Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Joint Planning Workshop and the Comprehensive Plans. And Ms. Cathy is going to take that over.

Oh, sorry. Okay.

Thank you. We're excited to be here this evening. We have been working on this project for quite some time, and so we're excited to be here to be able to talk about where we are with the comprehensive plan update and how we're going to move this forward so that we can transmit the document, the new comprehensive plan, before the end of the year.

Next slide.

So a couple of things we're going to take care of this evening. We are first going to review what we have accomplished so far with the comprehensive plan update. We're going to talk about and establish a vision statement and guiding principles for moving forward with the vision components of the comprehensive plan update. We're going to analyze how the vision relates to the comprehensive plan and the various elements. And we're going to recommend projects for implementation of the comprehensive plan after adoption. So we have been working on this project for about a year and a half. We've gone through an extensive visioning phase. Then we've completed all of the data analysis to update the comprehensive plan. And then we did the ear-based amendments. And now we are here in the vision-based amendments, which are all of those things that are really what the community wants. The ear amendments were the things that the statute required. Now we're at where the community's vision comes into play. So in the visioning phase, we completed five community pop-ups. That's when we were at various festivals and community events. We did four strategic planning workshops with the city council and with the planning board and one with the CRA. And then we completed seven stakeholder committees and one audit of the entire Main Street to determine how that would fit in with the new conference plan. So in the visioning phase, like I said, we focused our public efforts, not the stakeholder or elected and appointed bodies, on using pop-up events. And in those five pop-up events, we were able to communicate with somewhere each event between 100 and 200, 300 people. So we got a lot more participation by going to the events where people are rather than holding workshops at City Hall and asking people to come to us. And the themes that we heard that really resounded out of the community visioning were that people want to protect and support the small town character, our parks and open spaces, our public services, community connectivity, making sure that everywhere in Williston is connected to each other, the revitalization of Main Street, which we're going to get to a little bit more, and economic development, but economic development on a local scale. What does it mean here for Williston? So let's talk about the Williston Main Street, because this is a real important part. This evening, we have handed out a copy of the City of Williston Downtown Main Street Plan, which was adopted two years ago and has been and continues to be a living document for us. We continue to go back to this document and remind ourselves, what did the Williston Main Street Plan say? What do we need to be focused on? How do we translate an idea from a plan into implementation, starting with a comprehensive plan? So to remind everyone, the Williston Main Street plan starts with the Williston fields to the north and ends with the elementary and the junior, senior high school to the south, and then goes through the city of Williston and includes Heritage Park, and it creates kind of a north-south corridor through the community. And there's a lot to be redeveloped here. One of the great assets that the city of Williston has is about a mile and a half of unutilized rail corridor that is currently being used as a swale. You have enough right-of-way with the road and the swale area to create a linear main street, which We are very excited about. We also have talked about the establishment of a McCoy Central Park in the center of the area, and we're working with the property owner to identify if we can acquire that property for the long-term use of the city as a much-needed parking lot area for the Main Street, but also for parks, for a splash pad, for some stacking for the elementary school and parking for the football field. So this space is a really big area and could be used as a major central feature on the Williston Main Street. And then all of it lined by buildings in the north part of the main street closer to the city center. Those buildings would be for commercial purposes. And then as you move your way south towards the schools, those properties would be able to be used for live-work properties, places. that people could live, but they could also have a cottage business, whether it's an architect firm or a bakery or some other type of private industry building. Next slide. And then also the revitalization of downtown Williston. This is a critical component of the Williston Main Street project. It's the heart of Williston. And these are some graphics that we generated using AI to help us understand what could happen. So the way we envision the redevelopment of the downtown area is that because 27 and 41 are major thoroughfares. We don't see the ability to revitalize these on the front side. So we're really looking to the backside where the current parking lot is being developed and to be able to make that an active courtyard space with restaurants or outdoor markets or farmers markets, things that could be in the building It could be in the building, but it could spill out to the backside. Usually those things would spill out to the front side, but because of the limited right-of-way that we have on the front side, we are looking to be able to develop that in the interior near the parking lot area. And then revitalize the front-facing area with facade improvements. So this really does become a central feature and the core downtown for Williston, which would then link to the new Main Street to the south. So as we worked through all of these ideas, we were thinking about what would be a strong vision statement for Williston, and we worked with your staff on this statement. Williston is a unique community with a blend of natural charm, small-town feel, and economic opportunity. Williston's future calls for a balance of community-centered growth that develops a vibrant city center, creates walkable, interconnected neighborhoods, provides a wider variety of local amenities, and enables the provision of high-quality public city services while still maintaining clear boundaries between urban and rural spaces, preserving the city's unique small-town character and history, and protecting the parks and natural open spaces within and around the city. And then we identified eight guiding principles that would help us achieve that vision statement. First, supporting the small town character in history. Second, community-centered growth. Third, clear boundaries between urban and rural spaces. Four, a vibrant city center. Five, walkable interconnected neighborhoods. Six, wider variety of local amenities. Seven, parks and natural open spaces. And eight, the provision of high-quality public city services. So phase two, after we completed the vision and we were understanding what we wanted to head with the city, was the data analysis. This is the backbone of every comprehensive plan update. helps us understand both how to change the goals, objectives, and policies, both those that are required by the state and those that are desired by the community. So we updated data sets. We reviewed the sources. We developed consistent methodologies in order to evaluate. Next slide. A variety of data sets, including your carrying capacity. That's a really important piece because that helps us understand how many people we expect to be in Williston and how much public services are going to be demanded by your capital improvements. We always say that if it's not in the budget, it's not real. So a plan is a plan until it's in the budget. Then it becomes a real thing. That's when it actually is something that you have made a priority so that you're going to actually spend money on it. Then we continued with some housing evaluations. We evaluated your interlocal agreements. We evaluated the market conditions, parks and open space level service standards, as well as road capacity level service standards, and finally, your utility service areas and protected needs. And all of that resulted in, first, the update of the evaluation appraisal report, which was adopted earlier this month and has been submitted to the state for review.

