OFFICE OF THE CITY COUNCIL

CHERYL L. BROWN 117 WEST DUVAL STREET, SUITE 425

DIRECTOR 4^TH FLOOR, CITY HALL

OFFICE (904) 630-1452 JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA 32202

FAX (904) 630-2906

E-MAIL: CLBROWN@coj.net

LUZ COMMITTEE WORKSHOP MINUTES

August 6, 2013

4:30 p.m.

City Council Chamber

1^st floor, City Hall

117 West Duval Street

Attendance: Council Members Lori Boyer (Chair), Bill Bishop, Don Redman, Robin Lumb and Matt Schellenberg

Also: Jason Gabriel – Office of General Counsel; Bruce Lewis, Gary Kresel – Planning and Development Department; Jeff Clements – Council Research Division

See attached sign-in sheet for additional attendees.

Chairwoman Boyer called the meeting to order at 4:34 p.m. and solicited further input from committee members of potential discussion items for future workshops.

Small scale land use amendment process

Chapter 650 does not address a small scale land use amendment process. The Planning Department currently groups small scale land use amendments into quarterly groups for purposes of economizing on advertising costs. The department would be open to allowing applicants to pay for ads themselves if they wish to move their projects more quickly. Council Member Bishop questioned why the City currently subsidizes these ad costs for land use changes and suggested that the City look at other print options (Financial News and Daily Record, Folio). Jason Gabriel was requested to review what the state currently requires with regard to adequately publishing these actions and to investigate what other jurisdictions do in this regard.

Historic preservation appeals

Chairwoman Boyer sees a need to speed up the process of historic landmark designation when the applicant has been denied a demolition permit on the property, which triggers and automatic designation consideration if the building is eligible for designation. There is also a need to adjust the requirement for an appellant to provide a considerable amount of information in their notice of appeal that is not readily available in the time frame required for submittal. With respect to the first issue, Jason Teal suggested that the City Council could make the decision on historic designations in these demolition appeal cases without the Historic Preservation Commission making a recommendation first, which would save considerable time. As to the second concern, a suggestion was made to require the applicant to supply most of the required information at the time of submittal, but allow the addition of the name and address information for all parties to the case and delivery of the transcript later in the process when it is actually available. Starting with the July meeting the Planning Commission started a new process of having the court reporter produce just the motions and votes, not the entire verbatim transcript, so that orders can be produced more quickly. The full transcript follows later.

Chairwoman Boyer suggested that the Planning Department could begin its historic evaluation immediately after the filing of an application for a demolition permit so that it could be ready in the event the JHPC denies the demolition request. The department said it would need to work with the Office of General Counsel to determine how to word advertisements to reflect the conditional nature of the action since the JHPC’s action won’t be known yet.

In response to a question from Council Member Redman, Jason Teal explained the two processes by which Code Enforcement deals with demolition orders where the JHPC denies the demolition permit request. This topic will be addressed in more detail in a future meeting.

Next meeting topics: bicycle/pedestrian coordinator position plus one other item to be determined by the Chair.

There being no further business, the agenda meeting was adjourned at 5:08 p.m.

Jeff Clements, Council Research Division (904) 630-1404

Posted 8.8.13

12:00 p.m.