Two outlets report the 4,462-acre N Palm Valley enclave denied 3-2

UPDATE, Oct. 1, 2026. The Oct. 6 agenda is posted and carries no written order for this denial, no enclave item at all, and not the Sept. 28 minutes. The 90-day certification on inaction remains in the statute unchanged and expires Jan. 1, 2028. See Three enclave denials, and not one written order on Tuesday’s agenda.

The 4,462-acre agricultural enclave application on North Palm Valley Road came back to the St. Johns County commission Tuesday morning with fourteen days left on a 90-day statutory clock. News4JAX and Jacksonville Today both report that the board denied it by a 3-2 vote, and both name the same three commissioners on the prevailing side. No county record of Tuesday’s decision has been posted. The tally in this story is theirs.

What the board had in front of it was regular agenda item 2, printed on the agenda as “Public Hearing * Continued Board Consideration - ENCERT 2026-01 N Palm Valley Rd.” It is not a rezoning and it is not a comprehensive plan amendment. It is an application for agricultural enclave certification under sections 163.3162 and 163.3164 of the Florida Statutes, which asks a board to find that land already meets a definition the Legislature wrote. The agenda describes the request as approximately 4,462 acres north of Nocatee Parkway, west of the Intracoastal Waterway and east of the Duval County line. The Sept. 4 Planning Division Report lists the applicant as Ellen Avery-Smith, Esq., of Rogers Towers P.A., and the owner as BR4700 LLC. Both outlets attribute the project to the PARC Group and the Davis family. Neither name appears on the agenda or in that report.

Staff wrote the board two motions and printed both on the agenda item sheet. One approves, on a finding of competent substantial evidence that the parcels satisfy the definition in s. 163.3164(4) and the certification requirements of s. 163.3162(4)(a). The other denies, on a finding that they do not, and it carries a clause the approval motion has no need for:

“and direct the Office of the County Attorney to prepare the final written order, including Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law supporting the Board’s determination, as required by Section 163.3162(4), Florida Statutes.”

That clause starts the next clock. Nothing in a posted county record shows it has been reached.

What the county has posted, and what it has not

The Clerk’s agendas and minutes index lists both Sept. 15 meetings with a working link to the agenda and with “Approved Minutes” and “Watch on GovTV” as plain unlinked text, and the Sept. 1 and Sept. 3 minutes are not linked there either, although Tuesday’s own consent item 21 was a motion to approve them. The index prints the reason above the table: “The minutes of the Board of County Commissioners meetings are posted after Board approval.” The county’s video library, which carries commission meetings back through the year, ends its 2026 commission list at Sept. 3, and it already holds the Ponte Vedra Zoning and Adjustment Board meeting of Sept. 14. The county’s news page carries nothing on the decision.

So the motion, the disposition and the tally all rest on two outlets tonight. The next county document that would settle them is the draft of Tuesday’s minutes, which on the Clerk’s own practice reaches the public as consent backup before it is approved, and the next consent agenda is Oct. 6.

The tally the record does carry is from Sept. 1

The draft Sept. 1 minutes ran as backup to Tuesday’s consent item 21. They print three roll calls, two of them on this application and one on the law behind it.

Both motions on the application failed, and the Sept. 15 agenda records the result in one sentence: “No further action was taken on the application.” A failed motion to approve is not a denial. It leaves the application standing where it stood and leaves the 90 days running, and that difference is the one this statute is built on. On Sept. 3, under Commissioners’ Reports at the special budget meeting, the minutes record a request for board consensus to put the item on the Sept. 15 agenda, and record that consensus was given.

What the two outlets describe is the other kind of vote. News4JAX quoted Chair Clay Murphy saying “There was a motion made to deny based on the area requirements,” and Jacksonville Today wrote that the commission “denied the measure by a 3-2 vote.” News4JAX reported that Commissioners Clay Murphy, Ann Taylor and Krista Joseph voted against the proposal and described Murphy as the swing vote. Jacksonville Today named the same three voting to throw the proposal out, put Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst on the other side, and reported that Murphy had changed his mind since the earlier meeting. Set against the Sept. 1 roll calls, which show Murphy voting against denying and then against approving, that is the change the reported outcome turns on.

What Sept. 29 means now

The date came from the county. Growth Management Director Mike Roberson gave the receipt date for this application as July 1, 2026, and wrote that “the 90-day certification period will end September 29, 2026,” which is the date this paper published on Sept. 11. The objections filed into the county’s own hearing packet work from the same ninetieth day.

Section 163.3162(4)© makes that date matter in exactly one way:

“If the local government does not approve or deny certification of the parcel or parcels as an agricultural enclave within 90 days after receipt of the application, the parcel or parcels must be certified as an agricultural enclave.”

