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Council paves way for casino boat plans
By MATTHEW WAITE PORT RICHEY -- Either way, the city was facing a lawsuit. Port Richey's two gambling boat interests were before the City Council, one having challenged the city's building official over giving the other building permits. If council members went against Paradise of Port Richey, which brought the case, the city got sued. If they went against the other, Stardancer Casino Cruises, the city got sued. After more than two hours of testimony during a special meeting Thursday night, the meeting ended with Paradise planning its lawsuit. "We're going to be amending the suit we have currently to include this board didn't act impartially," Paradise attorney Larry Crow said after the 3-2 vote that upheld the building permits. Since July, Paradise of Port Richey has been challenging Stardancer's plans to build a boarding area and ticket booth on the Pithlachascotee riverfront area, two doors down from Paradise's offices, which have been there since 1995. Paradise sued the city in July after building official Bill Sanders refused to stop Stardancer from building while Paradise's appeals went on. Since half of the construction has been done already, that suit was largely moot until the addition of Paradise's claims that its due process rights were denied. During the last of many delayed hearings on the appeals, frustration boiled over and, according to Paradise attorneys, council members Pat Guttman and Phyllis Grae said some things that revealed them to be biased against Paradise. Jerry Theophilopoulous, an attorney for Paradise, asked that Grae and Guttman recuse themselves for what they said at the Oct. 16 meeting. There, Guttman asked that Crow be handed a document in front of witnesses so she wouldn't "worry" about it and Grae said it was "convenient" that Crow took a deposition from someone and then notarized it. Then, at an Oct. 23 meeting, Grae read from a written statement that said, in part, she wouldn't listen to "someone who does not pay the bills," meaning that Crow is not a city voter. "How can anyone who comes before this council think they are going to get a fair shake?" Theophilopoulous said. Before Paradise pleaded its case, the council voted 4-1 -- Mayor Eloise Taylor was the lone vote against -- to keep Grae and Guttman onboard for the hearing. As it turned out, had Grae and Guttman been recused, the vote would have gone Paradise's way. The two women, along with fellow council member Joe Menicola, were the majority that went against Paradise. During the hearing, Paradise argued that under city code, Stardancer had too few parking spaces, created too much traffic, needed council approval to change the use of its land and needed a variance for its parking lot. Stardancer attorney Robert Lecznar said his client followed every rule the city asked the company to follow, and that Paradise was using the city to try to stop Stardancer from competing with Paradise. "Like the old saying goes, consider the source," he said. "They do not want competition and they will clearly do anything to prevent that." And, he said, if the city changed the rules on them, it would affect the "hundreds of thousands of dollars on this project." "Then we have a business that has been severely damaged financially," Lecznar said. "And the ramifications of that are substantial." Sam Gray Jr., who runs the Port Richey operation for Stardancer and is the son of the company's owner, said the victory cleared the way for them to build their waiting area. He said "ludicrous claims" like Paradise made "make you question how much you want to invest in a city. We will go through with our plans in the near future." - Matthew Waite covers the city of Port Richey. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com.
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