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Editorial: Editorial: Cedar Key News Annual Meeting March 29
March 8th, 2008

Editorial: Let School Board Know What Should Be Taught
February 15th, 2008

Editorial: What Is a Fair Tax?
February 4th, 2008

Editorial: Inconsistent Appraisals Harm Taxpayers
December 17th, 2007

Editorial: Energy Crisis?
November 30th, 2007

Editorial: Florida Water War Heat Up
October 16th, 2007

Editorial: Nobel Prizes in Medicine
October 5th, 2007

Editorial: Editorial: Same Rules for Everyone
September 22nd, 2007

Editorial: Demand Action on Bridge Repair
August 8th, 2007

Editorial: Local Response Needed to Stem Clam Poaching
July 24th, 2007

Editorial: Money, Money, Money...Votes
July 9th, 2007

Editorial: We Celebrate Independence and Clams
June 26th, 2007

Editorial: Are You Ready for Hurricane Season?
June 12th, 2007

Editorial: The Sources of Progress in Medicine
May 30th, 2007

Editorial: A New Era of Politics and Religion
May 17th, 2007

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Problem Ordinances

Problem Ordinances

Editorial

Over the past decade the number of Cedar Key ordinances has nearly doubled in number. They are approaching number five hundred. The ordinances can be categorized as either enforced, unenforced, haphazardly enforced, or unenforceable. Over the past three years the Commissioners and their successive City Attorneys have wrestled with a commercial sign ordinance that has not been enforced, and is therefore judged unenforceable. (Among the sign ordinance problems is a provision for fees required of sign owners, but unpaid. That has resulted in lost badly needed revenue for the City.) In recent years the number of signs, like the ordinances, have proliferated. Big signs, multiple small signs, even some trashy signs.


Ordinances enacted by our Commission include a tree ordinance, a seawall ordinance, a noise ordinance, an animal ordinance, a fence ordinance and the sign ordinance.

At the May 1 Commission meeting a proposed sign ordinance came up for a vote after much legal work. A motion in favor of the ordinance failed for lack of a second. A compromise motion then failed on a three to two vote. There May be a procedural possibility of a second "first reading" of the new ordinance at the next Commission meeting, at which time there will be one or possibly two new members in office, depending on the outcome of the election on May 8.


The new Commission will have the opportunity to make the sign ordinance, the tree ordinance, and all the others enforceable and enforced or take them off the books. It is up to the voters of Cedar Key to let the Commissioners know that they want clear enforceable ordinances put into effect in an even-handed way.

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