County to hear storm plan change
BY LAURIE KARNATZ
Citizen Staff
The Monroe County
Commission next week will consider revising county rules to change the
county's hurricane evacuation plan, a move that could pave the way for
thousands of new residential building permits for unincorporated Monroe.
That, according to
opponents of the plan, is its entire purpose.
The proposal, recommended
in January by the state-sponsored Monroe County Hurricane Evacuation
Working Group, was approved 3-2 by the county Planning Commission this
week in Marathon. Commissioners Jiulio Margalli and Denise Werling
dissented. Margalli called the proposal "preposterous."
Even Chairman Lynn Mapes
acknowledged, before voting in favor of the proposal, that it was about
allowing new development rather than improving hurricane safety.
"Personally, I don't
think it has anything to do with hurricane evacuation or public safety,"
Mapes said. "... No. In my opinion this is about building permits."
Mapes did, however, with
the planning board's approval, insert language into the plan that would
limit any additional building permits to "workforce housing."
"For hurricane safety
reasons, we do need to control growth," he said. "But we also need, ever
so desperately, workforce housing."
County
Planning
staff had recommended approval of the proposal, which, they wrote, "is a
result of research and analysis" done by the working group. The county
is required by its land-use plan to this year "develop strategies to
reduce actual hurricane clearance times and thereby reduce potential
loss of life from hurricanes."
The County Commission,
when it takes up the issue at 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Key Largo library,
is not bound by its planning panel's recommendation.
Environmental groups and
Keys activists have been lobbying against the plan since it was proposed
last December. County Commissioner George Neugent has called it a ruse
and Senior Emergency Management Director Billy Wagner has said it is a
threat to public safety.
The proposal focuses on
including in land-use rules phased evacuation, which begins 48 hours
ahead of a storm with the evacuation of tourists. Phased evacuation of
the Keys has been in place for a number of years with local officials
working closely with the tourism industry to ensure visitors leave 24
hours ahead of residents.
The approach appears to
fly in the face of earlier recommendations by state officials to "avoid
paper solutions" to the evacuation conundrum.
Since 1992, new
residential construction in the Keys has been limited based on a
requirement that evacuation not take more than 24 hours. Exceeding the
clearance time could put a halt to new building permits, while reducing
the clearance time below the 24-hour threshold would allow the state to
increase the number of new residential building permits that could be
awarded each year.
The hurricane working
group, created last year by the state Department of Community Affairs
and composed of officials from the county and Keys' cities, was charged
with analyzing hurricane evacuation issues and developing strategies to
reduce hurricane clearance times.
In September, at the
group's first meeting, it was revealed by state officials that the
county had slightly exceeded the 24-hour requirement. But based on
recommendations made by the group in December, it appears that the
current 371 annual permits available Keyswide could be dramatically
increased, likely by thousands.
Key West
entrepreneur Ed Swift said of the plan, "I'm pleased at the recognition
of the fact that hurricane evacuation is a safety issue and not a growth
management issue. It has been used by the environmental community to
control growth," which in turn has limited opportunities to build
workforce housing.
Swift said it was time
for county and state officials to recognize the importance of building
suitable hurricane shelters in the Keys and to plan for post-hurricane
recovery.
There are currently no
public shelters in the county for greater than category 2 hurricanes.
lkarnatz@keysnews.com
|
