Our Response to the Manager: Our criticism of the budget process last week was meant to help make improvements in the future. Though our editorial was not about you and your state experience from years ago, Mr. Saunders - you are our hope for the future!   If the process is strengthened - the end result may be closer to what the taxpayers need - relief from high taxes, inefficiencies and out of control spending.

To read the full analysis, with statistics, along with suggested improvements we’d like to see in Village budgeting: Click Here.  We found the comparison of Islamorada and Marathon budgets shocking. Islamorada property taxes approved are $8 million more than Marathon!  And they are a larger community and have a huge fund balance.

We appreciate the improvements the Village Manager is instituting - but the Village’s ongoing operating costs cannot continue to escalate.  Using the fund balance and increasing property values is not a good way to reduce and control a bloated budget.  Islamorada is spending too much of the taxpayers’ hard-earned income.

Islamorada planners strive for the bare minimum. Why is that?

Rather than independently evaluate what is best for the residents and make recommendations, the Village now simply touts its decisions as being “consistent with the Comp Plan” — you know, that document that sets the absolute floor of decisions and has been decried by all who have read it as being inconsistent and in desperate need of revamping.

The Comp Plan: The document that is over 25 years old and has been the subject of Band-Aid amendments. Yes, that comp plan. The comp plan has been exploited, piecemeal modified and abused for over 25 years.

Take the Crooked Palm amendment case: Village officials accepted the minimum, claiming it met the Com Plan guidelines — but which ones?

The Comp Plan is so inconsistent, anything would meet at least some of its goals. But

there is rarely any mention of the goals.  What are they?

Rather than simply holding the line of the voluntary concessions that resulted from the months-long negotiations with residents that were deemed necessary to obtain the transfer of the liquor license and use the property as a bar several years ago, the Village just eliminated the agreed upon conditions.   

This despite its proximity to schools and churches, the Village has decided, oh well, now removing all those carefully considered and negotiated conditions is fine — all because Crooked Palm supposedly meets the bare minimum of the Comp Plan. Whatever that is.

Why are they striving for the minimum? What is the minimum? 

To help out a “good neighbor” — who cited only financial underperformance as the justification to renege on the painstakingly negotiated agreements.

Was that all for show? It looks like it.

Many factors must be considered to determine whether to grant major conditional use

conditions — or in this case, remove them (despite there being no process in the Code to do so).

Whether a particular use of property violates the Comp Plan is the bare minimum, the starting point, not the ending point. It is an excuse to hide behind the continued lack of transparency and fair evaluation of what is best for the property, the neighborhood, and the Village, irrespective of who owns it.

It is certainly not a goal to champion and frankly, embarrassing, that “the code is the code” is all the Village had to say to justify such unprecedented actions.

When this establishment is sold, what is our guarantee that the next owner will be a “good neighbor?”

There is none.

My feedback on my prior article regarding the Crooked Palm was 10 to 1 in favor of

maintaining the restrictions in the original deal.

Does anybody care?

I would love to write positive things about the village that we love but the horrible decisions and gamesmanship consistently on display, prevents me from being very positive.  

Elections have consequences.

Tom Raffanello

Reply to: ICA.in.Keys@gmail.com