Next slide. which looked like this document.

So now we are going into the vision update. So we've completed the data analysis. We've updated the document according to state statutory standards. And now we get to do what is really the heart of your comprehensive plan. It is those items that matter to you, the community. There are three things we will be doing as we evaluate how to do the vision upstate. First, we're going to respond to the community input. Second, we're going to establish future projects because a plan is but a plan until it gets implemented. And we're going to implement best practices throughout the document. And we're going to do this all based on the guiding principles. So let's talk about how each of the guiding principles will be utilized to evaluate your comprehensive plan in order to create the vision update. First small town character in history. The themes here in your small town character are historic preservation and directing and managing growth. These are the two major components that we will be looking at as we look to update your comprehensive plan based on this guiding principle in the future land use element, the transportation element, the housing element, and the conservation element. The next guiding principle is community-centered growth. And this is really about making sure that as growth happens, it's based on what the city of Williston wants and not pressures from the outside, so that the growth is reflective of and supportive of the city of Williston, who it was in the past and who it will be in the future, by looking at local economic development and job creation, leveraging growth tools, and promoting viable working agricultural lands. through your future land use element, your economic development element, your recreation and open space element, and your conservation element. The next guiding principle is your vibrant city center. And again, this one is really about that main street. This is where we will be looking extensively at the main street plan and making this plan come to life. Like we, as mentioned, we approved this plan, adopted this plan for the city of Williston two years ago, but it is but a plan until it gets implemented. So this is where it really starts getting implemented as we look at your future land use map in fact just today our staff had a very detailed discussion about what changes we wanted to make to the future land use categories because we will be bringing forward a new set of land use categories specifically for any of your mixed use areas which is something you don't have right now right now you have some general language for mixed use and you implement it through a PUD process But what we'll be doing in the comprehensive plan is the first phase of developing a set of categories and standards that really direct mixed use and in specific targeted locations so that we really understand what's different about the city center, what's different about adjacent areas, what's different about live work. And we will be looking around the city to understand all of those things. And then we will look to implement them in your land development code. We will also be looking at your economic development element, your transportation element, your recreation open space element, and the rest of the future land use element, understanding that the implementation of Main Street and the assisting of local business development and retention isn't something that just happens in your future land use element, but is really something that is connected throughout your documents. Then we will look at the next guiding principle of walkable interconnected neighborhoods, which is The main themes here is assuring local mobility and mitigating the impacts of U.S. 2741. This was something we heard a lot about from the public when we did our community engagement, is that the impacts of 27 and 41 really cut your community in half and make it sort of a through community, which is why we are so focused on the creation of the Main Street corridor and also the understanding of how we can interconnect the city from within the quadrants. So we'll be looking at the transportation element, the future land use element, infrastructure element, and intergovernmental coordination. The next adding principle deals with wider variety of local amenities, and this is about making sure that Williston is Williston. What we heard a lot, in fact, I heard one specific comment, and I won't call out what the business was, but they said, we don't want fill in the blank of a large big box store. We want fill in the blank of a smaller community store. And it was just a real touching moment for me with that conversation that I had with that individual because it stressed the level of which people want Williston to be Williston. And they don't want it just to be Williston in terms of how it looks and how it feels, but they want the businesses here to also reflect the character and commitment to the city. And then addressing gaps in the market for community needs, recognizing that people do have to travel right now to Ocala and Gainesville predominantly to get some of your bigger services. And how can we fill in those gaps? So we'll be looking at the future land use element, the economic development element, the capital improvements element, and the recreation and open space element. And the next one is the parks and natural open spaces guiding principle and this is about promoting and understanding that your parks and natural open spaces is what bring people to Williston. This is what really captures people and we want to recognize that your parks, your open spaces, your conservation lands, your local activities are what bring people to Williston and we can't We need to protect them, we need to support them, and we need to promote them. But at the same time, we don't want to lose those characteristics that makes them so important by looking at your recreation and open space element, your conservation element, your future land use element, and your capital improvement element. The next one is the provision of high quality public services. And the main themes here are the stormwater and flooding, maintaining the new fiber optic system and expanding it, ensuring the long-term affordability of your public services. The city of Williston has so many public services that it provides, and it does not depend on an outside source for them, so we need to make sure that those public services are maintained and provided so that we can have that local community that people really want that's based on local economic development, local growth. And we'll be doing that by looking at your future land use element, your economic development element, your capital improvements element, and your infrastructure element. So how do we implement this? You all have been so quiet. You are welcome to interject at any time. So this is probably a good breaking point because we're going to go from what how the plan will be done to how we're going to implement the plan with some key strategies. Are there any questions about the guiding principles? Are there any questions about the elements we're going to be addressing? Are there any questions about the vision statement? Any comments?

