##VIDEO ID:ptphbSgKYq0## Hello. Called to order the meeting of the Tarpon Springs Planning and Zoning Board. Tonight is a sort of a special meeting that's mostly on the staff, but, can we start, Mr. Vessey, with the Pledge of Allegiance and your invocation? Pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, for all. Let's please, first of all, I'd like to take a moment to, you know, last week, we celebrated, tragic anniversary of 911. And keep that in mind, that we are we are fortunate in this country. They have the ability to come to meetings like this and make plans and move forward. And how how we do things in a civilized and orderly manner, and, and those first responders and those in the military that give us that protection and allow them. Thank you. Okay. Well, so all right, tonight we have kind of a different meeting where the staff is presenting a couple things to us. So I'll turn it over to staff. If that's all right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to I'm going to use the podium. I think it'd be a little easier for me to speak to you, this is going to be really informal. I just want to, as I stated at the last meeting, start a little conversation with you all about, just comprehensive planning, your land development codes, things like that. And just making the distinction for you between legislative items and quasi judicial items, as you know, I'm an attorney. I've been practicing in land use law for over 20 years. I was a planner before that with the state, for ten years. So my entire career has been dedicated to comprehensive planning. So this is an area that I'm very, very fond of. Still, even after all these changes. So you all are the planning board, right? So you're the planning board, but you're also, by state law, every locality has to designate what's called a local planning agency. Local planning agency is the keeper of the comprehensive plan overseeing it. You all have gone through this whole process, but it's also your land development regulations, land development codes. But how did we get here? Let me give you a little history. I like to do this. I taught law school for a little while. So I think it's always important historically to know how this all came about, late in the 70s or late in the 60s, a lot of change occurred. Not only in Florida, but in the United States. There was a big population boom, growth boom. And not only did the United States enact some very, very substantial environmental laws, under under the Nixon Administration Act, actually, it was the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, clean Air Act, Nepa. All of these things came about because of there was so much degradation occurring, because of development and population growth. There was an incident, you may recall from history in Ohio. The Cuyahoga River actually caught fire and it was so polluted it caught fire. And that grabbed the national attention. And eventually Congress took action and enacted these sweeping environmental laws that are now in place in Florida. The same thing took place. Obviously, Florida is a popular state. It was growing very, very quickly in the 60s and 70s. And because of that, in 1971 they set up what was called the environmental Land Management Study Committee. Elms one. And part of that was to look at like, how do we how do we deal with this population? Boom. We're kind of dealing with that here to here now to where the third largest state in the nation and back then it was really growing super fast. So they had this elms one committee where, a guy named Doctor John de Grove, very famous guy, you know, they came out with this study and that's where some of your water management districts come from, their areas of critical state concern and the development of regional impacts. So then fast forward about ten years, 11 years, you have another committee set up called the Elms two, which is 1982. And that's where state comp planning was talked about. Your regional planning councils were put in place and then the state would review local plans. So comprehensive planning at that time okay, we've each local government needs to start planning for development because development if it's done wrong, it's going to degrade, degrade the environment right. Run off things of that nature. In 1985, they changed it because of one thing, there was they found that while local governments were adopting their comprehensive plans, they weren't enforcing them. So they changed the law. In 1985. And that was referred to, simply as the growth management Act. But what they did was they added, the state Department of Community Affairs, and they added what was called concurrency. And I'm sure you've heard of this concurrency or levels of service. So essentially they put in place a law saying that in order for you to develop this land, there has to be a certain level of service on critical infrastructure like roads, sanitary sewer, schools, parks, things like that. And if it wasn't in place, if you didn't have that infrastructure in place, you couldn't build that was what really put the teeth into comprehensive planning as we know it, because before then you would see a lot of what people refer to as urban sprawl or suburban sprawl, where they would just build it and then, okay, how are we going to get the roads and the pipes and all this other stuff out there? Then in 1985, that law started that, of course, the first comprehensive plans that were adopted in Florida were along the coast. They they said that the local coastal communities were most important. So they were all set up on a schedule and all through from 85, 86 for the next couple of years, everybody was enacting their new comprehensive plan. The table of contents, the contents of those comprehensive plans are set out in chapter 163, part two, in fact, it's 163, 31, 77 and it says your future land use element, housing element, all of those different elements. And the great thing about it is that you can go to almost any community, any, any locality, any county, and they're all generally going to be set up that same way. They have to have those minimum standards that are described in the statutes, you know, all of these different things that you have to address with goals, objectives and policies. Then in 19 and in 2011, the growth Management Act was changed to the Community Planning Act. The state significantly got out of the business of reviewing comprehensive plans. They downgraded how, how, how detailed they would get involved in this, there was a thought that by now, local governments and the planning capacity of the local governments have gotten so good that, you know, let's let the local governments kind of dictate how they're going to go with their comprehensive plans. Nevertheless, your comprehensive plan is your single most important guiding document policy for development and development decisions. It is a policy document, a legislative document, which means that it is, when you amend it that you you do it as the local planning agency and it's very different than when you're deciding for example, maybe a site plan or a conditional use permit. Those are development orders. Generally speaking. And they're they're done differently. So the public hearings for a legislative item like so you all went through this whole process of adopting, adopting this new repeal and replace comprehensive plan that's going through the process. You all sat as the local planning agency and, you know, your planners here helped you go through all that process and essentially set up these these policies for driving your development. The reason that it's important to understand that it is a policy document is because that if anyone were to challenge you, when you, for example, amend your comprehensive plan, the courts are going to review this in a different standard than they would in reviewing a development order. So they're going to use a very deferential standard. Fairly debatable is what it's called. And so essentially, if you have reason, good reason for making a change to your comprehensive plan, the courts are going to take a deferential a deferential view of that. So you have your comprehensive plan. But what drives that? What makes that those goals, objectives and policies actually come into, happen over your planning period, whether it's 20 years or 30 years or 40 years? Those are that's your land development codes. That's your not just your zoning code, but all your land development codes that deal with, all the different procedures. That's how you in that's how you enact the policies that are in your comprehensive plan. So when you're adopting new, new codes, which you're going to talk about here today, you're also sitting as the local planning agency by statute. You're sitting here, you're talking about the land development codes, or regulations and how does that, how does that further your goals, objectives and policies in your comprehensive plan? So one of the things that when you're dealing with amendments to your comprehensive plans, there's actually four things you have to think about. You have to think about whether the amendments to the comprehensive plan are internally consistent. Meaning that are they consistent with the other goals, objectives, and policies in your comprehensive plan, whether it's supported by data and analysis and whether it's also consistent with the state law? And again, it's the under 163, part two, part two. But there's another factor to that. And I like to say it's about due process, procedural due process. So the statute lays out the procedures for how you conduct hearings that it has to go through the LPA before it goes to the legislative body, and how those hearings take place as much different than, for example, a conditional use permit or a site plan or a very small parcel related rezoning, not a not a big, large rezoning, but a parcel related, rezoning, then those things are considered quasi judicial. So I want to explain really quickly the difference between legislative decisions and quasi judicial decisions, because they're very, very important. So when you're sitting here in the legislative capacity in the LPA and the same thing is true of the Board of Commissioners, the decider, the decision makers that you're sitting here in the capacity of formulating policy, it's really easy to remember because so if you're formulating policy, establishing policy, then you're in a legislative capacity. If you're applying that legislatio, that policy, then you're in a quasi judicial manner. So for example, you've adopted criteria for the approval of a conditional use permit. Correct. So you see staff comes up and they give you your, the staff report, they act as experts. And the quasi judicial hearing process is much more formal, a formal process than it would as a legislative process. So it's the creation of policy versus the application of policy. So when a quasi judicial, proceedings, you are applying the policy, it's a formal hearing, the first thing you do and you've heard this before, is that you disclose your any ex parte communications and that's like, so you're here to be judges quasi judges, and you're here to make that based on the record that's before you, based on what your staff tells you, based on what the applicant tells you, and even maybe based on what some of the laypersons say during public comment. If you do anything outside of that, you know what's behind your packet, your packet information. Like you go to the site. Let's say you drive by the site and you take a look at it. You want to take a look at it or you have a you have a conversation with the developer or some neighbor neighborhood organizations are concerned and they come and talk to you outside of this arena. The state law has said that just like it would be improper for you to talk to a judge right in court, the state law has allowed for that understanding that you are also citizens and you're bound to, you know, run into people, get emails, things of that nature. The state law has been set up so that the way you cure that, that presumption of prejudice, having not disclosed anything to the applicant, you go ahead and disclose it right at the beginning of the hearing. So that's the reason why you're being asked to disclose any ex-party communication. It's so that the applicant primarily is aware of the people that are making decisions, what all they have done to prepare themselves for this decision, they can actually, if they wanted to, they could ask you, well, I'd like to know more about your conversation with John Smith that you just disclosed, things like that. Yes, sir. At one point. Judicial. You do the actual rules of evidence apply? I mean, are they stringent? No they're not, they're well, so I'm going to talk about that. It's called substantial competent evidence. So what you what you want to look for in those. And thank you. That's a good segue. Segue What you want to look for is testimony that's coming from from Pat from Renee, your planners or experts, attorneys cannot give expert testimony. They can only talk about the law. So frequently. I'm sure you've seen attorneys come here and represent applicants. And with no experts, no traffic engineers, no anything. I mean, they're making a big mistake because technically, they can only talk about the law, but they can rely on what staff has presented. So if staff is saying, here's my staff report, we're recommending approval. You can they can just say, well, I'm going to adopt that and rely on that. So you want to look for competent and substantial evidence that's coming from an expert. So that's the key to it. And the difference between layperson testimony that you want to that you can rely on is that as long as it's fact based and it's based on personal knowledge. So let's say somebody talks to you about highway 19 and says, like, you know, I was in a car accident just the other day and it's been backed up, and I live right there, and I know factually that's something that they factually know about, as opposed to I don't want this development because I think the city's overpopulated already and you shouldn't you should deny it. That's just not anything you should rely on. They can say anything. They want during the public comment phase, but what you want to do is look for, competent, substantial evidence that's coming from an expert and applying it to the specific criteria, the policies that were put in place for that particular type of application. A cup is different than a site plan, different than a rezoning. And fortunately you have some really good planners here that work for the city