County wins on land-use challenge
BY LAURIE KARNATZ
Citizen Staff
A state hearing officer
on Thursday ruled that changes to county land-use rules support goals to
protect the environment while taking care of the Keys economy.
The ruling rejects
assertions made by attorneys for two environmental groups that
challenged the proposed rules, which were crafted by state and county
officials more than a year ago.
"We're reading through it
to analyze the finer points," said Assistant County Attorney Bob
Shillinger. "But it appears the county was victorious in all aspects.
That's good news for Monroe County and its citizens."
The rules would, among
other things, allow the reinstatement of hundreds of building permits
—165 in unincorporated Monroe and 65 in Marathon — withheld by the state
over the past decade because of the county's failure to implement its
land-use plan and related five-year work program in a timely manner. The
work program is now a 10-year program.
It also would raise the
number of residential building permits allowed in unincorporated Monroe
each year from 158 to 197 with at least 71 of those set aside for
affordable housing. In Marathon, the number would rise from 24 to 30
with six set aside for affordable housing.
"That's very exciting
news for the whole Keys and I'm thrilled to see this happen," said
entrepreneur and affordable housing advocate Ed Swift.
In her ruling,
Administrative Law Judge Carolyn S. Holifield found that the
challengers, Last Stand and the Florida Keys Citizens Coalition, "would
prefer that the [state] continue its past policy of mandating work
program items and imposing penalties on local governments that fail to
make substantial progress on those items. Since that past policy has not
been successful, it cannot be concluded that the [state] acted
arbitrarily or capriciously in choosing to endorse the Partnership
Agreement and amend the City of Marathon and Monroe County Comprehensive
Plans and Land Development Regulations accordingly."
"God save the Florida
Keys. No one else with any power is willing to," said attorney Richard
Grosso, who represented the two civic groups in the legal proceeding.
Grosso and Ed Davidson,
president of the Citizens Coalition, said Thursday the ruling isn't the
end of legal challenges to the proposed rules.
"It's by no means over,"
said Davidson. "We're confident that we have many compelling legal
points that will be supported in the appeals process."
The rules at issue, for
unincorporated Monroe and Marathon, were crafted in large part by
then-county Mayor Murray Nelson and designed to bring hundreds of
millions of dollars into the Keys for land conservation, sewer upgrades
and new housing. They were approved last spring by Gov. Jeb Bush and the
Cabinet.
But the challengers
argued that the change violates requirements of the state's Growth
Management Act. It also violates the findings of the Florida Keys
Carrying Capacity Study, a $6 million project that was designed to
determine how much additional growth the environmentally sensitive
island chain could sustain, they said.
"The last time we
challenged the [land-use] plan, the reason we lost was because they had
put in this requirement that the Carrying Capacity Study [wasn't
complete] and they would change the rate of growth when it was done,"
said Grosso. "Fast forward to the day of reckoning and they don't
reduce, they actually increase the rate of growth. It's the classic bait
and switch."
Grosso also said there
could be problems because much of the ruling was based on a new system
of valuing property for environmental purposes. Holifield's ruling
relied on a system of three tiers ranging from the most to the least
environmentally sensitive.
The County Commission
earlier this month eliminated the middle tier.
"She says all this stuff
about protecting habitat with the tier system" when one of the tiers has
been eliminated, he said.
Nelson, who had a large
hand in the rule change, did not return a call for comment.
lkarnatz@keysnews.com
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