Clearwater City Council again approves Scientology request for Garden Avenue, but it’s not quite final
A final City Council vote is still required, and there's still a group suing over a related ballot initiative.
The Clearwater City Council has again approved the Church of Scientology’s request for a right-of-way land vacation on Garden Avenue in downtown.
This time, though, the city isn’t requesting any funds from the Church.
The City Council voted 3-2 to move forward with
vacating the portion of South Garden Avenue in front of the Church’s Flag Building. Another vote is still required to finalize the land vacation. The City Council had previously approved the land vacation, but the Church withdrew its application and is now revisiting the proposal.
The City Council had included a $1 million price tag on vacating the portion of roadway, but has abandoned that now after Attorney General
James Uthmeier issued
a legal opinion that the Church likely owns the land, meaning it could petition for the right-of-way vacation without paying market value for it.
The Church had proposed that the city sell a portion of South Garden Avenue for $1.375 million with the intent of closing that portion of the street. The Church owns adjacent property and wants to build an auditorium and park. The Church sought to shut down that area of the street because leaders say it’s not safe to have vehicle traffic between the two projects.
In his opinion, sent in December, Uthmeier fully sided with the Church, finding that it owns the land because it was dedicated to the city of Clearwater through common law dedication and, because the Church owns the abutting land, it retained the title to land under Garden Avenue. Additionally, the letter said the Church can petition to vacate the right-of-way without paying full market value.
That was not the first time Uthmeier has sided with the Church of Scientology in the Clearwater land dispute.
In a
letter to Clearwater Mayor
Bruce Rector last June, Uthmeier cautioned that any decisions made based on discriminatory reasons would violate Florida law, as would mandates that a land deal be tied to alternative properties also owned by the Church of Scientology.
The issue has been fraught, with a group popping up opposing the land transfer. The group, Save the Garden, attempted to petition for a ballot initiative seeking to require voter approval of public right-of-way vacations in the city’s Downtown Community Redevelopment Area, which includes the site the Church of Scientology is seeking. Voters would be asked to approve such vacations in either a regularly scheduled municipal election or in a special referendum.
Save the Garden
submitted more than 8,000 petitions to the city, but most were rejected. The majority of those rejected were gathered before the group had the required number of city voters heading the effort, making those collected invalid. Other petitions were rejected for a variety of reasons, including duplicate petitions, those from voters who don’t live in the city or those who are either not registered to vote or who are listed as inactive voters.
Save the Garden, through its legal representation from the ACLU of Florida, is now suing over those rejected petitions. It had
previously retained embattled attorney
Anthony Sabatini, but is no longer using him as counsel.
The city of Clearwater in 2018 approved the Church of Scientology’s application for its event hall, but at that time the request for Garden Avenue was not included.
Rector and Council member
Lina Teixeira cast the dissenting votes on the right-of-way vacation, while Council members
David Allbritton,
Ryan Cotton and
Mike Mannino voted “yes.”
The City Council meets again June 18, though an agenda for that meeting has not yet been published.
