Minimum flood elevations likely to be repealed — Preliminary FEMA maps adopted in 2019 are likely to be stricken from the town’s ordinances so the rules revert to the 2017 FEMA maps.
The state preempted local governments from using preliminary FEMA maps for any rules for permitting, so the 2019 maps have been left on the town’s books, with no enforcement, while final approval of the 2019 maps remains in limbo.
Town attorney Christy Goddeau said repealing the minimum elevation ordinance for the high-risk zone would be the clearest course for keeping the town out of litigation.
“So that there’s never any argument that we could enforce it,” she said, before the commission agreed to proceed with repealing the ordinance regarding minimum elevations in certain parts of town.
Town history gets fifth printing — Details on the origins of Ocean Ridge shall not be lost to time — Commissioner Carolyn Cassidy funded a fifth printing of the late Commissioner Gail Adams Aaskov’s telling of it. And now the 80-page booklet, “The History of Ocean Ridge,” is available for $1 at Town Hall.
Ocean Ridge, we learn, got its start as Boynton Beach, carved out of Boynton, by a special act of the Legislature in 1931 after a dispute over beach properties.
Problem was, the name was often confused with “Daytona Beach” — to the point mail intended for Daytona came south. So, six years after the town’s founding, an emergency meeting was called to consider a new name. Marion White Bird suggested “Ocean Ridge” and won a $100 prize, “a sizable amount of money at that time,” Aaskov writes.
— Anne Geggis
Comments