that are going to put that in your staff reports and tell you, here's the analysis that we've done based on the criteria that the code says that we've previously adopted, is the criteria that we should use to make a decision. So the other part about that is due process. So due process is very important. One of the things that's very tricky that I find that's tricky anyway at local governments is that so there's two parties in a quasi judicial hearing. There's the applicant and then there's the city. There's a lot of people that are going to want to say, well, I'm an interested party or I want to be I want intervenor status or I want to be an affected party. For me, anyway. I know what I know what the courts have said about that. Like in order to have standing, I know what the rules they use. But unless a local government has adopted a criteria that says if you're within the mailing radius, that's always one that people like to look to. If you're if you're next door or something like that, if it's in the code, then I think you can make a decision about, you know, this person's affected, this one isn't. But I tend to think that you should just use fairness due process. Give them a little extra time without saying you're an affected party, because I think that that to me, in order to do that, you have to you have to sometime you could be challenged and said that you did that arbitrarily and capriciously because you have no you have no criteria in your code that says this is what an affected party is. This is what an interested party is. I don't mean to interrupt. Is that okay? No please. I see the hands are good. So I have a question about, the quasi with the applicant in the city. And this actually, this came up yesterday. So there's an appeal tomorrow for the Heritage Preservation Board, and so somebody asked the applicant that was denied. I think a retroactive application. And so they can appeal that to the board of commissioners, and they can say yes or no. So if they say no, it goes back to, I guess, the code enforcement or whatever, but can an the like say the people that were against it, can they appeal a decision, say if they had been granted it. Can other people. So let's let's talk generically about that case, not talk about that one particularly. Yeah. Because since that's still out there but yes. So the point that I was getting at is so I don't think it's, I don't think it's the local government unless you have something in your code that says these are affected parties and this is how you, you differentiate between a normal. But even if you're if you don't do that, you, you let the folks that decide that they want to make an appeal, let's say it's a third party appeal, okay? A third party appeal, as long as they follow the procedures that the court has laid out for how, you know, did they file it in a timely manner, meaning it's usually 30 days based on rendition, not adoption rendition. Sometimes the comp plan part is adoption, but not so. Did they do it in a timely manner? They're going to have to argue standing. They're going to have to argue the. You may have heard of the Rennard case or something like that. They're let them do the arguing in court why they should have standing and at least in when they have to do those appeals, they submit the whole transcript, not just of what happened at the Board of commissioners, but what happened at the advisory boards as well, so that they can see that. And that's why I was getting at is like, as long as you afford due process, which means that say, I see you have an attorney, I see you've got some folks here, I'm going to let you have extra time to make your case, make your record, but you're not going to be given party status so that you can't cross-examine the city's planners or the applicant's planners. We're not going to let you go that far. Usually. I think a court will be fine with that as long as you've said on the record, I frequently like to say that on the record that the, the, the third party, the person asking for intervenor status was given 20 minutes and so forth and so on. Get it on the record. And then I don't think anyone's going to really challenge you with that. I just don't like to. I guarantee you, if you raise you asked out the audience like, who's an affected party here? Everybody's going to say that, you know, and it'd be impossible for you without a criteria to be able to say you are or you aren't, and so forth. And so on, because you're running the risk of letting the judge determine that they were given that by this right? So they'll say, well, we were already categorically given this label at the lower level. So then you should judge do that. No, let the judge figure it out. There's plenty of case law on that. And we can you know, so I don't I just don't like to go down that rabbit hole. But I think it's a dangerous rabbit hole to go down, if I may. Yeah. Because we're standing over the rabbit hole and over the rabbit hole. You mentioned it twice. Maybe it's just one of them varmint holes, does the city of Tarpon Springs ordinances, to your knowledge, have any reference to affected parties? And I kind of knew the answer. That's why you're bringing it up? No, no, but we don't. It may be I have seen, another thing that I've noticed that boards boards will adopt procedures which are different than codes, different than comp plan, things like that. And if you adopt a procedure and you enact it as the board's procedure and it has a way of going through an affected party process, then maybe you do have a procedure in place. That's what I was. I'm always that's the first thing I asked when I was here, because I noticed that affected party was being used a lot in some of the language, and I didn't see it in the code. I didn't see it anywhere else. But if you have adopted a procedure already formally that says, this is how these are the questions you ask somebody in order to determine what is an affected party or an interested party, whatever you want to call it. But make no make no bones about it. I totally respect a third party. There are members of the public. I think they are fully entitled to due process. The state law says that these are public meetings. They're open to the public. You're allowed to you're you're allowed to have the ability to participate in them. The question is just how much do you participate in them? So I think you give them you give folks who want that status. Unless again, you know, and I have to ask the clerk or other people if which boards have adopted which rules, I wouldn't go down that road of trying to determine it. I would just be fair and use fundamental fairness, and I have to comment on that in the in the ten years that I've been here, we have repeatedly requested people to ask for, affected party status. And we have granted that on numerous occasions. We have not ever that I'm aware of voted to actually approve creating such a thing. I think we were led to believe that it existed somewhere in the codes, as far as I know. And I always thought we were bound by that. And I, I think our previous council did and still another attorney came and was like, no you're not. Yeah. See, I mean, every, every attorney, it's there's nothing. So now you have a pattern of practice. That's another thing. So if you do have a pattern of practice where you have done that in the past, maybe it's inherent that people expect that you can do that. So you may want to start thinking and I'll look more closely at your code, but you may want to start thinking about moving the ship in a different direction on that, because I do understand that there are some attorneys that will actually take the case law and create like a criteria of questions to ask and say, well, are you within? Did you receive a mailing notice? I imagine that was one of them. How far from the property are you? It typically had been, I believe, and I could be remembering wrong, but typically it would be. It was anyone that was adjacent to the property in question. That's an easy one. Was easily granted. That's an affected party status. Yeah, that's an easy one. And again, you know, like I don't think I just don't think I've looked at your code. I don't think it has that in it where it says if you're abutting the property, I'm talking about in a quasi judicial setting, then you're an affected party. I do think it's smart for people, attorneys, to send in a letter ahead of time if they represent third parties, send in a letter ahead of time saying, hey, I represent so-and-so establishing their standing and their record because they don't know. Walking in. I've represented third parties. You don't know how much time you're going to get. So you're smart. If you've sent in a letter ahead of time and said, okay, well, I'll just rely on my letter. It's in the record. Do what you want, but I think still I would fall down on if. Yes. Okay. You're you're an adjacent property owner talking about quasi judicial hearings. You know, I think you're entitled to more time than the general public because the law, the actual case law says that you're you're affected in intensity greater than the general public, like in kind and intensity greater than the general public. That's the concept. So when you said the pattern of practice, is there a way that you could write it almost in like not? I don't want to say the negative, but tarpon or and where would this go? Like tarpon has no definition for affected parties, but they just go how do we scrub it right. How do we scrub it out? Right. So basically, how do you change the pattern of practice? I think you have to, I think I would establish that in some kind of resolution. Resolution something like that. So it's actually put put out there notice, you know, people can come and speak to it and, and, and go back and forth. Because again, I respect the fact that I'm new here and you all have had a pattern of practice of doing that. I've I've been reluctant to do it in other cities that I represent just because I just feel that someone's going to say, like an applicant is going to say you gave them the ability to cross-examine and you had no criteria for declaring them as an affected party. Now, I will tell you that if you're dealing with a comprehensive plan amendment, that in the statute itself, it has a definition for affected party. And that's that's what I was trying to explain before, is that you could just rely on the affected party definition in the statute. And 163 so that's an easy one, but that's the biggest challenge I've had. I can tell you, in my practice as a land use attorney is trying to deal with the parties who are the parties? Is there an interested party? Is there an affected party? Is there a third party? And I trust me, I've been on all sides of this. I've represented builders. I've represented third party groups, I've been a city attorney. So I know every single way that it comes at you. And I just think that if you wanted to change a pattern and practice, adopt a resolution saying that, you know, we, you know, we recognize folks that are, neighboring adjoining properties or received notices that perhaps they should have a little extra time, but they won't be called a party because you don't want them. You know, you you don't. Let's say that ultimately, the decision is approval by the Board of commissioners, and it gets appealed by a third party. You don't want them to go back and say, well, the planning board told me I was an affected party judge. Here it is in the transcript. And if we were talking about doing the resolution to sort of clarify the position on that, would that be something we do or something BoCC needs? I think it's going to I think it's going to have to be something that I talk to the commission about, because it's because there are other boards that also have quasi judicial hearings, you know, that that that would have to be across the board. So that's going to have to be a decision that the Commission makes and instructs, because I think it can't just be for this board. It has to be, you know, there's a historic board, you know, Board of Adjustments. Yeah, for sure. That's a big one. That that's all they do is quasi judicial. So. Well, I don't I don't think because we notify up to 500ft, I don't think all of those people could be. I mean, in a big case, that could be insane. That's why that's why the case law says that's only one factor. The case law says that's one factor that you think about. If you're adjacent. Property is another thing entirely. Totally. Another thing entirely. But then what do you deal with an organization that is a legitimate organization. That's an advocacy group that has a right to be here. And, you know, there is something called association. Status or association standing in court. You know, that you have to show certain things to be as a group, as an organization, to have standing, and good lawyers know how to do that. But I just think it's a slippery slope, whatever you want to call it, rabbit hole, but I think that's a big decision that has to be made across the board, not just in one one board, but I'll be here when you have these quasi judicial hearings to help you walk through it. I will try to find some paper trail on how this goes back ten years. So the pattern of practice was started. Maybe maybe it is a good practice as long as it's foolproof. I don't know. I don't like to do it. I just don't like to do it. So that's about it. I could talk about a lot of different stuff. I love this stuff. So much. I could go on forever, but you've got some smarter, nicer people to talk to you about. Some things, I want to go back to the 500, 500ft. The radius. When there's in that 500 radius, an apartment comple, you've seen that you give notice to the owner of the complex, but not to the residents of the complex. Yeah. What's the. I guess that's that's. So if it's an apartment. Yes. If they're rentals, usually the mailing notices are based on ownership, property ownership out of the property appraiser database. And it is tricky. I won't I won't deny that because frequently people will the, the you know, they may be from out of town and they, they get their mail somewhere. They don't get it here. They don't, you know, up in Minnesota somewhere and they didn't get it in time. But the apartment complex. So due process and notice that's why there's multiple layers of that. It's not just the radius. Notice there's signs that go up on the property. There's notices that go outside on your website outside there on there in the newspaper. Although nobody reads the newspaper anymore I don't know, I do maybe sometimes actually changed it. A few years ago it was so they have levels to capture that now. We know it was 100. Yeah, I think we changed it and we took it to 500. Yeah. You did. Yeah, yeah. And there's sometimes the development may not touch anybody's like it may, it may be like two people, you know get a mail. But that's why there's that level of, of notice is like the sign, the big signs on the, the property that are obviously governmental and you know, so there there's other there's different levels, different ways. That's why these are public meetings. That's why the agendas are published ahead of time. It's all for due process. So typically if you're going to appeal something in court your three prongs are, you know, did they follow the law. The policy that are adopted was is it based on was a decision based on competent, substantial evidence and was due process afforded? Those are the three things you typically argue when you're challenging a development order in a quasi judicial manner, you know, I could talk about, like I said, I could talk about this forever. Maybe I'll take some more time every other meeting or if I may. Yeah. Because I love talking about this. And the law is always changing, you have some really great planners here, by the way. So anytime. I'm not letting you off yet, Mr. Dickman. Oh, you want more? Okay. No, I don't want more. But Just to make sure I understand, because at the beginning of the conversation, in regards of affected party, I think I heard the thrust of your suggestion and maybe it got diluted, which is, as I understood, that you encourage the liberal use of due process in lieu of granting the status of affected party, or even entertaining said conversation where it's like, hey, we'll provide you ample extraordinary due process, but we're just not going to talk about affected party. Right? That's exactly you said it better than I could. Thank you. