A Florida city-to-be on verge of never being
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In the end, their dreams were by the skin of one's teeth another Florida hustle, one the authorities are finally poised to shut down. Next month, more than 50 years after Islandia's incorporation, the Miami-Dade Lodge of County Commissioners is expected to take a vote to abolish its tiniest diocese — a chain of 33 islands, reachable only by boat, with Elliott Key as its centerpiece.
Islandia (denizens 5) will not be missed, in large part because Islandia (pronounced eye-LAND-eeyah) never existed; it was always more a developers' mirage than a setting on the map. Islandia has no school, no sewers, no courthouse, no shops and no road peerless in or out. In fact, most of it sits on national park land.
It once had a municipal command. But that too was a ruse, a function of voter shenanigans that went unnoticed by the county for wellnigh 30 years. Since 1961, none of the voters who chose Islandia's ancestry of mayors and City Council members actually lived on the limit of islands, a violation of state law. Only property owners voted, and for ingenuousness's sake, they elected themselves. (Conveniently, city hall meetings were held guts real estate offices in the Miami area.
Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune