Town emails crack the code of meeting cancellations

Six of eight Code Enforcement Board meetings scheduled so far this year have been canceled, according to the town’s website, longboatkey.org.

After reading about the cancellation of the Aug. 8 meeting, Longboat Key resident John Wild sounded off on Code Enforcement issues in an email to Vice Mayor David Brenner. In his email, he citied a home in the Bayou subdivision that “looks like sin.”

“ … with so many similar situations of unkempt grass and lawns, why no business to conduct?” Wild wrote. “Have we been ‘spooked’ by lawsuits from those who have been cited in the past?”

Planning, Zoning & Building Director Monica Simpson responded to Wild’s email with Code Enforcement statistics from 2005 through 2010 and wrote that the number of cases that come before the board at meetings should be small compared to the overall number of meetings.

“This small number of meetings directly reflects upon the town’s CE staff’s ability to effectively educate the public and bring a property into compliance without extreme measures,” Simpson wrote.

Simpson wrote that Code Enforcement has experienced an increase in cases because of the economy “and the fact that we are dealing with banks in many cases that do not have the sense of urgency or ability to comply … ”

Simpson explained that for most of the past decade, Heidi Micale has been the sole full-time Code Enforcement employee and stated that the town was unable to retain former staffer Ben Bailey because his position was only part-time.

“ … the town does not want to be in the business of training its employees only to lose them to other entities that can offer them full-time employment,” Simpson wrote. “Future budgets will then need to reflect these facts.”

Click here to view a graphic of code enforcement stats