Florida Keys leaders, facing a potential building boom, seek a delay in state plan
Monroe County is asking the state for another year before a decision is made that could potentially clear the way for thousands of more homes and buildings in the Florida Keys.
The move to open the door to issuing more building permits could spark a development boom not seen in decades in the Keys — one that critics say the environmentally fragile island chain lacks the infrastructure to support.
The Florida Department of Commerce is seeking to amend restrictive growth rules that were put in place in the 1980s to protect the ecological sensitivity of the Keys and its surrounding marine ecosystems. The department wants input from the county and other Keys municipalities before the ultimate decision is made by the state Legislature.
By amending the rules, the state would one way or the other be relaxing them, potentially allowing nearly 8,000 vacant parcels to be developed, which would require an expensive overhaul of everything from freshwater distribution, electricity, traffic mitigation, sewage treatment, schools and law enforcement.
Read More: Building boom looming for Florida Keys? State considers easing decades-old growth limits
Allowing more development would also require the Keys to make an earlier call than the current hurricane evacuation time, which is designed to give residents 24 hours to evacuate in a 113-mile long archipelago with only one road in and out.
The five-member Monroe County Commission was expected to recommend an option to the state at its meeting in Key Largo Wednesday — whether to stop issuing permits, which even most critics of Tallahassee’s proposal view as unrealistic, a plan somewhere in the middle, or granting permits to all of the 7,954 remaining undeveloped lots in the Keys.
Instead, the commissioners unanimously voted on a resolution from Commissioner Michelle Lincoln, who represents the Middle Keys city of Marathon, that would ask the Legislature not to make any decision until all leaders from the county as well as the local governments Key West, Marathon and Islamorada can study how to move forward.
“All of us have the same questions of, what is our infrastructure, how much can we handle, how many vacant lots truly are there available, where are they located,” Lincoln said at the meeting. “And, until we have all of the answers that all of us have asked, it’s impossible for anyone to give an educated decision on this, and even to give an educated recommendation.”
County Administrator Roman Gastesi said choosing among the options outlined by the state would not be possible before the Legislature meets next month.
“It would take a good year or so, until the next legislative session, which will be March of ‘25,” Gastesi told commissioners.
Under rules, put in place in the 1980s, the county was supposed to cease granting any new building permits for undeveloped properties after this year. The rule, which designated the Keys “an area of critical state concern,” was amended in 2012, which added about 3,500 lots to be up for consideration. Since then, about 1,350 permits out of that number have been granted and the Keys population has gained another roughly 10,000 people.
The consequences of development
“And we now live with the consequences of all that development,” Dottie Moses, a member of the Key Largo Federation of Homeowners Associations, told the commission this week.
“Over the past 11 years, our traffic has become a nightmare. We are now a failed level of service. Our water pipe has failed, our wastewater has experienced saltwater intrusion, our reef is all but dead, our marine life is fading away, our neighborhoods flood with regularity, vacation rentals have consumed our once-residential homes, and our endangered and threatened species are in decline,” Moses said.
All the while, tourism in the Keys has morphed from a seasonal industry, with most visitors coming in the winter and spring months, to a year-round event, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic when the island chain was one of the few destinations in the world open for business.
“Three months out of the year this summer, Key West had to use its back-up generators to supply enough power at peak times because of the energy that was being used because our (main line) was inadequate for the added uses and added people that would be here,” said Commissioner Craig Cates, who represents the Southernmost City.
While weighing the environmental and infrastructure costs of allowing more development, Keys officials are simultaneously worried about a crippling legal bill from thousands of so-called “takings cases” if they don’t grant the pending building permits.
The cases, which Marathon City Manager George Garrett said “are inevitably lost in courts,” could cost the county and Keys municipalities billions of dollars.
By law, if the government prohibits owners from developing their lands, it must pay what a court ultimately decides is fair market value for the property.
Steve Williams, Marathon city attorney and deputy city manager, said the municipality has 1,026 vacant lots. Several hundred of those lots likely can’t be developed because of issues like environmental sensitivity or the fact that they may even be underwater, but that leaves at least 1,000 property owners who could sue if they don’t receive permit allocations.
“Even with the greatly reduced number of 700, you begin adding the potential statutory costs and attorneys fees to each potential takings case, such financial impact would be devastating to the city,” Williams said.
Monroe County Mayor Holly Raschein, who was the Keys state representative in the Legislature before being term-limited out of office, said she has had several conversations with officials in Tallahassee, and they said they are willing to wait to make a decision on the issue.
“They have very much yielded to our community on this conversation. We’re not under the gun to make a decision right away,”Raschein told her colleagues on the dais. “We have time for our municipalities to collaborate.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
