The board agreed not to criminalize a failure by sellers to get a lower level enclosure inspection upon sale of their homes, a suggestion that had been made by county staff to put some teeth into the regulation.

In the proposed version turned down by the BOCC, sellers who did not get a downstairs enclosure inspection could have been charged with a second degree misdemeanor with penalties up to $2,000 per day.

“I’m not very comfortable with charging people with a misdemeanor for failure to get an inspection that we can’t prosecute anyway,” said Commissioner Kim Wigington.

The ordinance as approved requires sellers to get the inspection, but only allows the buyer to seek civil redress if the proper inspection is not done. The stated intent of the new ordinance is strictly to gather data concerning non-conforming uses. Failure to bring the structure up to current code will not result in code enforcement action, according to Growth Management Director Christine Hurley.

Instead, she said that some homes that have already been identified as in need of a lower level enclosure inspection for flood insurance renewal and haven’t called for the inspection will be caught in that process when the policy comes up for issuance or renewal.

That means the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s pilot inspection program, which was supposed to have ended in 2009, will stay on the books.

More than 5,500 homes were identified as in need of a lower level enclosure inspection for flood insurance renewal, but more than 2,000 of them have not yet called for the inspections.

Hurley said FEMA hasn’t yet answered the county whether homes that weren’t initially identified would be added to the pilot program when the home sold and a mortgage required flood insurance.

Another method to ferret out non-conforming lower level enclosures will be when homeowners apply for a building permit to make improvements to the enclosure.

A state law passed last year prohibits the county from conducting inspections of lower level enclosures simply because a permit was applied for elsewhere on the property. But the inspections can be done for compliance with current code when a homeowner applies for a permit that affects the lower level enclosure.

Property owners may also have to submit to a lower level enclosure inspection if the home is substantially destroyed by a storm or other calamity and the repairs reach 50 percent of value, or if a homeowner applies for permits to remodel or enlarge the home and the value of the construction is 50 percent or more of the value.

Value has been redefined, however, to eliminate cost of demolition from the equation and to tag value to the market value, not the tax appraisal value, the latter of which is usually substantially lower than the actual market value.

The commission also agreed to some other changes, particularly in the definition of limited storage.

According to FEMA guidelines, lower level enclosures may only be used for parking, access and limited storage. Prior to the new regulation, county staff had interpreted a very narrow view of limited storage, primarily yard tools and plastic items that couldn’t be damaged by flood waters.

Under the new definition, limited storage covers items accessory to the residential use of the home that can be easily moved out of the flood plain during storm preparations.

The new regulation also establishes a voluntary certificate of compliance program that Hurley feels will end some of the issues involved between sellers and buyers when homes transfer with a lower level enclosure.

A property owner can request a lower level enclosure inspection and if found compliant be issued a certificate that can be filed with the deed that proves to a buyer what is permitted in the enclosure.

Any deviations from that certificate would have to be worked out between the buyer and seller prior to closing.

Commissioners decided they had little to no leverage to take sellers to code enforcement for not obtaining the inspections because most of the county’s punitive actions are based on being able to lien the property to achieve compliance. And they didn’t want to use the lack of an inspection to take punitive action against a buyer who may have been assured during the purchase process that the enclosure was allowed.

According to Sugarloaf School Principal Harry Russell, changes to the physical education program will be coming during next school year, but “We will maintain the program.”

Russell says that the new physical education program will meet all the statutory requirements from the Florida Department of Education.

He says there are two options on the table right now, “But I want to discuss them with my staff and get their input before I put them on the street.” That meeting occurs today.

The one thing that is certain at this point is that the junior physical education teacher has been transferred to another job in the district, leaving just senior PE teacher Sean McDonald as the lone physical education teacher.

Concerned parents have established a website  www.sharkparents.com to garner support for a petition drive to divert the proposed changes.

On that website, developer Jaynie Royal writes that the plans currently under discussion will not be in the best interests of the students at the school.

She claims that the school is contemplating placing all classes in each grade level in a single physical education class that will result in PE classes of up to 70 students.

The site claims that a single teacher cannot safely handle a group of young kids that large in any setting.

“I’m sure we won’t be trying to handle 50 or 70 kids in a single classroom with just one adult for supervision,” said School Board Chairman John Dick. “The school can always use an aide, or the program can be changed to allow for smaller classes.”

