Loading...
HEX Minutes 02/27/2025February 27, 2025 Page 1 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COLLIER COUNTY HEARING EXAMINER Naples, Florida February 27, 2025 LET IT BE REMEMBERED that the Collier County Hearing Examiner, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 2:00 p.m., in REGULAR SESSION at 2800 North Horseshoe Drive, Room 609/610, Naples, Florida, with the following people present: HEARING EXAMINER ANDREW DICKMAN ALSO PRESENT: Michael Bosi, Planning and Zoning Director Raymond V. Bellows, Zoning Manager Tim Finn, Planner III (appearing remotely) Ashley Eoff, Planning Technician February 27, 2025 Page 2 HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Today's February 27th, 2025. My name is Andrew Dickman. I'm the Hearing Examiner for Collier County. This is the Hearing Examiner meeting. Let's all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, please. Thank you. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. Let me make a couple of quick announcements. As I said, my name's Andrew Dickman. I'm a Florida Bar attorney practicing over 20 years -- is my mic on? -- practicing over 20 years in the area of land-use local government. I am not a county employee. I am retained by the Board of County Commissioners to fulfill the duties of the Hearing Examiner that are prescribed in the Code of Ordinances. My job is to conduct the -- this quasi-judicial hearing, and I'll explain that in a minute. I will not be rendering any decisions here today or anything. My decision will be in writing within 30 days after this. When I refer to a quasi-judicial hearing -- the mic keeps going out. Hopefully everyone can hear me. I'll try to project my voice. Today is the day that I need to hear from the county, from the applicant. One second. We're going to do a switch-out. It might be a battery or something. My pacemaker. I don't know. So I'm going to conduct a hearing today. And I want -- it's fairly informal. So anyone who's going to speak here today, you'll have to do it under oath. But I want you to be calm, relaxed. It's most important for me to get whatever information you want to communicate to me, whether you're the applicant, county, or a member of the public, on issues that are germane to the criteria related to the petition that I have to review. So today -- after today, the record is closed. I have read everything that's been submitted that's part of the February 27, 2025 Page 3 file. It's available to the public. I did do a site visit -- I will disclose that -- however, I have not had any conversations with the county staff, with any applicant, any neighbor, anybody. I try to keep myself here as a quasi-judge in an impartial position so that I can take all the testimony and evidence here today, close the record, and render a fair decision within 30 days. The procedure that we follow is the county will introduce the item. We only have one item on the agenda today. They'll give me a little bit of background about the petition, some of the notice issues, any recommendations that they have, any conditions that they would suggest, and then the principal case in chief will be done by the applicant or the applicant's representative. So the county will be here in the middle podium. The applicant or applicant's representative will use the podium over here by the court reporter. Mentioning the court reporter, she is taking verbatim transcripts of everything that I'm saying, so I'm trying to speak as clearly as possible. Even though I was raised in Florida and have a very heavy southern accent, I have managed to cover it up fairly well at times. We try not to talk over each other or else she's not going to be able to capture what we're saying. She will stop the meeting and say, "Please wait. Stop," or if you talk really, really fast, I probably won't understand it, and she probably won't either. So that being said, if you have any phones or anything on that create noise, please turn them off so that we can focus on the item today. The other thing that I do want to mention and will mention it now and at the end is that this space, for anybody watching or listening, is going to be abandoned for a short time, and we're going to move the meeting to a different space while this space is being renovated. Right, Mike? February 27, 2025 Page 4 MR. BOSI: Correct. For the month of March, it's just going to be going through a technology upgrade. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Excellent. Great. So we will be relocating. So if anybody's watching, make sure that you check that out. Look for the new room location. And we'll get -- we'll make that announcement again at the end of this meeting so it's clear that everybody has fair notice. MR. BOSI: And I will add that the advertisements for the March meetings, which will take place at the CareerSource, have been designated that that will be the location, so -- HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: But it's in this campus area, right? MR. BOSI: Yeah. It's right across the street. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Right across the street. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. All right. So why don't we go ahead and swear in anybody who's going to speak here today. Please stand, raise your right hand, and I will ask the court reporter to administer the oath. THE COURT REPORTER: Do you swear or affirm the testimony you will give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? (The speakers were duly sworn and indicated in the affirmative.) HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: All right. Thank you very much. Why don't we just -- we have one item today. Why don't we jump right into that. Who is covering it? MR. BELLOWS: We have Tim Finn, our principal planner. He's going to be remotely presenting. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. So he'll be appearing remotely. All right. Tim, take it away. MR. FINN: Hi, Andrew. Can you hear? February 27, 2025 Page 5 HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: I can. Thank you. MR. FINN: Okay, good. For the record, I'm Tim Finn. I'm Planner III. This is for Petition No. VA-PL20230015856. This is for owners' agent, Sarah Knaak of Knaak Design Group, on behalf of owners Debra and Michael Feaser, request a variance from Ordinance No. 92-15, Section 3.07, Table II A, side yard setbacks for a single-family detached dwelling unit on the north side from 10 feet to 4.7 feet and on the south side from 10 feet to 9.85 feet and from the rear yard setback accessory from 10 feet to 9.65 feet for the screen enclosure on a .24-acre property and in the Lely -- Lely Island Estates subdivision also described as 8967 Lely Island Circle in Section 34, Township 50 South, Range 26 East, in Collier County, Florida. This project is compliant with the GMP and LDC, therefore staff is recommending approval. The applicant has complied with all hearing notices by our operations staff. The advertisement was sent to the Clerk on January 28th and posted on February 7th. The property owner notification letters were mailed out on January the 31st. The hearing advertisement property signage was constructed at the property by staff on February the 6th, which is included in Attachment D of the backup materials. And this concludes staff's presentation. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: All right. Thank you very much for that. Is the applicant here, applicant's representative? Come on up. You can use this podium over here, yeah. MS. KNAAK: Okay. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Good afternoon. MS. KNAAK: Good afternoon. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Name? February 27, 2025 Page 6 MS. KNAAK: My name is Sarah Knaak. I represent Knaak Design Group and the homeowners, Debra and Michael Feaser. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. Thank you. MS. KNAAK: Next slide. This is the vicinity map where the property in question's located in the Lely Resort Association. Next slide. Oh, next slide, please. This here is a parcel map, an aerial view, just isolating where the property is on Lely Island Circle. Next slide. Just a quick intro. The home was built in 1998 and then purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Feaser on May 23rd, 2022. We completed construction of the pool, pergola, and screen cage in 2023. When we tried to obtain the final survey for the certificate of completion, that's when we determined -- the county determined that there was an encroachment into the setbacks. Next slide. MS. EOFF: I'm trying. We are having some technical difficulties. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Take your time. MS. KNAAK: So this is just a summary of the variance we're requesting, which Tim already covered. So, you know, as previously stated, I think it was 4.7. If you could go back to that now, please. MS. EOFF: I am not sure what's going on. MS. KNAAK: Mike, if you can come over to explain this slide a little bit better than I can. MR. MAYER: Well, we've got two slides on top of each other. MS. KNAAK: Okay. But I think you need to -- MS. EOFF: I'm switching between them, and it's not -- MS. KNAAK: It's not capturing. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. Well, we -- February 27, 2025 Page 7 basically, the slide is listing what the request is, right? The variances? MS. KNAAK: Yes, sir. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: So it looks like it's north side, south side, and rear side, right? MS. KNAAK: That is correct, yes, sir. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. MS. KNAAK: Okay. So the next slide outlines the survey, which was obtained from ME Land Survey, and the encroachments are identified. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: All right. So this is an after-the-fact, right? So it's already in place. MS. KNAAK: Correct. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: The cage and the pool was already put in place and then -- MS. KNAAK: Correct. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: -- from what I understand, I'm going to just move this along a little bit. What I understand is that upon asking for final inspection, it was discovered that there's an encroachment in these various side yards, right? MS. KNAAK: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. So then county redirected you to me because I'm the one that gets the pleasure of reviewing these applications; is that right? MS. KNAAK: That's correct, yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. This happens from time to time. I don't want -- I mean, we -- probably five or six a year. You know, there's -- they come in after the fact. You know, someone's doing something. Can you tell me a little bit about -- like, I notice that there was a no objection letter in here. Is that -- was there any other neighbors February 27, 2025 Page 8 that had any no objections to this? MS. KNAAK: We didn't receive any notices from any neighbors. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: You didn't see, okay. Any objections at all? MS. KNAAK: Not at all; no, sir. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: All right. Well, we're going to hear from the public or see if anybody's speaking at all. MS. KNAAK: Okay. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. So was your -- was your team responsible for putting this in? MS. KNAAK: Yes. We're the general contractor. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: And can you give me an idea of, like, how this happened and why it happened? MS. KNAAK: So we -- it stemmed from the footers. When we marked the footers, everything was within the setbacks. I mean, it wasn't -- no encroachments. But we feel maybe somehow it was moved or -- we don't know what happened. But when they laid it out, it was fine. So maybe something moved, because the one -- the two encroachments are less than a foot, and then the other one was probably almost five feet. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Right. So the north side is actually -- you're reduced -- where were 10 feet is required, you're asking for 4.7. So let's call that, like, a 6-foot change -- MS. KNAAK: Correct. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: -- roughly. MS. KNAAK: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: And then on the south side, it's de minimis, really. It's 9.85 where 10 feet is required, and then on the rear side, it's 9.65 where 10 feet is required. So it's really the north side which, I guess, looking at the survey, February 27, 2025 Page 9 is there an arrow on here? Arrow. Unusually north is up. Oh, I see. North is that way. So the north side is the side yard; is that correct? MS. KNAAK: Is that correct, Mike? HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: If you're going to speak, sir, you have to come on -- why don't you come up, please. MR. MAYER: Do I come up? MS. KNAAK: You can come up. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Please come up and -- you can't speak from the audience. I should have told you that. Your name, please? MR. MAYER: My name is Michael Mayer. I'm with Knack Design Group. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. So explain this larger side. I mean, the -- two of them are de minimus, in my opinion, but there's a big change that happened on the north side which looks to be, like, the side yard. MR. MAYER: Right. It's the right side of the plan. And, yeah, there's definitely a greater encroachment into the setback, and not -- not really sure how it came to be that much. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: I mean -- because it seems like this should be going right from the sides -- I'm looking at the survey. So if you take the survey and you go directly back, I mean, it should go directly back that way. But I do see that the lot is a unique lot. Some people refer to them as pie shapes, meaning that the rear yard is less -- is skinnier than the frontage yard, right? MR. MAYER: Correct. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: So I don't know how to prevent these in the future. It does happen. I'm not going to say it doesn't happen. I hear a couple of after-the-fact permits -- or these variance after the fact. I don't like to hear them because it tells me February 27, 2025 Page 10 that there's a mistake that happened somewhere along the way. And you-all are contractors. I don't know if there's an obligation to double-check things and remeasure things and see if things are off, but it sounds like someone went out and poured concrete after you-all staked it out or something like that. MR. MAYER: Yeah. And we had the plans approved for permitting and were not aware of any encroachments. So I think we built the structure per plan. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. MS. KNAAK: Yeah. And we had a footer inspection, too, if I might add. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. MS. KNAAK: So the footer inspection requires, you know, the depth and the, you know, size rebar is being used, that's also another, you know, checks and balance. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. And I'm here with the planners, so I'm not sure if you guys can speak for the building inspectors. But do they check that when they go out? I mean, was this -- I'm just kind of curious, like, when was this missed? At the beginning? MR. BOSI: My understanding, the way the footer inspection is, they're not inspecting in terms of side yard setback or not. They're looking for the construction of it, and the building techniques that were utilized. So it wasn't something that was checked at the footer size. It was probably done at final inspection when they finally -- they discovered that it was encroaching. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. I do see that if you look at the -- I'm looking at the survey. It's interesting that that right side of the house is actually 10-point -- if you take the north -- northwest, I guess, northwest corner of the house is at 10.3 feet, whereas the other side is at 15.1 -- 15.15. So the house was February 27, 2025 Page 11 actually, when it was built, was shifted a little bit to the north, which I guess if you do take the side of the house and you go straight back, logically you're going to end up in the rear yard -- in the side-yard setback. MR. MAYER: Yes. And our design did align with the side of the house, and we didn't change the depth of that. So again, I feel like the plan was followed that was permitted and -- HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Yeah, I get you. MR. MAYER: -- approved. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: I hear you. So if it were to be -- if it were to stay within the 10 feet for each side, the -- I guess it's a lanai, right, or, like, a pool -- with a pool with a cage, right? MR. MAYER: Yes, yes, yes. MS. KNAAK: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: You would have to, like, be dog-legged a little bit to the left in order to stay -- MS. KNAAK: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: -- inside those side yards. Okay. Yeah. And it's all because of the unusual lot, really. It's not a -- it's not a perfect rectangular lot. I see that very clearly. Do you have anything else, or can we go to the public hearing -- public hearing part and -- MS. KNAAK: No, no. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: -- see if there are any public speakers here? Any there any public speakers for this? MS. EOFF: Give me just a second. No, we do not currently have any public speakers registered. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. Nobody here February 27, 2025 Page 12 as public speakers. Yeah, this is pretty straightforward. I get it. It's unfortunate. You know, these lots are tricky. I think what -- how this started, if I look at this, it's the way the house is positioned. You know, just the house alone, there's a -- they kept it right at the 10-yard side-yard setback and so forth and so on. Are you going to have to go through -- I mean, I don't get involved in any of the HOA processes or whatever, but is there another step within the HOA that you have to go through -- MS. KNAAK: No, sir. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: -- for this? That's it? MS. KNAAK: We just had approval to build -- HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. MS. KNAAK: -- received the approval, and then move forward thereafter. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. I have no other questions. Anything else from the county? MR. BOSI: Nothing other than the -- two of -- the de minimus side yards would qualify for an administrative variance, but because of the third, it would -- that's why we had to go through the full after-the-fact variance process. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: I get that. It's so small on those other two, so there's really just one that is significant, I guess. It's at least halfway into the side yard. The back part, however, I will say, is a lake, right? MS. KNAAK: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: It's a pond -- or it's part of a golf course or lake, so there's no one back in the rear yard, so -- and I did see the sign posted outside of the house, so -- and the mailers went out, and so the public has got an opportunity right now February 27, 2025 Page 13 and right here to speak if they wish to. There's no one speaking, so with that -- MR. BOSI: And I would add one more -- and I think you've probably identified it within the package. There were two letters of objections [sic], and from the addresses that are -- from the letters who do not -- HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: No objections. MR. BOSI: No objections. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Yes. MR. BOSI: And from the address, you can tell those are the two adjoining. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: The adjoining properties. MR. BOSI: The two adjoining neighbors that would most affected have provided letters of no objection. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Yes, I see that. Thank you. That's a good observation. So both sides, more particularly the one where the larger -- or the larger setback -- or variance is being requested, there's a letter of no objection. So we're glad to hear that. Okay. So with that, unless you have something else you want to say... MS. KNAAK: I conclude, thank you. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Nice try with the slide show. I'm sure the room will be so high tech you won't be able to contain yourself next time. Thanks for being here. MS. KNAAK: Hopefully. Thank you. Thank you for your time. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: We really appreciate your time. February 27, 2025 Page 14 All right. I'll get a decision out as soon as possible. All right. That's it on the agenda, correct? (No response.) HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: All right. So once again, we are not going to be in this room all of March -- all of March madness. We're going to be at the -- what do you call it? MR. BOSI: The CareerSource Center. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: The CareerSource Center, okay, which is here, right across the street. And then when we come back into this room, it's going to be Star Trekkie, right? MR. BOSI: Yes. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Okay. MR. BOSI: And just for your own information, on the March 13th meeting, we have three petitions, and as of now we have zero petitions scheduled for the 3/27 hearing, and the advertising deadline for that has already passed, so that meeting will be canceled. I'll coordinate -- HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: So one meeting in March. MR. BOSI: One meeting in March. So we'll only have to miss this room for one meeting, and then we'll be back in technology's laptop. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: Can't wait. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day. Enjoy your weekend, too. Thanks for being here. MR. BOSI: Thank you. HEARING EXAMINER DICKMAN: We're adjourned. ***** February 27, 2025 Page 15 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Hearing Examiner at 2:22 p.m. COLLIER COUNTY HEARING EXAMINER ANDREW DICKMAN, HEARING EXAMINER These minutes approved by the Hearing Examiner on 3/12/2025 , as presented _____✓________ or as corrected _____________. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING, BY TERRI L. LEWIS, REGISTERED PROFESSIONAL REPORTER, FPR-C, AND NOTARY PUBLIC.