Commission Meeting Agenda Item

Effective June 2, 2011, local governments have more discretion in determining whether they need to update their local Comprehensive Plan. As such, local governments no longer need to submit Evaluation and Appraisal Reports to the Department for a sufficiency determination. Instead, local governments must follow these new provisions:

1. At least every seven years, pursuant to Rule Chapter 73C-49, Florida Administrative Code, determine whether the need exists to amend the Comprehensive Plan to reflect changes in state requirements since the last time the Comprehensive Plan was updated.
2. Notify the State Land Planning Agency by letter of this determination.
3. If the local government determines amendments to the Comprehensive Plan are necessary, the local government shall prepare and transmit the proposed amendments to the State Land Planning Agency within one year of such determination.
4. Any local government failing to timely submit a notification letter or proposed amendments within one year of notification may not amend its Comprehensive Plan until it complies with the requirements.
5. The Evaluation and Appraisal should address changes in state requirements since the last update of the Comprehensive Plan and update the plan based on changes to local conditions.

In February of 2010, the Town of Lady Lake submitted the last Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR) of the Comprehensive Plan. As a result of the EAR, the Town subsequently submitted the adopted EAR based amendments to the Comprehensive Plan in November of 2011.  In 2012, the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) published a new schedule for each jurisdiction to submit their Evaluation and Appraisal Notifications to the DEO. The Town of Lady Lake was scheduled for a 2013 evaluation of the Comprehensive Plan. Given that the EAR based amendments had just recently been adopted in 2011, the Town appealed to DEO to forego the 2013 submittal, and comply with the following cycle date of the Evaluation and Appraisal Notification Process; that date being May 1, 2020. DEO agreed with the Town’s appeal.

The date of the mandatory Evaluation and Appraisal Notification is just a little more than a year away. At this time, the Town would like to apply for a Planning Technical Assistance Grant in an effort to gain funding for the evaluation of the Comprehensive Plan.  LTG, Incorporated has reached out to the Town with a proposal to prepare the grant application on the Town’s behalf.

Two options have been prepared for the Town’s consideration:

Option One proposes that LTG would prepare the application free of charge for the Town of Lady Lake and submit the materials to the Department of Economic Opportunity. Should the grant be awarded to the Town, the Town would be obligated to utilize LTG for the Evaluation and Appraisal of the Comprehensive Plan. Should the Town not get the grant, the Town is under no obligation to use LTG’s services for the evaluation process.

Option Two proposes that a fee of $3,500 be paid to LTG as compensation for the preparation and submittal of the grant application to the Department of Economic Opportunity. Under this option, should the grant be awarded, the Town is under no obligation to utilize LTG’s services for the Evaluation and Appraisal process. The Town could seek another firm for such services through the competitive bid process or seek to piggyback on another state contract for these services.

Town staff supports the first option given that this is a process we undergo pursuant to Florida Statutes; if we are not given the grant, again we are under no obligation to use LTG. However, if the Town is awarded the grant, we are assured that the amount that we will be paid for the Evaluation and Appraisal Report will likely be much lower than if we went directly to the Request for Proposal (RFP) process to seek a firm for such services. The amount of the grant may vary; therefore, we do not know at this time what percentage of LTG’s services will be funded through the grant if awarded.

The question may be asked as to why staff cannot prepare the application for the grant for submittal to the Department of Economic Opportunity in lieu of using LTG for this task. To that, the answer would be that staff is involved with many other applications at this time as a result of the normal operations and duties of the Growth Management Department. A task of this magnitude is very time consuming and would simply require more time to prepare than staff has the ability to allocate at this time. Further, it should be noted that LTG has prior experience in the preparation of such application to DEO, and that Mr. Matthew West, Project Manager for LTG for this proposal, was the professional planner that prepared the EAR based amendments for the Town of Lady Lake in 2011.