ISLAMORADA PARTS WAYS WITH DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR DAN GULIZIO

JIM McCARTHY jim@keysweekly.com

Islamorada’s director of development services and planning, Dan Gulizio, was let go on May 30 following more than a year of employment with the village.

Village Manager Ted Yates told the Keys Weekly that Gulizio will be transitioning away from the village.

Gulizio was hired in November 2021 by then-village manager Greg Oravec following the departure of then-planning director Ty Harris in July 2021. Gulizio, who has more than 25 years of planning and land management experience, began with the village on Dec. 1, 2021.

He came from New York, where he served as the deputy director of planning for Suffolk County. He was also the commissioner of planning, environment and land management for the Town of Brookhaven, New York, commissioner of planning and development for the Town of Islip, New York, and executive director of Peconic Baykeeper, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving ground and surface water resources.

During his time in the village, Gulizio dug into the village’s land development regulations and comprehensive plan— ultimately leading to several presentations that highlighted a number of inconsistencies and gaps within the language. Gulizio ultimately crafted a list of items the council could address to fix the village’s complicated code, which ranged from smaller “housekeeping” items to larger overhauls.

By mid-April, the Islamorada Vil- lage Council had 11 proposed changes to the village code before them during a workshop meeting. Items addressed permits that allow establishments to sell alcoholic beverages, establishing a permanent mobile food vendor program with guidelines outlined in a two-year pilot program that ended in March 2022, defining terms such as buildable area and lot area and limiting outdoor storage and display in a tourist commercial district, to name a few.

A special meeting held on April 11 saw brief discussion on the series of code fixes. Vice Mayor Sharon Mahoney expressed concern that residents would be limited to speak for three minutes on the 11 proposed code fixes. The items were pushed to May to allow for more discussion.

Two days later, at its April 13 meeting, the dais agreed to move some less controversial code fixes ahead to a first reading at a future meeting. Ordinances pertaining to those proposed fixes were discussed during a May 18 meeting of the village council.

Items included the alcoholic beverage use permits, which repeals a section but keeps certain protections; adding single-family residences as a permitted use in multifamily zones; incorporating boat dealership as a major conditional use in tourist commercial zoning district; standardizing notice provisions for the development review process; allowing a variance for lot area administratively, provided the request is limited to a maximum of 5% or 250 feet of the minimum required lot area and changes related to outdoor seating areas.

But before Gulizio explained the proposed changes on May 18, he acknowledged severe challenges working in the village of Islamorada. He said he was accused of arbitrarily selecting things and plucking them out of thin air. He was also questioned for bringing forth a proposed resolution during the April 13 meeting that sought the services of Cyriacks Environmental Consulting Services in order to gather data as it relates to floor area ratio (FAR) in residential areas in Islamorada.

Gulizio told the dais that the village has FAR standards for commercial districts but not for residential districts. In his comments, Gulizio noted the changes in the village’s character due to development decisions that allow someone to take a 1,500- square-foot home and construct a 12,000-squarefoot home with a 7-foot setback.

“Floor area ratio is the single best tool to measure intensity of individual lot,” he said. “This doesn’t provide recommendations in terms of what the FAR ought to be. It’s just giving us basic information, the building blocks of

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