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Comprehensive plan and land development code rewrite

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Land Development Code

Donald, Assistant County Administrator Development Services. We're here to get some guidance on a comprehensive plan, land development code, rewrite, and the mobility fee update. The discussion will be led by Chris Hughes. You'll be assisted on the technical points that you might ask or questions you might have by uh several other

Commissioner Oakley

staff members. Chris. Good afternoon, Chris Hughes, Director of Planning and Development. I just want to say this has been a humbling day. You guys are wrestling with some amazing uh topics. Um and I want to give you some good news to start off. Um

you're not asking for money.

We're I'm not gonna go down. Thank you. Um What you're seeing and what you're experiencing are are what my father used to call growth pains. Uh we are a growing, booming country. County. And there's lots of good things happening as you drive up and down the roads and you see what's happening. Please remember that what's happening is a response to growth and success and you guys are making it all happen. It's not easy. It's sort of like riding Buck and Bronco in the rodeo, but

it's a great rodeo. So hang on and we're gonna get through this. There's ways to solve these problems and we're all in it together. So with that, what we want to do is go over a couple of very specific things related to the land development or to the first to the comprehensive plan and the land development. Code. So we are also let me just you all know Ernie Monaco is the deputy planning and development director. Also brought in today a couple of other staff who've been pivotal in the work on this and are going to be pivotal over

the next several years as we work on these projects. Smitta Ambadi, who stand up. Smitta is the interim land planning, the long-range planning manager, and she's just been promoted to. Principal planner in our office. She's an amazing talent, and we're very proud to have her with us. Next to her is Chandra Harasa. Chandra is a new to the office. He's our transportation senior planner. And he comes to us with a professional engineer's degree as well as a master's in planning and a lot of experience in Florida and otherwise

and elsewhere. He's one of our transportation experts. And next to him is Amy Elmore. Amy's a new planner, one we have in our office who's an expert in uh social media uh public engagement and she comes to us with a lot of computer skills. She's helping more broadly than then long range as well in the entire branch. So with that, uh of course you know David Goldstein always always there to help in every way we can get him to. Um so why do we need to rewrite the comp plan and the land development code? Um Ernie and I were hired

two years ago to do that. That's part of why we're here. The comprehensive plan was make this work.

Under law, the last plan we have, which is called the 2025 Comp Plan, was adopted in 2011. Under state law, we're supposed to do that every seven years, correct? So we're we're due under state law to do to do our review and update. The Land Development Code was adopted as a whole new code in 1975. Since then, there's been a number of changes and amendments that have cobbled over the years, and we have quite an incremental mix of laws at this point that are working reasonably

well. There's been a lot of amendments. We've had a lot of growth. When I say there's a lot of growth, uh someone mentioned we're over a half a million today. And I think Commissioner Starkey, you mentioned that point. I think we're up to about 525,000 at the most recent informal census numbers. And we're growing at 15 to 20,000 people a year. And so when you're talking about thousands a month, that's exactly what's happening in our county. The equivalent of a small city is moving into our county every year. And

that's the growth pains, folks. Those people need and demand services. Well I'll go back one more, excuse me. Uh twenty projected population of a million by twenty forty is what we're looking at right now. A million people, doubling our population in the next uh twenty years, twenty-five years. So the comprehensive plan, what it does for us is it provides the principles and standards, strategies to direct that growth. And

as you've heard in the discussion about all the service delivery, libraries, public safety, all of those services are connected intimately to this growth. The comprehensive plan is the document that ties that all together and makes sure that they're all coordinated. We're expecting to have changes to the comp plan. Again, and I'm going to make this point if I can get anything else across this afternoon. The comp plan changes is not a comprehensive rewrite of the comp plan. We are just going to update the document. We have a good comp plan.

The policy statements and directives are working, and what we're what we're trying to do is take the numbers and make sure that we're reflecting the growth, that all of the population changes, all of the service Delivery mechanisms, all the changes that have occurred in the last seven years are going to be acknowledged, recognized, and made current so that we can go forward. And you'll hear later when we talk mobility fees, the numbers that we generate are the driving calculations that help us estimate all of our costs, all of our service delivery, and our balancing for transportation projects,

roads, bridges, school construction. All of that planning and all of those capital improvements and maintenance derive from that underlying data analysis that we do in this document. And that's what we'll be updating. We're also hoping to add in, and we've used the word performance standards, but we're looking for ways to enhance flexibility in our policy so that we can move forward creatively, try to find opportunities. for public-private partnerships and to leverage all the resources in

the public and private sector as we go forward to develop projects. We're gonna also, and this has been missing. We're gonna be identifying, and and Dan, this is taking off some of the stuff you've been doing for the county generally, the plan needs to very specifically define the metrics and measurements that we're gonna be looking at as we go forward. Some of the new technology we have, social media devices, some of the survey mechanisms that we we now have in place, just started having in place, are Are going to enable us to move through this process

over time and actually measure as we go. So rather than hiring a consultant four or five years after the fact and asking what happened four or five years ago, we're hoping to have real-time analysis as we go through that. We're going to be trying to set that up in the plan itself with specific descriptions of the process and the measurements and the metrics.

That's why Amy's here to hear that message. So the jumping to the land development code. Unlike the Comp plan, which is just an update, we're wanting to take the land development code and really strip it down to its bare bones, rebuild the skeleton, and find a more efficient, simpler, better process mechanism to go through the approval process for development. One of the things we've discovered in working with the plan for the Code for the last several years, and our predecessors already knew this,

is that the Land Development Code has become, because of its incremental build, how it was defined to respond to specific targeted problems, it has gone off in different directions in some ways, sometimes in conflict with itself, and almost always it's created procedural barriers to getting through a process. In an efficient way. In every case, it was for a good intention. It was to achieve a specific objective or to solve a specific problem. But as you do that over

five, ten years, you start to build impediments. So we want to take it down to its bare bones, rebuild the process, preserving the things that are working, and then try to find ways to simplify it so people can get through the process better.

The new review, we're going to try to achieve a number of things, make it more user-friendly. Love those code words. More flexibility in design, best practices and new zoning techniques, and we're looking to find incentives that will help improve the quality. One of the challenges we have is people are often designing and building to the least standard so that they can spend the least amount of money and get through the process they think. As quickly as possible. But when in fact what often happens is if you come in on the front end and say, How do we do this the best that we can to

enhance the quality of the neighborhood and improve our marketability? And as we do this with new folks coming in on Mutterham projects and TOD projects, we're finding ways to create better design and improve the quality of the actual neighborhoods that are being built. We think we can create those incentives more effectively through the land development. code by building on some of the successes we've already had. So we have a particular project proposal, and of course, having heard the discussions today about MSTUs and consultants, I'm a little hesitant to even put this up

on the screen. We started this idea of talking about hiring a consultant to come in and run this project because we are heavily loaded, our staff is full-up and more than 100% used right now, mostly on development review, and in changes to the amendment. And codes and things. As we thought about it, we realized that this could be accomplished by probably more of a hybrid situation. And so last year, in the budget, you all approved four new consultant position, contract positions, a not

consultants, excuse me, I almost misspoke. Four positions to be added to our staff, but not as full-time county employees as contract employees. We have a Senior planner, a planner two, and two planner ones to do the grunt work. So we are eligible to hire them now. We we're ready to pull the trigger to advertise those positions. We also think it would be useful to have a consultant for very specific selected activities, not an overall consultant that does everything, but somebody who would come in with

targeted expertise to help us handle some of the specific requirements. Requests some of the specialties items that we're trying to work on. So what we would hope to get from a consultant is really simple. One is to review recent development trends and planning efforts, sort of a way of checking what's happening here, but also with the knowledge nationally, uh having worked in other areas to be able to bring experience to our challenges and problems, knowing what's been happening recently nationally, and then trying to find examples. uh of existing uh code

uh activities from other jurisdictions that are working very effectively. And we've thrown up a couple of names, performance standards, form-based codes. Those may or may not be the techniques that are used, but those are the kinds of things we might be looking at to see how they might apply. Is this in

Mike Moore

your budget?

Commissioner Oakley

Not yet.

Mike Moore

So we just did we just went through the budget process. I

like I said.

So we just went through the budget process. And um you know, you knew the strategic during the strategic planning meeting this was one of the main priorities. So wouldn't that be budgeted for?

Commissioner Oakley

Uh we do have uh other consulting services budgeted to a small amount of money that is available for partial on this, yes. So we could use some of the existing budgeted funds for this to a to a level. Uh whether it's enough or not is a question when we decide how we're gonna what

Mike Moore

the scope needs

Commissioner Oakley

to be.

