Board Basics

The P&Z Board in Juno Beach consists of five members and an alternate. Each Town Council member appoints one representative, and the alternate must receive the majority of the vote of the entire Council. In the past, the P&Z Board did not set their own agenda or add topics to their agenda, but were directed by Council and Town Staff. The P&Z Board also acts as the Town’s Architectural Review Board (ARB). Any Juno Beach resident may serve on the Board. The members and their Council person who appointed them are Diana Davis (Cooke), Jim Ferguson (Wheeler), Michael Stern (Cotronakis), Laure Shearer (Halpern), Nancy Wolf (Hosta), and Jane Le Clainche as the alternate.

P&Z Board - Agenda Items from Town Council

The P&Z Board voted to recommend to Town Council to move forward with the staff proposal for ordinance language to:

• Return the environmental review (siting plan) for single family and two-family homes to the P&Z Board with a vote of 3 to 2; Michael Stern and Laure Shearer voted against exercising this responsibility, although the Board already provides this review for large multiunit projects like Caretta.
• Adopt into code a definition for harmony with language that follows Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach - unanimous support.

Ranking of P&Z Board Priority Items:

1. Obtain draft language from staff to address nuisance type spill-over lighting issues, which we expect at next meeting [issue prioritized by previous board]. 
2. Explore creating measurable numbers for mass and scale for our definition of harmony, such as the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) used by Town of Lake Worth Beach.
3. Review architectural standards and support the design an architectural style book to help the Board, when exercising their architectural review responsibility, to identify the quality and character of Juno Beach. 
4. Examine setbacks – Did you know that P&Z has allowed a series of retaining walls to raise the build grade 11 ft above the build grade prior to its addition without requiring the setbacks for a structure? Did you know that P&Z allowed a tower to be erected only 5 feet from the neighboring property? (Note that a tower can be one and one half as tall as the structure, so if your neighborhood allows homes in the height of 30 ft., then the tower can be an additional 15 ft., or a total structure height of 45 ft.).  
5. Reassess towers and their code provisions, given that towers are only allowed to be 225 square ft. total. What happens when a tower is proposed above a second story onto a flat roof giving access to the entirety of the flat roof?
6.  Encourage pervious surfaces for building, and landscaping, open space; and determine the appropriate regulation of the use of artificial turf.
7. Support sustainable building practices such as LEEDs and Florida Green Building.

Workshop Success 

The P&Z Board held a workshop on May 1, where the Board voted to encourage Town Council to support ordinance language to prohibit adding fill to lots, when not required by flood resistant building design, and to stop removing our secondary dune. There was also a proposal for ordinance language to limit the height of retaining walls, and to limit the height for a series of retaining walls.

The Board proposed exploring historical preservation procedures for homeowners or neighborhoods who wish to opt-in; and to look into conservation concepts in order to provide incentives for residents to upgrade their homes within the existing footprint. Let’s celebrate our ranch style homes of the 1950s and 1960s, in an effort to preserve what makes Juno Beach unique.

How to support the P&Z Board

The P&Z Board works at the pleasure of the Town Council. The five members and alternate (Davis, Ferguson, Shearer, Stern, Wolf, and LeClainche) make recommendations to the Council, who then must decide whether to support these proposals.  Our next workshop is tentatively scheduled for June 1st from 9am-noon. Please express your support to Town Council for this work by the P&Z Board.