We continue to work diligently to educate the public regarding local issues that impact quality of life, our fragile environment and our limited infrastructure.
The Crooked Palm code change fiasco last Thursday is the poster boy for our Village making decisions based on influence and business relationships rather than the merits of the case. Have you forgotten playing by the rules and equal treatment for all?
Personally, I do not doubt that the petitioners are good people and “good neighbors.” This is not about that and should have had no bearing here. It is about everyone playing by the rules, and what is best for the future of the Village, not the profitability of one.
Planning and Council members, what were you thinking?
We are not stupid. There are so many rules ignored and bent that I will just give you my “low lights.” A more comprehensive list will be published in our next newsletter.
(1) The applicant applied for a minor deviation to a conditional use. The deviations requested were not minor. The changes requested were recognized by the planning department as not being minor, but the request was nevertheless processed as an amendment to a major conditional use.
This was not what the applicant requested. Who did? the Planning Department, Village manager?
It never should have been on the agenda.
(2) The site plan in the agenda was not the same site plan the applicant submitted and was approved by council in 2022. The site plan in the agenda is from 2024 and was not approved by council.
Planning Department, Village manager?
(3) Code clearly states that: “Before any conditional use is amended, extended, varied or altered, the applicant SHALL demonstrate that change of circumstances or conditions has occurred which MAKES IT NECESSARY to amend, extend, vary or alter the conditional use.”
Ensuring a business owner’s profitability is not a factor or “change in circumstance” for our planning department, Village Manager or our Village Council. While being a “good neighbor” is commendable, it is not a circumstance or condition qualifying for code changes.
The Village code does not require being a good neighbor and the entity being unprofitable. What circumstances or conditions were stated by the applicant? All of the circumstances cited, complained of their inability to “operate.” Click here.
Circumstance cannot justify the lifting of the restrictions which were implemented to ensure the property and entity — whoever owns it and regardless of whether it’s sold would remain a “good neighbor”.
What happens if the next owner is not a “good neighbor”? I will tell you — intractable problems and a series of “woulda, coulda, shoulda” excuses from those responsible for this mess.
(4) The Council and staff missed the very reason in our code as to why this was a “conditional use” and not treated like every other similar business: the necessity of individual review of location, design, intensity and density of the use to ensure appropriateness and compatibility of the use at a particular location.
This specific location is like no other in the Village - near churches, schools and is part of a neighborhood with more children than any other neighborhood in Islamorada.
Council: To do this to the residents, who put you in office, with such a brutally overt perversion of our codes based on your friendships and business relationships, should disqualify those responsible for and who supported this from serving our Village in any capacity.
Insulting!
Reply to: ICA.in.Keys@gmail.com
