Preventing problems, rather than simply reacting to complaints, has placed the Village of Key Biscayne into a 96% proactive rate, among the highest in the state, when it comes to code compliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall numbers have held pretty steady in the number of violations,\u201d said Building, Zoning and Planning Director Jeremy Calleros Gauger, while recently updating Village Council on his department’s progress.<\/p>\n
Calleros Gauger said the department is tracking a new statistic — the number of red tags issued at a construction site.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Village of Key Biscayne Building, Zoning and Planning Department Director\/Village Planner, Jeremy Calleros Gauger.<\/p>\n
Photo by Jessica Drouet<\/p>\n
“The red tag says you have to stop work; it’s the most effective tool when fines can be seen as a cost of doing business,” Calleros Gauger said. “What’s $250 a day when they are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to keep the work going? But, stopping the work is the last resort.”<\/p>\n
Red tags are usually issued for work being done without permits, or unsafe or non-compliant construction.<\/p>\n
Asked by Mayor Joe Rasco if he’s seen any slowdown in construction in the Village, Calleros Gauger replied: “We’ve seen a decrease in the rate of increase. We’re still getting more (applications) in than we’re finalizing (closing out construction sites).”<\/p>\n
He said the average is about a month, from a submission of an application to receiving an actual permit when work can begin.<\/p>\n
A public dashboard is being put in place to show the number of permits issued and finalized and information on addresses.<\/p>\n
Also, the department has been collecting Business Tax Receipts this year of $63,000 with another $17,000 pending.<\/p>\n
In addition, compliance officers periodically patrol on weekends to make sure construction noise and sea turtle lighting compliance is being followed.<\/p>\n
Village Manager Steve Williamson was impressed by the work done at the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, where a $100 million renovation took place in seven months before a recent soft opening. A grand opening is slated for January.<\/p>\n
“I still don’t believe they got it done in seven months, but they did,” Williamson said. “It’s exciting; good news for them, for the community and for our team working with them. They were working 24\/7. It was impressive to see them working just as hard at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night.”<\/p>\n
He thanked Calleros Gauger for working with Gencom’s development team and the Key Biscayne Fire Department for making sure all rules were closely followed during the renovation work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preventing problems, rather than simply reacting to complaints, has placed the Village of Key Biscayne into a 96%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5683,19418,52709,126,123,125,124,15624,52711,52710],"class_list":["post-100449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-code","tag-code-compliance","tag-compliance","tag-key-biscayne","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-policies","tag-proactivity","tag-village-of-key-biscayne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}