—Longboat Key wants more of its homes lifted out of harm’s way. On June 22, the Town Commission confronted an awkward truth: the Town’s own zoning code is often punishing the very homeowners trying to do it.
—The discussion, brought as a workshop conversation rather than a vote, asked a deceptively simple question — when a homeowner raises an aging, flood-prone house to meet federal standards, why does the Town’s rulebook so often stand in the way, and what can be done about it?
—The Town wants homes to go up
—Town Manager Howard Tipton set the stakes at the outset. “This is one of the more interesting conversations you’re going to have,” he told commissioners. “We really do want to see more properties elevating. Water levels are continuing to be a concern. But we have certain properties — especially the smallest ones — that create some challenges when it comes to elevation.”
—The case for elevation isn’t theoretical. Planning, Zoning and Building Director Allen Parsons reminded the commission how newer, higher homes fared in the 2024 storms.
“The properties built over the last 20-some-odd years that met the FEMA flood elevation requirements did really well,” Parsons said. “They did not have flooding in the habitable portions of the structures.” Garages and ground-level spaces flooded; the living areas above did not.
“Elevating structures is really one of the best resiliency strategies that can be had for structure safety,” Parsons said. “What we want to avoid is disincentivizing or making things difficult for those electing to elevate their homes. It’s an expensive proposition.”
—What happens when a house goes up 10 feet
—The trouble starts the moment a modest older home rises.
“Post-hurricane, we’ve had a number of properties seeking to elevate their existing structures above or at the FEMA flood elevation requirements,” Parsons explained. “On a number of properties with smaller, constrained lots — depending on when the houses were built — they may not meet the current zoning standards. When those homes are elevated, what was at ground level before is now up in the air 10-plus feet. Access needs to be provided to that.”
—That access — stairs and decks reaching a front door that now sits a story off the ground — is where the conflicts begin.
—The six-inch rule and the lot-coverage trap
—Two provisions do most of the damage: setbacks and lot coverage.
“The setbacks and lot coverage seem to be the significant issue that we have seen often,” Parsons said. The mechanism is a quirk in the definitions. “Our zoning code calls anything constructed on a property above six inches in height a structure. So a deck can become a structure,” he said. “That starts to add to the lot-coverage maximum — which in some cases may already be exceeded.”
—Most single-family districts cap building coverage at roughly 30% of the lot. But many of the small lots where elevation makes the most sense — in the Village, parts of Sleepy Lagoon, and the mobile home park — predate today’s standards and are already non-conforming. “We have lots that are non-conforming,” Parsons said. “We have development on those lots that are non-conforming.” A new stair run or a wider deck can push an already-overbuilt lot further out of compliance.
—Setbacks, daylight plane and rooftop equipment
—The list of pinch points runs longer than coverage alone.
—The Town’s daylight-plane rule — an angle meant to keep tall structures from blocking light to neighbors — can trip up a home that is merely being lifted, not enlarged. “What likely makes more sense is to exempt that kind of structure that’s just being lifted up — not being added onto,” Parsons said.
—Mechanical equipment is another snag. Air conditioners and utility meters must also be raised above the flood elevation. “Those actually have to meet our setback requirements,” Parsons noted — a problem on narrow lots where there is nowhere compliant to put them.
—Since the 2024 hurricanes, the building department has issued about 30 home-elevation permits, “a little over half of those in the mobile home park,” Parsons said — though those were modest lifts of a few feet, not full 10-foot elevations, so access hasn’t yet become an issue there. Still, he added, “you could not have more constrained lots in the town than in our mobile home park.”
—Why a variance isn’t the answer
—The existing escape hatch — a variance from the Zoning Board of Adjustment — is a poor fit, Parsons said, because it demands a hardship finding the situation rarely satisfies cleanly.
“The case that has to be made for a variance is one of hardship and unique circumstances,” he said. “It can be difficult for zoning board of adjustment members to find that what’s being proposed isn’t necessarily the bare minimum” — and the bare minimum, in practice, is usually just a three- or four-foot strip of stairs.
—What staff wants to do
—Parsons floated several tools the Town could study, stressing he was not asking for a decision yet.
—The leading idea is administrative relief — a new, lighter-weight path distinct from a variance. “The terminology could be something different than variance — like an adjustment,” he said, with criteria written into the code and a staff official empowered to approve qualifying requests. Other options on the table: allowing wider, uncovered slatted decks that let rainwater percolate through and therefore wouldn’t count against lot coverage; and permitting lot coverage to exceed the cap when a homeowner adds no new square footage or impervious area.
—Underlying all of it is a single principle. “Wherever possible, we would like to not have the code be a reason why someone would choose not to elevate if they otherwise want to,” Parsons said.
