You, the City, received an offer from Mr. Kadoura to settle some of the pending lawsuits.
Basically the offer was:
First,
Plaintiff, BRUCE KADOURA (“Kadoura”), and Defendants, LORRAINE HUHN (“Huhn”), SAVE OUR LITTLE VILLAGE, INC. (“SOLV”), and CITY OF ST PETE BEACH (“the City”), by and through their respective undersigned attorneys, hereby stipulate and agree as follows:
1. The parties hereby withdraw all motions for attorneys’ fees or sanctions filed by any party against the other in this action and forever waive same.
2. SOLV and the City will pay the sum of Fourteen Thousand and No/100 Dollars ($14,000.00) to Kadoura in full satisfaction of his claims for taxable costs.
Second,
Appellants/Cross-Appellees, CITY OF ST PETE BEACH (“the City”), LORRAINE HUHN (“Huhn”), and SAVE OUR LITTLE VILLAGE, INC. (“SOLV”); and Appellee/Cross-Appellant, BRUCE KADOURA (“Kadoura); by and through their respective undersigned counsel, jointly move to dismiss the appeal and cross-appeal and notify this Court that all motions for costs, attorneys’ fees or sanctions filed by any party are hereby withdrawn and forever waived.
Third,
Plaintiff, BRUCE KADOURA (“Kadoura”), and Defendant, CITY OF ST PETE BEACH (“the City”), by and through their respective undersigned attorneys, hereby stipulate and agree as follows:
1. This action is hereby dismissed, with prejudice, and without taxation of attorneys’ fees or costs.
2. The City will produce the requested public records to Kadoura within thirty (30) days.
Note that this third stipulation references “requested public records”. I feel there is no question about the right of Mr. Kadoura to request these records but the request was quite expansive and at issue is the payment of the roughly $7,000.00 that the City rightfully, in my opinion, requests from Mr. Kadoura to cover the costs of producing the records.
So in summary Mr. Kadoura desires $14,000 and a gift of $7,000 in public records in exchange for which, he will agree to dismiss three issues before the court.
Your representative City Commission held a public meeting, retired to a shade meeting to discuss strategy to reduce overall litigation costs and reconvened in a public meeting to propose via motion, and vote on a counter-proposal.
Their proposal of dismissing three (3) issues falls short of what I believe is best for our City. I believe a better situation is to dismiss five (5) issues (listed below) to end the challenge to our Comprehensive Plan and to allow our City to move forward and end spending your tax dollars to defend a Comprehensive Plan that was overwhelmingly voted FOR in previous elections.
Turning Mr. Kadoura’s proposal down, we offered a counter-proposal which, in my opinion, potentially reduces your litigation expenses and gives Mr. Kadoura AND Mr. Anderson everything that they have stated they desire. I find no rationale that they might use to turn down our counter-offer.
Please read my take on this counter-offer as I think it represents the best interests of the majority of residents of St Pete Beach and for the future of our community.
We voted 5 to 0 to reject Mr. Kadoura’s offer and we proposed the following counter offer:
Mr. Kadoura and Mr. Anderson dismiss the following suits:
• Kadoura v. Huhn, et al., Case No.: 08-12498-CI-19;
• Anderson v. St. Pete Beach, Case No. 11-1319CI-11;
• SOLV and St. Pete Beach v. Kadoura, Case No. 2D11-503;
• Kadoura v. St. Pete Beach, Case No. 09-002732-CI-19; and
• Kadoura v. Commissioner Garnett, 2D10-4253.
City and SOLV to dismiss appeal of Kadoura case.
All parties withdraw all pending motions for attorneys’ fees and costs.
All parties assume their own costs and fees.
The City and SOLV will pay $30,000 to Mr. Kadoura and Mr. Anderson, in total, in consideration of their costs.
In addition, in order to address the concerns of Mr. Kadoura and Mr. Anderson regarding the costs of redevelopment being passed on to residents, the City will initiate and support a comprehensive plan amendment to clarify the following facts of our Comprehensive Plan:
- The Community Improvement Fee, and waivers thereof, does not apply to any infrastructure impact fees imposed by the City or County. The purpose of the Community Improvement Fee is to finance additional improvements to our community, such as streetscaping and landscaping.
- No waivers or variances may be granted for the maximum heights allowed under our Comprehensive Plan.
Additionally, the City agrees to hire a consultant to conduct the study necessary to support the imposition of impact fees in the City, and begin the process of adopting and impact fee ordinance.
This study will include the feasibility of assessing a transportation impact fee in the event that Pinellas County repeals its impact fee ordinance, which is currently assessed by the City.
We will agree not to repeal our transportation concurrency ordinance, although it is no longer mandatory statewide, as long as it meets state approval.
Part of the motion included our stipulation that this offer was valid until 4pm on 3 November 2011.
As always, comments are welcome. You can email to me at J.parent@stpetebeach.org
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