County certifies 310 acres at 1.08 units an acre

Approximately 310 acres west of Pacetti Road are now a certified agricultural enclave at a density of 1.08 units per gross acre, which on that acreage is roughly 330 homes, and the figure came from the applicant rather than from the county. That is the central line of the Sept. 15 record, which the Clerk posted this week and which settles all three of the agricultural enclave applications the board heard that morning. A certification is not a rezoning and it is not a development order. It is a finding under sections 163.3162 and 163.3164 of the Florida Statutes that a farmed parcel is hemmed in by development on enough of its perimeter to be treated as part of the development around it, and the minutes give all three outcomes plainly.

The receipt dates are the ones the Director of Growth Management gave this paper’s earlier reporting, and they matter because paragraph (4)© of the statute certifies a parcel automatically if a local government has not approved or denied it within ninety days of receipt. Sandy Creek and the AFI Property both came in during the first week of August, which put their ninety-day marks in early November. Neither needed that clock.

The density is the whole of it

Commissioner Ann Taylor asked the Growth Management director how many units the property holds, and the minutes record that he explained the total as determined by the applicant. Then the applicant’s attorney “clarified for the record that her client agreed to 1.08 units per gross acre for the property.” A unit per gross acre is a count of homes against every acre inside the boundary, roads and ponds and buffers included, which makes it a lower number than the lots-per-acre figure a buyer eventually sees on a plat.

What that figure does not do is cap anything by force of law. The agreement was made on the record of a certification hearing rather than in a development order or a zoning condition, and the submittal that certification unlocks is a separate proceeding governed by the statute rather than by anything said on Sept. 15.

What the county cannot ask for next

Paragraph (4)(e) is the operative one. An owner of a certified parcel may submit development plans for single-family housing consistent with the land use requirements, or future land use designations, including uses, density and intensity, of one or more adjacent parcels or an adjacent development. A development submitted that way “must be treated as a conforming use, notwithstanding the local government’s comprehensive plan, future land use designation, or zoning.” So the comprehensive plan and the zoning map stop governing these 310 acres, and what governs instead is whatever the parcels next door are already entitled to build.

Paragraph (4)(g) sets the schedule. Within thirty business days of receiving those development plans, the county and the owner must agree in writing on a process for submittal, analysis and final approval, and the county may not require a process longer than 180 days, nor one “that includes further review of the plans in a quasi-judicial process or public hearing.”

Sept. 15 was that public hearing, and under the statute the board may not require another one on the plans themselves. A certification vote that reads like a technical finding is therefore the last room a resident gets on these 310 acres.

The 4,462 acres, and the written order

The large one went the other way on the same morning, by the same margin reversed, and with two of the three who carried the AFI certification on the losing side of it. Commissioner Krista Joseph moved to deny ENCERT 2026-01 on North Palm Valley Road, finding on the competent substantial evidence in the record that the parcels do not satisfy the statutory definition of an agricultural enclave under section 163.3164(4) or the certification requirements of section 163.3162(4), and Taylor seconded it. The motion carried 3 to 2, with Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst against, and it directed the County Attorney’s office to prepare the final written order with findings of fact and conclusions of law.

That written order is what paragraph (4)(d) requires of a denial, and it is also what starts the thirty days in which an applicant may take the denial to circuit court on a petition for writ of certiorari. The board approved the minutes on Oct. 6, and the order is not among the exhibits attached to them. Three days have passed.

Two more coming back

The same minutes carry a motion by Whitehurst, seconded by Arnold, to schedule a special meeting to reconsider ENCERT 2026-05 and ENCERT 2026-06, the two certifications the board had already approved for the State Road 207 corridor.

It carried 4 to 1 with Chair Clay Murphy against, and the minutes set no date for the meeting it orders. Those two certifications cover about 1,166 acres on the State Road 207 corridor and the board certified both of them on Aug. 19, so the special meeting this motion scheduled is the one that was eventually held on Sept. 28.

And page 10 holds the first reading of the Durbin Creek National Development Agreement Modification, which exchanges 745 multi-family units for 330 single-family units with no increase in the project’s external traffic. The second hearing on that was Oct. 6, three days ago, with the companion major modification to the Durbin Park planned unit development heard alongside it. The minutes of that meeting are not posted.