Moving all classes for a single grade into one class is not one of the options on the table, says Russell.

“We have to take into account the statutory requirements for class size,” said Russell. “Kindergarten classes are limited to 18 students, 21 for elementary students and 25 for high school. Whatever we do the class sizes will be manageable.”

Monroe County Schools are facing the need to cut just over $6 million from this year’s budget. That has resulted in a cut of four teaching positions at Sugarloaf School.

“Three of those four have been given jobs at other locations. One was a yearly contract employee and has been cut. We’ve been cutting for the last five years. Parents are starting to notice now because we the cuts are starting to hit the classrooms more heavily,” said Russell.

“We will not be doubling or tripling up on physical education classes,” said Russell. “We are aware of the injury concerns of the parents, and we respect those concerns.”

Another option the website claims is on the table is to handle physical education needs of the students through recess hours rather than a structured program.

“Florida statute requires 150 minutes of physical education each week,” said Russell. “We will meet that statutory requirement, we may just not meet it all in a structured physical education class,” said Russell. “We may have to use the general education teachers to fill in the gaps.”

Using general education teachers is something other schools in the district have been doing during the years of cutbacks, said Russell.

Russell said it is his intention to offer a “well-rounded” educational experience.

“We will offer physical education, art, music, choir and library services as well as other elective courses,” said Russell. “It is more important to me to keep the core classes up to par and offer a wide-range of electives than to delete programs entirely to meet our budgetary constraints.”

Changes to the program will not be heard by the full school board.

“The individual school budget is my responsibility, I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in a tight fiscal environment and I stand behind what we have presented,” said Russell.

The parent website urges concerned parents to attend the school board meeting May 22 in Marathon to voice their displeasure with the proposed changes and to sign the petitions they can find on the website.

“I’m glad we have a proactive parental group. It always betters the school when parents show an interest in their child’s educational process,” said Russell.

The BOCC voted to allow county staff to file an action for injunction against Keys Energy Services to prevent the utility from building a power grid to the remote island off the northeast shore of Big Pine.

Last week the Keys’ utility board voted to award contracts to begin construction of a power grid on the island of 43 homes even though county officials say they believe their land use regulations don’t allow for the extension of utilities to or through areas inside a federal Coastal Barrier Resource System designation. Portions of No Name Key are in such a designation and the lines would have to go through the CBRS to reach the 25 homes that have signed on for electricity from the utility.

The KEYS’ board said it felt it had the authority to establish the power grid without the county’s permission because of the statutory authority given it by the state and because the jurisdiction for public utilities lies with the Public Service Commission and not with the local governing body.

Chief Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger said he had been given additional information in the last few days that would require some further research and asked for a closed session on the utility issue for No Name Key at the BOCC special meeting coming Tuesday.

“That research may be enough for you to decide that we don’t want to go forward with the injunction, but we need time to research that,” said Shillinger.

Shilinger has maintained that the county has a valid ordinance prohibiting it from issuing building permits to the No Name Key homeowners to hook into electric lines even if they are run to the property along public rights-of-way.

Not all of the lines use public rights-of-way, however, and Shilinger said there are still questions surrounding the authority of the county to deny easements across conservation lands it owns on the island that would be used for lines for the project.

The Public Service Commission is expected to hear the No Name Key matter in a June 5 session.

In other actions, the county filed a declaratory judgment action late last year that sought to get a court’s opinion on what the county could and could not do with regard to electrification of the island in light of their land use prohibitions.

That action was dismissed by the local circuit and punted to the PSC. That dismissal was appealed by the county and by anti-power groups. That appeal has yet to be ruled on by the appeals court.

The county has also filed to intervene in the PSC case because Shillinger said the state body is being asked to rule on the county’s ability to claim jurisdiction over land use in its own area.

Groups opposed to power on the island where the homes are now powered by solar arrays, generators or a combination of the two, have also filed a demand action with the county to enforce the land use regulations on the books since no court has ruled those regulations invalid.

Upper Keys Attorney Andy Tobin, representing the No Name Key Property Owners Association, the group seeking commercial power, said the county no longer has jurisdiction to decide what utilities a homeowner uses once they have issued the building permit for the structure.

