Who is paying for this?
Who is paying for this?
To the Editor:
Once again, the Town is being sued by a local resident who doesn’t like one of the Council’s decisions.
Chris Patton, who lives on Primo Drive, has filed legal actions asking the court to throw out the Town’s approval of the TPI-FMB Margaritaville project, claiming the Town didn’t follow its own procedures in approving the application. She claims she will be “adversely affected by increased traffic, and negatively affected by the project’s height, intensity, activity, lights, music, visual and audible noise pollution and enjoyment of the beach.” Beyond that, she has the “chutzpah” to ask for the Town to reimburse her for her costs in the action.
This lawsuit has about the same chance of succeeding as I have of winning an Ironman Competition.
No development project since incorporation has been vetted, scrutinized, torn apart and put back together with as much attention to detail as this one has. Everyone, including the Council, town staff, the outside consultant who wrote the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code, and the TPI applicant Tom Torgerson, has made very sure that every “i” was dotted and “t” crossed.
The Comp Plan and Code very clearly give the Council the flexibility to grant “deviations” in return for “public benefit.” It is strictly the Council’s call and they made it, unanimously. They decided that a storm drainage system serving that entire area, improved view corridors, discounts for residents and the donation to the Town of a tract of land at the base of the bridge was sufficient public benefit. Ms. Patton can dislike the decision all she wants, but that won’t change the correctness and legality of it.
This entire gambit raises questions that deserve to be answered. First, who’s paying for this? A suit of this type is going to cost both Patton and the Town a bunch of money, no matter the outcome. She’s engaged three lawyers, one from Cape Coral and two others all the way from Tampa.
There are some interesting “coincidences” here. One of Patton’s lawyers, Ralf Brookes, is the same one who has filed legal actions on behalf of the Lani Kai owner, Bob Conidaris. Over several weeks recently, Conidaris bought full-page ads in the Observer in which he wrote very lengthy and somewhat disjointed essays (I’m being kind here.), telling us what a wonderful citizen he has been, what terrible people a couple of elected officials are, how greedy Tom Torgerson is, and excoriating the Town for the TPI approval. His complaints echo (or served as the template for) the grievances in Patton’s lawsuit.
In May, he invited other unhappy campers to a meeting with the same attorney, Brookes, to discuss “all potential legal rights and remedies” concerning the issue. The media were excluded from that meeting. Just a couple of weeks ago, Conidaris appeared on one of the local TV channels announcing that he was planning to “donate” to the Town a pedestrian overpass at the base of the bridge that would cost him $3 million, totally ignoring (or maybe not) the fact that the Margaritaville project included an overpass less than 100 yards down the street. Attempts by another town newspaper to reach Conidaris for comment were unsuccessful.
The public always has a right to to know who is forcing the Town to waste money on a frivolous lawsuit
In the interest in transparency, I would ask Mr. Conidaris to issue a simple, unequivocal public statement that he isn’t funding or in any other way backing this suit.
For that matter, Ms. Patton could make her own statement that it is she alone who is paying for this.
So where do we go from here? Months ago, I told the Town Council that the time had come for them to establish a policy that says to people who file meritless lawsuits that the Town would seek to recoup funds spent on defending such suits. What’s happening now is precisely the kind of “nuisance suit” I was talking about. I understand that people need to be able to sue the Town when the Town has really screwed up because that certainly has happened. This isn’t one of those instances. This time, they did everything right and anyone who can read could figure that out. As to Patton’s demands to be reimbursed? That’s a double-edged sword which cuts both ways. As a taxpayer, I want to be reimbursed, too. The Council needs to decide whose interests they are there to protect.
At this moment, TPI and Tom Torgerson aren’t a party to the suit, but there is no question that delaying his project while this Kabuki Theater plays out is going to cost him a pile of money, too. I urge him to have his attorneys send a letter to Mr. Brookes making it clear that TPI is being damaged by this action and will independently seek remedy from Ms. Patton, since she is the sole plaintiff. Then we’ll find out who really wants to play hardball.
Jay Light
Fort Myers Beach