EDITOR'S NOTE: Ellen Sugarman is a nationally known investigative reporter. She has given KWTN permission to serialize her new book about environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys.
In Chapter One, officials from County Code Enforcement, the Sheriff's Office and the Florida Marine Patrol— off duty and in civilian clothes, but armed— pay an unofficial visit to property owners on Little Knockemdown Key. A few days later, the owners were cited, ordering them to tear down unpermitted structures— even though many of those structures had been there prior to the law requiring permitting. In Chapter Two, Sugarman used Fantasy Fest as a backdrop to introduce us to her cast of characters. In Chapter Three, an investigative reporter hears about an alleged conspiracy by multiple government agencies to take over private property in the Keys and, in Chapter 4, she starts to look into it. Chapter 5: Officials "raid" Little Torch Key. Chapter 6: Government officials charge a Sugarloaf resident with environmental infractions and, in Chapter 7, they take his house. To read previous chapters of The Willing Seller, see our website— www.kwtn.com.
Late afternoon, week two of Kate's investigation of what she now thought of as the `Landgrab' story. She knew a lot more now, but still had a long way to go. Where her work would lead her— its eventual parameters, whether it was a TV story or print one, what effect it would have— were still unknowns. But, she was certain of one thing. She had something here and it was an important story.
She sat in the kitchen poring over papers, Mick Jagger and company on the airwaves, a nearly cold mug of coffee and an opened box of chocolate chip cookies by her side. She'd consumed nearly as much caffeine and sugar as documents by now and she was enjoying the buzz.
She finished reading another set of minutes and put them face down on the stack she was done with, noting, with some elation, that the latter pile was now just a little higher than the former. She had completed all three years' agendas a few days earlier and was making good progress with the minutes.
Tedious as it had been, it helped a lot to read the agendas first because her growing familiarity with the material really stepped up the pace. She knew a lot of the properties and their owners' names by now, could remember many of the scenarios as well. And some patterns were beginning to emerge.
For one thing, she was certain she'd found clear proof of selective enforcement conforming to the P-2000 projects. That was illegal. Citations were clumped together. People with properties in the four project areas were definitely being cited more often than those with properties in other locations, who were mainly being left alone. This in itself was illegal.
Kate sighed, put down her pen for a moment, and stretched, punching the air with her fists and rolling her shoulders to work out the kinks. Then she let her hands fall limply to her sides and shook them vigorously. A groan escaped her lips as she sat up again and reached for the next legal sized three-page set of minutes. This one was dated July 9, 1995.
The first page was taken up by three properties that weren't on any of the conservation projects, so Kate skipped over them quickly. She was halfway down the second page when something caught her eye. A name. Warner. Number four. It rang a bell. Donald and Kitty Warner? Where had she come across them before? Then she remembered. The Warners kept cropping up here and there in the last few months' minutes. Their property was on Big Pine Key and Big Pine was the heart of the Key Deer Preserve.
Although she couldn't put her finger on it, there was something odd about the Warner case, she had a feeling about it. So she decided to take another look.
She grabbed for the pad marked `Key Deer Preserve,' began to leaf through it until she found the page she'd assigned to the agenda. Beneath it she'd made four other entries, all for the same citation but taken from different minutes. May 12th and 23rd, June 15, June 26. The dates that the Warners had appeared before the Code Enforcement Board.
Kate went through the pile of minutes she'd read and pulled each of those dates. Starting with May 12th, she scanned the minutes until she came to the name `Warner.'
The format of the minutes was simple. An item was listed by citation number and date of citation, name of the property owner, a formal plat book description of the property. Followed by a paragraph describing the code enforcement statutes that had been breached, with a shorthand explanation of what was involved. The entry she was looking at began:
#05 DBL 3. March 3, 1995. Donald Warner and Kitty Warner. Parcel No. 54, Lots 35 and 36, 21-481900-038, Old Island Road section, southeast corner Big Pine Key.
It went on to list the violations, which included clearing brush without a permit, dumping, disturbance of native plants. The plants weren't listed. Kate would have to get a copy of the actual citation to find them.
