| Coletta pledges buyout won't cut
off residents' access to their homes
March 12, 2003 By Eric Staats Naples Daily News Naples, Florida To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@naplesnews.com Collier Commissioner Jim Coletta pledged Tuesday that he would not let an ongoing state buyout of Southern Golden Gate Estates cut off rural residents' access to their homes. "We're going to be in negotiations with the state of Florida forever," Coletta said. "This is far from over." Coletta's comments came as the commissioners voted 4-1, with Coletta dissenting, to put on hold a 1999 lawsuit that asks a judge to declare the public's right to use the Miller Boulevard extension, a dirt road that connects the Estates to U.S. 41 East. The vote to put the lawsuit on hold comes after the governor and Cabinet voted in February to pursue eminent domain to, in effect, buy out the public's claim on the extension. The state already owns most of the land over which the road runs. The dirt road is a piece of a larger effort by the state to take over hundreds of miles of county roads in the Estates to make way for a massive project to restore natural water flows to the mostly abandoned subdivision east of Collier Boulevard and south of Interstate 75. Talk of taking over county roads in the Estates prompted pleas from residents of neighboring North Belle Meade to preserve their access to their homes. "Make sure you don't leave us out there stranded," said Emilio Baez, who owns almost 100 acres in North Belle Meade. Resident Justo "Joe" Morera told Coletta that he wanted to make sure he remembered his earlier promise to defend residents' access against the state buyout. It provoked an angry reaction from Coletta. "Don't tell me I'm selling you short because I'm not," he said. Coletta told Morera that "there's no sense" in moving forward with the 1999 lawsuit with the eminent domain question hanging over it, but he eventually voted against putting the lawsuit on hold. Assistant County Attorney Michael Pettit told commissioners it would be a waste of county funds to proceed with the 1999 lawsuit. The dispute over the Miller Boulevard extension foreshadows a larger coming fight over county roads in the Estates. Pettit told commissioners he's not convinced the state has the legal authority to exercise eminent domain over the county roads. The state might not even go that route at first. Pettit said he expects the state first will ask the county to donate the roads to the restoration effort rather than pursue eminent domain. Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David Struhs said last month in Naples that he thought it was "ludicrous" for the county to expect to be paid for the roads. He said the county already is benefiting from the multimillion-dollar restoration project because it will improve the environment in its back yard and protect the county's underground drinking water supply. County Manager Jim Mudd has said the county would use proceeds from the sale of county roads in the Estates to meet its road-building budget shortfall in other parts of the county. Allied with the county on the question of putting the 1999 lawsuit on hold is the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, which owns a parcel across which the county is seeking access rights. The tribe has not sold that parcel nor another 800-acre parcel in another part of the Estates to the state. The governor and Cabinet are set to vote Thursday in Tallahassee on whether to pursue eminent domain against the tribe, an issue that could test the law's recognition of the tribe as a sovereign nation. At Tuesday's meeting, Coletta repeated a suggestion he made in a Feb. 18 memo to Mudd and County Attorney David Weigel that the county sell its roads in the Estates to the Miccosukees. The sale would be conditioned upon the tribe giving the public "reasonable access at all times without charge" and that "whenever possible" any roads that are removed for the restoration still would be accessible during the dry season. Attorney Kelly Brooks, representing the Miccosukees at Tuesday's meeting, shrugged off Coletta's suggestion that the tribe buy the roads, something that would put the state and the tribe on a collision course over the roads and over the land the tribe already owns. "Then we'll have a really big fight on our hands," she said. |