Mike Moore

Yeah, so we just got done with the budget. Right. We went through all the exercises and again the direction was given to your team to move ahead. With rewriting the land development code months and months ago. I forget when do we meet again for the workshop, treaty payment workshop? May. What was that? May. In May. So

Land Development Code

Commissioner, I I think uh if I may that uh the direction given was to hire four people on a temporary basis, I think we've done that. I think what he's talking to you about today is well, we haven't actually hired him because We don't want to waste the money, we won't we don't want to hire until we get everything get up ready to go. But uh I think what he's saying is there's some things that these four people that's gonna come in to do the grunt work as he put it won't be able to do that we might need an outside consultant for. So that's that's

Mike Moore

outside of your

own.

I I understand what he's saying. My point is why was why didn't you ask this during the budget process for this ask for additional funding for another person, i.e. consultant. We just went through the whole budget process.

Commissioner Oakley

So we did initi

Land Development Code

we haven't changed your mind. We if if I can't commission I I made that decision not to do that because uh one of the things that you had said at that meeting was that you didn't want us to hire any consultants. So we looked at trying to do it the way we discussed at that meeting, which was hiring four people. But in doing that, looking at it long term, those four people are going to be at certain skill sets. They're not going to have national knowledge that we're going to need to bring in an excellent code for the people that we work with on a daily basis. So we're asking now for the ability to hire a consultant to help us get to that

point.

So if if there's any blame for not asking up front, I guess it's all mine.

Kathryn Starkey

What if we hire three people and the fourth one is the consultant? Can we make that one?

Land Development Code

Well you're you're looking at a difference in skill sets.

Kathryn Starkey

That's what I'm saying.

County Administrator

I I think we need to develop a scope a little more refined, kind of get an idea of what that would cost. I mean

Kathryn Starkey

we're feeling beat up over

County Administrator

here. Whether we have that in the budget or not. I know.

Kathryn Starkey

I mean there's only so much money and I you know sticking my neck out and sticking my neck out and

County Administrator

this isn't meant to be an ask. I mean this is just a discussion. We we need a consultant to do this. We need to figure out what that costs. And if we have that in the budget, we're gonna deal with it. Right

Commissioner Oakley

for exactly. Ernie, did you wanna add something? Yeah.

County Administrator

Mr. Mayor.

Jack Mariano

I know I

was

just gonna say from the sound of it you had excess money in the budget.

County Administrator

Yeah.

Jack Mariano

If you had those four consult or four positions that you weren't gonna hire, if you can do it with your existing budget, then there's really not an ask here. It's just a matter of here's how we're gonna go get it.

Mike Moore

How we

Commissioner Oakley

move

Mike Moore

the

Commissioner Oakley

money,

Jack Mariano

right?

Mike Moore

No, this is not so you're s okay, so you're saying the money is is in your current budget.

Commissioner Oakley

We'll work within what we have a budget. Yes. So we're

County Administrator

gonna Yeah, we're gonna figure out how to get this fixed. Yes, sir.

Ernie Monaco

In the in the past, what you often can use consultants for is advisory capacity. I don't see a problem, and correct me if I'm wrong. Ultimately we will have pieces, small pieces of whatever we can do that consultant can do better than us in-house. We don't have the exact talent yet of the four people, whether it's three or four is not that important. What we have to do though is what I think we should do, and it's just an opinion, is you send out an RP with a very good scope of work, they bid on it in pieces. It's like a menu. And you look at your four your four or three planners and you compare. I've got I've got for

example, I'm just giving you an example. Uh this person's a specialty in inform-based code, but I don't have someone who who who understands incentive-based zoning. But consultant, six out of twelve, who responded, has given me a price of what it would cost to do that to incorporate that into uh into the land alone code. It may be worth going back then to those consultants and say listen for this price you've given me and I've compared against 12 consultants for six, whatever I can get. And say I know roughly

Land Development Code

if I may I I think we'd like to do that. I was gonna make sure

Mike Moore

it's within your current budget that we already just went through.

Land Development Code

That's good.

Kathryn Starkey

D does anyone remember what we paid Glady Jackson? That's who did our last rewrite, right? It was huge. It was really

County Administrator

if you use the way you do it, it's gonna be over it's not if all you do is hire somebody to do it. It's it's gonna be lots. Yeah,

Kathryn Starkey

so they're not asking

County Administrator

for

Kathryn Starkey

anything near like that.