That was questioned by commissioners as they already force homeowners to hook into central sewer systems throughout the county even if the home has a functioning, approved on-site wastewater system.

That would add some 4,500 single-family units to the second phase of the evacuation procedure for storms Category Three and above.

The state Department of Economic Opportunity, which is working on an agreement with the county on occupancy and participation percentages, has suggested that the county do away with the latter half of phase one, where mobile homes are now required to evacuate, and instead put the mobile homes in with the first phase with tourists and special needs residents.

DEO has also specified that the county will use a Category Five storm, wind speeds 155 miles-per-hour or above, as a baseline to model evacuation clearance times.

The difference between what the county commission says it wants, and what DEO says it wants, is literally the difference between meeting the Keys’ 24-hour clearance time mandate and not meeting the mandate.

And that difference could mean an end to future residential building permits in the Keys.

Adding mobile homes, even at the reduced occupancy rates used in the model because hurricanes happen when snowbirds generally aren’t present, puts Monroe County over the 24-hour limit. Future residential building allocations are tied to the amount of time it takes under 24 hours to evacuate the Keys. The less time it takes, the more permits can be issued for a longer period.

By putting mobile homes in phase one, as the state wants, the model run claims it takes 23 hours to evacuate the Keys in the face of a Category Five storm.

That hour keeps residential building permits flowing, at least for now.

The stated purpose of finding a common ground on assumptions and a model run that everyone agrees with is to find out what the true build-out horizon is for the Keys, build-out being the point beyond which local leaders can no longer safely get everyone out of the way of a major storm.

The Keys went beyond the 24-hour limit many years ago and implemented the current phased evacuation plan that takes tourists and mobile home dwellers out of the equation and uses only those permanent residents living in what is termed site-built homes.

As the 24-hour limit approached again, leaders began a long process to study how many of those remaining homes were occupied during hurricane season and how many people would actually heed a mandatory evacuation call.

And those numbers are now under fire from some.

“When we did the survey for mobile homes to determine participation rates, only one mobile home park responded,” said Growth Management Director Christine Hurley. “When we surveyed site-built homes, we only got 60 responses. That might be too small a representative sample to determine if our participation rates are accurate enough for our purposes.”

Hurley is suggesting that the county do a more intensive survey, including door-to-door visits if necessary, to get a more representative sampling and see if the assumptions currently under discussion are valid.

The reason the assumptions are important, again, is that clearance time must come in at no more than 24 hours or the county loses all residential building allocations.

County Commissioner Sylvia Murphy said she believes too much is made of the modeling process.

“There are variables the model doesn’t deal with,” she said. “We don’t know if growth will continue at the current rate, we don’t know if the Keys will continue to be as popular a ‘final’ destination as it has been.”

The working group that has been chasing this issue for more than a year has discussed moving the clearance time from 24 hours to 30 hours, a move that never sees an end in paperwork shuffles, says citizen activist John Hammerstrom.

“Every time the goal gets close, we move the goal posts,” said Hammerstrom. “That’s not the way to provide for public safety.”

Hurley has asked the state to run some more models before the working group meets again on June 8.

She wants to see what happens when only 50 percent of the mobiles are added to phase two, and only 25 percent are added to phase two. There are about 8,500 mobile homes in the Keys. Occupancy on those units is currently stated at about 60 percent during hurricane season, although the model does not run the heavy traffic weeks of July 4, Labor Day, Fantasy Fest or Thanksgiving, all of which are within the dates of hurricane season June 1 to Nov. 30.

To make the last of the residential allocations last longer and delay potential land takings suits which could rise to $300 million in today’s dollars, more if land prices begin to rise again by any substantial amount, Hurley has asked for a build-out scenario using 50 percent and 25 percent of today’s allocations.

Monroe County receives 355 allocations yearly. It has been estimated that with the current clearance time, those allocations would run against build-out in as little as six years. Cutting back on the number of allocations would stretch out the time frame in which the county could draw up a plan to deal with those properties that would no longer be buildable.

There might be a couple of ways to deal with that, but the only sure way to eliminate building rights is to have a government entity purchase the land.

According to Hurley, there is about $300 million in taxable land right now that could have building rights.

