Zoning Signal

Meetings · Mount Dora

Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — April 15, 2026 minutes

City of Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — April 15, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (7 of 7 members present — full board) Duration: 10:00 AM – 11:13 AM (1 hour 13 minutes) Location: City Hall Board Room, 510 North Baker Street

Attendance

  • Present: Adrian Coombes (presiding, recorded as Vice Chair in the call to order though elected Chair on March 18), Harris Turner, Lynn Tipton, Tom Dring, Suzanne Scheck, Andrea Lother, David Hoops
  • Absent: None
  • Staff Present: Michele Janiszewski, Deputy Planning Director; Andrew Hand, City Attorney (via Zoom); Theresa Willis, Administrative Coordinator

Prior minutes: March 18, 2026 minutes approved 7-0 (moved Tipton, seconded Scheck).

No applications were on this agenda. The meeting was a legislative work session on the Landscaping Code plus staff updates.

Agenda Items

Item 1: Landscaping Code Update (Old Business)

  • Type: Text Amendment (Land Development Code — landscaping)
  • Case Number: [no ordinance number assigned in the record]
  • Location: Citywide
  • Applicant: City of Mount Dora (staff-initiated)
  • Request: Continued section-by-section review of the Landscaping Code rewrite — the same rewrite first presented at the January 3, 2025 special meeting.
  • Current Zoning: N/A
  • Proposed Zoning: N/A
  • Acreage: N/A
  • Staff Recommendation: Working draft; no recommendation put to a vote
  • Action: No motion. Reviewed section by section; the Buffer Section was tabled for a future date.
  • Vote: [none]
  • Conditions: N/A
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Hand discussed proposed Senate Bill 180 in the context of the landscaping rewrite.
    • Sections reviewed, by citation as recorded: Chapter VI Design Standards, Section 6.6.1 general requirements (including cost of renovation work); Section 6.6.3 parking lot requirements, including landscape requirements at entrances and exits of parking garages; Section 6.6.5 planting standards and requirements, existing trees, and landscaping credits; Section 6.6.6 maintenance and enforcement of dead-landscaping replacement, including inspections after cold snaps; Section 6.6.7 Item 2, subsection 3 exemptions to replacement and mitigation.
    • Discussion of the buffer section — tabled for a future date.
    • Discussion of residential lot landscaping requirements and tree removal mitigation requirements.
    • "Question posed: Why are city parks excluded?" — discussion followed.
    • Discussion of PUD exemption from landscaping requirements — the mechanism the board fought over in February 2025 when it stripped a PUD's vested landscaping plan.
    • Discussion of repairing existing planters, the Boy Scout Building, and other locations.
    • Discussion of the approved tree chart; performance standards; tree maintenance, irrigation, pruning, fertilizer, and tree removal.
    • Discussion of increasing tree bank contributions.
    • Discussion of commercial entities needing a license for the use of fertilizer.
    • Discussion of enforcement for new developments and of landscaping comparisons with other cities.

Item 2: Staff Update — EAR ("Evaluation Appraisal Report")

  • Type: Other (Comprehensive Plan process update)
  • Case Number: N/A
  • Location: Citywide
  • Applicant: City of Mount Dora
  • Request: Staff update on the Evaluation and Appraisal Report.
  • Action: Informational; no motion
  • Vote: [none]
  • Notable Discussion: Janiszewski provided an update. No detail recorded.

Item 3: Staff Update — Traffic Guidelines

  • Type: Other (staff update)
  • Case Number: N/A
  • Location: Citywide; specific intersections named below
  • Applicant: City of Mount Dora
  • Request: Staff update on Traffic Guidelines.
  • Action: Informational; no motion
  • Vote: [none]
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Discussion of traffic lights and of traffic studies.
    • Discussion about the intersection of Donnelly and US 441.
    • Discussion about the intersection of ABC Liquor.
    • Discussion of the role of the Public Works Department and the City Manager's Office.
    • Discussion on traffic studies for one-way streets in downtown.
    • Discussion of sidewalks on the same side of streets.
    • Discussion of the role of the board for Planning and Zoning.
    • Discussion of Commissioner Training Courses and of FDOT attending.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0. Public participation on non-agenda items is recorded as "None." No public-hearing item was noticed.
  • General sentiment: N/A
  • Key concerns: N/A

