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Highlands Today

Code Enforcement Cites Avon Park Landowner

NUMEROUS VIOLATIONS INCLUDING BUILDING WITHOUT A PERMIT

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: June 13, 2008

AVON PARK — A 15-foot tall illegally built building, which was illegally used for citrus-related business in a residential neighborhood just north of this city, will probably have to be torn down or moved as the result of a ruling by the Highlands County Planning and Zoning Commission.

Complaints from homeowners in the neighborhood just north of the city limits, off County Road 17-A, led to Highlands County Code Enforcement citing the owner for numerous violations.

The most serious citations were building the building without a building permit, putting an industrial building in a residential neighborhood, and running a business operation in a residentially zoned tract of homes.

The landowner, Baltazar Perez, lives on Abbot Street in Avon Park, several miles away from the the industrial building he had built on North Berwyn Avenue. Perez applied for a variance so that he could keep the industrial building in the residential neighborhood.

On Wednesday, after hearing both the owner, several neighborhood residents, and county staff, the seven-member Planning and Zoning Commission, known as "the P&Z," voted unanimously to deny Perez's variance requests.

As a result, Perez was given 90 days from Wednesday to either tear down or remove the building or bring it into compliance with the building and zoning codes.

The building was used to houses and/or repair citrus picking equipment, including "goats," according to code enforcement's citations.

A "goat" is a vehicle used to collect citrus in the fields from the pickers, transport the load of citrus down the sand trails between the rows of citrus trees to a paved road, and then load the citrus onto semitrailers.

"I think the biggest issue was that he failed to get a building permit," said Lew Carter, chairman of the P&Z. "Essentially, he blatantly built this building without any permits."

Carter said that if Perez had, as everybody putting up a building is supposed to do, applied for a building permit, he would have been told that he could not build that type of building or use it for commercial purposes in a residential neighborhood.

"He was running a mechanic repair business outside in a residential area, and you just can't do that," Carter said.

Perez and Rick Whidden, who represented Perez, spoke in favor of Perez getting a variance allowing the building to stay up.

Three people who live in that neighborhood spoke against it, and county code enforcement and zoning officials unanimously recommended that the variance request be denied.

"We made a recommendation to deny it (variance) because it was bad for the neighborhood," said Jim Polatty, director of the county's development services department.

"It was bad for the neighborhood, it was bad for the quality of life of people living in that neighborhood, and it was bad for the property values of the surrounding neighbors," Polatty said.

Polatty and Carter said Perez apparently stopped storing or working on "goats" and other citrus harvesting equipment in the 15-high structure some time after he received his first warnings of numerous violations from a code enforcement officer on Aug. 17, 2007.

In that code enforcement warning notice, one of the warnings advised Perez: "Can not run business out of this home."

Around the time the warning notice was issued, Carter said, Perez had all the equipment removed. But the building is still obviously an business/industrial building in a residential neighborhood, was built without a building permit, and violates numerous building and zoning regulations, Carter said.

Besides the recommendations of county code and zoning officials, another factor in the P&Z's 7-0 decision was homeowners speaking out against this building at the P&Z hearing, Polatty said.

"There were enough people who spoke against it, and that is always an import ant factor," he said.
In all code enforcement and variance request cases, Polatty added, "We are worried not only about the property rights of people who apply for a variance, we also are concerned about the property rights and property values of the surrounding property owners."

Perez has 90 days to either remove or tear down the building unless he can bring into compliance with all building code and zoning code regulations. According to Polatty, removing it would be difficult due to the size and type of the structure, and bringing it into compliance with all regulations would also be difficult.

The zoning code states that any type of shed building on a residential lot must be shorter than the home on the lot. The building in question is much higher than any surrounding home.

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