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Thanks It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Let me just go ahead and pull this up. Just. For, For reference, in case we need it. I don't have an actual presentation for this, if you recall, we. We started talking about an amendment to article seven of the Land Development Code, which is our historic heritage preservation ordinance or historic preservation ordinance, to accommodate an alternative process for. That's less stringent, in the form of a neighborhood conservation overlay. And when I came to the board, a few months ago, we had developed or I had developed a kind of a pretty onerous process. I had used, some other localities as examples, and it was, it was a little bit muddy. I think at that point in time when the feedback that I got from the board was, let's try this again, and try to maybe, you know, focus in more on just the things that are like historic preservation related versus, you know, being able to use this process for something that's really not in an historic area. So as I thought about tha, more I, I came to the conclusion that we already have a really good process for establishing a district. What we need to do is develop a different kind of district and use the same processes that are already in place in the ordinance. So if you're looking at now we I've kept in a lot of other amendments to this entire ordinance. Because there are things that needed to be updated. So a lot of that did not change the significant portion of this that did change is the new section 118 that is, starts on the last basically the last two pages of, of the of the ordinance. And if you want I can scroll to those, but you're not going to be able to read that there. So never mind, and so what I, what I've laid out is something that really very much relies on all of our existing processes for establishing an historic district, but it establishes a new a new table for specifically for conservation overlay districts, and really, the intent there is to focus on the really important things demolition that we're, we're trying to save structures and, and new construction. So it's not so much about changing out doors and windows and roofs and putting on solar and things like that. Those those are things that you know, through our efforts and discussions, we've learned that are not what people are as concerned about. It's really about preserving those structures that have something unique about them. So, so right now we've developed this table of exhibit B that really identifies those, those specific activities as things that can be regulated. Now, we can continue to amend this as we go along, but, and it really follows the same kind of format as our certificate of appropriateness for full blown historic district. But it's limited to these activities. And then there's a second table, exhibit C, that's been created where as a new conservation overlay is developed, we had basically enumerate okay, for that particular overlay area. Maybe it's Greektown. You know, then these are the activities that are going to be regulated. And so we already have a process for certificates of appropriateness. All that's already in place. We're simply kind of slimming it down and using all of our existing processes and structures, rather than creating some something completely new and improved. So, I hope you had a chance to look at this. I just wanted to get some initial feedback tonight on this approach, and then I can, you know, move it forward for through public hearing, perhaps starting in October. So I'll stop and answer questions. Renee. Yes, so, yeah, for exhibit B is the suggestion that all of these with HPB goes through the Heritage Preservation Board for a new primary, new accessory addition that that's the. So but then how how are these to be designated prior, you know, to like how are we going to designate those, those types of things before they go through. So that's that's the process. So if you wanted to establish a new historic district, we have a process in article seven that says, here are the here's how you do that. I want to use that same process because this still is really historic preservation related. So a district will be identified. We'll go through the same process instead of it being a historic district. It's going to be a conservation overlay district. And through that process and working with the public, then we'll also decide which of these activities will be regulated. It may not be all of them. Maybe they just want to control demolition. So that'll be part of the enumeration that will show up in that table. See. But I mean, wouldn't there be if it's not going to be if it's going to be a neighbor. So like downtown is a historic a historic correct. Okay. So they go through the heritage preservation. Right. But if we're going to have a neighborhood conservation overlay, shouldn't we have a neighborhood conservation board? I my proposal right. And one other board. No, my as it's written right now, we would rely on because historic preservation there's nothing so incredibly unique about between you know in tarpon that that warrants, I think a separate board. They review historic preservation. So I would continue to use them. But we would be with different guidelines though, correct? Correct Yeah. I mean, I think that would be that's kind of like the it's just scary to see I understand. Yeah. And so I mean, the intent is the intent is to use our existing we have design guidelines, but again, the only thing they're going to apply to is are these things that that that group decides that that's in their, in their overlay that they want to regulate. But we haven't gotten to the point where they decide, correct, correct. This is just a process to get there. Yes. And I guess that would be my I mean, is the process. That because we had discussed that before. So it was that maybe we could that hasn't changed. Right. So if we go back to that only because it it has since, since then, I think I asked Pat that like she's and if you can share Pat like you, I know you worked in Key West and other places in Florida. If there's any designated like areas where you have been where people have voted to be in either historic district or a neighborhood conservation overlay district where people have voted to be in it like this, 51% that like, we've kind of discussed, I haven't worked in anywhere. They put it up to a vote, like like that's being proposed here. Right? So this is like this is just this is like evidence of 51%. Right? Not necessarily a vote. So it wouldn't be a vote like we would actually hold like a little mini referendum. And I don't I mean, I don't know how you would know. I mean, we, you know, I think the way it's the way it's structured right now is, and that's how I took the 50. And I believe that if I'm not the only one, because I think that's how that's and that's what I'm trying to get feedback on. I, you know, I think there's a way to establish, you know, through some process, you know, of recording, you know, whereby we can establish if 51% of the property owners in the proposed district, you know, have are in support, it might be a postcard return or something like that. We'll have to find a way to do that. But so okay. So like that Pat or Renee or any you left for a little bit now has that been done in other areas before? I mean, I don't know, I'm trying to think historic districts where people ask to be included. So we have a process, you know, the historic ordinance right now, if you want to come to the board and say, but in this sense, this is this is not really like like I haven't seen the voting. So this would be like the first you've ever seen of this. Something like this being 51 of like requiring evidence of the 51% in this by polling by a card or, you know, it sometimes. I mean, it could be by petition, you know, you've seen that, then I, I'm sure I could go dig that up and find find some evidence of that. You don't have any recollection. I'm just I'm trying to remember I think that we have functionally done it even though it wasn't a requirement from a policy standpoint. In order for like when we've expanded the local historic district process, I think we had to have substantial proof that there was support from the property owners, the affected property owners, in order to do like residential, normally. Yes. So not commercial, but well, if it's in a commercial district, I think it applies across the board. It can. But I'm saying as far as at the end of the day, it's putting the onus really on us as the city to say, you know what that how are we going to gather that, you know, I think I had heard pretty substantially from this board and through some public hearing process, not public, but public involvement, you know, processes that there was a desire to have at least 51% of the affected property owners in support in order to implement. And that's a district fair, I think. I think my and that's a little bit just my, you know, being naive, my, you know, I didn't realize it. This had never been done really before. Like I, I would never vote myself into anything, you know, like, well, like any of this honestly, so I just assumed, oh, this is how they do it. Because where did that knowledge, like, where did that language come from? So apparently it was just created. And that's kind of what I think is a little bit more I think people are like, oh yeah, let's do that. If everybody wants it. But at the same time, I don't want to be the first person, you know, we don't always want to set precedents. Yeah, well, I'll tell you between now and October when we come back, I just want to kind of find. Not on you guys. I want to make that clear that when I agree to that, I thought, oh, this is how these things are done. Sure. This is how it's done. So I was a little bit more agreeable to something that I didn't understand. Wasn't just the normal thing that people just do all the time, you know? So I don't think it's unprecedented. Let me put it that way. Yeah. But I mean, in your because you guys are both very experienced. So that's why I wanted to. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. Just to just let you know Saint Pete, Saint Pete, they do it by, 51% ballot. So when the ballot in the Saint Pete Beach or Saint Pete Saint Petersburg area. So we'll continue to investigate and find examples and, you know, like coming back to that because I know we just kind of skipped over it. Come back to how these are designated. Again, I'd appreciate. So the next workshop okay. So what we're really relying on is, you start at section. So section 108 okay. Designation of. So again this is the same process that we use now for designation. It would just apply to conservation overlay districts as well. Because I didn't I just, I didn't I felt it was good to be consistent, so, so we have added the 51%, to that, to that section, but you have the petition information, the board process, who, you know, the approval process is all laid out already in section 108. So we're just keeping that process and using it for this as well. No, I just wanted to clarify that. So in effect is with the a excuse me affected with an A affected Renee, what public involvement in coming up with this is has occurred to this point and is there going to be more public involvement before finalizing. So, didn't necessarily other than going through a public hearing process to amend the code, which would be, you know, the general public notice to the public. We've been at this one for a while now. I was not intending, but if this I don't even know how you would go about it at this point, other than I can push it out through Connect Tarpon and we'll push it out through social media to get, but but who am I mailing it to? The entire city of Tarpon Springs district. So, I mean, this came up, but but but right when we get to the point of where we're establishing a district now, now we need to do if it's a little backwards, the public input. Yeah. Right now we're creating a process and a code. So normally I mean, if it was something that was affecting one, you know, group of people right away, I mean, you know, that's I would go do that, but this is a holistic it could theoretically be applied all over the city. This this was just, a discussion item here and at the Board of Commissioners. So yeah. And it was, talked about during the process. It's not like it's been like because a lot of people that came out here, they came out at the very end. Yeah, sure. Just to keep people involved in the very beginning because they also need to know how they're going to be. Right. I mean, because if we start at the end, then how are they going to decide who's an affected