Certification by operation of law is triggered by inaction and by nothing else. A denial on Sept. 15 would be an act inside the 90 days, and on the reported account the trigger does not fire and Sept. 29 becomes a date on which nothing happens by itself. 29 becomes a date on which nothing happens to ENCERT 2026-01. The deadline was not moved and it was not cancelled. On the reported outcome it was met, fourteen days early.

What replaces it has not started. Paragraph (d) of the same subsection reads in full:

“If the application is denied, the governing body of the local government must issue its decision in writing with detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law. The applicant may seek review of the denial by filing a petition for writ of certiorari in the circuit court within 30 days after the date the local government renders its decision.”

Renders is a defined word here. Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.020(h) provides that an order “is rendered when a signed, written order is filed with the clerk of the lower tribunal.” Rule 9.100© then puts a petition for certiorari, and a petition to review the quasi-judicial action of a local government board, within 30 days of rendition. So the applicant’s 30 days runs from the filing of the signed written order rather than from Tuesday’s vote, and no such order appears in a posted county record.

There is a question underneath that, and the statute does not answer it. Paragraph © asks the local government to approve or deny within 90 days, and paragraph (d) says a denial must issue in writing with findings of fact and conclusions of law. The text does not say which of those two acts is the denial for the purpose of the 90 days, no court has construed the 2026 language, and the county has taken no public position on it. If the answer is the written order, the order has to be signed and filed by Sept. 29.

The legal exposure, and whose words it is in

“Setting up a possible legal battle” is the headline News4JAX put on its story, and the characterization is News4JAX’s.

What the documents carry is narrower and older than that. Section 163.3162(4) names one route for an applicant after a denial, the certiorari petition in paragraph (d), and it describes no other. The county’s own deny motion tells the County Attorney’s Office to produce the written order such a petition would be filed against. And the board put litigation in its own minutes twice before Tuesday. On Aug. 4, under an added item headed Agriculture Enclave and Senate Bill 686, a motion by Murphy seconded by Joseph carried 5/0. It directed the County Attorney’s Office to confer with outside counsel on the legal viability of pursuing an injunction against that bill, including an assessment of standing and a cost analysis. On Sept. 1 the board voted 3/2 to direct staff to fight or seek an injunction for the same bill, and the minutes record County Attorney Rich Komando giving details of discussions with outside counsel about filing injunctions.

Komando addressed where such a case would be heard in remarks News4JAX quoted Tuesday: “It was our outside counsel’s opinion that it would be preferable to litigate this case in St. Johns County versus Leon County.” Jacksonville Today reported that Murphy said he would start a petition drive to have the law repealed and carry the petitions to the Legislature on the opening day of session. Jacksonville Today also reported that Avery-Smith could not be reached on whether her clients intend to sue the county, and News4JAX reported that representatives of the PARC Group declined to speak on camera after the vote.

Item 1 on Tuesday’s agenda was a closed attorney-client session at 9:30 a.m. under s. 286.011(8), and its notice confines the session to settlement discussions in Robinson Improvement Company v. St. Johns County, Case No. 3:25-cv-01275-TJC-LLL. That is a different case.

The dates a reader can hold

Jacksonville Today reported that after the denial the commission agreed to revisit two enclaves it approved last month, totaling more than 1,000 acres near Interstate 95 and State Road 207, at a special meeting on Sept. 28. The county has not noticed that meeting. Its board calendar runs Sept. 15, then Oct. 6, Oct. 20 and Nov. 3, and the all-boards calendar from Sept. 17 through Oct. 5 carries no Sept. 28 entry.

Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. is the next scheduled regular meeting, and it is the meeting where minutes of Sept. 15 would ordinarily reach the consent agenda.

The other two enclave applications sat on the same agenda Tuesday. Item 3, ENCERT 2026-07 Sandy Creek, is approximately 379 acres east of Interstate 95 and south of County Road 210 W. Item 4, ENCERT 2026-08 AFI Property, is approximately 310 acres west of Pacetti Road and north of County Road 208. Jacksonville Today reported that the board approved that one 3-2, with Arnold, Murphy and Whitehurst in favor and Joseph and Taylor against. Each carries a 90-day clock of its own. Roberson gave the county’s receipt dates for those two as Aug. 5 and Aug. 7, which counts them out to early November.

The law all three were brought under is temporary. The statutory note on both sections records that the 2026 amendments to s. 163.3162(4) and s. 163.3164(4) expire Jan. 1, 2028, and that the text of those subsections reverts to what existed on June 30, 2026.