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Guest Column

Writer, who isn't one of us, is wrong about Alliance

By Jim Nicoll
Published September 18, 2006

As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all over again."

Each week, we encounter yet another letter on these pages excoriating the Homosassa River Alliance for opposing the Riverside Resort expansion, each missive more shrill and dishonest than the last.

It's almost as if they're all letters from a single mind, one sinking slowly by degrees into deep obsession with irrelevance and minutia.

The latest appeared recently under the name Carole Rogers of Lecanto, who opens her assault by weasel-wording the fabrication she is actually a dues-paying member of the Alliance.

"I am concerned," she says, "with the way the HRA is using the tax-deductible donations so many of us have given over the years for their corporate purpose as a charitable, environmental organization."

A search of HRA records can find no donations from anybody named Carole Rogers. Nor has one of HRA's 1,400 members expressed any such "concern" to the organization itself, or anybody else.

This comes as no surprise. When an organization's mission statement involves protecting the environment, one understands that "bankrolling a lawsuit" against threats to that environment becomes a prime directive.

Was Ms. Rogers concerned with how money was spent when HRA won its legal challenge to the Halls River Retreat four years ago? If so, she was in the minority. The public stood up and cheered and joined the Alliance in droves.

The HRA's demonstrated willingness to "bankroll" that lawsuit quadrupled its membership. Which transformed it into an environmental force for good beyond "planting mangroves and monitoring water quality," as Ms. Rogers cavalierly suggests should be the limited goal.

The naivete of those who identify with developer greed is baffling. Either they're culturally unwilling, or genetically incapable, of accepting the proven correlation between a rise in population density and a fall in water quality. "It must be something else," they always argue. But it never is.

The Citrus County Comprehensive Plan delivers exhaustive analysis of this population-pollution relationship, pointing out just how much more lethal the equation becomes in a low-lying estuarine system such as ours.

Which is why the comp plan's spirit (and its legal spine) directs population growth away from such short, shallow river systems.

To be sure, the plan recognizes a lot-owner's right to build a home, but it denies developers any right to deliver population in bulk (via planned residential developments) to any area west of U.S. 19.

Halls River Retreat was defeated on this basis. The courts ruled that its time-share condos were residences, and planned developments for such residences greater than 1 unit per 20 acres were not permitted.

Enter, now, the worm-tongued loophole.

To avoid such censure, the Riverside Resort calls itself "condo-motels." Why? Because the Riverside resort is zoned for motel rooms. Thus, the owner reasons, she can build an entire Halls River Retreat, by simply calling her 72-unit, three-stories-over-parking development a motel.

The buyer of a Riverside Resort Hotel Condo is told he can only reside in his fully residential unit for a maximum of 180 days. Why? Because, well, it's being called a motel.

Is the owner required to rent his room out the remaining 185 days in motel fashion? Nope.

Does the county have any oversight agency to count days, or prevent the owner from residing in his residence longer than 180 days? Or 260 days? Or 360 days? Nope.

Is there a law that even purports to punish such crime? Nope.

How, then, do these condos constitute motels? They don't. It's all simply tantamount to linguistic fraud.

These condos are residences, pure and simple. They're residences in a planned development that cannot, by state law, exceed 1 unit per 20 acres.

This issue is the core of the HRA lawsuit, the one Ms. Rogers' letter would have Times readers believe is only concerned with "aesthetics."

One wonders: Where does this person get her abysmal lack of information? Does it come from the people who tell her this project won't pollute the river, harm manatees or increase boat traffic because the boat slips at the resort can't be increased? Does she believe this?

Is she cognizant of the activity a short walk away on Otter Creek and the request to vacate a public road? The rumors about a marina and illegal night dredging? Has she heard statements leaked by a few lot-owners on Otter Creek to the effect that "Gail Oakes' condos are going to make us rich?"

Probably not. It's a good bet Ms. Rogers didn't write this letter herself. Not, at least, without selective input from a very visible "someone" the HRA's Board of Directors agrees had better close the door on this vendetta as soon as yesterday.

There is, after all, something about closets that make skeletons terribly restless. Or, if that isn't cryptic enough, one can always quote Yogi.

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there."

Jim Nicoll is a Homosassa resident and occasional commentator on local issues. Guest columnists write their own views on topics of their choice, which do not always reflect the views of this newspaper.

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 22:26:47]