A dilemma confronting Tarpon Springs illustrates why local governments need to be given at least a limited power to donate or sell public land.
Tarpon Springs recently has stepped up efforts to tidy up the city by citing owners whose property violates city codes.
For many years the city had a lackadaisical attitude about such things. The result was an accumulation of trashy, unsightly lots and dilapidated, even dangerous buildings in some areas of the city. Many of those problems have been cleaned up since the city cracked down on violators.
But some property owners didn't clean up. They ignored the city's letters and the mounting fines. When it became clear that the owners had abandoned the properties, the city foreclosed.
Now city leaders wonder what to do with the two residential lots recently obtained by foreclosures and 15 that may soon follow. The city has no use for the lots, which would serve no public purpose if kept but would instead cost the taxpayers to maintain.
Yet the city charter does not give local government the power to sell any land without first holding a referendum. Referendums can cost thousands of dollars and must be scheduled months in advance.
Some of the Tarpon properties are in low-income areas of the city. Ideally, the city would donate the lots to an organization that builds affordable housing, or if not that, sell them at a reasonable cost to an organization or builder for construction of low-cost housing. But because of the charter provision, the city would have to hold a referendum and ask the voters every time it wanted to get rid of a property.
Clearwater has a similar problem. That city has a few lots around town that would be ideal to donate to Habitat for Humanity for construction of affordable homes. However, the city charter does not allow the city to give away land without first asking permission from voters.
Clearwater also has come into ownership of a few slivers of land that are unusable. Most of these are in subdivisions, around the edges of people's yards. Under the current charter, the city can only dispose of such property by selling it to the highest bidder. That requirement opens the door to land speculators to snatch up the remnants and create problems for adjoining property owners.
City officials, recognizing that possibility, wanted authority to just donate the remnants to the surrounding property owners. But in March, when the city asked voters to change the city charter so remnants and unneeded lots could be donated, the voters said no.
Such provisions limiting the power of government to dispose of property were inserted into charters to protect against irresponsible officials who might sell valuable land. The public wanted to retain the right to make such decisions.
But those laws surely were not intended to create roadblocks to disposal of tiny slivers sometimes amounting to only a few square feet or isolated residential lots that have no public purpose. It is beneficial for such properties to be in private ownership, sparing the public the cost of upkeep and insurance and returning the properties to the tax rolls.
A loosening of such strict charter provisions, with appropriate wording to retain the voters' decisionmaking authority on larger parcels that are not surplus, would serve the public interest.
The voters should keep that in mind when the opportunity to amend city charters arises in the future.