Next came the actual proceedings of the meeting. What the Warners said, what Code Enforcement staff and board members said. Any decisions, like fines or mitigation plans, stuff like that. In the case of the Warners, there'd been some limited discussion between them and Ricky Pindar. He talked about the seriousness of the violation, using buzzwords she'd seen repeated over and over in the minutes she'd read. Kate could see from their questions that the Warners simply wanted to do whatever was necessary to bring their property into compliance and were asking for clear direction from the Board and Mr. Pinder. There wasn't the slightest tinge of ill will or contention on their part. No solutions had been reached by the time the Warners were told to step down and the next property owners were called. The item had been tabled— this wasn't unusual— until two meetings hence to give the Warners time to get some expert help with the problem, obtain after-the-fact permits and pay the fine. They were directed to report back at the May 23rd Board Meeting.
Kate turned her attention to the minutes of May 23rd. For some reason, the Warners had been put late on the agenda— number 32— and hadn't gotten to report anything. The meeting was long and when it came time for them, they were rescheduled for June 15th.
On June 15th, a similar snafu occurred. This time the Warners showed some exasperation when they were instructed to come back June 26. Donald Warner wanted it entered in the minutes that they'd gone to the expense of bringing with them a private biologist, one Randy Clement, and a landscaper. He vowed to return with his attorney in tow.
On June 26, the Warners were placed second to the last on the agenda and the same thing happened. This was when Kitty Warner blew up, stating that they were leaving their Keys' home for three months like they usually did in the summer, and complaining that all this time had passed and why hadn't they been allowed to prove their efforts at compliance which they'd undergone in good faith?
And why wouldn't Mr. Pindar or anyone on his staff come out to their property to see what they'd done, either? She presented a sheaf of letters she'd written to Pindar, a couple of documents provided by her paid consultants, plus a handwritten list of phone calls she'd made that hadn't been returned.
One of the board members, Pete Kerr, sounding disinterested or possibly weary— it had been a long meeting— told Mrs. Warner Mr. Pindar was a very busy man and directed staff to look into this. Meantime they had to do some re-scheduling. As to the Warner's problems with this, if the Board complied with every property owner's vacation schedule they might as well shut down half the year. (This had elicited laughter from his fellow Board members.) Mr. Kerr also made it clear that he frowned on what he called "all this foot-dragging," refusing to blame Code Enforcement for the delays. That was it. The Warners were dismissed and the Board went on to the next and final item.
Then came the mistake— or maybe it wasn't. The Warners were back on the agenda for the July 9th meeting, the very time they had told the Board they'd be away. This time the case was heard, without them or their representatives present. The result was a $250-a-day fine that would keep on rolling until it was proved to the Board's satisfaction that they were finally in compliance. As one of the reasons for imposing the fine, Pinder mentioned all the time that had passed since the citation with no satisfaction from the property owners. Without knowing the history, it was easy to buy that argument, make the Warners look like scofflaws.
Kate did a little mental arithmetic. $250 a day, that was $7,500 a month! In three months, that would be nearly $23,000 owing to the county. Lots on Big Pine weren't expensive. She wondered what the value of the Warner's property was and started thinking about foreclosure.
She tore off a piece of paper and made a note to herself to find out how property owners were notified of daily fines. There must be some formal process like certified mail, in cases where fines were imposed.
Kate pushed her chair back and sat there thinking. The minutes presented a record that wasn't nearly as straightforward and bureaucratic as one would expect. Anyone could see the Warners had been confused as they made their way through the labyrinth of the Code Enforcement meetings. Like the child's game, Blind Man's Bluff, where they spin you around until you're too dizzy to know which way to turn— the Warners were `it' and they didn't know which way to turn.
Kate felt a little bit like Don and Kitty must have, frustrated and angry. Why, indeed, hadn't they been given more clear guidance and a timely opportunity to resolve their violations? Why had the department ignored their efforts to comply? And what about all these delays? Where they as innocent as they looked? Simple bureaucratic red tape? Kate didn't think so. Something subtle and egregious was going on here. But, what? she wondered. And to what end? Was what happened to the Warners just a glitch, an anomaly? Or was it a carefully executed strategy?
