Eighteen applications go to the St. Augustine Planning and Zoning Board on Oct. 6, and eight of them ask permission to remove significant trees. Three more ask the board to reduce or eliminate off-street parking that a use would otherwise owe. The meeting is at 1 p.m. in the Alcazar Room, and two of the items on it have been waiting since Sept. 1.

The eight tree applications break down this way. Six sit under the agenda’s conservation overlay heading, at Pelican Reef Drive twice, at 1400 Plantation Island Drive South, and at 928, 876 and 862 Pantano Drive, which are three consecutive requests filed for the same owner on the same street. A seventh is one line inside the King Street Inn package described below. The eighth is Flagler College, asking to take a significant tree at 74 Riberia Street. A ninth conservation item, at 17 Salt Run Court, is a dock rather than a tree.

The hotel is eight deeds, not one

Item 9 on the agenda is headed “Applications Regarding King Street Inn,” and it is a single application number, PZB2026-0078, covering eight addresses: 130, 132, 134 and 136 King Street, and 129, 131, 133 and 135 Oviedo Street. It was continued from the board’s Sept. 1 meeting.

What it asks for, across all eight properties, is a use by exception for a hotel and special event use, a second use by exception for a special event venue, a variance to reduce the off-street parking requirement by 15 percent, a variance to pool setbacks, and the removal of significant trees within conservation overlay zone 3. Four of the eight addresses then carry their own setback requests, and two of those also ask to increase the maximum lot coverage.

A use by exception is the mechanism that lets a use the zoning district does not list outright be established anyway, on conditions the board sets. Assembling eight separately deeded parcels under one of them is how a block becomes a hotel without a rezoning.

The agenda does not carry a staff report, a staff recommendation, a required parking count or a proposed one. Those are the numbers that decide whether a 15 percent reduction is fifteen spaces or three, and the city does not publish them with the agenda.

Three applications about parking, and a fourth that is only parking

The 15 percent reduction at King Street Inn is one of three. PZB2026-0100, at 111 King Street, asks for a variance “to eliminate the required off-street parking,” which is the whole requirement rather than a share of it. PZB2026-0094 is two sites moving together: 3956 North Ponce de Leon Boulevard asks to vary the parking lot design standards, reduce the off-street parking requirement, reduce the north landscape buffer and add a use by exception for off-site off-street parking, and 8 Hybiscus Avenue asks for a use by exception for a commercial parking facility and a variance to the parking lot design standards.

Read together, one item asks to supply parking off site, one asks to supply none at all, and one asks to supply 15 percent less than the requirement.

What the board has to find before it says yes

The standard is in the code and it is narrow. Sec. 28-29(b)(1) says the board “may grant a variance only under circumstances where practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship is so substantial, serious and compelling that relaxation of the general restrictions should be granted,” and then requires four separate findings.

The property must suffer “singular disadvantage” from its size, shape, topography or other physical conditions, a disadvantage “which does not apply to other properties in the vicinity.” Because of it, the owner must be “unable to make reasonable use” of the property. The disadvantage must not “exist because of conditions created by the owner or applicant.” And the grant must not be contrary to the public interest or adversely affect nearby property.

The same subsection tells the board what it may not weigh: “In passing upon a request for variance, the board shall not consider prospective financial loss or gain to the owner or applicant.” It also forbids a variance to maximum lot coverage anywhere in historic preservation districts 1, 2 and 3, with two exceptions, for school, church and governmental agency uses, and for handicapped accessibility in buildings constructed before Dec. 19, 2019. Two of the King Street Inn addresses ask to increase maximum lot coverage.

The board that applies all this is composed by seat rather than at large. Sec. 28-58 reserves eleven places: a registered architect, a planner belonging to the APA or AICP, a real estate broker, a college-level educator, a registered engineer, a registered landscape architect, a preservation organization officer, an environmental or land use organization officer, a Florida Bar attorney, a merchant or business person, and a licensed contractor. Four members are a quorum. The last item on the Oct. 6 agenda is the election of a chair and vice chair.

The cross reference that does not land

Conservation zone work reaches this board through Sec. 28-29©(1), which says that “No building permit shall be issued within conservation zones 1 and 2 as defined by section 8-41, until such time as its issuance has been approved by the board.”

Chapter 8 of the city code, as published in the July 28, 2026 version, runs from Sec. 8-1 to Sec. 8-708. The numbering goes 8-1 through 8-5 and then resumes at 8-101, and there is no Sec. 8-41 anywhere in it.

So the provision that decides which properties need this board’s approval before a building permit issues defines them by pointing at a section number the published code does not contain. Seven of the eighteen applications on Oct. 6 are conservation zone items, and five of those name zone 3, which the subsection does not mention either.

Both documents are the city’s own, and on this point they do not line up.