Hernando County's fairgrounds plan is put off

Give away the fairgrounds? Not so fast, other county commissioners say.

By Barbara Behrendt, Times Staff Writer
Published March 13, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT Commissioner Dave Russell had urged his colleagues to okay a deal.

BROOKSVILLE - County commissioners were hardly thrilled Wednesday by a suggestion to fix longtime lease problems with the Hernando County Fair Association simply by giving the group most of the county's land at the fairgrounds site.

"Basically, we're giving away the store here," said Commissioner Diane Rowden. "There is a lot of valuable property that the county owns. This is our property. It belongs to the taxpayers."

Commissioner Rose Rocco wanted to know how things got to the point where giving away land is the best way to solve a problem. Commissioner Jeff Stabins asked about the financial impacts of the proposal.

Their reluctance led the board to back away from any deal and to direct the staff to come back later with more information.

Commissioner Dave Russell, the board's point person on talks with the association, had urged his colleagues to seal the deal. "This puts an end once and for all to the disputes and squabbles of the past," he said, noting it would get the county out from under complications caused by "shabby accounting" by past county officials.

Russell said the commissioners should not think of the deal as giving away land to some private entity that might build hotels there someday.

"The whole purpose here is to benefit the public," he said. "It's going to enhance the performance of the fair."

The complicated dispute that has lingered more than two years focuses on the approximately 35 acres along U.S. 41 S. The Fair Association has two leases that cover most of the site. The lease that covers the actual fairgrounds and auditorium was signed in 1964 and is renewable annually for as long as the county fair is held.

The acreage just to the east of the fairgrounds was leased to the Fair Association in 1984 for 20 years, Assistant County Attorney Kent Weissinger told commissioners Wednesday.

Part of the association's responsibility in the lease was to make the payments for the land. In 1997, the association told the County Commission that it could not make the payments, and the county took over paying the debt.

While the county contends that the lease has expired, the Fair Association says that an automatic 30-year extension is now in force.

The county could fight the association in court over the terms of the 1984 lease, Weissinger said the outcome would be uncertain.

Part of the reason the county is in a tough spot is that it has situated its Extension Services and Animal Services buildings on the easternmost parts of the property - on land that has been leased to the association.

Weissinger told commissioners he can find no documentation that association ever relinquished its interest in those sites.

Further muddying the waters are other leases on pieces of the 35 acres and the north-south connector road known as Governor Boulevard that the city of Brooksville plans to build through the middle of the site.

The push to get the right-of-way secured for Governor Boulevard is what has shoved the whole issue to the forefront, county officials said.

The complicated lease mess also squashes notions such as the county possibly trading the fairgrounds site for property closer to Brooksville to be used for a new court complex, or building the complex at the fairgrounds, according to interim county administrator Larry Jennings.

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified March 12, 2008, 21:38:18]