In her presentation coming Tuesday during a special Board of County Commissioners meeting, Hurley suggests that the infrastructure sales tax extension the county is seeking from the voters to pay for wastewater be turned toward property acquisition when the sewers are complete. She also suggests that the county could establish a special taxing district by voter referendum that would go strictly toward land purchases and possibly avoid a huge round of private property land takings cases when the building allocations eventually run out.

Hurricane evacuation will be a central point discussed Tuesday when the BOCC meets in special session. The commissioners are also expected to act on other land use matters including some land use issues with Naval Air Station Key West and to hear a presentation on the progress of the county’s revamp of its comprehensive land use plan.

And what started out as a very productive season tailed off to a mediocre one, said Bobby Holloway, owner of Fanci Seafood on Cudjoe Key.

He said the Gulf side catch started good, but tailed off to well below normal from past seasons.

But the Atlantic side catch made up for some of that be being a better than normal year for fishermen.

The lackluster crab season comes on the heels of a productive lobster season that ended in March, leaving local commercial fishermen with another decent year.

“No one knows really why we couldn’t find the crab this year that we have in year’s past. If we could, we could all be rich down here in the fishing industry,” said Holloway. “We think the crabs were out there, they just weren’t appearing in the traps.”

Demand for the succulent crabs remained high throughout most of the season which kept prices to fishermen good until about mid-March when lobster season ended and crab season didn’t fulfill its promise.

The markets will end the season paying about $5.50 per pound for medium claws, $11 per pound for large claws and $15 per pound for jumbo claws, similar to what fishermen were paid last year.

“The price on medium claws always drops toward the end of the season because that’s all the fishermen are bringing in,” said Holloway.

Seafood lovers will be able to get fresh stone crab claws for probably two days after the season ends as the last of the fleet brings home their remaining traps, although a lot of them have already wrapped up their gear for the year, said Holloway.

“And if there are markets that froze some crab during season, they’ll have them for a little while longer,” he said.

Holloway estimated that the crab haul this year was probably about 20 percent below what it was last season.

In the first move, commissioners are expected to approve eliminating the current inspection on building permit program to comply with a state law passed last year that prohibits the practice unless the permit involves the lower level enclosure.

That program has been a contentious one for local contractors who claim that property owners were skipping needed work on their homes rather than undergo a county inspection of the lower-level enclosure even if the enclosure was compliant.

The contractors also claim that work was still being performed but the work was just being done by unqualified or unlicensed contractors who didn’t bother pulling permits to ensure the work was done to county building standards, which are the highest in the state.

But with the state regulating that program out of existence, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the National Flood Insurance Program told county officials they would need to find something to replace the program to continue to ferret out what estimates have placed at 7,000 non-conforming lower level enclosures.

The county’s participation in the NFIP was threatened by the state move. Without flood insurance, lenders won’t write mortgages in the flood-prone county and the county might not be eligible for federal grants or FEMA grants for pre-storm mitigation and post-storm debris removal.

In a related issue, commissioners are expected to conduct a public hearing making changes to the existing flood plain management inspection procedures for lower level enclosures prior to sale of the property.

Under the new guidelines, the county proposes continuing to use the results of that inspection solely for data gathering. In the existing program, the seller or buyer was supposed to file the inspection report at closing. That requirement has been eliminated.

The county has also been using the lack of a transfer inspection to deny future building permits until the transfer inspection takes place, a practice the new proposal eliminates.

In fact, the new proposal does not require that the illegal improvements be removed once the inspection is completed.

Instead it is thought that new buyers will either be caught up in the existing insurance inspection program for those homes that have received a letter demanding that inspection and was never done, or will go through the process at a later date during a remodel or repair from a storm where the overall value of the work reaches 50 percent of the market value of the home.

The new proposal protects the buyer from code action as the result of illegal enclosure improvements, but allows the county to prosecute in two ways the seller; first for not requesting the sale transfer inspection in a timely fashion, which could result in a $2,000 per day fine: and secondly as a misdemeanor offense through the criminal courts.

That language has local legal advocate John November a little hesitant to endorse the new program. November was the primary author of the legislation that outlawed the inspection on permit practice last year.

He said that the retroactive prosecution of sellers might not pass constitutional muster.

The new proposal also outlines remedies a buyer may seek if the property is found to subsequently have illegal downstairs enclosure improvements.

