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Council denies request to gag public comments

A mobile home park owner wants residents banned from making comments. Seminole leaders say no way.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published August 14, 2005

SEMINOLE - An attorney for the owner of Harbor Lights Mobile Home Park wants the city to ban park residents from speaking during council meetings because the controversy caused by their comments could derail the sale of the property.

In a related action, the council voted unanimously to send a letter to the Pinellas Planning Council to ask that group to field a task force to come up with solutions to the problems of people displaced when mobile home parks are redeveloped. Council members said they want to participate in such a task force.

The request to bar residents from speaking to their elected officials came in an Aug. 8 letter to the mayor and council members from St. Petersburg attorney David A. Bacon, who represents East Madeira Corp., the park's owner.

Bacon said the buyer and its lender knew about the uproar caused by park tenants who own their mobile homes over concerns that they will lose everything.

The buyer and lender apparently notified EMC "that the resulting issues and controversies may well interfere with the sale and purchase of Harbor Lights, and any such interference which causes a delay in closing or prevents the closing of the sale and purchase of Harbor Lights will cause very substantial financial loss and damage to EMC," Bacon wrote.

Bacon added, "EMC respectfully requests that the City Council not allow any further occurence of arguments or presentations by tenants of Harbor Lights regarding the subject of perceived or anticipated redevelopment."

If and when someone applies for a zoning change, Bacon wrote, then everyone would have an equal chance to speak.

Despite the letter, the council allowed Harbor Lights residents to speak about their concerns at last Tuesday's council meeting. The council did, however, limit each person's comments to three minutes. Harbor Lights residents vowed they'd return at the next council meeting to present a packet with their position outlined.

Mayor Dottie Reeder said she intends to allow the Harbor Lights residents to continue to address the council until a zoning application is filed. When that happens, state law prohibits the council from hearing anything until a formal hearing is held. At that time, both sides get to talk.

While Reeder said she understands Bacon's point, public comment has always been a component of Seminole's meetings and it cannot be stopped now.

"We're public officials. We cannot have a meeting where we represent our constituents and not allow them to say anything," Reeder said. "They can come and say anything to us, that's my perspective of it."

Seminole city attorney John Elias confirmed Reeder's stance. Elias said he had talked with Bacon before the letter was delivered to the council and told him "there wasn't any way that City Council could stop any comment that's made at the public meeting."

If a zoning change is proposed, Elias said the city will conduct itself in accordance with law and stop comment until the proper time. But until then, he said, "I believe the council is intelligent enough and sophisticated enough to distinguish between evidence that comes in at a public hearing and information that (they hear) during public comment."

Developer John Loder of Sun Vista Development Group has a contract to buy Harbor Lights, 9191 Bay Pines Blvd., and the adjacent Bay Pines Marina. The $60-million purchase price includes $45-million for the park and $15-million for the marina. A closing is planned for September.

Before the contract was signed, the Travis family, which owns the park, offered it to the approximately 400 tenants, who own the 313 homes on the land. The tenants, mostly elderly and on small, fixed incomes, could not come up with $45-million.

Loder said in an interview earlier this year that he plans a $300-million development with almost 400 residences that would include townhomes, single-family dwellings and luxury condominiums with price tags ranging from $600,000 to $1.75-million.

Buyers would have first choice of slips and docks.

But the prospect of redevelopment has thrown the mobile home owners into a frenzy of fear and indignation. They say the Travis family told them the park would "never" be sold.

They also worry about the prospect of losing their homes.

Under state law, Loder would have to give the residents six months to move and pay each homeowner $3,000 to help move a singlewide and $6,000 to help move a doublewide.

But if the trailer cannot be moved for reasons that include permanent additions or poor condition, which is the case with most of the trailers in Harbor Lights, the owner would receive only $1,375 for a singlewide and $2,750 for a doublewide.

That money does not begin to repay the money the owners have put into their trailers, both when purchased and for later maintenance and repairs. With many of the Harbor Lights residents fearing the loss of everything and eventual homelessness, they have attended recent council meetings to plead for help and understanding.

They are responding now because once a developer asks for a zoning change, council members are forbidden from discussing the issue or listening to information except during a hearing set aside specifically for that purpose.

[Last modified August 14, 2005, 00:53:19]