Thumbs up, Deborah. You like it.

Is this another thumbs up?

Okay, no, there was a thumbs up behind me.

I guess I heard a lot of a lot of information related to the vision and how it actually, how it actually plays in and somehow, and this is just me maybe, but I didn't hear a lot of the people in the plans and I heard very little about, I guess, the masses of people. And the reason I say that is because I'm taking the average person in my community and how could they relate to the plan? And I'm hoping that we do as we go through it, not y'all, but just we go through it, that there's a little bit more persons or people in the plan. And I heard something that was a little bit divergent when We talked, you said a business person talked to you about we don't want the big box store.

That was actually not a business person, sir. That was a resident.

Oh, really?

That was absolutely a resident.

And it'd be interesting to see the background for that resident. And I guess all I'm saying is I'm just concerned that let's make sure that we keep enough people in the process to make sure that this is a plan for Williston. And I was even concerned about the vision statement because where did the vision come from? And did it actually come from staff? Or did it come from people?

So the vision statement and the guiding principles, all of that came from what we heard from the community. This was not from staff. This was developed. And that's why we're here this evening, Mr. Fuller, is because if there is anything we we are here at a point before we really get into the vision updates we want to hear from everybody and make sure can we go back to the vision statement and the um yeah it's back a little bit um but that's what we're here for this evening we want to make sure before we go forward that we have the vision statement correct we have the guiding principles right that we are focused uh that each of the guiding principles as i went through them that we are focused on the things that we should be focusing on but this this dip absolutely came from you remember we spent About eight months. And we even went to, we spent a day at the junior-senior high school. So we didn't just meet with boards. We didn't just meet with the stakeholder groups. We didn't just meet with the citizens who came to the festivals. We went to groups like the junior-senior high school where we met with all the 11th graders and all the seniors. And this vision statement comes from what we heard them talking about. But if you feel like this vision statement doesn't accurately describe Williston, that's what we need to know now so that we can make adjustments to it.

And that would be interesting. I guess this is my early reading of the vision statement.

probably would like to the main thing that I want to I want to leave with you is let's make sure that we keep the people in the plan and not do the plan to the people absolutely that is that that's what we have been doing that's why we started this whole process with eight months of community engagement before we put a single pen to paper before we even started reviewing our data analysis we did all of the community engagement to make sure that we were really talking to people. And if you remember correctly, even they came on the heels of the development of the Main Street Plan, which also had an extensive community engagement effort. So we had spent probably a year and a half talking to people before we started writing this plan. So is there, I mean, on that question, I mean, that's, again, what we're here for this evening. Do you collectively, between the three boards here this evening, the CRA, the Planning and Zoning Board and the City Council. Do you feel that this vision statement adequately addresses, and by the way, this is actually a revised version. You may remember, or at least the City Council may remember that they had seen an earlier version, and we did make some tweaks to that based on the comments we received from City Council the first time.

