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Not in our town
By THOMAS C. TOBIN LAYTON -- It takes 20 seconds to motor through this narrow hamlet in the Florida Keys -- past the City Hall that doubles as a two-engine firehouse; past Little Italy, the town's only restaurant; past the western shoreline dotted with lobster buoys. But turn off U.S. 1, the asphalt thread that divides the Gulf of Mexico from the Atlantic Ocean, and you float through the serene residential canals dredged by the town's namesake, the late Del Layton. A prosperous Miami grocer who escaped to this part of Long Key in 1947, he molded it into a community of his friends from the big city then served as mayor for 23 years. It was, he once said, "a place where we could all be happy and not have to worry about the wolf at the door all the time." But the "wolf," it appears, has finally arrived, bringing modern problems that the city's pioneering founder hardly could have imagined. This town with eight streets and no stoplights is fighting the federal government in court, and is paying for it in a way that most cities would find utterly unthinkable -- with a 59 percent increase in the property tax rate. In a lawsuit filed last month, the city challenges the U.S. Border Patrol's plan to locate a holding facility next to City Hall for the hundreds of Cubans and dozens of Haitians who are smuggled into coves along the Keys each year.
The trouble is evident under the twin coconut trees that frame City Hall and drop their stone-like fruit with no warning. There, near the coral monument to Del Layton and his wife, Mary, is a copy of the city budget on the town bulletin board. One-fourth of Layton's operating budget -- $40,000 -- will go to legal expenses in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, up from $6,000 last year. Most of Layton's 186 residents grudgingly approve of the increase. Underscoring their scrappy stand, the city has listed none other than U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as a defendant and issued a summons for him to respond. "This was a decision made by the Border Patrol long before they came to Layton, and they thought because we're such a small town we would just lay down," said Yvonne Harper, 68, a one-time business executive who retired to the city 18 years ago, became a commercial lobster diver and served as vice mayor until her term ended this month. It's the kind of issue that forced city officials twice this year to pull the trucks out of the "fire barn" and fill it with chairs for public hearings. About half the town showed up -- first to hear the Border Patrol's plans, then to set the bulging new tax rate. A short time later, Layton city taxes on a $300,000 home with a $25,000 tax exemption shot to $728, up from $459 last year. "When the citizens realized it was slated to become a detention center, they really got up in arms about it and more or less demanded that the city fight it," Harper said. "They're not too happy about the raise in (property) tax, but they understand that the money has to come from somewhere." Harper's voice rises with the kind of emotion that has pushed Layton to act. "Would you want to live next door or across a canal from a detention facility for processing illegal aliens?" She leans forward to press for an answer. "Would you?"
• • • Tens of thousands of immigrants flocked to South Florida in the 1990s, one reason Miami-Dade County suffers from the worst poverty rate in the nation. Mention immigration, and the world thinks of Miami and its infamous "processing" facility, the Krome Detention Center. But it's the people of the Florida Keys in neighboring Monroe County who see the problem first. Once or twice every week on average, the Border Patrol apprehends a group of Cuban or Haitian immigrants somewhere in the Keys -- five times the pick-up rate in Miami. Nearly 1,300 people came ashore in the Keys during the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1, compared with 117 in Miami. Far from the star-crossed journeys that made Elian Gonzalez a household name, most are routine trips from the northern Cuban coast just 90 miles away. The smugglers, traveling in boats that go 40 to 60 mph, drop off their human cargo on land. Many of the new arrivals know the system well.
