School housing hits table again

By Steve Estes

The issue of possible housing units being built on property adjacent to Sugarloaf Elementary School will get maybe its final public airing Monday.

The Monroe Board of County Commissioners is expected to hear the proposal at a special 9 a.m. meeting to approve sending the measure to the State Department of Community Affairs for their review and potential approval.

The proposal will allow the county to approve residential units on land currently set aside for educational uses.

The project initially surfaced last year when the school district proposed building 28 units of workforce housing on a little over an acre of land on the back side of the property where Sugarloaf School sits on Crane Blvd.

The school board approved the project over the rather vehement objections of local parents, only to discover that the county’s zoning regulations did not allow residential building on educational land.

The BOCC went through the process to amend the county’s comprehensive plan to allow the housing, but was unable to transmit the measure to DCA last year, thus the need to act on the transmittal now.

The county gets only two windows yearly to send DCA comprehensive plan changes, and used one last year to hastily send the working waterfront initiative that was speedily shot down by the state agency which oversees growth management issues.

The BOCC then tabled approving this educational change measure to wait for further clarification from the school board.

Between the first approval, pushed through over objections by parents and local residents, and the second attempt, the real estate market began to fall and the school system said that providing housing for teachers was not the urgent priority it had been.

“We haven’t had any formal discussions on that issue in a long time,” said School Board member Steve Pribramsky. “As far as I’m concerned, the issue is definitely on the back burner. The current economy doesn’t support such a drastic measure, and the underlying reasons for seeking the housing no longer apply.”

Pribramsky said that the initial reasoning behind building workforce housing on school property was a retention issue.

The school district was losing about 100 teachers every year, and most of them cited the exorbitant cost of living in the Keys as their reason to go elsewhere. When the school system first broached the idea, average home prices were hovering above the $300,000 mark, which many teachers claimed was out of their price range.

Since then, average home prices have fallen until, “Now there are at least 10 homes in the immediate Key West area that are priced lower than what we were proposing for the affordable units, with others scattered throughout the Keys,” said Pribramsky.

He said that all the teachers currently at Sugarloaf remained there from last year, and overall, the turnover rate in the school system has fallen dramatically.

“If retention were still the overriding concern it was, this would be a hot item. It’s not, and I don’t think we should spend any staff time or money on pursuing it until we see a need again,” he said.

District One County Commissioner Kim Wigington said she hasn’t talked to anyone that is in favor of approving the comprehensive plan change to allow homes next to Sugarloaf, and the vote for her is simple.

“If the staff decides to hold off and bring this back when the need is there, I can live with that,” said Wigington. “Otherwise, I don’t think it’s something we need to do right now.”

Pribramsky said if the need for the school board arises in the future to consider workforce housing for district personnel, he would much rather focus attention on the acreage the board owns at Trumbo Point.

The school system could have built 28 units at Sugarloaf, but it can build about 100 units at Trumbo Point and address needs that might arise more quickly with Key West schools than other county schools as prices in the southernmost city tend to rise faster and remain higher.

There had been speculation from School Superintendent Randy Acevedo that the board wouldn’t be able to stop the project because of contractual agreements with developer Ed Swift.

“I haven’t read the contract, but I know most of our contracts have an economic out clause in them somewhere that if the board can’t fund the proposal, it doesn’t go forward,” said Pribramsky. “We have other, more important, issues to concern ourselves with at the moment. We need to let this one lie dormant.”