Posted on 05/14/2002 5:05:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
EAST LAKE -- Many residents thought they owned the lake behind their $300,000 homes. They mowed up to the water line and chipped in yearly to treat the lake for algae blooms.
So it came as quite a shock Thursday when workers began erecting a 6-foot-high fence around the lake, obliterating their view.
For good measure, the workers painted a portion of the fence behind Alice Beehner's home bright pink and decorated it with sparkles.
"Isn't that atrocious?" Mrs. Beehner said Monday, pointing to the fence a few feet from her screened-in pool. "It's sickening!"
For 10 years the developer of their Tarpon Woods subdivision had let the taxes lapse on the 4-acre lake and a thin band of land around it.
A real estate speculator swooped in to purchase it for $1,000 at a delinquent tax sale in February. The speculator, 44-year-old Don Connolly of Valrico, now is offering to sell the land behind each of the homes for $30,000 per homeowner.
Residents ignored a letter from Connolly, trustee of the Lake Alice Land Trust that purchased the lake, offering to sell. Instead, someone took a couple of survey posts marking the property boundaries and threw them into the lake.
Connolly said that's when he decided to build the fence.
He started behind Beehner's meticulously landscaped property. The new fence separated her from two mature laurel oaks she planted shortly after moving into her home 17 years ago.
[Times photo: Jim Damaske] The fence behind the house of Alice Beehner, with dogs Beethoven and Bridgette, is pink with sparkles. Don Connolly says the color is to warn workers to stay away "because that person is very volatile and confronted us in the past."
"It's total extortion," Mrs. Beehner, 61, said Monday.
Connolly said he offered to sell the property to the homeowners as a courtesy.
"Is selling a piece of land extortion?" he said. "That doesn't make any sense to me."
He said he specializes in buying properties at tax sales. Records show he owns 50 properties in Pinellas County. Connolly said he owns 150 to 200 statewide.
"When people don't pay their taxes, this is what happens," he said. "I was willing to pay more than anyone else for this property. . . . The business we're in is unpleasant sometimes."
Connolly knows the consequences of failing to pay taxes.
Records show that in 1997 he was charged with failing to remit more than $100,000 worth of sales tax for an auto sales business he owned in Hillsborough County. Connolly blamed it on the company's accounting firm and said he reached a settlement with the state.
Because homeowners have rebuffed his offer, Connolly said, he now plans to develop two or three "executive" homes overlooking the lake. It might entail a dredge and fill project to move the lake a bit to the south, he said.
County officials said that would be difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish.
"He can't build on it unless he replaces the stormwater drainage," said Al Navaroli, a manager for the county's Development Review Services Department. "And pretty much all of it is stormwater drainage. . . . He's limited in what he can do."
But there's nothing to prevent Connolly from erecting the fence, Navaroli said, or painting it any color he chooses.
"I certainly see the man is trying to be obnoxious to his neighbors," Navaroli said. "But I don't see that he's violating any codes."
On Monday, the fence stretched across three of the 15 waterfront lots. He plans to extend it all the way around the lake.
"My intention is not to annoy anyone," he said.
As for painting the fence pink behind Mrs. Beehner's property, Connolly said, it was done to warn workers to stay away from that site "because that person is very volatile and confronted us in the past."
Connolly said he was shocked by the vitriol from some of the residents. The offer to sell small pieces of land to individual homeowners is off the table. Connolly said he is now negotiating with one homeowner interested in buying the entire 4.7-acre property.
He would not say how much he is asking. "I'm a reasonable man," Connolly said.
Mrs. Beehner warns the pink fence behind her property could be erected behind any number of homes in Pinellas.
"People need to be warned," she said. "This could happen in your back yard."
Connolly said he owns one other lake in Pinellas County.
But Navaroli said his office believes Connolly may own several properties that neighborhoods consider common areas. Navaroli said he warned the county property appraiser's office more than a year ago about the danger of taxing undevelopable lands, such as retention ponds, or selling those lands at tax sale.
"It's a pretty disgusting mess," said County Commissioner Susan Latvala. "We have to prevent this from happening again. That kind of property should not be for sale."
As for the Tarpon Woods lake, however, county officials said there may be nothing they can do to help the homeowners.
Some homeowners blame the developer, Lloyd Ferrentino for allowing the taxes to lapse. At the very least, some said, he should have notified the property owners so they could have tried to buy it. Ferrentino could not be reached Monday.
On Monday, Connolly's workers continued their fence-building, extending it behind the home of Peter Cieslinski. Cieslinski, 44, who was just released from active duty in the Navy a week ago, said he can't believe the county would allow someone to come in and take away his view of the alligators, turtles and wading birds.
"I look at it this way: There's the spirit of the law and the letter of the law," Cieslinski said. "The county is looking at this as the letter of the law. There's got to be a legal Latin term for "the law says this, but wait a minute, look at the extenuating circumstances.' "
Mrs. Beehner said neighbors plan to hire an attorney.
Oops, please point out the fraud.
Sure it is! He obtained property for $1K and he wants to sell it for $210K or some such. That's his right, and he's exercising it. If no one will pay him what he's asking however, then his plan won't work out.
That too.
With all due respect, I find Mr. Robinson considerably more responsive and enlightening than his critics.
Funny...all that work and intent, yet they never actually bothered to PAY for that lake.
Setting up one's property to enjoy someone else's property for free, then expecting some right to the latter's property, is foolish.
I enjoy the fact that my property is surrounded by someone else's hayfields. If the farmer decides to turn his property into a housing development or build a fence at our border, I have no right to stop him, other than to offer to buy that property at a mutually acceptable price.
Black's Law Dictionary 6th Edition defines extortion as "the obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right."
He did not engage in extortion.
There's room for judgement, and that judgement stops far short of the Korean store owner's rights to charge what he can -- for no one of his customers is forced to shop at his store only.A lake that none of them owned the shore around, that none of them made the effort to buy the shore around. He built the fence because they refused to discuss buying the property that they all took for granted and used for free...until he bought it.Here we have a neighborhood, built around a lake, centered around the lake, landscaped to the lake, with the people having bought the lots in a planned subdivision where the lake was part of the plan. Now those folks have an ugly, naught but view-blocking fence in their backyards, built by a man who built the fence just for the sake of having them pay to take it down.
You might have a fine Jewelery store downtown someday. And maybe then some stinking ragged grifter will come to sleep near your entryway and p&ss against it. And the grifter wants $1,000 to move away. Would ask the city to pass a law against such, or will you advocate the right of freemen to stink, sleep and p&ss where they may?My Korean grocer example is more to the point because they have invested in their operations and have the right to their property, peace or no peace.
Your hypothetical stinking Demo....errr......bum actually resembles the homeowners more, as far as the lake property is concerned. They wish to use it without buying it.
-Eric
How so? The property was taken from a man who was on good terms with the people of the community - or at least the ones living around the lake, and sold to the highest bidder, who then proceeded to antagonize and attempt to extort money out of his new neighbors. Theoretically, the government did this for the greater good of the community, since that is their job.
Looks like that's where he developed his business model...;-)
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