Better communication. Better utilization of experienced assets. Better administrative control. Better flexibility to call for ignition.
Those are four of the many recommendations handed down in a review of what is being called the Blue Hole Fire last year on the National Key Deer Refuge.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials told Monroe County in a letter last week that its fears of being caught in the grip of multiple land takings cases as the result of a court settlement probably won’t materialize.
The correspondence is part of a back-and-forth between the county and FEMA over a court settlement in a two-decade-old case. Environmental groups sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service and FEMA claiming that the former agency was abdicating its responsibility to protect endangered species by continuing to allow the latter to issue flood insurance policies in sensitive habitat.
The courts agreed with that claim and to settle the suit, USFWS and FEMA proposed a plan where Monroe County would have to review all future building permits for potential habitat impact and deny those permits if certain levels of impact were exceeded. The levels were based on total acreage of impact.
That, claims county officials, puts them in a vise because they have been designated as the agency to police the impacts, but haven’t been given the authority to deny development for agencies over which they have no jurisdiction.
The county does not control permits for development for other taxing districts, such as the school board and mosquito control. The state agencies don’t need county permits, neither do the federal. The county has little control over development of public utilities.
And all of those uncontrolled groups can develop in sensitive habitat with the county unable to say no.
But FEMA last week stated that the total impact acreage it had devised for the new development regulations was based on a “worst-case scenario” and impacts should never approach the maximum levels.
Sign rules for businesses along US 1 in unincorporated Monroe County changed Wednesday.
County staff has been working on revamping the sign ordinance for more than three years following a December 2008 code sweep that resulted in 150 notices of violation, mainly for illegal use of sandwich board signs which were not permitted at that time.
Fast on the heels of good news from Tallahassee earlier this month that the state House of Representatives had included $50 million in funding for Monroe County wastewater systems, came bad news this week that the Senate did not include that same appropriation.
Continue reading ‘Senate budget doesn’t include sewer money’
The Monroe Board of County Commissioners Wednesday decided to throw its support behind a group appealing a court decision claiming that the Public Service Commission has sole jurisdiction to decide commercial power issues in Coastal Barrier Resource areas in the county.
The county last year filed a declaratory action with the circuit court seeking to get clarification on several issues surrounding the possibility of bringing commercial power to No Name Key.
Commissioners wanted to clarify their rights and obligations in the more-than-two-decade-old battle. The questions the BOCC wanted the court to answer included:
Whether the county had to allow public power grids to cross conservation lands that are publically owned
Whether the county had to allow the extension of commercial power into CBRS units
Whether the county had the ability to deny building permits to hook into power lines if they were run because the county’s comprehensive land use plan “discourages” the extension of public utilities into CBRS units and its land development regulations prohibit that same extension
No Name Key property owner Bob Reynolds, who first applied for commercial power to his No Name Key home, asked that Circuit Judge David Audlin dismiss the county’s action, claiming that sole jurisdiction for the extension of commercial power lines belonged to the PSC.
Following a Jan. 26 hearing, Audlin did indeed dismiss the county’s case, claiming that the PSC did have jurisdiction over the matter.
But that alone, said Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger, didn’t answer the questions for the county because the judge didn’t invalidate the county’s ordinance prohibiting the issuance of building permits for residents to hook up to power lines if they were run in the public right-of-way.
Just days after Audlin’s ruling, five No Name Key residents filed an appeal of the ruling with the Third District Court of Appeals.
County Attorney Suzanne Hutton presented the BOCC with several options in the case.
Monroe County’s long road to improving water flow in residential canals may be taking another small step forward in the near future.
Many of the residential canals in the Florida Keys were developed by excavating fill material for land-based developments more than 40 years ago.
Continue reading ‘New canal study underway: Water quality is goal’
The visioning process for the Lower Keys from Little Torch to Sugarloaf Keys is in the home stretch.
During a special meeting of the Monroe Board of County Commissioners Monday, the Liveable Communi-Keys Plan for the Lower Key area is expected to be approved for transmittal to the state Department of Economic Opportunity. The old Department of Community Affairs, the overseer for land use activities in the Keys, with its designation as an Area of Critical State Concern, is now contained in the DOE.
The Monroe Board of County Commissioners appears ready after more than three years to implement a new sign ordinance.
The final version of a new sign ordinance is on the BOCC agenda for Wednesday and contains proposed changes to the current sandwich board sign rules as well as proposed changes to signs for multi-tenant buildings.
The process began in January 2009 following a code sweep through the Keys in December 2008 during which 150 notices of violation were issued for illegal use of A-frame signs.
Business owners urged the commission then to take a new look at the use of A-frame signs which were banned in the existing sign ordinance. Commissioners agreed and implemented a temporary A-frame sign allowance through June 2010, then extended the allowance again until December 2011 to allow staff time to come up with a new ordinance.
In the current proposal, staff is recommending that the allowance for A-frame signs disappear but that the signs themselves can remain as ground-mounted signs on properties where no ground-mounted sign currently exists.
Continued use of existing A-frame signs will require a permit as a ground-mounted sign, but the new ordinance does not specify a permit fee. Fees will probably be part of the BOCC discussion Wednesday.
Monroe County voters overwhelmingly approved a school district referendum Tuesday that will allow the district to retain nearly $9 million in income for operations, instead of putting that money back into capital accounts where all agree the money is not needed.
“People realized how important the issue was and they voted their minds,” said John Dick, chairman of the Monroe County School Board.
Continue reading ‘School tax referendum big winner with voters’
After four years of chasing the proverbial carrot, Monroe County has cleared the first turn in the race to get the state Legislature to release at least a part of $200 million in bond money for the construction of wastewater systems promised to the county.
“There is $50 million earmarked for Monroe County wastewater projects in the Florida House of Representatives budget proposal right now,” said County Administrator Roman Gastesi.
But that doesn’t guarantee the money will be allocated on the other end of the funding pipeline.
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