Whitehurst motion backfires as BOCC Reverses Previous Approval of Two Ag Enclave Applications In Surprise Vote

In a contentious Sept. 28 special meeting, County Commissioners unexpectedly voted 3-2 to reverse their decision last month to approve two agricultural enclave applications. 

The Heritage Development Company of Northeast Florida is behind the proposed developments, which would consist of up to 15,158 new homes on 1,166 acres near Interstate 95 and State Road 207.

Even more surprising than the outcome was the breakdown of the vote — lame duck Commissioner Sarah Arnold, who has consistently voted for development, voted to deny the applications, forming a majority along with Commissioners Krista Joseph and Ann Taylor. 

Her decision appeared to take Joseph and Taylor by surprise, with Joseph stating just moments before the vote that there weren’t three votes to deny the application. Arnold did not explain her vote during the meeting, nor did she respond to comment from Jax Today. 

Commission Chair Clay Murphy, a swing vote who has at times voted against development, voted alongside Commissioner Christian Whitehurst to uphold last month’s decision to approve the applications.

Whitehurst was the one who made the motion to reconsider the applications at the Sept. 15 meeting, after the board voted to deny a 4,462-acre PARC Group application and seek an injunction against SB 686, a new state law that has led to a slew of similar agricultural enclave applications in St. Johns County.

Importantly, Whitehurst’s intention seems not to have been reconsidering the commission’s decision on the Heritage developments, but rather to point out alleged inconsistencies in the way commissioners treated the PARC application compared with the Heritage applications

“Denying certification of a state governed process based on who the applicant is or which district the project about will be built in, or which way the political winds happen to be blowing is inviting more and more state interference into our county government process,” Whitehurst warned.

Reading from a written statement at the outset of the meeting, he argued the commission was inviting unwinnable lawsuits that would waste taxpayer dollars and providing lawmakers in Tallahassee justification to further preempt local governments.

However, Whitehurst’s move to reconsider the items appears to have backfired thanks to Arnold’s unexpected vote. 

Immediately after Whitehurst finished reading his statement, Joseph blasted his remarks as a “diatribe” and asked to know who wrote them, to which Whitehurst responded that he wrote “every word” himself. Joseph also moved to censure him for “wasting everyone’s time,” arguing he had called a special meeting with no intention of actually reconsidering the applications.

Taylor took a different approach, using the reconsideration to raise new questions about whether enough of the properties’ perimeters were surrounded by an “urban service area” to satisfy SB 686’s requirements for agricultural enclave certification.

County staff had effectively been treating the county’s Development Area Boundary as a stand-in for an “urban service area,” but Taylor challenged that interpretation. She argued the DAB did not necessarily meet the more specific definition laid out in state law.

“That's not what this statute reads. The statute is very clear,” Taylor said.

Defending the application on behalf of Heritage, attorney Robert Walters pushed back on Taylor’s point about urban service areas and insisted SB 686 did not give county governments the option to reverse approval once it has been granted.

“St. Johns County’s development area is the functional equivalent of the statutorily defined urban service area,” Walters said.

The surprise vote, which prompted an outburst of cheers and applause from attendees, now puts the ball in Heritage’s court. 

The commission is scheduled to consider several more agricultural enclave applications in the coming weeks, even as the county continues to prepare to contest SB 686 in court. Further raising the stakes is Commissioner-elect Martin Pyszczymuka, who will replace Arnold in November, cementing a slow growth majority on the commission.

The next county commission meeting will be held Oct. 6 at 9 a.m.