City of Haines City Planning Commission — June 8, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (4 of 7 members present — exactly the LDR-required minimum of four) Duration: 18 minutes (4:00 PM – 4:18 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Earle Lee, Brian Stokes, Joseph Hamilton (Vice Chair — presided), Sameka Akins
• Absent: Charles Anderson, Louie McLean (Chair), Eddie Perez
• Staff Present: City Planner Grace Malpartida (presented both items); Sharon Lauther, MMC, City Clerk (signature block). No attorney is recorded present. Staff reports in the agenda packet were routed through Richard Greenwood, Development Services Director; his attendance is not recorded in the minutes.

Agenda Items

Item 4.a: Minutes to be Accepted — Planning Commission 05.11.2026

• Type: Other (procedural — acceptance of prior minutes)
• Case Number: —
• Location: —
• Applicant: —
• Request: Accept the May 11, 2026 Planning Commission minutes.
• Staff Recommendation: Accept
• Action: Approved
• Vote: "Motioned carried" — no tally recorded (Moved: Brian Stokes; Seconded: Earle Lee)
• Conditions: None
• Notable Discussion: The minutes record that "Dr. Lee would like clarification on when something needs to be voted on from the attorney." No attorney is recorded as present and no response is recorded. The May 11 minutes being accepted are the same record that documents the Deputy City Clerk's § 286.011 / § 120.525(2) warning and the Chair's refusal to follow it.

Item 5.a: Zoning Map Amendment for Crossroads Townhomes

• Type: Rezoning (zoning map amendment)
• Case Number: Not stated in the June record (carried at May 11, 2026 as Ordinance No. 26-2149)
• Location: 330 Watts Dairy Road, Haines City. Polk County Property Appraiser Parcel Number 27-27-30-792000-000132.
• Applicant: Applicant-initiated; developer and engineer not named in the record (the item was continued from May 11 "at the request of the Developer and Engineer")
• Request: Reclassify 4.92± acres from County RL-4 to City R-3 for the Crossroads Townhomes development.
• Current Zoning: Polk County RL-4
• Proposed Zoning: City R-3
• Acreage: 4.92± acres
• Staff Recommendation: Forward an approval to the City Commission
• Action: Recommended for approval
• Vote: "Carried" — no numeric tally recorded (Moved: Brian Stokes; Seconded: Earle Lee)
• Conditions: None recorded
• Notable Discussion: Grace Malpartida presented. The site "has plans for developing multi-family units" and will be built to R-3 standards, which staff read into the record: front yard 20 ft; side 8 ft interior / 20 ft adjacent to street (for single-family attached, side yards apply only to end units); rear 10 ft; maximum impervious surface coverage 55%; minimum living area 1,200 sq ft; minimum 200 sq ft garage, with townhome garages rear-accessed. Open and recreation spaces to meet or exceed requirements. Vice Chair Hamilton opened the floor to public comment; no one came forward; the floor was closed.

Item 5.b: Small Scale Land Use Amendment for Crossroads Townhomes

• Type: Comp Plan Amendment (small-scale future land use)
• Case Number: Not stated in the June record (carried at May 11, 2026 as Ordinance No. 26-2148)
• Location: 330 Watts Dairy Road, Haines City. Parcel 27-27-30-792000-000132.
• Applicant: Applicant-initiated; continued from May 11 at the developer's and engineer's request
• Request: Small-scale land use amendment of 4.92± acres from County RL-4 to City Medium Density Residential (MDR).
• Current Zoning / FLU: Polk County RL-4
• Proposed FLU: City Medium Density Residential (MDR)
• Acreage: 4.92± acres
• Staff Recommendation: Forward a recommendation for approval to the City Commission
• Action: Recommended for approval
• Vote: "Carried" — no numeric tally recorded (Moved: Earle Lee; Seconded: Brian Stokes)
• Conditions: None recorded
• Notable Discussion: Companion land-use case to 5.a, same parcel and acreage. Staff stated the multi-family project "is compatible with the surrounding area, and will abide by the comprehensive plan standards." No separate public hearing is recorded for this item.

Item 6: Board Comments

• Type: Other (board and public comment)
• Notable Discussion: New Board Member Sameka Akins (recorded as "Sameka Atkins" in this section) expressed her excitement at joining the board; Vice Chair Joseph Hamilton welcomed her. Resident Mari Cruz Reeves came to the podium and commented about beautifying Haines City.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0 (public comment floor opened and closed on Item 5.a with no one coming forward); 1 non-agenda resident comment during Board Comments (Mari Cruz Reeves, on city beautification)
• General sentiment: No public position expressed on either entitlement
• Key concerns: None raised from the floor

