City of Maitland Planning and Zoning Commission — February 5, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting (the Commission also sits as the Local Planning Agency for LDC text amendments) Quorum: Yes (5 of 5 members present) Duration: 1 hour 25 minutes (6:00 PM – 7:25 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Chair Glen Jaffee, Commissioner Greg Hardwick, Commissioner Jody Barry, Commissioner Eddie Baird, Commissioner Ken Linehan (newly seated)
• Absent: None
• Staff Present: Mike Daniels (Director of Community Development), Ryan G. Knight (Attorney), Barrett Chaix (Senior Planner)

Agenda Items

Item 1 (Organizational): Election of Chair and Vice-Chair for 2026

• Type: Other (board organization)
• Request: Annual election of Chair and Vice-Chair. Chair Jaffee read an introduction describing the role of the Planning and Zoning Commission in city government and introduced new member Ken Linehan, who provided a brief biography of his work background.
• Action: Glen Jaffee elected Chair for 2026; Jody Barry elected Vice-Chair for 2026
• Vote: 5-0 on each (Ayes: Baird, Linehan, Hardwick, Barry, Jaffee; Nays: none. Mover: Baird; Seconder: Hardwick, on both)
• Notable Discussion: The second result line in the minutes reads "Elect Jody Barry as Chair of Planning and Zoning Commission for 2026." The agenda item is "Election of Chair and Vice-Chair," Jaffee had just been elected Chair on the preceding motion, and the June 4, 2026 minutes record Barry presiding as Vice-Chair. The recorded office is a clerical error in the minutes.

Item 2: LDC Text Amendment — Reasonable Accommodation Requests for Certified Recovery Residences

• Type: Text Amendment (LDC Article 5, new Section 5.16)

• Case Number: [none assigned in minutes]

• Location: Citywide

• Applicant: City of Maitland (staff-initiated, state-mandated)

• Request: Add LDC Section 5.16 establishing procedures for review and approval of reasonable accommodation requests for certified recovery residences, as required by Senate Bill 954 — approved by the Governor June 25, 2025, effective July 1, 2025 — which added subsection (15) to Florida Statutes Section 397.487 and requires every local government to adopt an ordinance establishing review and approval procedures, including a process for requesting reasonable accommodations from any local land use regulation that would prohibit a certified recovery residence.

• Current Zoning: N/A (citywide text)

• Proposed Zoning: N/A

• Staff Recommendation: Recommend approval of the LDC amendment to City Council

• Action: Not recommended for approval — remanded to staff and legal counsel. The board instead adopted a motion directing further work.

• Vote: 5-0 on the remand motion (Ayes: Hardwick, Baird, Barry, Linehan, Jaffee; Nays: none. Mover: Baird; Seconder: Hardwick)

• Conditions: The motion as recorded: "requesting that applicable staff continues to work with the City's legal counsel to further look into and to propose to us at the appropriate time potential options for recertification, reapplication and/or revocation of accommodations as contemplated within the proposed ordinance and compliance with Florida Statute 397.487 also to include the person or persons or body and or bodies that would make a determination that a violation has existed that would result in a revocation of accommodation."

• Notable Discussion: Daniels presented the ordinance. Hardwick asked how the statute changes the process for variances and appeals in court; Daniels explained the threshold difference — a variance requires demonstrated hardship, a reasonable accommodation does not. Barry pointed out the similarity to the Live Local Act "in that it sets up an administrative process instead of a public hearing."

  Baird asked what conditions trigger revocation and which body carries it out. Attorney Knight cited lying on the application, losing the state license, or the qualifying individual no longer living there, and noted a final order is not required by statute. As drafted, revocation requires a special magistrate or court order; Baird proposed instead that the City Manager make the determination, with the applicant carrying the burden on appeal. Hardwick proposed requiring annual re-application; Daniels said that could be made a condition of approval; Knight noted cities have treated accommodations either as running with the property or as requiring revisiting.

  Jaffee said the city "needs to really think through this and this definition of disability, which is very broad," compared it to emotional support animals, and said: "With AirBnBs and Live Local Act, we tried to put up roadblocks and speed bumps to keep these out of residential areas... We need to be able to make it very easy to immediately correct." Knight replied "there isn't much we can do in the way of speed bumps as the state has required the City to review and approve or deny in 30 days."

  Linehan asked whether certified recovery residences were already allowed. Daniels replied that they were — five unrelated persons in a single-family home are allowed by right. Jaffee asked whether the city could put restrictions in its code covering these specific uses; Daniels replied that it would run afoul of Senate Bill 180.

Item 3: LDC Text Amendment — Administrative Review of Plats and Replats

• Type: Text Amendment (LDC Sections 2.5.2(b) and 6.4.2)
• Case Number: [none assigned in minutes]
• Location: Citywide
• Applicant: City of Maitland (staff-initiated, state-mandated)
• Request: Amend the LDC to conform to Senate Bill 784, effective July 1, 2025, which requires that a subdivision plat or replat be approved administratively where it complies with Florida Statute 177.091, and requires local governments to designate by ordinance or resolution an administrative authority to receive, review, and process plat submittals and an administrative official responsible for approving, approving with conditions, or denying them. Staff stated plainly that the legislation "preempts the City's authority to prescribe the plat approval process as currently set forth within the City's Land Development Code, which requires board review and approval in a public hearing."
• Current Zoning: N/A (citywide text)
• Proposed Zoning: N/A
• Staff Recommendation: Forward a recommendation of approval of the ordinance to City Council
• Action: Approved — recommendation of approval forwarded to City Council
• Vote: 5-0 (Ayes: Hardwick, Baird, Barry, Linehan, Jaffee; Nays: none. Mover: Baird; Seconder: Barry)
• Conditions: None
• Notable Discussion: Staff recounted that Resolution 13-2025, adopted by City Council August 25, 2025, was an interim step designating the Community Development Department as the administrative authority and the City Manager or designee as the administrative official. The LDC amendment was the follow-on step, delayed because the code's multiple cross-references to the platting process made the amendment more complex than anticipated; sections 2.5.2(b) and 6.4.2 were revised in underline/strikethrough form. Hardwick asked what happens if an applicant disagrees with staff; Daniels explained staff's review is based on statute. Jaffee asked about the distinction between the neighborhood meeting and the community meeting; Chaix described the current code treatment of the neighborhood meeting in the standard application process.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0 across both noticed public hearings
• General sentiment: N/A — no public present
• Key concerns: None raised by the public. The scrutiny was entirely from the dais, and on both items it was about enforcement authority rather than siting.

