Local development interests haven’t yet given up hope that the state Department of Community Affairs will see fit to change the way it calculates evacuation times for the Florida Keys.That’s a subject better off left in the scrap heap.Last year, the county tried to tell DCA officials, and the Governor, that the actual evacuation time for the Keys was just over 18 hours for permanent residents.They achieved that time by not counting tourists, and by not counting mobile home dwellers, and by not counting the elderly and the infirm. The only folks that should be counted, they said, are the only ones that should be left in the final 24 hours before the first gale-force winds strike the Keys. And that, the state was told, would be only the folks who live here full-time.And, by the way, subtract from that the 25 percent of folks who won’t leave anyway, and gee, we can evacuate the Keys in 18 hours

The state didn’t buy that particular scenario, and told us that we better darn well be ready to evacuate everybody, tourists included, within 24 hours.See, evacuation clearance times are the yardstick used by the state to issue building permits in Monroe County. The lower we can get the clearance time, the more permits we get.Right now, local government officials, and local developers, aren’t happy with the number of permits we get annually. We aren’t sure why. The inventory of homes for sale in the Keys is still at an all-time high. We can’t sell what we have available. Yet, we constantly fight for more.We disguise the fight in terms of affordable housing allocationsIf we get more allocations, our leaders tell Tallahassee, we can build enough affordable units to make a dent in the need for them.

According to the county’s own numbers, we need more than 7,000 allocations just to make up the difference. Our leaders have tried many times to get the state to just hand us 3,000 or 4,000 to start building.This request makes little sense on a number of fronts. First, we have lots of inventory on the market not selling. Second, that would account for more than 35 years worth of permits at the present rate, and we must remember that the current permits cover both market-rate and affordable units.We know we can’t build our way out of the affordable housing crisis, and we know this particular commission doesn’t have near enough political will to earmark all allocations for affordable use for the next three years, let alone the next 35.So this new attempt to revamp the clearance times is, without a doubt in our minds, simply an attempt to get more market-rate permits.The current attempted ruse is to allow us to factor in only 50 percent permanent resident evacuation. That might open up another 300 or 400 permits yearly, which in five years translates to another 1,500 to 2,000 extra homes in the Keys, 80 percent market-rate, and 20 percent affordable under our current rules.

Playing a building permit numbers game with our clearance times is just plain bad policy. Skyrocketing taxes, rising insurance rates, a coming service deficiency with leaner budgets, and a rising crime rate, don’t make Monroe County the most attractive place to live, as is evidenced by the high inventory of homes on the market. And prices still are beyond the common man’s reach.We cannot get everyone out in under 24 hours. We have proven that to ourselves. To allow us to build more homes, with more people that need to be removed in the face of a major hurricane, would be ludicrous, and we know that the state isn’t prone to be ludicrous with us.This latest attempt should be filed where it belongs, in the NO pile.We have enough inventory to allow every single person who wants to buy a home here do so.What we don’t have is a reason to open the flood gates any wider. Our economy can’t stand it, our infrastructure can’t stand it, our ecology can’t stand it, our environment can’t stand it, and most importantly, we don’t have the leadership right now to manage it effectively. All we can urge DCA Secretary Tom Pelham to do with this latest request is to “Just Say NO.”