The new proposal also mentions use of the controversial insurance inspection program. That program, started in 2002, was supposed to last just seven years, but is still on the books. FEMA staff claims that the county hasn’t yet completed the program because not all of the 5,800 or so properties notified of a need for the inspection have as yet complied with that request.

According to Growth Management Director Christine Hurley, the county considers its participation in the pilot program insurance inspection to be complete because it has notified all of the properties in question.

FEMA disagreed, however, and instructed the county to continue the program and work up a plan to ferret out the remainder of non-inspected homes.

FEMA hasn’t yet answered the county on its assertions that the pilot program has ended for Monroe, and Hurley says that leaves her unsure whether only those properties previously notified will be part of the continuing insurance inspection program or whether new policy requests will be forced to undergo the inspection.

Commissioners will also hear a proposal that establishes a Certificate of Compliance inspection program that will be voluntary for local property owners.

Those wishing to ensure their homes are FEMA compliant, either for themselves or because they plan to put the home on the market and want to assure buyers that’s the case can request an inspection from the county. If the enclosure is found compliant, the certificate will be attached to the property record card and will outline what was permitted in the enclosure for future buyers.

The new proposal also changes some definitions in the existing ordinance that Hurley says she feels will make the flood plain rules more “homeowner friendly.”

And coming Wednesday, the Monroe Board of County Commissioners is expected to approve two actions that could potentially block the installation of that power grid on the island.

On the agenda Wednesday is a request to approve filing the potential electrification of No Name Key in the Inter-Government Conflict Resolution program. That, says Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger could force the utility to the negotiating table to try and work out the differences the county has with the KEYS project.

Also on the agenda is a request to approve filing for an injunction that would stop the installation of power poles on the environmentally sensitive island until some of the county’s underlying legal questions are answered.

Electrification of No Name Key has been bounding around in the courts for more than two decades.

And while the two entities currently are embroiled in yet another round of potential legal stand offs, the matter is still wending its way through the legal system on another front. No Name Key power is also slated to be a topic for consideration when the Florida Public Service Commission meets June 5.

Utility Board Attorney Nathan Eden told members Wednesday that they had really left themselves with little choice but to approve the construction contracts because of the line extension agreement they had approved last month with the No Name Key Property Owners’ Association.

The board approved that extension agreement over Eden’s objection who counseled them to wait until the PSC and the courts ruled on the current matters before them.

Under that agreement, KEYS plans to run power lines to 25 homes of the 43 on the island at the cost of the owners of those properties, estimated to be just over $600,000.

Part of the agreement, however, requires that the NNKPOA acquire the easements necessary to run the power grid at no expense to KEYS.

Part of the grid will have to pass over county-owned conservation lands. The BOCC last year denied the use of those lands for utility easements.

According to Monroe County Land Authority Director Mark Rousch, allowing easements across those particular lots would violate the agency’s enabling legislation as they were purchased using money that specifically prohibits development uses.

The utility board accepted proof of easements from the NNKPOA based on a 1973 document that granted vehicular easements on what are now non-existent roads and weren’t at the time owned by the county. The board also accepted a 1995 deed that granted mutual use easements on some of that land, argued by the property owners that utilities were included because phone lines were installed years before the current land use prohibitions were put in place by Monroe County.

At issue with county officials first is their denial of easements across conservation lands and secondly with county land use regulations that specifically prohibit the extension of commercial power to No Name Key and the other 14 Coastal Barrier Resource System areas in the Keys.

County and KEYS officials had attempted to get those issues clarified but the local circuit court punted the issue to the Public Service Commission, which is scheduled to hear at least parts of the case June 5.

The county has received permission to act as an intervenor in that PSC action.

Opponents of commercial power and the county have appealed that court decision allowing the PSC to take jurisdiction. That appeal hasn’t yet been acted on by the appeals court.

According to Shillinger, unless a court of competent jurisdiction voids the county ordinance prohibiting electrification of the island, county staff will be forced to adhere to those rules.

He claims that means even if the utility puts poles in the ground, the county building department can’t issue permits to the homeowners to hook into those lines due to the prohibition.

A majority of county commissioners have thus far stood firmly behind their land use regulations.

