City of Winter Garden Planning and Zoning Board — May 5, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (7 of 7 members — full board) Duration: 14 minutes (6:30 p.m. – 6:44 p.m.)

Attendance

• Present: Chairman Will Hawthorne, Co-Chairman Steve Ambielli, Linda Bennett, Myron Brown, Jimmy Dunn, Jeff Ewing, Mark Hide
• Absent: None
• Staff Present: City Attorney Kurt Ardaman; Planning Director Kelly Carson; Planning Supervisor Shane Friedman; Senior Planner Yvonne Conatser; Planner I Amber McDonald; Recording Secretary Ellen King
• Other Attendees: Jozef Mergan (Dragonfly Developers, LLC); Thomas Skelton (American Civil Engineering Co.)

Agenda Items

Item 2: Approval of Minutes — April 7, 2025

• Type: Other (procedural)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 7-0 (motion by Dunn, second by Ewing)

Item 3: 1098 & 1106 E Fullers Cross Road (Dragonfly Reserve) — Preliminary Plat

• Type: Preliminary Plat
• Location: 1098 & 1106 E Fullers Cross Road (Parcel ID 12-22-27-0000-000-60 and 27-22-12-0000-000-70)
• Applicant: Dragonfly Developers, LLC (Jozef Mergan); engineer Thomas Skelton, American Civil Engineering Co.
• Request: Preliminary plat for a ten-lot single-family subdivision
• Acreage: [not available]
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to conditions in the staff report (presented by Planning Supervisor Friedman)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 7-0 (motion by Bennett, second by Hide)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions in the staff report
• Notable Discussion: The board asked about HOA formation, maintenance of tracts and shared access driveways, emergency-services comfort with the access arrangement, whether any improvements to N West Crown Point Road were proposed, road right-of-way, sidewalks, and setbacks on the west side. Staff answered that an HOA will be required at final plat to maintain the tracts; Tract C becomes a city-owned lift station; shared access driveways are acceptable to emergency services; no improvements to N West Crown Point Road are proposed; the subdivision builds no new roads and is unusual in that every driveway exits directly onto N West Crown Point Road or E Fullers Cross Road; and staff will consult Public Works and Engineering before final plat on where the front-yard setbacks should be established.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0
• General sentiment: [no public comment offered]
• Key concerns: None raised by the public on the single substantive item.

Key Signals

• A ten-lot subdivision with no new roads — every driveway feeds directly onto an existing county-grade corridor. Dragonfly Reserve at 1098 & 1106 E Fullers Cross Road builds zero internal streets; staff called the arrangement "unique" because all ten lots load onto N West Crown Point Road or E Fullers Cross Road. No improvements to N West Crown Point Road are proposed to offset the new curb cuts. For anyone buying along the E Fullers Cross / N West Crown Point pair, this is the mechanism by which incremental infill adds turning movements to a road that never gets widened in exchange.
• E Fullers Cross Road is the quiet accumulation zone in Winter Garden's north. The same corridor returns in March 2026 with the New Life Slavic Church annexation, FLU amendment and rezoning at 1325 E Fullers Cross Road and 1414 E Crown Point Road (Ordinances 26-01/26-02/26-03). Read together, May 2025 and March 2026 mark the same two-mile stretch as a standing conversion front — small-lot residential platting first, institutional and land-use-map changes behind it.
• A city-owned lift station is being taken on inside a ten-lot plat. Tract C converts to city ownership as a lift station. That is a utility-capacity commitment absorbed at a very small entitlement scale, and it lands in the same fiscal cycle as the November 3, 2025 water/wastewater/irrigation impact-fee escalation (Ordinance 25-36, the first update since 2011). The fee update and the lift-station intake are the two halves of one problem.
• The board defers its own setback question to staff engineering rather than conditioning it. Members raised concern about west-side setbacks; staff took it away to resolve with Public Works and Engineering before final plat instead of the board fixing a number in the motion. That is the procedural default in Winter Garden at preliminary plat, and it is worth contrasting with the board's willingness to write conditions directly into motions on variance items one month later (704 Summer Street, June 2, 2025).

Raw Notes

The full board sat — seven of seven, the only full-attendance meeting in the May–August 2025 stretch. The meeting ran 14 minutes on a single substantive item.

Board member Mark Hide was present and moved and seconded items through this meeting; his tenure ends two meetings later (July 7, 2025), leaving the seat that TJ Ryan fills in September 2025.

Source: standalone Minutes PDF (fileId 153), CivicClerk tenant wintergardenfl, agendaId 63 / event 64. Text extracted cleanly; no OCR required.