party? I do want to say this. It's not realistic to do one notice for the entire city of Tarpon Springs for every code amendment we do. And I'm just I'm trying I'm not done yet. No, I know you never seem to be done. No, I excuse me. Give an opportunity. I think Mr. The chairman is here to direct this, and I'm bringing up extremely important facts, and you can wait because, Mr. Vessey, you take a lot of time on your questions, okay? So you can be patient and understand that you're not. It doesn't appear that you actually have any questions. I just engaging in a rambling conversation with staff, sir. And again, you're not the chairman, are you? Hello. Okay Please stop. Yeah. I've had a question down here forever. I need to poke the button. This is a template. I understand that, and I think my question is, do you have beyond the known any kind of priority listing in your mind as to where you would then extend those specific areas that you want to put these overlays upon? And I realize that's when you get to those areas in develop. I, I do not, but I'm there's been a request for some kind of a process by most notably would be the Greektown area, you know, it the onus is going to be on the local the people who want this not on us to drop it on somebody. But I have to disagree slightly because you're going to have some areas that may not be as involved typically. Socioeconomic depressed areas to that they can benefit from this, but we don't get them here. We're going to have to reach out to them a little bit more. And see what we can do in those areas, too. Those are big policy decisions that are and go ahead, Mike, I think one area at a time, no, no, I understand that. And I said beyond the norm, I just know I do not have it. Let me say this and maybe this will will help to the extent. And I'm just going to talk for, for the, the fish house because that's what I grew up calling it, the fish House, not Greektown. We're not calling it, so those people that live in that district and all you have to do, all you have to do is drive down Grand Boulevard. There's one house that that that sort of tells you why it's important that that people in that community have some, process in place to prevent that type of construction. So that group got together. So we need this to protect our heritage in this part of town. That is inaccurate. That group did not get together well, regardless, but that was the purpose. Okay okay. So if other other if other neighborhoods of other neighborhoods wanted to try to and obviously there may be historical in nature, there is one area of the of the city that we would work with the local residents, that would be the, you know, the Union Academy area is definitely would be on the table, but but that the onus falls on them to try to well or reach out to them. CRA they were going to come up as part of the community redevelopment area. So All right. Okay. All right. So one at a time. Just just for the staff I know. So I did talk to the city clerk and she watched our meetings and realized we don't have this. Well, we have it. We don't use it. This procedure with the lights. And that's how the board of commissioners work. So it's really not our fault that we speak like this, because no one's calling us out to put our lights on and to do that. So but I'm just saying in general, you know, so, you know, Mr. Vessey likes to interrupt everybody, but that there is a procedure so that we can all be called on procedurally and it's just not being used. So that's why this happens and it can be done. And the city clerk has asked, so we can actually have her help us with using the lights so that we can ask when does talk? And that way we're not talking over each other and being rude. Or we could just use good manners. So I would like to say that I think this is a terrific document. I reviewed it, it's a I guess we might call it a policy or procedural document. We're not making a bunch of decisions here. We're not talking about overlay districts uniquely. What we're trying to do is establish, and I don't want to speak for staff, just the guardrails and outlines so that we're prepared when they do come up. And we ask staff quite some time ago to do this, they responded, they've adjusted. I like this document and I would like to perhaps propose an informal motion or procedure to say, hey, even if it's not perfect, we've asked for it. It's been delivered. We'd like to move this ball forward so that it can at least see the light of day. If it goes to the Board of commissioners, or if it's returned to us with corrections or suggestions. So there's no motion if I agree, if I understand correctly though, you're just asking for input at this. Yes, sir. Right. You're not. Yes. Asking for yes for action tonight. Well if there I've gotten feedback I would like to start the public hearing process which would come back to you. I would be looking for some sort of, at least a consensus that we're ready to do that. Yes. Yeah Mr. attorney, do you have anything you need to add? Wait. So this is a great example of you all acting as the local planning agency. You're developing policy right now. So at this point, I think the staff staff has gotten to a place where, hey, we don't want to go any further until we bounce it off of the people that are ultimately going to have to hear it first in a public hearing setting. So, you know, I think I think she's getting your, your vibe that everybody seems like they're moving in the right direction. They've gotten some feedback from you. So unless unless there's someone that adamantly doesn't want this to go forward, I think they've got zambellas. Well, I just have one observation. So when I look at section 118 .01 and it says preserve significant historical, cultural or architectural assets, and I go back and look at definitions, what old historic trees fall under any of those three categories? I see where it talks about them, but it doesn't. It's in like a landscape plan. Major landscape. They use the word major trees. I would say no, I mean, we'd have major landscape plans have come under the guise of historic preservation. If it's in the district needs to be treated with like a certificate of appropriateness, if that is something that you know, I'll use the kapok tree right? That was a historical tree that caused the state of Florida. The Department of Transportation, to relocate the road to avoid you could tie, you know, like, Gran, grand trees are are defined. We could, we could if you wanted to put, you know, removal of a grand tree as something that would have to be reviewed when we go through the conservation process, the process to establish one, it still may or may not end up in the list of things to be preserved, but I think that might be a broader policy discussion. And actually, we're going to be having changes. I think Pat helped me with our with our tree ordinances and stuff coming up anyway. So it might be better. That's to me, that's almost a citywide thing that as opposed to a yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick question. Does this I know it's called heritage preservation, but if a group came to you and they're not historic in nature and they wanted some sort of overlay that I can't really think of at this moment, does it have to be a historic neighborhood if they should choose to become. There needs to be so if you go back to the process for, for designation, there's a list of things that that qualify. And so I think you're still working under that same, that same umbrella. That's the intent. You know, we've acknowledged that we probably want a separate process that may not be historic related. That's just maybe a, you know, a neighborhood overlay or something that's not necessarily a conservation, but we can we can work on that separately, I think when you see, when we get to the to the next piece of this, when we're talking about the special area plan and the smart code updates, that's another really great way to get it. A lot of those types of things that maybe they're not necessarily historic, but we like the look and feel of this, and we want to make sure it stays that way. Would you like us to have a, a vote? I don't think it's necessary to proceed to the next step. No, I think I've heard from everybody. I think I'm pretty comfortable here. Yes. And the definition of historic begins in a. New of age event or building. Say that again. I'm sorry. You're looking at one would think historic. Oh, sorry. One would think that historic means something of the past. We have a definition. Where is it? I'm looking for the definitions. Are in section 107. Like historic site. There's a historic property or historic resource, any prehistoric or historic district, site, building, structure, object, real property or other element of historical, cultural, architectural or archeological value so it pertains to anything. Yeah, we define it in various ways through through section. Was that that's, that would be on page three. It's right up front in the definition section. Section 107. Is where all the definitions are located. And we have done some significant updating of the definitions of this. And this section, you know, historic site. The site of significant event, prehistoric or historic occupation or activity or structure or landscape. Extant or vanished, where there's your landscape, where the site itself possesses historical, cultural or archeological value apart from the value of any existing structure or landscape. So we have a lot of all encompassing kind of definitions. Give me an example of significant event. Significant. What A site of a significant event. Signing the Constitution. Yeah, exactly. Signing the signing the Declaration of Independence, where some sort of significant historical event. I mean, I think you could argue, I mean, Spring Bayou and Epiphany would be a significant historical event. So, I mean, good example. So if a group wanted to come in and establish something other than like epiphany, but let's say they wanted to establish a lbg, what's the acronym you? Is that going to be considered historic? Well I'm not being prejudiced. I'm just saying that's I'll give you an example. Well, that's a I mean, if you're talking about an event that goes to a separate process with the Board of commissioners and others as a special event that becomes their hall or whatever, this XYZ, whatever, I mean, I think that's if you're trying to establish a site as a historic because an event took place there in history. That's what you're trying to do. Yes history. Now, let's say something of history happens now. Well, in 50 years you can establish it as something that historic is actually something of the past. Correct? Not not today. Correct Correct. I didn't read it that way, though. I read prehistoric any prehistoric or historic district. So those buildings, nothing of the future of historical, cultural, architectural value. Okay. I mean, I can it be debated maybe. I mean, I just it's just not typically how how a historic ordinance has been applied. I mean, I mean, obviously there, you know, there are sites where, you know, okay, you can point to an event and is that took place, okay. So just yeah, it's fuzzy. Yeah. And that's the definition. If you go on to 108 and you read some of, you know, of something important to the history of the city, the state or the nation, you know, so somebody would have to make a decision. Was this event really important in the history of the city of Tarpon Springs? Like, like that. That's what makes it good. Nick. So that way people can argue that's not significant. So, you know, that's a good thing. We don't want everything to be defined. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments for staff. Good. Good job good work good work. Thank you. All right. So the next thing we wanted to do and you know we wanted to show this is a preface to our discussion about our update of the special area plan and the Smart code, which is intended to kind of take place after this. These are two short videos or about 12, 13 minutes each, we talk about form based codes. We talk about the smart code is a form based code, so these are like high level. What is a form based code? And I just so if you're game, I'd like to show these, and then we'll go into the, the discussion about what we want to do with our update process itself, so if everybody seems to be I, you know, I know it's going to take a little time here. It looks like I just missed her. She's a Hertz Gold Plus rewards member, so no, wait. There we go. All right, now, can I. Hello I'm Tony Perez with Opticos Design, and I'm here today to talk to you about form based codes. Specifically, what is a form based code and how does it work? Thanks for joining us today. So thanks for joining us today. We're going to talk today about how form based code works. And how it's different than conventional or use based zoning. The two terms that we'll be referring to a lot today. Th. There we go. Basically the description of form code is simple. It's these two sentences. The form based code fosters predictable results and high quality public realm by using physical form rather than a separation of uses as the organizing principle for the code. And secondly, a form based code is a regulation, not a guideline. It's adopted into city, town, or county law, typically in zoning and the zoning ordinance. But before we go into the form based code specifics, let's talk about why it came to be and how how, how what it's trying to address. So let's understand it by looking at the current system, which is called conventional or use based. That is a system that was born about 100 years ago out of a serious need to keep bad things from happening and undesirable results. Buildings that were out of scale, etc. but it was never a system intended to make anything. And that's really the problem with use based or conventional zoning. And it's evidenced by these kinds of results that nobody in San Rafael would approve. But there's still, possible because of the result, the way that conventional zoning, is made and the kinds of questions that it asks or doesn't ask in this case, in these two communities, the zoning didn't even recognize the very character that existed before the zoning code came to be, and if you look closely, photography, aerial photography, you'll notice the sizes of the new buildings which don't have the tile roofs, the sizes of the older buildings which have the tile roofs and they tend to be smaller footprint have bigger setbacks. The parking in different locations as compared to the new. And that is a big difference because the numerical approach to the to the conventional use based system just didn't take into account the existing character, another big departure from the form based code practice is that the conventional use based approach uses density as the big metric, and it's an important factor. But you can see here these two buildings are completely different, yet they only differ by one unit per acre. And yet one building has 60 units and the other one has five. Same with floor area ratio. It's a very highly used metric and use based conventional zoning. But here again you know the higher the number the presumption is that it's something that wouldn't be wanted. But yet the duplex on the left has a higher floor area ratio than the three story building with 12 times the number of units in it, and so the conventional use based approach does not recognize a lot of realities that exist in, in our communities. And so this slide shows very simply that there are basically two categories of buildings that the form based code sees, buildings that are individually or collectively the size of a block, the blue area. So those are block scale buildings or buildings that are individually the size of houses and are detached from one another, and these can range from small little cottages to up to mansions. Those are in the purple, those two categories. Then fan out into a repeating pattern across the country of many building types, you've heard duplexes and triplexes and courtyard buildings and cottage courts and all kinds of different terms, including townhouses all the way up to towers on the right, with houses on the left, towers on the righ. And these patterns repeat across the country. And they have different names and different variations. But the conventional zoning code, the use based approach, cannot see this information. That is a very elemental piece, an aspect of our communities and built environment. So the form based approach takes that on and understands those existing, characteristics and then goes through a public process to prepare a vision, physical vision that is, highly specific to an area and based on the sizes of those lots and based on the on the community intentions and expectations over, over the next 20, usually 20 to 30 years. And these principles are applied, through the process. And I won't read them because they're on the screen. So I'll just give you a couple seconds to go through these. So those five principles bleed into the practice of making form based codes. And the essential elements of a form based code are are five, there is a regulating plan of building form standards, frontage type standards, civic space standards and thoroughfare standards. And we'll get into those here next. The first one is a regulating plan. It's basically what I like to call three dimensional zoning map. And it's three dimensional because the conventional or use based approach to zoning only maps, the uses that are allowed and the heights in the in the zoning district, essentially, and sometimes the setbacks. The regulating plan is different. It maps those things for sure, but it also maps the physical character and the relationships between buildings and the urban design intentions of the plan. So if you look at this, this plan for a small downtown, carefully you'll see that the darker colors are going to mean buildings of more intensity, more height, more lot coverage, closer to the front, usually shaping mixed use streets. And the colors that are lighter, the pink and the lighter blue. There they are indicating buildings that are detached from one another, have lower lot coverage, are smaller in scale, smaller in height, and have less intense uses, usually in neighborhoods. And then you can see other indications on there that show, urban design intentions at particular corners or in particular streets. So the regulating plan is very important, and it does far more than the regular zoning map. And then the building form standards are important because they talk about the sizes of buildings, the height of buildings, the height of ground floors along particular streets to keep or generate a particular character, how how big the buildings can be front to back, which is usually not regulated by conventional codes. How wide they can be on particular lots. Again, to keep in with the with the existing pattern or pattern that you want to make. And then where are the parking needs to go in order to make all this work? There are a lot of codes that do a lot of things right, but they don't get the parking right. And so the parking often detracts from the physical character that would otherwise be great. And then frontage standards, these are very, very important as they shape and, and really detail the ground floor of each building to do its part to shape the public realm. Keep in mind that you know, the form based code is very focused on generating a public realm that you want to be in, can cars be in that public realm? Sure. If it's a street that accommodates cars, yes. But pedestrians and cyclists also are expected to be on that street. And you know what it's like to walk past a building, or a ground floor that, architecture aside, but just the blank windows or big blank walls, and so this section of the code provides standards to, to make sure that that public realm, the ground floors are appealing and interactive. Next are the civic space standards, which are small gathering spaces that are not in nature. They're not open space out in the country. They're plazas, greens, squares, passages, things like that that connect the public realm of streets with other areas. And maybe sometimes even within blocks. And then lastly, thoroughfare standards. These are standards that that capture all the different types of thoroughfares from boulevards and avenues and main streets to neighborhood streets to roads, all those different thoroughfares and how they pass by the lots that they're serving is very, very important. That needs to be in balance. So those are part of the form based code, where in conventional or use based practice, those are a separate domain. And depending on the relationship between the different departments, that's either a good thing or a not a good thing. I think in San Rafael it's actually working well. And to have these, these standards will only help things. So, it's, it's working well, but it will work better with these standards, we want to make sure that it's clear that form based codes are not intended for everywhere. This slide is showing a typical community where form based codes can be applied. And that is in the purple area. The darkest purple area, the walkable urban. Or you'll hear the walkable neighborhood, name. And those are areas that are tend to have short blocks, usually under 600ft in length, highly interconnected block pattern, giving you multiple routes to the same destination, different choices that get to the same place and amenities to walk to, from your from your place of work or where you live, and the other areas, the suburban pattern, the approach there is intentionally to separate everything, and that's the way people want it in those areas. And so form based codes don't really offer a lot for areas like that, because the form based code is trying to mix things and provide proximity, and the suburban pattern is the opposite. The transitional pattern are those areas that would otherwise be walkable, but they're missing the amenities to walk to so they can be retrofitted to be walkable. I have to finish writing this paper. I'm swamped with the weather. It's very. Can it help with what I wrote last night? Grammarly will catch all those spelling. I think that was all of that one. Oh, I think it just threw an ad in the middle of my. It did. Thanks for YouTube. Yeah. All right. So let's skip that. A couple things here about repeating structure. I love to use this example of the anatomy of, of this girl's face that we all share. Every one of us shares this, and we all are unique in our own ways. And, thankfully so. But communities share anatomy too. And that's what the conventional reuse base code does not recognize. This repeating structure. And so this soundboard analogy is to show you that the form based code, takes all the elements of a community as few or as many characteristics that make your community. And the character that you like, or if it doesn't exist, that you want to generate, it lets you choose them and then lets you coordinate them. So, take for example, all these different subjects. And at the left hand end of this board you can see the question mark. And then just indicating that you could add more. But the idea is that the as in the recording engineer sound booth, what they're doing is they're coordinating different. Aspects, different factors of a group. Let's say vocalist, horns, percussion, and so on. The coordinated for one effect for, for a coordinated sound that they want the zoning district and form based code is the same way. Using this analogy, you can dial up or dial down these different characteristics to for particular outcome, a physical place, outcome in your code. And I think it's really powerful to understand that about form based codes because there's a misunderstanding that somehow they, they either come with a thousand different regulations or none. And that's very far from the truth. The truth is, you can choose as few or as many, to regulate and depending on your physical character, you know, you need to figure that out. And so this slide goes to that and it identifies the, the range of standards that you could regulate. And there are more. But the range of standards that that, for this example on the left in that column and then five scenarios of expectations. So the light blue outline around the gray is a basic level of regulation. The medium is shown in gray. And then the highest level of regulation is shown in black. And the idea is that, there are two levels to this. One is which regulations do you need to achieve the effects that you want. And number two, to what level do you need to regulate that element to achieve what you want, and the form based code lets you do this because it sees all the physical character, in your, in your community. It's like a radar looking for all these elements, and it's up to you to turn them on or off, depending on your policy expectations and your community expectations. Lastly, there is a big responsibility to teach about this because it's such a departure from the prevalent conventional use based approach that there are a lot of questions and misunderstandings. And clearly over 20 years of practice, we've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work. And so we're the first to tell you that there's a lot to be taught about it and a lot to be explained. So anyway, thank you for your time today. We look forward to hearing from you on your questions and, really enjoy talking about this with people and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much. So if, If you don't want to delve into the next one, we can save it for another meeting. Maybe most people have no clue that in 2023. Sorry Stop the close this and go back. Yeah Ye. Okay. You know, when I, when I drive through Tarpon and, you know, we see things like this, but we really don't have a lot of blank canvases. We do not in tarpon that, that that this stuff would be more applicable towards. Well, we have these ideas. Oh, actually, it's not the blank canvas. It's preserving. It's preserving what we've got and making the making the code produce something that we want. You know, for all that infill lots and vacant land so that we don't get the Grand Boulevard situation. That's exactly what this is about, if the next one, there's actually like six of these videos we had originally said, let's look at part one and part four. Part four is building form and placement standards, if you want to watch that, we can I know that we just we have a lot of conversation tonight. So I can also rely on you to just look up this and I can send them to you and you can watch them at your leisure if you like, I don't know what your tolerance for just watching a video is tonight. I kind of like watching. Maybe it's a little bit like the attorney did, just maybe a little bit each time. So it's not like an overload, you know. Right. Okay. So we can we can continue continue these, so the next thing that was on the agenda was just, it says a brief history of the special area plan and the smart code. And I don't have anything, you know, prepared for that? But historically, when we started, we started back in 2009, and we knew we wanted to address the downtown and the docks and so at that point in time, and as the city attorney talked about concurrency, transportation, concurrency was was a big issue. And so we had two major roadways, all 19 and Tarpon have that were state roads that were failing level of service. And so when we were trying to put in the special area plan, and whatever regulating plan we were going to land on, we really and this was all following establishment of the community redevelopment area. We knew that we wanted to be able to bring up density, intensity a little bit because it was really low. And so we had to go through a lot of machinations with the state in order to get where we are today. Now, concurrent transportation concurrency is no longer. And so it's really not a factor anymore. But it was a driving factor behind the original special area plan, and we actually established a multimodal transportation district, which again, is not really even a think a thing anymore at the state level. But that was a if you could establish a multimodal transportation district where you were looking at your walkability, your block sizes, your level of service for bike and pedestrian and transit, you could you could get there. And so that's what that special area plan was, was riding on at that point in time. We also knew that we wanted to at that point in time, you know, the real form based code that was very prevalent was the smart code. And that was something that we could get training on, the we actually had our elected officials go to a smart code conference where they learned about it and got buy in. And so that's kind of the history of how we got where we are, we did have a we had a set focus group. If you look at the introduction section of the document for the special area plan, you'll see everybody that was involved, in that and they met multiple times and worked through the downtown and the docks, and establish that first kind of vision, and then we, we try to, we try to follow on then and implement