to go to the Sawgrass Rebellion's website.
Posted on 08/27/2002 5:53:02 AM PDT by TonyWojo
Florida growth regulators notified Collier County on Monday that they had signed off on landmark changes to the county's rural growth plan, but opponents are vowing a legal challenge.
County commissioners approved new growth rules this summer in response to a 1999 order from Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet that required the county to work with its citizens to come up with better environmental protections for its rural land.
The rules apply to some 93,000 acres on the edge of Golden Gate Estates known as the rural fringe.
Other changes, still under state review, would apply to almost 200,000 acres around Immokalee. An agency report on that plan is due Sept. 16.
A legal challenge to the rural fringe plan would prevent the plan from becoming effective and would extend a moratorium the governor and Cabinet imposed in 1999 on most new development in the rural fringe.
At issue is a Transfer of Development Rights program that is the centerpiece of the rural fringe plan. Supporters say it will allow landowners to recoup development rights the new plan takes away. Sign-carrying property owners crammed hearings earlier this year in opposition, saying they want to keep their development rights and don't trust a TDR program.
In a letter Monday to county officials, Florida Department of Community Affairs Community Planning Director H.E. Sonny Timmerman announced that the agency plans to publish a notice Wednesday finding the rural fringe plan in compliance with state law.
Opponents have 21 days from the notice's date of publication to file a petition for an administrative hearing. Such petitions are filed with the DCA and heard by an administrative law judge working for the state's Division of Administrative Hearings.
"I assure you this is not something we're taking lightly," said Don Lester, a director of The 15,000 Coalition and chief executive officer of Century Holdings Ltd., which is buying up land affected by the new growth plan.
The 15,000 Coalition's name refers to the number of acres in North Belle Meade, an area north of Interstate 75 and surrounded by Golden Gate Estates. It is a focal point for opponents.
The group hired Robert Diffenderfer, in West Palm Beach, to handle its case. In July, he withdrew from the case citing his firm's conflict of interest.
Lester said Monday that the Coalition has hired Tallahassee attorney Tom Pelham, a former DCA secretary, but Pelham couldn't be reached for comment Monday.
The 15,000 Coalition might not be the only source of a legal challenge to the plan although it was unclear Monday what form other challenges might take.
Attorney John Vega, representing landowner Francis Hussey, has raised the threat of a lawsuit over the plan, which bans earth-mining on Hussey's property in North Belle Meade but allows mining on property next door under a deal struck with environmental groups.
Opposition has come from as far away as New Mexico, the home base of a nonprofit group called the Paragon Foundation, which advocates private property rights causes nationwide.
A representative of the group has set up shop at the Century Holdings office in Naples to plan a property rights rally in October that is billed as the finale to a national convoy of protesters angry about the way Everglades restoration is treating property rights.
"The Paragon Foundation is committed to standing by the folks here in Collier County for as long as it takes and with whatever it takes to win their property rights back," Paragon representative Jay Zane Walley said.
Walley said the group is consulting with the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Pacific Legal Foundation about a civil rights lawsuit against Collier County.
"We can make Collier County the epicenter of the property rights battle in America," Walley said.
In the Monday letter, the DCA's Timmerman compliments Collier County's three-year effort to rewrite its growth plan.
"The result is a plan that strikes a balance between preservation of the county's unique natural heritage and the protection of private property rights," Timmerman's letter said.
The plan would divide the rural fringe into receiving areas where development would be encouraged — and sending areas where development would be discouraged.
Property owners in sending areas would be restricted to one home per 40 acres, or per parcel smaller than 40 acres created prior to June 22, 1999 — the date of the state order that set the stage for the new plan. That compares to one home per 5 acres under the old plan.
The lost homes would become development credits that could be sold and used to build additional homes in receiving areas. The market would set the price of a TDR unit.
People still could live on their land and use it for some forms of agriculture after they sell development credits.
Florida Wildlife Federation spokeswoman Nancy Payton promised the group would help fight off any legal challenges to the rural fringe plan.
The Florida Wildlife Federation and the Collier Audubon Society sided with the DCA against Collier County in an administrative hearing that gave rise to the 1999 order in the first place.
"We'll be there, standing by the DCA and the county, to defend these amendments," she said.
It's nice to know our county representatives are on the side of "The Florida Wildlife Federation" instead of the people they represent. That's almost as comforting as our state and federal government siding with the enviral-pinkos in an effort to push their phoney "susutainable growth" onto the backs of SW Florida property owners.
This is simply a total degradation of the historic concept of property rights. Now in America, your property is no longer secure. Used to be that you didn't have to worry about government encroachment usless you were one of a handful of owners in the way of the building of a federal highway or something similar. Now, nobody is safe. If your federal, state or local govenment gets a hair up their ass and signs on to a political agenda, you're screwed.
Sorry sir, we need your land and your money for our purposes. You're not powerful enough for us to listen to.
The biggest damn outrage is that they using our money and our land against us to accomplish this huge pile of s**t, while everyone sits back and watches, thinking "oh how nice it is to be saving the environment".
Honestly Tony, I can barely get through these articles anymore. By the time I'm done reading them I'm to the point where I just want everyone involved in bringing this affliction to our community to die of bone cancer and burn in hell.
You'll be meeting him when you visit in Oct.
You mean our "green conservative" semi-pinkos? There was a time where there was no such thing on this forum, that is until a bunch of people started sewing their lips to the asses of their favorite politician dejure.
They ought to sign up with the Sierra Club where they'll be surrounded by repugnant morons like themselves.
Check out the pejorative descriptor in bold type, above!!! See how the writer starts right out tweaking and torquing the situation with degrading phrases aimed at any and all rural landowners.
"The Rural Fringe" is a smear phrase, designed to get the readers to mentally marginalize any people connected with resisting this GovernMental/EnvironMental steamroller ready to be crushed!
Oh, how I wish Jeb wouldn't continue to play-up to the DECONSTRUCTIVE DEMOCRATS, just like brother "W" has done to try to win favor with them. It never works... NEVER!!!
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