Everyone wants to know: Can a city of nine save a landmark attraction of a Florida gone by?
By ROBERT KING
Published September 21, 2003
WEEKI WACHEE - Weeki Wachee Springs was ailing.
The mermaids still held their magic. But the paint in the park was chipping, the buildings were rotting and the landlord was breathing down their neck to fix up the place or close.
Florida Water Services was in need of a buyer.
Its corporate parent in Minnesota was interested in selling Florida's largest private utility to the highest bidder. But efforts to deal with a group of local governments were going nowhere.
To most people, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs and the corporate bosses of Florida Water would seem to have nothing in common. Except maybe a fondness for spring water.
But they had Joe Mason, a Brooksville lawyer who represents the mermaids, Florida Water and the city of Weeki Wachee. And Mason saw an opportunity for three clients with "a mutuality of interests."
When Mason brought them together several months ago, a grand scheme was proposed that looked like it would solve everyone's problems: the city of Weeki Wachee would buy the utility and reap such profits that the mermaids would be able to swim in cash.
Yet, as summer turns to fall, those dreams are fading fast.
The blockbuster deal fell apart. The mermaid's lease on life is in jeopardy. And now, the very survival of the city is even in doubt.
On Tuesday, the governing board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District will decide Weeki Wachee Springs' fate as a roadside attraction. But its decision could also mean the demise of the "City of Mermaids," a company town in the truest sense of the words.
A new city as marketing ploy
The Weeki Wachee Springs tourist attraction, founded in 1947, had been in business for 18 years when it persuaded the state Legislature to allow a city named Weeki Wachee to be incorporated on the attraction's property.
Incorporation would mean the words "Weeki Wachee" would appear on road maps and on the directional signs along state highways. So, on Jan. 1, 1966, the city of Weeki Wachee was born.
Through the decades, the city has been nearly invisible - or at least indistinguishable from the attraction itself.
Within its borders are the park, a hotel, an Eckerd store and a number of shops in the nearby Weeki Wachee Village shopping center.
The city's entire population of nine rents its housing - a handful of block homes - from the tourist attraction. City Hall is also rented from the park.
The city's lone residential street has a "no trespassing" sign posted on it. Along its shoulder, one can find a river cruise boat on blocks and giant, colorful heads that were once used as props at the attraction.
It is a city with no police or fire departments - services Hernando County provides. In fact, Weeki Wachee has only one employee, a part-time clerk. Its three city commissioners, who were re-elected last fall with five votes apiece, are compensated at a rate of $10 a month.
Their workload is light.
Meetings typically take 15 to 20 minutes. And those in February, March and April of this year were scrapped because there was no quorum; the one in May was canceled because it was too close to Memorial Day.
In most years, the only ordinance the commission adopts is the budget, which last year stood at $29,015. There is so little official action that when someone recently asked for a copy of the city code, the person was told it would cost $20 an hour to pay the clerk to piece one together.
Which makes what happened this summer in Weeki Wachee all the more exceptional.
City commissioners voted to launch a $53-million takeover of Florida Water's Spring Hill operation, a system that sits outside the Weeki Wachee city limits.
They proposed tripling the property tax rate as a way to pay the anticipated legal bills.
And, in a strange reversal, the city took over the tourist attraction that asked for the creation of the city to begin with. The child, in effect, became the parent.
Legal entanglements
Mason, who earns $260 an hour as Weeki Wachee's city attorney, says his role in the development of Weeki Wachee's sudden civic activism was more that of midwife than father.
"I made the introductions," he said.
Those introductions - among Florida Water, the city of Weeki Wachee and the attraction's owners - occurred sometime last year. And the conversation continued until this summer.
Both Mason and lawyer Jake Varn, who represented Weeki Wachee Springs LLC when the private company owned the park, say Florida Water offered to pay the legal bills of the city and the attraction during the condemnation process.
The Wall Street bond houses were to handle the financing.
All the city of Weeki Wachee and the tourist attraction were supposed to do was think of how to spend their forthcoming profits.
Initially, Florida Water wanted Weeki Wachee - the city and the attraction - to buy all of its Florida properties - 150 systems in 28 counties that served 500,000 customers.
Varn says the private owners of Weeki Wachee Springs LLC came to the conclusion the deal was too big to swallow. They knew it would be controversial and result in a mountain of lawsuits.
Varn says those concerns were borne out when the same offer was made to the Panhandle towns of Milton and Gulf Breeze, who were buried in lawsuits and criticism until Florida Water pulled the plug on their joint effort.
Still, Weeki Wachee had caught the utility business bug. Even after the meltdown of Milton and Gulf Breeze on March 10, Weeki Wachee was determined to press on. By then, Florida Water had decided to sell its business in pieces.
Showing its age
In 1999, Jeffrey Farrar led a group of a dozen owners in the purchase of the mermaid attraction at Weeki Wachee Springs. Their company, Weeki Wachee Springs LLC, would make improvements to the park and do more to market it than ever before, he said.
Four years later, the attraction had added a new water slide and some amenities like a Tiki bar and an expanded kiddie pool. But its marketing was hardly noticeable; its infrastructure still showed its age.