County Administrator

done by the four-pointer.

Kathryn Starkey

Just so you guys know. The thing the thing I have is if we're gonna hire someone, like we hired AECOM to do the parts. We can't just let it Sit on a shelf and collecting the code. Well this is

County Administrator

a land development community.

Kathryn Starkey

I

know

but we use

County Administrator

every day.

Kathryn Starkey

That's my thing with consultants. I'm okay with hiring if we put the what they do

County Administrator

to work. So the re the main reason we're here is we have some questions and we need some ideas. Go ahead.

Commissioner Oakley

All right, so where were we?

Good.

Kathryn Starkey

Go back, go back to me. I gotta skip a couple of these things.

Commissioner Oakley

So this was I'm sorry. So this was um these are things we might add to the new code, some of the issues that we wanted to address with the work that's to be done. We talked that's about the sorry incentive led regulations. These are just some examples of some of the topics we might cover. Um high-risk zone areas, clean energy issues and initiatives. The big one down at the bottom is installation of gigabyte infrastructure. One of the things we learned from the connection. Connected City Project is this is a huge economic driver, and we need to figure out the way to do that on the west side and the existing redevelopment areas as well as the new emerging neighborhoods.

Um we're looking also to create a number of different types of regulations. One of the ways to approach this is to actually land in specific areas. And we we've talked Chris,

County Administrator

can we go back?

Commissioner Oakley

Sure.

County Administrator

So the question here is what do you want to see out of the new code with respect to incentive regulations? What are things we would like to see the code incentivize?

Mike Moore

Sure.

County Administrator

I

Mike Moore

I think the you go back and commissioners jump in here when we had the strategic planning workshop one of the main things w the reasons we asked to do this rewrite was we want Pasco County to be an attractive place to do business in, make it easy easier to do business in, and you know how you find that out? We talk to the stakeholders. The stakeholders are the ones that are gonna tell you how that's gonna happen and how that's gonna work. So I think that again I'll think I know but that was one of the our number one priorities and we talked about this is why you're gonna write rewrite the relay development

code. Make sure we can get make sure they're not getting held up. You know when Don I talked to you on the phone or Chris I talked to you on the phone they're like well it's in the code we have to follow the code we can't get away from that. Even though You may agree at sometimes This isn't the way I would do it, but it's in the code, so legally I need to follow it. So how do we pull that monotony out of the process so we can get people up and running faster? It'll cost them less money and more people will be willing to invest in Pasco County.

So we don't lose business, we don't lose opportunities. And we are not known as a place people who don't want to do business. Does anybody disagree or anything? We're doing

Ron Oakley

that.

Mike Moore

I mean,

Ron Oakley

yeah. I think they're doing that now.

Mike Moore

Right.

Yes, they're doing their best.

Ron Oakley

They're working

Mike Moore

at it, but they can't change the code. That's why we're doing this. Right,

Ron Oakley

that's why we're doing this. Exactly. But they are actually have been working very hard with new people coming in. Well they they owns and do and it comes back. But

Mike Moore

they have constraints. We hear about it.

But they have constraints that they can't help and it's not their fault.

Commissioner Oakley

So Mr. Chairman, just and uh following up on that point, we've already done outreach to the building community. We're continuing to do that. Uh we have scheduled meetings with some of our principal developers, we're meeting with T meeting with TBBA and we're we're going to be talking about the specific issues and concerns that they have. We're also going to be building a team that will be working with the with the in-house team through the process. Um much as we did with the connected city on a weekly basis to actually work step by step through each of the issue areas and make sure

we're addressing them directly.

Mike Moore

And

other

pieces like your um Commissioner Oakley people like Metro Salito and people that have been through the process of a large organization like that. But what do you feel could be done differently or better? What would have made your life easier too? You know, not just quote developer, not just quote builders, but actual owners of businesses and business people too.

Kathryn Starkey

And I think we still hear issues with on the commercial side, so commercial side's definitely something you gotta look at. But I'm very much for encourag finding an incentive to encourage redevelopment. I'd like I've talked about that on 19 and I think I saw a slide ahead the Pasco Prosperity somewhere.

Commissioner Oakley

So I was on the first one on

Kathryn Starkey

our list, yes. I I I am I think that's really important for the county, especially you know we have so much population on the west side and most counties uh uh in Florida that are on the coast, your most valuable properties on the coastline and it's not that way in our county and we need to reimburse that.