And what about motivation? Was this just a legitimate, if excessive, push on the part of the agency to clean up the environmentally sensitive areas? It could be. Or to increase revenue for the county through these fines? Or was it, as Kate was beginning to suspect, something else? Something shadowy?
She had a feeling the answers lay buried in the Code Enforcement minutes. All she had to do was go over them carefully, looking for cases where property owners with holdings in preserve areas were being jerked around. Especially cases with large daily accruing fines.
Thinking that she'd need a new system and something to record it in, she went into her office— a small room off the living room where she had her computer, fax line and files— and got a reporter's notebook, a long narrow pad designed to fit easily into a purse or a pocket. This would stand out from the legal tablets she'd been using thus far. She returned to the kitchen, dropped the notebook on the table, then went over and opened the refrigerator. Her blood sugar was getting low and she could feel a headache coming on. She really had to eat something, but it was hard to tear herself away.
To her relief, on the top shelf she found a take-out box with a still edible portion of seafood pasta. She nuked the contents, opened a bottle of Perrier, and ate standing at the counter. They she refilled her mug with fresh coffee and went back to work.
With a small frisson of excitement, she opened the reporter's notebook to the first page and wrote "LANDGRAB/EGREGIOUS CASES, CODE ENFORCEMENT MEETINGS." Turning to the next page, she wrote Warner at the top and copied most of her notes from the Key Deer tablet, adding a few more things— stuff that was said at the meetings, which board member tabled the item, anything that might turn out to be useful.
Kate had abandoned her original plan to read all the minutes straight through in chronological order in favor of her new line of inquiry. She was focusing now on the four tablets where she'd organized citations from the agendas according to the P-2000 projects. They would be her guide.
Starting with the Key Deer tablet, she began leafing through it looking for property owners who'd come before the Board a number of times, yet failed to resolve their situation.
the first case she found that fit the profile was that of a John Aldrich. Mr. Aldrich had appeared at five meetings in three months. Kate had already read and notated these minutes, but she went back a pulled them anyway to get a closer look. While she revisited the Aldrich case, she entered it in the reporter's notebook just as she had with the Warners.
She developed a little shorthand for this. A double asterisk before the date of a Board meting meant a property owner had brought an attorney with him, maybe that would turn out to be a factor. (In the Warner's case, they had legal representation twice; both meetings had been rescheduled at the request of staff.) She underlined an entry in red if the meeting had occurred without the property owner present, making sure to note any action taken by the board, particularly the levying of a fine.
She continued going through the Key Deer cases until she came to another name, Brownell, with a long list of dates under it. She pulled the various minutes, read the sections, involving Brownell, and entered it in the reporter's notebook.
In another hour she'd gotten most of the way through the Key Deer pages and found three other property owners who'd taken similarly convoluted trips before the Code Enforcement Board. They were new cases to her, so she slogged through slowly, reading each item, making notes. It was going to be a long tedious process and she was beginning to flag; her eyes were watering from all the fine print.
To be continued next week.
Willing Seller is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed are imaginary. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental.
Ellen Sugarman's writing has appeared in publications such as Newsday, Time, Vogue, Ms., Penthouse, New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun Times, and the Miami Herald's Tropic Magazine.
As a freelance television producer, she has worked with ABC, Fox News, A&E and the BBC. Several years ago, she produced a segment on environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys for ABC's 20/20. Although scheduled to run several times, the show was ultimately killed, reportedly because of pressure from the Nature Conservancy.
The program did air in the Keys, however, after activist Peter Anderson was able to obtain a videotape of the show and paid for time to run it on local cable television.
Among a number of shocking revelations, the program documents that State Attorney Kirk Zuelch, while a member of the local Nature Conservancy board, offered to drop charges against property owners accused of environmental crimes if they would sell or give their land to the Nature Conservancy. Zuelch quickly resigned from the Nature Conservancy board after he was interviewed by 20/20.
Anderson encouraged viewers to tape the show when it ran on local TV. If you want to see this show, KWTN has a couple of loaner copies. Info: 292-2108.