Joel EngelhardtLawsuit ignites emotional debate, attempt to fire town attorney.
A Lake Park resident is suing the town and three commissioners, saying closed meetings leading to the decision to lease the town waterfront to Forest Development violated state open-meeting laws, constituting “an irreparable public injury” that empowers the court to toss out the deal.
News of the lawsuit prompted an emotional and divisive Town Commission meeting two days later, with Commissioner Michael O’Rourke admitting he didn’t trust town staff and Mayor Roger Michaud appealing for unity.
Pablo Perhacs, an attorney who lives in his grandfather’s 1968 Lake Park home, said he filed the lawsuit on Monday because he believes in participatory democracy. No matter how much public officials disagree, he said, he wanted to ensure that their deliberations follow state Sunshine Laws.
“As long as that is done, whatever else is done, whatever democracy brings about, if it’s done openly, that’s government,” he said. “That’s democracy.”
Democratic disagreements were on full display Wednesday as the Town Commission discussed the lawsuit and O’Rourke tried to fire Town Attorney Tom Baird.
O’Rourke, also an attorney, got down from the dais to address the commission for three minutes during public comment. He blamed Perhacs’ lawsuit on Baird, whose Dec. 8 memo described the potential Sunshine Law violations.
The memo, O’Rourke said, appeared to be a tool to help the town shut down negotiations to give Forest, the developer of the Nautilus 220 waterfront condos, the right to run the town marina and build a restaurant and hotel at the base of the twin towers on town-owned land.
Baird and Town Manager Richard Reade have argued that Forest’s proposed approach, particularly concerning public access to the waterfront, is not meeting the terms of leases signed in 2023.
The town is also under pressure from a resident group, the Lake Park Society for the Advancement of Civic Engagement. It has mounted a pressure campaign sharply criticizing the deal’s financial terms, which call for Forest to pay $1.2 million up front and $3 million over 10 years to control the town’s waterfront property for 99 years.
While the town attempted to renegotiate, Forest sued the town on Dec. 29 over delays, putting the talks on indefinite hold.
The Sunshine Law memo
Baird’s memo assessed the risk to the town after a Forest consultant sought the minutes and recordings of closed-door town meetings in 2021 and 2022 that led to the town’s decision to select Forest and negotiate the leases. The town found many meetings went unrecorded and were held behind closed doors even though a state law allowing such meetings had lapsed.
The key closed-door meeting came on Oct. 13, 2021, when the Town Commission selected Forest over Creative Choice to develop the waterfront. Afterward, the commission opened its meeting to the public to ratify the decision.
But the state law allowing the closed-door meeting had ended less than two weeks earlier, Baird wrote. Baird, who noted that he did not attend the closed-door meetings overseen by then-Town Manager John D’Agostino and consultant Don Delaney, pointed out that if a resident took the town to court, a judge could rule Forest’s selection invalid.
A court also could rule that everything is fine because the public meeting after the closed session “cured” the violation, Baird wrote. That meeting would have had to meet the standard of “a full open meeting” that provided the public an opportunity to weigh in, he wrote.
Perhacs’ lawsuit, drafted by Tallahassee attorney Terrell Arline, who once practiced in Lake Park, argues that all of the meeting participants, as well as the leases that resulted from the meetings, violated Florida law.
O’Rourke feared that he, Mayor Roger Michaud and Commissioner John Linden — the three commissioners named in Perhacs’ lawsuit — could be held criminally responsible for violating the Sunshine Law because they participated in the closed meetings. Knowingly violating the state law that calls for public business to be conducted in public is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail or a $500 fine.
O’Rourke blamed Baird — “somebody who is supposed to be here to protect our legal interests” — for detailing the issues in the memo.
“The Sunshine Law violations are being used as a sledgehammer,” he said.
O’Rourke moved to fire Baird but couldn’t get a second. Instead, Michaud, Linden and Commissioner Michael Hensley voted 3-1 to increase the hourly rate to $500 from $300 for Baird’s firm, Jones Foster, for the upcoming litigation involving Forest and Perhacs.
As O’Rourke and Linden discussed their recollections of the closed-door meetings, Baird interrupted them to warn that Perhacs was in the audience and that they should not be discussing the case. Michaud backed Baird, insisting that the conversation cease.
When O’Rourke persisted, Michaud appeared angry.
“As much as you want to talk about this, I suggest we stop now,” he said, pounding his fist on the desk.
Town to sue Forest subsidiary
Baird asked the commission for guidance on a disagreement with a Forest subsidiary, Sales at Sea, over payments for town marina space. The space had been set aside for a barge Forest used to showcase Nautilus condos during construction.
After the barge departed, Baird said, the agreement called for Forest to restore the space by installing floating docks. Sales at Sea never paid the town for the space, Baird said, and by failing to install floating docks it deprived the town of rent money it could use to help its cash-strapped marina operations.
Commissioners voted 3-1 to authorize Baird to file suit against Sales at Sea.
‘This stinks’
And O’Rourke’s comments brought more impassioned responses as the two-hour meeting proceeded.
Town Manager Reade asked commissioners to reach out to him rather than to criticize his work at public meetings.
“It’s not fair to kind of just keep pointing a finger and saying that this is happening or that’s happening.
“I don’t want any of this to happen. This stinks. I have to keep fixing a lot of stuff. And I am getting blamed and it’s not OK anymore. It’s not fair. Sit and talk to me and understand what I’m dealing with and what our staff is dealing with and how hard they’re working to fix this stuff.
“You can’t say that we love our staff and then keep blaming and pointing the finger. … There needs to be unity here. I’m asking for unity here.”
‘I don’t know if we can work together’
O’Rourke appeared unmoved.
“My position is that I’m not sure I trust the management that’s going on in this town,” he said.
“I don’t know if we can work together, