Decision NOT based on Law

Here is a special Saturday edition. We are going to talk about the Pine Ridge Ruling that just came down. If you want to read it in full, check out yesterday's post. I have posted the full decision on that page.

This is a full smack down of the BOCC and their determination on a 3-2 vote to approve the Pine Ridge project. Commissioners Bays, Davis and Kinnard voted to approve this. The court just told them they were wrong and did not correctly apply the law.

That is HUGE.

First of all, this does not happen often. Normally, these public hearings come and go and once they are done, they are done. This one was different because there was an intervenor. The intervenor made the appeal to the courts. Most of these hearings do not have an intervenor. Most of the hearings are not appealed. Cardinal Farms did an appeal of sorts when they were denied, but that is the only one I can think of. Likely because most projects are approved and without an intervenor, who is going to appeal? Tuscany Ranch comes to mind. More on that in a bit.

This appeal is called a petition for a writ of certiorari.

From Groves Local Government Law:

It is a legal mechanism that allows a Florida circuit court to review the decision of a lower tribunal, like a zoning or code enforcement board. A petition for writ of certiorari asks the court to review what already happened to determine whether the decision followed the law and respected your rights.

In land use and code enforcement cases, this process allows you to argue that a government decision was:

Procedurally flawed;

Unsupported by evidence; or

A violation of your due process rights.

Basically... the petitioner (Pine Ridge in this case) appeals the BOCC ruling and writes a brief about why the decision was incorrect. The other parties (Dicks and the County) can write their responses on why the decision was correct. The court then looks over the evidence, the discussion, etc and makes a determination as to the merits of the appeal.

It is important to note that the court does not go back through the evidence and rehash the case. They can make rulings about the laws being applied to the decision, the competent and substantial evidence, and so on... but this is NOT a new argument in front of the court, like a trial or anything like that. No new evidence is provided. The court looks at the record.

Let's look at what the court decided.

The court uses a 3 pronged test to make its determination.

And this part is very important. Just misapplying the law does not suffice to grant certiorari relief.

Here is what the court is deciding here.

Here is what the court ruled.

1) The court's decision is that a Development of Regional Impact (DRI) can not be amended by a Planned Unit Development (PUD) process.

This is going to be a big deal.

Just about every big hearing recently has been a DRI amendment of some sort... Tuscany Ranch... Citrus Hills (more commercial space)...

Betz Farm is coming soon and that is very similar to this case. It is a DRI that they are amending by the PUD process. How can the PDC/BOCC approve Betz after this ruling just came down saying this is not the proper way to amend a DRI?

This decision basically says that the process for all of those was flawed and they should not have been approved.

2) Commissioner Bays is specifically mention in the ruling. It states that due to her questions, she and the board were aware of Section 380.06(7) of the Florida Statutes...

Basically... he says she and the board acknowledged the law in questioning but Bays, Kinnard and Davis did not apply the law to the decision they made.

Ouch.

Basically.. Bays, Davis and Kinnard did not follow the law and applied their own reasoning to approving the project, not a decision that is based on the Land Development Code or Comprehensive Plan.

3) The court found that the board's deliberation did not really discuss the legal rationale to support approval... including Bays' tie-breaking vote.

Double ouch. Again, the judge smacks them a bit for not talking about legal principles in their decision making process.

This is a HORRIBLE decision for the board. The court basically told them they did not apply the standards of the law.

Surely we all knew this because they denied it in 2024 (election year) and then the 3 flipped their vote in 2025 after the election. However, the court can not look at that as part of this, but we can.

The ONLY reason the board approved this was because they were safe from being voted out. And we heard the reasons why some of them flipped... which were not grounded in law as the judge has stated.

I expect this is not the end. Dicks/Batsel will likely appeal this and the court ruling may get overturned (it happens). But for now, this is a horrible look and the 3 commissioners that voted to approve this just got schooled.

I have heard rumblings that some of the BOCC members would support an appeal as well to attempt to get this overturned... but that will require more tax dollars to be spent and the board a few weeks ago stated they wanted to stop spending money on lawsuits.

I can't see that going over very well.

And remember... the PDC voted to approve this as well, both in 2023 and 2024.

While she did not vote on the 2024 project, Stacey Worthington did vote in 2023 to approve it. It was largely the same project as the BOCC voted on in 2025 and the court would have applied the same ruling to that case.

Here is the video from Stacey Worthington's opinion in 2023. She also mentioned (as did the BOCC) that the golf course was no longer in business. THAT is not following the LDC and the Comp Plan as the judge has ruled. She was wrong in this as well.

Here is Kinnard talking about it never going to be a golf course again just before he made the motion to approve it.

And here is Davis talking about giving the community a chance to work it out and since they didn't, she's voting to approve it.

Bays never gave her reason why she voted to approve it due to the audience grumbling after she said she would vote to approve it.

None of those reasons were based on law the court decided.

Now let's see if they decide to appeal this decision and what the courts do with that and let's see if this comes up during the PDC meeting on Thursday!