A steady increase in smuggling prompted the Border Patrol to step up enforcement in 1999, which led to an "interim" office in Marathon, about 20 minutes south of Layton. The Border Patrol now says it has outgrown that facility and needs a new place to operate. Out of six sites, it settled on leasing a vacant warehouse in the center of what loosely could be called "downtown" Layton. Among the building's attributes is a dock that sits on one of the six 50-foot-wide canals dredged by Del Layton to provide boat access to the town's residents. The tea-colored waterways are filled with snapper, tarpon and shrimp. They are lined with mangroves, buttonwood trees and sea grape plants that Mary Layton once harvested to make jelly. After idling past the homes of Layton residents, the Border Patrol could be out in the Atlantic Ocean in 10 minutes, surveilling the coastline. Layton residents say they support the patrol's mission but are turned off by its approach. In late 2001, the agency initially told city officials they were looking for office space. Not until months later, according to Harper, the former vice mayor, did they acknowledge they also needed holding cells. Also, according to the city, an environmental assessment commissioned by the Justice Department was riddled with errors. The report downplayed the warehouse's proximity to homes, misinterpreted city zoning laws and made Layton's tiny waterways sound more busy than they are. Layton officials dispute the finding that there were no manatees in the city's canals. The report cited a lack of mangroves and seagrass needed for manatee life. Residents say they see manatees all the time. They note that the canals are rich with mangroves and seagrass. The canals are full of signs warning boaters to watch for the mammals. "Whoever did their analysis, I don't think they drove down these canals," Haring said during a boat ride through the city with former City Council member Hal Halenza. "We just don't know where they're coming from and what to believe," said Halenza, a retired Navy officer. "We begin to look at some of their statements as not being fully truthful." Border Patrol officials declined to comment, citing the lawsuit. But public documents make their position clear. The patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- which operate within the U.S. Justice Department -- contend the warehouse would serve primarily as office space for agents while they "process" immigrants. There would be three "holding cells" to "ensure the safety and welfare" of the immigrants for a few hours before their 21/2-hour bus ride to Miami. But the major use would be office space, the agencies say. The federal government insists it has few other options. It cites a Monroe County building moratorium that keeps new construction in the Keys to a bare minimum. It also has invoked the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which "have placed increased emphasis (on) border security and homeland defense." Layton's residents have heard these words but are unconvinced. The federal government, they say, is planning to locate a small prison in a quiet, residential community. "I've been here 22 years and been associated with the place for longer than that," Halenza said. "I think this is the most togetherness I've ever seen in the little town of Layton."
• • • Togetherness is what Del Layton had in mind when he vowed to sell his thriving grocery business in Miami and "drop out" to the Keys. His decision is chronicled in the 1976 book, Pioneer in the Florida Keys: The Life and Times of Del Layton, by James McLendon. "Del was like a lot of men in his position," Mary Layton told McLendon. "He was overworked, and he had spread himself so thin that he felt like a besieged army general most of the time. He would talk for hours about wanting to get away from the phones and the rat race ... but I never thought he meant to give it all up." After visiting the Keys for the first time in 1935, Layton was purchasing land on Long Key by 1945. With his two daughters out of high school and married, he and his wife sold the grocery business and moved to the Keys in 1947. Layton's plan was to relax and live off the income from rental properties in Miami. But he soon found himself in business again, albeit at a less hectic pace. He built a fishing camp and a small home. He dredged canals on some of his land and sold the lots to friends and acquaintances, slowly building a small utopia. "It was an interesting grouping of people because of their largely middle class, WASP backgrounds and the fact that most, like Del, were self-made men," McLendon wrote. "The group was conservatively Democratic, staunchly Protestant (primarily Baptist), God-fearing, hard-working and hard playing (chiefly fishing), good country people." By the 1960s, the community had grown tired of answering to Key West, 68 miles away, which had developed into the seat of political power in Monroe County. In 1963, the residents met at Little Italy and voted 25-0 to incorporate. There was little doubt that the newly minted city would be named after its leading citizen, who also was chosen as the mayor. Del Layton held the post until the year before his death in 1987 at age 81. His wife, Mary, died in 1993. Today, the town that bears their name has a post office, a food store, a restaurant, a small resort, a boat rental business and a Baptist church. City Hall is open on Fridays only. "We met him in the '50s, and what a guy," Halenza said of Del Layton. "He was the type of person you never knew that he had money ... He wasn't looking for publicity or anything. And that's kind of the way we stayed until this Border Patrol thing came along." Layton's relatives say he would have loathed the Border Patrol's proposal but also would have frowned on the idea of raising taxes to sue the government. When the city was incorporated, he had said it should have no local taxes, no alcohol sales and no speed traps. The tax increase is 'ridiculous," said Aileen Howard, one of Layton's two daughters, and the primary keeper of the Layton legacy. "Why don't they buy the property, use it for something here in town rather than spending all that money fighting the Border Patrol? And they still might lose to them in court." Jerry and Marion Palmer, who run the boat rental business in town, oppose the tax increase as well. But they also object to the Border Patrol's presence. "You're talking about people who are strong supporters of our government, strong supporters of what the Border Patrol does," said Jerry Palmer, who quit a salaried job with a medical supply company 20 years ago and hunkered down in Del Layton's quiet paradise. "Nobody's against what they're doing," he said. "It's just where they're putting it." Whatever happens, it probably won't be enough to pry the Palmers away from Layton, where their dock is the stage for a daily drama of sunsets and sea life. The view goes clear down to the sea bottom, where neon-colored parrot fish troll for food, oblivious to a passing shark and the clusters of lobsters who try to stay hidden from view.
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