that with the smart code. So it's got a little bit of age on it now, the smart code itself has been updated. Oh About ten times. We've had about ten, ten amendments to it. Not major overhauls, but things that have taken place, you know, kind of reactionary to when you find out something. Okay We had the best intentions when we put this in place, but maybe in retrospect, you know, we didn't ground truth things enough. So we're at that point where we recognize after the comprehensive plan process as well as, the sponge docks and area plan that we just went through. We're at the point where it's a good time to look at both of these documents and update them. And that brings me up to the update process. And you did have a memo for that. And. So what we are proposing, let me find this. And again, I don't know that you'll actually be able to really see much of this at this level, but we're as we sit around the table, we being the planning staff, we sat around the table, we were talking about how do we how do we go about this process? And that's where we, we knew that we wanted to kind of jump off from what we learned when we worked through the comprehensive plan with you as a board, and we want to be able to capitalize on that, that process. We also talked about, functionally, the smart code itself, is, you know, while we on we get it. We know we understand it, a more generic form based code may be easier for the public to understand, Ali worked on a couple of those at the county. She has a really good grasp of, you know, taking that something that's maybe almost too technical and presenting it in a manner that is a little more user friendly. So we've talked through that process. So kind of migrating from a smart code to a more generic kind of form based code. That let's kind of let's us put our own stamp on things, and then we hit on the idea, and I have to give Caroline credit for it because she asked, why do we have to have two plans? And my initial reaction was, well, you just do. But we talked through it a little more and we kind of landed on because we have in the special area plan, we have the character districts. So let's take that document and the and the and the smart code, and let's kind of merge that into one document where you start at the character district level that sets the high level vision and then you go down to your, we call them transect zones. And the smart code, whatever they may be. So you have very and you pull everything kind of into by district. And it it allows you to capture a little more uniqueness, and it will be easier for the public or for developers or whomever, because we can hand them like, okay, here's the sponge docks, character district and all the regulations that go with it. It will be a bit repetitive, but that's okay. That's so don't pay too much attention to what we have. A Ali started working on kind of an example, of what that might look like using these two documents. So we would pull in use I mean, they talked about, you know, shouldn't be, you know, uses irrelevant. Well, no use is relevant for us. We're not going to throw out use as a as a regulating element. So but we started the character district level. And then you go down to your, to your more your zoning district and your form based standards within each district. So we think we can we're going to talk to Ford Pinellas and make sure they're not going to have a, the county about having these two, having two plans. We want to have one plan. And then what? And this will be the city of Tarpon Springs special area plan and form based code with a process to for expansion. We know we have an area where we probably want to expand this, already based on the sponge docks, plan that we just planning process we went through, we know that we may want to try to do this in Union Academy, so we're setting the template for other areas where we can we can use this. And so that's kind of the high level approach, and then I don't know if we want to if you want to talk about that. And then we can talk about the engagement process. So I think I'll stop now and ask if you have any questions so far about yes, what we've talked about as you were, were you describing character districts, character districts. And we want to take these two documents. We have a special area plan or smart code. We want to merge that into one document starts at the character district level and goes down to what we'll call a zoning level or transect level. But we would do we would do this by character district and so that we can kind of capture the uniqueness. So that character district, you're going to probably identify, you know, what's the vision for this area. And now we go down to the, to the, the sub level at the transect zones. And we implement it. So I see undersea character districts and you mentioned Union Academy, but it doesn't show up on this outline. This is just an example right now an outline form of how we might this we may not end up looking exactly like this. I just kind of want to present the concept of merging this to one document, but let's talk about Union Academy, where would it fall in this outline? It would be it would be, under so under, objectives. The specific area specific, you would create a new character district. Okay. So, that, you know, if there's a planning effort. So like in this instance, we know we're doing a community redevelopment area or in process of doing that for the Union Academy. That might be an area specific plan. But then we would go through, you know, we would establish character districts for that area to, you know, what's unique to them. So the idea so this is going to be a work in progress. We're going to try to try to do this where it's, you know, we if you think about if you remember in the comp plan, we identified transitional areas, we identified some traditional areas where where this type of approach makes sense. So, we want to grow it. That's kind of our plan. But instead of having 15 different plans out there, we want everything to try to work in this document, this, this future document that we want to put together. I think that makes tremendous sense. The redundancy is really confusing for people trying to work through the process. So, Renee, can I ask you a question? Because I've been trying to explain this to people and the more I explain it, I usually understand it, but I want to make sure I'm explaining it the right way. And I think, actually, Ali's not here tonight, but I think I saw her do it and it kind of helped me. And I don't know if we can do this. This is definitely simplified from the original, but I'm I'm very visual and I understand like the maps, but almost, one of the candidates actually talked about a Venn diagram and that is really helpful. So the way that I see it is that the comprehensive plan is a policy. Right. And the land Development Code is the regulatory. And those are like sister documents. Right. So I know that the special area plan is in the comp plan, but it's also its own plan as well. So am I correct in saying that the community, the comprehensive plan is to the Land development Code, as the special area plan is to the smart code. The way it is? Yes, the way it is set up. Now, that's exactly right. Now, does that also apply to the comprehensive plan is to the CR. Same thing with the CRA, to the smart code. Does the Smart apply to the CRA? No. Community redevelopment area is kind of a different animal. It's a different plan. No, it's not the special area plan. But does the smart code apply to the CRA? Our current smart code applies to our CRA and also to the Union Academy that it could. Right. So, but those are like the only place district that's actually in currently other places could be in. But right now the only district that's in the special area plan is the sponge docks. Correct No, you have all of them in there. But then like, is downtown considered the special area as well? Yes Yeah. But is it also so it's not considered the CRA? It's two different things. Yes. It's a community redevelopment area. So community redevelopment area is something that can be both. Yes, absolutely. It can. It absolutely can. And CRA also being the docks to then that. So it could weight the smart code applies regardless the smart code is going to apply wherever we adopt it and drop it down on the ground and say this, this is going to supplant our existing land development code, you know, and land use and zoning, but does it have to be in the special area plan to have the smart code? Is that is that, that's the way we're setting it up. Yeah. Because we because you want that policy level, you kno, guidance right now it's in two separate documents. We want to we're hopeful we can do that and merge that into one. So on a on the on our land use map right now the sponge docks and CRA shows up. As for actual land use designation is CRD Community Development District. Okay. And so the Union Academy isn't quite in there yet. No, no it's not. It's not. So that's it for myself. So I because I've been explaining I want to make sure I'm explaining it right. So those are all in the special area. So the smart code only applies to special area and correct today. That is the way it's laid out. Yes. Yeah. Yeah Any other questions before we jump into process. Well I think that's what I'm saying. I like graphics like circles. You know what I mean. So the visuals hel. Yeah I mean this is better, but I'm just saying like that's and this is just a jumping off point. Yeah. I just want to know for myself because I tried to I don't want to I'm explaining it incorrectly. I think sometimes. So that's why I wanted to. But it's obviously it's good to know the districts and the colors and all. So then is there any other questions about this? And then I'll talk about the what we kind of our thought process for the engagement process. Another question, and this is just more of a when we get to it, the traffic studies is there a way that when, so you said that the concurrency thing happened because of like all 19 and I guess Tarpon Avenue or. Oh, I mean, that's all that's all past history. It doesn't exist anymore. Like when the hotel came up, they did the traffic study, but they only did like so. So is there a way that we could put in the smart code that anything that they want to do condition that they have to do the road connect, the traffic study has to be connecting to all the roads that connect to the site. Plan So no, we're under, we follow, we follow the. So concurrency in the is a we follow the Pinellas County right as does everybody. They kind of lord over us on transportation concurrency. So our concurrency ordinance is exactly the same as the county's. So we may have some latitude and we, we absolutely want to do a city wide, we're going to look at the multimodal Transportation District again, that's in the comp plan as one of our follow on actions down the road. So whether or not it ties directly into this, there may be a mechanism to we could certainly look at thoroughfares and streetscape. You know, streets and things like that. But for actual traffic count numbers, we'll we'll look we'll put that on the list of things to think about. Obvious like, like a I don't know, missing gap in that study was that honestly, it's inside it's neighborhood roads. The one thing that you will find very consistently through form based codes is and if you were, you know, they were talking about where these get applied, are traditionally kind of walkable communities. And so you have much less emphasis on, you know, parking required parking versus where the parking needs to be located and what the you know, what what a level of service on a roadway is going to be, because it's inherent in a walkable area that hopefully people are going to park their car and they're going to they're going to stay there for a few days. They may go in and out, but it's not going to be a high. You have trip capture. And so when you're applying these smart codes and form based codes, it really is predicated on that, that type of area. So which is why you don't go out in the middle of a suburban area and try to plop one down, unless you're really trying to change the form and function of an area. So regarding process, I've already talked about plan organization. So under the engagement. So what we're hoping to do is one thing we think we may need a little bit of consultant assistance through this process for some specific tasks, like if we need architectural renderings, if we need to code test, things like that, we are in process of going through a request for qualifications for, to pre-qualify planning firms for a whole range of services. A lot of sub areas, so that if we have a task, we can go to them, get a task work order and work through what we need rather than have to put like a whole project out. So that process is in place. But we really feel pretty confident that with our staff, we can we can pull off most of this in-house. And that's our intent, so if I can just real quick if, if there is somebody I think if the ref or the, the on the charter passes, I think the new thing would be 75,000 would be what you could be granted, I guess, without having to go to the board of commissioners. Oh, but yeah, not that we would need it for something like this, I don't know, but the, the consultant that we had that presented is actually at a new firm and a smaller firm, more specialized. And he really I think, connected with people in the town. So he might be a good prospect for something like this. I don't know what the name of his new place is, but, you know. So, yeah. So what we're proposing is to kind of we need to review the existing special area plan and the and the districts and, and then we know we have the one major expansion would be the I'm just going to use the Greek town area, so we're we're looking at kind of breaking up doing community engagement and three, three sessions and kind of focusing on the character districts in, in these in three locations. So we would, we would do mailed notice to property owners. Everybody before we do that, hopefully we would. And what the content is going to be that we're going to have to work through that. But right now conceptually, we're looking with like three big engagement sessions, maybe one a month. The idea being then, we would have the engagement session, we would collect all the information, we would come back to the planning and zoning board kind of ground truth and make sure we all heard the same thing. And then in the back ground, staff can be working on updates and amendments based on that. So it would kind of be a rolling