Before the vote, one utility board member announced to the press that No Name Key would be energized by August.

Most involved in the situation believe that only a court ruling will eventually settle the matter for good, but how the entities go about getting that ruling is still caught up in the myriad twists of multiple legal actions.

Last week Monroe County also received a demand notice from anti-power representatives that demanded the county stand by its land use codes and deny building permits and easements to hook the homes on No Name Key into the power grid.

The 43 homes on the island are powered by solar arrays or generators or a combination of the two.

But no matter the variables it looks as though Monroe County will be hard pressed to come in more than slightly under the state’s mandated 24-hour clearance time for permanent residents.

The reason for that, says County Commissioner Sylvia Murphy, the Board of County Commissioners representative on the evacuation working group, is that the state has ruled that all planning must be done for a Category 5 storm.

“The state rule governing hurricane evacuation clearance times for Monroe County says that we must use a Category 5 storm as the baseline,” said Rebecca Jetton, planner for the Department of Economic Opportunity Division of Community Affairs.

And that, says Murphy, is different form the previous conversations when the group was talking about using a Category 3 as the baseline.

Using a Category 3 storm as the baseline, and inputting other assumptions from various research and behavioral studies on unit occupancy and participation rates during evacuation, officials believed the new model could produce a clearance time of less than 20 hours, about four hours under the current estimate.

“I don’t know if we can come in under 24 hours using a Category 5 baseline,” said Murphy.

The more intense storm pushes the estimated participation rate for occupied units into the 90 percent range, meaning only about 10 percent of the people in the Keys at that time wouldn’t choose to evacuate in the face of a brutal storm.

Attendees at the meeting also had some concerns about the remainder of the assumptions being used.

“Our phased evacuation plan has mobile home dwellers leaving 36 hours in advance of landfall,” said Muprhy. “I personally don’t believe that’s even close to truthful.”

“About half of those folks are retirees with no obligations and they’ll get out of town. The other half (approximately 2,000 units) are our work force. They will have to stay to board up our homes, clean our yards, close down our businesses and transport those needing help to get out. We have to add them to the permanent resident mix in some fashion,” said Murphy.

Other assumptions to decrease the number of vehicles on the roadway also didn’t exactly meet with attendee approval in all cases.

Under the current slate of assumptions, all homes for sale are considered vacant and “we don’t evacuate an empty house,” said Barbara Powell, DEO representative and chairman of the working group.

“There were quite a few assumptions that were iffy,” said Murphy.

At stake with hurricane evacuation clearance times are future residential building permits. Monroe County gets more than 250 residential permits yearly scattered throughout the Keys now. The final clearance time established by the governing bodies will determine how much more residential growth can occur before the county has to cut off new residential building permits.

“It’s a shame this thing is tied to building permits when there’s so much we don’t know about the future,” said Murphy. “This is a group of educated people going to make an educated guess about how long it will take us in the future to get our people out of harm’s way.”

Murphy said a lot of that depends on how quickly Monroe County returns to its rapid growth pattern, if ever, and how much of the residential market becomes second homes or people who won’t be around during hurricane season.

“Eventually we will get to the point where we can’t get everyone out in time to miss the big one. At that point we have to have the guts to say no more building and find ways to deal with the private property takings issues we’ll face when that time comes,” she said.

Upper Keys activist John Hammerstrom, a resident member of the working group, planned to give a presentation Monday that showed the county was already past the ability to get everyone out safely is mobile home residents were counted in the final mix.

One of the build-outs scenarios brought forth last month showed that at the current rate of building allocations, Monroe County could have as little as six years before build-out occurs.

Before the next meeting, state officials are supposed to run mock evacuation models that outline how long building could continue if allocations are cut to 50 percent of current levels and 25 percent of current levels.

Some at the meeting talked of changing the mandated clearance time to 30 hours instead of 24 hours, a move that Hammerstron said assumes that a storm will be considerate enough to give 30 hours advance warning that it will intensify to a Category 5 or that it will shift track to target the Keys.

“This must ultimately be about public safety,” said Hammerstrom.

Murphy said the next meeting of the working group should be in July. The county is supposed to have a new evacuation clearance time nailed down by fall after which the state will make a determination on how many building permits can be issued each year.

