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Meetings · Montverde

Montverde Planning and Zoning Board — March 11, 2026 minutes

Town of Montverde Planning and Zoning Board — March 11, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (4 of 5 members present; a fifth member recused on the sole substantive item, leaving three voting) Duration: Adjournment time not recorded in the minutes Location: Town Hall, 17404 Sixth Street, Montverde, FL 34756

Attendance

  • Present: Chairwoman Karin Arellano, Vice-Chair Aaron Wadsworth, Josie Weiss, Michael Whidden
  • Absent: Holly Broecker; Town Manager Paul Larino absent; Town Planner Sean Parks absent
  • Staff Present: Anita Geraci-Carver, Town Attorney; Lisa Busto, Associate Town Planner; Caroline Trepanier, Town Clerk; Iman Rashid, Administrative Assistant

Recusal: Chairwoman Arellano recused herself, stating a personal interest in the sole substantive agenda item. Vice-Chair Wadsworth chaired the item. Arellano returned and resumed the chair after the vote.

Prior minutes — a three-meeting backlog cleared in one sitting:

  • November 12, 2025 — approved 4-0 with a correction (moved Whidden; Wadsworth presented a correction; Weiss seconded with the correction)
  • December 10, 2025 — approved 4-0 (moved Whidden, seconded Wadsworth)
  • January 14, 2026 — approved 4-0 (moved Whidden, seconded Wadsworth)

Agenda Items

Item 1: Resolution No. 2026-02 — Minor Site Plan, Specialty Retail at 17510 CR 455

  • Type: Site Plan Review (minor site plan, LDC § 6-24)
  • Case Number: Resolution No. 2026-02 — Alt Key 1462568, Parcel No. 01-22-26-1200-009-00400, Lot 4 F, Block 9, Division F, Town of Montverde, Section 2, Township 22 South, Range 26
  • Location: 17510 County Road 455, Montverde, FL 34756. The resolution's site plan shows an existing one-story residence at #17510 with a carport and septic tank; Busto explained the project's functional orientation faces 8th Street.
  • Applicant: Michael and Marie Theresa Kay (owners). Michael Kay appeared. Site plan prepared by Michael S. Helfrich, P.E.
  • Request: Minor site plan approval for a specialty retail business — specifically, per the resolution, to construct parking spaces with landscaping improvements at the property.
  • Current Zoning: R1M (as labelled on the site plan exhibit)
  • Proposed Zoning: No change
  • Acreage: [not stated — a single platted town lot; the site plan shows a 131.55 ft frontage dimension and 25-foot setbacks with a 10-foot landscape buffer on all sides]
  • Staff Recommendation: Approve with the conditions listed in the staff report
  • Action: Recommended for approval with conditions
  • Vote: Recorded in two stages. Initial motion 3-0 (moved Weiss, seconded Whidden). After the Town Attorney asked that the staff-report conditions be incorporated into the resolution itself, Weiss revised her motion; the revised motion is recorded as approved with conditions 4-0 (seconded Whidden). See Raw Notes — the 4-0 tally is inconsistent with the number of non-recused members present.
  • Conditions: Per Resolution 2026-02 as drafted: (a) before any construction activity the applicant must resolve all Planning and Administrative Matters to the satisfaction of the Town Manager or designee, and comply with all other Town land development regulations and reviewer requests; (b) the approval may be revoked if a construction permit has not been issued within 12 months, in which case the site plan must be re-evaluated by Town Council under any newly adopted standards. Written extension requests require cause.
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Busto explained the project and its functional orientation facing 8th Street — a CR 455 address whose activity fronts a residential side street.
    • Board members questioned the nonconforming structures on the parcel, which Busto explained. The site is an existing single-family residence on a platted town lot being adapted to retail use.
    • Further discussion covered sidewalks, project requirements, and barriers around the area. Kay said the barrier information had already been submitted to Town Manager Larino — who was absent from this meeting.
    • Public hearing: opened and closed by Vice-Chair Wadsworth with no one speaking for or against.
    • The procedural correction is the notable moment: the board voted, and only afterward did Busto speak to the conditions outlined in the staff report, prompting Geraci-Carver to request that the motion be reconsidered to incorporate those conditions into the resolution itself. Weiss revised her motion accordingly and the board voted again.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 1 — Michael Kay, the applicant-owner. No non-applicant members of the public spoke.
  • General sentiment: No opposition recorded.
  • Key concerns: None raised by the public. The board's own questions concerned nonconforming structures, sidewalks, and site barriers.

Key Signals

  • The board approved a site plan, then had to vote again because the conditions were not in the motion. The first motion carried before Busto described the staff report's conditions; Geraci-Carver then asked the board to reconsider so those conditions would be incorporated into the resolution itself rather than living only in a staff memo. Weiss revised and the board re-voted. This is the recurring Montverde pattern in miniature — the same board wrote conditions into its motions on the Parque Verde site plan (July 2025), the Montverde Estates PUD water waiver (November 2025), and the Osgood final plan (January 2026). Conditions attach here by motion, not by staff report, and this meeting is the one where the difference was explained out loud.

