Lake County Planning and Zoning Board — April 1, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes — bare quorum (4 of 7 voting members present) Duration: 58 minutes (9:00 AM – 9:58 AM)

Recommendations from this meeting were transmitted to the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) for its public hearing on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. The PZB is an advisory body; the BCC is the deciding authority.

Attendance

• Present: Laura Jones Smith (Chairman, District 2), Dan Tatro (District 5), Sean Lahey (At-Large Representative), Mollie Cunningham (School Board Representative)
• Absent: Judith Fike (District 1), Addie Owens (District 3), Carroll Jaskulski (Vice Chairman, District 4), Mark McManus (Ex-Officio Non-Voting Military)
• Staff Present: Janie Barrón, Planning Manager; Corey DeVogel, Planner I; Eva Lora, Public Hearing Coordinator; Melanie Marsh, County Attorney; Josh Pearson, Deputy Clerk, Board Support

Agenda Items

Minutes Approval: March 4, 2026

• Type: Other (procedural)
• Action: Approved as submitted
• Vote: 4-0 (MOTION by Sean Lahey, SECONDED by Mollie Cunningham; FOR: Jones Smith, Tatro, Lahey, Cunningham; AGAINST: None)

Tab 1 (Consent): Sandberg Property — Future Land Use Map Amendment

• Type: Comprehensive Plan Amendment (small-scale FLUM)
• Case Number: PZ2025-110, Ordinance #2026-XX
• Location: 3793 Codding Place, in the unincorporated Mount Dora area (Alternate Key 3870245)
• Applicant: Gary Sandberg (owner)
• Request: Amend the Future Land Use Map to change the Future Land Use Category on approximately 1 +/- acre from Urban High and Regional Commercial to Urban High only — a small-scale amendment collapsing a split land-use designation to a single category.
• Current Zoning: Rural Residential (R-1) and Neighborhood Commercial (C-1)
• Acreage: 1 +/- acres
• Staff Recommendation: Consistent with the LDR and Comprehensive Plan
• Action: Approved on Consent Agenda
• Vote: 4-0
• Notable Discussion: None — passed on consent without being pulled. Property sits within the Mount Dora Joint Planning Area and the Wekiva Study Area. Commissioner District 4 (Leslie Campione). BCC hearing set for May 5, 2026.

Tab 2 (Consent): Sandberg Property — Rezoning

• Type: Rezoning
• Case Number: PZ2025-110, Ordinance #2026-XX
• Location: 3793 Codding Place, in the unincorporated Mount Dora area (Alternate Key 3870245)
• Applicant: Gary Sandberg (owner)
• Request: Rezone approximately 1 +/- acre from Neighborhood Commercial (C-1) and Rural Residential (R-1) to Rural Residential (R-1) — the zoning half of the paired FLUM/RZ action, removing the commercial split.
• Current Zoning: C-1 and R-1 (split)
• Proposed Zoning: R-1
• Acreage: 1 +/- acres
• Staff Recommendation: Consistent with the LDR and Comprehensive Plan
• Action: Approved on Consent Agenda
• Vote: 4-0
• Notable Discussion: None — passed on consent. Mount Dora JPA; Wekiva Study Area.

Tab 3 (Consent): Blueberry Farms — Conditional Use Permit

• Type: CUP
• Case Number: PZ2025-394, Ordinance #2026-XX
• Location: 26405 Bloomfield Avenue, in the unincorporated Yalaha area (Alternate Key 1031753)
• Applicant: Michael Walther / Michael J. Walther Trust (owner)
• Request: CUP on approximately 16.08 +/- acres to allow an enclosed wedding venue inside the farm's existing packing house, within the Agriculture (A) District.
• Current Zoning: Agriculture (A) District
• Acreage: 16.08 +/- acres
• Staff Recommendation: Consistent with the LDR and Comprehensive Plan
• Action: Approved on Consent Agenda
• Vote: 4-0
• Notable Discussion: None — passed on consent. Rural FLUC; Yalaha-Lake Apopka Rural Protection Area; Upper Ocklawaha River Basin BMAP. Agritourism conversion of existing agricultural structure rather than new construction. Commissioner District 3 (Kirby Smith).

Tab 4 (Consent → Regular Agenda): Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal — Rezoning

• Type: Rezoning (conditional zoning to CFD)

• Case Number: PZ2023-262, Ordinance #2026-XX

• Location: 13131 County Road 561A, in the unincorporated Clermont area (Alternate Key 1743931)

• Applicant: Ernest Portalatin; owner Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal De Clermont, Inc.

• Request: Rezone approximately 2.63 +/- gross acres from Agriculture (A) to Community Facility District (CFD) to accommodate development of a place of worship.

