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A visit produces lists of problem properties, many tied to prominent residents. City officials disagree with some criticisms.
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 27, 2002
ST. PETE BEACH -- The federal government visited this summer to check on the city's compliance with coastal building rules. Regulators were unhappy with what they found:
-- Contractors who provide the city with low-ball construction estimates so their clients won't have to elevate their homes.
-- Condominiums that allow more improvements on the ground floor than are allowed.
-- Appraisals that overvalue aging coastal homes, allowing homeowners to spend more on remodeling without having to elevate.
City officials say some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's criticisms are unrealistic, given the workload of the building department and the level of enforcement FEMA demands. They are also suspicious of why the agency visited the city, noting that FEMA officials who were previously unfamiliar with St. Pete Beach arrived in June with a list of suspect properties.
The two FEMA officials who toured St. Pete Beach this summer outlined their concerns in a 10-page letter delivered to City Hall this week. Both of the Atlanta-based FEMA officials, Brad Loar, chief of the Community Mitigation Programs Branch, and Prasad Inmula, an engineer with the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Division, are on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment.
Dean Jarvis, a contractor who teaches a course on flood plain regulations at St. Petersburg College, said the contractors who follow FEMA's rules get hurt in the marketplace when cities like St. Pete Beach go easy with the rules.
"There's just some major abuses on St. Pete Beach," Jarvis said. "It's not fair to the other homeowners. It's not fair to the contractors who play by the rules. It's the cheaters that are making all the money."
The city's building official, Mike Knotek, said FEMA officials were so strict while they were in town that they expected him to cite someone with an elevated home for having a refrigerator on the ground floor.
FEMA guidelines for new construction do not allow living space on the lowest floor, and the officials spotted the infraction because the homeowner's garage door was open.
"I'm not going to cite someone for something like that," Knotek said. "It's going to cause a big argument for nothing."
City Manager Mike Bonfield said he wants to know what prompted FEMA's visit and whether the agency plans to visit other beach cities in Pinellas County.
St. Pete Beach participates in FEMA's Community Rating System, a program designed to encourage better management of flood-prone areas. FEMA estimates that St. Pete Beach's participation in the program has saved property owners citywide more than $322,000 in flood insurance premiums each year since 1992. That's more than $46 per policy per year.
But the Community Rating System is for communities that manage their flood plains more strictly than federal guidelines mandate. In some instances stated in the letter from FEMA, St. Pete Beach has not even met minimum federal guidelines.
FEMA provided the city with a list of problem properties, including many connected with prominent St. Pete Beach residents. Condominiums developed by a former mayor are on the list, as are other condos developed by the contractor who built St. Pete Beach's new City Hall.
FEMA had several questions about a property remodeled in Pass-a-Grille this year by Nancy Markoe, a gallery owner and City Commission-appointed chairwoman of the Future of the City Committee.
Here are some of the specific problems FEMA found:
-- Contractors who underestimate how much their clients will spend on a remodeling project.
FEMA's "50 percent rule" forbids homeowners from spending more than 50 percent of the value of their structure to upgrade it. The rule is particularly restrictive in a community such as St. Pete Beach, where land is often exponentially more expensive than the house that occupies it.
A 60-year-old home might be valued at $50,000, for example, but its location on the water could give it a market value of $500,000. Still, the property owner would be allowed to spend only $25,000 to remodel it.
To get around the rule, FEMA suggests, contractors are turning in low estimates for their work, and the city is not challenging them.
"You go through St. Pete Beach, and you see a structure that's completely elevated where the neighbor had to spend the money to go up, and next to it the neighboring structure didn't have to go up," Jarvis said. "It cheats those residents."
-- Structures that are built more than 2 feet lower than allowed under FEMA rules.
The federal agency listed 43 buildings that are believed to have been built too low. FEMA has asked city staffers to visit all of the properties to evaluate their compliance.
-- Incorrect calculations for a structure's market value. St. Pete Beach's procedure for calculating the value, FEMA says in its report, allowed several projects to get around elevation requirements.
FEMA listed 127 structures that exceeded allowable improvements because the city incorrectly calculated their market value.
-- Inadequacies in the city's flood damage prevention ordinance. FEMA noted several changes that must be made to the ordinance.