quick meeting today. Sorry we didn't have more to entertain you today, but maybe next meeting we will. So with that, that's all I have.

Thank you sir, appreciate it. And any comments from any of the commissioners? No? Well, it's not quite my fastest meeting, but pretty close. We adjourned.