In short: A pair desires to construct a house in Palm Coast Plantation that might partly violate an present eagle-protection zone. The Flagler County Planning Board on Tuesday gave it the go-ahead, reasoning that the eagles haven’t been seen within the space for years, and that the safety zone must be scrapped anyway. However that won’t have been the planning board’s name.
An eagle’s nest in Palm Coast Plantation that by all account has been vacated years in the past has landed a pair of householders, their builder, Flagler County authorities, the governing board of Palm Coast Plantation, and environmental teams in a novel dilemma that has county officers fearful about lawsuits and making ready to go a decision that might unilaterally take away an “eagle safety line” in that portion of the Plantation.
Tuesday night, the Flagler County Planning Board did the County Fee one higher. It voted 4-0 to do one thing that didn’t seem like inside its authority to do. It issued a “variance”–a permission to interrupt present land guidelines–by arbitrarily deciding {that a} long-established eagle-protection zone didn’t apply to some constructing a home in Plantation Bay. They might not solely construct their home, encroaching on the zone, however they may construct a swimming pool, too, encroaching that rather more.
It wouldn’t matter, the board discovered, because the eagle’s nest now not exist. They seem like proper: the eagles are gone. However the rule continues to be on the books. All the opposite property house owners within the space have been respecting it. The county itself, however for a mistake, has been requiring all builders and property house owners to observe it. On Tuesday, the planning board determined the rule didn’t apply, if not with out sturdy arguments that it ought to now not apply.
The case of the ghostly eagles is illustrative of sturdy and well-intentioned environmental protections that generally outlast their objective, impeding property house owners’ proper to do with their property as they want whereas creating inequities between neighbors, all of whom to date revered environmental restrictions newcomers now need to be exempt from.
Final August Janine and Sebastian d’Amato determined they’d had sufficient of New Jersey. They purchased the quarter acre lot at 218 South Riverwalk Drive in Palm Coast plantation, proper by the Intracoastal, for $94,000. They employed a builder, Saltwater Properties, and commissioned a 4,000 sq. foot house. Saltwater acquired a constructing allow by way of the county on Could 18 and started working. It didn’t get too far previous the clearing of the lot: crews put down board for the pouring of the concrete slab, however the slab had not been poured by the point the county found it had made a critical error.
Although it had performed issues accurately earlier than, the county realized that the rear of the property extends into the so-called Eagle Safety Zone Line: an eagle had nested there up to now, necessitating that line in accordance and environmental guidelines. The road was not a whim: it was the results of session between the county, the native Audubon group, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee’s workers. The road extends in a radius of 750 toes from the nest. No development might happen in that zone. The plans for the house encroached into that zone. A deliberate swimming pool would encroach much more. “So we’re not going past the eagle zone, we’re going properly past it,” Adam Mengel, the county’s planning director, stated. “This would be the first pool that we’ve had within the space. Due to the eagle safety zone no one’s put a pool there.”
Right here’s the issue: the county had already accredited the constructing allow. The county had enabled the violation, not the builder or the property proprietor. “There isn’t a rationalization of what occurred as a part of the workers assessment that allowed the allow to be issued,” a county abstract of the difficulty states, at the same time as different properties had been permitted, together with two this 12 months, with restrictions on how far the concrete might go, in order to respect the eagle line. “The issuance of the constructing allow with the encroachment was a workers error,” the county discovered. That staffer is now not with the county. “With all that in thoughts, we made the error,” Mengel stated.
To beat the eagle line, the county concluded it must have the consent of 157 different lot house owners, as a result of it’s a change that impacts every of their property rights. The language is embedded in platting paperwork.
So Mengle got here up with an answer. The minimal setback for a single-family home on South Riverwalk is 25 toes for the entrance yard, in compliance with the Palm Coast Plantation Deliberate Unit Improvement settlement, adopted as a county ordinance. Palm Coast Plantation’s personal covenant and restrictions displays the identical rule. Mengle’s proposal was for the county planning board to challenge a variance, shifting among the development 15 toes nearer to the road. It could not remove encroachment. It could merely cut back its impression.
