Mary Katherine Coughlin is an 84-year-old Irish lass, who doesn't like to be called a lawbreaker and has taken her cause to the streets. She's lived on Stock Island close to 30 years and still remembers when you could hear the barking from the dog-racing track.
"There were only four people when I lived out here in the early 1970s," she said recently from her tiny home on the ocean side of the island. Mary Katherine remembers when much of Stock Island back then was about as attractive as a barren white marl mud flat.
Monroe County remembers Mary Katherine also . . . as a code violator, who has until November to tear down her 24-year-old 6-foot fence or face hundreds of dollars in fines, plus the destruction of the fence.
In response, Coughlin has walked the mean, narrow and sometimes flooded streets of her neighborhood with a petition. She has already compiled 265 signatures in a short time. County Commissioner Dixie Spehar is calling her "a heroine, who is acting not only out of concern for herself, but championing her neighbors' cause as well."
That old rocking chair has never gotten to Mary Katherine, thanks to county code enforcers, as well as the steady changes her little idyllic community has undergone over the years.
Mary's husband, her mainstay, passed away in 1976, and her once quiet, isolated little slice of Heaven now finds itself squeezed in like a cheap pack of sardines. Aging trailers, double-wides and ramshackle houses are pressed up against each other, abutted by a few of the slightly higher-priced cinderblock homes.
Welcome to what may be a quintessential example of the county's answer to affordable housing, complete with slum landlords commanding, in many instances, $1,300-a-month for dingy double-wides, whose only redeeming virtues are their proximity to the jobs of the Key West service and hospitality industries.
This, along with the "Dogpatch" trailer area of Big Coppitt, exposes a Lower Keys' underbelly of homeless people and transient rentals— often full of drunks, druggies and welfare cases. There's late-night dealing in contraband, voodoo and gang symbols splashed around, along with overworked mothers, whose undersupervised, unkempt juveniles run the streets all hours, along with their equally unsupervised, unleashed, unfenced rottweilers and pit bulls.
A large Hispanic population adds to the cultural melange of basically economically depressed (or some would say, oppressed) people trying to survive any way they can.
Enter Mary Katherine, who has always had a fence surrounding her property. First it was wire, she said. Then, after her husband died, a 6-foot wood fence. Hurricane Georges in 1998, "messed it up," as she says.
As they were rebuilding, they noticed the big dogs would jump over her fence into her yard at the lower levels. "I'm afraid of those rottweilers," she said. She is also afraid of the homeless people who could pass through her yard on the way to their "homes" in the mangroves.
At 5-foot-5, Mary likes her attractively weathered 6-foot fence. It affords her the protection and privacy a 4-foot fence would not. "I've actually shrunk down to 5-foot-1," she jokes.
She said her fence is important to her sense of security in a world of chaos and constant community changes. "I used to be scared to go out my door," she said.
However, even before the county "got her Irish up," which sent her on her petition quest through the neighborhoods, Mary Katherine was feisty. At 84, she still works once a week separating boxes in the back of a local store. And every Friday, she can be found with three other elderly ladies playing Yahtzie.
She is also active in the community's valiant attempts to better itself. A member of the Stock Island Business and Homeowners Association, she shares the enthusiasm and accomplishments of the clean-ups and removal of derelict cars, boat trailers and open-container violators.
But she wonders whether the previous county commission's insistence that code enforcement must act when anonymous callers squeal on their neighbors. Coughlin said it sounds more like kids than adults.
"Some of the people I talked to wouldn't sign the petition because no one had turned them in yet for having too-tall fences and they were afraid of retaliation from the county," she said. She remembered that former mayor Wilhelmina Harvey was a big opponent of the anonymous-tipper program.
And like the former commissioner, Dixie Spehar, Harvey's former aide and now Coughlin's commissioner, shares that view. "I strongly endorse the removal of that program," Spehar said. "We have enough frustrations in life without turning neighbor against neighbor in some vindictive vendetta."
Rhonda Norman is head of the county's Code Enforcement and has a personal stake in the outcome of the Coughlin case. "I came across 20 violations when I first started working on Stock Island as an inspector, including Mrs. Coughlin's," she said recently. She also said that her department does not solely rely on anonymous tips. "We are proactive, too," she said.
But the county's "pro-activeness" curiously hasn't extended to many of the more affluent areas of Stock Island. A number of fences on the eastern side of the island exceed 6 feet, including the home of a major Stock Island landowner. And a quick drive through the opulent bayside subdivision of Key Haven turned up at least 65 homes with wood and cement fences of 6 feet or higher.
But these homeowners have expensive lawyers on retainer and Coughlin and most of her elderly friends are on a nominal or fixed income. And if there are any retainers at all, there're probably the kind that hold dental appliances.
"No favoritism," insists Norman, but she does note, "You will see a lot of inconsistencies." She also notes that with Commissioner Spehar's intervention, they have "revisited the fence ordinance and the planning commission is also looking at another revision."
Spehar, on the other hand, when informed how little the affluent communities are being targeted, acknowledged, "It does seem like the poorer communities are the victims."
Meanwhile, Mary Katherine has been hauled in front of Code Enforcement's special master to answer for her crime. "I went to Marathon about a month ago and was given until November to either cut it (the fence) down to size or he will fine me," she said.
Spehar said Mary Katherine is actually one of two elderly ladies she's trying to help. "They both have the same problem. They've been reported (to code enforcement) for having 6-foot fences."
She said she's talked to Tim McGarry of the county's Growth Management to consider doing a zoning overlay "because each Key is different."
According to Spehar, the area where the two ladies live is unique. "The lots are so small and close and there's a need for privacy and security."
Another problem for the octogenarian and others is that they thought they could repair their fences without a permit because it was damaged by the hurricane. Of course, if they had gotten a permit, their needed security would not have been satisfied by looking over a 4-foot fence.
The commissioner said the county has to make some allowances for the fact that there are many heights of fences throughout the county. "The entire community is supporting Mary Katherine's attempt," she said. "Tim McGarry said he would work on it. It will (ultimately) require board action. But I feel very strongly we are going to be able to help Mary Katherine," she said.