I guess I want to make sure it's not just to me, but to all the people sitting here.

I just want to say that I like the fact that you've got the small town character and the history. I'm really big on the history part. I appreciate you added that part. And I also like the fact that you've divided it between the urban and the rural. Because we are rural and we are becoming urban. So it is important that we make those clear boundaries. And I think you've done that in this statement.

Are there other comments about it?

Mr. Fuller, when festivals and different things, I would go out there and would talk to this lady here and everything and listen to the questions that they were asking people. And they were doing a good job to...

what would you like to see? What would you this? What would you do?

And it wasn't, I did not think it was anything geared the other way. It was truly what they were asking for the people.

And basically what I'm more interested in is making sure that it's not tainted by one person's or one group of people's vision. And particularly as it relates to, you know, there's a group of people that go to festivals. And there's a group of people that don't. And we just need to make sure that all the people are in the plan when the plan gets done. And I'm no genius about how to do that. And I do it by finding a typical person, let's say, a typical person in my community. And then I'm saying, are they impacted negatively or positively or are they even visible in what we see? And I know it's hard to do because it's hard to reach people. And I have to say that you all have actually reached more people than what I saw in the last comprehensive plan and what was done. And I guess I'm just saying, let's make sure that

all of the people not just the people that may go to a specific event or whatever are part of the plan that we move forward with and that's not a criticism at all no it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a i mean when we started this process a year and a half ago we promised that this plan would be from the city of williston and we continue to look for ways to make sure that that happens and You know, we have talked to your planner, Laura, about how to ensure that's happening moving forward as we go through this update. It is definitely harder to get the public involved in the policy writing, which is where we are now. But we still are looking for ways and opportunities to ensure that what comes out of the plan is what the public wants. and is looking for from the community. Yes, Ms. Stepper.

I will also say that I love that you went to the middle high school. That was great. And that you captured the future of Williston. I can tell you my biggest concern is in your next step, is your implementation. And I know you hate this, everybody's tired of hearing it, but with the property tax thing as it's coming, like where's the money coming from?

Yeah, and that's a – so I'll hold that comment for just a second, but I realize that's a challenge. But let's start here with the vision statement. Is there anything else about this vision statement that people feel? Are we good generally? Thumbs up. And then the guiding principle – yes, sir.

I believe that I'm Dan Coffin from – yeah, where do I live? Forest Street. Okay. 32 Forest Street. I'm originally from Tennessee, backwoods Tennessee, where they still haven't paved the roads. I've seen small towns. I've traveled throughout Florida and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, all the way to Washington and back. And I've stopped at some of the smaller local type main street towns. And the biggest thing I can think of that they have been positively influenced by is, first of all, facades on buildings, maintenance, sidewalks, crosswalks. But they also have something that we don't have, or at least I haven't since I got here. We don't have a local newspaper. We have to, just like you say, to go to a major grocery store or a major place to buy appliances besides just Winn-Dixie and the new Aldi's that I don't think is ever going to open. Is that we're 25 miles from Ocala, 25 miles from Gainesville, 25 miles from Vanilla. It's a 50 mile round trip for us to go into town to get needs besides what we eat. So with that said, Economic development is finding people to go out and find like-minded people in business to let them see what we're building and then looking at the mileage And we also need, like, a newspaper or something or to acquire some writers from magazines to come in and do espouses on the area in order for people that's outside in other states or other areas to realize there's something besides blank land between here and there waiting for the developers to fill it up. I just see the biggest hurdle we've got to deal with in this day and time is economics. Right now, until the economy balances back out, until fuel comes back down to where we find out about the property tax situation, what's going to happen with that. And we also, I've understood by coming to some of your meetings, that we're pretty much tapped out when it comes to being able to keep up with our daily needs of employment, insurance, repairs, maintenance, things like that. But I would say that if we can hold off long enough to get past the economic deluge, as I call it, and then continue you to plan for a specific type of town, you can be a city by name. But most people, especially the older people who seems to have a little money and expendable cash, they're looking for some place to where they can feel retired without coming from a place where I originally came from, which was Palm Beach, Florida. We saw the little towns all in there because I've been here since 1956. And we saw all the little towns that got infiltrated with big box stores, as you were talking about, and everything else. And then two lanes went four lanes, four lanes to six lanes, and then so on and so forth. We've already got 41, and we've already got 27. These are things that we need to capitalize on the ability for traffic, but we also have to look at ways to create a market for that traffic. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Hi, Shanna Church, 590 Northwest 4th Place. So one thing that I'm hoping that I see in this is not just the fact that, you know, we're known as like a pass-through town where you have to go 25 miles, like you said, to Gainesville or Ocala to shop, but it's also jobs. Because we have such smaller shops, which is wonderful, and I'm really hoping that we keep those, but we try to avoid the big box stores. That means there's also less job opportunities. So as these people, as the residents, have to go to Gainesville or Ocala, I know myself, when I'm going to Gainesville, I'm not just working there. I'm eating my lunch there. I'm doing all my shopping there. So all that money that I'm pouring into Gainesville, I would love to be able to pour that into here, and I would be able to do that if I had a better job opportunity in town. So I'm kind of hoping to see, with that growth of the city, is kind of getting rid of the old saying that I kind of grew up hearing, which is, you know, Wilson's small, and we want to keep it small. We want to avoid any big stuff here. But we're also saying we want growth. So I'm kind of hoping that we see a little bit of that middle ground where we do want growth but we don't want the big giant growth that's just going to knock us out but at the same time we're going to keep the small town values and keep Williston Williston so I'm hoping you know as we go through it we see a little bit more that talks about job opportunity it talks about pouring that money back into the city to help keep it at a comfortable rate of growth to where we keep our values and everything the same as we grow yeah well that is definitely that's that's why it calls for a balance of community-centered growth that is

