County wasted chance to settle Tier challenge

For close to two decades now, growth management in the Florida Keys has consisted of an endless round of painful rule-making, followed by negotiations with the state of Florida, followed by legal challenges from environmentalists.

The result has been a strict system governing building in unincorporated areas, which has prevented the Keys from the sort of development explosion seen in other areas of the state.

It has also been a confusing morass for people seeking answers about building homes — and an unending source of concern for people who would like the Keys to retain some of the natural and community character that differentiate these islands from the rest of the state.

There is real hope that the Tier System, the county's latest approach to growth management, may allay concerns both for would-be builders and for those concerned about the environment and quality of life (not to mention the ability to get out of here when a hurricane approaches).

The Tier System was intended to simplify the complexities of the Rate of Growth Ordinance, known universally as ROGO. Where ROGO assigned points on 18 different criteria, the Tier System had only three categories, which could be likened to the three colors of a traffic light: Tier I (red, high quality habitat, don't build there); Tier II (yellow, transition and sprawl reduction, think hard about your decision here); Tier III (green, scarified area, go ahead and develop).

County staff worked hard with state planners and interested residents to craft this system. Unfortunately, the County Commission removed some key foundation stones along the way, eliminating Tier II entirely and declaring that a habitat patch must be at least four acres to qualify as Tier I.

Environmental groups challenged the rules implementing the Tier System on a number of fronts and an administrative law judge recently issued a recommended order (the recommendation is to the state Department of Community Affairs).

The environmentalists lost on the vast majority of the points they challenged. But they won on a couple of the big ones, notably the size of parcels that deserve protection and whether a 16-foot-wide road should be considered a divider of habitat areas.

It would be tempting to say that all this is the system working as it should, the various parties using the process set up to pursue their goals, with the end product the result of our democratic, legal and political systems.

But there's more to this story. The county had an opportunity to save everyone a lot of time, hassle and money by settling this case last year. And the settlement would have resulted in an outcome more favorable to the county's stated aims, and less favorable to the environmentalists.

The next time the commission gets a report on growth management and the implementation of the Tier System, it would be interesting to hear an explanation from the commissioners who opposed the settlement offer, and an assessment of what the county's refusal to settle the case last fall has cost us.

It's not like they didn't have fair warning. Over and over again, commissioners heard from state officials, and their own staff, that the Tier System must honestly implement the conclusions of the Florida Keys Carrying Capacity Study. The part of that study that received the strongest validation from a National Academy of Sciences review panel found that the upland habitats of the Florida Keys had already been overdeveloped.

Still, commissioners fought each step of the way rather than seeking partnerships that could help us with the real dilemma we face now: coming up with the money to buy the land that owners will not be allowed to build on under the new system.

Judge Donald Alexander's recommended order is not an all-out victory for either side in the debate over how to further develop the Keys. But it is a commonsense and fair assessment from an objective observer about how to move forward with the Tier System and with allowing "smart growth" for the foreseeable future in the Keys.

We can only hope our county leaders are listening, for a change.

— The Citizen