engagement process. What I'm hoping that we can do is if we can get a schedule with you, and we'd like to bring this back in October. So when I do that mailed notice for when that engagement session is going to be, they know when the follow on planning and zoning board meeting is going to be to show up and kind of bring things full circle. Once we do that, then we may be in the background a little bit more on the staff side, doing the drafting, bringing the plan together. And then I want to go through a very similar process that we did with the with the comp plan and go character district by character district, and just go through the whole thing. And so it's going to take it's going to be a process. This is not something that's going to happen in two months. So yes, because that that was really sure. Yeah. Okay. So when you talk about South Pinellas, South Gateway, South Safford and south or southern portion of Spring Bayo, would that include, and I know he already asked the question, but Union Academy, it would not in this upfront process. We will but what we will do is we will I feel like I'm shouting into the mic. We will establish what the expansion process will be. We have more work to do with that area before we get to apply for them. Okay And I in any way, if I can help, I will thank you also help South Safford isn't really that populated. How how are you going around that one? Let me. I'm going to try to pull up the actual map. These are existing identified areas in the special area plan so that that's why we were trying to group together. You kind of got south Pinellas, South Safford, and then a portion of the spring Bayou District. Those are existing character districts. Okay So we're kind of we want to review those areas as a, as a group, so okay, so the South Gateway, that's all 19 down by Klosterman as we come south to South gateway is actually, it's one it is one large chunk of property that is the manatee Village South Gateway, that is the Manatee Village shopping center. We just we called that. I'm pretty sure that's the South Gateway and it's its own entity altogether in the special area plan, because it was such a large piece of property and it has such development potential, one, because it's already been brought up to base flood elevation. You notice it sits up about three feet higher than the rest of the area. So at that point in time when that was put in place, it was really identified as an area ripe for redevelopment, hasn't happened so much. So So is the area. I know some of it is still Pinellas, is the area on alt 19 by Klosterman. As you enter into harping on any of this? Because that area really needs to be I want to I know some of it. I want to find the map for you, and I'll just put the special area plan map up if I can bear with me while I go through. Come on. Through I'm going to sign this. This Oh, I was just going to pull up the plan and pull up the map. Hold on. As soon as I find it. Lunchbox and CRA special area plan. Located righ? Absolutely Yeah. He's all in on this type of stuff. I bear with me. This will just take a second. So what I'm scrolling through is the actual special area plan document today, and I'm trying to I don't know if I can get all this on the screen. Hang on. I know I'm making you sick. Where is the map? There we go. All right, let me see if I can. Write this down a little bit. So these are the existing special area plan character districts. So I don't know if you can see this or not. So this is the sponge docks. Maybe I'll just zoom in and then scroll down so that you can see. So this is the sponge docks area. This municipal gateway is really where the dog park and the splash park and everything is. So then you've got it's hard to see, but there's a North Pinellas character district. It's hard to distinguish from the what's not included, but it kind of goes about a block deep. To the west, and then on both sides. And then you've got the Uptown district, and you have downtown, downtown, gateway, Spring Boulevard, South Pinellas Avenue, this is the South Safford Character District, and then South Gateway, actually, South Gateway is this whole area. I thought it was just this, but it's the whole both sides of the street. So we'll look at all those areas. We'll we'll group them together to do the public engagement. We may move some of these boundaries around, as we kind of ground truth everything. So it'll be hopefully I'm excited. This will be a fun process, can you go back to that or you already. Yeah. So in regards to the expansion expected expansion into Union Academy, slash central Tarpon Springs, where would that be? So just with your arrow, that district is going to be primarily oh, I wish I actually had the union had the map up for the CRA boundary. To the yeah, to is it. It's but it's south of. That area right there that and farther east. Yeah. Yeah. If you want we'll try to make a note. We can send you the, the finding of necessity and you can see where we're, where we're headed with that. And then what I want to go back to the introduction on your outline. So you associated planning efforts and you list the docks and CRA sap sponge docks. You list three. And in fact, I see that you list we list central Tarpon Springs CRA plan and you parentheses future. What does that mean that that means that we know that's that's going to be the union account. It's not called it won't be called the Union Academy. CRA It's the central tarpon CRA. That's that area. Yes, yes. And this is going to be public documents sitting out there on the website. Whatever your portal, can we at least call it reference. What that means so that they understand that's the Union Academy area. Sure I mean, we can we can, you know, we can understand that that's where it fits. René, can you show me where Uptown is? The uptown district is so really, between the trail and about a block deep to the east of North Pinellas. So, like, Stumpy's is in here. Oh, yeah, I around this. Okay, so I just want as an example, just to explain some of the conversation that happened before with fish House in Greektown, Uptown. Downtown used to be called uptown. Okay. No we may not have some of this. Right. So but we would never call it that because that would be very confusing to people. Right. So that I think is what people were trying to say is that that's fine. You can call it whatever you want when you live here, but we don't want to confuse people and advertise it in some other way. We can debate all day. Oh in the book. My grandfather's book has fish house. You know, it doesn't have Greektown in it, but we can call things our own thing here, but we don't want to advertise it that way because it would be confusing to, you know, people that are moving here and things like that. So just I just use it as a clarification as to why how we name the time and our rhetoric within town is different than how we present things, and how tourists and people that are coming to shop here view that. That's all. Thank you. I didn't realize I lived in uphill. I have one question in the in the process, in getting the consultant and all that is could the P and Z board be representative or represented in selecting the consultant? You cannot. We actually explored that idea when we knew we were going to be doing an RFP for the planning consultants, and, we procedurally under city rules, we cannot like introduce outside entities into that process. So the process is already underway. We actually have already received the proposals, and we're going through the scoring and evaluation. Now, if you're I believe the list of responders is public record. If you want to ask our procurement department, they can at least tell you who's responded, the way we set it up is we identified nine sub areas that we wanted to get. So a consultant could they could apply, let's say they were really only interested in, you know, multimodal transportation planning. They could just apply to get qualified to do that type of work. Or they could apply for everything. So we had some firms that applied across the board that want to get get qualified for all ten areas or nine areas. And some only was like, well, no, I'm really only interested in economic development. So but at the end of the process, you know, as long as they can demonstrate competency for those areas, we hope to pre-qual have at least a couple, you know, consultants qualified for every one of these sub areas so that when we have a task or we need some services, we can do a scope of work and we can go straight to them, negotiate everything and get the work done and not have to go through a process every time we want to. To do that. It was more of an answer than you needed. Sorry. That's good, Renee, we met one of our speakers at the. I know you're going to get there. I'll wait till we get to the. Okay, so on process, what I may try to do is if it's okay, I think we can, like, reach out with for scheduling to try to. Well fundamentally, I do want some feedback. We're headlong rushing into holiday season, so I. I'm hesitant to try to start scheduling a major, you know, public input engagement session. In November or December. And I don't think we can functionally pull it off by October, because I'm coming back to you with a schedule. So, I would really like to start this process in, you know, sometime in January, it gives us plenty of time to get in front of everything, make sure that we can push this out so that people know the engagement is happening, and we can get a good schedule, you know, with, with you involved, I think we can probably when we get to the point of where we're actually reviewing a doc, a draft document, we'll work that schedule once we get there. I think it will probably be very similar to what we did with with the comprehensive plan, hopefully not quite as long, but that's that's the intent that I want to do. I want you guys to help get us there. And I try to do this earlier so that you could be here for it. You just so you know. Right. Yes, I'm looking forward to missing it. And we are intending to do final adoption of the comprehensive plan tomorrow night. We got one little thing. We got to address, but we're in good shape, so that will be done. That's good. It's very good. Feels good. I don't think I ever actually finished a comprehensive plan. No, I take that back. I did have another meeting with Merle or I. I mean, I'm done in October. So you have one more meeting with you? Yeah Yeah. That's really all I've go. Pat, did we want to try to get something more specific on dates at this point? But I think we've got some time to work on that. So yeah, we do. I think we're we're going to ask you about schedule, as you know, your regular meetings are the third Monday of each month. So just think about like, maybe to start out what nights like our Monday's good, the second or fourth one are probably free here or upstairs in the media room, depending on where we have these. Just think about what nights, of the week. If we have, say, one additional meeting per month, which would, you know, start thinking about that and we'll reach out to you about this process, this. Yeah, this specific time in January. Correct. Yeah. You're looking at January in the months thereafter. Yeah. January, February, March would be kind of the rolling process that's going to be on football season. So well, yeah. Okay. We'll get there. So no Mondays or Thursdays. Yeah Through January and then post February season. So people will the people will be in the list. Little football humor in there that rusty bellies if you can use that to reach out to people. Sure. You know. Yeah. If we yeah we have contact information. Yeah. So we'll you know, we'll also set this up on Connect Tarpon and so that it's a rolling place where people can go and make sure they're following what's going on, and we can push it out that way. But I think the mailed notice as we go, character district by the character character district groupings will be pretty, pretty key for us to get people early into the process. And then on the back end with planning and zoning board review. And I think that that's one of the most important facets of this, Renee, is, is community engagement, community outreach and community education so that people aren't relying on hearsay. And, you know, what happened there? And you get somebody's interpretation of it. The more we can push out there. And I think we'd be willing to do our parts. You know, in our respective neighborhoods. But when it comes to a specific district, like some sort of outreach, either from the city or from us or, you know, at Publix or anything, just handing out something to say, what's happening that this is when it's happening and this is why it's happening. I do intend to have these major community engagement sessions on, on probably on a Saturday or, you know, I'm not going to try to have them at night during the week. I just think that's to, you know, I'd rather do them on a Saturday, you know, morning or afternoon, something like that. That might actually be a good community. Connect Tarpon question I don't know. I think you think during the week is better. Yeah. I mean on the weekend these people have put some thought into that. So I mean yeah, they got birthday party too. If you have children, you're at a birthday party Saturday at 2:00. Every point you make a good point because, you know, people come on the weekend with their weekends to do something. That's true. That's true. That was in the morning. At night. Look how many people they're already working. And then they just come after work. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well we'll all right. We'll, we'll we'll chew on that and we may, we may try to have a morning and an evening session. So excuse me when you get the weekend off. This is true, so I think generally, you know, we may reach out directly. Maybe we can. Is it okay for us to do, like, a doodle poll on date preferences? Because is that legal to do, Mr. Attorney? No, I'm thinking no. We can just decide on our own. Yeah. No, no, that's fine. Another method. Okay. Understand? We'll do that. What is what is something that's acceptable, that's following that same type of concept? Sitting here talking about it. Yeah. Doing it in a public meeting. Yeah. Let us get back to you on that one. Thank you. We'll put together some options and hopefully we can nail this down in October when we know the general direction, we'll put together a draft schedule. And then if we got a minute on the fly, we will. Three. You can, you know, on a Saturday. Right. We'll figure it out. I'm more concerned about y'all's availability in an evening other than Monday, our regular Monday night. Do we do another Monday? I'm hearing not in January, because of football, but, but I mean, if the bucks. But the other thing we got to look at is the city schedules for where meetings can be held. So and what's available. So we'll do that on the back end, back end. And we'll get hopefully nail this down in October. How does the employ employees do their voting. Do they do it via emails internally. Well that's a different we're not subject to I mean we I mean we can use we use doodle polls actually. I mean just look at outlook and I can tell when anybody's available. So yeah, but that's you know, yeah. With you in the past we have sent an email that's. Yes. Set up. So they even if they hit reply all. Yeah. It only comes to it only comes to us and we say hey what nights, what dates what. And then we pull them all together and identify common dates and evenings and bring it back. That's probably the best way. Yeah, we'll do that. Well thank you Renee. Thank you all, and then so what's left on the agenda is the board. Are there any more questions on this from anybody? Yeah. Good. No productive night. Pedal. Turn it over to you. Yeah. The only. Well, I don't I don't I think the only thing we have is board items and staff items we had under the board items. If you guys want to give feedback on the on the training that some of you went to over in Tampa with, Kim was going to give a presentation. But yeah, I have just a couple I'll read from my notes. First of all, they're all great speakers, we had the first guy, Merle Bishop, who basically spoke about comprehensive planning techniques, talked about urban growth and urban edges, which and regional boundaries. He also spoke about urban service areas and what I found interesting, too, was urban infill and redevelopment areas, the live local act, was also discussed. Discussed floor area ratios, total building, all the things we just spoke about, and transformative placemaking, which was pretty interesting, and that kind of falls into some of that. Then there was Owen Beach and Peter Henne, and I got those two guys confused in my notes. I'm going to put them together. One was an attorney, one was not. But as you mentioned earlier, Florida's the third largest populated state in the nation, following California and Texas. Since 1980, we have had 12,000,200 people moved to the state. We have 39 million housing. Housing is deficient by 39 million, 3.9 million people in the state. And, we know it will take much more than 80 years. They were talking about 80 years and some of the surrounding communities where they're trying to get people to use those for the homeless. He said that since we've grown so much, there's continuous disruption and policies are actually obviously moving much slower than the market. So we're dealing with trends, not passing issues, and we need more structured attention and not just policy updates, we talked about sunshine Law. We talked about statutes versus codes, starry decisis, all that stuff, quasi judicial and legislative. And his take on legislative was you set policy opinions can matter. And the matching shirts for the people in the audience can pressure you to vote. But if you're quasi judicial, you're a mini judge. Opinions do not matter. And those people with those matching shirts out in the audience cannot pressure your vote, right? We talked about zoning precedents and they talked about the Euclidean Ohio, which was pretty interesting. Then eminent domain versus inverse condemnation, then not in my backyard. And Lulu's, which are locally unwanted land use and how those are hard to solve and getting more and more prevalent, then Bob cambric, who I want to talk to you guys about, he's more of public policy. He assists citizens in identifying, a lot of their issues. He he's really involved in community development, assisting low to moderate income people. He's really into sustainability, he also is on the board of directors for 1000 Friends of Florida, which is a great group. And he he has trying to get his communities together. He has pop up parks, food, wellness checks, etc. especially in the lower socioeconomic areas. He says. You got to get out, and that's the only way you're going to get some of those people involved, he also said, interestingly, is to look at the city of how do you say that? Apopka. Apopka Apopka, Apopka, they have a great community visioning, process and something good to look at. And he also mentioned to check out Tallahassee's community Redevelopment Agency. And that's what I have. All right. Anybody else? Any other board comments. Just really good work by staff. Thank you. Thank you. Yes absolutely. I went to the, Robert was there. Well, no, there were other people, but I Bob was my favorite, the one, the lawyer, it was a land use attorney that did he did a good job of distinguishing quasi judicial and legislative in a like you did today, city attorney, in a way that we have not been told before other than just the definition. So it made it clear in how you're supposed to make the decisions. Although I don't necessarily agree, but he just said when it's legislative, you get to, you know, you don't have to explain, you know, why or and you get to, you know, kind of use your own judgment and quasi judicial, you know, if you use your own opinion, you shouldn't be there. Whatever But, you know, and then he no one would describe they pretended a little bit not to know what like, about these, like, code hacks or the some of the live local act thing that I brought up, but, or compatibility, they avoided some questions, but just the people in the beginning. But the last guy, Bob cambric, was really good, and it's just about outreach. And I think it was like hand in hand with what the new city manager talked about. How do you spell his last name? It's a c a I have his card, so I'll give it to you. I have his card on my desk, too. And it was kind of hard to tell if he was talking about, like, the planning planners going out to the community or us, because I don't know if we could do that. I mean, I just as long as, like, as far as the Sunshine Law, like promoting something. I don't know if we could if we could do that. But I think with the new city manager, that might be something that he might implement for, the different departments and like maybe in tandem with everybody else, but it just just basically like the pop up parks. Yeah, actually some of them turned into like real parks and like, you know, and then, had the kids, one of them, I thought he had a typo. It was like some skate park. Remember Yeah, it said something punk. And I said, he said, that's not written wrong. And he said, no, that's what it's called. Skate parks or something. Yeah. And these kids, like, got a skate like a, like a small one because those things are super expensive. But, it was really impressive. And he seemed to be really genuine and care. So I'll give you his card. Thank you. He said the planner should be. And I'm laughing and chuckling because you guys are overworked already, but planner should be out in the streets two days a week and in their offices three days. And I said, okay, well then we need to have the budget done again. Yeah. You know that. No, I mean, it's, you know, it's a it's a very valid statement. I mean, if we can't walk the street and look at a property or especially in a planning process like we're talking about, and that's where you get your information, you know, I mean, sometimes it's as literal as, you know, if you're trying to establish where you want your setbacks or, you know, all right, what's the average, you know, what's happening on the street. You can measure that and you can code for it. And so if you like what you see, there's always a way to code for things like that, especially through the form based codes. So yeah, you have to get out. And then with the get togethers like having someone bring some food, having a local. Sure. Somebody, you know, and because you said you instead of having them here where it's very cold and formal, having them out and people, not just the one center where we always do it because that's just in that one area where people will come and you'll get like feedback from someone who would never come up and speak at the lectern. And it could be somebody who basically runs that neighborhood, you know? Right. Absolutely. And you'll never see them anyplace else. Yeah. Our initial, outreach on the finding of necessity for the central tarpon CRA. We, we went to the churches and we went to. Yeah. And that's, that's where we got our best feedback and input. So thank you to the city for paying for us. Yeah. We'll continue to do this every year. It's there. You know if it's locally available. So don't get it yet. I have one more board comment and it's not related to anything that we were just chatting about. But miss McNeese reminded me that several months ago I had brought up a topic and it just seemed to have slipped away. And, unfortunately, that topic probably has slipped away. And that is the Klosterman preserve issue that is unfolding before our eyes. And fortunately, it's probably unfolded. But I think we'll probably just have to use it as a lesson and coulda, woulda, shoulda at this point. But I'm trying to collect my thoughts real quick because what's probably going to happen there and a quick background if one doesn't know there's a big square of undeveloped land at the end of Klosterman that is de facto the city of Tarpon Springs. It's adjacent to the city of Tarpon Springs, and we'll see it shortly enough, because they're going to be asking for annexation. That's just my opinion. That being sai, this piece of property, which is highly coveted by every developer through the nation at this point, has been owned by the Pinellas County School District for a long period of time. And several years ago, someone decided that they should sell it and went up to a public auction block more or less. Now, whether you are near it or you're not, those of us on the LPA that's us. It has just a couple key structural features that are going to eventually impact us that we have talked about and worked on for several years. The easiest one is our issue with annexation. Well, Justin, what do you mean? It's in Pinellas County? Because whatever happens to that property, they're going to be knocking on our door. My opinion second is our new comprehensive plan that emphasizes parks and community. And I'll use parks and parks again. And our deficiency in parks and our mission statement that says the city of Tarpon Springs shall endeavor to protect, to purchas, to develop parks whenever possible. And then there's this unique segue about relationships, the city of Tarpon Springs. And I'm going to get a little bit over my skis here, has an existing relationship with Pinellas County School District. It more or less is what do you call it? When we work with Pinellas County development, there's a agreement that goes on. I'm way out over my skis. Call me back is more or less the county school district in the city are agreed to work together to reach goals, which means, in my opinion, a school district probably should have contacted the city, but they didn't happen more or less. We've got this huge, valuable piece of property that is ideal to be proactively brought into the city and turn it into a community park of whatever form or fashion that could have been. Is there dollar amounts involved in it? But it coulda, woulda, should have happened. But we missed that. And now the agency that is trying to save Klosterman preserves may or may not be successful. If they're not successful, it's going to go to the highest bidder, and that's going to be a developer. And they're going to put up maximum density apartments. How many acres? Five. Six. I think it's like five. Yeah, yeah 5 or 6. But we're going to see it in some period of time. They're going to come a knocking and they're going to say we need to be annexed to the city because we can't get water and sewer unless we ask. And all along, instead of it being proactively part of the city of Tarpon Springs and meeting our deficient park needs, there it sat for years and we didn't do a thing. Okay, so that's my board comment. It's just a comment on what we missed that train. Pardon me, did we? And I reached out to that board and he missed that bus too, and maybe we'll get a second bite at the apple. But that is a piece of property that represents the essence of all the planning we're trying to do. But we just missed it. Of course, we're just an advisory board and couldn't do anything of with it. Anyways, it's up to our board of commissioners to really act on those good impulses. So that's it. All right. Anybody else? I just think that that's an, you know, right, right. I can't hear you. I just can't hear you. Thanks. Thanks for your time. I just wanted to echo what he said, because we did have that discussion quite some time ago. And not to belabor this meeting, but you know, that it was we talked about what can we do to preserve and protect that piece of property without, you know, because density might be a big issue depending on what Pinellas County does with it. So you know, I'm not sure it's completely dead yet. The group I, I see their posts every day and they're about $200,000 away from their goal. But I don't know whether the people are going to give them time to get there or not. And I would look for a sympathetic commissioner to bring any issues to. And I'd like to I always put everything in writing. So, that's how I try to go against, you know, about things that way. I mean, I know that our meetings are recorded, but if you just keep doing that and you have to do it at their direction, I mean, I've been asking for this for a long time. It didn't happen because, I mean, I kind of know why it's happening now. And so it's not that anyone's ignoring you, but you just have to keep and look at the commissioners who have relationships with other counties and things like that. So they have share your values. So all right, there's nothing more. We stand adjourned. Kim has something to I was just going to say that it appears as though a post was made 20 hours ago that said that there was more time, they have they can work until December to raise funds. There you go. So that's good. Good. Look at that. Well, thank you for the sliver of good news. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Good night everyone. I called tax I talked to tax and I said tax. Come and chat with us. Come on. Tax in front of us. The city of Tarpon.