that is based on understanding where growth can happen and um and making sure the services are here i mean that that is in a nutshell what we heard from every person we talked to and of every age group that people want services here they want economic development here but they don't want to lose the small town character and how do you do that it's a huge challenge it is but we think um We think we have some ideas, and that is by understanding where certain development features are happening here in Wilson and allowing those development areas to be what they are going to be, whether they're the areas for your Main Street, whether they're the areas for your larger services and big box stores, whether they're for allowing more people to live and work at their own home. There are different ways that Williston can stay Williston and recognize that the spaces, as you said, sir, between here and the different cities around you aren't just waiting to be filled up, that those are active, viable ag. To us, agriculture is not open space. Agriculture is industrial lands. Those are viable economic lands, and we need to understand that those are viable economic lands because agriculture If we treat them as open space, they won't be there for us for farming long term. So it's a balance, but it's something we have already started to work on. And definitely, I think these eight principles really help steer us in that direction because that is what they're all focused on. I think, can you move just slowly? Because there was one forward. Go to, no, the other way. Go to number three, because I think I might have. Nope. The other way. Sorry, guys.

I'm not going more into the slides. Keep going. Into the guiding principles. The third guiding principle.

Next one.

Clear boundaries. Yeah. The clear boundaries one. Next one. Next. Next. Next. OK. Now go. One.

two three here so this really is um and we sort of skimmed over that but this is what the the crux of what we talked about that urban is urban and rural is rural that we want williston to have a very strong defined urban area and then the rural areas can be active working agricultural lands and that we guide growth to the development areas to ensure that urban is urban, and we allow agriculture to be viable and strong in the areas that are outside of the established development area.

So if now you can move to, we can go forward.

Okay, one back, back, right here. So how do we implement this plan? And we know that we are coming to you at, a week after the legislature decided to deal with the property tax by putting it out to the voters. So we understand that money has always been tight in Williston, and if it passes, it's going to be even tighter. But we're here to say to you that if there is one area that we would like you to invest, we hope that it's in this plan, ensuring this plan moves forward. Because Your land development code, as in just a second, Christine Dalton of Dalton Studios, who is a consultant that we work with, and we're bringing her into the Williston projects. So she's going to talk about these things. But the implementation of this plan is so critical. The plan itself will do nothing. It will be just words on paper if they don't get implemented. So the ideas that we're going to talk about in the plan, the plan cannot implement itself. A comprehensive plan is a master planning document for a city. It's a critical master planning document. It helps do all sorts of things, including getting money for future grants and giving you direction about where you should be strategizing future capital resources and establishes level of service standards and establishes your land use map and where you want growth and where you don't want to grow. everything that the comprehensive plan talks about none of it it can implement on its own it also has to be implemented through other documents materials and decision making from the from the city so it is if we stop here and i i i do understand that we're in a really difficult place right now because of the looming vote on the property on the on the property taxes but if we stop here what you have today in your planning documents is what will be achieved and implemented moving forward so If that's not the direction that you want and that's not what we heard, we heard that there's a lot of good things in your current conference plan, but there are some shifts that you would like to make in order to ensure that economic development comes, ensure that Williston becomes Williston, that the services are met, that we bring in and develop a new Main Street corridor, that we understand where growth areas should be. All of that is going to be very hard to implement without moving this document forward. to the next stages. And on that, I'm going to ask Christine Dalton to come up and walk you through how to implement the plan. Christine is an expert in plan implementation and historic preservation and works a lot with communities just like Williston here in Florida, but even outside Florida.

