Three enclave denials, and not one written order on Tuesday's agenda

The county commission has denied three agricultural enclave certifications in seventeen days. The agenda for Tuesday’s regular meeting, which is the first since the last of them, carries no written order for any.

It carries no enclave item at all. The words ENCERT, enclave, written order and findings of fact do not appear anywhere in its eight pages.

That matters because of one sentence in the statute. A county that denies one of these applications does not simply vote and move on. Section 163.3162(4) says that if the application is denied, the governing body “must issue its decision in writing with detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law.” The applicant may then seek review by filing a petition for writ of certiorari in circuit court within 30 days after the decision is rendered.

Until that written order exists, nothing has been rendered, and the 30 days have not started on any of the three.

What was denied, and when

The motion that denied ENCERT 2026-01 directed 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.” Commissioner Taylor’s motion on Sept. 28 directed the same thing for the Heritage parcels, in nearly the same words.

Three directions to the County Attorney. Sixteen days since the first.

The rule that has not changed

One thing this paper has reported since September is worth restating plainly, because it is easy to read the three denials as evidence that it went away.

It did not. The 90-day provision is still in the statute, word for word, and the Legislature’s own current-statutes site still carries it:

“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.”

A county that does nothing certifies the land by doing nothing. That is not a drafting accident and it has not been amended. The amendments to subsection (4) expire Jan. 1, 2028, and until then this is the rule.

What changed is the board’s behaviour, and the N Palm Valley file is the clearest illustration of it. On Sept. 1 the commission could not reach a decision, and neither a motion to deny nor a motion to approve carried. Jacksonville Today reported the position that left: without a vote either way, the county had 90 days to act before the land was certified automatically. On Sept. 15 the board came back and denied it. That outlet described the denial as reversing the commission’s own lack of a decision, and noted that the earlier inaction would have led to an automatic approval.

So the rule did its work. It is the reason the board went back. Certification on inaction is triggered by inaction and by nothing else, and a denial is an act instead of an absence.

Which is precisely why the written order is not a formality. It is the thing that converts a vote in a room into a decision the law recognises.

And the minutes are not there either

Item 24 on Tuesday is the motion to approve minutes. It names two meetings, the Sept. 15 regular and the Sept. 15 special.

It does not name Sept. 28.

This paper told readers on Sept. 25, and again on Sept. 28, that the minutes of the special meeting would go to the Oct. 6 regular meeting as backup to the item approving them, because that is where minutes go. They are not on it. The Clerk’s board records index still offers an agenda for Sept. 28 and nothing beside it.

The Sept. 15 minutes arriving Tuesday is the good news in that paragraph, and it is real: the roll on the first of the three denials will finally be in a document the public can read, two and a half weeks after the vote.

For the 1,166 acres, the count now stands at a meeting with no minutes, no video, no written order, and no item on the next agenda.

A denial nobody has written down is not yet a denial. It is a vote that happened in a room, and three of them are waiting on the same desk.