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Strange hedgefellows?
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
REDINGTON BEACH -- Bob Fountaine doesn't want to talk about the hedge. Neither does Charles Haggerty. It runs between the two men's properties and barely reaches 6 feet in height before its branches are pruned, its height scaled back to city code. That ritual has been going on for months now, since they sat at a mediation table at the end of a two-year dispute and arrived at a hedge-trimming agreement. Now Fountaine and Haggerty, who live side by side, are running against each other, and former Redington Beach Mayor Ramona Updegraff, for mayor of this town of 1,500. Throughout this campaign, as the proximity of their homes at 16438 and 16440 Redington Drive was noted, they have refused to discuss whether their campaign for the mayor's chair arose from a neighborly dispute, like a barking dog or an erroneously placed fence. But the hedge episode is detailed in a code enforcement file at Town Hall. Last week they agreed to talk about it, although they insist their hedge troubles have nothing to do with why they're running. Said Haggerty: "I filed to run first. I don't know why he's running." Said Fountaine: "The candidates who are running don't represent the town as it's changed." It all began with a hedge that runs between the two men's properties. Said hedge will not be assigned a height at this point in the tale, as Fountaine and Haggerty do not agree how tall it was when this whole thing started. Fountaine says 15 feet tall. "They were never over 6 feet tall," counters Haggerty, "until he let them get over 6 feet." The hedge began growing and then, according to Haggerty, began growing uncontrollably. It grew so thick that he could barely walk between the hedge and the east side of his house. Haggerty says he asked Fountaine to trim it, and though Fountaine initially agreed and even planned to borrow Haggerty's hedge trimmer, he never did. Eventually, Haggerty complained to code enforcement. Fountaine said he tried to point out that the hedge provided privacy for both his family and Haggerty's. Fountaine also notes that his too-tall hedge was allowed by city code, unless a neighbor within 150 feet of the property complains about it. And even when the hedge was cut, Fountaine claims, Haggerty would complain when it grew an inch or two taller than code allows. "All I wanted was the ordinance enforced," Haggerty said. "They said, 'This is a neighbor problem.' So we went to mediation." They mediated through the county's alternative dispute resolution program, designed to keep arguments like Haggerty's and Fountaine's from reaching the court system. "It was set up by the Legislature with the idea of cutting down on people going to court," said Ron Stuart, spokesman for Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court. "It saves the taxpayers time. It eliminates court time. It saves the involved parties time in that it shortens the legal process." Haggerty and Fountaine agree on one thing: Mediation worked. Fountaine agreed to have the hedge trimmed every few weeks, and Haggerty agreed not to complain when the spindly branches grew an inch or two too high. Mark Davis, the town's code enforcement officer, who knows the Haggerty-Fountaine dispute better than anyone at Town Hall, declined to comment about it. He could be working for one of them soon. The dispute is a thing of the past -- sort of. Haggerty has since built a deck on the top of his house, and without the tall hedge, the Fountaines think he can see into their back yard. And in a town where code enforcement is a hot issue, the candidates sat side by side at a candidates forum last week and talked about their ideas for enforcing the codes. Fountaine thinks many of the codes are old-fashioned, and he wants them revamped. He mentioned specifically the rule about hedge height between houses. Haggerty, on the other hand, wants to make it possible for town residents to complain anonymously about code enforcement problems.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