Mike Moore

I agree a hundred percent. Good commissioner

Jack Mariano

Mariano. Yeah and I really like those bullets and that redevelopment is key and I know when we talk about the next item that comes up it'll be addressing that quite a bit. Clean energy incentives as well. Uh I love that the gig infrastructure. What type of incentives you guys talked about and thought about?

Ernie Monaco

Okay, can I just comment about Connected City? Yeah. What we did in Connecticut City was actually offered disincentive. You picked the billers in the Owners pay a thousand bucks. But if they do certain things like put a solar rope on top of the you know solar rooftop panels or they do smart water, you get your credit back back. So at the end of the day it costs you nothing, but you're highly motivated to get that thousand dollar back. So that's a disincentive, but that's one thing that that is it works, at least with Connected City, because they're gonna be doing that. They say they they're into that. Um

Commissioner Oakley

let me just add on the clean air energy and It's not just about being green and doing low energy, it's also the emerging economic development activity for high technology jobs. And if we can identify ourselves as a hotspot for the development of new edge technology, we'll be able to create a synergy between job creation and possibly new manufacturing and industry. And that that's the call, that's the goal behind Connected City by creating an environment where people Going to want to do business because of high-speed technology, gigabyte technology,

but it's also going to leverage. We've got the medical campus coming out with Tampa General, uh, the group that are out there. We've got MIT engaged, we've got USF engaged. There's a number of partners that are kind of circling right now, trying to take a look at are we the place to land? So it it that's how it'll build. And if we can pop it onto the west side. With gigabet technology into the corridor in the redevelopment area, we could stimulate similar activity in that area. And I don't want to, and I'm going to jump to

Mike Moore

the next slide. And that's

right,

I'm going

to

jump in one more time because that area you said exactly what we hear from all the time on the west side. Where's the incentives to come for developers to come and do redevelopment? There has to be something there for them. We know we've talked about before what they've done in Hillsburg or City of Tampa and things like that and other areas. you they gotta have the they gotta

Commissioner Oakley

have a carrot. The technology is key to making that even possible. So that's great. So I just also want to point out it's not just Wells.

Mike Wells

Sorry. Chris, hold on just a minute. I um talk about redevelopment I can tell you Rural King, if we haven't contacted them yet on the old Kmart on US 19 in Hudson, they just they just did the one in Zephyrhills at the old Kmart out there. I'm pretty certain we could get them here. Um it's not a high paying job, but it's it's like uh tractor supply on steroids. Uh Rural King, they uh farm supplies, automotive stuff. It's a it's a neat store. It's one of the Spring Hills. Like tractor supply? But a huge

one. It's like all kinds of size. Just throwing it out there.

They just did the Kmart here. They know the model, it'll be perfect. No.

Commissioner Oakley

Uh

Mike Wells

I know we're not digging in too much here, so I'm not gonna but it looks like you're talking about I know we got a lot of duplication in the code. I know it seems like we're talking about adding things, but that's really not what you're saying. We're talking about taking things away.

Commissioner Oakley

Absolutely. Because that's what you're

doing.

Stripping down first and ris and retaining what's working well so that we maintain the the techniques that are working.

Mike Wells

And I would hope that somebody, I know Matt's not here anymore. I know he spent probably the most time on the connected city stuff. Well right Ernie did. So Ernie should hopefully be able to to lead this and not put these new folks. Um maybe they could do something else and he could maybe two of them could take his spot where he leads this because we've seen how successful it's been already. I know they took a lot of things out. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's a model that we spent

thousands of thousands of hours working with them. So we shouldn't reinvent the wheel. Exactly. I would think that there's there's a lot of good things we're doing out there. That was the idea I thought from the beginning was let them pilot it. That's why the state supported it with Wilt and so forth. Definitely

Unidentified speakerVoice A

right.

Mike Wells

We try to do the same thing to cut out all the red tape and make it easy to do business here. And

Commissioner Oakley

and we've built an internal work team which will continue as we move into this project as well. It's not we're not going to Get everybody all new. Okay. And

Ernie Monaco

that was just comment because that was the first step when we looked at the code. What can we remove? What's worth keeping? And we've removed I think about a third of the stuff that we said this isn't what we want. So we're exactly going to file on that. I think it was large numbers of pages that we just said this is not gonna be we're gonna have to move on.

Commissioner Oakley

I also just want to say that's not just the nineteen quarter, it's also the forty-one quarter, Land O' Lakes. It's the old Lakeland Highway quarter on the east side, it's the gateways to to the camp. County north and south best.

Mike Moore

So all yeses from the board, they're looking for some direction, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, don't go.

Commissioner Oakley

I'm sorry, back.

County Administrator

Yep. You're you're asking a question. Thank you. All all yeses. Everybody like this?

Okay. All right.

Commissioner Oakley

Good. Thank you very much.

County Administrator

You're welcome. Thank you.

Commissioner Oakley

All right, the uh sorry. This might went the wrong way. Sorry. Here we go. Um this is the key part uh that we're interested in doing. One of the things that that Dan has recently introduced to us uh in general is the concept of moving the level of responsibility to the level that can be most quickly responsive, to the low to the lowest level where the work can be decided. You still have to of oversight and you have to still have check. Some balances. We don't need to have people having to duplicate review or having to pass things up a chain of command.

So that translates in my mind to the term administrative approval. So one of the concepts that we want to further, and this is very important to I think the success moving forward, and I am biased because I think this works and I've had it in other areas where I've worked, is that instead of everything going to a committee, everything going Into the DRC or even to the board ultimately. There are things that have to go to the board that are legislative, but there are a number of things that are currently going through substantial processes that take time that

can be decided at an administrative level. Whether it's department head level or an ACA level, we haven't figured that out yet. But somewhere down further in the organization, what you really need to reserve your process stuff for is when. There's high level of conflict or there's an appeal necessary so that people go through things that are truly necessary to be diving into the complexity. Most things, 90% of 95% of the work and the approval that comes through our county to work quickly. should be able to be structured and handled

at an administrative level in a reliable, objective fashion that'll work.

Kathryn Starkey

I understand that, but I have to say there are some decisions that have been made over the years um by your by the zoning administrator and previous zoning administrators that I think have gone against board board direction. So I'm a actually a little leery of that uh if we don't have any recourse and uh I would say That has to do with signs, and someone saying, for example, a feather banner is not a temporary

sign. How how can you possibly say that?

Land Development Code

Well, if I if I may, Commissioner, we're not suggesting that you don't have any recourse, we're suggesting that the that the approval be changed because what happens is if the zoning administrator makes a call, he or she is still answerable to the department head, which is And over to the actor, which is me, and then maybe on up the band. Depending on how far down he wants to push the

Kathryn Starkey

who decided that a feather banner was not a temporary sign. I can't. I'd like to

Land Development Code

make the

Mike Moore

decision. Yes, go ahead.

Unidentified speakerVoice A

So what you're talking about is interpretations of the code. If the Yeah, what you're talking about is interpretations for the code. That's not what Mr. Hughes is talking about Mr. Hughes is talking about the approval process in the code. So if the code is Defined enough, which it has to be because you can't delegate to staff something that has legislative authority. So there has to be sufficient criteria

for staff to act on. Once that once those criteria are there, there's really no need for a public hearing because all that can do is really get you all in trouble. Um because it should issue. We've had to do that. That's the that's the you know if you go back to the ULI report and the issues of predictability, if If the code, which I don't think it currently does, But if the code were re-to be

rewritten that to give those criteria that says if X, Y, and Z are done, you get a permit.

I don't think the board needs to see those anymore.

Kathryn Starkey

I'm okay with that. That's kind of zoning by right kind of. It's the performance standards. The criteria is the

County Administrator

key. Right. But I'm okay.

Commissioner Oakley

There will always be the opportunity for repeal under the process. Everybody's rights will always be protected.

All right, you had already brought up connected cities as a model. The question is, do we want to continue to use connected cities examples as a way of expanding that countywide as a model for how to do the county code generally? And it talks about the gigabyte community fees, uh mobility fee credits, but Ernie just described those a little bit. And then and the neighborhood vehicle trails. Some of the technology changes that we're doing for design could be things that could be applied more broadly available in the county generally. So do you want to

continue using the connected city model? Move that forward? I think

Mike Moore

again, it's up to the entire board, but um I think giving the yes, giving the opportunity to duplicate is something I think we all talked about when we were fine with the remote process.

Commissioner Oakley

So we had touched a little bit on this earlier in the discussion, um public outreach measurement. Methods and we talked a little bit about uh the focus groups and the the interest air interest groups. Um we would propose doing work a series of workshops uh and sh or charettes, um establishing the stakeholder groups which we discussed earlier, uh, and then we're gonna go social media project website and have a totally transparent process that anybody can engage uh on an ongoing basis throughout the process.

