Marathon Planning Commission Decision Raises Eyebrows
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
– H. L. Mencken
A letter to the editor appeared in last week’s edition of the Florida Keys Keynoter that posed a question about whether the members of the city of Marathon’s planning commission know what they are doing.
Bob Guerin, who lives in a gated community near a proposed site of a new trash transfer station, wrote:
“The planning commissioners are not elected but appointed by City Council members. I can’t imagine any qualifications are required, as two of the commissioners had no idea what they were asked to do.”
Another letter writer agreed.
Eric Viehman wrote that,
“… if Mr. Guerin is correct that this planning board comprises untrained individuals who are in power to overrule professional government-trained employees, I have to ask why? It seems to me that this is clearly a City Council responsibility to determine if the city professionals have made the right decision, not appointees with no experience.”
Guerin and Viehman may be right. Upon viewing the December 16 session that made the decision that irked Guerin, it’s obvious that one of the new members, Lynn Landry, was completely unclear about the issue and how the planning board should handle it despite several attempts by planning director George Garrett and Assistant City Attorney Michael Marshall to clarify the issue. Landry ended up voting to overturn Garrett’s denial of a permit.
Marshall says at the meeting,
“it’s not about whether it’s a good policy decision, it’s not about whether it’s a good looking project, but it’s about whether the staff made an interpretation of the code that is legal.”
First the commission members wanted to put forth a motion to ask the city to revise the land development rules that govern the proposed project. That suggestion was totally inappropriate because they, the planning commissioners, weren’t there to discuss such a move nor are they empowered to take that action. Then members of the group wondered aloud if there were any means to send the issue back to the city council for review but, as the lawyer pointed out, the city council had never even discussed the issue in the first place. The commission was reviewing an appeal to a planning staff decision and the city council never had discussed whether or not the transfer station could be built in the proposed location.
Even the commission chair, Jim Tashjian, didn’t get that.
And even after they had voted to reject the staff’s determination to deny the permit – in other words to approve the transfer station – the members of the commission were still unclear about what would happen next, thinking that the city council would review their decision. Which they won’t unless there is an appeal, which carries a $1500 fee plus incidental expenses.
As planning director George Garrett told the commissioners at the end of the meeting, “Your decision is final.”
The question here is not whether the transfer station is legal or not; it’s whether a citizen planning commission has the ability to make these kinds of decisions. New member Lynn Landry co-owns Caribbean Glass, a company that installs hurricane shutters and windows. He has been in the Keys for many years and has probably applied for hundreds of permits and yet he was totally at sea in making this decision.
Anyone who has read a city code or charter is familiar with their complexity. The documents are a swamp of specialized language and even contradictory statements. They are often cobbled together from charters from other cities, from original efforts that may be outdated and from efforts by special interests in the city.
Knowing this, one wonders if the city planning staff preps the members of the commission before the session. Both planning director George Garrett and assistant planner Karl Bursa say, “Absolutely.”
“We give them the staff report and it’s a pretty straightforward presentation of the issue. We generally talk to them beforehand,” said planning director George Garrett.
“As part of any staff report, the director of planning would provide them with sections of the code for the situation at hand. We’re required by law to provide that information,” Bursa added.
Bursa further added that,
“When first appointed all planning commission members get copies of the code and the city’s charter. They are more than welcome to call us about questions and can even ask them at the meeting. The appeal itself is confusing and if you don’t know all the ins and outs of the code you can get tripped up but all that information is in the staff report.”
Garrett told The Blue Paper,
“That one was complicated only by the number of the people in the room and not by the facts. It was an unfortunate situation. They had over 200 people in the room, two of [the planning commissioners] were new and it probably wasn’t the best situation to be a planning commissioner in.”
In other words the commission bent to the pressure of the public rather than interpreting the code as they are mandated to do.
This totally frustrates Guerin who told The Blue Paper in a phone interview that,
“The planning director who is a professional paid employee of the city and the city attorney who is a professional paid employee both examined Marathon’s regulations and it specifically forbids construction of a debris and transfer station. At the hearing Garrett said ‘this is a no-brainer. I have no choice but to deny the permit’ and the city attorney backed him up.”
Not the first time
When a different group of planning commissioners considered a conditional use permit for putting a zip-line attraction at Crane Point despite the area being zoned Conservation – Native Area, the vote also didn’t take into consideration the specifics of the code. After a long meeting at which a number of speakers, some of whom were from out of town, opposed the application for a zip-line, citing specific elements of the city’s code, members of the commission applied their own peculiar logic.
Keys Realtor Morgan Hill (who is no longer on the commission) said, at the end of the session,
“We’ve listened to it twice and I’ve read it twice. And I don’t get on a bus and go back to Miami when we are done here tonight. I’ve lived here 40 years. And almost every comment that was made here tonight, if I had plugged the word airport into it, it would have been the same. The noise. The airplanes. And it goes very closely to the gentleman that talked about the bus. That’s what an airplane is. Flying through everywhere where we eat dinner all night long. I’m not buying that. I do think we’ve got a really, really long way to go to complete the project, to do all the things we want to, but I do think these people deserve and we deserve them to try to make it work.”
Yep. That’s what she said, word for word.
And liquor store owner and local Marathon fixture Ralph Lucignano commented as he voted to approve the permit:
“Well, if we don’t do something, I think we’re going to wind up with another shopping center or something there. So that’s my sentiment.”
So given the complexity of the code and the inability of planning commissioners to understand it and their tendency to offer opinions rather than apply the code, it’s important to look at whether such a system can be viable in Marathon or any community.