Project team offers only minor tweaks after commission continued hearing in February
In late February, when it appeared that a majority of the Sarasota County commissioners were going to oppose the application, a representative of the Diocese of Venice asked for — and was granted — a continuance of a hearing involving construction within the county’s Myakka River Protection Zone.
On Dec. 17, as the County Commission met in Venice, the project team members were back, but with only a few changes from the proposal they aired in February.
This time, no commissioner hesitated to voice opposition to the plans, with Commissioner Mark Smith leading the way, followed immediately by new Commissioner Teresa Mast.
On a unanimous vote, the board denied the application for a variance that the project team had emphasized was necessary to control erosion on the grounds of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Retreat Center.
The address of the property is 3989 S. Moon Drive in Venice.
One speaker who protested the project — Rob Patten — apologized at the outset of his remarks for his being “a bit under the weather” that day.
“But I got out of bed,” he added, “because this is too important.”
Patten pointed out that he was the founder of what was the county’s Coastal Zone Management Department and its Natural Resources Department.
“Honestly,” Patten told the commissioners, “I am baffled at this particular request. … It’s like taking a bunker bomb to kill a wasp’s nest.”
In February, he pointed out, the commissioners told the Diocese’s representatives to “come back with a better plan.” Yet, he said, the plan the project team had presented that morning is to “install the same dangerous seawall.” He added, “This is old-school 1950s, ‘Build a seawall’ approach. We’re over that; we’re better than that.”
The February proposal called for the installation of two retaining walls and the realignment of a driveway within the 50-foot River Area Buffer of the Myakka River Protection Zone (MRPZ), as the county staff report explained it. The affected property, comprising 24.9 acres, has a shoreline approximately 2,350 feet in length on the Myakka, which is the only state-designated Wild and Scenic River, as the staff report further noted. The goal with the installation of those walls, the report said, would be to prevent future shoreline erosion along two outer bends of the river adjacent to the property.
Patten stressed that county policies and regulations make it clear that the commission’s goal should be to protect the river.
The staff report for the Dec. 17 hearing explained that the lengths of the two walls would remain the same as they were for the February hearing. The northern retaining wall would be 107 feet long; the southern one, 272 feet. However, the northern wall would be no closer than 25 feet landward from the top of the bank of the Myakka River. The southern retaining wall would stand from about 25 feet to more than 50 feet landward of the bank.
In February, the northern wall was described as being as close as 7 feet landward from the top of the river bank, while the southern wall would have been built from approximately 10.5 feet to greater than 50 feet landward of the top of the bank.
Nonetheless, as county staff documents pointed out, Section 54-1047 of the County Code prohibits new shoreline hardening on the Myakka River. Moreover, as the county staff report added, the County Commission also was tasked with taking into consideration policies in the Comprehensive Plan, which guides growth in the community, in determining whether the variance should be granted. One of those, Environmental Policy 4.5.4, encourages “shoreline softening rather than shoreline hardening practices.”
Further, the staff report pointed out, Section 54-1042 of the County Code, which contains the goals and purposes of the Myakka River Protection Zone, says that the county should “[m]aintain the outstandingly remarkable ecological, fish and wildlife and recreational values that are unique in the State of Florida.”
Two former assistant attorneys with the Office of the County Attorney — county resident Susan Schoettle-Gumm and Ralf Brookes of Cape Coral — told the board members that granting the variance “would be contrary to the public interest,” as Schoettle put it.
Brookes stressed that the Myakka is the first river in the state of Florida to be designed “wild and scenic.”
Schoettle added, “The area we’re talking about is the most vulnerable and critical part of the entire [river protection plan of the County Code].”
Altogether, only four people encouraged the commissioners to approve the variance; three of them testified that they volunteer or work at the retreat.
More than twice that number — 11 — urged the board to deny the variance.
Adamant opposition from the commissioners
After interim commission Chair Joe Neunder closed the hearing, Commissioner Smith announced that he could not support the proposal this time any more than he could in February. Placing the northern seawall farther from the river, he pointed out, “doesn’t help the riverbank.”
He indicated that “one hell of a seawall salesman” must have convinced representatives of the Diocese that seawalls were the answer to the erosion issues that the project team had described.
On the other hand, Smith continued, moving the access road to the retreat “would allow more area for planting, which would be a natural way to protect the [riverbank].”
Commissioner Tom Knight referred to his three, four-year terms as sheriff, saying that he and his staff used “faith-based organizations” and their facilities, such as the retreat, for healing in painful times and for helping the homeless, for examples. “Thank you for what you do to make people better and to bring peace to people,” he told the representatives of the Diocese, including Father Mark Yavarone, who is the leader of the retreat.
Nonetheless, Knight continued, “To me, there’s few little things that are still cherished that haven’t been touched. … Myakka River’s off limits to me.”
Commissioner Mast — who, like Knight, joined the board in November — talked of having visited the retreat, calling it a “lovely little gem.”
