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Meetings · Eustis

Eustis Local Planning Agency — April 3, 2025 minutes

City of Eustis Local Planning Agency — April 3, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 5 members present) Duration: 5:30 PM – 5:54 PM (24 minutes) Location: Eustis City Hall

Attendance

  • Present: Chairman Willie Hawkins, Vice Chair Gary Ashcraft, Mr. Michael Holland, Mr. George Asbate, Ms. Emily Lee
  • Absent: None
  • Staff Present: Mike Lane, Development Services Director; Tom Carrino, City Manager; Sasha Garcia, City Attorney; Christine Halloran, City Clerk

Prior minutes: March 20, 2025 minutes approved (moved Holland, seconded Ashcraft), 5-0.

Agenda Items

Item 1: Approval of Minutes — March 20, 2025

  • Type: Other (procedural)
  • Request: Approve the March 20, 2025 LPA minutes.
  • Action: Approved
  • Vote: 5-0 (moved Holland, seconded Ashcraft)

Item 2.1: Ordinance Number 25-01 — Amendment to Chapters 102 and 109 of the Land Development Regulations

  • Type: Text Amendment (Land Development Regulations)
  • Case Number: Ordinance Number 25-01
  • Location: Citywide
  • Applicant: City of Eustis (staff-initiated)
  • Request: Require a pre-application community meeting for defined development types, and revise the Chapter 109 use regulations covering massage establishments, retail smoke shops, self-service storage, and tattoo establishments.
  • Current Zoning: N/A (citywide)
  • Proposed Zoning: N/A
  • Acreage: N/A
  • Staff Recommendation: Transmit to City Commission
  • Action: Recommended for transmittal to the City Commission
  • Vote: 5-0 (moved Holland, seconded Lee)
  • Conditions: None added
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Lane reviewed the current community-meeting regulations and the proposed conversion to a pre-application requirement — a shift from the February 20 draft, which framed the meeting as mandatory but did not fix it to the pre-application stage.
    • The use-table revisions had broadened since February: the categories now named are massage establishments, retail smoke shops, self-service storage and tattoo establishments.

Item 2.1 (continued): Medical marijuana treatment center dispensing facilities — policy direction

  • Type: Other (policy direction to staff; no ordinance before the board)
  • Case Number: [not applicable — taken up after the Ordinance 25-01 vote at the City Manager's request]
  • Location: Citywide
  • Applicant: City of Eustis
  • Request: Direction on whether to ban future medical marijuana treatment center (MMTC) dispensing facilities or continue treating them as pharmacies.
  • Staff Recommendation: [none stated — item presented as an options briefing]
  • Action: Consensus of the Board to have staff prepare an ordinance to ban future marijuana dispensaries
  • Vote: Consensus (no recorded vote)
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Garcia framed the binary the statute imposes: a municipality may either (1) ban future MMTC dispensing facilities, or (2) be pre-empted into allowing them wherever it allows pharmacies, subject only to a 500-foot separation from schools.
    • The board confirmed that a ban would grandfather the existing dispensaries.
    • Asbate referenced the Commission's earlier decision to allow dispensaries as pharmacies and said he would not want them in the Central Business District.
    • Garcia and Carrino delivered the constraint that decided the matter: a ban applies only to dispensaries, but if the City does not ban, dispensaries must be treated as pharmacies — and any regulation the City enacts would then apply to pharmacies as well.
    • There are already three medical marijuana dispensaries within the City. Lane said they are generally in the General Commercial area.
    • Carrino's pharmacy-district inventory: permitted in General Commercial; conditional use in General Industrial; permitted in Central Business District; conditional use in Residential/Office Transitional; permitted in MCR and MCI. The only regulatory difference for dispensaries is the 500-foot school buffer.
    • The board discussed whether the number could be capped and what would happen if recreational use were legalized. Garcia cited Crystal River as having recently banned any future dispensaries.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0 (hearing opened and closed at 5:35 PM on Ordinance 25-01)
  • General sentiment: No public comment recorded
  • Key concerns: None raised by the public

Key Signals

  • Eustis chose to ban future dispensaries because the alternative would have forced it to regulate pharmacies. That is the mechanism, stated by both the city attorney and the city manager: Florida law makes MMTCs legally equivalent to pharmacies unless a city prohibits them outright, so any zoning tool aimed at dispensaries would land on every pharmacy in the city as well. A board that wanted to keep dispensaries out of the Central Business District had exactly one lever that did not also hit CVS. The consensus reached here becomes Ordinance 2026-20 a full year later.

  • Three dispensaries were already operating when the board directed staff to draft the ban. Whatever ordinance follows protects them as grandfathered and closes the door behind them. For a commercial landlord in General Commercial, the practical effect is that an existing MMTC lease acquires scarcity value and a new one becomes unavailable.

  • Carrino's pharmacy-district map is the useful artifact for anyone siting a retail medical use in Eustis. Permitted outright in General Commercial, Central Business District, MCR and MCI; conditional use in General Industrial and Residential/Office Transitional. That schedule governs pharmacies regardless of what happens to dispensaries.

  • The community-meeting requirement moved to the pre-application stage between February and April. The February 20 draft made community meetings mandatory for five development categories; this version requires them before an application is filed. Timing is the whole value of the tool — a neighbor who learns about a project at pre-application can still influence its shape.

Raw Notes

  • Source: minutes PDF at https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/eustisfl-pubu/MEET-Minutes-c61f3b57562240ab8a1b30783af348b9.pdf (2 pp.), retrieved 2026-08-15.
  • Minutes stamped "APPROVED 4/17/2025".
  • The MMTC discussion was not on the published agenda. Carrino raised it after the Ordinance 25-01 presentation; Garcia presented it after the vote.
  • The board's April 2025 consensus is the policy history the City Attorney recites on the record at the April 2, 2026 LPA meeting when Ordinance 2026-20 finally comes forward.
  • Minutes pages headed "Eustis City Commission" (clerk template artifact); the signature block on page 2 reads "Mayor/Commissioner" rather than Chair.

Connected records

1 connected record

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