So I've asked her to come and explain how to implement the project.

And I just want to say that Kathy's enthusiasm for Williston is definitely contagious because professionals Kathy and I encounter each other at Main Street, Porter Lee's, and other events. And every time I talk to her, she's always talking about Rolison. So it became very clear that her heart is definitely here, and I'm excited to talk to you all. If you could just go to the next slide. So implementation, the visioning process is complete. And as Kathy said, this is really important for implementation, because what you don't want to have is you don't want to have just a plan that sits on a shelf collecting dust. And what you do want to do right now is actually build on the momentum of we have main street plan now, now we have this plan. You want to keep it going and build on that momentum and actually start implementing things. So implementation is what's going to take the community's vision and actually turn it into tangible actions. And it's important to see how each one of these works together. So first,

one of the things that Kathy just talked about was the land development code update.

This is gonna be really important because number one, your land development code should be updated periodically. There are things that change statewide, there are things that change locally, that requires you to really should encourage you to look at that land development code. I was a municipal planner for 13 years and there was a point in time where I was working with a land development code that was outdated and I could tell you that makes it very difficult for staff to do the things that they're charged with doing by the elected officials. So if you have an outdated code that has inconsistencies or even worse, sometimes you have conflicts between two different sections of the land development code, that really presents some major challenges in getting the job done that staff has been tasked to do. And also with realizing the objectives that you have outlined. So throughout this process, you've identified priorities and goals for Williston that we've talked about. And we want to make sure that the code is supporting the community's long-term goals. Like I said, no inconsistencies, gaps, and all of that. And future development decisions are going to really rely a lot on the land development code. And I just want to, when I present, I always like to give little anecdotes and examples. I worked as a planner for a municipality here in Florida for 13 years. And so there's two types of planning. And I think the public and sometimes even the elected officials don't realize this, is that you have the long-range planning and then you have current planning and short-term planning. The current and short-term planning, that's the planning that the developers walk in the door to do. That's the planning that they come in with the roles of plans already done up in the thick packets and they just come in and present it to you and say, you know, we want to make sure that we could do this. We've already designed it. We don't need your community's input.

We did this in another community in Texas and it was successful.

So we're going to come here and do that here. That's the current planning. That's the planning that walks in your door. And I will tell you, these developers hire people who are very experienced with the land development code and know how to pick sections out of the code.

where they say, we're going to do this because that's what's in your code.