• Current Zoning: Agriculture (A) District

• Proposed Zoning: Community Facility District (CFD)

• Acreage: 2.63 +/- gross acres

• Staff Recommendation: Consistent with the Comprehensive Plan and LDR

• Action: Approved with four added conditions

• Vote: 4-0 (MOTION by Dan Tatro, SECONDED by Mollie Cunningham; FOR: Jones Smith, Tatro, Lahey, Cunningham; AGAINST: None)

• Conditions:

  1. Type A landscape buffer, 10 feet in width, on the west, north, and east perimeters of the property
  2. South buffer along CR 561A in accordance with the LDR (labeled "LDR as amended," anticipating a pending ordinance that may raise the front buffer from 15 to 20 feet)
  3. Property subject to a maximum impervious surface ratio (ISR) of 35 percent per the Comprehensive Plan
  4. Offsite parking and stacking of vehicles on CR 561A prohibited

• Notable Discussion: Pulled from consent because speaker cards were filed. Concept plan depicts a 7,337 sq ft single-story house of worship, estimated 150-chair count, 75 parking spaces plus three handicap spaces, accessed from CR 561A. Property is designated Rural FLUC and sits inside the Lake Apopka Basin Area Overlay District and the South Lake Interlocal Service Boundary Agreement (ISBA). The application was sent to the City of Minneola for review; Minneola raised no objections.

  The ISR error. DeVogel disclosed an error in the staff report table: it listed the CFD maximum ISR as 80 percent, but the Rural FLUC caps ISR at 20 percent, with a secondary 35 percent allowance for civic uses (Barrón). Marsh confirmed the most restrictive controls — here the Rural FLUC. The applicant's concept plan showed 48.29 percent ISR, materially above the 35 percent ceiling. Staff confirmed the project must come into compliance at site plan, forcing a reduction in impervious area.

  Buffering gap. DeVogel confirmed there are no perimeter landscape buffering or fencing requirements between Agriculture and CFD zoning. Marsh advised the Board it could attach a specific buffer because this was conditional zoning, and described the code's lowest tier (Type A) options. The parcel is only 97 feet wide with 10-foot setbacks; a 15-foot buffer proposed by Tatro was reduced to 10 feet after Public Works flagged that the width could not accommodate it.

  Public opposition — six speakers, all opposed. Vic Pacheco (adjacent owner): flooding, the site sits near a 90-foot elevation and acts as a stormwater basin for Heavens Hill Lane and Scrub Jay Lane; traffic and parking spillover on CR 561A; noise potentially exceeding 100 decibels. Darryl Woodhouse (realtor, representing western neighbors): parcel under 100 feet wide against a 48.29 percent ISR; no noise study or property-impact study completed; opposed granting an accommodation he believed would not be extended to an individual homeowner. Louis Bidrogo (western neighbor): site plan reads commercial, not rural; roughly 75 percent build-out; structure within about 10 feet of the fence; cited a 75-foot building height. Omayra Bidrogo (western neighbor): loss of privacy, existing puddling and flooding. Michael Stenzel (adjacent): questioned well and septic percolation siting; CR 561A is a heavily used weekend bike route with no improvements since a 2009 study; argued the footprint belongs in the City of Minneola about half a mile away; asked for denial. Doug Ramsay (abutting east, 30-year resident with a tree farm): structure within 100 yards of his home; concern the use expands to a school; existing detour traffic from Florida's Turnpike construction; asked for denial.

  Applicant response. Portalatin stated he purchased the property in 2007 intending to build a church, planned a retention pond, would provide access for the rear neighbor via easement, would use an insulated metal building with services Sunday mornings and noise reduced after 9:00 PM, and was amenable to a noise study. He confirmed he understood the ordinance conditions requiring a noise study and environmental assessment at site planning.

  Infrastructure and utility posture. Jones Smith noted the City of Minneola's letter anticipated water and sewer availability within five years, with no obligation to connect once available — DeVogel confirmed the County requires connection for residential properties on the western side of US Highway 27 but did not impose it here. Minneola's letter also flagged over 500 units coming directly across the street (Minneola Ridge PUD), with Del Webb at Minneola (~1,000 age-restricted homes) further down the road. Seth Lynch (Public Works) stated additional right-of-way on CR 561A would be required at site plan, that the road will need improvement due to development coming to Minneola, that there is a 75-foot-or-greater grade drop from the north side down to CR 561A, and that stormwater retention must be sized to new state water management rules. Grass parking is permitted for churches but drive aisles, turnaround, and handicap spaces must be paved.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 6 (all on Tab 4, Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal)
• General sentiment: Uniformly opposed
• Key concerns:
  • Stormwater and flooding — the parcel functions as a drainage basin for uphill lanes; 75+ foot grade drop to CR 561A
  • Impervious surface ratio and site density on a 97-foot-wide, 2.63-acre parcel
  • Absence of completed noise and property-impact studies at the rezoning stage
  • Traffic safety and parking spillover on CR 561A, a weekend bike route already carrying Turnpike-construction detour traffic
  • Loss of rural character, privacy, and viewshed; buffering absent between Agriculture and CFD
  • Well/septic siting and percolation on a constrained lot
  • Concern the use expands later (e.g., a school)

Key Signals

• A bare four-member quorum approved every item on the docket, including a contested rezoning six neighbors turned out to oppose. Only four of seven voting members attended — Fike, Owens, and Vice Chairman Jaskulski were all absent — and the Board still moved a rezoning that drew uniform public opposition. Every vote was 4-0. For anyone tracking unincorporated Lake County, this is the practical lesson: PZB outcomes can turn on who shows up, and a four-person board is the minimum that can act. The absent members included the two who, five weeks later at the May 6 meeting, would be the most active interrogators of applicant language. The composition of the room is a real variable in this county's land-use outcomes, not a formality.

• The staff report understated the binding impervious-surface cap by more than double, and the correction came from the podium. DeVogel disclosed that the report's table showed an 80 percent CFD maximum ISR when the controlling Rural FLUC allows 20 percent (35 percent secondary for civic uses). The applicant's concept plan proposed 48.29 percent. Marsh confirmed the most restrictive standard governs. The Board wrote the 35 percent ceiling into the ordinance as an express condition rather than leaving it to LDR cross-reference. Anyone reading a Lake County staff report should treat the development-standards table as the zoning district's ceiling, not the parcel's — the Future Land Use Category can cut it by more than half, and the concept plans applicants submit are not necessarily buildable as drawn.

• Agriculture-to-CFD rezonings carry no buffering requirement in Lake County code — the Board has to add it by hand, one ordinance at a time. DeVogel confirmed there are no perimeter landscape buffer or fencing requirements between Agriculture and Community Facility District zoning. The only reason this parcel got a 10-foot Type A buffer on three sides is that Marsh advised the Board it could attach conditions because CFD is conditional zoning, and Tatro moved to do so. This is a structural gap: rural neighbors adjacent to any institutional rezoning get whatever buffer a given board improvises on a given morning. The parcel's 97-foot width forced the buffer down from the 15 feet initially proposed to 10 — the site's geometry, not the neighbors' objections, set the number.

• Minneola's non-objection is doing heavy lifting at the county line while ~1,500 units land across the road. The City raised no objection, anticipated water and sewer within five years, and secured no mandatory connection requirement — a condition DeVogel confirmed the County does impose on residential parcels west of US 27. Meanwhile Minneola's own letter documents Minneola Ridge PUD bringing 500+ units directly across CR 561A and Del Webb at Minneola adding roughly 1,000 age-restricted homes nearby. The rural neighbors objecting to a 150-seat church are surrounded by entitlements an order of magnitude larger. Public Works confirmed CR 561A will need widening and additional right-of-way because of Minneola's growth — the road, not the church, is the coming change.

• A three-year entitlement clock: PZ2023-262 was filed in 2023 and heard in April 2026. The case number dates the application to 2023; Portalatin testified he bought the land in 2007 intending to build a church. For a 2.63-acre place of worship on rural land with staff finding consistency, the queue ran roughly three years. That cadence is the practical cost of entitlement in unincorporated Lake County and a useful baseline against the county's larger PUD applications moving through the same office.

Raw Notes

• Source PDF (approved-pzb-minutes-4-1-2026.pdf, 11 pages, 641 KB) is a scanned image with zero extractable text; content recovered via tools/ocr-pdf.py (pdftoppm 300 DPI → tesseract, psm 1). OCR quality was high. Known OCR artifacts: "Barrén" for Barrón; the signature block renders as "Ldura Jones/Siith" for Laura Jones Smith; "constrnction"/"trncks" for construction/trucks in adjacent documents.
• Agenda for this meeting published separately at https://cdn.lakecountyfl.gov/media/em0dg3ly/pzb-agenda-ada.pdf (2 pages, verified "PLANNING & ZONING BOARD AGENDA APRIL 1, 2026"). Its tab listing matches the minutes exactly; no separate agenda document was authored because the minutes supersede it and add no distinct content.
• Consent-item detail for Tabs 1–3 (case numbers, locations, applicants, acreage, overlays) was recovered from the published staff reports at https://c.lakecountyfl.gov/ftp/PlanningZoningStaffReports/2026/2026-04-01/, since the minutes record consent items by title and vote only.
• Board roster context: Bill Mathias appears on the April agenda masthead as Alternative School Board Representative — a seat not previously noted in the source profile.
• BCC Chairman is Leslie Campione; BCC members are Anthony Sabatini (D1), Sean M. Parks (D2), Kirby Smith (D3), Leslie Campione (D4), Timothy Morris (D5).
• Agenda updates: Barrón confirmed all cases were duly noticed and there were no changes to the agenda. Jones Smith moved Tab 4 to the regular agenda because speaker cards had been filed.
• Public Comment (general): no one wished to address the Board.
• Other Business: Barrón announced the next meeting for May 6, 2026.
• Marsh's buffer taxonomy on the record (lowest tier, Type A): 20 ft width with two canopy trees, one ornamental, single row of shrubs; or 15 ft with three canopy, two ornamental, single row of shrubs; or 10 ft with two canopy, one ornamental, single row of shrubs. A separate five-foot residential-to-residential category requires a six-foot solid wall.
• Barrón flagged that the front-of-property LDR reference needed to read "LDR as amended" because a forthcoming ordinance may require a 20-foot front buffer rather than 15 feet, depending on when the project develops.
• Tatro's stated rationale for moving approval: the request was pending site plan approval and final decisions on most of the items discussed.