Homeless shelter site approved after three years of debate

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

A showdown over dueling plans for the city-owned property on Stock Island that formerly housed the Easter Seals facility was settled by Key West City Commissioners Feb. 3 when a bare majority voted to build a homeless shelter at the location.

 

Commissioners had been arguing for almost three years over what to put on the site, with half advocating an affordable housing development and the other half arguing it should be the new home for the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS). Commissioner Clayton Lopez was the swing vote, changing his Oct. 7 vote against putting KOTS on the property and giving Commissioners Teri Johnston, Jimmy Weekley and Mayor Craig Cates the needed go-ahead vote.

 

“If we do approve this tonight, then begins a long process at every step forward or backward… [where] there is public input,” Lopez asked City Attorney Shawn Smith. Assured by Smith that there are multiple development processes that have to be approved – with each allowing public comment – before the project can begin, Lopez relented. “We and the citizens actually get a chance to weigh in on each one of those things and possibly help guide whatever ends up being there,” he confirmed with Smith.

 

But the 4-3 vote was soundly booed by about 25 members of the Key West Golf Club Homeowners Association who attended the commissioners’ meeting urging them not to approve the College Road location as the new home for KOTS.

 

“You’re opening a Pandora’s Box,” said George Maffei, a homeowner in the golf club association, a group of 390 homeowners who live in a development that abuts the Easter Seals property.

 

Maffei and the other homeowners were concerned that the city has not fully created a development plan for KOTS, including hours of operation and security measures. Ironically, KOTS has to be moved as part of a legal settlement with another near-by homeowners’ association, which sued the city over the current location next to Sunset Marina.

 

The golf club homeowners in attendance all wore turquoise baseball caps imprinted with “Say NO to City Property.” And Russ Vickers, president of the golf club homeowners association, said the homeless men waiting along College Road for KOTS to open each day are becoming younger and “more aggressive.”

“We have experienced such incidents as homeless people squatting under our porches and on the porches of vacated homes, using our bathroom facilities and loitering on our private streets and properties,” he told commissioners.

 

“This is not a NIMBY [not in my backyard] issue for those of us opposing the poor location plan for Easter Seals. This is an ‘are we adequately prepared to do this’ issue,” said Bill Buzzi, another golf club homeowner.

 

Other speakers, as well as Commissioner Tony Yaniz, questioned whether city staff had fully investigated other possible sites for the overnight shelter, a charge strongly denied by City Manager Jim Scholl. Distance, financing, logistics and property ownership eliminated all of the other proposed sites, he said.

 

Commissioner Mark Rossi asked Vickers point-blank whether his homeowners association was planning to sue the city if the Easter Seals site was approved.

 

Vickers said the association was talking to legal counsel “about our rights” but stopped short of saying it would sue. However, City Attorney Shawn Smith assured commissioners that if the development project followed all city zoning and planning ordinances, the legal risk was minimal.

 

“Your risk of losing any litigation is small. Follow your rules and you’ll be fine,” he said.

 

The Sunset Marina lawsuit that is forcing the city to move KOTS was won when a judge ruled the city ignored its own ordinances when it build the shelter on a site next to the Monroe County Sheriff’s building.

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