Key Signals

• Maitland is the corpus city that refused to rubber-stamp the SB 954 recovery-residence mandate — and it pushed back on enforcement, not on siting. Every other instance in the corpus adopted the surface on first presentation: Clermont passed Ordinance 2026-013 6-0 on March 3, 2026, and Leesburg granted the Butler Street CRR conditional use 6-0 on March 19. Maitland's board sent the ordinance back 5-0 on February 5 with a specific ask — name the body that determines a violation, and give us recertification, reapplication, and revocation options — then recommended adoption 4-0 a month later on March 5. The recovery-residences pattern's Maitland entry is a two-meeting sequence, and this is the meeting where the substance was contested. The pattern generalizes across the county line, but not without friction.

• Two state preemptions landed in a single meeting, and one of them removed work from this board's docket permanently. SB 954 forces an administrative accommodation channel for a federally protected use; SB 784 moves plat and replat approval out of the public hearing entirely, to the Community Development Department and the City Manager. A board spent one evening debating how much control it retains over one preemption and then voted 5-0 to codify the loss of jurisdiction over another. For anyone tracking where Central Florida land use decisions are actually made, February 2026 is the month Maitland's platting docket disappeared.

• SB 180 was named from the staff table as the wall that forecloses a local option. Asked directly whether the city could write use-specific restrictions on certified recovery residences, Director Daniels answered that it "would run afoul of Senate Bill 180." That is the same statute driving the south-Lake corridor's compressed adoption windows and its 2028 sunset watch — surfacing here, in Orange County, as the reason a density-cap city cannot regulate a use it is uneasy about. SB 180's reach into the corpus is not confined to the corridor cities that adopted under it.

• Commissioner Barry drew the line between two unrelated statutes: both replace the public hearing with an administrative desk. He noted the SB 954 process resembles the Live Local Act "in that it sets up an administrative process instead of a public hearing." Add SB 784's plat preemption from the same meeting and the pattern is three statutes converging on one mechanism. Maitland's governing tool has always been the quasi-judicial hearing where form and character get negotiated; the state is steadily removing categories of decision from that room.

• The ordinance as drafted is more permissive than the board realized, and the deemed-approval clause is why. The Section 5.16 text in the packet gives the Community Development Director 60 days to determine a request, and provides that if no written determination issues within 60 days the accommodation is deemed approved. Appeal runs to the City Manager, not to this board. There is no fee, enforcement is stayed while a request is pending, and approvals expire in 180 days if not implemented. Two provisions cut the other way and answer the board's questions directly: revocation follows automatically on loss of state certification with cessation of operations within 60 days, and the accommodation is personal to the applicant and does not run with the property. Any resident tracking a specific address should note that the operative deadline is administrative and silent — nothing is noticed, and the clock can expire into an approval.

Raw Notes

• Minutes of November 6, 2025 approved 5-0 (Mover: Hardwick; Seconder: Baird).
• Under Old Business, staff provided an update on "the grocer on Maitland Concourse North Lot 3" and other projects previously before the Commission — the first explicit identification of the Lot 3 anchor tenant type in the record.
• Attorney rotation: Ryan G. Knight sat as attorney at this meeting. Drew Smith appears as City Attorney at the June 2025, July 2025, November 2025, May 2026, and June 2026 meetings. The February substitution is not explained in the minutes.
• The minutes PDF (fileId 5526, 29 pages) appends both draft ordinances in full behind the 7-page minutes.
• Draft Section 5.16 detail (from the appended ordinance text): application to the Community Development Director with contact information, parcel ID, description of the accommodation and the specific regulations from which it is sought, reasons, description of the qualifying disability, a perjury certification, and a verification-of-disability form executed by someone with personal knowledge such as a medical or social services professional. Director notifies within 30 days if more information is needed; the applicant has 30 days to supply it or the application is denied absent a written extension. Review within 60 days against FHA/ADA protected status, reasonableness and necessity, absence of undue financial or administrative burden on the City, and absence of a fundamental alteration in the nature of land use and zoning regulations. Written determination must state objective evidence-based reasons for denial and identify deficiencies or actions necessary for reconsideration, and must include the right and method of appeal. Non-issuance within 60 days deems the request approved. Appeal to the City Manager within 30 days; City Manager final decision within 45 days. No fee. Enforcement stayed during pendency. Approvals expire in 180 days if not implemented. Revocation on violation of conditions found by a court or by the special magistrate hearing code enforcement cases, or on failure to obtain or maintain state certification or license, with cessation of operations within 60 days. Medical information may be requested to be held confidential to the extent allowed by law. The accommodation does not run with the property.
• Both the agenda (fileId 4469) and the approved minutes (fileId 5526) were retrieved; the packet (fileId 4470) carries the same two ordinances.
• Source: CivicClerk tenant maitlandfl, agendaId 636 (event 1025).