The city of Alachua’s Planning and Zoning Board unanimously denied a special exception permit for the Tara April project Tuesday night, ending nearly four years of pending development next to Mill Creek Sink.  

Cheers from the public erupted through City Hall just before midnight following the 4-0 vote against the permit.  

If passed, the permit would have allowed applicant Sayed Moukhtara to use agriculturally zoned land to build two stormwater basins capable of supporting more than 1,000 homes and commercial components half a mile from Mill Creek Sink, plus a larger basin for the Florida Department of Transportation to collect runoff from I-75.  

Mill Creek’s karst area is sinkhole-sensitive and feeds into the Floridan aquifer, which raised concerns from residents, governing bodies and environmental experts about negative impacts to the land and drinking water. Find a timeline of Alachua’s Tara projects here. 

Tara April deliberations totaled almost 12 hours between last week’s quasi-judicial testimonies from the applicant and affected parties, Tuesday’s public comment, rebuttals and closing comments.  

Affected parties included Alachua County, the National Speleological Society, which owns land at the sink, the City of High Springs and Santa Fe Hills resident Soorya Lindberg. 

The board cut the last meeting off at midnight, indicating it wanted further geologic and environmental testing, as well as a clearer vision of the site’s infrastructure, before it’d entertain approving the application.  

But after board member Danielle Judd gave a passionate repudiation of the applicant’s request for a continuance on Tuesday—which the board rejected 5-0—Judd initiated the motion to deny the permit entirely. Member Jenny Highlander provided the second. 

Member Virginia Johns did not vote on the permit denial because she was absent from the first part of the quasi-judicial hearing last week and had not watched a recording. 

“This board finds the application to be inconsistent with the city of Alachua’s comprehensive plan and its land development regulations,” said Judd in her motion. “We have not been given information that addresses the question specifically with the two storm water basins under consideration that that design would minimize the environmental impact.” 

Around 50 voices from across the city, county and state spoke during the three hours of public comment.  

Not a single one supported Tara April’s special exception permit without testing the land proposed for all Tara developments, with most calling for the project to be shut down completely. 

Some commenters brought artifacts to emphasize their objections. One husband and wife carried to the podium a stack of framed pictures showing their children and grandchildren, whom they said would be harmed by Tara’s damaging of the aquifer. 

Another speaker dropped a handful of feathers resembling the dreams of health and long life, floating away in the wind unless the Mill Creek land and water were protected. 

During rebuttal, the applicant’s attorney, Vinette Godelia of Stearns Weaver Miller, swore in Kenneth Hill, a principal engineer for GSE Engineering and Consulting, as a new witness. 

Hill said he’d done thousands of geotechnical studies across Alachua County and had been involved with all Tara projects in Alachua, including Tara April. He said even though his company didn’t know Tara April would ask for a special exception permit, they performed the project’s geotechnical testing according to the city’s guidelines.  

Bryan Thomas, director of the planning department, said he felt hardly any of the testimony given during Tara April’s hearing was pertinent. Although he previously said at the last meeting that all the Tara projects are linked, he said the evidence given applied to all the projects instead of solely to Tara April.  

Godelia requested a continuance to give the applicant time to meet the environmental testing conditions proposed by the city’s hydrologist consultant, Michael Alfieri. She said the process was highly technical and complicated, so they hadn’t had time to do it yet. 

“We’re going to do it, but we’d like to be able to present that evidence to you and to the public, and to have a decision made with those due process considerations and allowing us to move forward,” Godelia said. 

Although the board already granted the applicant its one allotted continuance in November, Alachua’s land use attorney, Patrice Boyes, said the board could grant another if it wanted. 

Judd said she was willing to put her seat on the line to state why she would not grant a continuance or the application itself.  

Page after page in the application, she said, diagrams and materials for the number of stormwater basins tied to Tara April fluctuated between two and three. 

Judd called it disingenuous to introduce the third basin proposed for FDOT as part of the project if it wouldn’t have anything to do with the two other basins in the permit, as staff said it wouldn’t at the meeting. 

She noted that special exception permits run in perpetuity, not just to the current landowner, and asked which basins would be impacted when the Environmental Resource Permit expires in December 2027. 

“I understand the purpose of the special exception. It’s for use,” Judd said. “But what clouds the issue for me is we’re saying it’s only for the community commercial [zoning] for those two basins, but yet, we interject all this other material into the record that came from the applicant and staff.” 

She guessed that at some point, somebody came up with the idea of weaving in conditions for the developer to meet, like the trails and kiosk, as a way to soften the context of the development.  

But enough was enough, she said. 

“My gut feeling tells me I’ll probably get in trouble for this and be asked to step down, but enough, damn it,” Judd said. “I am extremely, extremely disappointed in this entire process and I don’t fault it on simply the applicant. At some point, somebody in either the previous or the current administration said this is a jam-up idea, let’s go for it. And enough already. Enough.”