“We’ve been fudging the numbers on hurricane evacuation for years. We’ve done whatever it takes to make us fit in that 24-hour window instead of taking a hard look at how we actually can fit inside that 24-hour window,” said Murphy.

BPAA has been suffering for several years from a lack of volunteer manpower, says Steve Miller, long-time president of the organization, and owner of Big Pine Liquors.

That lack of volunteer manpower, and the subsequent losses in fundraising and program capacity, has forced BPAA to consistently cut back on program functions.

At one time in the not too distant past, BPAA ran a robust after school care program at Blue Heron Park along with a large summer care program at the same facility. The organization was also the lead agency in the annual Big Pine haunted house. All of those programs have ceased in the last three to four years.

The athletic association can’t just cease to exist because of the pivotal role it maintains in local parks and as an umbrella charitable organization for the myriad of athletic teams throughout Big Pine and the lower Keys, says Miller.

All of the youth sports leagues that fall under the BPAA umbrella are their own entities, he said, but use the BPAA status as a charitable non-profit for fundraising and other things.

BPAA actually owns Watson Field on Key Deer Blvd. on Big Pine Key. It leases that field back to the county as a public park. Watson Field is a major part of the local little league as well as the only usable field for adult softball. The field is also used for several events in the Lower Keys during the course of a year.

BPAA must remain in operation in some form to maintain ownership of Watson Field.

The organization also holds a county contract for the management of the skate park at the new Big Pine Community Park.

Blue Heron Park has been under the management of BPAA for several years, and the organization still maintains a person at the facility in case kids show up for after school activities.

BPAA’s afterschool care program charged parents $100 per school year whether the program was or wasn’t used. According to Miller it was a back-up plan for many parents who used other services if those were closed for some reason. At one point the summer program had in excess of 70 kids, but the count cut the organization’s money during the early years of the economic downturn and BPAA officials were unable to keep the program alive.

Now the diminished after-school care program might be on the chopping block as the Board of County Commissioners last year agreed to remove most of the county’s non-profit organizations from the line item budget to a status where they’ll compete with all the other non-profits in the Human Services Advisory Board allocation, which has been frozen at current levels.

As part of the assumption of administrative duties for BPAA, Boys and Girls Club will take over management of Blue Heron Park, said Club Director Dan Dombroski.

“Our goal is to keep the county money coming to youth programs on Big Pine Key because this area is severely underserved,” he said.

The groups had planned to merge all their operations, but meetings with county officials proved difficult on that front, so an administrative-only merge was the most prudent course for now.

“If the county doesn’t come up with the $44,000 BPAA use to get as a line item, all bets are off on keeping Blue Heron viable,” said Dombroski. “We hope to be able to save administrative costs with this move, but Boys and Girls Club doesn’t have the funding to absorb BPAA’s administrative costs without some cash from the county.”

Plans now call for the conversion of Blue Heron into a local teen center for use by area teens on Friday and Saturday nights for get-togethers, movies and social hours, said Dombroski.

“We like the idea of a teen center. It’s something that’s needed here,” he said.

Monroe County pays for operational costs at Blue Heron, such as lights and water and does maintenance on the grounds, although that maintenance has gotten spotty the last two years as the park declined in program use.

Instead of replacing pavilions at the park, county maintenance crews removed them to save on future maintenance costs. The basketball courts haven’t been repaired in more than four years and the building itself is showing the signs of spotty maintenance.

There is a storage unit under the building that houses equipment for BPAA and for the Big Pine Moose Lodge, the latter of which pays rent to BPAA…now Boys and Girls Club….for access.

“For the moment nothing has changed in the various relationships with the county,” said Dombroski. “We will take over the responsibilities of fundraising and applying for grants to keep programs and facilities viable.”

The board will vote on two contracts, one to run the overhead lines and another to furnish the attachments to the No Name Key Bridge necessary to get power from the nearest line on neighboring Big Pine Key to the island.

The issue is being placed on the board agenda by Lynn Tejeda, KEYS Chief Executive Officer.

According to the timetable issued with the agenda item, once approval is given Wednesday the utility board will send letters to Monroe County concerning easements for the lines and poles necessary to reach the 25 homes that have signed on for commercial power. There are 43 homes on No Name Key.

