Jacksonville technical advisory committee seeks clearer GIS layers, cost updates before recommending UGB additions

The City of Jacksonville Technical Advisory Committee met to continue reviewing proposed urban growth boundary amendment (UGBA) study areas, reaffirming a need for medium- and higher-density housing and asking staff and applicants for clearer GIS visuals and updated cost estimates before making parcel-level recommendations.

Raul Warner, a planner with CSA Planning, told the committee the process for the UGB amendment must be treated as a legislative, city-initiated application rather than an owner-initiated, quasi-judicial request. "It was determined it had to be done through a legislative process. The city is the applicant," Warner said, explaining that the scale of land proposed and required comprehensive-plan text changes triggered that approach.

That distinction matters because the TAC is preparing technical analysis and recommendations that the city will package as the formal application to county and state reviewers. Chair (speaking for the Technical Advisory Committee) framed the session as a check-in on prior work — including an assessment that residential needs are for medium- to higher-density housing and that opportunities inside the existing urban growth boundary are limited.

Committee members spent much of the meeting parsing competing applications and the methods used to estimate need. Members noted one application used more recent population forecasts and another relied on a Division 38 buildable-land calculation; both arrived at similar employment-acreage estimates. "That application was saying there's a need for about 10 acres," a committee member summarized. Several participants said the group must clarify what type of employment (industrial, commercial, office) the city needs before assigning scarce acreage.

Technical staff described how exclusions were applied. Environmental constraints (for example, steep slopes, landslide susceptibility and floodplain) were removed first, then lands judged impracticable to serve were considered. A staff member explained the capital-improvement estimates that underpin impracticability are based on a larger build-out; extending services to the point discussed represents about 44 percent of that total and the original total cited in the analysis was roughly $5.4 million. "If you were to stop there and extend services to that point, that would be 44%," the staff member said, adding the pro-rata share for the number of housing units factored into the practicability calculation.

Members also debated whether mapping a single set of objective site criteria would be useful or whether the TAC should continue to evaluate the information applicants submit. Some favored a rubric describing what a site must offer; others cautioned that applicants often tailor analyses toward a particular parcel, and that the TAC's role is to verify methods and identify omissions.

Environmental protections and wildlife habitat were a recurring theme. Several members said big-game habitat often overlaps steep slopes or wildland-urban interface areas and that mitigation or negotiated agreements with state wildlife authorities have been used in prior expansions. One participant noted that inclusion or exclusion based solely on a habitat layer can miss other important context.

On next steps the committee asked staff and applicants to provide: interactive GIS layer presentations that demonstrate stepwise exclusions (turn-on/turn-off layers), updated infrastructure and capital-improvement cost breakdowns tied to the specific service extent under consideration, and clearer interim maps and tables that show acres removed at each exclusion step. Members also discussed a field tour to inspect a few priority parcels.

The committee settled a date for its next meeting and scheduling details: members agreed to reconvene on Oct. 14 at 11:15 a.m., and the chair said the group would aim to review the updated GIS mapping and tightened cost numbers at that meeting. "For the next time, we'll kind of get into the more specifics with the GIS mapping," the chair said.

No formal votes were recorded during this session; the group focused on data requests and process clarifications ahead of any parcel-level recommendations.