Property owners must not usurp public land
By A Times Edtiorial
Published January 23, 2008
Tarpon Springs commissioners sent an important message when they voted recently to reclaim a small strip of city land for the public. The message was that if you live next door to public property, you can't try to keep the public away by making the land look like part of your property.
Earlier this month, residents of the S Beach Drive area of Tarpon Springs came to a City Commission meeting with a complaint. They said that a small piece of city-owned, mangrove-covered property on the Gulf of Mexico slowly was being incorporated into a neighbor's property.
The residents told commissioners that for years they had gained access to the tiny beach and the gulf by using the public property. But in recent years, a home was built close to the line between public and private property, and then the homeowner installed landscaping, grass, sprinklers and a parking area, leaving the impression the public land was part of his yard.
Nearby residents were left feeling like interlopers when they tried to get to the beach.
"We're tired of having our rights stepped on," said one.
Commissioners ordered the improvements torn out to make it clear that the narrow strip of mangroves and beach did not belong to the neighboring property owner. Mayor Beverley Billiris said that many public accesses to the water effectively have been lost through the years by just such activity by adjacent property owners. The public doesn't even know the accesses are there.
It isn't happening just in Tarpon Springs, and not just on the waterfront.
Last year in Largo, officials learned that homeowners whose properties backed up to John R. Bonner Nature Park had taken some of the public parkland to expand their back yards. They had landscaped, added play equipment, even put in a basketball court. Their dogs scared people who tried to walk on the park's trails. The city reclaimed the property and decided to put up a fence so the border between private and public land was exceptionally clear.
One of the more interesting cases arose years ago between the city of Clearwater and millionaire Clearwater Beach resident Fred Thomas. A public boardwalk that provided beach access went down the middle of a city-owned lot next to his new beach home. Under the city's adopt-a-park program, Thomas "adopted" the land on either side of the boardwalk and landscaped it. Then he had a concrete wall, painted the same pastel color as his house, built across the front of the property. To the passing public, the lot looked like an extension of his property and the public beach access appeared off limits.
The temptation for private landowners to use pieces of adjoining public land is great, especially if the public land doesn't get much public use, as was the case in Tarpon Springs, gets annoyingly heavy use, or if the public property is poorly maintained by government.
Maintenance is an important issue. While private property owners have an obligation to leave the public land to the public, government has an obligation to maintain the land so it doesn't become an eyesore and detrimental to the adjoining property.
Sometimes, private landowners intrude on public property deliberately to discourage its use by outsiders.
For all those reasons, it is important for local governments to make sure to protect the public's investment in property by making its ownership extraordinarily clear and preventing encroachment by private landowners. It wouldn't be going too far for local governments to routinely erect a small, unobtrusive sign on such properties to let the public know, "This land belongs to you. You can walk here."