Tequesta Notes
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Sunday, August 15, 2021
Update on the
Council's Resolution on
Tequesta Park
Regrettably, last Thursday the Council voted four to one to move forward with the mayor's plan for Tequesta Park by approving the concept at issue in the resolution, which was an athletic complex with tournament fields directed to sports tourism. Laurie Brandon was the only vote in opposition and we thank her for that. That was the only right way to vote here for the residents on a proposal so defective both in terms of substance and in terms of process. Nevertheless, the Council will now send the mayor's concept to the state and, unbelievably, ask for $8 million from the state of Florida to build it. The massive on-going maintenance costs, to be assumed by the village of Tequesta.
At the Council meeting Thursday evening, not a single resident stood up in support of the mayor's concept.
In contrast, there were numerous residents voicing their opposition to the mayor's concept. And this opposition was explicitly directed to the concept generally—sports tourism based on tournament athletic fields (see the mayor's proposal)—and also to any incarnation of that concept.
Residents do not want Tequesta to be a sports tourism destination. They do not want tournament fields at Tequesta Park. They do not want more parking lots and pavement there. They do not want the village saddled with the massive maintenance costs and nuisances to nearby neighborhoods connected with this kind of athletic facility and the transience of the sports tourism model. They do not want the destruction of imperiled natural habitat that would result from this project in a park with a conservation interest protected under the lease and Florida statutes. They do not want the additional poisons that would be applied to the land in massive quantities and which would infiltrate into the aquifer and also run into the river and intra-coastal.
Residents also oppose the offensive process under which this project is being foisted on the community: rushed, with no consultation of residents on the development of the concept, with inadequate public notice, and during the summer vacation. (See Plan Review (31 July 2021) and Plan Review (7 August 2021).) And to all the previous procedural defects you can now add these: the resolution vote Thursday was buried in an over-loaded agenda and the agenda notice had not provided residents with current and accurate information on the mayor's plan.
Indeed, the mayor attempted Thursday evening to deflect criticisms of his concept by suggesting that the vote concerned a new drawing that had never before been released publicly, in total contempt of any basic notion of due process and reasonable notice. But the criticisms were based in the only publicly available information and to the extent there was new information, it was the responsibility of the Council to make that information available with reasonable notice prior to the vote.
The mayor and the village manager admitted that they had posted incomplete information in the agenda. They posted an application to the state appropriations process and when the elements of that document were criticized by residents, the mayor's response was that the document in the agenda was just a mock up and the village manager chimed in to say he didn't even know if it was the right form. To be clear, nothing in the agenda identified the document with this uncertainty. So here we have a Council noticing a critical resolution vote with misleading and incomplete information.
The proponents of the mayor's concept seem not to understand that due process is not merely to satisfy the personal convenience of their special interests or a mechanical bureaucratic check-the-box. It is, rather, a substantive requirement necessary to secure the legitimacy of corporate municipal action. The kinds of procedural tactics that we have seen are especially unfortunate in a small community like Tequesta where there is no good reason for local governance not to be completely straightforward and transparent. The process for the mayor's proposal here has been neither; there was no consultation with residents in developing the concept; and there is no excuse for the gamesmanship that has tainted this proposal and this resolution vote. A contrived deadline is not an excuse.
The repeated violations of due process explode the legitimacy of the resolution vote. And further, by providing misleading information, the Council made a mockery of the Council and of the vote. If the Council will conduct business in this fashion there is no need for public hearings. They mean nothing. The Council should just meet privately to foist arbitrary decisions on the community.
Likewise for the concept at issue in the resolution up for vote. The mayor and Mr Prince tried to suggest to residents that there was not a particular concept at issue. That was obviously wrong because the resolution that the Council voted on was directed to a particular concept, even if it was the general concept of an athletic complex with tournament fields to support sports tourism. So this deflection was a deception: the Council is indeed sending a particular concept to the state. That is what the Council voted on and that is what residents have consistently opposed.
It is worth noting, however, that the fact that the mayor and Mr Prince suggested there was not a particular concept at issue in their resolution vote, should really mean that their vote was not an expression of approval for the particular concept they are sending to the state. State legislators should not credit this resolution as a meaningful expression of support for the concept they receive from the village of Tequesta in its request for millions of dollars. Certainly, the resolution is not an expression of popular support.
In regard to the vote itself, the attempted deflection was egregious because it sought to mask from the public what exactly the Council was voting on for the resolution.
To state legislators: We ask the appropriations committee to kill this request from the village of Tequesta for $8 million for an athletic complex in Tequesta Park. The plan was rushed, thoughtless, and ill-conceived. It is a plan utterly devoid of any resident consultation and of any kind of basic due diligence or inquiry into what residents want. (See Plan Review (31 July 2021) and Plan Review (7 August 2021).) And it is no defense for the plan proponents to hide behind the appended qualifying language in the resolution suggesting that consultation with residents and due diligence might happen after-the-fact. This suggested backwards process precludes meaningful consideration of any other viewpoints and concepts for Tequesta Park. The proposal does not deserve one cent from the state of Florida. Florida has many desperately more urgent needs.
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