City deserved judge's rebuke over transient rental decision

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Or more emphatically.

That's our reaction to 16th Circuit Court Judge David J. Audlin's order to quash a decision by Key West's Board of Adjustment that would have cleared the way for the sale and transfer of transient rental rights to many as 83 residential properties in Old Town.

Last month, as readers may recall, we expressed a hope for this outcome when Last Stand, the activist civic organization, joined by more than 20 angry homeowners, filed suit to set aside the board's outrageous decision.

This issue had landed in the lap of the Board of Adjustment when the developers of Parrot Bay, who are currently replacing the former Hampton Inn with condominiums, sought to override the city's Planning Department in order to off-load surplus transient licenses.

Judge Audlin's order affirms that the city's master plan and other codes do not permit such transfers, as the planning director had made plain. He also pointedly rebuked the Board of Adjustment — whose members also make up the City Commission — for accepting the developer's spurious claim that such transfers could be permitted by recognizing a new category of housing that was never contemplated in existing ordinances.

We would be among the first to agree that a board of adjustment represents a useful avenue of appeal when interpretations of ordinances and codes are in dispute. But it's certainly not the place to "invent" new ordinances or permit egregious exceptions. Once again, what we witnessed — and what Last Stand wouldn't stand for — is yet another example of an old, old custom, a tendency of the board to readily accommodate the demands of powerful special interests, especially developers and their land-use experts who seem to have a knack for finding ways to circumvent regulations that ordinary citizens could never get away with.

It also continues to astonish us that the Board of Adjustment would approve, with only one dissent, a developer's proposal that absolutely flies in the face of the public's desire to protect the residential character of historic Old Town. Moreover, why would our city commissioners, acting as the Board of Adjustment, needlessly inflame tensions between the tourist industry, a foundation of our local economy, and the residents and voters who support tourism but increasingly resent undesirable intrusions into their neighborhoods?

As we stated in an editorial last month, public opinion data that emerged from a study undertaken by Lou Harris showed that 89 percent of respondents want the City Commission to give equal consideration to the concerns of residents and businesses alike, and 62 percent think the city usually or always favors business interests.

What is it about these data that our office-holders don't understand?

— The Citizen