However, she added, though she respects private property rights and is “a huge private property rights advocate, I think that we have to collaboratively work together.” Mast added that she wants “our wonderful residents” to be able to enjoy the river long after everyone in the Chambers that day no longer was living.
“In order to be a good neighbor,” Mast said, “I do feel very strongly that you need to stay within the abiding principles and guidelines that are in front of us.”
Commissioner Ron Cutsinger noted that he, like Mast, is a strong property rights advocate. Yet, Cutsinger talked of having visited Sarasota County for the first time with his parents, when he was a child; they were Detroit residents. The Myakka River State Park was their favorite spot, he added. “This is a treasure to be protected at all costs …”
“I wholeheartedly agree with the statements here from my board today,” Neunder said.
Smith ended up making the motion to deny the variance, and Mast seconded it.
‘We didn’t create the erosion’
At the outset of the Diocese’s presentation, Michael Delate, of Q. Grady Minor & Associates of Bonita Springs, first called Father Yavarone, the spiritual leader of the retreat, to the podium to discuss the erosion on the property.
Yavarone explained that the center on the Myakka is available to other organizations and individuals not associated with the Diocese. “People love to come for both group and individual retreats,” he said as he showed the board photos of settings on the property, including a central shrine “where people love to sit and pray …”
“We are right next to the Myakka River,” Yavarone pointed out. After Hurricane Ian struck Fort Myers Beach in the fall of 2022, he continued, and the storm’s rainfall produced widespread flooding — some of which came from rising river levels — “The entire property was submerged …”
The driveway to the site is to the north, as he showed the board members on a map. “The river bends at that point and abuts our entranceway.” A second bend in the river, to the south, also is adjacent to the retreat, he said.
A prayer deck located near the southern river bend has had to be moved twice, he pointed out, because of erosion along the adjacent riverbank. He showed the commissioners a cell phone video of that spot, noting “pieces of earth in the process of breaking off.”
“This is what we’re dealing with every day,” Yavarone added.
When Delate returned to the podium, he told the commissioners, “We’ve worked on various scenarios” to protect the retreat property from further erosion.
Using photos taken by staff of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), Delate talked about the same part of the riverbank that Yavarone had addressed. The “real concern,” Delate said, is that some weather event will result in that part of riverbank falling into the Myakka. Most of the bank appears to be held in place by tree roots, he added.
Further, Delate stressed of the driveway Yavarone had discussed, “This is their only means of access.”
Plans do call for the road to be moved farther from the river, Delate continued, “with native plants that are indigenous to the area” to be planted within the old roadbed.
Wayne Arnold, principal planner with Grady Minor and Associates, stressed, “We didn’t create the erosion. … The retreat center’s been there for decades”; it predates the implementation of the Myakka River Protection Zone regulations.
‘We need to let Nature do her job’
Among the other public speakers during the hearing, Rebecca Zarem, a certified arborist with Tortuga Tree LLC in Myakka City, provided the board members details about the functions of tree roots. She, like other speakers, expressed concern that the Diocese’s plans for the seawalls would result in the deaths of trees along the Myakka’s shoreline.
Lateral roots, which anchor a tree, are shallow, she noted, and they can extend three times the diameter of the crown — or, dripline — of the tree. “Severing one main root,” Zarem stressed, “can cause 15% to 20% of the root system to be lost …” That, in turn, she said, can make a tree unstable. “It is vital to maintain and preserve as much of the tree root system as possible …”
Zarem recommended that an arborist conduct a thorough inspection of the retreat along the paths of the proposed seawalls.
Ultimately, Zarem said, “We need to let Nature do her job, and she’ll take care of us …”
Jono Miller, who served in years past as the co-director of the Environmental Studies Program at New College of Florida, and who also has been the long-time chair of the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Lands Oversight Committee (ESLOC), showed the commissioners what he said was a high-quality aerial photo of the site of the retreat taken on March 13, 1948 by a federal agency. Then he presented a high-quality aerial photo taken 73 years later.
“Your staff and I don’t see evidence of significant erosion on the applicant’s property,” Miller continued. “The erosion problems,” he asserted, “are the result of actions taken by the applicant,” which rules out the granting of the requested variance.
John Lambie, who served for years as the executive director of what was the Florida House Institute, talked of having lived in Sarasota County since October 1946; he grew up on Siesta Key.
When he was a child, Lambie said “huge animals” lived in the waters off the Key, which were as clear as the water of the Bahamas until the Intracoastal Waterway was dug. He noted the “7-foot manta rays and big sharks and millions of small food fish” that disappeared.
“It’s been death by a thousand cuts,” Lambie continued.
Referring to the Diocese’s proposal, Lambie added, “It just seems to me we’re solving a problem we don’t have.” Although Father Yavarone had indicated that the fast movement of the Myakka was exacerbating the riverbank erosion, Lambie maintained, “That river is slow moving.” Because it is wide, he indicated, it cannot move but so fast.
“Three hundred seventy feet of steel [seawall] driven into the soil?” Lambie continued. “Talk about death by a thousand cuts.”