—His recommendation was to hand the problem to the Planning and Zoning Board. “It would be staff’s recommendation to pursue this further with the planning and zoning board, with some workshops to flesh out these issues and bring back recommendations to the commission,” he said, pointing to Fort Myers Beach as a community that has already built an administrative process for elevated homes.
—The legal landmine
—Town Attorney Maggie Mooney delivered the cautionary counterpoint — a reminder that in the current legislative climate, giving rights away can be a one-way door.
“We are in the era of SB 250, or SB 180, which says governments shall not adopt anything more restrictive or burdensome on property owners,” Mooney said. “This is going in the other direction — we’re giving more rights. But I just want you all to appreciate that once you give it, you may not be able to take it back.”
—The risk, she warned, is a future claim under Florida’s property-rights law. “If we try to taketh away, property owners may turn at us and say, ‘You’re taking away a vested right I had — and now, government, you owe me because of the Bert Harris Act,’” she said. For all its clunkiness, she argued, the variance process has one virtue: “It allows you to look at properties on a case-by-case basis. Developing a one-size-fits-all rule has some consequences.”
—One commissioner’s personal fight
—No one on the dais spoke with more direct experience than Commissioner B.J. Bishop, joining remotely, who is rebuilding after losing her own home.
“I wish we had done this about four years ago,” Bishop said. “I think I am the only member of this commission experiencing the issue of trying to construct after losing a home to a hurricane — and the issues our code has created.”
—She ticked through the traps one by one. On pools: “The six inches coming off the ground could well be an eight-inch rim around your pool, and suddenly that pool puts in a setback requirement that makes it almost unfathomable to recreate a pool that existed on the site before.” On daylight plane: when she built a garage a decade ago, “we were penalized because the lift-station right-of-way is on that side of the property — we had to constrain the garage to avoid casting shadow on a piece of property that will never be constructed on.” On wide rights-of-way: “There are parts of Buttonwood Drive over 60 feet in width. Imagine the penalty you absorb with that kind of right-of-way restriction sitting in front of your property.”
—Bishop also signaled where federal policy is heading. “The 50% rule is somewhat laughable, but FEMA is going to stop encouraging people to repair on the ground,” she said. “If your house is badly damaged in a hurricane, it needs to go up.” Homes left at grade, she warned, become projectiles in a major surge, “pushed into the elevated homes next to them.”
—Her conclusion was blunt about the Key’s future. “As much as I hate seeing those neighborhoods become mega-mansion neighborhoods with elevated homes, the reality is that’s probably what Longboat Key in the next 10 to 20 years is going to look like,” she said. “I would urge you to get this to the planning and zoning board so they can create a set of rules people can live with.”
—The neighbors’ side
—Commissioner Sarah Karon pressed the question staff is most likely to hear from the other side of a property line.
“There’s the potential for some folks feeling that a neighbor who elevates and gets an exception for daylight plane is problematic — that they’re losing property value or quality of life,” Karon said. “What do you think about that as a potential problem?”
—Parsons acknowledged the tension. “It’s a challenging environment when someone has experienced flooding, wants to make the investment to be safer, and then runs into regulatory issues,” he said. “There’d be some trade-offs.”
—Karon also flagged the precedent risk — whether rules written for storm-damaged or low-lying homes could be claimed elsewhere on the island — and asked whether elevating homeowners typically bring in fill (generally not, Parsons said, though it is permitted with an engineered drainage plan). Vice Mayor Penny Gold pushed on process: “Are you considering some sort of formal procedure for this, or just a seat-of-your-pants thing?” Any administrative decision, Parsons replied, would be governed by written criteria.
—Residents speak
—Two residents urged the commission to act — and to keep the fix simple.
—Blythe Jeffers, of 652 Lyons Lane, said she’s been personally lobbying builders to go higher. “When I see their signs go up, I call and say, ‘Do you know you can go five more feet up?’ — because we really need to raise the roads,” she said. “And they still come back and say the architect’s plans are at grade.” She urged the Town to streamline the cumbersome variance route — “you had to put an ad in the paper, and it was going to take a couple of months” — and recounted her own utility-meter ordeal: “FP&L required us to build a platform on the side of our house, and boy, it was a big platform.”
—Jay Plager, vice chair of the Planning and Zoning Board speaking in his personal capacity, called the referral obvious. “It seems to me this is a no-brainer,” Plager said. “We ought not to ad-hoc it with variances and special exceptions when we’re really misusing those special provisions, which are designed for special circumstances.” The Town’s usual instinct to force conformity, he argued, doesn’t fit here: “That doesn’t make sense in this context — particularly where there are homeowners willing to come forward with their own money and fix up what they’ve got, if we’ll only let them do it in a sensible way.”
—What’s next
—With no formal recommendation on the table, Mayor Williams asked for direction. “Do we have a consensus to direct planning and zoning to come up with a solution for this very difficult problem?” she asked. The commission agreed, sending the issue to the Planning and Zoning Board to draft options and report back.
