The county’s new Growth Management Director believes that mitigation issues on Big Pine and No Name Key may be finalized in the next few months.
At least concerning how much has been used and how much remains to complete the 20-year planning horizon of the Incidental Take Permit.
Continue reading ‘County, feds work out differences on H value’
District Two County Commissioner George Neugent says he plans to ask his fellow commissioners to amend, clarify, change or whatever is necessary to at least partially exempt the county attorney and county administrator from the county’s ethics rules.
He particularly wants to make sure the two, particularly County Administrator Roman Gastesi, are able to continue to make public appearances on behalf of the county at functions where their meals or other incidentals may be provided gratis.
The need, says Neugent, stems from a series of recent chastisements from State Attorney Dennis Ward.
Continue reading ‘Neugent may seek change to county’s ethics rules’
Local residents of Big Pine who live down Key Deer Blvd. and must traverse the light to get to US 1 on a daily basis may feel as if they have been sitting there waiting for the light to change for an inordinately long time in recent weeks.
That’s because they have, according to Judy Clark, county engineer.
“During Christmas week we got calls from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office that there were tremendous back ups at the light on Big Pine for travelers north and southbound on US 1,” said Clark. “They had to position officers at the light to manually switch from red to green to get the traffic moving and avoid lines back to Spanish Harbor Bridge.”
So deputies got permission from the county to retime the light for northbound and southbound travelers.
“We went from a one-minute interval for US 1 traffic to a two-minute interval to alleviate those back ups,” said Clark.
And because the area was coming into its traditional heavy tourist season, with thousands of cars on the road daily making the trek southbound to Key West, officials left the interval at two minutes to allow more cars to pass through.
As lobster and then stone crab seasons come to a close in the next few months, Florida Keys waters will become home to a different type of harvest.
When local fisherman have pulled their commercial traps for the final time, the traps that are left will be part of a derelict trap harvest.
Continue reading ‘County readies program to remove traps from shallows’
Residents of Middle Torch Key are satisfied that a former burn dump in the middle of the remote island won’t become anything but vacant land.
Continue reading ‘Residents satisfied with no development on Middle Torch site’
The Monroe Board of County Commissioners Wednesday approved a resolution asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to terminate the flood insurance renewal inspection program.
And next week, county staffers are slated to sit down with officials from FEMA and try and hash out some changes to the existing downstairs enclosure inspection program.
This resolution may be atop the agenda.
County leaders have been trying to get FEMA to agree to some changes in the downstairs enclosure inspection program for about two years, mostly at the urging of the grass roots group Citizens Not Serfs, which was formed to keep the former commission from continuing to remove Monroe County from the area of critical state concern designation and to urge a fight against downstairs enclosure edicts.
The county has a three-phase lower enclosure inspection program, one at flood insurance renewal, one at time of sale and one when property owners attempt to pull building permits for other reasons.
Continue reading ‘BOCC asks FEMA to end insurance inspections’
Water enthusiasts hoping for an eventual lifting of the ban on personal watercraft among the back country islands of the Florida Keys probably won’t get that wish granted.
Instead of setting about answering information requests from the US Fish and Wildlife Service about running commercial power to No Name Key, the No Name Key Property Owner’s Association instead wants USFWS to tell the association how it gets its authority to ask for the information.
Continue reading ‘No Name questions USFWS authority to question’
Monroe County Commissioner Mario DiGennaro believes local residents have been under the thumb of the Federal Emergency Management Agency long enough.
So Wednesday he’s going to try and garner support from at least two other county commissioners to approve a resolution asking FEMA to end the flood insurance inspection program.
The county had to implement the program in 2002 after FEMA came to town in the late 1990s and told county officials they hadn’t done enough over the years to prevent the proliferation of non-compliant enclosed space below base flood elevation.
After a couple of false starts where some of the then-seated commissioners tried to get FEMA not to force compliance, the county leaders put the insurance inspection in place, as well as the inspection on sale program and the building permit application inspection program.
In the seven-plus years the programs have been in place, county leaders and property owners have complained that some portions of the program caused more problems than they rectified.
Continue reading ‘DiGennaro: Let us out of inspection program’
There is an old adage that recounts the happiest days in the life of a boat owner as being “The day you buy it, and the day you get rid of it.”
And sometimes, what happens in between the two leaves the owner so tired of the whole mess that the final stage never officially happens.
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