Monroe County has already denied use of its conservation land for easements to run commercial power to the homes on the island. The land originally requested was purchased with trust fund money that specifically prohibits easements.

The board will, however, act on a new design for the potential system that eliminates some county lands and uses a newer route than was previously considered.

The county also turned down the easement requests last year because it has a land development regulation prohibition against allowing the installation of public utilities to or through Coastal Barrier Resource System areas, of which No Name is one of 15 in the county.

Not all of No Name Key is part of the CBRS, but nearly all the homes would have to be served by lines going into or through the CBRS to complete the power grid.

According to KEYS’ schedule for the project, officials expect the new lines to be energized in August.

Still at question, however, says County Commissioner Kim Wigington, is whether the county is allowed to issue building permits to homeowners to hook into the lines because of the prohibition contained in the county land use code.

“We still have a valid ordinance prohibiting us from issuing building permits to hook into public utilities on No Name Key,” said Wigington. “Unless some agency with authority to do so invalidates that ordinance, we can’t issue permits for the project.”

The county and KEYS had sought to have that question and others answered by the Circuit Court last year, but Judge David Audlin dismissed the declaratory action and instead said that the Florida Public Service Commission had jurisdiction to make the decision.

Shortly after that ruling, No Name Key property owner Bob Reynolds filed a complaint with the PSC asking it to force KEYS to run the power and to force Monroe County to abdicate its authority over land use to allow the permits and easements.

The utility board approved a line extension agreement in March and has asked the PSC to dismiss the Reynolds’ complaint as moot because of that.

Reynolds’ attorneys have in turn asked the PSC to dismiss KEYS motion to dismiss, claiming that the utility missed the filing deadline and has no authority to do so anyway.

The PSC clerk’s office accepted Reynolds’ complaint on March 7, and accepted certified service of KEYS on March 15 for that complaint. KEYS’ attorneys filed the motion to dismiss March 28. Reynolds claims that the utility only had 20 days from his original filing to answer the complaint.

The PSC has also agreed to allow Monroe County to intervene in the issue.

“The PSC is being asked to rule on your ability to govern land use in your jurisdiction,” Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger told the Monroe Board of County Commissioners in March. “It would be wise to file a motion to intervene.”

The BOCC agreed.

The PSC board is expected to rule on the KEYS motion to dismiss Reynolds’ complaint June 5.

Should the PSC dismiss the complaint, there are still no answers to the underlying questions about running commercial power to No Name Key, something both sides had hoped the circuit court would settle in the declaratory action, said Shillinger.

No Name Key residents opposed to the extension of commercial power filed an appeal of Audlin’s decision, and Monroe County has joined in that appeal.

Shillinger said there is no concrete timetable when the appeals court will rule on the matter.

That doesn’t mean the county has no options, however, said Shillinger.

He plans to present some of those options to the BOCC at its May meeting.

One of the options he said would be to file for injunctive relief allowing the county to enforce its own codes until a competence jurisdiction rules on the validity of the ordinance prohibiting public utilities to the island.

Another option he outlined was to take the issue to the inter-governmental dispute process.

“We are also looking into some of the options we may have with regard to easements,” Shillinger said.

Another factor at play, he says, is the environmental groups opposing commercial power to the island. Homes on No Name Key are powered by solar arrays, generators or a combination of the two.

Those groups could file a motion to compel the county to enforce its existing ordinance until or if the ordinance is declared invalid.

KEYS board members have said publicly that the county could be facing some land takings issues if it denies permits to hook into the lines once the poles are in place.

That, says Shillinger, is debatable.

“I have not been presented with any conclusive evidence from anywhere that supports a takings case against the county,” he said.

Generally takings cases are found valid if the governmental entity does something that deprives a property owner of beneficial use of the property, or in some way diminishes the ability to use the property as it has always been used.

“The homeowners there still have a viable use. They live in the homes,” said Shillinger.

“For a board member who is going to be voting on the issue to publicly threaten takings cases on the behalf of customers they don’t have yet is out of bounds,” said Alicia Putney, No Name Key resident and staunch opponent of commercial power on the island for decades.

“No one has yet taken a good look at the new easements KEYS claims to be using. No one has applied to the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Key Deer Refuge for easements across their land,” said Putney.

Most involved in the issue expect that the only final solution will come in the courts.