So being able to look at that land development code and anticipate any activity that may occur that may not be favorable to where you have decided to be at this point is very important. So that's just an anecdotal example of why you would want to update the land development code. Historic study and survey. This is something that I am especially passionate about because I'm a historic preservationist. The thing that I kept hearing from Kathy and all this time that she's talked to me about Williston and then actually coming here and driving around, talking to people, seeing Williston through my professional preservationist eyes is this is really an exciting town that you have here. You've got a lot of historic resources, you've got a deep, rich history, and you've got a character that people keep referring to as keeping Williston, Williston, keeping Williston, Williston. Well, what is that? If I walked over to any one of you, can any of you articulate just like that why Williston is Williston? Perhaps, but maybe not. Everybody knows what it is because they feel it. It's just a feeling that they have. We call that sense of place in urban planning and historic preservation. So one of the things that the historic resource study or the historic preservation study would do is not only look at your existing buildings that are 50 years and older. We look at the newer buildings, but not as deeply as we would look at anything 50 years or older. But one of the meat and potatoes of a historic resource survey is not actually the buildings at all. It is the historical narrative part of the document. So there's a whole entire part of a historic study where we're looking at the history of the town. We're looking at development patterns. We're looking at major players in the town's history. The way things develop, the way roads developed, we go far back as looking at how your infrastructure developed. When did you first get electricity? I mean, we're going that far back. And so what we're doing when we're doing a historic resource survey is we're studying the newspapers. I know that Williston, it was mentioned, does not have a newspaper of its own, but perhaps at some point in time it did. If not, we look at the local papers. And we get that story of what Williston has been up to this point in time. Once you have all that information and the Williston story defined, that is going to help you to actually determine what your sense of place is and how you want to convey that to people. So when you say, we want to keep Williston Williston, you actually have some tangible ways that you can do that by looking at your history and knowing what your sense of place, your character, and identity are. This historic study also takes that. Now you can apply it to your building. So one of the things that I'm really excited about is actually looking across here. A lot of roads in Florida started as one lane in either direction, and they expanded. And before you know it, we've got what we have over here, which is basically an opportunity for people to drive really fast and bypass your downtown. So how do we get them to stay actually in your downtown, park their cars, and walk around? So we've had a lot of discussions about what the city's already started doing across the street with the parking lot and the park and all of that. And these are great foundational things that can definitely be built upon. So from a historic preservation perspective, there's a lot of things that you could tangibly do with buildings. And the other thing that's very exciting here is your existing buildings, some very large areas of existing buildings that are now vacant, there is an opportunity for what we call adaptive use. So say if a plot of land was used for an agricultural purpose and it's not going to be used for an agricultural purpose anymore, are there historic aspects of that property that could be bought into the future of the property? Just an example, up north, this is a funny example that always makes people kind of shocked. Pittsburgh had a big population decline in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh had so many churches. So you've got tons and tons of churches everywhere. And the Catholic Church deconsecrated this particular church and said, we don't consider it a religious building anymore. To us, it's just a building. And so a buyer came in, purchased it, and turned it into a brewery. To me, that's one of the most shocking examples, but it is super popular. It's a tourist attraction. It's a brewery and restaurant, and people love it. It's called Church Brew Works. But that's an idea of adaptive use where you could take in a building that was used for one function and turn it into a totally separate function. So I get excited about that. Next slide. The housing study is actually, did we go backwards? I started with the... Okay, sorry. So, one more. In the housing study, the housing study will actually build off, if you do it in the order that we've described, would build off of the historic preservation study because in the preservation study you're looking at the baseline information of your older buildings. Well, the housing study is going to fully complete that and look at all the buildings in your city. And what that study is going to do is it's going to help you to determine what changes, if any, are needed to be made to support the housing needs for your future. One thing that I didn't mention, if you could just go back two slides, is Kathy and I discussed talking about building on this momentum and really getting this underway. project timing for all of these so we think it's reasonable to be able to do the land development code updates between the remaining of 2026 at least starting them into 2027 next slide and same thing for the historic study that could be a project that could begin in 2026 wrap up in 2027 next slide and then the housing study that one would be between 27 and 28. next slide Then the last thing that we talked about is a capital improvement plan. So of course, big ideas are wonderful, but the first thing people usually start freezing on big ideas is it sounds like a big ticket item. So what can you do in that process to figure out what your capital improvement plan is going to be? So that project timing would be development between 27 and 28 and implementation from 2028 to 2038. So obviously, If you're thinking you're going to implement everything all at once, that's a huge, huge number. But the whole point of this capital improvement plan is actually figuring out how are we going to achieve these different milestones that we're outlining and what kind of funding sources are we going to be looking at. You would, of course, look at city budget, but you look at where else can we get funds from. So what kind of partnerships could happen? What kind of grants could be gone after? and things of that nature. So that is really, capital improvement plan is gonna be major to obviously achieving your goals. Next slide.

Do you wanna go over that next?

So where do we move from here to finish the comprehensive plan? The first thing we're doing is an implementation matrix, which we have already started developing And that is looking at the guiding principles, looking at the vision statement, looking at each element of the comprehensive plan and marrying each guiding principle to the changes that we need to make. When we have that implementation matrix complete, we will share it with you and you will see how we have developed that. At the same time, we're starting drafting and project budgeting drafting of the policies and project budget budgeting for future projects so that we can implement the plan our goal is that by by October that we will be working through the adoption transmittal so that in December we can transmit the document So our goal is, and we are still working with staff on this schedule exactly, but sometime in July or August, we will do a first workshop on the first elements, which we are going to start with future land use and the mixed-use areas because they're so critical to the changes that's going to affect everything so the everything to do with the new Main Street corridor and any of the major land use changes that we will be looking at around the city identifying we have gateways that we have worked with staff to identify how we can address the major corridors so that will be first then the Once we've completed that, we will do in the next two months, we will break up the elements. We will do it just the same way we did with the ear, where we'll do the elements that deal with the implementation of the plan first, and then we'll deal with the elements that deal with level of service standards and infrastructure items and other things like your property, your required property rights element. capital improvements element in the second so we'll have a series of three or four workshops to do the adopt to go through the actual elements and the changes and then we will do an adoption hearing and a transmittal hearing we will send it to the state and then we will adopt hopefully the beginning of the year after we've had comments from the state so are there any questions yes Laura

I just wanted to talk a little bit more about this capital improvements plan because the board has seen a capital improvements plan. We have one every year in the budget. This is a little bit more meaty. Wright Pierce, your engineers put together an excellent cost estimate of what your utilities are going to cost and things like that. But what the ladies are talking about are more. It's more than just utilities. It's more than just the things that we know we need. This is, do you want to tell them the more? Because I just want them to know that this is a plan. It's not just that piece of paper that they see every year. This is We've been working with Wright Pierce on it for a couple years. This is a little bit meatier than what you usually see.

