MANATEE COUNTY – A proposed project at Kingfish Boat Ramp won’t be happening and county leaders are placing the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of city officials in Holmes Beach.
County staff members, with County Administrator Scott Hopes adding his voice to the group, said they are prepared to cancel grant funding of $4,500,000 from the Gulf Coast Consortium for planned renovations at the boat ramp, including paving, adding launch lanes, bathrooms, new dock facilities and other changes.
Two of the proposed changes that garnered the most public attention were the planned removal of dozens of trees along with the removal of a popular tree-shaded picnic area and the elimination of parking spaces to serve as a stormwater retention area until the Anna Maria Bridge is one day replaced. Though it’s designed, construction on a new bridge is not yet funded through the Florida Department of Transportation.
During a Sept. 13 county commission meeting, Hopes and other members of staff said that the reason the grant funding was being canceled is that a permit for construction from the city could not be obtained in time to complete construction before the November 2023 expiration of a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) permit. As that permit had already been granted multiple extensions by the department, staff members said it couldn’t be extended again. In addition to the outstanding construction permit from the city, other permits also were mentioned as still needed for the project, including one from Manatee County.
Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said he would like to see if there’s some way to recoup the funds that the county has already spent on the project in staff time, engineering fees and other costs. He suggested suing the city, but was cautioned against that action by the county attorney, who stated that the permit application hadn’t been denied by city leaders.
In an Aug. 25 email to Hopes, Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth said that the permit application was progressing through the city’s approval process for site plan changes. She said she was told by city staff that the changes planned for the boat ramp required site plan approval by the city commission to comply with Manatee County codes under the annexation agreement for the boat ramp. Titsworth said that city staff notified the county’s representative for the project, Michael D’Angelo, of the site plan approval requirement on June 7 and 22. She added that building department staff was notified by the county’s project engineer on July 6 that the Kingfish project was put on hold. With no further communication from county representatives, Titsworth said she instructed city staff to continue with the internal site plan review, which was almost complete as of Aug. 25.
She added that she believes some of the delay with the project was due to county leadership signing a lease for the Kingfish property with the Florida Department of Transportation instead of FDEP.
In a Sept. 15 email to The Sun, Titsworth said that city leaders only had two points
of contention concerning the Kingfish project, the removal of Australian pine trees that provide shade and nesting habitats for birds along with the picnic area and the elimination of parking spaces on the east side of the boat ramp to turn that area into a stormwater retention area.
“This in no way held up any permitting process as Florida statutes do not give us that authority,” she said.
In a Sept. 14 email to city and county commissioners, Titsworth said, “Holmes Beach does not have the authority to withhold permitting. This had nothing to do with additional parking. The hold up was that the planning administrator made the county aware that the annexation agreement required Holmes Beach to administer the permit using the county’s own rules which required site plan approval. I am disheartened by the continued misinformation and deviation from the truth. These improvements also required a new lease between the county and DEP as the original lease was done in error as the ownership of the land was not FDOT. Unfortunately, the county could not complete this in the time constraints of the grant. This is no fault of the city.”