However the house owners need to proceed constructing the home as is, with the encroachment already in place–even after the variance is granted–and in addition construct the swimming pool, regardless that they haven’t but utilized for a allow for that pool. The house owners’ view is that because the eagle’s nest is vacant, the eagle line is now not relevant.
They’ve some extent, and the county sees their level. However nothing formal has been filed to formalize the purpose.
“I noticed emails from FWC saying that they’ve reviewed all of the proof submitted by the Audubon Society and from greatest they will decide, the eagles are now not there,” Sean Moylan, the assistant county legal professional, stated, referring to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee. “They’ve relocated someplace else and nobody so far as I do know disputes that the eagles at the moment are gone. They’ve been gone for years. And so we had been making an attempt to determine a solution to resolve this challenge the place folks’s properties are unfairly encumbered by an arbitrary customary that ought to now not apply. The FWC on the identical time was telling us, ‘We don’t actually challenge official determinations or some kind of certification that the eagle is gone.’ They’re like, yeah, it’s gone. However we don’t have some doc that we issued for that objective. So it appeared like we’re on this arbitrary course of. And we would have liked to provide you with an answer.”
Apart rom the variance, Moylan and Mengel are submitting a decision to the County Fee on Monday that, if accredited, would unilaterally take away the eagle line and doubtlessly render the entire challenge moot. (How that decision would have an effect on the language in platting paperwork is unclear.)
However the variance Mengel was proposing to the county planning board Tuesday night did in no way sit properly with residents of Palm Coast Plantation or the chairman of its Architectural Evaluation Committee: they didn’t need to see a single home 15 toes nearer to the road.
Mike d’Amato, the chairman of the Palm Coast Plantation Structure Evaluation Committee (he isn’t associated to the house owners of the property in query, who’ve the identical title), instructed the planning board that the one factor the committee would reject is a home constructed nearer to the road. “The minimal setback in Palm Coast Plantation is 25 toes. And that’s in our governing paperwork,” he stated. “That’s what the whole lot has been based mostly on the entire time, and we’ve issued some variances however nothing wanting the 25 toes.” He added: “They might grasp us.”
He stated the answer is in pushing again or eliminating the eagle line. (There are eagles on Herron Drive, which parallels South River to the west, he stated, however on South River, even the timber had been uprooted by current storms.) He wasn’t blaming anybody for the error. “We missed it on the ARC, the builder missed it, the county missed it, all of us missed it,” d’Amato stated.
A resident of Palm Coast Plantation who’s a builder positioned the duty for the error on the builder. “The truth that they’ve all their boards up, and if they’ve to switch the home to do it, that’s the builder’s duty,” he stated. “It’s not your fault. It’s not the county’s fault. It’s not the ARC’s fault. if I construct one thing that went previous engineering within the constructing division and my plans had been accredited, and I constructed one thing that wasn’t code, the constructing division would make me take it down.” He nothing aside from some boards have been constructed. One other property proprietor–a neighbor of the property in query–echoed the builder’s perspective. He requested that the variance be denied.
Shifting forward with the variance might result in a lawsuit from Palm Coast Plantation. Not transferring forward with a variance might result in a lawsuit from the property house owners. Mengel was making an attempt to keep away from each. He needed to make sure that “if inevitably, we went to court docket, that if I might then reply in a straight face response again to a choose, whoever is asking me, did you do the whole lot doable?” Mengel desires to have the ability to say sure.
Ultimately, the planning board was spooked extra by the prospect of a lawsuit from Palm Coast Plantation than by no matter authorized entanglements it could have provoked by ignoring the county’s personal eagle safety line, figuring that if the county fee might properly repeal the road unilaterally, the planning board’s rear is roofed.
Eagles, in the meantime, are now not endangered: “Whereas now not listed beneath the U.S. Endangered Species Act or the Florida Endangered and Threatened Species guidelines, bald eagles stay protected by each the state eagle rule (68A-16.002, F.A.C.) and federal legislation,” in keeping with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee.