County Administrator

Correct during the process.

Commissioner Oakley

In addition to the mandate. There is going to

County Administrator

be a lot of outreach. And actually that's probably what will take the longest in the process will be the outreach fees. The study of the meetings, the timelines, and all that. That actually will take up more of the process than most of the other effort.

Jack Mariano

Yes sir. Do we really need to go that much with this? I mean if we're going to simplify things and make things better, do we really need that much? I mean, couldn't you do it in like one workshop in front of

County Administrator

presentation?

Jack Mariano

Well, I think

County Administrator

I would prefer more rather than less. In something like this, you I think you always want probably a little more outreach than a little too less.

I think if we came to the board, we would want to be able to say we had this many D's and people showed up, and that there was, you know, we o overdid the public outreach rather than under the public. Do the public outreach. That's what I would rather err on that. Even if we're making it simpler, even if we're making it easier, I would still rather err on too much outreach than too little. Okay.

Jack Mariano

I mean with limited staff time, et cetera, though, I just wonder how much outreach you really need to do.

Land Development Code

Well well, Commissioner Oakley One of the reasons that outreach is so important in this instance because One of the things that we deal or some of the things that we deal with every day is the results of a lack of reaching out to begin with. Because we we actually we paint ourselves into a corner based on the rules that we that we've already made that were intended to fight some problem that we had at that time that may not even exist anymore. But now we still have to deal with it because that's the law, now that's in the code. So we we wanna avoid those unintended consequences. And how do we do that? We go We do outreach and we talk and

we say, Well, this is what I think. What do you think? Does this does this impact you in a way that I I can't see right now? Alright, so you're not sure

Jack Mariano

what

Land Development Code

you want to do yet.

Jack Mariano

You'll you'll want to go out and reach out to get that information back before you make the move.

Land Development Code

We know, Commissioner, we want to simplify the we want to check with our stakeholders to see what's the best, and we have an idea of how to do that, but we want to check with our stakeholders to make sure that they agree that that's the best idea, and they may have another idea that we haven't even thought of. Yeah. So how how do you reach out to let's say the building community or would it be neighborhoods or how would you go out and do it? Well we we have stakeholder committees right now. We got one we're gonna be meeting with tomorrow on uh uh that we meet with all the time. We have a vertical and a horizontal review committee. Do we use people out of those committees? They already express a willingness to volunteer or whatever we needed them to volunteer for

to help train this code because remember this affects their living on a daily basis. And some of the things that But there are there are known wrongs in the in the code that we all know about, but we can't do a lot about without changing the code as a whole. So like the construction board, would you kind of start with those folks? Not the construction board. We we have uh we have a vertical committee that's made up of people that do actual construction, the developers that actually build a house going up. It's an ad point, right? It's an ad hoc

County Administrator

committee.

Jack Mariano

But I'm just wondering, we're looking at all these little directions. That are different that how do you get all

Land Development Code

the way from development to the

right-of-way.

They're actually the same commission because you have when you're doing development, you have the people that do the horizontal development and the land ready, you have the people who do the vertical. We've engaged both parties. We we engage the vertical and the horizontal uh people. So

Ernie Monaco

and some of them also, excuse me for a second, is that are based on special interests. For example, there is a a team putting together Team for two solar energy, for example, or energy generation. That's one of the topics out of many. There are especially people that have an interest in that. Those are the people that I want to really listen to and really get their input from. So there'll be

Commissioner Oakley

groups like that. As we go through the code, we're going to identify specific areas of interest, and we'll be able to reach out to the specific impacted parties specifically for those topics. So that some of those will be workshops, some of those will be meetings. We may call them in on individual. basis to give their comments to get them in the record by multiple means. It'll be public meetings, workshops, charettes, a variety of techniques. And it'll be open to the public to put in comments electronically anytime as well. We'll be gathering that information to help us guide our work as

we go to the site. That's good. So that's enough and what we've described works. Yeah. Oh thank

Mike Moore

you. Oh thank you. I think we're all excited that we move forward this time, right? Excellent. All right.

Commissioner Oakley

Thank you very

Mike Moore

much. We will go chop chop.

Commissioner Oakley

Right. Let David come up. Yeah.