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Meetings · Mount Dora

Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — May 20, 2026 minutes

City of Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — May 20, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 7 members present) Duration: 10:00 AM – 10:53 AM (53 minutes) Location: City Hall Board Room, 510 North Baker Street

Attendance

  • Present: Chair Adrian Coombes, Harris Turner, Lynn Tipton, Tom Dring, Andrea Lother
  • Absent: David Hoops, Suzanne Scheck
  • Staff Present: Michele Janiszewski, Deputy Planning Director; Andrew Hand, City Attorney; Theresa Willis, Administrative Coordinator

Prior minutes: April 15, 2026 minutes approved 5-0 (moved Tipton, seconded Turner).

Agenda Items

Item 1: Create Conservatory School — Site Plan (SP24-09)

  • Type: Site Plan
  • Case Number: SP24-09
  • Location: 4900 Lake Park Court
  • Applicant: Mason Group Investments, LLC (owner); JamesCo Builders, LLC (applicant); Linn Engineering & Design (engineer). Nikki Duslak, Founder and Head of School, testified.
  • Request: Site plan approval for expansion of the Create Conservatory School.
  • Current Zoning: [not stated in the minutes]
  • Proposed Zoning: No change
  • Acreage: [not available]
  • Staff Recommendation: Approve, subject to current Development Review Committee and CHP comments (rendered "CHP" in the source; the engineering consultant appearing elsewhere in the Mount Dora record is CPH)
  • Action: Approved as presented
  • Vote: 4-1 (moved Dring, seconded Tipton). The dissenting member is not named in the minutes.
  • Conditions: Subject to current DRC and consultant comments
  • Notable Discussion:
    • The enrollment cap is set by the existing Conditional Use Permit, not by this site plan. Duslak stated final occupancy is 169, which includes staff, with roughly 15 to 20 staff members. Janiszewski advised that based on the Conditional Use Permit, a maximum of 169 students are permitted.
    • Discussion of how the increase would affect traffic in the area; adding road markings such as no-parking signs to help prevent traffic backup; staggered drop-off and dismissal times; pick-up stations based on dismissal with cones and numbers; whether a school resource officer or police department would guide traffic; and whether any bike trails exist.
    • The board asked whether it could limit the number of students today, allowing the applicant to re-petition for an increase based on traffic congestion. Hand stated there is already an approved Conditional Use Permit guideline that allows 169 students. The board's cap-by-condition option was closed off by the prior CUP.

Item 2: Landscaping Ordinance (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 review of the Landscaping Ordinance rewrite.
  • Staff Recommendation: Working draft
  • Action: Tabled to the June 17, 2026 meeting
  • Vote: 5-0 (moved Tipton, seconded Dring)
  • Conditions: The motion, as recorded: table discussion on the Landscaping Ordinance to the June 17, 2026 meeting, "that staff notes be included towards revisions in the landscaping code for new development. To be mindful of 'The Notion of Burden,' Retroactivity to existing properties would be discussed at a separate date."
  • Notable Discussion:
    • The board split the ordinance in two. New development is the near-term target; retroactivity to existing properties is deferred to a separate date — the formal recognition of the homeowner-burden problem that had been circling since April.
    • Discussion on how Bill SB-180 would affect new codes / ordinances, and discussion of applying new rules to new construction at this time.
    • Discussion of canopy trees and irrigation lines pending jurisdiction; whether to require sodded yards and the irrigation that would follow; how effective irrigation would be with water bans; and running out of reclaimed water and drought.
    • A substantial backflow-preventer thread: requirements in irrigation systems, FDEP mandates for backflow preventers, inspection requirements and inspection fees, and penalties for failing to inspect. Janiszewski to contact Public Works for clarification.
    • Discussion on cost of reclaimed water vs. potable water.
    • The board requested Janiszewski provide additional recommendations.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0 members of the public. Public participation on non-agenda items is recorded as "None." Applicant testimony from Nikki Duslak. Hand swore in staff and attendees for the site plan item.
  • General sentiment: No opposition recorded — though the site plan drew the first recorded dissenting vote of the coverage window.
  • Key concerns: Traffic generated by the school expansion — queuing, drop-off and dismissal management, and the absence of any mechanism for the board to cap enrollment.

Key Signals

  • A conditional use permit granted earlier removed the board's leverage over a school expansion, and the vote went 4-1. The commission asked directly whether it could limit student numbers now and let the applicant come back based on observed congestion. Hand's answer — the existing CUP already allows 169 — is the operative lesson: in Mount Dora, the enrollment or intensity cap is set at the CUP stage, and the later site plan is a compliance review. For neighbors of a conditional use in this city, the hearing that matters has usually already happened.

  • The first split vote in the coverage window, on a school. Every recorded tally from January 2025 through April 2026 was unanimous except the 6-1 on the Overlook Drive garage in March. A 4-1 on a site plan whose only contested issue was traffic capacity suggests the 2026 board is willing to break consensus — and that traffic, not utilities, is now the axis it breaks on.

  • The board formally split the landscaping ordinance: new development now, existing properties later. Tipton's motion is the first structural decision on a rewrite that had been circling since January 2025. "To be mindful of 'The Notion of Burden'" is the board naming its own hesitation about imposing sod, irrigation, backflow-preventer inspections, and replacement obligations on existing homeowners. Expect the new-development half to move first, and expect the retroactivity question to stay open past the coverage window.

  • Water, not land, is doing the work in a landscaping code. The discussion ran to reclaimed-versus-potable pricing, water bans, drought, running out of reclaimed water, and FDEP backflow-preventer mandates. Mount Dora is writing a landscaping ordinance while simultaneously constrained on wastewater capacity, dependent on reclaimed water supplemented by an augmentation well, and hearing resident complaints about reclaimed outages. The landscaping code is a water code with plants in it.

  • The board is using ChatGPT on its agenda packets, and asked whether the summaries are public records. Under staff and board updates: discussion of PZC packets sent as attachments versus a direct link, "the use of ChatGPT to review PZC Packet items," and "the use of ChatGPT Summaries as a public record document sent with PZC packets." A municipal advisory board deliberating whether AI-generated summaries of its own agenda materials become part of the public record is a live Sunshine Law question with no settled answer in Florida, raised here in a 53-minute suburban meeting.

  • Staff will be absent for the June meeting, and the board knew a month out. Janiszewski announced she would not attend June 17 due to a conference. The June meeting nonetheless carried a CUP to a 7-0 approval and a transportation briefing — worth noting that Mount Dora's board now functions without its Deputy Planning Director in the room.

Raw Notes

  • Source provenance: Standalone minutes retrieved as CivicClerk file ID 6672, published as "May 20, 2026, Minutes" (event ID 2060, agendaId 1321). The published PDF is a scanned image of the signed original, three pages, and required OCR.
  • The CivicClerk event name for this meeting is recorded simply as "Planning and Zoning Commission" without a date.
  • The Deputy Planning Director's surname is rendered inconsistently in this document — "Janiszewski," "Janisjewski," and "Janiszewski" all appear in the source OCR. The correct spelling per the staff reports is Janiszewski.
  • The staff recommendation is recorded as "subject to current Development Review Committee and CHP comments." CPH is the engineering consultant named in the January 15, 2025 minutes; "CHP" is read here as an OCR or transcription artifact but is left as it appears in the source.
  • The minutes record the school item as agenda section V.a and the Landscaping Ordinance as "VI. Old Business — B. Landscaping Ordinance," though the published agenda lists it as VI.a.
  • The minutes' Adjournment section repeats the line "Chair announced the date and time of the next scheduled meeting" from the preceding section — the same template artifact present in the April 2026 minutes.
  • Adjournment 10:53 AM, moved Tipton, seconded Lother. Attested by Theresa Willis, Administrative Coordinator; signed by Chair Adrian Coombes.

Connected records

1 connected record

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