Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Frustrations listening to last night's (10/6) City Commisison meeting...

I listened to most of the meeting last night via the live Internet stream. Regarding the change in language for the Residential Planned Development (RPD) district - the change that will allow Publix to do what they need to do for a grocery store at the northeast corner of 2nd Ave. North and Dixie - there were a couple other ways to go about it. The best and surest way would have been to go through a land use plan change that would best reflect the commercial use of the property - but seeing as the City Commission has allowed our Comprehensive Plan to slip out of compliance, that was impossible at this time due to tight time constraints for the project to happen. Instead, the Commission voted to change the wording in the zoning code related to all RPD districts - which was over-reaching and unnecessary. RPDs typical involve a specific property and carry specific conditions related to that property that make it a "planned development." For some time now, the City had been getting away from using RPDs entirely - the Lucerne happens to be governed by an RPD. The Master Plan and the eventual code re-write was to have included more of a "form based" zoning approach - so that you could better predict what would be built there as a property redevelops. That seems to have gotten lost in the hype about the Comp Plan and all the late changes that the City Commission is ladling on it.

Speaking of the Comprehensive Plan, the Commission voted 3-2 to hold new buildings to 35 feet in commercial areas and to 30 feet (I think?) in single family residential areas. They sent the whole matter back to the Planning and Zoning Board for consideration at their next meeting so they can return a recommendation for the October 20th City Commission meeting when the changes will be incorporated into the version that is set up to the Department of Community Affairs in Tallahassee. One thing I can't get over is how many times everyone talking about this process from the dais mentioned that "DCA told us to do it this way." I guess that's what happens when you have staff and elected officials that don't know much about the Comprehensive Planning process, the city's role in it and DCA's role in it. Alas...