Key Signals

• The May 11 "Crossroads Cottages" ambiguity resolves — the items were continued, not decided, and the project is townhomes. The June 8 staff reports state plainly that both items were "continued from the May 11, 2026, Planning Commission" at the request of the developer and engineer. That closes the internal contradiction flagged in the May record, where staff said the items "would need to be deferred" yet motions were recorded as "Carried Unanimously." The May votes did not settle the case; June did. The project also arrives renamed — "Crossroads Cottages" in May, "Crossroads Townhomes" in June — and the record now names the parcel (330 Watts Dairy Road, Parcel 27-27-30-792000-000132) and the product: multi-family attached units with rear-access garages, 1,200 sq ft minimum living area, and 55% maximum impervious coverage on 4.92 acres.
• Another County-to-City conversion clears in a single hop: Polk County RL-4 to City MDR and R-3, at multi-family density. This is the Haines City growth mechanism running at small scale — absorb a county parcel, move it to city medium-density land use and R-3 zoning in the same sitting, and let attached product follow. For anyone tracking Watts Dairy Road, the entitlement path from county rural-residential classification to townhomes took two meetings and drew zero public speakers. The mechanism is identical to the paired LU-plus-Zoning ordinance template the corpus recorded through 2025 (Prince & Sons, Ford Family Trust, Bridgemohan), only on a five-acre infill parcel rather than a 100-plus-lot annexation.
• Bare quorum, and the dissent seat was empty. Four of seven members carried both entitlements — exactly the four-member floor Chair McLean read into the record in June 2025. Absent were Chair Louie McLean and Charles Anderson, the only member in the harvested corpus to cast a recorded nay (Marion Groves, October 23, 2025). Vice Chair Hamilton presided. Two entitlements advanced on the minimum lawful board with the board's one demonstrated dissenter not in the room. Combined with the roster churn — Debra Smith appears in the May 11 attendance and not in the June 8 roster; Sameka Akins is seated and welcomed as new — the seven-member body is turning over mid-cycle.
• Eighteen minutes, two entitlements, no speakers — the frictionless-throughput baseline reasserts one month after the board's first denial. May 11 produced a rare defeat of a staff-recommended preliminary plat (Lake Eva Estates) over whether street-tree conditions enforceable only through HOA documents could be relied on. June 8 shows that denial did not generalize into a posture. The board's filter engaged on condition-enforceability at the platting surface, not on County-to-City land use conversions, which continue to clear unopposed. That distinction is the useful read for anyone forecasting this board: bring a plat with unresolved maintenance obligations and expect friction; bring a straight annexation-and-upzone pair and expect roughly nine minutes.
• A board member opens the meeting asking the attorney when a vote is required — and no attorney is in the room. Dr. Lee's request for clarification "on when something needs to be voted on from the attorney" is the direct aftershock of May's clerk-versus-chair noticed-action dispute, in which the Deputy City Clerk cited Florida's Sunshine Law to warn that an action recorded under general comments "risks rendering the action procedurally defective." Interim City Attorney Seth Claytor was present and active on May 11. The June minutes record neither his presence nor any answer. The governance question raised in May is still open on the record.

Raw Notes

• Source set: post-meeting minutes PDF filestream.ashx?DocumentId=31358 ("Post-Meeting Minutes - Planning_Jun08_2026 - English.pdf", 4 pp.); agenda packet FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=29851 (10 pp. — agenda, the May 11, 2026 minutes, and both Crossroads Townhomes staff reports); agenda cover FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=29852 (2 pp.). Meeting page: Meeting.aspx?Id=533a578b-d69a-4c95-b999-748fd26bb047.
• Naming inconsistency across meetings: "Crossroads Cottages" (May 11, Ordinances 26-2148 and 26-2149) versus "Crossroads Townhomes" (June 8). Same 4.92± acres, same County RL-4 → MDR / R-3 pairing, same applicant-initiated posture. The June record does not restate the ordinance numbers.
• Descriptor sentences transposed in the source: under Item 5.a (Zoning Map Amendment) the staff narrative reads "This is an applicant-initiated request for a land use amendment"; under Item 5.b (Small Scale Land Use Amendment) it reads "request for a zoning amendment." The recommended-motion language on each item is correct and is what is reproduced above; the descriptor sentences are crossed in both the minutes and the staff reports.
• Member name spelling varies within one document: "Sameka Akins" in the attendance block, "Sameka Atkins" in Board Comments.
• Minutes-acceptance status: the June 8 minutes were placed on the July 13, 2026 agenda under "Minutes to Accept" — listed there as "June 06, 2026 - Planning Commission Meeting," a date typo for June 08. No minutes of the July 13 meeting are published, so formal acceptance is unconfirmed. Front-matter status recorded as pending-approval for that reason.
• Signature block: "Louie McLean, Chair" and "Sharon Lauther, MMC, City Clerk" — McLean is recorded absent from this meeting.
• Workshop: the May 11 minutes announced a workshop for June 8 at 3:00 PM preceding this meeting. No workshop agenda, minutes, or eScribe listing entry was found for it, and the June 8 minutes do not reference it.
• Invocation line is garbled in the source: "Board Member Dr. Lee led the pledge" appears under heading 2 (INVOCATION), with heading 3 (PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE) empty.
• New staff entity: Richard Greenwood, Development Services Director — the routing authority ("Through:") on both June 8 staff reports. Not previously in the Haines City entity directory as a named staff role, though he appears as staff contact on the October 2025 RWS Ranch item.