The courts have ruled and the PSC has opined. No county, including the Conch Republic County of Monroe has the authority to regulate utilities. But Monroe County has in fact been regulating utilities without authority for decades. Fraud: Merriam-Webster definition: intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right. This whole mess was created because the County became complicit in one woman’s fraudulent and failed social experiment. The County has used the Coastal Barrier resources act to prevent legally permitted and constructed homes from receiving basic services, doing so is a perversion of the act. The acts intent is to discourage development in undeveloped coastal areas prone to flooding. The act does so by limiting the expenditure of federal dollars. It in no way regulates how people can develop their land and the act in no way hints that utilities can be withheld. The undeveloped status of System lands was an important underpinning of the law. The idea was to help steer new construction away from risky, environmentally sensitive places where development was not yet found, not to hurt existing communities where serious commitments of time and money had already been made. The county comp plan and LDR language relative to utilities was a fraudulent misapplication of the CBRS Act from the very beginning in a stealthy attempt to spot zone NNK. Now the county is faced with the unintended consequences of its actions as evidenced by the issues we are facing now with the sewer system. The county had no more authority to regulate utilities when the comp plan and LDRs were written than it does now. But it doesn’t matter what the county comp plan or LDRs say. Whether the county likes it or not, it’s not the county’s call. The courts have ruled. The county has no authority to discourage, prohibit, forbid, ban, inhibit, bar, prevent, or regulate electrical service in any way. Denying the residents of NNK permits to connect to the existing electrical grid that is in front of their homes, the grid that they paid for, is in fact ongoing regulation of utilities on the part of the county. If the county wants to discourage development, it should not issue permits for homes to be constructed. Period. Any action taken by the BOCC other than directing the building department to issue permits immediately for electrical connection is a further attempt to fraudulently regulate utilities, something the courts have ruled the county has no authority to do. The county has already wasted more than a million dollars trying to regulate utilities on NNK. That is more than the entire electrical grid for NNK cost to install. The county tried, unsuccessfully in the courts to prevent the system from being installed, but the courts rebuffed the county, because the county has no authority to regulate utilities. How many more taxpayer dollars, in addition to the more than a million already wasted, will be wasted in a continuing effort to do what the county cannot? Preventing the residents of NNK from connecting to the installed and energized electrical grid in front of their homes by withholding electrical permits is insanity. Merriam- Webster definition of insanity: “something utterly foolish or unreasonable” Don’t be fooled again.

along with the lunacy of most of the commissioners. Murphy continues to hold the title of “Head Nut” on the board while Neugent seams to be progressing in regaining some semblance of sanity.