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CCPC Minutes 10/02/2025October 2, 2025 Page 1 of 84 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION Naples, Florida October 2, 2025 LET IT BE REMEMBERED that the Collier County Planning Commission, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m., in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Joe Schmitt, Chairman Paul Shea, Secretary Michael Petscher Charles "Chap" Colucci Amy Lockhart, Collier County School Board Representative ABSENT: Chuck Schumacher, Vice Chairman Randy Sparrazza Michelle L. McLeod ALSO PRESENT: Raymond V. Bellows, Zoning Manager Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning Director Heidi Ashton-Cicko, Managing Assistant County Attorney Courtney DeSilva, County Attorney's Office Ailyn Padron, Management Analyst I James Sabo, Planner III October 2, 2025 Page 2 of 84 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. And good morning, and welcome to the October 2nd, 2025, Collier County Planning Commission. We have several agenda items today, but first, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: If I could ask Commissioner Shea to please take the roll. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Chairman Schmitt. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Vice Chair Schumacher, not here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: He's absent. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Secretary Shea is here. Commissioner Sparrazza is not here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: He has an excused absence as well. He had a contract conflict. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner Colucci? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner McLeod is not here. Commissioner Petscher? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: We have a quorum of four, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Excellent. We have a quorum of four. So nobody can leave. Ray, any addenda to the agenda? MR. BELLOWS: We have no changes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. And with that, the next meeting for us is October 16th at 9 a.m. Are there any projected absences -- anybody that would think they're going to be absent from that meeting? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'm a tentative -- I have a tentative that day, so I'll let you know. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Well, we'll just make sure, because we have others that -- just make sure we have -- we'll make sure we have a quorum. And note that we have a regular scheduled meeting on November 6th, and on the calendar, we had a 5:05 scheduled that evening, but that has since been canceled, so just November 6th. So you can cancel that 5:05 meeting, and -- but we're still scheduled for November 6th, so... Okay. Number 5, we have approval of minutes. We have in our packet September 5th, 2025, CCPC minutes. Do I hear a motion to approve as submitted? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Motion to approve. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Do I hear a second? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All in favor, say aye. October 2, 2025 Page 3 of 84 COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: (No verbal response.) COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It passes 4-0. Ray, BCC report. MR. BELLOWS: Yes. On September 23rd, the Board of County Commissioners heard, on the regular agenda, the Premier Vehicle Storage CPUD. That was approved -- and the companion GMP amendment. That was approved -- both petitions were approved 5-0. Then on the summary agenda, there was the LDCA amendment for the -- to complement the housing initiatives. That was approved on the summary, as well as the David Brookside MPUD. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay, great. No questions from my colleagues. Troy, if you are listening out there, I do need the screen here so I can monitor any comments from my commissioners, if you're out there listening. All right. Then we'll proceed. From -- with the Chairman's report, there's nothing that I need to state. There's nothing in the consent agenda, so I'll proceed right to the public hearings. ***And with that, we're having -- we'll hear both 9A and 9B -- the companion item 9B. 9A, PL20230016340, which is the Sabal Palm Road Residential Subdistrict. This is a subdistrict amendment to the GMP. And the companion item, 20230016342, which is Sabal Palm Road RPUD. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And note that the PUD will require EAC approval. So with that, I turn it over to the petitioner. Yes. Oh, thank you. Very well. Thank you very much. Do we have any disclosures first, Chap? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: No, just the staff. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Staff materials, and I did -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: I went to the site also, I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay, good. And I did talk to Mr. Yovanovich about this as well as the staff in regards to this petition, both petitions. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials, site visit, and I spoke with Mr. Yovanovich. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that, the disclosures. All -- any persons wishing to speak on this matter, please rise to be sworn in. 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.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, I now turn it over to Mr. Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: Good morning. For the record, Rich Yovanovich on behalf of the petitioner. October 2, 2025 Page 4 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Before you start, anybody in the audience wishing to speak on this matter, again, if you didn't take the oath -- but if you do wish to speak, please submit your speaker request to the back of the room so we can put you on the agenda. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: Thank you. The applicant is SWJR Naples One, LLC. I'm the land-use attorney on this petition, Wayne Arnold is our professional planner, Norm Trebilcock is our traffic consultant, Tim Hall is our environmental consultant, and JD DeForge is our civil engineer. As typical, I'll do a brief overview of the petition and the request. Wayne will get into the detailed analysis of the planning. He'll be followed by Norm Trebilcock, Tim Hall, and JD DeForge. At your first hearing and also at the Board of County Commissioners' hearing, there were concerns and questions raised primarily about environmental drainage, so we're going to spend probably a little bit more time than we typically do in our presentation on those two items. And we always have Norm up here talking about traffic, so Norm will also be talking about traffic. But we will be doing a much more detailed presentation on drainage and the environmental. The subject property is 169.19 acres. It's located on Sabal Palm Road, and it is an existing orange grove, as you can see. The property is about 1.4 miles from Collier Boulevard and about .4 miles from the urban area. The urban area is basically one mile east of -- I keep wanting to say 951 -- Collier Boulevard is the urban boundary, and we are near by the urban boundary. This is a closer-up picture of the property. As you can see, it's been cleared. There are two areas that have native vegetation on them, and those two areas will remain. And as Tim will take you through in pretty good detail, we are establishing a flowway for purposes of treating water and processing that water and cleaning up the dirty water that comes through our site and is on our site as a result of the agricultural operations. We are currently designated within the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. We're designated Sending Lands. Our proposal is to create and establish our own subdistrict, the 341 Sabal Palm Road Residential Subdistrict, and then to rezone the property to an RPUD that would allow for 423 residential dwelling units of which 328 of those dwelling units are anticipated to be single-family and 95 dwelling units are proposed to be townhomes. That's a density of 2.5 units per acre, which is the same density allowed in the adjacent urban area of Collier County. We are the first project that I'm aware of that -- other than Habitat for Humanity that is proposing to do for-sale owner-occupied affordable housing, and that will come with a 30-year commitment that that property remain affordable housing. And you are acting as the EAC because the property basically has no native vegetation on it. You're supposed to have continuous preserves, but as you can see from the property, the remaining vegetation is not adjacent to each other, so we have to request a deviation to be able to preserve both of those areas to satisfy our preservation requirements. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the existing future land-use designation and the proposed future land-use designation. Some of this is a repeat of our October 2, 2025 Page 5 of 84 first hearing, so I apologize. There may be some new people in the audience. But as you will recall, I think it was in 1999 there was a moratorium imposed by the governor and cabinet on Collier County for development basically east of the urban area. That moratorium was in place to address environmental concerns raised by certain environmental groups. And as a result of that moratorium, there were two portions of the county created to address those environmental concerns. There's the Rural Lands Stewardship where you have your towns and villages that's further out east, and then there's the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District which is kind of near where Golden Gate Estates would be on the northern portion and kind of between the urban area and conservation area out further to the east on the southern portion of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. That study, the resulting Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District analysis, placed this land initially as Sending Lands. That analysis that was done was at the 50,000-foot level. There was not an analysis done on individual parcels when the district was established. And what we're seeking to do is, based upon actual groundtruthing of the property, properly designating this property as lands that would be eligible for development. My clients, unfortunately, were farmers. They were farming. They weren't paying attention to what the County was doing when the County was going through this process of establishing the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. Unlike, us when we're obligated to do -- when we do petitions and we provide notice to those around us as to what's happening, there was no required notice to property owners as to what was happening through the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District process and the RLSA process. So unless you were paying attention, which most people weren't, or you already had a lawyer that was representing you to say, "Hey, be careful. Something bad is about to happen to you," you didn't know what was going on. I feel confident and I think staff feels confident and I know our environmental consultant feels confident that had the property owners come to me or Wayne or to someone else and said, "Hey, I don't think it's appropriate for these lands to be designated Sending Lands," these lands would not have been designated Sending Lands. They would have been designated either Receiving or Neutral Lands because they're not Sending Lands. It doesn't mean there aren't Sending Lands around them, and you'll hear people testify, "Well, it's surrounded by Sending Lands." Yes, but this piece of property is not Sending Land property, and it would be appropriate to designate it for something other than Sending Land property, and that's exactly what we're doing through this process. Now -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Rich, before you proceed on that, and just for my colleagues, I was -- of course, I was the administrator of Community Development at that time when all this was going through the County for almost two and a half years in regards to the final order and then the eventual development of both the Rural Lands Stewardship program and the Rural Fringe, both the amendments to the GMP and the implementing LDC amendments. That said, I'm very familiar with the criteria. But in regards to the criteria for this piece of land, had you done any research and drilled down to any of the works that was done? I think at that time it was -- was it our consultant -- I may be wrong -- Stantec, or whoever it was at that time, or any of the other consultants in regards to the scoring for this piece of property. MR. YOVANOVICH: Stantec was dealing with the Rural Lands Stewardship October 2, 2025 Page 6 of 84 Area. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: Those lands were scored. I don't believe any of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use Districts went through any scoring other than, you know, people looked at aerials and said, "Where's development? Where's not development? Where's farm fields? Where's not farm fields?" I don't know that there was any detailed scoring like there was related to the Rural Lands Stewardship Area. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, I don't recall either, just that there was an assessment made in regards to the -- what was deemed to be premier environmental land and other lands that were less. And, typically, my recollection at that time is if this was an active farm at that time, which it was, it would have -- and most likely, as most other farmlands would have been, classified as either Neutral or Receiving. But in this case, I don't ever remember the landowner ever objecting to it, so -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, that's because they didn't know about it. Unlike the Rural Lands Stewardship Area, Mr. Schmitt, as you might remember -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- there were, like, six or nine property owners out in the RLSA. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: So it was a very limited universe of property owners, and they got together and formed a group and said, "Let us propose a solution to getting out of the governor and cabinet's moratorium." CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's how you got the RLSA, and that's why you have -- you had nine property owners that agreed to the concept of SRAs, Stewardship Receiving Areas, and SSAs, Stewardship Sending Area. They came up with their program. In the Rural Fringe Mixed Use District, you had thousands of property owners, thousands of property owners. And obviously, they -- there was no consortium of thousands of property owners saying, "Here's what we want to do." Now, there were some big property owners that were actively involved in that process. This was not a big property owner actively involved in that process. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, there were some property owners that assessed the impact and objected, one of which had to go all the way to a settlement agreement with the County -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- with regard -- MR. YOVANOVICH: And guess what? They got out of Sending Lands. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Say again, please. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, they're no longer Sending Lands. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: They're no longer Sending Lands, right. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. So there have been modifications to that program over the years, and we're asking for a relatively minor modification. Now, I want -- going back to what -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But to clarify, this is -- this is not a reclassification of this property to -- MR. YOVANOVICH: It is. We're creating -- October 2, 2025 Page 7 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- to Receiving Land. You're creating a special subdistrict. MR. YOVANOVICH: We are creating a special subdistrict, that's correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: Now, but I want to -- I want to talk about a few things that exist today in the regulations, because I think you're going to hear some things from the public comments that I don't think are totally accurate. First of all, under today's Comprehensive Plan, if this property was designated Receiving Lands, we would be eligible to come through and ask for affordable housing, and we would be eligible to ask for up to 12.2 units per acre through the affordable housing system. Under the program today in Receiving Lands, you're actually not allowed to use TDRs if you're doing affordable housing units. So we're modeling that as part of this density bonus, because what you're doing is you're getting affordable housing for the bonus, for the extra units. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And when you say, "You're not allowed," that's Board policy. MR. YOVANOVICH: It's in the Growth Management Plan right now. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It's in the Growth Management Plan, okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: And I'm sure Mike will correct me if I'm saying that wrong. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: So, one, you're not allowed us use those, and we're not using them either. And other projects get affordable housing, and they didn't provide TDRs either, and that's consistent with the Growth Management Plan. Also, the governor and cabinet were very involved in the establishment of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. I take that back. The Department of Community Affairs, which I don't know what they're called anymore because they keep changing their name. MR. BOSI: The Department of Commerce. MR. YOVANOVICH: The Department of Commerce -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Department of Commerce. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- was very involved in the establishment of the provisions pertaining to the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District, particularly the environmental concerns, because that's why we have the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. This is a large-scale Comprehensive Plan amendment, which means it's transmitted to the State prior to adoption. This went to the Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce didn't have any objections. If the Department of Commerce, who was previously involved in this, from an environmental perspective, thought we were somehow ruining the protections afforded to wildlife, they would have spoken up. They didn't speak up. They did not object to modifying the program. They were originally very involved in implementing within our Comprehensive Plan. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, I'll have to correct you there. The only comment that came back from the State had to do with history preservation. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right, right. But it had nothing -- no, nobody from the Department of Commerce -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- commented. Nobody from the Department of Transportation commented. And the people who commented from the historical October 2, 2025 Page 8 of 84 department, they were wrong when they said there was an archaeological site on this property. It was on a different piece of property. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: But we got the appropriate waiver, and we have the appropriate conditions in there that should something be discovered, we stop, we analyze it, and then we move forward. I also -- JD is going to get up here and talk about water management and how this works and how the water flows in this area. There were -- you heard from people in Verona Walk and Tamarindo regarding their concerns about flooding. You can see from this exhibit we're over 2,000 feet at the closest point from Verona Walk. They have their own self-contained system, and JD will go over this in greater detail. We have absolutely no impact on their water management for their projects. We are not doing anything that will in any way harm them from a water management perspective. I just wanted to highlight really quickly some of the proposed text. You've seen this before. Again, it's 169 acres. We are -- we have to rezone to a PUD. Our maximum density is 423 units. We have a 60 percent open-space requirement. If we were in the Receiving areas, we would have a 50 percent open-space requirement for an affordable housing project. So we're exceeding what is required of Receiving Lands. We are going to provide 63 affordable housing units to people making equal to or less than 120 percent of the AMI for Collier County, and there is a 30-year deed restriction, and that's what all those words say. We have -- we're well situated to serve existing employers in the area and other employers throughout Collier County. I don't think there's any question that there's a shortfall of affordable housing. I don't think there's any question that there's a shortfall of owner-occupied affordable housing. We have the two petitions before you, the Growth Management Plan amendment and the rezone to PUD. Staff is recommending approval of both of the petitions. That's the general overview of what we're requesting. I'm going to turn it over to Wayne to take you through the master plan and other planning testimony, and that will be followed by the rest of our experts. I'll sit down unless you have any questions of me before the rest of my experts get up here to provide testimony. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Charles, you're the only one up on the screen right now. Go ahead, please. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Rich, would you put back Slide No. 6. MR. YOVANOVICH: I didn't talk about Slide 6. Wayne's going to talk about Slide 6 later, so I didn't think you wanted to hear -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: No. This was the one -- this was the slide that provided an overview of the zoning changes you want. There you go. MR. YOVANOVICH: This one? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: No, next. MR. YOVANOVICH: That one? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Right there. This will help me. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: And maybe some in the audience. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: And I don't know if Mike wants to answer this or October 2, 2025 Page 9 of 84 Joe, but what I need to understand is who has the responsibility or the authority to change the F-L-U designation from A to B? MR. YOVANOVICH: The County Commission. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Existing or proposed? MR. YOVANOVICH: The County Commission has that authority. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. MR. YOVANOVICH: You make recommendations. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. So our role, then, is not to make that decision. It's to maybe advise -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- the County Commission whether or not we think it's a good idea or a bad idea; is that right? MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. I would say not just a good idea or bad idea, but how does it sit in relationship to our Land Development Code and our Growth Management Plans and the policies that have been adopted. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I understand that. MR. BOSI: Yep. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: But for the audience, we have no authority to grant the change from existing to proposed. That is the Board of County Commissioners, correct? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We forward to them our recommendation for approval or disapproval or any other comments that are related to the petition, but they are the decision-maker. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. But we still will make a vote. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We will vote. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: And as a reminder, when this came through the first time, the Planning Commission recommended approval of the Growth Management Plan in a vote of 4-1. So the first time you-all considered this, you believed that the change to the Comprehensive Plan was appropriate you had not heard the rezone yet because the rezone comes when you're at the actual adoption portion of the Comprehensive Plan. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, I hope there's enough acronyms for all these people. MR. YOVANOVICH: I'm pretty sure most of them -- or I know one of them understands all the acronyms. I'm going to turn it back over to Wayne -- or turn it over to Wayne. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mike, go ahead, please. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Mr. Yovanovich, I've got a question. Can you go to Slide 7, please. I'm sorry. To the far north of this slide, what is that community there? MR. YOVANOVICH: Up here? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yes, sir. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's Hacienda Lakes. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Hacienda. Now, did they have to do what you're doing to build into this Rural Fringe area? October 2, 2025 Page 10 of 84 MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, what they -- they were one of the property owners that were very involved in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District criteria. Part of their property is in the urban area; part of their property is in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. So the PUD encompasses both Sending Lands in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District and urban area. This portion of the property, obviously, is beyond the boundaries of the urban area and was allowed to develop as development. It was an impacted area similar to this piece of property, so development was allowed to occur. They stripped the TDRs, basically, from the lands that were in the Sending Lands area and were -- took those TDRs, brought them into the -- into the project. To show you how involved property owners could be at that time -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- initially the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District regulations didn't allow for the transfer into the urban area. It only allowed for the transfer of the TDRs into the Receiving area. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: I was their lawyer. I worked with staff and others to say, "You know what, it only makes sense, since my client owns property adjacent to the Sending Lands, that they be allowed to use their TDRs on their own property." So there was a modification of the program to allow for those TDRs to come into the urban area, and then there was a further amendment a few years later. Instead of going to 2.5 units per acre, bringing one TDR to go from 1.5 to 2.5, to get -- to be able to do another .3 units per acre so they could use more of their TDRs. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: So there have been modifications to the program over the years -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: How many homes are projected to be planned out or built out in the RFMUD? MR. YOVANOVICH: Oh, with the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah, just in this little -- in the one on the screen here. MR. YOVANOVICH: On ours? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: It's a total of 423 homes. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: In Hacienda Lakes, I'm sorry. MR. YOVANOVICH: Oh, I don't know. I wish I -- I don't know how many are platted to go in there. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Okay. I was just curious. MR. YOVANOVICH: Just that little, small -- yeah, I don't know. It looks like probably a couple hundred maybe. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. Okay. And you'll probably get to it, but is there a ditch that's around this -- around this farmland? MR. YOVANOVICH: We're going to get into how the flow is going to be restored -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Okay. Perfect. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- as part of our environmental and drainage discussion. October 2, 2025 Page 11 of 84 COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Sounds good. Thank you. I'll wait to hear it. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. Mr. Arnold. MR. ARNOLD: Good morning. Wayne Arnold, certified planner with Grady Minor & Associates, here to talk to you about both the Growth Management Plan amendment and the rezoning that are before you. As Rich mentioned, you-all heard the transmittal hearing back in May and voted to transmit to the State. We took this to the Board. They voted also to transmit to the State. And, you know, we think one of the things that's really key to this project, in addition to the fact that it's not an ecologically sensitive site because of all the past disturbance on the site, it's well located. And the employment map that we created that was part of our data and analysis shows that within this 10-mile radius we've got large parts of the urban area that are easily accessible. And just by my count, we have three hospitals, 15 schools. We have a Home Depot, Lowe's. We have three Walmart stores; Collier County Government Center; 15 hotels; 15 country clubs; 15 police, fire, and EMS stations; Coastland Center Mall, all very, very large employment centers that this is, as Rich said, just over a tad over a mile from Collier Boulevard, less than a half a mile from the urban boundary, and we think it's well located and well suited to support our request, which is why Rich and I are bringing this forward to you, and you're going to hear the testimony from the other experts in their respective fields testifying why this makes a lot of sense. Now, I looked at it from a planning perspective, and I was involved in one of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use committees, and Rich is correct, there was not individual owner participation unless they were fully engaged. Like Calusa Pines Country Club up on Immokalee Road, that landowner had lands that were in the Rural Fringe and had a golf course with a hope to do a residential component at some point. And they were fully engaged, and there were amendments made as this worked its way into the Comprehensive Plan and the Land Development Code to make sure what they hoped to do could be accommodated within the sensibility of still respecting the environmental conditions. And there were other carve-outs, as you've seen if you're familiar with the code, for other Belle Meade properties in the North Belle Meade, and there are some exceptions for existing communities. But in this particular case, I don't recall -- and I was involved in one of the committees with the Conservancy and others as a private sector consultant, and I don't recall any involvement from anybody on the Sabal Palm Road corridor. And I think that it was just felt that, you know, in my opinion, they were growing oranges. You know, they weren't in the throes of being a conversion at that point in time. But I think as many of you just -- you know, as we listen to the news and read articles, the orange industry in this state's been decimated, and it's not on the mend. It's really in bad shape financially. There's a lot of disease that's affecting them. And in this particular case, you know, the owners have told me that they have to import oranges to sell at their retail center because they can't grow the oranges because of some of the diseases that affect these oranges. So you've got a site that has been impacted. You're going to hear, you know, JD come up and talk to you about some of the drainage aspects. But I think if you're familiar with ag operations, they're virtually unregulated with regard to discharges from their site. So you have a site that's actively in citrus production that can take waters that are October 2, 2025 Page 12 of 84 coming onto its site, and they pump them and they pump them and they pump them. And the advantage of what we're doing is you create a community where you have a controlled water management system. So we'll bring in waters that are flowing onto site today. They're going to get cleansed in a series of our lake system and through a flowway that we're creating, and that's going to be then discharged at a very low rate off site into the preserves to our south. So we think that this is a very beneficial project overall. So we showed -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Wayne, before you proceed, again, just for historical purposes, the orange grove was existing at that time because all on that road, as I recall, was some landscaping companies and some units out there and then, of course, the orange grove. MR. ARNOLD: Yeah, there's also a small church. