The St. Johns County Commission meets at nine o’clock on Monday morning to take back two decisions it already made.

Both items on the special meeting agenda are reconsiderations. ENCERT 2026-05, Heritage Development East, is roughly 615.41 acres directly east of Interstate 95 and south of State Road 207. ENCERT 2026-06, Heritage Development West, is roughly 551 acres on the other side of the interstate. Together that is about 1,166 acres, and the board certified all of it on Aug. 19.

Two weeks ago this paper wrote that a certification is not the kind of decision a later board revisits. A certification moves farmland out from under the county’s comprehensive plan and lets it be treated like whatever has already been built around it. The statute is written for land that farms while development closes around it, and what closes around it is what the land may then become. That section was headed what does not come back. Monday is both of them coming back, and it is the only thing on the agenda.

What the board did in August

The agenda carries its own vote history, which is unusual and useful.

On ENCERT 2026-05 a motion to deny certification failed. A motion to approve the same application then carried 3 to 2, with Commissioner Joseph and Commissioner Taylor dissenting. On ENCERT 2026-06 a motion to approve carried 3 to 2, the same two dissenting.

Three votes certified 1,166 acres. Move one of them and neither application has a majority.

Who asked for it back

On Sept. 15, during commissioner comments, Commissioner Whitehurst moved to schedule a special meeting to bring both items back.

Whitehurst is District 1. He was one of the three yes votes in August.

A member of the prevailing side asking for a decision to be reopened is the procedural shape a reconsideration usually takes, and it is also the only reason these 1,166 acres are on any agenda at all. The agenda does not say what changed between Aug. 19 and Sept. 15, and it does not have to.

The meeting where it happened has no record

The motion was made during commissioner comments on Sept. 15. Ten days later the Clerk’s board records index carries two rows for that date, the regular meeting and the 5:01 hearing, and each one offers an agenda and nothing else. No minutes document. No video for either meeting.

Minutes are approved at the next regular meeting and the next regular meeting is Oct. 6, so the minutes are not late. The video needs no motion and no second.

So the moment that produced Monday’s meeting is, for now, a sentence in a later agenda. The board’s own summary of it is the only public account there is.

What a certification actually does

Agricultural enclave certification runs under sections 163.3162 and 163.3164 of the Florida Statutes. It is a finding about land that farms and is surrounded by development, and the effect of the finding is that the surrounded land may be treated like what surrounds it.

That is why the vote is worth this much attention and why a 3 to 2 is worth counting twice. A rezoning is a decision about what may be built. A certification is a decision about which rulebook applies, and the county’s comprehensive plan is the book it moves the land out of.

Both items are District 3, which is Commissioner Murphy’s, and he chairs the board.

Who will be at the microphone

The agenda names Robert Walters, attorney representative for Heritage Development, as presenter on both items, and Abrielle Genest, senior planner, as the staff member on both.

Joy Andrews is county administrator and Rich Komando is county attorney.

If you are going

Monday, Sept. 28, 9 a.m., County Auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View. Two items, both reconsiderations, nothing else on the agenda.

The same room has the Amendment 3 town hall at 6:30 on Tuesday evening, which is a different subject and the same 1,166 acres of tax base.