This is more of a strategic document, and it's the reason it is put last, because it follows everything else. We can't work on this strategic capital improvement plan until we really understand everything we need to know about how this plan will be implemented. We need to understand... the land development code we need to understand where new growth is happening we need to understand the historic study we need to understand how we're going to revitalize or maybe reuse some of your historic properties we need to do the housing study because we need to know where we want new housing what types of new housing so all of those things that we're going to learn through the other documents they get funneled into this strategic capital improvement document and it's not It's not the annual update. This is a much more detailed strategic document about how you are going to spend capital resources and where you will find those capital resources. So it's actually a fairly detailed document, and it's something that, honestly, not enough local governments think about. They think capital planning, and they do it every year, and they're not really putting thought into it. But at the end of a major planning effort, which you are undergoing right now, it's important to then really look strategically at the resources and how you're going to spend them so that you can implement them.

And these are not to be looked at two separate things was the only comment that I wanted to make is that capital improvement plan that you all are doing every year. That is something that will be looked at in creation of this capital improvement plan to see, as I mentioned earlier, how are you going to leverage what you already have out there? So if you already have plans for sidewalks, for example, in a certain area, how can we actually take what's already been committed or planned for in this capital improvement plan and pull it into this master plan that is being developed?

i just want to make it clear too that these plans i don't know if you address this but these plans are important because we grant writers know that it's very difficult to look through grants and say oh we might have something that works for that it's much easier for a grant writer to know a project has needs and then to find the money for that so if i if your grant writer has a cip that makes sense it's much easier to go out and search for grants that make sense for that it's almost a scramble and fire if you're trying to fit a project to a grant that you find makes sense that's true not only of the capital improvement plan but the historic study

That is true of your historic study, your land development code, your comprehensive plan.

All of that is really important for going after new grant money. And another thing, the other reason that all of this is so important is we've talked about that as we move forward with the comprehensive plan, you're going to see a new lane use structure for your mixed use areas and your gateways. If we don't move forward with the land development code, that doesn't get implemented. There is no implementing tool to implement your new mixed use standards. So what you have today in your land development code would stay. And because your comprehensive plan is based on what you have, you would continue down the current path. You would use PUDs to implement your mixed use standards, and you would hope that the vision that you have established and worked so hard over the last few years actually gets achieved. And I can tell you, because I've looked at your land development code already as we are working on the new land use standards, the current land development code for your commercial areas does not meet what you want in your mixed use areas. There is a major disconnect there. You're the planner, of course you can.

I just wanted to remind you guys that we have gone back in time and we're pretty sure that our land development code was not created by anybody from the city of Williston. We believe it was copied because it needed to be done. So it doesn't necessarily fit, right? Yeah, he's on my planning board, so he knows. And Ms. Jones also. So we think that was pretty much copied and pasted. So that's why it's really time to get into that and fix it up.

Yeah, it's been a while, and like I said, your land development code really needs to reflect who you are today. And so that's where we are, and I think we're right on time. So if there are any final questions that we have, Christine and I absolutely will stay afterwards, but I know that there is a city commission meeting, so we've been... We want to make sure that we end on time. We appreciate your attention. We will work with staff on the schedule. And as soon as we have a schedule, staff will bring that forward to you so that you know what the new schedule is.

And we're excited to finish this comprehensive plan for you.

Yes.

I think the comment is that it's

Just want to make sure that in the future that we give advantage to all people who are in the city that would like to have comment, because today it happened at a time when most people who are working class people are actually working. And so let's just make sure that in the future we make plans to include everybody that we can in that process.

so as i said we will we will definitely work with staff on making sure that um that public is allowed and when we we didn't spend all of that time up front mr fuller doing all that community engagement for us not to include the public now to make sure that we're going forward in the right direction um and i'm sure that there are some ways through facebook and others that they can get the information that we presented this evening at the same time We are getting into more of the strikethrough underline, which is harder for the public to absorb, because now we are actually into the writing of the document and changing of the policies. So it's a balance, and we will work hard with the staff to figure out ways that we can strike that right balance.

Any other questions? Well, thank you very much.

We are excited to move forward and we're excited to see this plan get adopted.