Key Signals

  • Sixteen months after the special meeting called to launch it, Mount Dora's landscaping rewrite is still being read section by section, and the buffer section is tabled again. The draft opened at a January 3, 2025 special session, reappeared in June 2025 as clean-up items, and by April 2026 is being walked through as Chapter VI Sections 6.6.1 through 6.6.7 with no ordinance number and no vote. It returns in May and again in June, still unresolved. Anyone counting on the new tree-bank rates, buffer widths, or mitigation requirements to bite should assume the old code governs — and has governed continuously since before this coverage window opened.

  • The rewrite is drifting toward regulating existing homeowners, and the board keeps flinching at it. Residential lot landscaping requirements, maintenance enforcement for dead plantings, inspections after cold snaps, fertilizer licensing, and replacement obligations were all on the table in April. The following month the board explicitly tables retroactivity "to be mindful of 'The Notion of Burden'"; in June the discussion turns to elderly residents affording replacements. Mount Dora is drafting a code with real teeth for homeowners and has not decided whether to point them.

  • Senate Bill 180 is now the gating condition on the whole rewrite. Hand raised it in April, the board discussed how SB 180 would affect new codes in May, and in June discussed the October 2027 timeline and asked staff to present which items are not restricted by it. Mount Dora is doing what several Lake County jurisdictions are doing — sequencing its land development code work around a state preemption clock rather than its own calendar.

  • "Why are city parks excluded?" A one-line question in the minutes, but it goes to the credibility of the whole ordinance. A landscaping code that exempts the largest landscaped properties in the city — the ones the city owns — while extending maintenance obligations to private homeowners has an enforcement asymmetry problem. The board noticed it in April; the exclusion had not been resolved by June.

  • PUD exemption from landscaping requirements is back on the table. In February 2025 this board stripped a PUD's landscaping vesting by motion, requiring compliance with the code "at the time of site plan approval." In April 2026 it is discussing the exemption structurally. The connection matters: with several four-year PUD extensions granted during the wastewater freeze, whether PUDs are exempt determines whether the new landscaping code reaches the projects that will actually be built when Plant 2 comes online.

  • The board is asking to be trained and asking FDOT to come. Commissioner training courses, FDOT attendance, "the role of the board for Planning and Zoning," traffic studies for downtown one-way conversion. This is a substantially new board — two members seated within four months, a new chair, a new vice-chair, a new administrative coordinator — building its own competence in public rather than deferring to staff summaries.

Raw Notes

  • Source provenance: Standalone minutes retrieved as CivicClerk file ID 6632 (event ID 2050, agendaId 1320). The published PDF is a scanned image of the signed original, three pages, and required OCR.
  • The published agenda for this meeting (file ID 6578) is headed "April 16, 2026" while the CivicClerk event, the minutes, and the approval at the May 20, 2026 meeting all establish the meeting date as April 15, 2026. Treated as a scrivener's error on the agenda.
  • The CivicClerk event name for this meeting is recorded simply as "Planning and Zoning Commission" without a date.
  • The roll line in the source reads "Present: Adrian Coombes, |--Harris Turner, …" with an OCR artifact; all seven members plus the City Attorney via Zoom are listed.
  • Theresa Willis appears as Administrative Coordinator for the first time, succeeding Alexandra Stevens.
  • Ask Staff / Other Business: Janiszewski discussed the organizational chart and updating the website with it; discussion of mitigation fees for Project Juniper Village; discussion of a Historic Preservation Board ordinance for accessory dwellings, which Janiszewski said will be forthcoming to the Planning and Zoning Commission; discussion of road residential impact fees; and a request to add "Questions for Staff" to future agendas.
  • The minutes' Adjournment section repeats the line "Chair announced the date and time of the next scheduled meeting" from the preceding section — a template artifact in the source.
  • Adjournment 11:13 AM, moved Tipton, seconded Dring. Attested by Theresa Willis, Administrative Coordinator; signed by Chair Adrian Coombes.

Connected records

1 connected record

Places1