By AMY WIMMER and KATHY SAUNDERS
Published May 25, 2003
TREASURE ISLAND - The land development regulations that divided the city last fall were declared void Thursday by a circuit judge.
The ruling is the last breath for the ordinance, passed seven months ago but never enforced, that allowed high-rise hotels in Treasure Island. The ruling also makes it unnecessary for city commissioners to rescind the ordinance, as some of them had pledged to do while campaigning for office.
Ken Weiss, the lawyer who represented two residents who sued the city to stop the ordinance, said the judgment was an unabashed victory.
"It's very, very important for people to not throw up their arms and say, "We can't fight City Hall,' " Weiss said. "The people in Treasure Island got together, and they organized."
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Thomas E. Penick Jr. ruled Thursday that the ordinance was never valid because it was not properly advertised. So many "substantial and material changes" were made at the first public hearing that the ordinance should have been advertised again, and two more hearings should have taken place, Penick ruled.
"Without having had two additional advertised public hearings, Ordinance No. 02-06 ... was never validly enacted ... and is hereby set aside and declared to be void and of no effect," the judgment reads.
City Manager Chuck Coward said that the City Commission preferred to have the judge invalidate the ordinance. Commissioners feared that property owners who benefited from the ordinance could claim the city took away their property rights if the commission simply rescinded the ordinance.
