Beach access needs parking action
Seven months after the civil trial began of the Tezak Family Trust vs. the Town of Fort Myers Beach, Judge Lynn Gerald, Jr. has issued his final judgment. In a ten-page document he denied the Tezaks’ claim that they owned the portion of Chapel Street adjacent to their property and had the right to control the public’s use of it.
The judge stated that the “action was fatally flawed on procedural grounds,” but went on to adjudicate it fully in order to close the issue. The fatal flaw was that the Tezaks owned the property for nineteen years before claiming the town had revoked its ownership of the strip. The evidence was clear that first the County, then the Town after incorporation had maintained the strip at least since 1986. The Tezaks had seven years to file their claim. They didn’t, so it was dead in the water on those grounds alone.
Testimony from county and town staffers plus several neighborhood residents made it clear that the street was used as a beach access since long before the Tezaks owned the property.
So – the Town of Fort Myers Beach owns all of Chapel Street. Yay!
OK, where do we go from here?
It is imperative that there be consequences. Without any, the only education that will take place is that residents will learn they can put the town through years of hassles and significant expense just by filing a lawsuit, however misguided. And even if they lose, nothing will happen.
The end of Chapel Street adjacent to the Tezak property has always been designated a no-parking zone. It is the very fact of the town not enforcing this ban and trying to cut the Tezaks some slack over the years by allowing them to park there which emboldened them to try the land grab. Being nice to some people just doesn’t work.
Now that the ownership issue is decided, either everybody should be permitted to park there, or nobody should. I favor the latter. If that causes the Tezaks and their guests some inconvenience, that’s tough. They should have considered this as a possible outcome before forcing the town into this very high-cost, high-stakes game.
The town needs to act immediately. If it does nothing, I could envision a situation where someone other than the Tezaks parks there, either the Tezaks or the town has the vehicle towed and the town has opened itself up to yet another lawsuit because they are not enforcing the parking ordinances uniformly.
A more benign approach, should it be determined the Tezaks deserve one, would be to lease back to them for their exclusive use the four parking spaces they have been (ab)using all this time. Charging them $4 a day per space (a bargain in any season) would generate $5,840 annually. It would take about 10 to 12 years at that rate for the town to re-coup the money it had to spend defending the lawsuit.
One clause that absolutely must be a part of any lease agreement with them is that if any member of the Tezak household, in any way, interferes with the public’s legal use of the beach access, the contract is immediately voided and they will have to make other parking arrangements.
We will never know what conversations took place between the Tezaks and their attorney Mark Ebelini. It is entirely possible that he knew about the time limit, told them the case wouldn’t go anywhere and they insisted on pushing it anyhow. If he didn’t, he should have. From the point of view of his law firm, the Tezak family has been a gold mine. When a member of that family walks in either for civil or criminal representation, one sound prevails -ka-ching. The lawyers will send their kids to college with funds the Tezaks could have used for educating their own.
It would be very tempting to gloat about all this except that nobody won. Everybody lost. Both sides wasted a pile of money. The town staff and several regular users of the Chapel Street beach access went through more than two years of barricades, tirades, threats, curses and extended middle fingers. Being called a “bleepin’ piece of “bleep” or “bleep-hole” became a regular event while walking through the access. If the Tezaks have become local pariahs, they brought it on themselves. David Tezak brought two criminal charges upon himself by his actions surrounding the whole mess. They just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
It would be nice if this ended now. I’m not holding my breath.
Jay Light
Fort Myers Beach