City of Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — January 21, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (6 members present) Duration: 10:05 AM – 11:00 AM (55 minutes) Location: City Hall Board Room, 510 North Baker Street

Attendance

• Present: Vice Chair Adrian Coombes (presiding), Harris Turner, Lynn Tipton, Tom Dring, Suzanne Scheck, Andrea Lother
• Absent: Miles Beach
• Staff Present: Michele Janiszewski, Deputy Planning Director; Whitney Scott, Associate Planner; Andrew Hand, City Attorney; Mr. Sumner (Code Compliance, named in the Ask the Staff discussion)

Elections: Miles Beach nominated Chair 6-0 in absentia (moved Coombes, seconded Dring); Adrian Coombes nominated Vice-Chair 6-0 (moved Dring, seconded Scheck).

Prior minutes: December 17, 2025 minutes approved 6-0 (moved Turner, seconded Dring).

New member: Lynn Tipton appears on the roll for the first time, filling the seat left open since October 2025.

Agenda Items

Item 1: Sunshine Law Presentation

• Type: Other (board training)
• Case Number: N/A
• Location: N/A
• Applicant: City of Mount Dora
• Request: Annual Sunshine Law refresher for the commission.
• Staff Recommendation: N/A
• Action: Presented; no motion
• Vote: [none]
• Conditions: None
• Notable Discussion: Hand provided a Sunshine Law refresher presentation. No detail recorded.

Item 2: Update — Vista Ridge Road (Developer's Agreement)

• Type: Other (staff update on a developer's agreement)
• Case Number: N/A
• Location: Vista Ridge Road; discussion extended to Sand Lake Road, Round Lake Road, and Sunset Hills Grove
• Applicant: City of Mount Dora (staff update)
• Request: Update the board on the Vista Ridge Road developer's agreement.
• Staff Recommendation: N/A
• Action: Informational; no motion
• Vote: [none]
• Conditions: None
• Notable Discussion:
  • Janiszewski provided the Vista Ridge Road developer's agreement update. Discussion followed on Sand Lake Road, including the number of traffic lanes and speed limits.
  • Sunset Hills Grove is stalled on sewer. The board and Janiszewski discussed potential plans for the site; Janiszewski stated there have been inquiries but "due to there currently being no waste water capacity, developers haven't moved forward with an application."
  • Round Lake Road junction: Janiszewski said there will be a stop light but she is unsure of the time frame, and that there are plans for roads east of Round Lake.
  • Janiszewski confirmed a few applications have been submitted to Lake County and that they are not contiguous — i.e., not annexable into Mount Dora.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0. Public participation on non-agenda items is recorded as "None." No public hearing items were noticed; the agenda carried no applications.
• General sentiment: N/A
• Key concerns: N/A

Key Signals

• Thirteen months after staff first told this board Plant 2 was overcommitted, the constraint is now suppressing applications before they are filed. Janiszewski's January 2026 statement on Sunset Hills Grove — there have been inquiries, but "due to there currently being no waste water capacity, developers haven't moved forward with an application" — is the clearest evidence in the corpus that Mount Dora's development pipeline is being throttled upstream of the permit counter. The agenda for this meeting contains zero applications. That is not a slow month; that is the capacity freeze showing up as an empty docket.

• The development that Mount Dora can't serve is being filed with Lake County instead, on non-contiguous land. Janiszewski confirmed applications going to the county and specifically noted they are not contiguous — outside the reach of voluntary annexation. Every month the plant stays committed, more of the growth around Mount Dora gets entitled under county rules, on county standards, with county impact fees. This is the concrete cost of the JPA stalemate the board forced in mid-2025.

• The tree bank has an enforcement problem, and the board went looking for it. Under Ask the Staff, the commission pressed on fines and code violations for clear-cutting and applicants not following landscaping plans on inactive projects, asked staff to bring back ordinances to strengthen the tree bank contribution requirement, and asked staff to check into enforcing unpaid tree bank contribution fees. Janiszewski explained the contribution is made a condition of the Site Development Permit and is usually paid before trees are removed. The gap the board is probing: a project can clear its trees, stall, and leave the obligation unpaid.

• One property was taken to the special magistrate over it, and it worked. Mr. Sumner confirmed a specific property went to magistrate, fines have been paid and the site has been cleaned up. In a corpus where several Lake County jurisdictions have been debating whether to route code enforcement through magistrates, Mount Dora has a working example and cited it to its planning board.

• A traffic signal is coming to the Round Lake Road junction and nobody can say when. With Round Lake Charter K-8 just annexed and rezoned, and its principal telling the board in December that he hopes road repairs help with congestion, the timing of that signal is the single most consequential unanswered question for families in that corridor.

• The board elected an absent chairman. Beach was nominated Chair 6-0 while absent; Coombes presided in January, and by the March 18, 2026 meeting Coombes had been elected Chair with Dring as Vice-Chair and Beach no longer appears on the roll. Mount Dora's P&Z leadership transferred over two months without a recorded resignation in the minutes.

Raw Notes

• Source provenance: No standalone minutes file was published to CivicClerk for the January 21, 2026 meeting. These minutes were recovered as native text from pages 3–5 of the March 18, 2026 agenda packet (CivicClerk file ID 6544, event ID 2252, agendaId 1319). Approval of the January 21 minutes is recorded in the March 18, 2026 minutes, 7-0. Only an agenda file (ID 6450) is attached to the January event itself.
• The February 18, 2026 meeting was canceled, which is why the January minutes did not surface until the March packet.
• Under Ask the Staff (Section VII), in addition to the tree bank items above: conversation on enforcing the landscaping code for projects that are not active or moving forward.
• Under Staff and Board Member Updates (Section VIII): discussion of the Highland Main lots status. Janiszewski said the lot has been cleaned up and they are moving forward, currently working to connect water to the property; three lots are still proposed, the water line must be brought to the site, and a right-of-way utilization permit is required by Lake County. This continues the "three homes on Highland at the beginning of the city limits" thread from the August 20, 2025 meeting.
• "Conversation on the Senate bill. The board members asked to be kept updated regarding the Senate bill." The bill is not named in the January minutes; the surrounding record (June 2025, April 2026, May 2026, June 2026) identifies the board's standing legislative concern as Senate Bill 180.
• The minutes name the next regularly scheduled meeting as February 18, 2026 — subsequently canceled.
• Adjournment 11:00 AM, moved Scheck, seconded Dring (rendered "Mr. Ding" in the source). Attested by Whitney Scott, Associate Planner. The signature block's chair line is blank in the packet copy.