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It was long before Winding Cypress PUD, which is now Verona Walk, or long before Hacienda Lakes -- MR. ARNOLD: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- when the Rural Fringe was actually working its way through the approval process. Is that your recollection? MR. ARNOLD: This definitely was an ag production. It has been for decades. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. ARNOLD: Tim Hall probably can tell you the exact year it was cleared, but I think it was sometime in the late '60s, early 1970s when that clearing occurred for the orange grove. So we showed you this plan as part of our transmittal hearing process, and I'll take you through the key elements of our master plan. We have two primary access points on Sabal Palm Road. We have one that's in the center of the site, and we have another that serves the townhome portion of the site and what's designated as RTH, it stands for the townhome area for the site, and that's where the 63 affordable housing units will be constructed. Approximately 95 total townhomes, 63 of those would be the affordable units. So you can see on the conceptual master plan we've shown the general internal road configuration. The two preserve areas that Rich pointed to earlier are here and here. And the one to the south is an important feature because the area that surrounds it becomes part of a flowway and preserve where there will be littoral plantings which will support wildlife and wading birds, et cetera, and that separates us from the preservation lands to the west that are part of the Hacienda Lakes PUD. So Hacienda Lakes owns property to our south and to our west. They satisfied some of their mitigation and some of their preservation requirements in those lands. So these two areas are preservation areas. Of course, they're disconnected, as we've said. We also have an amenity area that's shown in the center of the site. We also have a separate small amenity area that serves the townhomes. And I know that you're going to have some criticism from others that we've created these two distinct amenity areas, but in listening to that, I think that, you know, some of you live in gated communities where you have single-family homes and you have multifamily homes, and it's not uncommon that these individual condo facilities have their own pool and small club amenities to service them. October 2, 2025 Page 13 of 84 There can also be a larger community amenity. It's no different; I can name dozens of projects in Collier County that have sub-element condominium complexes that have their own amenity center. So I just wanted to make sure that's understood that that's not something that unique to this site. This just shows an aerial overlay. We put some distances on here to just give you a feel, because we heard early on from the folks at Verona Walk they were really concerned about the impacts we were going to have to them on drainage, and you're going to have Jeremiah come up and tell you about the drainage and how there's separate basin divides in this area. But you can see that we're a half a mile or so from Verona Walk. And we have, you know, virtually no impact to them, and, of course, they don't access Sabal Palm Road. They only access Collier Boulevard, so we don't really have any conflicts on Sabal Palm Road that would affect the Verona Walk folks. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Wayne, can you pull the speaker up a little to you? MR. ARNOLD: Sure. I'll try to speak up, too. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Because for some reason, it doesn't -- it's not as loud as it should be. MR. ARNOLD: Okay. I'll try to speak louder myself. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: There you go. MR. ARNOLD: So this is a list of our proposed deviations, so we've asked for three deviations, four deviations for the project. They relate to, as I mentioned, the preserves to be disconnected because they occur disconnected. We've asked for a pretty standard deviation with regard to our street cross-section to allow 50-foot rights-of-way rather than 60 feet, which was your typical Land Development Code section. We asked for one small deviation on a cul-de-sac to allow sidewalk on only one side of the cul-de-sac. It doesn't work that well, often, to have a cul-de-sac with sidewalks on both sides. And we've asked for a deviation with regard to littoral plantings, because the deviation we've asked for would allow some of the littoral areas to be made up in the proposed flowway that we're creating. So that's why we've asked for that deviation. And you're going to hear more about that from both Tim Hall and Jeremiah. Permitted uses, so this is a for-sale product only. So we've allowed for single-family, two-family, and townhouse, but these are all for-sale. These are not rentals, and they will be all for-sale owner-occupied residences. We've asked for standard amenity packages for this, so you'd have a clubhouse and pools and things of that nature. We have development standards. And I know that staff has changed their staff report format, and now they're discussing a little bit more about some of the variations from our proposed project to those that occur in the Land Development Code. But, you know, I think from my perspective, part of the reason you go through the Land Development Code PUD rezone process is so that you can establish and create those unique standards for your site. And in this particular case, staff pointed out townhouses. There's a separate provision in the Land Development Code, and I can't cite a single project that's been built in 30 years under that provision that used the standard townhome provisions for cluster design. Mike and Ray may recall one, but I can't think of a single one. October 2, 2025 Page 14 of 84 So we've proposed standards that -- you've seen Pulte's labeling on some of these exhibits. You know, Pulte right now is likely to be the homebuilder for this community. And Pulte has product that reflect these development standards that we've proposed. So we think they're in line. You've seen these in other projects. They're not dissimilar to some that we've used in Fiddler's Creek as well. So we think these standards work perfectly fine. Staff does recommend approval, obviously, but they've noted that we are varying from standard Land Development Code sizes. For instance, 40-feet lot widths for some of the single-family. That allows some variation. I don't know that we'll build any 40-foot-wide lots, but it allows for some small lot single-family in addition to much larger lots. So I think it's always good to have the opportunity to have a variety of housing types, and that's what we've proposed here. Again, the developer affordability aspect of this project, we think, is significant. As Rich mentioned, outside of Habitat for Humanity, we can't think of a for-profit developer who's offered up for-sale owner-occupied housing that's affordable. So in this particular case, 15 percent of the townhomes -- or 15 percent overall of the project, which equates to 63 townhomes, would be affordable, and they're all going to have the same finishes. Pulte's known for building townhomes that feature, you know, three bedrooms, two and a half baths, you know, larger living areas, at least one-car garage, and they also have a hometown hero program where they offer these below market rate to, you know, folks who are here in our community, such as teachers, nurses, firefighters, retired military members, et cetera. So we think that all of those people deserve to have housing, and we think it's in a very good location for it. Just some early renderings that Pulte provided to us showing just some of the fit and finish for the townhomes, so you get a feel for sort of the scale and interior finishes for those units. One of the things we talked about for the necessity to change the Comp Plan and the reason for changing the Comp Plan are some public benefits that accrue. And again, we think the 63 for-sale income-restricted housing is a major public benefit, but we're also doing flowway restoration enhancement that you're going to hear more about. We didn't talk about it yet, but we're going to be improving Sabal Palm Road to county standards and then continuing a sidewalk that exists that Pulte actually built on the south side of Sabal Palm Road for the Verona Walk Winding Cypress project, and we'll continue that same roadway cross-section down to our site as well. Ninety percent of the site's on-site vegetation will be retained as native vegetation. We agreed and staff -- this came up at our first hearing, and we agreed to increase the open-space standard to a minimum of 60 percent. That's going to equate to around 100 acres of open space in the overall project. Our density of 2.5 acres, it's the same density that's allowed in the Urban Residential Fringe subdistrict just to our west, and we've also agreed to pay a proportionate share toward a traffic signal at the intersection of Sabal Palm and Collier Boulevard. We would take the lead in designing the signal, permitting the signal, and, of course, that's all subject to Collier County approving the signal. But we would even take in the prop share cost that would be to the public. And I think Norm has some figures, or Rich probably October 2, 2025 Page 15 of 84 does, that we can talk to you about what those equate to. But we think those are some pretty significant benefits that accrue from having this project in place. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Wayne, when you talk about a traffic signal and you -- can you go back there. It says, "Pay its proportionate share." Will that be -- you'll be identifying other contributors as well in that process? MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Schmitt, what -- the developer of Tamarindo has in their PUD an obligation to pay their fair share. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. They do, yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: We will pay our fair share, and we will pay everybody else's fair share of that traffic -- and I'll give you an example -- because we don't know the exact number yet, because Tamarindo hasn't built out. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: Let's just say our fair share is 50 percent based upon the traffic we put on Sabal Palm, and Tamarindo's fair share would be 30 percent, and the general public is 22 percent, if I did my math right. We're picking up the 20 percent. So the County will not be out any money towards -- should they approve the signal, the County will not have to pay a single dime for that traffic signal. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. My experience now with the traffic signal at 41 and Sandpiper in Fiddler's Creek, that's across three lanes. We're almost $2 million for a traffic signal. I would -- this is across almost six lanes as well, three on each side. You're in the neighborhood of probably by the time you put this in, somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million. MR. YOVANOVICH: You know, we think it's an excellent public benefit. I think it's a benefit to us. We think it's a benefit to the general public. And we're willing to pick up the general public's fair share of that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure that's on the record. Thank you. MR. ARNOLD: Sure. Thanks. So I just wanted to sort of conclude with some of our planning conclusions. So the subdistrict that we proposed is consistent with the Growth Management Plan statutory requirements. The State and their agencies have reviewed our proposed plan amendment. It's your responsibility to review the proposed zoning change, but the State makes a recommendation or review, and they made -- other than the history and archaeological comment, they made no other comments with regard to what we propose. So we've had Tim Hall's environmental data that's part of the package, and you're going to hear more about it. Norm Trebilcock prepared a transportation analysis. We've looked at the location analysis and urban services, and water and sewer services are available back at the Tamarindo project entrance that will be extended to the project. Again, we're going to enhance Sabal Palm Road. We're going to enhance a flowway. We're creating more habitat than you have certainly with an orange grove, and that's going to equate to other further water-quality improvements. And again, to mention that we're going to have 63 for-sale affordable units. So we think all those things combined that accrue from having this project in place are certainly not only public benefits but support good planning. And with that, I'll close, and if you have questions of me, I'm happy to answer them. Otherwise, I'm going to turn it over to Norm. October 2, 2025 Page 16 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mike has a question. Go ahead, Mike. MR. ARNOLD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Can you please go to Slide 13. Can you explain the deviation in No. 2? MR. ARNOLD: Deviation No. 2 is for a cul-de-sac that exists there that terminates at Sabal Palm Road to have a sidewalk on only one side of that cul-de-sac. So instead of having the cud-de-sac all the way around the sidewalk [sic], you would only have it on one side where the other sidewalk would exist. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Okay. You made a -- you made a comment that there's public comment and there's, you know, some contention on why these two don't intermingle, and you said there's plenty of communities that don't do that. And I'm a property manager. I've managed probably 75 to 100 condominium complexes -- condominium complexes and HOAs and associations in Naples -- in the Naples and Collier County and Lee County area. And they don't -- each one does have its own amenity center, but they are neighbors, and they do have some kind of connection between the two. And I'm just wondering why there's zero connection between the two communities here. MR. ARNOLD: Well, we show -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: And that was a concern not only of mine last time but of Michelle McLeod's. I know she's not here to speak for that, but there is -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Petscher, that's on me. I forgot to mention that we have -- we are providing for a pedestrian interconnection based upon our conversation. I've confirmed that, yes, we want people to be able to walk to and from their neighbors, whether they live in the townhomes or whether they live in the single-families. We will provide for that interconnection. We're just trying to limit vehicular interconnection. We're not trying to discourage people from walking to and from their neighbors and enjoying each other. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: So there's probably a sidewalk or a cart path or something? MR. YOVANOVICH: We will put a commitment in the developer commitment that there needs to be pedestrian interconnection. When we get -- when we come forward with the actual plats and site plans, then we will better -- right now Wayne's kind of showed you where the arrow would be to make that interconnection, but if there's a different interconnection -- I don't want to pinpoint it right now on the master plan. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: No. I understand. I just -- I firmly believe that it should be -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. I should have mentioned that in my earlier comments. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. Perfect. MR. YOVANOVICH: Sorry about that. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: That's fine. Those were my only two questions. Thanks so much. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Good point. MR. ARNOLD: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Chap, you have a question? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Yeah, let's bring Rich back for a second. Rich, what is a Sending Land? October 2, 2025 Page 17 of 84 MR. YOVANOVICH: A Sending Land is an area that is more environmentally sensitive than Receiving Lands or Neutral Lands. So the intention was for Sending Lands to -- they took away all -- basically all the development rights that previously existed on all of that property. That property was originally all zoned agriculture. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: And it was allowed to be developed at one unit per five acres. You could have golf courses. You could do a whole lot of other things through the conditional-use process. But if you were unfortunate enough to own land that the county said now will be designated Sending Lands, you lost all those rights, and they reduced your density to one unit per 40 acres. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: In exchange for that, they gave you this currency called a Transfer of Development Rights. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Oh, my God. MR. YOVANOVICH: This currency is called a Transfer of Development Rights. And if you don't own a big enough piece that generates a bunch of TDRs, you basically got nothing because no developer is going to go chase 10-acre parcels, 20-acres parcels to get basically, at that point -- if you had a 20-acre parcel, you got one TDR per five acres, and you got another TDR if you participated in the early entry. So you got two TDRs per five acres. So in that analysis you get eight. You got eight TDRs. So it just wasn't worth it. So the program worked okay for a while because you had larger property owners that owned Sending Lands, and they could strip a lot of TDRs and sell them to the Receiving Lands. Now, if you're designated Sending, we got to find a -- we've got to find a way to solve that problem for the small guy. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So is this -- is this piece of property Sending Land or isn't it? MR. YOVANOVICH: It currently is designated Sending. It's currently designated Sending. And we're saying based upon the environmental data that exists today, this property it not Sending Land. It's not environmentally sensitive at all. It's a farm field. It should never have been designated Sending in the first place. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, who makes that decision? MR. YOVANOVICH: Again, the decision was made in 2001, I think it was, or '2. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: 2002 and '3 time frame. MR. YOVANOVICH: And it was based upon, again, a 50,000-foot level. Everybody was looking kind of like at aerials and saying, you know what, what's the best land to develop? What's the best land not to develop? They didn't get -- they didn't get down to the finite parcels. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. So the County has decided -- MR. YOVANOVICH: The County made that -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- that this is not Sending Lands. MR. YOVANOVICH: The County decided that this was Sending Lands, and we're saying, based upon the data that exists today, the County was wrong in designating it Sending in the first place. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Chap, the -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Joe, help me. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. The -- we received a consent order in, I believe, October 2, 2025 Page 18 of 84 1999 -- MR. YOVANOVICH: 1999. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- a consent order, because the county was just urban sprawl, and it was developing at one unit per five acres. There was one development up off of Immokalee that sort of was the straw that broke the camel's back because he used part of the golf course to count for the acreage. We won't get into that. But then the County sat back. In order to remove the consent order, they developed these two programs. One was called the Rural Land Stewardship program. The other was called the Rural Fringe amendments. This was part of the Rural Fringe and -- Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District area, but they were areas identified by the County as -- because of their environmental sensitivity as Sending Lands. And in order to compensate those property owners for the loss of development rights, they created this program. They would Receive Compensation in the value of money for a TDR, where they would sell a TDR from their property to a community or an area that was considered receiving land. And at that time, there was a lot of thought that went into it in determining what areas were Sending and what were Receiving. The petitioner's point here is that the orchard really should have never been deemed Sending in the first place because it's an orchard or a farmland, which typically -- and I'm saying typically in the county, especially both in the Rural Fringe and in the Rural Lands Stewardship, most of the agricultural areas, whether they were farm fields for orchards or tomatoes or whatever, were pretty much deemed either Receiving Lands or Neutral Land. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And the large landowners, as Mr. Yovanovich stated, they had large swaths of land that they owned both Sending and Receiving, so they were very much adaptable to the program. They were the five landowners in the Eastern Collier that basically helped codify and put through, and the Board codified the Rural Lands Stewardship. This was a little bit different, but it was, again, to prevent the urban sprawl going eastward into the county. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So this issue that I'm harping on -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- is not something I should be concerned about? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, yes, absolutely. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Exactly. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Our concern is that the County identified this as Sending Lands. A petitioner is asking to now create a special district -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- and essentially remove the designation of the -- this area from the Sending Lands -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Got it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- criteria and be designated as a special district -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I understand. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- under the GMP. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And I think you're going to hear -- I'm not in any way promoting this. I'm just trying to give some history. You're going to hear, and I'm expecting Tim Hall and -- because I have some questions for Tim as well in regards to the October 2, 2025 Page 19 of 84 environmental aspects of this. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. And property owners have always had the right to come in and say, "You know, you mis-designated me. Hey, I woke up. I realize what just happened to me. Let me come back and try to fix this." And that's what my client is trying to do is say, "Hey, I didn't know about it. If I had, I would have hired you, Rich. I would have never been designated Sending in the first place." And, I'd like to -- I think I had pretty good odds back then of having this farmland designated Neutral at worst. I don't think staff disagrees with that. And that's what we're doing, we're exercising our rights to come through and provide the data and analysis to make the change. And Mr. Hall will get into that in greater detail. MR. TREBILCOCK: Good morning. My name is Norman Trebilcock. I'm a professional engineer -- certified planner and professional traffic operations engineer with over 35 years of local experience in transportation, and we prepared the Traffic Impact Statement for the project. So I just want to review a few of those items and kind of give you the highlights so you-all have more of the detail. One of the key things that was mentioned, Wayne had mentioned benefit of the project, is to extend Sabal Palm Road to the project frontage. Right now the maintenance of the -- of Sabal Palm ends at a certain point, and you can kind of see in the lower picture how the asphalt is a little bit different. And the idea is to extend the sidewalk as well to come all the way down to the project and all the way to the east end of the project so it's fully functional, so -- And Jeremiah will kind of get into the typical section elements and such, but that's an important benefit of the project to have. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Norm, is that -- would that be developed all the way up to the project at urban standards, meaning valley gutters, curbing or that type of improvements. MR. TREBILCOCK: Yeah. He has, like, the section that kind of shows all the elements of it. It is -- it is like a modification, but it's meeting, you know, the pavement thicknesses and such like that -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. TREBILCOCK: -- to meet county standards. And he's reviewed -- he's reviewed it with staff as well, so... CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But currently right now, from that picture, I can see the line. Anybody going east, those property owners or that -- that is technically and legally a private road. MR. TREBILCOCK: Yes, sir. So -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Or maintained by the property owners. MR. TREBILCOCK: Right. And you can see, too, as you go further -- oh, all right. I'm learning from Rich here or something. You can see at a certain point it actually turns into lime rock -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, lime rock. MR. TREBILCOCK: -- as well and that's, you know, even a little more rough and ready, you know. So the whole -- the whole idea is this will be a thoroughly paved road, but importantly, too, is the pedestrian aspects will be addressed where we'll actually -- the sidewalk ends a little before the maintenance point, but that will be extended down all the way so that will there be a connected sidewalk so the residents will have, you know, a way October 2, 2025 Page 20 of 84 to move about in either direction, so... CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And I'm looking at this. I'm looking then to the picture to my -- to the right is basically Verona Walk. MR. TREBILCOCK: Yes, sir, exactly. So yeah, Verona -- good point. Verona Walk, so they built this kind of section of road when they did their thing, I think, and maybe some of the other developments have improved it along the way. But you're exactly right. So from where you see that pedestrian sign -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. TREBILCOCK: -- that would be kind of the eastern limit of, let's say, Verona Walk, and then that's in that, like, kind of conservation land. So we'd be extending the sidewalk a good distance. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Who maintained the drainage ditch along here, the County or is that -- MR. YOVANOVICH: To help Norm out a little bit, JD's going to get into it in greater detail. Basically, what's going to happen is the road -- this picture meets county standards. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. MR. YOVANOVICH: This picture, if you've been out there during rainy season, does not meet county standards. It's wet. We're going to upgrade the road to meet county standards, including extending the swales, including extending the sidewalks. So if you've been out there recently -- I haven't been out there recently, but I have been out there after a rain. It gets a little -- it gets a little soggy out that way. We're going to fix that as part of this proposed project. MR. TREBILCOCK: Thank you, Rich. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Amy, do you have a question? MS. LOCKHART: Yes, I did. We have a school site out there kind of at the terminus. I think it's Sabal Palm and where Benfield would meet up with it. Is that at this -- where is that in this location? MR. TREBILCOCK: Oh, okay. Good point. Wayne -- thank you, Wayne. That's actually -- I believe it's at Rattlesnake and Benfield in Hacienda. MS. LOCKHART: Yes. MR. TREBILCOCK: Hacienda. So that would be north of -- MS. LOCKHART: North of it, okay. MR. TREBILCOCK: Way north of here. Let me see. (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. TREBILCOCK: Hopefully I don't get myself into trouble. MS. LOCKHART: -- Sabal Palm. MR. TREBILCOCK: I'm not going to get there. Okay. Okay. It's actually a bit to the north -- MS. LOCKHART: A bit north. MR. TREBILCOCK: -- is what it is, yes. MS. LOCKHART: Okay. Thank you. MR. TREBILCOCK: Cool. Thanks, Wayne. See, I do listen to you, Wayne. Okay. So just kind of -- this is a bit of a summary. In the first bullet point, what I wanted to do is just kind of emphasize in the traffic study -- a lot of time you'll see traffic October 2, 2025 Page 21 of 84 studies that we prepared, like it's dated October or something like that on the cover. And the important thing to understand is the traffic data we use is the County-collected data, which is based on their peak season, the AUIR data. So a lot of times folks will say, "Well, gosh, you did this study in the middle of the summer, and you're -- you know, you're gaming it," and that's not the case. When we do a traffic study, our trip generation is based on the ITE, Institute of Transportation's trip generation rates, and we use their peak trip generation, which would be representative of a peak-season trip generation. And then the back -- all the background data that we use for our analysis is Collier County data that the County uses based on an appropriate peak-season period. So I just wanted to kind of let you all know that and just make sure we understand that, because that's come up. And I understand when folks look at the studies and they see the dates, how that can get confusing. But we're just kind of keeping a record of when we submit things. So -- and again, we follow all methodologies with the County before we submit the study, and that's an appendix in the study itself. And then in this -- and also, you know, transportation staff has done a thorough review of the traffic study for compliance with the GMP and LDC, and they recommend approval of the project. Just another highlight point is we will have a trip cap for the project based on a mix of uses, p.m. peak hour rates, which is the -- really how Collier County analyzes the capacity of the roads based on the p.m. peak, because that's the peak period of when we're getting traffic out there. The other part is, is what was mentioned is Sabal Palm Road will be improved at the end of the county-maintained section, although we will connect the sidewalk thoroughly there as well as we will take it all the way to our east property line as well, and that includes the extension of the sidewalk, as I mentioned. The other portion that has already been mentioned is about the traffic signal there at Collier and Sabal Palm Road. So if and when warranted, the proportionate share, we would pay our proportionate share, and we would pay the public's proportionate share. And the math that Rich used makes sense as well. The only other factor, Commissioner Schmitt, that you had mentioned on, like, the comparable cost there, this is what we would call a three-legged intersection and not, like the one you had mentioned, A, that is a Department of Torture -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. TREBILCOCK: -- I mean Department of Transportation roadway, so there are some different standards there as far as that goes. But this would be a three-legged intersection. So we can do this with less mast arms is what we can do. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Half the price. MR. TREBILCOCK: So it would actually cost less. I'd put it -- and I know the developer won't hold me to this -- about probably in the $1.3 million range. So, you know, a mere bargain compared to that 2 million you mentioned. But those are real dollars and a lot of money, and it's significant, and that is what we call a site-related impact. We wouldn't get impact fee credits for that, so we're still going to pay our impact fees for the capacity of the County's road network. And this is site related, so it's on the developer. So stepping forth to say, "Hey, we'll be the catalyst to make this happen," and then October 2, 2025 Page 22 of 84 also, we will pick up the public's fair share of this when it's negotiated, I think, is real important versus -- and then the Rockedge is the PUD, or the Tamarindo, will pay theirs according to their PUD ordinance as well. And so -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Good point, Norm, is you will not receive credit for your impact fees for the monies that the light -- the light is in addition to any impact fees you're going to pay at the first development order, building permit, or otherwise? MR. TREBILCOCK: Yes, sir. As a standard practice for the County, they look at the signals as not an impact-fee creditable improvement as a norm. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. TREBILCOCK: In addition, you know, we may need in advance of, say -- because the County really wants to oftentimes wait until the signal's warranted, so we may need to make some improvements on Collier Boulevard in the interim such as, like, we're going to need -- since it's a directional median opening, we'll have a U-turn just north of us, and we may need to extend that turn lane on an interim basis potentially, and that's on us as well. So there's a fair amount of commitment and cost that they're looking to pay to take care of things to have things in good shape, and understanding the concerns of the neighbors was traffic. So based on that, I will turn it over to JD to talk about drainage, okay. And, oh, do you have any questions? I'd be happy to answer. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I see no questions from my commissioners, so next speaker, then. MR. TREBILCOCK: Okay. Thank you, all. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next petitioner -- petitioner/speaker. MR. DeFORGE: Good morning. My name's JD DeForge. I'm a licensed engineer, and I'm going to talk about the drainage and the existing conditions and the improvements that we're going to propose as part of this project. Today there are three surface water management systems that have been permitted and constructed in the area, including Verona Walk here, Tamarindo, which is here in the red, and Hacienda Lakes, which is here in the orange. Generally, these water management systems have constructed perimeter berms around the perimeter, and they control their discharge through a series of interconnected lakes and a control structure before they discharge off site. Verona Walk, their control structure is located to the south here and discharges. Tamarindo has two outfalls, one at the 951 canal and the other one here into the Sabal Palm right-of-way. And then Hacienda Lakes discharges to the east here into their preserve area. Currently, on site, there's an existing ditch that accepts flows from Hacienda Preserve through a crossing culvert which is located here, and then in addition to that crossing culvert, there are two more crossing culverts here and here that mimic the historic flowway from the north side of Sabal Palm in Hacienda Preserve and the south side of the Hacienda Preserve. So we would be proposing a surface water management system. We would go through the South Florida Water Management District. We would be proposing a perimeter berm similar to the existing systems that are discharging into the preserve today. In addition to that, we would be proposing an expanded flowway. Instead of a -- it's approximately 30-foot wide. We would be expanding it to almost 17 acres of additional October 2, 2025 Page 23 of 84 flowway. At the very south end of the flowway, we would have a preserve that would mimic the foraging habitats for birds, and then we would also be proposing concentrating all our littoral areas into that very south portion of the flowway as a secondary treatment system before it goes into the Hacienda Preserve system. Generally, the existing citrus grove, they are uncontrolled discharge, and they pump their water into Hacienda Preserve currently. What we would be proposing is a control structure that would reduce the discharge by 74 percent. The improvements to Sabal Palm Road -- let's see. Currently, Sabal Palm Road, there's a county-maintained portion, which Norm talked about, and then past there, there's an asphalted road where we would bring that up to current county standards. That would be including expanding the pavement for a 12-foot shoulder on the north side which matches what's currently existing closer to 951. We would also be extending the sidewalk all the way down to our property and then to the east end of our property extents, and then we would be raising the road profile from that point moving all the way to our property, including increasing the current culverts that run underneath Sabal Palm flow to help increase the flow capacity by about five times to get back to the historic flow that was there before Sabal Palm was constructed. This pink area here is -- there are no permitted -- or surface water management systems permitted. Right now that area is collected by a series of roadside swales that head generally southward. And then when they hit Sabal Palm, there are currently four existing culverts; one, two, three, and four. Those are the culverts that we're going to upsize by about three times, which increases their flow by five times. And then we're going to add a fifth one at a strategic location to help mimic and distribute that historic flow that was seen before Sabal Palm was built. So to kind of summarize the improvements, we're going to be raising the road profile that will help in rain events, so we're not going to have overtopping situations in larger rain events like hurricanes. We're going to add inlets to the roadway. That's going to prevent more erosion on the shoulders, and it's going to direct flow into the swales more directly and efficiently. And all of these improvements are going to be much more compatible with the Collier County watershed improvement plan which -- just to summarize quickly what the improvement plan was meant to do was it was going to restore its altered hydrology. So it's going to redirect the Golden Gate Canal stormwater from Naples Bay to the Rookery Bay Estuary. So as part of that plan, Sabal Palm Road was slated for improvements to help the conveyance from north to south, and what we're proposing to improve is going to enhance that plan. So that's the summary, but if you'd like -- have any questions. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: JD, I have -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Before he finishes, can I -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead. MR. YOVANOVICH: Can you address the basin divides that you're showing? We didn't talk about the yellow arrows. MR. DeFORGE: Absolutely, sorry. I just went right through the yellow arrows. Thanks, Rich. MR. YOVANOVICH: It's okay. October 2, 2025 Page 24 of 84 MR. DeFORGE: So Sabal Palm Road, the way the roadside swales work today, it's bifurcated in about -- right about where Verona Walk's preserve ends here. So the flows from Verona Walk west go into the 951 Canal, and then the flows going east flow into the Hacienda Preserve, and that's where our culvert improvement system is going to help mimic that sheet flow. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. A couple of questions. Where the blue arrows are, that remains preserve. That is designated as Sending Lands as well. And I don't -- is there a property owner there adversely impacted in any way? MR. YOVANOVICH: No. That's part -- that's the Hacienda Preserve. And they're -- no, they're not negatively impacted whatsoever by doing this. And, candidly, we've been working with that property owner. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. So all this -- JD, all this goes -- have you started your ERP yet, or is this all preliminary per your Environmental Resource Permit to the Water Management District? MR. DeFORGE: We've made a submittal to the District at this point, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You have? MR. DeFORGE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: With the preliminary design like this? MR. DeFORGE: Yes. This -- the preliminary design is what I outlined today, and we've gone all the way through the application process, and we've gotten staff approval. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. The -- let me look up the file again, because I just closed it. The -- I had a couple of questions. Stand by. MR. YOVANOVICH: Before you ask him, JD, can I just have you confirm for the record that our -- our proposed project has absolutely no negative impact to Verona Walk and the Tamarindo developments. MR. DeFORGE: That's correct. Our system discharges directly into the Hacienda Preserve. And as Rich mentioned in his presentation, we're over 2,000 feet away, and we're reducing our discharge by 74 percent. So our discharge is here, and it flows this way, and you can see by just virtue of where our arrows are the proximity to the other just -- communities. We're -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So that land where the blue arrows are, that's all Hacienda Lakes preserve area; is that what you said, Rich? MR. DeFORGE: Yes, it is. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. All right. There was a lot of talk at the transmittal and again in our staff reports about the proposed subdistrict is also located within the Belle Meade hydrological enhancement overlay. Made a big deal of that. I'm going to ask staff this as well, which technically it is. But why was that of such a concern to staff? Is this -- has this pretty much alleviated what was perceived to be or at least I kind of implied that somehow this was going to be -- adversely impact the Belle Meade hydrological enhancement overlay. MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't think staff was saying this negatively impacted it. I think it was kind of an FYI, wanted to let you know. And you can confirm that with staff. It was just -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We will. MR. YOVANOVICH: We just want you to know that this is where this is located, and there was nothing in the staff report that in any way indicated that it was negative on October 2, 2025 Page 25 of 84 either one of those plans. And my recollection from the transmittal hearing was Ms. Cook got up here and said, no, this is -- this has no negative impact on either one of these plans. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And I'll be asking Ms. Cook as well. The other aspect of this is -- was introduced and discussed, the Comprehensive Watershed Improvement Plan, the plan that the County was working on in the Belle Meade area probably for almost five years. It's gone absolutely nowhere. It was monies that they received, oh, gosh, was that eight, nine years ago from the oil spill in the gulf. But as far as I know, that plan has gone nowhere. And -- but my understanding and my recollection when Gary McAlpin and others were working, that's far east of this -- this area; is that correct? Are you -- do you have any knowledge of the Watershed Improvement Plan? MR. YOVANOVICH: Can I correct something I said? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't know how I convinced Peter -- confused Peter Hayden with Jaime Cook, but it was Peter Hayden who testified. He's your stormwater person from the County. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: He's the one who got up here and said, "This does not negatively impact either one of those plans." But I misassigned that testimony to the wrong person. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Thank you for the correction. So on the Comprehensive Watershed Improvement Plan, regardless of what the County's doing, you're controlling your water outflow. And my recollection of the Comprehensive Watershed Improvement Plan is significantly further east than this project. MR. DeFORGE: That's right. The proposed improvements, as part of that plan, were a couple thousand feet east of our project -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. DeFORGE: -- way further east than that right there. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Right. MR. DeFORGE: They were proposing -- as part of that plan, they were proposing crossing culverts to help some of that conveyance. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. MR. DeFORGE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And that would head all the way south. In fact, eventually they were looking -- would cross U.S. 41. MR. DeFORGE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And then down -- eventually work its way maybe in the Rookery -- MR. DeFORGE: It would go into the estuary bay from there, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, okay. All right. For some reason -- I mean, I asked Mike about this -- Mike Bosi about this yesterday when he and I chatted. Again, as -- if it's there, it's information, but there's no indication in the staff report that I could glean that there was any adverse impact. And I'll probably ask Mike to clarify that. Go ahead, Mike, please. MR. BOSI: And thanks. Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. And as Mr. Hayden spoke at the transmittal hearing, and I think you saw evidence October 2, 2025 Page 26 of 84 of the detailed breakdown of the stormwater management and the stormwater management improvements specifically to increase the flowway and distribute those -- those flowways to the -- to the Sending area as well as the Sending area that has been, you know, the preserve area of Hacienda Lakes, that the sheet flow outcome of what -- of the hydrological effort was intended to provide for is being increased from this particular plan. This project will better effectuate that transfer of water from north of Sabal Palm Road to south of Sabal Palm Road with a distribution that's -- that's a little bit more even spread. And from that, I believe that's why stormwater management had signed off on -- not only on the GMP request, but the PUD request, because the outcome is what the outcome of that -- of the hydrological improvement area is trying to attain. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Because I'm reading the article again, and it -- Comprehensive Watershed Improvement Plan is the county initiative designed to address these adverse impacts with a series of hydrological improvements to rebalance the two natural systems while rehydrating approximately 10,000 acres of land within the adjacent Picayune Strand. Much further east. MR. DeFORGE: It's much further east, yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. And with that, who's next? MR. DeFORGE: With that, I'm going to leave it to Tim. MR. HALL: Good morning. For the record, Tim Hall with Turrell, Hall & Associates. I'm a wildlife ecologist working on some of the environmental aspects associated with this project. First I'll go through some of the environmental aspects of the project and the differences between what's there now and what we're proposing. For one thing, JD had mentioned some of the enhancements to water quality. Currently, the agricultural operations there with the orange grove have -- when water gets high, they pump the water out as much as needed. You've heard the term that orange trees and citrus doesn't like wet feet. So there's a lot of pumping associated with those kinds of activities to keep the water levels low enough for the trees to do well. And the result of that is that the water from the ditches with the herbicide and the pesticides and all associated with the agricultural operations a lot of times doesn't have time to settle out in those ditches when the pumping is occurring. So you've got untreated water going into those adjacent preserve areas. And the other thing that's important to note is that agricultural operation has a berm that go -- a berm and a ditch that goes all the way around the perimeter of it. So you're not getting offsite water that's coming into that agricultural area. It's just the water table and rainfall that's getting pumped out. JD had showed you a couple of the culverts that are there. There is a ditch that runs north/south through the project, but that's separated from the agricultural operations. It just transmits flow from the north side of Sabal Palm to the south side of the orange grove. The improvements done to the stormwater management system will result in on-site stormwater treatment meeting the criteria that's required to get a water-quality certification from the State, meaning that it meets the -- the -- it's clean enough then to be -- to be allowed to flow off the site, and it only flows off the site when the water gets high enough to go over the controlled structure. There's no pumping that's associated with the project. October 2, 2025 Page 27 of 84 The hydrology JD mentioned as well. The project is proposing a flowway about 17 acres to pick up water from the north side of Sabal Palm and transmit it through to the south side to help with some of that exchange and get more of the water going down to the south and into those preserve areas that have been hydrologically impacted over time. So it's going to help to re-reestablish a more natural hydro period in those adjacent areas. The work being done within the preserves on site are going to create more wading bird foraging habitat, the 17 acres flowway, the shorelines associated with that, the littoral plantings that we're putting into it and all will create conditions that allow for better foraging for wading birds, some of which are listed species like the wood stork and a couple of the herons. We're also going to have increased on-site native preservation. Rich had showed you on the aerial those two areas that are currently forested or vegetated that aren't grove. Only three acres of that meets the County's current code definition as native habitat. So as it exists right now, there's three acres of native habitat on the site. Our preserve areas will increase that number up to 10 -- a little over 10 acres through some of the enhancement, the exotic removal, replantings, and all that will be done. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can you show that on the map or -- if you would, because I have some questions on that. And for full disclosure, the firm that I'm associated with, Dawson & Associates, Washington, D.C., I've worked with Tim Hall's firm in the past. So I just want to make sure that -- for full disclosure, I've worked with Tim but in no way on this project was I even involved in anything with Turrell, Hall & Associates. MR. YOVANOVICH: Is this the exhibit you wanted us to show you? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. I have questions in regards to the preserves. Tim, you -- just -- could you point to the two preserves, because the one that is existing -- because typically we do not allow for split preserves, but these preserves already exist? MR. HALL: The vegetated areas already exist as split areas. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. HALL: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And the existing area to the west, the southwest preserve -- MR. HALL: This one. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- is pretty much much larger, but you're going to -- you're saying most of that existing preserve does not meet preserve criteria currently? MR. HALL: None of that area qualifies as native habitat. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It does not? MR. HALL: Currently, no, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But you're enhancing it to create a preserve? MR. HALL: Correct. Some of it will be impacted as part of the flowway -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. HALL: -- and that's where the littorals and all will be going into the kind of marsh. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: There, that's the one I want. MR. HALL: Yeah. So that -- this preserve area right now currently does not meet the County's definition of native. It's 95 percent or greater exotic vegetation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Explain to me the rationale for why we should approve the littoral plantings to not -- to be integrated with the water -- what are we calling October 2, 2025 Page 28 of 84 it? The flowway. MR. HALL: Well, we're -- we want them to be integrated with the flowway as opposed to being scattered throughout the lakes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. So those lakes -- none of those lakes you're going to be putting littoral plantings. It will all be integrated into the flowway? MR. HALL: JD, are we doing -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is that correct? MR. HALL: Yeah, that's correct; yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So from an environmental standpoint, convince me why. Is it something that's considered better? MR. HALL: The -- because of the flows coming out, all of the littorals that we're planting are still going to be exposed to the stormwater coming out of the project. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. HALL: So you'll have the settling and all that's done within those basins. There will be plants that grow up around those lake banks, but, you know, regardless of that, that water's going to come through into the flowway and still pass through all of those littoral plantings prior to being discharged out into the -- or being allowed to flow out into the adjacent preserve areas. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So that crosshatched area on the west of this property, that is all the flowway; is that correct? MR. HALL: Correct, that's all of -- all of that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. With the one section preserve. MR. HALL: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And that preserve would be integrated into the flowway? MR. HALL: Yeah, it will -- correct. It will be at -- you know, kind of at grade. So as the flowway stages up or stages down, the water table goes -- will be consistent with that. So that preserve will also be used as -- for some of the polishing and nutrient uptake associated with that, because all of your lakes are going to end up into that flowway, and they're going to flow through those vegetated areas. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So the three lakes -- and it's probably something JD's going to answer. The three lakes I'm looking at over at the east side, those are all interconnected, but are they connected as well to the flowway? MR. HALL: Yes, sir. Everything goes into the flowway. There's no discharge. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. It's clear -- it's clear now. I understand. So the flowway is now acting as almost a secondary or tertiary treatment? MR. HALL: Exactly. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. I see no other questions. I'm asking all the questions. COMMISSIONER SHEA: You're doing such a good job. MR. HALL: Let's see. Where -- I talked -- let me go back to my -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Tim, have you started the -- are there jurisdictional wetlands? MR. HALL: There are, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And have you started the 404 process? MR. HALL: The 404 has been started. Our reviewer has not been the most October 2, 2025 Page 29 of 84 responsive. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No. MR. HALL: Well, you get good and bad. So we -- the project still has not been put out on public notice. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, it has not. Okay. MR. HALL: I just drafted a public notice and sent it to him to try to assist and try to increase -- or, you know, try to speed up that process. I know that the regulatory group is working on carryover funds right now. I think they're funded through the 15th. If the government shutdown goes past that, then, you know, everything is going to be shut down until they start back up. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, because the regulators and the Corps, they're not considered essential. MR. HALL: Right. So they are still working. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But do you have -- that has not gone through any Section 7 consultation then? MR. HALL: It has not. We did do some consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission with the state group -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. HALL: -- with respect to, you know, the state species, listed species, and the ones that they do, we've done the PHU analysis. This project is located in the primary panther -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That's what -- I was going to ask that question. MR. HALL: -- zone. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So you've done all that. MR. HALL: And so it -- you know, for the board members that don't understand, the primary -- the panther consultation done by Fish and Wildlife Service is kind of based on a habitat analysis. So they look at the -- they created a consultation map which identified high-quality or dense panther-use areas, which were the Primary Panther Habitat kind of buffer or less important areas which are secondary buffer habitat. They also have a dispersal area which identifies corridors where they're trying to get cats to move north of the Caloosahatchee River. And then their overall consultation boundary kind of looks at where panthers have been historically. It looks at old tracking data, accounts and all. And so there's a -- there's basically a big polygon in Southwest Florida associated with potential panther utilization, and any project that falls within that consultation area has to be looked at by Fish and Wildlife Service. The analysis that we do identifies the habitat types and the value of that habitat based on their metrics. It also takes into account what's going on around the project, the traffic that's associated with the project, and which direction the traffic goes on the different roadways, how many panther deaths have occurred on those adjacent roadways. It takes all of that information into account, and then they made the determination of whether the project's permittable or not, and if it is permittable, then it also identifies the mitigation that needs to be provided in order to be able to do that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So you'll identify the panther habitat units based on that -- if there's mitigation, which there will be on this. MR. HALL: Yeah. The analysis works out to about 1,600 PHUs are required and October 2, 2025 Page 30 of 84 what that does. So the replacement -- the way they look at it, the mitigation is purchased in areas that are much higher-quality habitat. They're conservation banks that are actually being managed for improvements to the panther. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. HALL: And those banks, like a wetland bank, will sell credits to developers, and the banks are permitted by Fish and Wild Service so that they look at the trade from the impacts on a project like this one to the conservation provided in those banks as a -- as a trade that is good for the panther. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So in this case, 1,600 PHUs, you're probably talking in the neighborhood of one and a half to $2 million probably. MR. HALL: Not quite that much. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Not quite that high? MR. HALL: I would say it's probably around 1 to 1.2. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right, 1.2. I went a little high, then. The -- but this is deemed in primary habitat by at least -- MR. HALL: It is. Actually, I brought a map if you'd like to see it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, please. Because the question is, in reality, I don't know if -- do you have -- in the last telemetry for the last 10 or 15 years that shows panthers in this area? MR. HALL: I have the telemetry. That was part of my analysis. I didn't bring that with me today. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. MR. HALL: But I can -- I mean, I can provide it if -- if needed. So this -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, I mean, the question is -- I'll be frank -- is from an environmental standpoint -- and this is -- I'm asking for your professional opinion. It would be better to take the PHUs and invest it into a panther mitigation bank somewhere like Panther Island or some other area which is deemed to be far more favorable for the cat than what I would consider less than a half mile from -- from residential communities that there exists now. MR. HALL: In my opinion, yes, because, you know, for projects like this that are so close to that fringe and that edge area, having the development there rather than further, you know, into those -- or further east, it makes sense to me because you are so close to all of the residential uses and the amenities that people want, you know, near their communities. And the direction of traffic coming out of this road is then going out of -- you know, it's going into the urban and out of those primary habitat areas rather than -- than into them. And this -- the map that comes up here, the red hatch is the -- is the boundary of the primary habitat area that was designated. You'll notice that Verona Walk, Tamarindo, Hacienda Lakes are also all within that primary -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All within the primary. MR. HALL: -- habitat. So it's not -- the primary habitat wasn't established to say you couldn't do anything within those areas. It just established the cost and the environmental review needs to be more stringent when you're doing work in those areas to make sure that it is compliant with panther preservation long term. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But you have not had any conversations yet with U.S. October 2, 2025 Page 31 of 84 Fish and Wildlife? MR. HALL: They haven't responded back, no. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No response. Okay. All right. I see no other questions for my colleagues. Anybody have any questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, it's 10:34. I think we owe our court reporter a break, so we'll take 15 minutes. Thank you. (A recess was had from 10:34 a.m. to 10:48 a.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. Please be seated. Continue, Mr. Hall. You still have the microphone. MR. HALL: Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: First of all, Paul Shea wants to add something on the agenda. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah. Just for Terri's sake, I forgot, when I called attendance, to ask Ms. Lockhart if she was here. She is here. And I -- and I think we forgot to get her -- if she has any conflicts associated with this. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I thought we did. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Did -- she said -- MS. LOCKHART: I don't think so. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So -- MS. LOCKHART: And it's just staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Just for the record. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: For the record. Mr. Hall. MR. HALL: I just wanted to end on this slide where we talked about the littoral plantings and all and kind of show you the -- what's being proposed, you know, with -- the flowway with no littorals versus a flowway or planted area with the littorals. So this is kind of what we're proposing to do within that flowway area with the ability to aggregate all of the plantings within, you know, kind of a -- one location. And it works out being, when you talk about the littoral area plus the preserve, about 29 percent of the area of the flowway will have this. And as water flows through this, of course, it's going to be -- it's going to be slowed down, so you'll have more of the suspended material can fall out. You'll have nutrient uptake going on, and just a general polishing of the water before it goes into the preserve areas adjacent to the property. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And all of this will be part of the -- both the ERP and the -- MR. HALL: And the Corps. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- 404 of the Clean Water Act permit -- MR. HALL: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- for both state and federal review? MR. HALL: Right. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. Any questions? October 2, 2025 Page 32 of 84 (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Tim, I have one last question. We were talking panthers and the PHUs. But as far as mitigation, if we get to that point -- and you identified the mitigation requirements. Have you identified -- is it something you'll work with the State or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in regards to whether it will go to the -- what's it called? I just lost the name of it now -- Panther Island mitigation bank or one of the other mitigation banks or some kind of panther -- do you think there's going to be some other type of panther mitigation? MR. HALL: The project is going to be required to purchase wetland mitigation credits. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. HALL: A lot of the wetland mitigation banks have panther mitigation associated with them -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. HALL: -- to a smaller amount. So some of the credits for the PHUs will come from the wetland mitigation purchase, and the rest of them will come from probably either panther passage or one of the other -- one of the other approved banks. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, we're at the conclusion of our presentation. I just wanted to, you know, reiterate that the State did review this Growth Management Plan amendment, and all of them had no objections or comments to what we're proposing. We initially -- if you will recall, we were asking for 450 dwelling units, but we've reduced it to the 423 at the first -- the first reading. We are providing 63 affordable for-sale owner-occupied units. We're improving Sabal Palm Road. We're doing flowway restoration and enhancement. We're providing 90 percent preservation on site. And obviously, we're constructing a flowway as part of this project as well. The open space is 60 percent, which is greater than what's required in Receiving Lands, which is 50 percent when you provide affordable housing. The 60 percent standard is actually the standard you find throughout Collier County when you do a residential development. Our density is consistent with the Urban Residential Fringe. And should we be able to persuade Transportation to put a traffic signal in, we're going to do our best to try to do, we're paying our proportionate share as well as the public's proportionate share of the traffic signal. Staff's recommending approval of both the Growth Management Plan amendment and our PUD rezone. We are requesting that the Planning Commission forward a recommendation of approval for both the Growth Management Plan amendment and the PUD rezone. And that concludes our presentation. If you have further questions of us, we're here to answer them. Obviously, we reserve the right to respond to any public comment, should there be any. And with that, we're done with our presentation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm looking for the piece on that as well, that it does include the deviations you're requesting as well. MR. YOVANOVICH: Of course, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Which were three, if I recall. MR. YOVANOVICH: Four. October 2, 2025 Page 33 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Four. Okay. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: Which staff is supporting all four of them. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Support all four. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's our presentation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, we will open up the hearing for public comment. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, there's four -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, did we want to do staff first? Let's do -- go ahead, staff, first. Then I'll open it up for public comment. Thank you. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. I'll provide just an overview as was contained within your agenda packet. Staff is recommending approval of the GMPA as we had provided for the same recommendation at the transmittal, as well as the PUD. I do have Environmental, Transportation available if you'd like to ask any specific questions related to that. A number of the public benefits that were identified were the things that staff has recognized as why we could support this lift -- this redesignation from Sending to its own individual subdistrict. And one of the end products that we continue to kind of come back to is not only the affordable housing project improvements on Sabal Palm Road but helping further the overall goal of the hydrological restoration area and the improvements that they're making to the culvert system and the water management flow for this area we think will be an outcome that supports that overall goal. And because of that, we think there is justification for identifying this one piece of property that has been utilized for farming for over 50 years and certainly would not meet the qualifications for a Sending Land designation. We think that transitioning this to a project that's going to provide the public benefits that's been identified and -- and further the overall goal of the GMP and the Sending area in this hydrological area is something that staff can support. And any questions that I can answer for you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Just, for the record, our packet included several letters of objection and then us up here, I'm sure, and you as well, received several letters of support. So that's all in the record. MR. BOSI: It is all in the record. And I can let you know that related to the Audubon's letter related to the utilization of TDR credits, the Board of County Commissioners has set a policy within the 2002 resolution that amended the -- or ordinance that amended the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District, and it specifically says TDRs cannot be utilized or required for an affordable housing project. Now, the perspective of the Audubon is that means only the affordable units. The way that the Board of County Commissioners, through past actions, has interpreted that, it means any project that is providing for affordable housing is not -- and shall not utilize TDR credits. That's a policy decision that was implemented by the Board in 2022 [sic]. So because of that, it's one of -- it's one of those areas where there is a slight disagreement in the interpretation of the code in terms of how that should be applied. Just to let the Planning Commission know that we have thought about that. But the Board's past actions of approval of affordable housing that had -- at 70 -- or at 30 percent within areas -- other Receiving area projects have indicated that it applies to any project that October 2, 2025 Page 34 of 84 provides for any amount of affordable housing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Well, I reserve the right -- I'm going to listen to public comment, then I may call up staff for clarification prior to the -- any closing comments and rebuttal from the petitioner. With that, we'll open the hearing for public comment. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, four public speakers. Brad Cornell is first. MR. CORNELL: Good morning, Mr. Chair and Planning Commission members. I'm Brad Cornell, and I'm here on behalf of Audubon Western Everglades. Appreciate the opportunity to comment. And we have shared with you, as was just referred to by Mike Bosi, a letter, and you have that paper copy in front of you, and I'm happy to answer any questions about that. I'll just summarize some of our points from that letter and a couple of additional details. We object to the Growth Management Plan amendment and its related PUD rezone on the basis of it being incompatible with the surrounding conservation lands, and it also conflicts with the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District policies that were established as a result of the final order from June 1999. That's Final Order AC 99-002. There are some fundamental conflicts with that -- that final order and the policies. There was a three-year planning study from 1999 to 2002 and then a series of court cases in which we and the County joined forces to defend the policies for the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. In 2003, we successfully did that several times, and so these policies are near and dear to our heart and hopefully yours as well. The Sending designation considers the regional context in looking at what was Sending and what is Receiving and what is Neutral. So in that regional context, this 169-acre citrus orchard is surrounded by conservation lands. The whole context of it is panther habitat, Red-cockaded woodpecker habitat, wetlands. It's part -- it's right next to the 74,000-acre Picayune Strand State Forest, the eastern part of which is the panther mitigation bank for all of Everglades restoration, all of CERP. So this is a very sensitive area. I will also note that it is a very fire-prone area. The day that this GMPA was voted on by the Board of County Commissioners, there were three uncontrolled wildfires in the vicinity of this project, two on Sabal Palm Road itself and one to the north. And so this is not an appropriate place to put residential development. It is a very appropriate place to have Sending Lands. And I will also point out that the Rural Lands Stewardship Area, which has Sending and Receiving Lands as well, is a mosaic, as is the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. A mosaic has a mix of agriculture, native lands, wetlands, uplands. That's the way the whole world is today. There's no pristine place. So a mosaic works very well for Florida panthers. And, in fact, if you look at Florida Fish and Wildlife conservation GPS -- GPS collared cat studies for panthers, they use, as do deer and hogs -- they use these orchards and agricultural lands and forested lands that are all in that mosaic. The final order from June 1999 directed Collier County to balance agriculture, natural resources, and to protect private property rights. It was supposed to be a balance of all three. And I think that's what we have accomplished, and that's what we defended in court. The TDR compensation was a vital part of that, and it's carefully designed in consultation with national experts on Transfer of Development Right programs, including October 2, 2025 Page 35 of 84 Dr. Jim Nicholas, who is a national recognized expert on that. He was the County's consultant in developing this program. Audubon Western Everglades was a party to that whole process, as was a lot of public and landowners. I also want to flag that the cumulative impacts to that TDR program come from several different projects that are currently -- have been before you and will be coming before you. One is NC Square, which is 921 units, only 30 percent of which are affordable; the Greenway Fritchey project, which is 1,299 units, only 20 percent of which are affordable; and the three -- this project, the 341 Sabal Palm, is 423 units. Only 15 percent are affordable. That's a total of 1,851 units that will not be using any TDR credits. That -- the impact of that is a devaluation of the cost or the value of those credits, which is the legal compensation the State directed Collier County to give to Sending Land owners whose land was downzoned, as has been discussed. So that downzoning was compensated for with these TDR credits. When you don't require their use and you up-zone or increase density without using TDR credits, that's a devaluation of those credit values. That's -- in addition to that was the 750 units of the Fiddler's Creek Section 29 Panther Mitigation Preserve that was permitted previously in a separate action. Audubon Western Everglades, as was discussed, reads the 2022 Rural Fringe Mixed-Use public benefit FLUE policy to only apply to the affordable housing units. So there is no mention in there of market-rate units in exempting them from the requirement to buy TDR credits. And so without that mention of any market-rate units, only affordable units are what we see that policy applying to. And finally, I just want to note that Audubon Western Everglades objects strongly to the reduction of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District required littoral plantings for all stormwater lakes from 30 percent to 7 percent. That is a significant impact on the ability of the stormwater system to clean that water, particularly from total nitrogen. Nitrogen is a dissolved nutrient. It's not a suspended nutrient, and so it's very difficult to reduce nitrogen as well as phosphorus, but nitrogen in particular. You need littoral plants to help that. And also, these littoral areas are important habitat. And you heard Tim Hall referred to the value of concentrating the littoral plantings in the flowway, and that's great. But they're only going to be doing 7 percent of the total stormwater lake surface rather than the required -- currently required 30 percent that's across all development in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. We think that's an unnecessary reduction and an impact to the water-quality and habitat benefits. And I also want to note that in terms of public benefits, the hydrologic restoration with this flowway is important, and we applaud that, but I would note that this project is coming -- it's surrounded by wetlands. It's in a wetland context. Any project built in that kind of landscape is going to have to do some kind of hydrologic restoration in order to make it work with landscape that surrounds it. And so while we are glad to see the restoration of the flowway, anybody would have -- it would be an obligation for anybody to build. I don't see that as a special public benefit that they're doing that nobody else would have to do. So I think it boils down to the affordable housing policy in the FLUE. And as we have stated, we think that only applies to the affordable units and would urge your consideration of that. Finally, I guess we would just object that this should not be established as an October 2, 2025 Page 36 of 84 enclave surrounded by permanent conservation. It's just incompatible with that landscape. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I have several questions. MR. YOVANOVICH: I do, too, if I may. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, I'll get to you. We received this right before the meeting. My first question when I got it is, why did we get it right before the meeting. I don't -- that's -- you made a decision to give this to us before the meeting. I sort of rule this as sort of irrelevant. Thank you for your presentation, but this thing has been on the agenda for quite a while. It's been both at transmittal and adoption, and for us to receive this the morning -- 10 minutes from before the hearing is just, to me, unacceptable. With that stated, I'm going to ask for some clarification. You talk about fires -- well, first of all, what do you expect or what do you think the homeowner should do -- the property owner should do with this property? MR. CORNELL: I think this is a great property for getting the rest of the TDR credits generated through restoration, a restoration plan, implementation of that restoration plan, and ultimately, the donation of this to the Picayune Strand State Forest, which gets the donation credits as part of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And so at the cost of the homeowner -- property owner, they should donate it to the Picayune Strand? MR. CORNELL: And getting compensation through a -- the TDR credits. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Have you -- MR. CORNELL: It's not a donation. I mean -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Have you evaluated the TDR credits versus what -- the current value of the property? MR. CORNELL: I have not, no. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But it's going to be a significant difference. So you're basically saying leave it as it is. Somehow convert it through restoration to a preserve area, and the onus is on the property owner to do that. MR. CORNELL: They would be incentivized through the TDR credits, which can be about 20- to $30,000 per credit. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is there a viable market today for TDR credits? MR. CORNELL: There is, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. I'll leave that up to the petitioner to answer but -- as well. But let me ask about some -- you state in here the whole history about fire. What does that have to do with this development? Of course there's fires in the Picayune Strand. MR. CORNELL: This development is -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is this -- is this development somehow going to create fires or adversely impact whatever is happening in the Picayune Strand? MR. CORNELL: No. These residential units will be vulnerable to surrounding fire-prone landscapes that have -- and as I said, there were three uncontrolled wildfires surrounding this project the day that the Board of County Commissioners voted on it. So we think it's an irresponsible place to put a residential development. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And is that a professional opinion or personal opinion, "irresponsible"? October 2, 2025 Page 37 of 84 MR. CORNELL: Well, I work for Audubon professionally. We do prescribed fire in the Corkscrew Island community, which is part of the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District, and our neighbors are extremely appreciative of the prescribed fire that we put on the landscape to keep the fuel load down so that they are not affected by any wildfire that might occur in that neighborhood. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Wouldn't that still happen in the Picayune Strand? They manage the Picayune Strand? MR. CORNELL: It would, but wildfires are the -- are literally the wild card. You don't always know where a wildfire's going to happen. And lightning or arson or just mistakes with, you know, people burning can result in a wildfire that gets way out of control. And if you look at the Picayune Strand immediately adjacent to this, there have been some huge wildfires that have destroyed tens of thousands of acres in the Picayune Strand. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: How far is this from the Picayune Strand? MR. CORNELL: It's immediately adjacent. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And likewise, Winding Cypress, or -- MR. CORNELL: They are very afraid, too. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Hacienda Lakes. MR. CORNELL: I get calls from the Verona Walk and Winding Cypress neighbors. When those three fires were burning, they were very, very concerned. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. I understand. But it -- if it happens -- if they happen to develop it, it's the fact that they still have to go through protective measures for fires, and, of course, it has to go through the County. And eventually the homeowners who purchase are going to understand that they're in an area that could be potentially adversely impacted by fires in the Picayune Strand. MR. CORNELL: That's right, but that seems like an unnecessary risk. This is not an appropriate place. Between the panther habitat, the wetlands, and the fire risks, it seems like an inappropriate place and was a good reason for it to be a part of the Sending Lands. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. And as was stated on the record, this is Primary Panther Habitat, but it's relatively little use. Do you have any telemetry? I have not seen telemetry of any panther. MR. CORNELL: There are very few cats that are collared right now. The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has not been able to collar as many. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. CORNELL: So the fact that there are -- I don't know what the data show. I know that the panther mitigation bank for CERP, as I said, is on the eastern part of the Picayune Strand State Forest, and so this is an important panther area. And I wouldn't say that it's a low-use area. I think that deer, hog are known to use agricultural areas, including, especially citrus groves. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But it's not going to stay agriculture. MR. CORNELL: Well, what we're saying is that it should. It should stay either agriculture or be restored. Agriculture is compatible with panthers, roofs, housetops. The residential is not. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I understand. MR. CORNELL: Yeah, yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Last question. You cite in here the TDR October 2, 2025 Page 38 of 84 program. And I told you right before the meeting I objected to the wording, and I'm going to put it on the record. But you cited the NC Square. That's already been approved by the Board. What -- what -- MR. CORNELL: It was transmitted by the Board. There's still an adoption hearing. MR. YOVANOVICH: You're wrong. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Wrong. It's been approved. It's already been approved. I guess you did this at the point to show us about the TDRs, but -- MR. CORNELL: Well -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- it's a moot point, and it's irrelevant to this discussion. And the Greenway Fritchey -- this Greenway Fritchey, is that not in Neutral or Receiving Lands? MR. CORNELL: It is. But what my point on that one is the same as the NC Square. When you are increasing the density without requiring TDR credit purchase in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District, whether it's Sending, Receiving or Neutral, however that comes about, that increased density is lowering the value of the TDR credits. So they're not as -- it's not good compensation anymore if you lower the value. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, the reason I'm questioning, because you're here as a -- acting on behalf of Audubon, so I find that -- that's why I'm giving you more time because you're representing the agency here. MR. CORNELL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But the -- I take great objection to this word of "they were gifted" -- "Fiddler's Creek was gifted 750 units." Can you describe what you mean by "gifted"? Wasn't that approved by the Board of County Commissioners? MR. CORNELL: Yeah, that was -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is that a gift? MR. CORNELL: That was the process of basically giving density to that project. It was 750 units in an area that was supposed to have been a preserve that was a federal preserve. It was also committed in 1998, on the record, as a preserve, and it was Neutral. So Neutral Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District is -- the maximum density is one unit per five acres. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, I think you need to go back and look at the record of that petition, because it -- what you just stated on the record is not factually correct as regards to that it was all preserve. It wasn't preserve. Part of it was parkland. Over half of it was designated as park. MR. CORNELL: It was not to be a developed. I mean, it was not to be a developed land. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. But I take objection, because I find the word "gifted" as -- it implies that somehow it was nefarious and the Board or the Planning Commission approved it as somewhat of a benefit to the developer. It went through the public-hearing process, did it not? MR. CORNELL: Yes, and you-all recommended denial. I remember that. I was here for that hearing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We did not recommend -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Yes, you did. Yes, you did. October 2, 2025 Page 39 of 84 COMMISSIONER SHEA: You abstained. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, that's right. I was not here. Okay. But the Board did approve it? MR. CORNELL: The Board approved it. We thought that was unwise, but -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Did your -- did your -- Audubon challenge that? MR. CORNELL: No. There is -- there are policies in the State of Florida that dis-incentivize challenges of land-use decisions. So we made the decision not to challenge. It doesn't mean we agree with it. We also believe the federal process is at play here, and that was a federal panther preserve under the -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, it really wasn't. It was identified in the -- it was identified in the biological assessment as mitigation for the preserve. The property owner -- MR. CORNELL: Correct. No, for the -- for Fiddler's Creek. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: For Fiddler's Creek. The property owner is still going through a process to change that with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But I'm not going to go through all that. But I find the word "gifted" is pretty inflammatory. MR. CORNELL: I didn't mean "gifted" in any nefarious sense. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You said "gifted." MR. CORNELL: I know. I meant gifted, but not in a nefarious sense. I meant in that the increase in density wasn't -- had no requirements attached to it. There was no policy basis for it. There was no TDR purchase. That's what I meant by that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. I'm not going to go into any more. Did you -- do you want to cross in any way? MR. YOVANOVICH: I have a lot -- I have a lot of questions. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Again, you're representing the Audubon, so I'll defer to the petitioner for any cross. MR. YOVANOVICH: I've got a lot of questions. First of all, I want to -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. YOVANOVICH: What's that? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Should we ask questions before they cross or wait till after? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm sorry. Yeah. I just had Charles here. Do you have a question as well? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Charles, go ahead, please. Before -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: How many current property owners are involved in this parcel of land? MR. CORNELL: The 341 Sabal Palm subdistrict? Is that what you're asking? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: The parcel we're talking about that these folks want developed, how many property owners are involved in this? MR. CORNELL: I believe they're listed on the petition. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, I -- MR. YOVANOVICH: It's one owner. MR. CORNELL: It's the owners of the South Naples Citrus. October 2, 2025 Page 40 of 84 MR. YOVANOVICH: It's one owner. I mean, the family owns it, but there's one property owner. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Have you talked to this owner about your concerns? MR. CORNELL: No, not yet. I did bring this up at the County Commission hearing for transmittal. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: It would be interesting to know how this owner feels about your -- I'll call them arguments, or your points of view. And I'm not being hostile here. MR. CORNELL: Yeah. I'm happy to talk to them. I talk to developers all the time. It's part of my job, and it's an important conversation to have. But in this case, I hope that the landowner knows what the Audubon Society opinion is about the current policies that we helped get established. I mean, we were litigants. We were parties to the final order that resulted in the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District. So we have a lot invested in seeing these policies implemented. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any other questions? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead, Paul. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Brad, I guess the -- some of the comments that Mr. Hall made were that had they paid attention and did a little more detail, this property would not have been designated a Sending area. Do you agree with that? MR. CORNELL: I do not. I think this is -- as I mentioned, the context for this citrus grove is a native landscape that has wetlands, uplands, agricultural lands, forested lands. It works for the wildlife. It works -- well, it has not worked real well for the water. And so restoration is needed. And that's what the eastern side is; it's a restoration of the south Golden Gate Estates. And there's a restoration plan for -- that the Florida Forest Service has for this portion, the South Belle Meade portion of the Picayune Strand State Forest. So that context is all a mosaic. And this -- if this were permitted to be a residential development, it would be an enclave, a little island of development surrounded by permanent conservation. It would conflict. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So you don't agree with his comment that had they looked a little -- in a little more detail, they wouldn't have made it a Sending area. Your feeling was it was designated Sending correctly and should maintain that? MR. CORNELL: And if you look across the entire Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District or the Rural Lands Stewardship area, the entire rural lands portion of that final order intent, it's all a mix of private lands. It's all private lands. It was. And it has agriculture and native forested lands, wet prairies, wetlands. It's a whole mix of habitats. And that's -- that was the way the mapping went was, okay, what can work together and then where are we going to put development that makes the most sense. Hopefully next to existing development and roads, like 951. That's why -- and I remember having the conversation with Rich Yovanovich during these Board of County Commissioners' hearings back in 2002. Rich came to us, and we went out into the hall with a big map to talk about 951 at the time -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Absolutely. October 2, 2025 Page 41 of 84 MR. CORNELL: -- to figure out what were we going to do with the mile east of 951. And so there was a lot discussion that Rich had. So Rich and I both have a lot of investment in that discussion about where was -- where was it appropriate to have development, and where were we going to protect forested and habitat areas, and that's how the Sending got mapped. MR. YOVANOVICH: Can we just clarify, Brad. Our discussion was regarding where Hacienda Lakes is. MR. CORNELL: Not that particular discussion. That came -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. YOVANOVICH: When we went out in the hallway, you're telling me I was talking about this property? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Hold it, hold it, please. MR. CORNELL: I remember that conversation, and it was not Hacienda Lakes. It was the general whole corridor that you were bringing up in the hallway, and then later we had a conversation with David Torres about Hacienda Lakes. MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't remember it that way. But when can I ask questions? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead, please. MR. YOVANOVICH: Are you done? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: One more. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So I guess from your perspective, how do you value the flowway improvements that they're making versus not making any and leaving the land the way it is? MR. CORNELL: So we're appreciative and agree that the flowway needs to be re-established and restored. And if you look at the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District TDR plan, the credits are apportioned to incentivize landowners to not only not develop it but also to come up with a restoration plan, like this, and then implement it, and ultimately, if they would consider that, to convey that land that had a restoration plan or an implemented restoration plan to a state agency or a land management entity for conservation purposes, and all that would be rewarded with TDR credits of an appropriate value. And that has been adjusted over the years. And I think you can ask your staff how that has worked. There was a white paper just recently -- well, not real recently. But there's been an evolution of the TDR program to make sure it was fair and that it did compensate those Sending Land owners. And that's one of the main things I'm bringing up here is that we're concerned that all these market-rate units that have no TDR requirement -- TDR purchase requirements is going to devalue that compensation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Mr. Yovanovich, do you have any -- do you want to cross? MR. YOVANOVICH: I have a lot. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Do it at this time, please. MR. YOVANOVICH: First of all, I'd like to know, are you a professional economist? MR. CORNELL: Professional economist? No, I'm a home economist. MR. YOVANOVICH: You're a home economist. So you really can't provide any testimony about the economics related to the TDR program. You can only recite what Dr. Nicholas talked about almost 30 years ago? October 2, 2025 Page 42 of 84 MR. CORNELL: Which is what set up this program. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. But you can't talk about how his testimony may or may not have changed since the program was originally established. Yes or no? It's a yes or no question. MR. CORNELL: I can because -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Is he here? MR. CORNELL: Dr. Nicholas? MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. MR. CORNELL: No, no. I can -- I can attest to the value of the TDR credits because Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary owns some TDR credits. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay, great. Let's talk about TDR credits. The restoration credit is one credit for five acres, correct? MR. CORNELL: The apportionment of credits has been adjusted recently, and so the restoration was recognized as not being fully incentivized by just one credit. I believe that's an -- you'll have to ask staff. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Bosi, is it one unit per five acres? MR. BOSI: Currently the -- Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. Currently, the one acre -- or the one credit for restoration is the current currency, but within this North Belle Meade hydrological area, you could also receive additional -- an additional credit for a flowway easement, and that's specifically to help adjust the -- or allow for the sheet flow to fall on a property owner's land. So this is a unique -- this is unique where they could receive five credits per five acres on this property. So they would be able to enjoy one additional credit than what currently -- or what the program was originally intended to provide. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. I just want to know -- so I can theoretically get two credits for doing the environmental restoration if I -- if I do the work and I also give a flowway easement. So I'm going to err on the -- I get two. Now, Rich's math, I think, is close to right. 169 divided by 5 is 33.8. Multiply that by two is, basically, 67 TDRs. You testified, and I think your number's way high, that TDRs are worth $25,000 per TDR. My clients are buying them for less, but let's use your number. What's 25,000 times 67? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: 175. MR. CORNELL: What was it? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Twenty-five times seven, 175. MS. LOCKHART: No, so 67. MR. YOVANOVICH: Sixty-seven. We're going to get him the number. Do you have any idea what it would cost to restore 169 acres to get the restoration credit? THE WITNESS: It depends on the restoration that you're doing. MR. YOVANOVICH: What would it -- do you have any idea? MR. CORNELL: Not specifically for this site, no. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. I asked Mr. Hall -- and I'll have him come up here and tell you the number, but he told me it would cost us $5 million to restore that 169 acres. Do you have any reason to question Mr. Hall's testimony through me? MR. CORNELL: No. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. What is -- so I get -- if you divide 67 into October 2, 2025 Page 43 of 84 $5 million, that's way north of $25,000 per TDR, way north. So there's no way the restoration credit that you said is an incentive to my client to put this in restoration compensates him for the $5 million; would you agree? MR. CORNELL: I agree, but there is an alternative. Would you like to hear about it? MR. YOVANOVICH: No. You were asked -- no, because I don't think there's another alternative. MR. CORNELL: There is. MR. YOVANOVICH: Nobody's out here beating the doors -- beating the door down to buy the property. MR. CORNELL: All right. There is an alternative. MR. YOVANOVICH: No. You testified that we should get the -- you were asked, and you said we should do the restoration credits, and we should play in the TDR realm. MR. CORNELL: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: You would agree that TDRs do not compensate my client for doing the restoration work, correct? MR. CORNELL: Not entirely. There's an alternative with the TDRs and restoration. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. Tell me what it is. MR. CORNELL: So you get your bonus and your first TDR for five acres and then you come up with a restoration plan. And then you convey the property to an entity like the Florida Forest Service, which is immediately adjacent, that's doing restoration, and they actually implement the restoration plan at their expense, and you get the credits without the implementation. MR. YOVANOVICH: Assuming they take the property? MR. CORNELL: Correct. But since it's immediately adjacent, there's -- there's a reasonable sales point that they might. MR. YOVANOVICH: They might, might. I don't live in the world of "might." My experience in dealing with these agencies is they don't want the land because they don't want to have to maintain the land. That's my experience. I'm just telling you -- no. I'm -- MR. CORNELL: But land immediately adjacent is much more maintainable. That's how you do fire, and then there's coordination with Hacienda. MR. YOVANOVICH: But you're -- I'm going to let you keep speculating, but you're speculating. You have no facts to back up what you're testifying to, correct? MR. CORNELL: I have experience with the agencies, as you do, too, and I see agencies take land that's adjacent. They don't want islands, which is the same thing for land-use planning for urban areas. You don't want islands that are surrounded by -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Are you a professional planner? MR. CORNELL: No, but I work with them a lot. MR. YOVANOVICH: Are you a professional planner? MR. CORNELL: I am not, but I work with planners. MR. YOVANOVICH: I'm glad you do. MR. CORNELL: And we hire planners. MR. YOVANOVICH: Why don't you bring a professional planner to the hearing to provide expert testimony? I want to clarify what you're an expert in. You're not an expert planner, correct? October 2, 2025 Page 44 of 84 MR. CORNELL: I am not an expert planner, but we hire experts. MR. YOVANOVICH: You're not an expert engineer, correct? MR. CORNELL: No. We hire engineers when we need them. MR. YOVANOVICH: But you're not an expert engineer? MR. CORNELL: And I have to say that you are not either. MR. YOVANOVICH: I know. And guess what? My expert engineer got up here and testified. Guess what? My environmental consultant got up here and testified. Guess what? My professional planner got up here and testified. You've not brought an expert with you on anything you testified to, correct? MR. CORNELL: I have not, no. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's all I have. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Any questions from my colleagues? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Brad, the only question I have is, again, this concern about the property owner. And the property owner, in your estimation, and what you would prefer, is that it retain -- the property owner just hold the property somehow through either grants or whatever else, or somehow, and through the TDR program, initiate their own restoration program and then transfer the property to an entity that may take it. MR. CORNELL: Like the Florida Forest Service or Conservation Collier even. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Which, in my experience, has not worked out well either. But I can discuss it with you offline on my experience. But with that, next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, next speaker is Michael Puchalla. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Puchalla, yes. MR. PUCHALLA: Good morning. For the record, my name is Michael Puchalla. I'm the CEO of the Housing Alliance, and through that role also serve as the executive director of HELP, which is the only non-profit local housing council agency HUD approved in Collier. And through that organization, we manage a Housing Navigator program. So I thought I'd just come up, give a little perspective on the -- just this income-restricted element, what that could look like for the community, the benefit that it potentially adds. Through that Housing Navigator program, we're working with a number of households, individuals, and employers who refer both their current and prospective employees. And as you can imagine, a good percentage would like to become homeowners at some point and build towards equity. We've done a great deal to improve the number of rental units in the community that do have some income restrictions, but we certainly see a benefit in having some for-sale units with restrictions as well. One of the biggest challenges that those prospective homeowners face is having a sufficient down payment. As you can imagine, things are very expensive right now, so building the amount of assets that are needed to qualify for a mortgage can be a challenge. So we look for a number of external resources, down payment assistance programs that are run both through the local level and the state level. Unfortunately, a lot of times those do take time to process and get somebody approved for. And so having this new construction inventory does provide a tremendous benefit, because it allows us that timeline to be able to get somebody approved for down payment resources. That allows us to work with a broader income spectrum of households. October 2, 2025 Page 45 of 84 So to that end, I just wanted to make mention that in our opinion it does definitely -- it does provide a community benefit to have new-construction homeownership product with some level of income restriction, certainly those are -- have a preference for essential service personnel. It's just when we know that inventory's available, we're here to collaborate and ensure that it creates the greatest impact for the community, providing those external down payment resources that can really help across the income spectrum for people to qualify and get into homeownership. It is very, very challenging in this community, which I'm sure everybody probably knows. And the last piece I would say is also just knowing that Pulte has the potential to be involved -- and it seems as though they're going to be involved -- having a national developer showing them that we're encouraging this kind of development in our community, I think, does also help create benefit and create new opportunities to come in. So thank you for your time. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. Paul, do you have a question? COMMISSIONER SHEA: A quick question, Michael. MR. PUCHALLA: Sure. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Just -- I guess for me the 120 percent seems like that's not really affordable housing in terms of where the real needs are. I'm wondering what your opinion are -- is. Nobody's really talked about the 120 versus a lower percent of AMI. MR. PUCHALLA: Well, certainly you're going to have -- that's why I mentioned having -- being able to have the time to go and find external resources. I think through -- our county has recognized housing is getting more unattainable on the homeownership side, so they recently increased the amount of assistance that's available per household through, like, our SHIP down payment program. So there's no question that the greater need probably exists at lower income bands, and that's why we're hearing a lot of conversations around the rental communities. We need to start targeting at lower levels. But those that are looking to seek homeownership, there's still a gap and a need for our moderate income, middle income work households. But certainly, our goal would be to try to find those external resources that can help individuals that are at a lower income level qualify to acquire these units. So just because you have a higher level cap, that doesn't mean you're going to need 120 percent of AMI to qualify and afford one of these units. Our goal would be to create opportunities to lower-income households to be able to qualify by using the assistance programs. And I believe Pulte even has one of their own Hometown Heroes program. It creates a bit of an incentive for essential service personnel. The State has a Hometown Heroes as well. Our local SHIP program, a lot of these can be layered. In addition, we have a number of financial institutions that have their own individual subsidy programs. So if you're asking the need, the need is certainly at lower income levels, but I can't speak to the economics of could this development be done and have a harsher income restriction placed on for-sale units. I think we have to start somewhere. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Thank you. October 2, 2025 Page 46 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michael, my question -- MR. YOVANOVICH: I was going to clarify one thing. MR. PUCHALLA: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: You would agree there's still a need at the 120 percent category as well, correct? MR. PUCHALLA: There's certainly a need for restricted units, absolutely. COMMISSIONER SHEA: The only reason I ask that is it seems like more and more of what we see up here is still the -- at the higher ends. Although I will say in the last few months we've seen a lot more at the lower, getting down into the lower bigger -- bigger need. MR. PUCHALLA: Yeah. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So that's why I wanted to hear your opinion on it. MR. PUCHALLA: There's no question that we need. And especially as we were approving locally restricted rental units, I do believe that we're -- the individuals that we see coming in that are still struggling -- our area median income has far outpaced our area -- our average wage because we have a lot of passive wealth in the community and passive income that gets generated from that. So for wage earners, having -- the AMI rents have steadily increased, as you know from being on the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, so... COMMISSIONER SHEA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michael, my concern -- I have a question here. We approve a lot of rentals. MR. PUCHALLA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And what's beneficial in this, as I see it -- that's why I'm going to ask your opinion. Because I look at this as the market rate -- our affordable housing that gives the person who can qualify an opportunity to what I consider the greatest generation of wealth anybody can have, and that's homeownership, and I would rather see homeownership than rental. This is -- this is a homeownership program certainly to qualify. So what's your take on this type of development where it's promoting homeownership versus the amount of rentals that we have? MR. PUCHALLA: Exactly. That's why I stressed the down payment assistance resources that are available. When we know homeowner -- this is one of the first. We've not seen -- most of what we're having approved is -- as on the rental side, for this being homeownership gets me excited knowing, "Hey, if there's going to be 63 units available, we'll have a timeline of when we know these are coming into the market." We can encourage a lot of the individuals we've worked who are probably in a rental now. They would love to be able to step into a position to gain equity through their housing payment, monthly, because their rent payments are still pretty substantial. This gives an opportunity, if we get individuals prepared -- and they may have challenges with credit and debt ratios. That's what we do through the Housing Navigator program, get people prepared, and then when we know we have a homeownership opportunity coming in that might be within reach, then we start assembling the resources that could help those individuals that we're dealing with to move to that next step. That's our -- entirely our goal is to get people towards homeownership whenever it's feasible. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. October 2, 2025 Page 47 of 84 MR. PUCHALLA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any other questions? None. Next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Next speaker is Christine Briggs. She was ceded time from Robert Blum. Is Robert Bloom here? (Raises hand.) MR. SABO: Thank you. Ten minutes for Christine Briggs. MS. BRIGGS: I'm Chris Briggs, 11 years full-time Floridian resident and a regular voter. I hope you will be a little kinder to residents in our comments. When Commissioner LoCastro recently spoke at Verona Walk, there was a massive turnout. Not a single resident spoke in favor of changing the land from Sending to Receiving. But before I go further -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Let me correct the record. We're not changing it to Receiving. It's -- MS. BRIGGS: Oh, to what -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Change it to a special district. Just so -- on the record. MS. BRIGGS: Thank you for giving me the clarification, because I do like to have facts. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. MS. BRIGGS: Okay. Before I go any further, I would like to thank all of you for volunteering for the Naples [sic] Planning Commission. I know some of you are also graduates of local leaders programs, something you had to personally invest in. So a fair assumption is that you all are deeply committed to doing the right and best thing for Collier County, and one of the things that you're going to have to do is listen to a pretty long presentation, so thank you. Although politicians might be wrong -- rightfully or wrongfully considered to be in the pockets of developers, you are the individuals we count on to see the big picture, to listen to residents, and to preserve the uniqueness of Collier County, a commitment not just to development, but to conservation. The best thing for Collier County is to retain -- please retain the Sending designation for this land. Here are five big reasons. Number one, the original detailed and comprehensive staffing report that I've read, one uninfluenced by politics, recommended that it remained Sending. Two, Collier County is a tourist attraction because it's not Miami. It has been our commitment to conservation and decisions such as Rookery Bay that makes Naples a compelling destination. It's part of the reason my husband and I came here 11 years ago, and on an impulse, after three days here, moved completely from Michigan after having done our due diligence by our relatives. Why is conservation so important? In this particular area, this site, as Brad Cornell of Audubon has astutely argued, is the primary Florida panther focus area, critical for the 120 to 230 remaining panthers. Telemetry data from Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation confirms nearby panther activity, yet Turrell, Hall & Associates' assessment claims no on-site presence and offers inadequate offsite mitigation. How can this be? We have panthers on our Ring cameras in Verona Walk. So how can there be no telemetry data of panthers further up the road? October 2, 2025 Page 48 of 84 Building here obviously engenders [sic] habitat connectivity to the Picayune Strand risk [sic] forest. My third reason, additional development is unnecessary and undermines we, the current homeowners who pay the taxes, who are deeply invested in Collier County. In our area, have you driven up Collier Boulevard in the last five years? We have a 30 percent vacancy rate. The pool of available homes increased in August in Collier County, not including Marco Island, to almost 5,000 listings. In my Verona community of 1,900 homes and over 3,700 potential voters, homes linger for more than six months. And when they sell, it's often at a much lower price than listing. How can any market survey justify the additional need for building, building which will only undercut the ability of long-term residents to sell their homes? Point four, no offense, but trust in builders and their lawyers is way down. Pulte Homes, '20/'21 guilty plea in Marion County for destroying 22 gopher tortoise burrows questions their environmental liability. Closer to the home front in Verona Walk, Pulte knowingly planted over 1,900 oaks in vergers [sic] too narrow to accommodate them as they grew. Per the Collier County requirement of two hardwoods per 6,000 square plot which would -- after all was a reasonable requirement, because if you're here full-time, don't you want shade in the summer? So 10 years after Pulte left, this year, to remove 300 oaks, just 300 of the 1900 that can potentially cause damage, cost our community over $600,000. What's another example of where trust in builders -- and hopefully not our county -- has been sadly misplaced? The developer of Tamarindo blames the County for major flooding issues which have suspended the sale of new homes in that community. After Tamarindo was built, the County approved permits for Hacienda and Azures, which are three feet higher, causing the flooding that affects the newer community; at least that's according to the developer. And I heard him say that firsthand at the Verona CDD meeting where the developer came to beg us to take the overflow of water, which given that we have our own issues, Verona Walk turned down. What assurance do we really have that this proposed building won't cause flooding to Verona Walk and other communities? If you reverse this, what will keep you from reversing the Hacienda decision Sending deal, which is adjacent to Verona Walk? And by the way, insiders in the Collier County Government have told me -- and they can't let their names be used -- that they are also worried about this flooding. Number five, the argument that this will promote affordable housing is kind of a red herring. Only 63 are affordable, but what's affordable? You have to have an income level between 83,000 and 125,000. Okay, great. There's an outside agency that will help you if you apply. But I have friends in Verona Walk. They've got children that are nurses, and they can't live in Collier County. They couldn't afford this. They don't make that much money. And if they have kids, they're certainly out of the mix. We do have affordable housing in apartments, as some of you have aptly noted, and near by in Ekos. Is there an alternative that benefits the three property owners who live in Illinois and the two who live in Naples and benefits us and makes you guys look good? Your retention of the designation Sending will reassure Collier County taxpayers that you listened to us and -- because I'm going to tell you, why am I the only one from Verona October 2, 2025 Page 49 of 84 Walk when there were hundreds of people opposed to it? Because nobody else believes you will listen and because I'm a Don Quixote, okay. So -- okay. But here's the alternative that I think will work, okay? Why don't you open the door for a deal like the one that began with Collier County seeking about 150 acres to create a regional park near Immokalee and ended with one of Southwest Florida's largest and most lucrative deals of the year, one purchased with public money? Collier County closed September 18th on a 2,247-acre agricultural property in northeastern Collier County paying 20.7 million for land adjacent to Lake Trafford and west and southwest of Immokalee. You guys are the planners. We count on you to think outside of the box. Why not look at this as an amazing opportunity, an educational opportunity? Preserve the 20 acres of it for an orange grove; hire the present manager, Bobby, to run it; and use it as a chance to explore the University of Florida's solution to citrus greening. You would be like -- you'd make national news if you did something like that, in a good way. And the people who own it will get appropriate compensation and money which we -- hey, I do believe in the American way. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can I ask you to wrap it up, please? You've already gone beyond 10 minutes. MS. BRIGGS: Okay. Sadly -- I only have one more sentence. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. BRIGGS: Most of the commissioners' recent decisions favor developers. The most disturbing one was the one that affected Fiddler's Creek. Since it is highly probable that Costco on Rattlesnake will be approved, your decision to keep this as Sending sends a message to residents that someone actually listens and cares about conservation. Thank you, and thank you for keeping me from questions from the lawyer. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Ma'am, I appreciate your comments on -- regards to the County purchasing it, but that's not our decision, so -- I mean, that would be something that would happen -- whatever the end result of this is, that would be another avenue. And I -- if I -- I don't even know if that was Conservation Collier that purchased that. I have no idea. MS. BRIGGS: Conservation Collier was part of it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, okay. Because there's criteria for purchasing under Conservation Collier. Next speaker, please. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Does Rich want to cross-examine her? MR. YOVANOVICH: Only experts. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next speaker. MR. SABO: Two speakers left. Gwen Ransone and then one online, Jenny Smith. MS. RANSONE: Good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Gwen Ransone. I live in Verona Walk. My house is on the other side of the wall where the housing project is planned to be built. Our area already has issues with power outages, low water pressure without hurricane interruptions. They want to build 423 houses, adding around 900 people all the way down Sabal Palm Road, which is a single lane road from each direction. Sabal Palm is not conducive to manage this amount of traffic, let alone the noise and the traffic that will disrupt our quiet neighborhoods and the wildlife. October 2, 2025 Page 50 of 84 Leave it as farmland, fruit, vegetables, cannabis, trees can be grown, and they're all lucrative businesses. I object to both of the petitions and so do other people, and we all sent objection letters to Parker and Laura. Thank you for your time. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Last speaker online, Jenny Smith. We're asking her to unmute. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Ms. Smith, are you online, please? (No response.) MR. SABO: We asked to unmute again. MR. RODRIGUEZ: Hello. MR. SABO: There we go. MR. RODRIGUEZ: Can you hear me? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. RODRIGUEZ: Oh. I am speaking on behalf of Jenny Smith in terms of two questions -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And your name, please? Sir, your name, please. MR. RODRIGUEZ: My name is Antonio Rodriguez. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. MR. RODRIGUEZ: And the two questions that we submitted dealing with the traffic studies, particularly the one that -- it was mentioned that the traffic studies that were utilized were conducted during the busy season for Collier Boulevard and wondering did they also take under consideration the three additional developments that are going on on Collier Boulevard that would add in excess of 3,000 units to the area? In addition to that, did they also take into consideration in that study the potential location of a Costco by Hacienda Lakes? So that is a tremendous amount of traffic that would be generated, and wondering if, in fact, the engineer that spoke in reference to the study and utilizing the busy season, whether that was -- those additional elements were taken under consideration. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And is that your question, or -- are you just looking for an answer? MR. RODRIGUEZ: That is my question. That is my question. I'm looking for an answer whether that, in fact, was done or not. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can I ask the petitioner, do you want to address those points, either Norm or Rich? Two questions, of course, was the traffic -- I think the question was asked, but I don't think they really comprehend and understand how the traffic studies are done on the -- and the way it's calculated, but go ahead, please. MR. YOVANOVICH: This is Rich Yovanovich on behalf of the petitioner, and I can bring Norm up if I have to. The traffic study takes into consideration the trip bank and grows the traffic based upon, you know, our project and projected growth over time. So yes, these developments are taken into consideration as part of the development. Now, remember the -- and I don't want to -- I don't want to litigate Costco on this petition nor do I want to litigate Fiddler's Creek in this petition. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: Costco is a permitted use in the Hacienda Lakes project. October 2, 2025 Page 51 of 84 It's -- I know that because I did it. So it is a permitted use. So that traffic was accounted for when Hacienda Lakes was approved. All that is taken into consideration in the trip bank and growing projected traffic in the future. And I can get Mr. Trebilcock to come up here and say that. The date of the study, as we said early on, is what you put on the piece of paper -- and those were my words -- is irrelevant. The analysis is done at the peak, and all of the numbers come from the County based upon the peak. So it is a peak-season analysis. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. So in a nutshell, for Mr. Rodriguez, yes, the -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: The traffic study does include the potential traffic calculations because it's already in what we call the trip bank and what is authorized and considered to be allowed on Collier County and all of the roads that enter into Collier County. I mean, we can have the -- I think you're looking for -- Mr. Rodriquez is looking at this as what exists today, and this is just going to add to it. But really, the traffic study is more than that. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. In the project -- and the traffic studies project out -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Project out, yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- several years in the analysis. MR. RODRIGUEZ: Is it projected out based on the additional -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. The additional -- MR. RODRIGUEZ: -- development, or is it projected out based on a percentage that is determined ongoing basis? MR. YOVANOVICH: The County has a formula for growing its traffic annually based upon -- you have what's there today, and the County grows that on a -- in a reasonable projected basis to look out to the future as to what the trips are. We don't look at it just based on today's traffic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. COMMISSIONER SHEA: But do you add all of the developments that have been approved that aren't yet at the stage that they would be counted? MR. YOVANOVICH: If -- I'm going to let Norm explain this. MR. TREBILCOCK: Yes. Norman Trebilcock. So -- and Michael can maybe help as well. So in the AUIR document -- so what we look at, we do look at a percentage of growth that's occurring or we look at the trip bank data that the County has based on projects that have been approved. And we'll use the higher of the two values in what we're doing in analyzing things to look at what the future's going to be like for the -- for the project area. COMMISSIONER SHEA: When is -- when does that clock tick that says you're going to count this project? Because it takes -- it's in the planning for years, and a lot of times you don't count those in your traffic study because they're not 100 percent sure it's going yet. MR. TREBILCOCK: Right. COMMISSIONER SHEA: But it probably will. MR. TREBILCOCK: Right. And so that's why the County has this AUIR. They actually count the actual traffic. Because what happens is if we add -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Pause for the record. The AUIR is Annual Inventory October 2, 2025 Page 52 of 84 and Update Report. It assesses the annual traffic count throughout all of the roads in Collier County, and it determines what capacity the roads are at -- annually, so that's what that is. You use some acronyms. I want the folks in the audience to understand what that is. MR. TREBILCOCK: You're -- exactly. And thank you. So what happens is the reason they count that traffic is because if we just add every TIS that comes in, you're dumping in all this traffic, and it's an overwhelming number versus -- by doing this combination that staff does is they're counting the actual traffic that is occurring as development occurs. Because, like, for instance, the Costco, in as much as -- that's going to generate traffic, but that's going to also be what we call an attractor. It's going to pull people in that -- you know, people that were going across town to Costco in Naples Boulevard no longer will have to do. They can travel a shorter distance to achieve their trip making. So that's the whole purpose of the AUIR counting that the County does, because they basically level off what's occurring. And then what staff will do based on projects that are coming online, they will look at stuff that's in the pipeline to be approved, and that becomes part of trip bank traffic that we add into the system. And then separately, what we do is we look at the historical growth rate of the traffic, and we'll look at a percentage of that traffic and look at that growth, and we'll compare the two, and we'll use the higher of the two items to get a reasonable estimate of what's going to happen. And we're looking out in a planning horizon for this for, like, a five-year period to see. Because what happens is things get baked in based on actual flow of traffic and how things get absorbed versus just stacking -- piling everything on. And it may be worthwhile to have your planning transportation staff comment on this as well, because they're the ones that see it every day. COMMISSIONER SHEA: I just wanted an answer for the -- and the answer is yes, we do consider all those items -- MR. TREBILCOCK: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER SHEA: -- and that's it for me. MR. TREBILCOCK: A little too long, sorry. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: A lot of times I'll say, "Norm, is it 12 o'clock? Don't tell me how the watch was made." CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Are there any other speakers, please? MR. SABO: No further speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mike, go ahead, please. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. Before you turn over to the applicant for final comments, I did have a note that Cormac provided to me. He mentioned that during their presentation, they had a -- they mentioned a slide that Pulte, I believe, has the Hometown Heroes, the $2,000 potential down payment assistance for qualified buyers. Based upon that, staff -- if the Planning Commission does make a recommendation for approval of the petition, to add to the PUD a commitment that the developer shall provide $126,000 in down payment assistance for qualified Hometown Heroes, parentheses, a/k/a, ESP, in parentheses buyers. Basically, the 63 units that are going to be available that are income restricted, times the $2,000 per unit, would -- that's the $126,000 that they would make available for October 2, 2025 Page 53 of 84 the -- you know, the Hometown Hero buyers, and incorporate that with -- into the PUD commitments. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Did the petitioner hear that? MR. YOVANOVICH: Yes, I did. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And your statement is you concur? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, I -- the "I told you so" comes to mind. Yes, we will include down payment assistance up to $126,000 at $2,000 per -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And do you have any statements in closing? MR. YOVANOVICH: Oh, yeah. Not a lot, not a lot. I'm assuming you all have received the letters of support from the Chamber, from NCH, from SWFL, from the United Way, from the Village School. You know, you've received those letters. I just want those to be noticed -- noted on the record that there is broad-based community support for the concept of providing owner-occupied affordable housing. I'm sorry if I scared the first nonpaid speaker by talking to Mr. Cornell. I would never cross-examine a member of the general public. And I think there's some things that we need to allay some concerns. Those of you who knew Mark Strain when he was on the Planning Commission knows that he put together a map of Collier County, and 75 percent of Collier County will always be in preserve. And that doesn't count private lands that are also being placed in preserve. So we're never going to be Miami. Because 75 percent of Collier County is already preserved. I find it a little ironic that Verona Walk is okay to be in Primary Panther Habitat but a 160-acre orange grove is not allowed to be in Primary Panther Habitat. The reality is is there's a process that we go through federal permitting, and our expert -- the only expert in environmental permitting that's testified here today has explained the process about what happens and what Primary Panther Habitat actually means. To defend Pulte, I guess it is a sin to plant too many trees. They planted too many trees. Most communities like that there's a lot of trees planted. Apparently planting too many trees in Verona Walk was a no-no. You've heard from the transportation experts. My expert testified. Your expert provided comments through the written documents. There are no transportation-related reasons to turn this down. You've heard from the environmental experts. Mine testifying; yours through the written documents. There's no environmental reason to turn this down. You've heard from the planning experts. Mine testifying, Mr. Bosi testifying, and the documents. There's no planning reason to turn this down. And you've heard from the experts in water management. Your staff report and in my -- and in JD's testimony today, there's no water management reason to turn this down. And you've heard that our proposed project enhances water management, enhances the environment. I disagree with Mr. Cornell's statement as to what would have happened in 2002 if we would have stood up here and said, "Hey, please take this 600 acres out." I think they would have created the enclave. Because they were not trying to hurt farmers. They were not trying to protect already impacted lands. I don't disagree that this is surrounded by Sending Lands, but it can be appropriately dealt with, and we've dealt with it appropriately. October 2, 2025 Page 54 of 84 Staff's recommending approval. All the expert testimony has been in support of approval. We're requesting that the Planning Commission give a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners to approve both the Growth Management Plan amendment and the PUD. We've made -- we'll make the change regarding the pedestrian interconnection. We'll make the commitment for -- what was the number, Mike? I don't want to speak too high. MR. BOSI: 126,000. MR. YOVANOVICH: 126,000 for down payment assistance. And with that, that's all I really have to say in rebuttal. All the experts support approval. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I have two follow-up. I never saw the cross-section for the proposed improvements for Sabal Palm, so I didn't know -- at what standards? Are we looking at full county standards? MR. YOVANOVICH: It's attached to the PUD document, I believe. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It is? MR. YOVANOVICH: Let me confirm that. I think it's one of the master plan changes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: My second question, Mr. Yovanovich, is your -- has your property owner, or owners, been approached by any external entities, whether it be Audubon, Conservancy, any other preservation -- MR. YOVANOVICH: No. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- type organizations to partner or attempt to purchase this property to keep -- to convert it to some kind of preservation? MR. YOVANOVICH: The answer's no. And my cell number hasn't changed in the 35 years that I've had that cell phone, so they all have it, and nobody's reached out to me. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No. But nobody -- has your client considered, in any way, shape, or form what was discussed with regards to the potential for somebody buying this? I know I've read different things online about statements from individuals commenting that it should be -- and we heard testimony that would -- why doesn't somebody buy this, convert it to a research center for an orange grove or whatever other activities that would be proposed, but has your client ever been approached -- MR. YOVANOVICH: No. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- by anybody to partner to pursue that type of venue? MR. YOVANOVICH: No. And, you know, I can't tell you how many petitions where I've been up here where someone has said, "You should just leave the land like it is," and "The county should make it a park. The County should buy it. Conservation should -- Conservation Collier should buy it." No. Nobody's called me. Nobody's called my client. Nobody's said we're willing to pay you X for this dirt. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Has your client considered any movement that was suggested by Mr. Cornell in regards to trying to sever TDRs from this and going through the restoration process? MR. YOVANOVICH: There -- if you look at Mr. Cornell's numbers, what it would cost to do the restoration, even if you took all of that out, which I don't think you can, you're only -- you would need -- you're not going to get anywhere near enough TDRs October 2, 2025 Page 55 of 84 to pay for the fair value of that property. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, that's my point. The fair value -- MR. YOVANOVICH: It's not even close. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: The fair market value of this property -- I have absolutely no idea. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, I'm not going to tell you what the purchase price is. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's the fair-market value of this property. And, no, there's no -- no -- not even close in the TDR compensation world. And that's -- you know, we need to be honest with each other. I'm not so sure the TDR program -- it works fine in the RLSA because you had a limited universe of property owners. I don't agree that the TDR program has necessarily worked for this medium-sized property. And I've talked to Mike about some suggestions in the future about maybe stimulating a TDR bank to make it easier for the 5-acre or 10-acre person to come to the County and sell the lands. But right now, it needs tinkering with. This is a good -- this is the first -- and you know what, I need to correct myself. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Considering -- MR. YOVANOVICH: This is the second project that has for-sale units. NC Square has some for-sale units, and this project, but NC Square predated the changes to the Growth Management Plan. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But at its current designation, it's one unit per 40 acres. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And other than people with pretty thick wallets to go in there and buy 40 acres and do some kind of restoration because that's now an orchard, I have no idea what the market would even be able -- be a lucrative opportunity. I mean, I can only see this property being preserved is if entities like Audubon, Conservancy, or other organizations could raise enough money to compensate the homeowner -- or the property owner to keep this land in preserve, so... MR. YOVANOVICH: I can have -- if you want JD to come up and show you the cross-section for Sabal Palm or -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes, I do, I want to see that. But while we're doing -- go ahead, JD. Because I have a question for staff. I want to ask the Conservation Collier question. MR. DeFORGE: JD DeForge. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That's good. I've seen it. Thanks. MR. DeFORGE: Good, okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I just wanted to see what the shoulders and the drainage was. I got it. Thanks. MR. DeFORGE: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Jaime, I have a question in regards to -- I'll wait till Jaime introduces herself. MS. COOK: Jaime Cook, the director of Development Review, and I also oversee the Conservation Collier program. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: From a perfect perspective of the County buying this and under the auspices of the rules and criteria for Conservation Collier, would Conservation Collier, without some kind of Board adjustment, be able to purchase this October 2, 2025 Page 56 of 84 property given its current condition? MS. COOK: So the -- the way the Conservation Collier program works is that properties can be targeted in three ways: Through Target Protection Areas, which are seemed environmentally sensitive areas that we're trying to parcel together smaller parcels of land. It can be nominated by a citizen, or it can be applied to the program by the owner of the property themselves. Whether they are in a target area or nominated by somebody from the community, the owner would still have to go through the process. They fill out an application. An environmental assessment of the property is done to look for things like listed species, habitat types, the environmental conditions of the property, soil conditions, whether there may or may not be any contamination on the property. Once it's gone through that, it's reviewed by the Conservation Collier Advisory Board, and a recommendation is made to the Board of County Commissioners. If the County Commissioners elect to move forward with the property, then an appraisal is obtained. The appraisal process for this type of property would require two independent appraisals, and then a negotiation of that purchase price would be made to the owner. Ultimately, again, this is a willing-seller program, so the property owner would have to agree to that selling price. If they -- if the real property staff and -- who handles all of our real estate transactions for the program and the seller come to an agreement, it would then go to the Board for a final approval before the purchase agreement is ultimately approved and a closing could occur. Does that answer your question? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, it does. But the criteria for -- or for ranking, whether Conservation Collier dollars should be used to purchase this property depends on the value from an environmental standpoint. This being an orange grove, it would probably be low value environmentally unless there's restoration. And then Conservation Collier would be responsible for restoration? MS. COOK: Yes. Conservation Collier would be responsible for any of the restoration, to include additional plantings, creation of flowways, things like that. There would also be -- just from my own experience in dealing with this, there may also be some mitigation required by the property owner because it has been used in agriculture for so long. There may be contaminants in the soils and things like that that would need to be remediated prior to closing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. And I was going to bring that up with you, Mr. Hall, because the -- the developer's going to have to deal with that anyway because this was many, many years an orange grove, so they would have to ensure that there's no contamination -- or any remediation of contamination. Fertilizers or otherwise would have to be mitigated as well. MS. COOK: Absolutely. No matter -- no matter the fate of this property, that remediation would be required to occur. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you, Jaime. MS. COOK: You're welcome. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, I close the public hearing, and I open for comments from my colleagues. Anybody? October 2, 2025 Page 57 of 84 COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, I can start. This is probably one of the -- I know we've had some tough stuff, but in my mind, most of them I can rationalize one way or another. I'm an environmental engineer, and I'm on the Affordable Housing Committee. My mind has gone both ways. I can tell you right now there is no doubt in my mind, when you go to the commissioners, this is going to get approved. But I'm going to vote against it just kind of as a -- as a note. I'm worried that we're nibbling away at our environmental boundaries in these areas that years ago we thought were sacred. And now by putting this in here, we're just nibbling, and then the next one's going to come in, and we're going to keep nibbling it. It's a great project. I think the petitioner has put some great effort into trying to preserve what's there, but I'm just worried that we're going to be nibbling away at it. So I'm going to -- it's more of a protest vote. As I said, there's no doubt it's going to be approved by the commissioners, because the community value is tremendous. They've done a great job in putting community value in there, but there's always a balance between community value and environmental, and we're now infringing on the environmental, which my environmental side jumped in, and I'll have a protest vote against it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So that's both for -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, that would be essentially for the GMPA because -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- you're -- without the GMPA being approved, we cannot approve the PUD. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Any other comments from anybody? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Yeah, I've got one. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Chap. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: First of all, I'm glad I have a compadre with Paul. I don't have any issues with the details of this proposal, including the public benefit. I understand that. My issue is the further -- what I'll call the further urbanization of the county particularly in areas that are environmentally sensitive or very close to areas that are environmentally assessment -- or sensitive. For that reason, I'll be joining Paul in voting against this proposal. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Charles, thank you. Mike, any comments? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: See, I think I view things a little differently here. I think this has been farmed for 50 years. I think it's an orange grove. I think the soil -- to restore the soil would take a tremendous amount of effort and tremendous amount of money. I think this is not good land. I think that they -- the best alternative is for-sale affordable housing. I think the watershed in the area is an issue, and the developer wants to come by and fix all of the watershed in the area. But because it's 2,000 feet away from where it's supposed to be, they made a -- I mean, Hacienda Lakes is in the same area. But this is not -- this is not land that anybody will ever want except for this specific developer. So I think that this is the best use of this land, and I think that -- I think that the comment to donate the land was -- was horrendous. Nobody wants to just give up their October 2, 2025 Page 58 of 84 land, their investment. This person's been there for, obviously, more than 50 years, and they just want to donate the land to the State for that? I think that this is the best use of the land; that's why I will be voting in favor for it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you, Mike. I, too, am going to vote to support this, and I'll explain why. I understand clearly the environmental impacts of it. Most of the folks -- some folks don't know my background, but I'm a retired Army Corps of Engineer former commander. I understand the 404 process very well, understand the environmental impacts, and I was also here as the administrator when this program was first developed under the Rural Lands Stewardship and the Rural Fringe. I have to believe -- and I asked the petitioner directly -- that the homeowner -- or the -- at that time, 24 -- 23, 24 years ago, that the property owner had no idea the County was moving forward to prohibit any type of development on this property. It's an orange grove. We had similar properties under this program in the past. I called this the hole in the doughnut when it first came to us in March. It's land that, frankly, is not -- would not ever have been conceived to be called Sending Lands. It just happens to be in the middle of an area that's surrounded by preserve. Clearly understand Brad's -- and respect his opinion in regards to the preserves around it in the Picayune Strand, but it's an orange grove. And I think the public benefit of providing an opportunity for homeownership is tremendous. The biggest problem today is young folks can't afford to buy a home and participate in one of the greatest ways of creating wealth in our country, and that is homeownership. And it's a few homes, but at least it's a start, and it's under homeownership. I asked a question specifically whether the property owner had been approached by any other entity to buy this, and I'm really disappointed. I'm really disappointed that -- the fact that I hear from -- and I got the letter from the Conservancy. I heard from the Audubon Society. Brad, I didn't -- like I said, I didn't get your letter till this morning, but nobody's approached the homeowner and said, let's figure out how we can save this land and still keep it a preserve. It's sort of like we want you to pay for it and keep it in TDR, and hopefully maybe some day you'll make -- be whole again. The TDR -- in my estimation, the TDR system in the Rural Fringe is not working. It's just not working. There's no market. There's no value. If the Board neutered the program by allowing affordable housing, that was a Board decision, that was a Board policy, and basically, it allows an applicant to come in now and put affordable housing into a proposal, whether it's Neutral Lands or Receiving Lands, that affordable housing does not require TDRs. I have to live with that policy. So with that regard and all the statements, I'm going to support it, so I call the -- I will make a motion to approve both 9A and 9B, and us sitting as the EAC, to approve 9B. So with that I call for questions. Do I -- I have a motion. Do I hear a second? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'll second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We have a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All in favor -- or all opposed, like sign. October 2, 2025 Page 59 of 84 COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Are we voting on -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: You just voted for it. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Oh, no. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So you voted against it? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Yes, I did. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct the record. We have a two and two vote, then. So it's a tie. So it closed at two and two. That's for 9A and 9B and sitting as the EAC for 9B. With that I think we'll -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Can I ask just -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes, go ahead. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Because I waited till the vote, because this issue with TDRs in the Rural Fringe that you talked about -- this is a question for Mike. What are we doing about that if it's not working? I mean, the intent was -- I mean, Brad was probably right, that people are -- there's no incentive to protect your land, but if it's not working the way we wanted it to, are we doing anything to try and make it work the way we intended it? MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. We made modifications in 2022. It was an adoption to amend the Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District to try to help facilitate further exchanges within the program. The problem isn't structurally with the program. The issue that we've found is that the greatest consumer of TDRs were anticipated to be the one village -- the one village that's allowed to develop in the four receiving areas, so four villages, and the four villages were minimum of 300 acres or larger. So those villages were going to -- or programmed to consume a large amount of TDRs for their entitlement. Because we have not had the -- the development of a village yet within any of those programs, we have not received that big demand. Now, what I will say is we've had a sellers' list on our program or within our -- within that program within the County website that we make sellers available to developers who want to purchase those TDRs. We have had exchanges within there. There is some exchange. This program is not completely broken. This program needs a fix, an adjustment. The Board of County Commissioners understood that. They also understood it back in 2019. And we went and had some -- and suggested some additional changes beyond what was adopted in 2022. They told us to pull that back a bit, so those -- the full-scale changes to how we arrange for how a village is developed has been partially adopted, but we need further action on that, and the Board of County Commissioners is aware of it. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Well, I guess I'm going a little farther. I think affordable housing is something we need, but we just basically trumped -- if we even had a good TDR program, everybody's going to come in with some small component of affordable housing, and they won't have to do that. Somehow we've got to balance those two policies. Not the Planning Commission, but to me, we've neutered the TDR program. Maybe it was already neutered because of the way it was structured, but now you don't -- you don't even have to think about it if you're in that area, in the fringe area. October 2, 2025 Page 60 of 84 MR. BOSI: I would say the Board of County Commissioners has already made that evaluation and affordable housing -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: So they've decided. MR. BOSI: -- and the affordable housing was the greater need. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That's my opinion is they made -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- that decision, and affordable housing, which has been the crescendo for 15 years in this county of trying to promote affordable housing. MR. BOSI: Correct. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So even the villages. If somebody wants to build a village, they do affordable housing. They don't have to do the TTRs -- TDRDs you were -- TDRs you were hoping to get. MR. YOVANOVICH: May I? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Sure. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's not true. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: If you do a TD -- the reason the villages aren't working -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I don't care about that. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- is it makes no economic sense, because you do have to do affordable housing, and you have to buy TDRs. And they're all kind of in the wrong place from a -- having to also build additional infrastructure. It's just -- and the best example is the Immokalee Road village that was going to occur basically around the curve. I worked on it, and we were working, working, working. And you know what? It turned out the better option was just to build based upon the regular Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District process, buy TDRs, not the TDR number that was factored into this equation of potential buyers. And I don't know what's going to happen -- and then that was one. Bonita Bay was going to do another village. They ran into the same issues about cost, so that one's gone. The only one I think you might have left is Six Ls, and that's not going to be enough -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- to buy up all the TDRs. So, you know, we need to talk about, you know -- you know, you got -- you've got two things at play here. You've got affordable housing -- and it bothers me when people say that's trumping the TDR program. It's not, because you're still providing affordable housing. And when you say, "I want you to buy all these TDRs" -- and I do affordable housing -- well, you may as well -- you changed the economics of the program, which you can't have either. And, you know, I'm sorry we ended up with a tie, especially since you said it was a good program, good project. I would -- I wish you would take the opportunity to perhaps switch your vote and say, "I think it's a good project, and we should move forward." CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, with a tie you move forward. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, I know we move forward regardless, but I'm just saying... CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Joe, this is -- to some of you in the audience, I October 2, 2025 Page 61 of 84 think that the entities, whoever they are, who oppose this project, and the individuals that spoke that oppose this project, you ought to band together and see if you can approach the current landowner and come up with a solution that's acceptable to the landowner and you to save this land. Right now, without something to dangle in front of the landowner, he's going to have no motivation whatsoever other than to sell it to the people that want to develop it. He needs an alternative. And if you don't give him one or come up with one, I think it's case closed. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Well, thanks. With that, we're going to adjourn till 1 p.m., and we'll resume. We have three other petitions to hear. Take a 30-minute lunch. Thank you. (A luncheon recess was had from 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. And good afternoon. If I could -- please, everybody note we're starting, please. Mr. Yovanovich is getting ready. ***We're going to proceed to the next petition, which is the -- it's the Miceli Planned Unit Development, PL20240012218. And with that, I turn the -- I'm going to ask first, Amy, any disclosures. MS. LOCKHART: None. Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: None. Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I spoke to Mr. Yovanovich about this petition as well and reviewed staff material. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials, and I spoke to Mr. Yovanovich. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And for the record, I'm very familiar with the history of this parcel, because it's had a long history of code violations, but that's all been abated. But I'm very familiar with the long history about this piece of property. But with that, any registered speakers, please rise to be sworn in. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Jesus Christ. 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.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, I turn it over to Mr. Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: I would start, but what do I do? Good afternoon. For the record, Rich Yovanovich on behalf of the applicant. I have several people here to support the petition, my experts. Jessica Harrelson will follow me and go through the planning aspects of this. I have David Hurst here to answer any civil-engineering-related questions. My anticipation is there's always -- there's going to be concerns from our neighbors about drainage, so Mr. Hurst is here to address the permitting process and how our project is designed to where it will not flood our neighbors as we go through and develop the project. Mr. Trebilcock is here as our transportation consultant, and Jeremy Sterk is here as our environmental consultant. This is an outline of the property that we're requesting to rezone to a total of 63 residential dwelling units. It's approximately 8.61 acres in size. And I'll get to you -- get October 2, 2025 Page 62 of 84 how we came up with the density calculation in a few later slides. The existing uses, it's a mixed-use PUD. It has some commercial uses on 2.83 acres, and it has 17 dwelling units on the other 5.8 acres. It's in the Urban Coastal Fringe. It's in the U.S. 41 east overlay corridor, which I think is still on hold, and we're in the Coastal High Hazard Area as far as how you would calculate density for the project. The property was deemed consistent by policy. And we've talked about this on other projects I think on, like, probably -- probably on North Tamiami Trail. But on East Tamiami Trail, there were -- there were properties that when the Growth Management Plan was adopted in 1989, there were commercial properties that were not consistent with the activity center concept that the county went to, and you -- certain properties, because they were improved, were deemed consistent by policy, and the commercial portions of those projects were allowed to remain intact, and this is one of those properties. So what we're seeking to do is convert those properties -- that 2.8 acres to residential. The Comprehensive Plan provides that you can request 16 dwelling units per acre on that 2.83 acres. That generates 45.2 acres [sic] -- -28 acres, and then the existing 17.4 dwelling units. It comes to a total of 62.68 acres [sic]. And under our code, we round up for how we get to the density. So that's how we arrived at the density. Your staff has determined that we are consistent with the Growth Management Plan with regard to density and with regard to our request. That's the actual language that's in the Comprehensive Plan, but I just told you how that works. I'm going to have Jessica come up and take you through the Master Concept Plan. But again, to summarize, the County's experts and our experts all agree that we're consistent with the Growth Management Plan, that we're consistent with the Land Development Code, and your staff is recommending approval of our request to rezone the property. We're going to, at the end of the day, ask you to recommend approval of this project as well. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jessica to take you through the Master Concept Plan, how we fit in with the neighbors. And if you need any further testimony from any of the other experts that we have here, we're happy to answer those questions. MS. HARRELSON: Hello. Good afternoon. I am Jessica Harrelson, a certified planner with Peninsula Engineering. So what you see here is the PUD master plan. Again, we're requesting 63 units over the property. It's 8.63 acres. So that equates to a density of 7.3 units per acre. The property was previously developed as a commercial landscape nursery and has an existing access point along U.S. 41. This will be retained. The site is encumbered by a 30-foot drainage easement along the rear and along the portion of the north. Site improvements will remain outside of that easement. Setbacks are 50 feet from U.S. 41, 10 feet along the north, 40 feet along the rear, to accommodate that easement, and then 25 feet from the southern PUD boundary. Maximum zoned height is 35 feet. Perimeter landscape buffers include a 15-foot Type D adjacent to U.S. 41, a 10-foot Type A along the north, along the west, and then we have a 15-foot Type B along the south, and where adjacent to residential along Raintree, the developer has committed to enhancing that buffer. October 2, 2025 Page 63 of 84 For surrounding zoning, the pink shaded areas are C-4 commercially zoned. They allow building heights up to 75 feet. Along the north, we have multifamily, and we have water management along the west within the Wentworth Estates PUD, commonly known as Treviso Bay. This area has a maximum zoned building height of 45 feet. To the south is RSF-4 single-family residential. This has a maximum zoned height of also 35 feet. This is the preliminary site plan which is subject to change as we get into final engineering design and permitting, but this just gives an idea of the placement of buildings. We have located the amenity tract along U.S. 41 to minimize impacts to surrounding landowners. We've requested a total of four deviations with this PUD amendment. The first is being -- requesting to allow a 50-foot right-of-way instead of 60 feet for the internal street. This is a typical deviation request for privately owned and maintained rights-of-way. Fifty feet is also sufficient to accommodate all proposed improvements. The second deviation is requesting to allow parking at the amenity center to back out into the internal street here. This is a low-volume, low-intensity community, and there is no issues with public health, safety, and welfare for the approval of this deviation. The third deviation is seeking to allow a hammerhead design instead of a cul-de-sac. The hammerhead allows a more efficient design with space -- with a site design and provides adequate vehicular circulation and turning movement. And the final deviation is from sidewalks and bike lanes, which requires a 5-foot sidewalk on both sides of the street to instead allow one sidewalk where there are no dwelling units. So the sidewalk would terminate here and not run up along this side, the north side of the right-of-way, but it would still run along to the amenity tract and connect out here to the sidewalk along U.S. 41. To highlight some of the important developer commitments, sorry, site lighting will be Dark Skies compliant. Again, that southern buffer will be enhanced where adjacent to residential along Raintree Lane. And the trip generation is 48 two-way p.m. peak-hour trips. And I would like to note that the traffic impacts proposed with this amendment are less than what is currently allowed by the current zoning. And then lastly, we held a NIM back in June. About 20 people came. And some of the public concerns included building height. So after the NIM, we limited the building height to two stories. They had concerns with landscaping and vegetation, so, again, we enhanced that southern buffer. The canopy trees will be planted at 14 to 16 feet in height instead of the typical 10 foot. And then the biggest concern that we heard that evening was stormwater related. And we had our engineering team take a preliminary look and do a preliminary assessment on stormwater. The site does accept offsite flows from the residential lots along Raintree, and the Miceli stormwater management system will be designed to continue to accept those offsite flows. And we do have David Hurst here this evening -- or this afternoon, sorry, to answer any questions you have related to stormwater. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I probably missed this, but what's on this site now? MS. HARRELSON: It's -- there's nothing on the site. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Nothing? MS. HARRELSON: Yeah. There was a landscape nursery, but that's been removed quite some time ago. October 2, 2025 Page 64 of 84 COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, that was once a -- wasn't that a pavilion of some sort? Before there was all that -- all the building was razed. MS. HARRELSON: Yeah, there was a -- yeah, a barn, like, an old barn that was removed from the site. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Then the lake just to the north tract, is that the County's lake? MS. HARRELSON: This is Florida Department of Transportation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, that was because of the expansion of 41 they had to put that in. MS. HARRELSON: Yes, correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Okay. But the water shown here, Jessica, that's all your requirement. You said you were going to take water from -- where is -- MS. HARRELSON: Yes. I'm going to have David come up, and he can -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. MR. HURST: For the record, David Hurst, Peninsula Engineering. So the lake that's shown here is representative of -- thank you. It's my first time here, I guess -- is representative of the onsite water management system. The intent to accept the water coming from Raintree would be via swale along this edge, which would ultimately convey it out to the LASIP canal right there. So it would basically capture this water, not bring it into the site; keep it separate from our system and convey it. Those calculations haven't been done, but that's part of the overall engineering. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. All right. Any other questions from my colleagues? I see none. With that, we will go to public speakers. Are there any public speakers? MR. SABO: Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. I think there are four. John Miller is first. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'll save staff after the public speakers just so you can answer. Mr. Miller. MR. MILLER: Good afternoon. My name is John Miller. I'm a current resident of Myrtle Cove Acres speaking to you today in opposition of the proposed rezoning for this property. The proposal seeks to convert a commercially zoned parcel into higher density residential use that will extent into the adjacent parcel shown here. That is a Coastal High Hazard Area. Frankly, I think that that's a recipe for a long-term disaster. I will preface, I am not an expert. I just view what I see on my property. I see the flooding, and I see the way that the water moves. Let me be clear, this isn't a zoning change. It's a decision that will directly impact flood patterns, public safety, and the variability [sic] of the surrounding community of Myrtle Cove Acres. The parcel in question is located in a sensitive FEMA designated flood zone, AE, allowing a significant increase in impervious surfaces, including rooftops, driveways, and parking lot which, looking at this, it looks like over 95 percent of the -- that area is now going to be an impervious surface. This will reduce the natural drainage and intensify flooding in the adjacent neighborhood of Myrtle Cove Acres, which is vulnerable already during heavy rains and October 2, 2025 Page 65 of 84 hurricane storm surge, which we have seen over the last three large hurricanes that have passed by Naples. So over the last three years, we've seen Helene, Milton, and Ian. All three of these storms have partially flooded or fully flooded streets along Myrtle Cove Acres, including Raintree Lane, as there is a drainage ditch there that flows directly into Rookery Bay. When it comes back from storm surge through Rookery Bay, it floods directly into a drainage ditch that then pushes water up through Raintree that's not shown in this here. So newly created drainage. There's also going to be a newly created bottleneck between the proposed rezone parcel and the newly developed residential lot loaded [sic] directly west of Myrtle Cove Acres. It's a small bottleneck that -- it's kind of hard to see. You might be able to see it here on the lower left-hand of your screen here where there's a -- the drainage canal basically splits into a small culvert that flows directly into our property at 5203 Raintree Lane and the rest of the drainage property that flows directly north. So we've seen time and time again that overdevelopment without regard for proper floodplain science leads to long-term infrastructure costs, property damage, and higher insurance premiums for everybody. Who will pay for that? Not the developer, obviously. The residents will as we continue to flood and flooding gets worse and worse due to overdevelopment. This rezoning benefits one party, and that is the developer, but puts many at risk, including the existing homeowners on Raintree Lane and all of Myrtle Cove Acres as well. We've already seen a significant increase in this flooding due to the other two developments that are currently taking place. One actually just finished, which is on the east side of Raintree Lane. That is the commercial property. And the other property that is currently being developed on the west side of Raintree Lane. Both of those had flooding mitigation plans put into place to mitigate the flooding and to aleve the flooding. I can tell you from personal experience, flooding has gotten significantly worse in the past two years. We have standing water now at both sides of Raintree Lane just from rain, not even including the storm surge that we see from hurricanes. I urge this -- this commission to take a step back and consider the broader consequences of this change. This lot is zoned in a High Coastal Hazard area for a reason, and then trying to shoehorn higher-density housing into a vulnerable area is both irresponsible and unfair to the current residents. I thank you for your time. I hope that you please stand with the community and recommend that this zoning change is not approved. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Miller, I have a question for you. You cited as AE zone, but that is a FEMA designation for establishing base flood elevation. MR. MILLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And that's based on the current flood maps. MR. MILLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And I know you cite flooding, and you're talking about flooding -- I'm looking on the map here -- down onto your house on Raintree. Is that -- does your house backyard face north, or are you on -- which side of the street are you on? MR. MILLER: I'm on the north side of the street, directly the corner. October 2, 2025 Page 66 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. And -- but do you understand that for this project to go forward, they have to go through the -- what they call an ERP, Environmental Resource Permit, and the engineer has to evaluate how much -- based on the -- a certain amount of rain falling, typically a hundred-year event, how much water they have to retain on -- and they're not allowed to trespass any water from their site onto neighboring property; are you aware of that? MR. MILLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. So you understand the ERP process? MR. MILLER: I understand parts of it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure that before this project can go forward, it still has to go through the Environmental Resource Permit. And we'll ask the engineer at the end where they are with that process. Thank you. MR. MILLER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next speaker, please. MR. MILLER: Next speaker is John Hudell. MR. HUDELL: I'm John Hudell. I live at 5211 Raintree Lane, which is right next door to John Miller, which just -- was just up here before. As far as I can see, there's no past president for -- precedent for giving this project, this Miceli project such a huge bonus density of quadrupling the amount of residences that are already there based on this conversion of a piece of commercial property that he owns. He's going to -- he's going to turn this commercial property, and he's wanting to convert this to affordable housing in order to get a quadruple rate, but he's not going to build anything on the -- on the commercial property. It's going to be lakes, and it's going to be probably palm trees and everything else in order to cover up the ugly buildings that are going to go in there. And you're going to cram all the buildings right next to us. I mean, there's a 15-foot buffer zone between this property and my house and John's that was right up here. There's no way that the flooding -- it's not going to flood. He's going to bring in a lot more land to raise it up. Like -- like John said, we've got tremendous flooding problems going on there right now. My lot is pretty high. Back on the corner occasionally during heavy rains, I do get a little bit of rain. But once they build this thing, I'm expecting it to be -- it's going to be a real mess. I don't know how bad it's going to get. And to say another thing about it, if he's going to build a two-story outfit there -- two-story buildings there, there's going to be hundreds of people looking right into my house. With 15 foot, they can see right into us. If we have to evacuate during any hurricanes -- I've had to cancel my insurance for all the interior contents just to carry insurance on the structure itself. So I'm going to have to sit there during a killer hurricane with a gun on my lap to try to protect my property from any looters that might come in during a bad hurricane. And I realize most of the people living in something like this are going to be fine, but it's the 5 to 10 percent that I'm going to have to worry about. I'm 76 years old going through a lot of medical issues. I don't need to deal with this, but I'm not going to have a choice. And we were never notified about this project even occurring until about three months ago. I saw something that they were supposed to notify everybody within a thousand feet of it. And there are a number of people within a thousand feet of this October 2, 2025 Page 67 of 84 development, the commercial part on 41, that they never notified. And certainly, you know, like I said, with a 15-foot buffer zone, it's the end of -- I mean, essentially, Miceli has made us part of his project. I don't know any place they've ever dropped anything like this into a residential community, nothing but single-family homes, and they're trying to add 63 units totally changing the nature of what Myrtle Cove Acres has been. And that's about all I've got to say. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I have a question, Mr. Hudell. Where does your water run now from your property? You're on the north side of the street on Raintree? MR. HUDELL: Yeah. I'm on the part that borders this whole project. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. And your water goes where? From your property, does it go -- MR. HUDELL: Like I said, my lot tends to be pretty high. It runs off into the street. The back part of it, there's a little bit of a drainage canal that I'm sure they made when they developed Myrtle Cove Acres there. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. HUDELL: But it's really gotten plugged by all the debris from the hurricanes. And Miceli hasn't done anything to clean up any of this debris. I've been out there with an ax -- I'm too cheap to buy a chainsaw -- and trying to cut down debris after hurricanes. I mean, we got hit head on by Irma, it was, and -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. HUDELL: -- that tore part of my roof off there. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Questions. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So your problem is twofold. Changing the nature of the neighborhood. MR. HUDELL: Yep. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: And you're a little concerned about more flooding? MR. HUDELL: Yeah. The flooding is going to happen, because he's going to bring in an awful lot of fill in order to build something like this, and I can't see how he's going to be able to drain it off properly. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next public speaker, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, there are two left, both on Zoom. Daniel Durst. We're asking him to unmute now. We asked him to unmute again. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: While we're waiting, staff, you did assure proper notifications went out? Mr. Hudell said he was never notified. But staff has affirmed that all proper notice went out for both the NIM and for the public hearings? MR. BOSI: In the backup, their material, the 500-foot notification list is provided for, and we think it's been properly executed per our regulations. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. Do we have him online, Mr. Dunst? MR. SABO: No, Mr. Chairman. We're going to go to the next one, Rick Pogany. We're asking Rick Pogany to unmute now. We asked again to unmute. Mr. Pogany? (No response.) MR. SABO: Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I guess no further speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: They just left. October 2, 2025 Page 68 of 84 All right. Staff. Do you -- would you present your findings, please? MR. BOSI: As contained within the staff report, the petition has been distributed to all of the reviewing divisions within the County, and we have recommended support of the request as well as the deviations. I will point out that the conversion of commercial to residential is something that's promoted by our Growth Management Plan as an incentive to eliminate the non-activity center commercial that is left over, and it has been utilized a number of times within this county. It does allow for a higher density, but that's the tradeoff for the exchange of commercial. But as I said, staff has reviewed this, and we find it consistent with the GMP as well as the LDC, except for the four deviations, and are recommending approval. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. With regards to the statement Mr. Miller made, this is higher density, and, in fact, it's -- it's a downzone from commercial to residential. So it is technically deemed less dense. MR. BOSI: I think what he was referring to is than the existing community. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Than the existing community, which is -- MR. BOSI: It is a little bit higher. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Which is -- technically now it's just wood -- a wooded lot. MR. BOSI: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Mike, the other issue here is this flooding issue. I don't know what's in the reports you have; I haven't seen them. Right now you have a flooding problem with A, whatever that is. Now you're going to do this. Now you've got B. What's the difference between what they currently have now and what's projected to be? MR. BOSI: What they currently have now is an unaddressed system of vacant land that spills water wherever the lowest points provide for. What they're going to provide for when this is developed is an engineered system to handle the water that comes onto the property and have to be able to discharge at a specific rate at a specific location. It's going to be an engineered -- an engineered system that is currently, right now, unaddressed. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So our staff is saying that the flooding problem should be less than it is now? MR. BOSI: The water that is shed from this current property onto other properties will now be contained on his property, treated before it's discharged to the canal. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can I have David come up? I want to ask him a question. MR. HURST: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: David, in regards to the homes on -- is that -- MR. HURST: Raintree. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- Raintree? MR. HURST: I believe so. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. Currently right now, how many of these homes October 2, 2025 Page 69 of 84 actually drain into the subject property, the wooded land right now? MR. HURST: So I don't have that exact information. My assumption at this time is all of them that are on the north side of Raintree. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: There's no type of berm or anything behind these lots? MR. HURST: No. They currently -- without, you know, additional information -- and we're not very far along in the engineering process. But I would assume that the back half. So the north half of each of those lots drains into this ditch on the north side of the -- on their property, south side of ours, and actually enters, you know, the Miceli site at this point. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But where are you now in going through the ERP process? You haven't started it yet? MR. HURST: We have not started. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Not started. MR. HURST: Site planning will start in several weeks. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But you -- just for the record, in regards to the ERP process, you are required to retain any water that is on your site. MR. HURST: Yes, sir. Not only that, but we are required to expect -- respect historic drainage conditions which, in this case, would be flows from our neighbors. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. HURST: And I would like to add, there was an existing ERP on this site for an ALF facility that did provide a swale on the south side of the Miceli parcel to accommodate those flows. The District has seen that, and we would, obviously, respect that. We just need to make sure that the calculations are correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. When was that done? MR. HURST: Yeah. Ten, 12 years ago. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That was a projected zoning action? MR. HURST: I think it was -- I don't know that we were rezoning it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Or was the zoning by right? MR. HURST: We were going into SDP. I think it was consistent. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Yovanovich, do you have the history of that? MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. You're now -- I think I had brown hair. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, you had brown hair back then, yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: I did, 12 years. And we were, I think, doing a comparable-use determination process at that point, that the assisted living was comparable to the existing residential. That's how I think we were approaching it back at that time. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, at that time. All right. Staff, well done. I'll turn it back -- MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, we found Mr. Pogany. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Pogany? MR. POGANY: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I have not closed the public hearing, so we'll hear from Mr. Pogany. MR. POGANY: Yes, sir. Can you hear me? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. POGANY: Yes. I wanted to reiterate that all the lots do drain. The rear lots released from the center of the lot towards the north do drain into the property currently, October 2, 2025 Page 70 of 84 and historically, the County has come out -- Mr. George Archibald used to live in this neighborhood, and he used to live in the house I live on in 5235 Raintree Lane, and he had commissioned the County to go out and clean that rear swale on a couple of occasions that I know of. So it is there. We want to at least have that maintained regardless of what gets developed, because I can't change the drainage -- I mean, typically, on any development, lots will drain the rear of the lot -- to the rear of the lot, not towards the road. It will be either via a lake or provided swale. The other concern I had was the density. Now, today the plan that they showed I was able to get a quick look at that in a snippet, and I counted up there are three six-unit, three eight-unit, one nine-unit, which is an odd one, and one four-unit. Well, that totals up to 55 units. Well, I had previously laid out a map and said that you can't get 63 units on this parcel. I'm not fitting them. So they did get 55 units on it, so I don't see why they would be petitioning to put 63 units on when it's pretty clear it's built out with the 55. But even as far as that, currently that property is zoned, I believe, for 16 single-family units and the commercial out front. So, okay, if you ditch the commercial, you want to put a few more single-family units in. Well, maybe that's going to get up to 24. Well, that's acceptable for this neighborhood. And the adjacent properties, Treviso Bay, those are coach homes. You're dropping a multifamily, basically, you know -- I wouldn't say -- it's not going to be low income, but totally different housing mixtures in the middle of these two neighborhoods when, if you'll look at the East Trail and on 951, the magnitude of the units like this, as well as apartments that have been built for this market, is quite sufficient, I think, for any growth in the community. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. POGANY: And to finalize -- and this will come up at permitting -- and I do not see how they're going to do it, but there's floodplain compensation to where the existing property's at grade. It's going to maintain some water during rainstorms. When you raise the elevation, that's gone. Well, how are they going to compensate for that? So that's something, like you said before, will come up in permitting. But this is a zoning matter, and I just think that this is way too dense for the location that they're putting it in. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Thank you. MR. POGANY: Thank you for your time. MR. SABO: No more speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Staff is done. I'll turn it back over to the applicant for any rebuttal. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And just to correct, he said 65. It's 63. The PUD says 63. So it will be zoned at 63. I don't know what he -- if the speaker was counting driveways or whatever, but it's 63 units. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, let -- yeah, it's 63 units, and that's what we're asking for. You know what, if we don't fit 63, we'll build 55. Whatever the number is, we'll ultimately build. Your last speaker is very familiar with -- as you could tell from his testimony -- October 2, 2025 Page 71 of 84 with development. He works for a local engineering firm. And -- and I'm not going to cross-examine him, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts his clients would not be happy to have him testifying that we should not apply the Growth Management Plan fairly to his clients. The reality is this property is entitled to convert, and it is actually encouraged to convert to residential. Let's talk a little bit about the zoning history of this property. I don't know if anybody lived there in 1984, but in 1984 this property was zoned for 60 residential units on the residential parcel and was also entitled to commercial on the commercial parcel; 1984. Fast forward to 1992. The County went through the zoning reevaluation program because the Growth Management Plan changed in 1989, and the County reduced the residential density in '92 from 60 units to 17 units. What did they give the property owner in exchange under the Growth Management Plan was the conversion process should they choose to do that. So we're going from what was allowed to be 60 units on just residential piece, which is the same area we're talking about right now, to 63 on the entirety of the property and giving up the commercial. I think that's a fair trade based upon what the Growth Management Plan allows. Two stories has been, since 1992, the allowed height on this property. We're two stories. So the reality is this is -- this plan is consistent with the Growth Management Plan and, frankly, consistent with what was originally approved on the property until the Growth Management Plan was amended, and now we have to give up the commercial to get back the units that were taken away. That meant, so we give you commercial to get back units that were taken away because the Growth Management Plan was changed. Now, the open-space requirement for this project is 60 percent open space. That's the requirement. This is a conceptual plan. The real plan will have 60 percent open space, and the impervious areas, other than the pool deck, don't count as open space, correct? MR. HURST: Correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: If we do multi -- if we do -- if we do the current plan, the required open space is just 30 percent because it's a mixed-use project. The standards are different. So you're actually getting more open space through converting this to residential than what's required today under the existing approved uses on the property. The reality is I appreciate people's concern about flooding. I truly do. They live in an older community. They probably don't have an engineered system. Fair? MR. HURST: (Shrugs shoulders.) MR. YOVANOVICH: We will have an engineered system, and for the engineers on the Board, we will be required to accept what's coming on our property today, account for all of our water on our property today, and we'll have to discharge it at a lower rate than it's being discharged today. I can have David come back up here and say that, but I've done enough of these presentations to know that that's the law, and that's what will be required. So the reality is the drainage will not get worse. More likely, it will get improved through our redevelopment of this property. What we're asking for is consistent with the Growth Management Plan. It's less intense than what was approved in 1984. We're going back to what the Board said we could have, essentially, in 1989 when the Growth Management Plan was changed. That's October 2, 2025 Page 72 of 84 all we're asking for. All the experts are saying -- recommending approval of the project. You haven't heard an expert say anything contrary. This is a rezone. It has to be based on competent substantial evidence. That's different than a Comp Plan amendment. So based upon the competent substantial evidence, we're requesting that the Planning Commission forward to the Board of County Commissioners this petition with a recommendation of approval. That's all I have. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that, I close the public hearing and look for any comments from my fellow commissioners. Nobody? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I've just got a quick question. It's not on the map here, but you said you're going to put a bigger ditch or a ditch behind the units? MR. YOVANOVICH: I think what David is saying is when we go through the final -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- design, we will have an appropriate-sized swale to address water that's coming to us under the current system. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Are you required to do that, or are you doing that because of the NIM? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, no. We're doing that because that's the law. We're required to accommodate water that comes on our property. They're coming on our property. We're accounting for it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, let me ask this, then. What ditch was we -- was referred to that the county cleaned? I didn't -- MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't even know. That's -- you know, that's -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. HURST: There is an existing ditch on the north side of those lots. It's not well maintained, not well defined, but that's what was intended. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is that the community responsibility or the County? MR. HURST: That I'm not aware of. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But somehow the County allegedly went out and cleaned it at some time? MR. HURST: My guess is George called somebody and -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. George called somebody, yeah. MR. HURST: -- got a favor. But we're going to address that. That's part of our plan. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Perfect. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. With that, again, I close the public hearing. I turn to my fellow commissioners. Do we have anybody that would like to make a motion? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'll make a motion to approve. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And I'll second that motion. I support it. It is a -- required by -- it's fully compliant with the GMP. In essence, it is a downzoning from commercial to residential. And the applicant is certainly going to have to comply with all the requirements for state permitting, so with that, I second it. October 2, 2025 Page 73 of 84 So with that, I'll call the question. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It passes 4-0. This -- considering there are objections, it will be public -- it will be heard publicly by the Board as well, so just so you know. All right. With that, I'm going to take a three-minute break because I have to -- drank too much water. (A recess was had from 1:41 p.m. to 1:44 p.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Thank you. This will be an item -- this is three items -- actually -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Two. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It's three -- three items. It's the Silver Mine -- it's the approval of the Silver Mine. It's the -- then the conditional use companion item, and then the excavation companion item. So that's three items. And then also the one item does require EAC approval, which is -- so I'll go through it. ***Item 9D is PL20220001634. That's the Silver Strand Mine. That does require PUD -- or correction. It requires EAC approval as well. The companion item, PL20230001067, Silver Mine. That's the variance. And then the excavation is PL20230018067, Silver Mine excavation. So those are the three items. And if the petitioner -- we'll hear those, then, together, but I guess which ones do -- we need to vote separately. We need to identify that we're voting as EAC on one of them as well. With that, are there any public speakers? Please rise to be sworn in. 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.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: With that, I turn it over to Mr. Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: So I can judge how long our presentation needs to be -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, disclosures. Thank you very much. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, that wasn't it, but -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We have to do disclosures. MR. YOVANOVICH: I know you do. Can I ask James how many -- if there are any people -- speakers on Zoom for this. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Are there any speakers on Zoom? MR. SABO: We have no speakers on Zoom. One here in the room. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: One in the room. Amy, disclosures. MS. LOCKHART: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Staff materials only. October 2, 2025 Page 74 of 84 COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I spoke to Mr. Yovanovich about this as well. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials, and I spoke to Mr. Yovanovich. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. The first item, then, we'll hear is the PUDA. MR. YOVANOVICH: I thought we were hearing them all. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And with those, we'll hear the other -- all of them together, basically. Yeah, let's do it. MR. YOVANOVICH: It's a conditional use. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm sorry. Conditional use. I was on the wrong item. MR. YOVANOVICH: I figured you -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go back to the right one here, the conditional use, thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: I just figured you were testing me. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I was testing you. MR. YOVANOVICH: Did I pass? (No response.) MR. YOVANOVICH: I think the one speaker who stood up is actually in support of the project, so I'm going to do an abbreviated overview of the presentation. And the entire team is here. You have Jessica, again, able to address the different planning aspects; Mr. Waters is our professional engineer; Mr. Trebilcock our transportation consultant; Mr. Sterk is our environmental consultant; and Kim Arnold is -- water, right? -- hydrology. MS. ARNOLD: Hydrologist. MR. YOVANOVICH: I knew what it was. I just -- hydrology, thank you. As -- see, all my slides are out of order. I'm sorry. It's all my fault. I don't know where the request slide is. You have three requests that we're requesting, a conditional use for the earth mining. This is not a rock mine. I know there may have been some concerns, but we're not doing a rock mine. No asphalt, no concrete. We are asking for an excavation permit, and we're asking for some variances related to, you know, buffers, and we'll go through that briefly with Jessica's testimony. The parcel, although it is almost 4,000 acres, we're only mining approximately 200 acres of the -- of the property. The current land-use designations, there are two land-use designations on the property. One is the agricultural zoning Rural Lands Stewardship, and then we have -- what's the other one, Jessica? The mobile home -- agricultural mobile home overlay as well as the Rural Lands Stewardship overlay or the current -- I'm sorry -- wrong zone -- wrong slide. Mine are out of order, and I apologize for my -- That's the Comp Plan designation. That's low-density residential. This is the RLSA portion of the property. That is what we're -- that's what we're proposing to do the conditional use under, the excavation permit, and the other last petition. I'm going to -- at this point I'm turning it over to Jessica to take you through, quickly, the parameters of what we're asking for on the earth mining. As you can see, it's only a small portion of the overall property that we're actually going to be digging, and with that, I'll turn it over to you. MS. HARRELSON: Good afternoon. For the record, Jessica Harrelson, certified October 2, 2025 Page 75 of 84 planner with Peninsula Engineering. So what you see here is the conceptual site plan associated with the Silver Strand Mine conditional use. The property boundary is the red line that you see that represents the land under the ownership of Silver Strand III, a Barron Collier Companies entity. The blue line work represents the excavation and accessory uses. The 204-acre excavation lake is located in this area here. It's located internally to the site to minimize impacts on the adjacent property owners and land uses. Site access is planned from Camp Keais Road within the location of the county's future roundabout. This is the internal access drive or haul route. The scale house office is located in this location here, which is about a mile from the Camp Keais access. We do have a tire wash that's planned near the Camp Keais access for trucks that are exiting the site to prevent dust pollution on adjacent land uses. The project exceeds minimum building and excavation setbacks from every property boundary, and the maximum zoned building height is 35 feet. As you can see, the site is also comprised of several large wetlands and WRAs that screen the excavation activities from adjacent land uses and rights-of-way. Adjacent land uses include the Immokalee landfill along the north. There are some lands also owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida. We have some residential developments and a community park. And then there's also some undeveloped lands along the north that are under common ownership of Barron Collier, the applicant. To the east beyond the State Road 29 right-of-way is a Habitat for Humanity community called -- I believe it's Kaicasa. Included in your packets is a support letter from Habitat for this project. Then further down State Road 29, we have about 11 acres of single-family residential. And then ArborX, which is the recently approved bio-char facility. All other surrounding lands are either farm fields or row crops. We've submitted a total of four variances as a separate application. The first being from perimeter landscape buffers. The only landscape buffer we're requesting to install is 200 linear feet adjacent to single-family residential in this location here. There is existing vegetation that exists along the northern property line, and in the event that vegetation -- the existing vegetation is removed or destroyed, it will be reinstalled to meet code requirements. The applicant has also committed to install code-required buffers within 180 days along any boundary where an SRA, a PUD, rezone or other residential development occurs on adjacent property unless that adjacent property includes the construction of a perimeter berm with a minimum height of seven feet at finish floor elevation. Justifications for that request include the location of the mine from adjacent land uses, the existing heavy vegetated areas on site aid in screening the excavation activities. The posted speed limits along with existing vegetation and distance to the mining mitigate impacts from adjacent right-of-ways. Agricultural uses will continue to occur on the property outside of mining activities. And we've also held two neighborhood information meetings for this project, as well as meeting with individual property owners several times, and we've had no objections to this project. This exhibit illustrates the proximity of the mining activities from adjacent land uses. You can see we're, you know, a mile from the south, a mile from -- over a mile from Immokalee Road, about 4,000 feet from the Seminole Tribe of Florida lands, and about October 2, 2025 Page 76 of 84 2,000 feet from State Road 29. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Jessica, I'm going to ask a question on the WRA, the water resource area. Just designated WRA, is there any restoration requirements for that, or that will take place eventually sometime if this is ever developed? MS. HARRELSON: Yeah. In the future, when property's redeveloped with maybe residential. The mining property is not impacting any of these -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Does not impact. MS. HARRELSON: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But it's technically designated as WRA? MS. HARRELSON: Yeah, correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. HARRELSON: The second variance is requesting that no paving be required past the tire wash, again, which is located near Camp Keais Road. The mine will not be open to the public. The internal accessway will be used by haul trucks to move excavated materials. There is a dust control plan that has been included with a companion excavation permit. And not paving the internal haul route is also consistent with all other mining projects in Collier County. And this -- these photos are just some examples of other mining projects. The third variance is requesting to eliminate the requirement to provide building foundation plantings for the scale house office. Again, it's not open to the public. And this is a proposed construction trailer, so it will be removed after the excavation activities are complete. And the final and fourth variance is requesting to eliminate the 7-foot landscaping and/or fencing requirement around the outdoor storage and equipment area. This requirement would interfere with daily operations of the mine, and the area is also screened by that WRA. To note some important conditions of approval, the daily trip generation will not exceed 162 two-way p.m. peak-hour trips, and the maximum number of one-way trucks per day is 430. Mining operations are permitted between 6:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturdays. The area surrounding and between the tire wash and the site's access will be paved, and the dust control plan will be implemented to minimize dust pollution. Staging of haul trucks on site is prohibited -- I'm sorry. Staging of haul trucks will be -- occur on-site and prohibited within adjacent rights-of-way. And the maximum excavation depth is 58 feet. The Comprehensive Plan excavation permit provides the construction plans for the 204-acre lake. It analyzes the excavation depth being requested and includes a required bond, performance agreement, and dust control plan, as I've mentioned. And Dan Waters, our licensed engineer, is here for any specific questions related to the excavation permit. And to conclude, I just want to note that the applicant is the owner of the South Grove Mine, which is adjacent to Ave Maria. This mine is coming to an end within the next 12 to 24 months, and then Silver Strand will open. The fill to be extracted from this site is critically needed for new construction projects. And then with that, we'll take any questions that you have. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, Jessica, on the conditional use -- MS. HARRELSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- it clearly states 22 recommendations, and then another October 2, 2025 Page 77 of 84 one, 23. I counted 23 recommendations. I did ask Rich when I talked to him on the phone, but no objections to the entire list of recommendations -- MS. HARRELSON: The conditions of approval -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- stipulations -- MS. HARRELSON: No. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- and specified conditions, as I called them. MS. HARRELSON: Yeah, conditions of approval. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You went through some of them, but there were actually 22. MS. HARRELSON: Yeah. A lot of them are just standard, typical conditions of approval. I just noted the important ones. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Shoot. That's mine. That's my phone. I'm rude. I'll turn it off. Sorry. MS. HARRELSON: Just to clarify, so we did have 22 conditions. Staff included a condition that when the property is developed for non-mining purposes, all required buffers will be installed along all property boundaries, and we are okay with that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. HARRELSON: Yeah. We did talk to staff prior to the hearing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. HARRELSON: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I don't see any of my colleagues asking any further questions. Staff, please. MR. BOSI: As contained in the three staff reports, staff is suggesting a recommendation of approval to the Board of County Commissioners. And I will point out that, really, I think that the prospective condition to say if a residential property is developed adjacent to this -- to the facility, that within 180 days they're willing to put in buffering unless specific conditions are met is a very unique condition and one that's appreciated by staff recognizing that there could be some incompatibilities if an adjoining residential property is developed in close proximity. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. If I could ask Jaime, please, I just want Jaime to come up for the record, because I did state prior to the meeting I wanted her to cover as well for my colleagues up here, this is pretty strictly controlled and monitored by the County staff. And I would just ask Jaime in a brief statement to highlight what her department does with regards to monitoring the activities of the mining operations. MS. COOK: Again, Jaime Cook, Development Review director, for the record. So when the excavation permit is approved and they've started their construction, my inspections team monitors the site at least monthly, typically more often. And if they do do any blasting activities, staff is on site for all blasting activities. But they're looking for things like offsite tracking. They're looking for things to make sure the site is clean and being maintained, silt fencing. Soil and dust and erosion control plan is being followed as permitted by the State. So staff does continue to monitor the site as long as it is an active mine, whether that's, you know, a one-year dig or a 20-year dig. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And critical, of course, are trucks entering and exiting, but more exiting, that they're not putting debris on the road and that the mine October 2, 2025 Page 78 of 84 operator is responsible for any debris on public roads as far as sweeping, cleaning, whatever -- MS. COOK: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- required. MS. COOK: Just like any other construction site, if there is any offsite tracking of material, we do give them the opportunity to clean it up or if they don't comply, operations are shut down until that is complied with both for any offsite tracking as well as staging of vehicles. They can't block the county roadways. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. And just note, there is no request here for blasting. This is an excavation permit. If they want blasting, they're going to have to come back and ask for blasting. So that would be another requirement. Any questions? COMMISSIONER SHEA: I have a question for -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Jaime, we have another question. COMMISSIONER SHEA: What is their dust control plan? You're taking out the paving, and quite frankly, the last mine I went to up there was -- you couldn't even see the site there was so much dust. What's their plan? Are they committing to water every day or -- MS. COOK: Typically -- typically -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: -- til somebody complains? MS. COOK: Typically what they agree to is laying down some asphalt millings to kind of keep dust down to begin with, to not even hopefully start getting the complaints. If there are dust complaints, then they would need a watering truck on site for that stretch of roadway to keep dust off of the roadways and any adjacent properties. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Seeing no other -- Paul, you did that? COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, that was it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. Mike, go ahead, please. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: My question's more for staff. Camp Keais and Immokalee Road, there's a lot of accidents at that intersection, and all these -- this is probably going to add a lot of dump trucks. Is there any improvements to that roadway there or -- that's my only concern with this. MR. BOSI: And I guess the operational aspect would be analyzed at the Site Development Plan in terms of whether there's going to be any operational improvements that will be needed at the zoning stage. Because it's still conceptual, and they don't have an SDP with the calcs, there's nothing that -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. I know it's not really related to the project. My concern is the project's going to obviously add a bunch of dump trucks to that area. So I just -- just accidents there all the time. MR. SAWYER: Yeah, if I may. For the record, Mike Sawyer, Transportation Planning. Just so you know, we are currently working on the design for a roundabout at that intersection. We're working on the location of it to the extent of improvements on both Camp Keais as well as Immokalee. So we're in -- right now we are working on the design, preliminary design, going into full design. Right now, to be honest with you, we do not October 2, 2025 Page 79 of 84 know where the funding is going to be coming from for the actual construction. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: So -- but there was a problem, and we're -- MR. SAWYER: We're well aware of it, yes, sir. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Just so you know -- just so you know, there's a DCA that will be going to the Board to -- we're assisting with the roundabout. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Oh, perfect. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: So that's going. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: With that -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Go ahead. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Schmitt, I just wanted to correct one thing just because -- the record. Blasting is regulated by the State, so if we do decide to blast, we have to get -- we have to get approval from the State. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. And through the County, when the County -- you'd noticed the County as well. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, there's a process -- it's been preempted to where the State regulates. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. I thought you had to come back in for blasting authorization. MS. COOK: They would. We do have a separate blasting permit process that is administratively approved. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Administrative, okay. MS. COOK: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay, thanks. So with that, we close the -- at least I close the -- no, I'm not going to close the public hearing. Do we have any public speakers? MR. SABO: Yes. One public speaker, Chris Borgeson. MR. BORGESON: Howdy. I'm Chris Borgeson, president of Arbor X. We own the land that is directly adjacent to this property and separates it from State Route 29. I just want to say, in brief, that we are in support of this project. We think it would provide good economic benefits to the County, be done in a responsible manner, and we're excited to see it go forward. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Great. Thank you. With that, I close the public hearing, unless the petitioner wants to rebut. MR. YOVANOVICH: No, I don't think so. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No rebuttal? Do I hear any recommendations from my fellow commissioners? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Do we have to -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We have to -- we are actually -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: -- separate the three? Can we do all three together? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We're voting on all three, plus the one application we're acting as the EAC as well. That's the conditional use. So we can vote for each of them separately if we want to do that. MR. YOVANOVICH: Up to Heidi. She's the boss. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We vote for them separately? They're three different October 2, 2025 Page 80 of 84 ones. Conditional use -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Whatever is your pleasure. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Let's vote for -- the first one, the conditional use to include acting as the EAC. Do I hear a recommendation for approval? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: So moved. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No opposition, so that's 9C -- correction, 9D. This is 9E and 9F. We can vote on them concurrently. That's the variance and the excavation. Do I hear a motion for approval? COMMISSIONER SHEA: So moved. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Second? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mike, second. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It passes 4-0. Excellent, thank you. And with that, as we change characters, we will proceed to reasonable accommodations for certified recovery residences. That's an LDC -- MR. JOHNSON: Amendment. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is that an LDC amendment or -- MR. JOHNSON: It sure is. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Legislative. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Eric's here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Eric's here. ***And it's legislative -- this next item is legislative in nature, and it's PL20250009062, reasonable accommodation for certified recovery residences. It's an LDCA. It's an amendment. It's legislative in nature. There is no requirement for disclosure. And with that, Eric, this is a State requirement. MR. JOHNSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We can make this easy, or do you want to make it hard? We can listen. MR. JOHNSON: I don't have to say -- October 2, 2025 Page 81 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But you can go through it just to highlight what we're here voting on. MR. JOHNSON: Sure. I'll be happy to do whatever it is that you want. For the record, Eric Johnson, planning manager, number one character. This is an LDC amendment that is going to bring our Land Development Code consistent with the Florida Statutes. The Florida Statutes were changed earlier this year regarding the certified recovery residencies [sic]. And just to read to you what the Florida Statute says about us changing our code, it says, "By January 1st, 2026, the governing body of each county or municipality shall adopt an ordinance establishing procedures for the review and approval of certified recovery" residencies -- "residences within its jurisdiction. The ordinance must include a process for requesting reasonable accommodation from any local land-use regulation that serves to prohibit the establishment of a certified recovery residence." So we, as in zoning staff, worked very closely with our county -- with our County Attorney's Office. They were kind enough to basically author this whole thing, gleaning from other jurisdictions. I think we started out with the city of Boca Raton, and Courtney was good enough to provide us with language from the city of Orlando as well as Broward County. So we're asking you, as the -- as the Planning Commission, to recommend approval of this -- of this -- of these new provisions so that way we could bring it to the Board of County Commissioners in a quick manner to have it codified. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Explain the intent a little more. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I was going to say the same thing. This is pretty much defining the processes and procedures for a group home? "Many" is what, seven? Anything above that? The County Attorney, are we talking -- go ahead. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: It's similar to the sober homes that we currently have in our LDC that allows six or more people to reside. There's -- there's definitions of larger certified recovery residences, and they have to have an administrator that's licensed in order to have these homes. So it's a requirement that we have to provide a reasonable accommodation, essentially a deviation process, for our -- for these specific residences that are going to have people in it that are recovering from alcoholism. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But this -- but they still have to comply with local zoning, or is this -- if I'm in a house out in the Estates and I want to have six or less people in a residential facility, I could do that based on this? MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm thinking -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- of the one we just approved in the -- in Golden Gate, near Golden Gate City that was an expansion of -- what is that? MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead. MR. BOSI: -- Planning and Zoning director. I believe you're referring to Hope Home. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, Hope Home. MR. BOSI: So that's the type of facility that went through a GMP amendment because of the -- because of the restrictions in the Golden Gate Area Master Plan. If they October 2, 2025 Page 82 of 84 were -- if they were proposing six individuals or less, that would be a permitted use. It's a group care facility. We allow group care facilities in the Estates residential ag zoned properties. We also have -- if you have more than six, it would go through a conditional use, but the State -- the State has mandated that we have a -- reasonable accommodations for a request beyond -- for those type of facilities that could be administered by the County in a -- in a way that provides, I guess, an abbreviated process for how it's decided upon. And what we were -- what we've done is we've looked at other communities in terms of what they've implemented based upon the direction of the State to do so. And so you can -- instead of having to go through the conditional-use process, you go through the reasonable-accommodation process. The County Manager or their designee will make a determination as to whether the request is approved or not, and then that can go to the Hearing Examiner or to the Board of County Commissioners to -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. BOSI: If it's appealed. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Actually, that was changed, Mike. It goes directly to the Board of County Commissioners for a decision, and staff, meaning the Zoning director, Michael Bosi, will make a recommendation to the Board. It's a tight turnaround; 60 days there has to be a decision or it's deemed approved. And we really don't know yet exactly what we're going to see. Usually reasonable accommodations, historically, were from some sort of development standard. But because of some of the other issues that we've seen across the state, there are some other jurisdictions where property owners are asking for more density than what's allowed, so we may see a density request as well through this reasonable-accommodation procedure. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER SHEA: All right. That's the same -- what's different from -- what are they gaining, and what are -- what's different? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It becomes administrative rather than coming in for conditional use. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, so they bypass our -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Well, it's not administrative. It goes to the Board for a decision. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It still goes to the Board. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. So just -- it's a time -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Yeah. Initially we were trying to set it up like the official interpretation where Mr. Bosi would make a decision, he would advertise it, it would be published, and it -- it would be published now on the Clerk's website or in a newspaper, whichever way he wanted to go. And then whoever disagrees with it has an opportunity to appeal. We did receive direction to change that, and instead of doing it administratively, it will go directly to the Board of County Commissioners with a recommendation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Seeing no comments, do I hear a motion to approve? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So moved. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Second. October 2, 2025 Page 83 of 84 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I hear a second from Mike. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It passes 4-0. Way to go, Eric. MR. BOSI: Good job, Eric. MR. JOHNSON: Yeah, that was great. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, I make a motion that we adjourn. Unless somebody has any other closing comments we adjourn. Yes, Mike. MR. JOHNSON: Here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Eric, sorry. MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. I just wanted to let you that staff had surveyed each and every one of you to -- MR. BOSI: We talked about it this morning. MR. JOHNSON: Oh, never mind. MR. BOSI: The October 6th night -- or the November 6th night meeting, he was going to let you know that you're free, but you already released that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I've already discussed that. We're free. COMMISSIONER SHEA: We erased it. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We erased it. All right. Thank you very much. We're adjourned. ******* October 2, 2025 Page 84 of 84 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 2:14 p.m. COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION _________________________________________ JOE SCHMITT, CHAIRMAN These minutes approved by the Board on ___________, as presented or as corrected ________. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING BY TERRI L. LEWIS, RPR, FPR-C, COURT REPORTER AND NOTARY PUBLIC. 10/2/2025 X_______