We had a meeting today with our lawyer about the legal strategy we are going to use at the county commission meeting. There is not much to it really. Our lawyer will speak and outline the whole issue and why the board should grant the waiver. Next, someone from the engineering firm that engineered the road originally will give a short speech on why the road was designed the way it was and how other options are simply not feasible. Then, the guy that helped us get all of the environmental permits will stand up and explain why the project is impossible because of all of the wetland issues that will arise. Our future house builder will also be there and will say something if he feels it is necessary. I doubt that we will say anything. The board didn't listen to us last time, so we're not going to bother this time. Besides, be this time our response is 'You had your chance, now talk to our lawyer'. I think our chances are good. At least I keep telling myself that. We are on...

OK. We had our meeting with the commissioner and the county attorney and some assorted other reps. It started out like many other meetings that we have had. They say we can't have what we want, we say why not, they come up with some lame reason, we tell them why it won't work. And round and round we go. After the obligatory county "beating of the dead horse" that has happened at all of our meetings so far, we finally started to get some where. Aparently we have been on some great quest where everyone knows the rules but you. The county board will not approve the waiver because it might set a precedent in some alternate reality. The thing is that the denial of the waiver request was also part of the process. Now that we have crossed the great void that is the county commission we finally know the last clue that will lead us to the holy grail. The final part of our journey is to hire an attorney and have him argue that we have exhausted all of our options and now the c...

We got a big fat denial to our request. It is not quite the end of the world. Yet. There are still some things that we can try. We are going to be meeting with our commissioner again along with the county attorney and some others to try and convince them of the uniqueness of our situation. I must say that our county government could be run better by a bunch of high school kids. A great deal of time is spent on recognizing individuals and groups at the beginning of the meeting. That is all fine but when they came to the part where actual laws were passed or money was allocated they breezed through those without much discussion at all. Our issue is fairly complicated and this is how it went and we spend a great deal of time writing out what actually went on in the past year(one post down). We are reasonably certain that some of the commissioners did not read it even though it was made part of the official meeting agenda. Two of the commissioners didn't ask any questions, ours asked...

Here is the full transcript of our much revised argument to the county commissioners for why they should grant our waiver request. To the Brevard County Board of Commissioners: In February of 2006, we purchased a 7.59 acre piece of property on north Merritt Island . Since then we have been working within the county and state regulations with the intent to build our dream house on that property. We have spent over a year and $17,322.28 toward that goal. We are requesting a waiver to the Brevard County Code of Ordinances Section 62-102 (b), which states that in order to obtain a building permit, the property must abut a county maintained road. Our first priority was to determine how best to use the property due to the existence of wetlands over the majority of it. We have been working with an environmental company for the past year to get a wetland permit to allow us to build on the property. This was finally accomplished at the end of Ma...

The meeting with our county commissioner didn’t go as well as we had hoped. To be fair though I think our expectations were a little high. He did know and understand many of the county ordinances we are having trouble with. That made things a little easier. It would have been that much harder to explain what our problem was and also have to explain the all of the specific ordinances to him. He seemed to look at everything very objectively and didn’t make any promises that he might not be able to keep. On Monday he has a meeting with most of the department heads to go over next weeks county board meeting agenda. At that time he will bring up our problem and see if anyone can come up with some sort of solution. I sure hope so. I’m not ready to give up on this, but it is getting harder and harder to be optimistic.

This morning we are going to meet with our county commissioner about our problems with our building permit. Our hope is that once he hears everything that we have been through he will be inclined to vote for giving us a waiver for the road dilemma. So far no one else in the county government has been so inclined. The difference between him and all of the others that we have talked to is that he is in an elected position. He should be more inclined to help us out, especially since we have tried all of the other possible options. Jen made a good presentation last night and we have all kinds of documentation and pictures to support our position. Even if he is on our side we will still need at least three commissioners to vote our way, but one will be a good start. Keep your fingers crossed that he is a reasonable person.

Our builder came by yesterday with some papers that we had to sign and get notarized so that our building permit package would be complete. He also showed us the completed set of plans that were to be turned to the county. It's very exciting. The whole package was turned in today and eventually accepted. There are still some big things that we need to get worked out, but it is nice to see something moving in the right direction. It actually seems like we might be able to build after all.

It looks like the road we have been trying to build might not happen. It is a setback for sure, but it might also be a blessing in disguise. The next course of action is to petition the county to vacate the right of way. This would probably cost a whole lot less than improving the road to the county standards. I really think that this might happen. There are only 5 properties that abut the right of way and I think there is only one property that is an total unknown. Hopefully it will be easy to get his approval as long as he is guaranteed access to his property. Keep your fingers crossed. For in depth updates go to the "Tortoise Hollow" link in my Blog Roll. Here is a picture from Google Earth of our new property.