Farrar said his ownership team had made its money and wanted to move on to other opportunities. So the owners did what Varn calls a benevolent gesture. They didn't want to get involved in a hostile takeover of a utility, but they would be willing to donate their company to the city.
The donation made sense in several ways.
The landlord of the property at and around Weeki Wachee Springs - Swiftmud - was threatening to shut them down if the repairs, estimated at $1-million, weren't made soon.
And, as it appears now, the park was losing money.
Weeki Wachee officials said last week that losses topped $173,000 last year. A Swiftmud analysis released Friday says Weeki Wachee's figuring may be overly optimistic. Furthermore, the analysis said there is little chance Weeki Wachee can turn things around any time soon.
So the donation was set in motion. Mason, having represented both the city and the Weeki Wachee Springs LLC, began drawing up the papers.
Money still a problem
A major problem remained. The source of the money that would restore the park had disappeared.
Florida Water walked away from the talks about a sale with Weeki Wachee, even though the discussions had been scaled back to the possibility of Weeki Wachee merely taking over Florida Water's utilities in Spring Hill, a system that serves 33,000 customers.
Instead, Florida Water began making progress toward a sale of the Spring Hill utility to Hernando County.
Undeterred, Weeki Wachee had one final card to play: It could try to forcefully take over Florida Water's Spring Hill operations through an eminent domain proceeding.
On July 22, two days before Hernando County would strike a deal with Florida Water, the Weeki Wachee City Commission voted 3-0 to begin condemnation proceedings. Since Mason has worked for Florida Water, attorneys from the Miami firm of Steel Hector & Davis filed the legal papers that same day. Among the newly hired lawyers was Sam Ullman, Mason's good friend and former law school roommate.
Without Florida Water to sponsor the legal fight, city commissioners soon proposed a tripling of the city's taxes to pay the legal costs.
Mason and Mayor Robyn Anderson say the condemnation case is important because it will help protect the Weeki Wachee Spring from being tapped as a water source.
Yet as a municipality, Weeki Wachee could set water and sewer rates for Spring Hill customers as high as it wants. One estimate showed that ownership of the operation could generate nearly $1-million in revenue for the city.
But how would a city of nine people spend $1-million a year in profits? Aside from protecting the spring and doing city projects, the resolution the city commissioners passed that day states it plainly: Surplus revenues, the document says, could be spent on "the preservation of the historic Florida Weeki Wachee spring tourist attraction."
But, legally, cities cannot just give away public money to private companies. To make it happen, Weeki Wachee would have to own the park.
Within days after their vote on condemnation, the City Commission voted to accept the donation of the park from the LLC.
The national spotlight
In the weeks that followed, Robyn Anderson began talking about how the city was perfectly positioned to turn around the park's fortunes now that the profit-obsessed private owners were gone.
The New York Times gave the story front-page play, and Anderson became a media darling. She appeared on the NBC Nightly News and on Good Morning, America.
In each case, Weeki Wachee was portrayed as David battling Goliath - a faceless state bureaucracy known as Swiftmud.
Little girls who want to be mermaids someday began handing over pocket change, and elderly women on fixed incomes started handing over $10 checks.
And Anderson created a campaign fund that she dubbed "Save Our Tails."
The title is profoundly appropriate. Because, as Swiftmud pointed out last week in its analysis, it is not only the mermaid attraction whose fate is in doubt.
As the tourist attraction's general manager, Anderson stands to lose a $50,000-a-year job. City Commissioner Julie Rivers, an animal trainer, stands to lose contract work as the host of daily animal shows at the park. The third city commissioner, Angela Weiss, is the mayor's mother.
Hernando County assistant county attorney Kurt Hitzemann says Anderson should not have voted on the donation agreement, since it directly affects her employment. State law prohibits public officials from voting on issues that benefit them personally.
That includes a prohibition against public officials buying, renting or leasing any property from their own agency. But each commissioner lives in a home now controlled by their city.
Beyond that, the commissioners - indeed, all nine residents of Weeki Wachee - stand to lose their homes if Swiftmud terminates the lease with Weeki Wachee Springs LLC and forces everyone to move out.
Thirty-seven years after becoming a city, the little town created to draw travelers' attention to Weeki Wachee could be wiped off the map.
- Robert King covers Spring Hill and can be reached at 848-1432. Send e-mail to rking@sptimes.com
Weeki Wachee: Population 9
Most of the nine residents of the city of Weeki Wachee are employed by the Weeki Wachee Springs attraction or are related in some way to the park's manager. They include:
1. Robyn Anderson, general manager of the attraction and mayor of Weeki Wachee.
2. Mike Anderson, Robyn Anderson's husband. Member of the New Port Richey Police Department.
3. Brooke Anderson, the couple's 1-year-old daughter.
4. Angela Weiss, Robyn Anderson's mother and a city of Weeki Wachee commissioner.
5. Bob Anderson, Robyn Anderson's father.
6. Julie Rivers, Weeki Wachee city commissioner and manager of the attraction's animal shows.
7. Sean Reynolds, deputy with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.
8. Shanna Reynolds, wife of Sean Reynolds and a dispatcher with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.
9. John Athanason, the attraction's marketing director.