  • A residence at 17510 CR 455 is converting to specialty retail, with the activity pointed at 8th Street. The parcel is a platted town lot zoned R1M carrying an existing one-story house, carport and septic tank; the approved work is parking spaces and landscaping. Busto's note that the functional orientation faces 8th Street is the detail neighbours should read: a CR 455 commercial address whose traffic and parking load discharges onto a residential street. Board questions about nonconforming structures, sidewalks, and barriers all point at the same friction.

  • The approval carries a 12-month use-it-or-lose-it clock with a re-evaluation trap. Resolution 2026-02 revokes the approval if no construction permit issues within twelve months of approval, and on revocation the site plan must be re-evaluated by Town Council under any newly adopted standards — not the standards in force at approval. In a town that amended its accessory-structure setbacks in 2025 and its maximum-slope rule in 2026, a lapsed approval is re-underwritten against a moving code. The clock runs from Council adoption in spring 2026.

  • The chair recused for personal interest and the minutes never say what it was. Arellano stepped down for the only substantive item and Wadsworth chaired. The record states the recusal and its reason as "personal interest," with no further disclosure. Florida's voting-conflict rules require a written memorandum of voting conflict in defined circumstances; no such filing is referenced in the minutes. In a town of 2,000 where board members and applicants are neighbours, this is the second recusal-adjacent disclosure in the window — Wadsworth volunteered a Nextdoor post in July 2025.

  • The meeting ran without the Town Manager or the Town Planner. Larino and Parks were both absent — the two staff who present or supplement nearly every substantive item in this record — leaving Associate Town Planner Busto and Town Attorney Geraci-Carver to carry the item. The applicant's answer that his barrier information "had been submitted to Town Manager Larino" landed in a room where Larino was not present to confirm it. For a board that meets as needed with a four-person working quorum, staff depth is the binding constraint, not member count.

Raw Notes

  • Source provenance — packet-carries-previous-minutes. The March 11, 2026 minutes are not published as a standalone document on the Town's Planning & Zoning index, and the March 11 per-meeting notice page links only the agenda and agenda packet. The approved minutes were recovered from the June 10, 2026 agenda packet, PDF pages 3–5 (00-P-Z-Meeting-Agenda-Packet-06-10-2026_Optimized.pdf), where they appear as the consent item for that meeting. The packet is a scan; content recovered by OCR (tools/ocr-pdf.py, 300 DPI, PSM 1). Signed Karin Arellano, Chairwoman; attested Caroline Trepanier, Town Clerk. Footer: "Planning & Zoning Board Minutes - March 11, 2026, Page 1/2/3 of 3."
  • Vote-tally inconsistency in the approved minutes. With Broecker absent and Arellano recused, only three members — Wadsworth, Weiss, Whidden — were eligible to vote. The initial motion is recorded 3-0, which is consistent. The revised motion is recorded "Approved with Conditions 4-0," and the adjournment is recorded as "Meeting adjourned 4-0," both after the recusal and before the line "Chairwoman Arellano returned and resumed the chair." The 4-0 tallies are not reconcilable with three eligible voters. This document records the outcome as approved with conditions and preserves both tallies as printed rather than selecting one.
  • Adjournment time is not recorded in the minutes — only "Meeting adjourned 4-0."
  • Resolution 2026-02 detail (applicant names, parcel identifiers, legal description, engineer, § 6-24 authority, conditions, zoning R1M) is taken from the draft resolution and site-plan Exhibit A in the March 11, 2026 agenda packet, pages 21–23 (00-PZ-Meeting-Agenda-Packet-03-11-2026_Optimized.pdf), dated 2-21-26. The minutes name only "Marie Theresa Kay" as the resolution's subject and Michael Kay as the appearing applicant; the resolution names Michael and Marie Theresa Kay jointly as applicants and "Owner."
  • Michael Kay's address is rendered by OCR as "177633 Kirkland Avenue" — a six-digit house number that is almost certainly a transcription error for a 17xxx Kirkland Avenue address. Treat the street as reliable and the number as unverified.
  • Council roster as printed on the draft resolution's signature block (February 2026): Mayor Joe Wynkoop, Vice Mayor Carol Womack, Councilmembers Joe Morganelli, Grant Roberts, Bryan Rubio. Grant Roberts is the same Grant Roberts who appeared before this board as the Parque Verde, LLC applicant on July 29, 2025 for the outdoor boat/RV/trailer storage site plan; the Town Council minutes of August 12, 2025 list him as a sitting Councilmember two weeks after that hearing. The July 29, 2025 P&Z minutes identify him only as "Applicant Grant Roberts, 16004 Ridgewood Avenue" and record no disclosure of his Council seat — while the board's motion conditioned approval on outstanding items being resolved "prior to going to the Council."
  • Council composition later changed: the August 11, 2026 Council agenda roster reads Wynkoop, Womack, Roberts, Rubio, and Jimmy Rogers, with Morganelli no longer listed; the July 14, 2026 Council agenda carried "Discussion Regarding the Appointment to the Vacant Council Seat."
  • Companion documents: agenda https://mymontverde.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/00-PZ-Meeting-Agenda-03-11-2026.pdf ; agenda packet https://mymontverde.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/00-PZ-Meeting-Agenda-Packet-03-11-2026_Optimized.pdf (60 pp.).
  • Canonical per-meeting record page: https://mymontverde.com/town-meetings/planning-zoning-meeting-wednesday-march-11-2026-at-630-pm-at-town-hall/

Connected records

1 connected record

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