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City moves to control growth
Bradenton Beach hires a full-time attorney specializing in land-use law.
BY MITRA MALEK
BRADENTON BEACH -- The city has signed a contract that affirms its new philosophy of tightly controlling growth.
Thursday night, the commissioners hired a full-time attorney they expect to help them toughen the city's land-use rules.
Ralf Brookes, a former Sarasota County assistant attorney, is known for his environmental bent and specialization in land-use law.
Last month, Brookes represented opponents to a proposed Collier County rezoning that would have made way for high-rise condominiums and a marina project.
More than 200 people came to a commission meeting to protest the plan, saying it would scare off bald eagles that nest nearby.
The Collier County Commission turned down the rezoning request.
Brookes served four years on the Florida Wildlife Federation board of directors through 2002, when he joined the Calusa Nature Center board.
That's sweet knowledge to a new commission that last November fired Bradenton Beach's attorney of nearly two decades for being pro-development, and pledged to find new counsel whose views on growth were more tempered.
They also fired the city planner. They said the two were pro-development and gave the city advice that led to lawsuits against it.
The firings came just weeks after election day, when voters ushered in three new anti-growth members to the five-member commission.
"We need to get our land-use and zoning laws good and sturdy, so they don't get run over," Commissioner Anna O'Brien said Wednesday.
O'Brien, who was elected in 2002 on an anti-growth platform, worked out the kinks with getting Brookes hired.
"He has already been in the trenches with a lot of the things we're now facing -- growth-management types of things," O'Brien said.
Brookes lives in Cape Coral, where he has his own law practice. His clients include the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"This City Council wanted to get someone from outside the city, and who isn't doing anything in the city," Brookes said Tuesday, "to avoid conflicts -- or even the the appearance of conflicts."
On occasion, the city had to find substitute lawyers for Prather because he also represented some developers in Bradenton Beach.
Brookes agreed not to accept clients in his private practice who are doing business in Bradenton Beach, or who might do business that could affect the city.
His resume includes involvement in major development projects, land development regulations, hotels and wetland and wildlife protection regulations.
Brookes worked in the land-use group of Miami's Fine, Jacobson, Schwartz, Nash, Block & England from 1988-90, when he became Sarasota County's assistant attorney.
The commission considered six candidates for the position and interviewed three.
Last modified: March 05. 2004 12:00AM
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Marine Scientist Turns Environmental Lawyer. by Pamela Hayford Smith, Ft Myers News-Press Sept 24, 2001
…Brookes' first job as attorney was for a Miami firm in 1988. Then, in 1990, he became assistant county attorney for Sarasota County. In 1992, Brookes went to Morgan and Hendrick in the Keys as an associate.
There, he worked as land use counsel to Monroe County, the city of Key West, other local governments and private clients. "He's got a legacy there," said Richard Grosso, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental and Land Use Law Center at Nova Southeastern University Law School.
Grosso said Brookes defended the county's comprehensive plan that dictates what can develop where.
"The Monroe County plan does some things that are really restrictive," Grosso said. Restrictive meant Brookes had to successfully defend the plan in court.
Those who know Brookes praise his environmental law know-how.
"Ralf is easily one of the leading, more talented, public interest lawyers in the state of Florida," Grosso said. "He's really good. He knows every aspect of the environment."
Grosso met Brookes about 10 years ago, then worked with him in the Keys.
Florida Wildlife Federation representative Nancy Payton praises Brookes' knowledge of panther and permitting issues.
"An environmental lawyer who has a science background makes it quite effective because he can understand the scientific language," Payton said.
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Sarasota Florida Herald Tribune
July 6, 2004
[Photo: Bradenton Beach recently hired City Attorney Ralf Brookes, photographed on the boardwalk near the city pier.]
In defense of 'old Florida'
Lawyer takes on the big-buck developers, bulldozers, polluters
By MITRA MALEK
Environmental lawyer Ralf Brookes has defended trees, lions, shorelines and the people who fear money is stamping out nature and state history.
He loathes suburban sprawl and commercialization, saying it will clog the Sunshine State's land, taint its waterways and wipe away its heritage.
Bradenton Beach, a sleepy fishing village turned tourist attraction, is in sync with Brookes' beliefs.
A new slow-growth City Commission hired him this year to stem increasing development that's spawned million-dollar condos, pushing out full-time residents and their small houses.
He's one of only a handful of lawyers statewide committed to environmental and historic preservation, ...
"One thing about Ralf: He definitely has a passion on these issues," says Matt Bixler, an environmental policy specialist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. "He doesn't just view it as a job..."
He's known to help folks with testimony, give pointers on how to get government's attention and offer other general advice, all free of charge.
"Sometimes a group of citizens don't know what they can do," says Bill Spikowski, who owns a Fort Myers consulting firm that specializes in planning issues.
"Sometimes they don't even know something can be done. He's funny and engaging, and he makes people care."
A bona fide tree-hugger, Brookes sued Charlotte County in 2000 on behalf of the EverGreen environmental group -- and named 27 historic cambian oaks among the plaintiffs.
"That certainly shows a respect for life," says Elliot Kampert, who was Charlotte County's planning and zoning director during the lawsuit.
EverGreen won the case on appeal.
Battling Brookes
Brookes, 40, has spent his career focused on the environment and land use. He says the two are inextricably linked: People help or harm the environment based on how they manipulate land.
His love of nature started with the frogs and crayfish he'd spot in the creek near his childhood home outside Detroit.
His dad took him there when he started walking, and Brookes kept going back until he moved to study ocean reefs at the University of Miami.
Fit, with a full head of silver hair, Brookes still finds time for surfing, kayaking, camping -- anything outdoors.
As a college student he often read John D. MacDonald murder mysteries, which were set along Florida's beaches.
"In the middle he would get up on his soapbox and talk about overdevelopment on the barrier islands, the motivation of profit over preservation," Brookes says.
Brookes realized his best shot at saving creeks and reefs would be to influence policy as an environmental lawyer: "Make science turn into law faster," he says.
He wrote wetland and wildlife regulations with a firm in Miami after earning his law degree in 1988 from the University of Florida.
He tackled similar topics as Sarasota County's assistant attorney in the early 1990s.
But it was his work in later years, as a solo practitioner and counsel to Monroe County, that captured the attention of the Bradenton Beach commissioners.
A solid record
Brookes helped draft and defend ordinances that reduced growth in the unincorporated areas of the Florida Keys to one-fifth (1/5) its historic rate.
The law has survived challenges in state and federal court.
It limits the number of new homes by letting the county dole them out based on environmental factors and location.
"We were growing too fast," said Timothy McGarry, Monroe County's director of growth management.
The county also has won legal battles over a vacation rental ordinance Brookes drafted in 1997, which bans rentals of 28 days or less in certain areas, because rentals were pushing out full-time residents.
"He can defend cities -- especially with development," Bradenton Beach Mayor John Chappie says.
In Sarasota County, he's working with The Alliance for Siesta Key's Future Inc. to stop developers from increasing density along a beachfront zone.
"There's not too many of us out there," says Dan Lobeck, a Sarasota environmental and land-use attorney. "There's a lot out there with the big bucks when it comes to development. The deck is stacked against us in many ways."
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