Photo by Garrett Hubbard

A pelican perches on a dead red mangrove on a small key off Caxambas Pass near Marco Island this past Tuesday. None of the red mangroves on this key, as with many islands for wading birds, are regrowing vegetation nearly a year after Hurricane Wilma caused damage.

Submitted City Code Enforcement

The Indian Mound, among the oldest Indian settlements in North America, located in Key Marco as it looks today. Chief of Code Enforcement Eric Wardle says it now looks like a country club. Eileen Ward of Greensward said it looks closer to the way it should with the removal of non-native plants.

Submitted

The Indian Mound in Key Marco as it looked in 2006.

Collier Couunty Appraiser

Aerial of Key Marco.The Key Marco development, which is sandwiched between the heart of the City of Marco Island and the village of Goodland. Key Marco was incorporated into the Marco city limits about seven years ago.

MARCO ISLAND — Is Marco Island inhabited by a group of mangrove marauders or are Key Marco community leaders and their landscape contractor simply misunderstood?

The Marco Island Code Enforcement Board will soon be deciding whether the Key Marco Community Association and Greensward of Marco, a landscaping company, have committed egregious violations against protected habitat or if there has been misinterpretation of how best to protect Key Marco, also known as Horrs Island.

Key Marco, about 550 acres located southwest of Goodland, is the largest piece of native habitat on Marco Island. As such, several agencies are responsible for protecting it. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the City of Marco Island, the Key Marco Homeowners’ Association and the Key Marco Community Development District are bound by law to ensure that native Florida plants and animal species in Key Marco are preserved and protected.

City code enforcement has found violations by the homeowners’ association and the CDD over the last two years. Those violations include several incidences of trimming or removing protected species of plants.

“This is the biggest case I’ve ever done as far as exhibits,” said Chief of Code Enforcement Eric Wardle.

Previous violations in 2007 were handled with the signing of a settlement agreement between the association and the city without going to the Code Enforcement Board. The agreement set out that any future violations would be considered a repeat offense.

The current case, with violations discovered on multiple occasions, but peaking in December 2008, is more egregious than the first, Wardle said.

“It looks like a country club now,” he said of the protected land.

Native plants are not to be cut or removed from Key Marco, said city environmental specialist Nancy Richie.

There are 15 native habitat parks within Key Marco, including the Indian Mound, an archaeological site. Another archaeological site, Capt. Horr’s house, is also within the community.

There are 174 acres of which development is permitted and currently there are 22 homes, although 134 single family lots are available for development.

The Island landscaping company, Greensward, was hired by the association and applied for city permits to remove exotics and weeds.

Code enforcement officials say they discovered much more removed than the permits allowed, including state protected black mangroves and several other native plant species.

Eileen Ward, owner of Greensward, who writes a gardening column for the Marco Eagle, recently wrote about the need to protect mangroves.

“I’m just disappointed,” said Richie.

Ward’s first response to inquiry on the city case: “I’m just disappointed, Nancy and I were good friends.”

Neither would elaborate on how their once shared pleasantries turned icy, but the development of the case is the main culprit.

Wardle said the settlement agreement allows fines of $500 per tree and plant cut down.

“I don’t even know how to count them there were so many,” he said.

So, instead of per occurrence fines, city employees are recommending to the Code Board May 6 that fines be $10,000 for each case, one against Greensward and one against the Key Marco Community Association.

Ward and association board members have been sparring against city employees and with at least two homeowners, Glenn Hanke and Dawn Henderson.

Hanke and Henderson have expressed disgust to code officers in the amount of vegetation removed illegally by the association.

Ward and the association board, say the city is intimidating them and allowing the two property owners to use the code enforcement officers as attack dogs for their personal vendettas.

“Where else does one of the two code enforcement officers in the city have the chief of police as a husband,” said Casey Weidenmiller, an attorney from Salvatori & Wood, who is representing both the association and Greensward in their individual cases.

Ward said that Code Enforcement Officer Liz Carr used the police department through her husband, Marco Island Police Chief Thom Carr, to intimidate her and the association on Oct. 17, by calling for police backup during the investigation of a landscape code violation.

Neither of the Carrs commented on the allegation.

Gerry Tsandoulas, president of the Key Marco Community Association said Liz Carr came in with the escort of three police cruisers.

“It is obvious that it was a planned and orchestrated action aimed at nothing less than intimidation,” Tsandoulas said.

The city had no record of a such an occurrence.

“That absolutely did not happen,” Wardle said.

He added that a police officer did stop by and talk to the code officers while they were at Key Marco, but the police were not called by them to assist and did not to his knowledge get involved in their code case violation in any manner.

City Manager Steve Thompson looked into the allegations of harassment and police intimidation and said he found no evidence of it.

“You have people passionate about the issue,” Thompson said.

“When it comes to enforcing the laws we have to do what we have to do,” he added.

Thompson said the association has been interested in making the property more marketable, however Horr’s Island was established with protected native parks decades ago and that cannot be changed.

This is Ward’s first code violation and she says that the violations have been so minor in this case, that they require no more than a discussion.

“This is very misleading,” Ward said of the before and after pictures of the Indian Mound entered as an exhibit in the case by code officers.

She added that the removed plants were non-natives and weeds.

“They’re making a federal case out of this ... I have been the one to see the mistakes and call them into code enforcement,” Ward said.

Ward is supervising the association’s landscape crew and said that at least two of the native plants removed in her absence were reported by her to code enforcement as soon as she saw them.

Richie and Wardle said they expected counter-allegations against them. It’s common for violators to truly believe they didn’t do anything wrong and get upset about the allegations.

As far as the allegation that Ward removed understory plants that Richie said serve as habitat and food for protected turtles, rare snails and other animal and insect species, Ward says it’s just not the case.

“I didn’t remove understory. I’ve removed nuisance vines, weeds and non-native plants,” Ward said.

She said that Richie doesn’t understand the work Greensward is doing out there. “She’s not a horticulturist,” Ward said.

The Indian Mound is of significance, all parties agree, because it is considered the oldest Indian settlement in North America.

As for the removal of state protected mangroves in the wetlands, Key Marco and Greensward, are not in trouble — this time.

“During a site visit on April 15, 2009, DEP personnel observed alteration of two black mangroves to a height of less than six-feet,” wrote Jon Iglehart, DEP director of district management, to Tsandoulas, April 21.

Iglehart advised the association that the action violated Florida Statutes and would normally incur penalties, costs and mitigation, but that DEP would not pursue formal enforcement and the letter would serve as a warning.

Ward said one of the mangroves was cut down because it was dead and another was trimmed because of Brazilian pepper, an exotic species, overrunning the tree.

Tsandoulas said much of the work the association wants to do is for wild fire protection, which Key Marco is susceptible to.

April 1, after the association notified the city that employees’ presence at Key Marco would be trespass on private property, a wild fire started at the gated community.

Marco Fire Rescue Department responded as usual and the fire burned about 1 1/2 acres.

“We’re trapped like rats. There is only one way in and one way out of Key Marco. A prescribed burn, which the city doesn’t want us to do, would remove the fuel load that Eileen (Ward) was removing by hand,” Tsandoulas said.

The Code Enforcement Board will be reviewing alleged violations by Greensward and the Key Marco Community Association of native plant removal at the Indian Mound and at another native habitat park near the entrance to Key Marco at a special-called meeting, 3 p.m. May 6, in the community room, 51 Bald Eagle Drive.

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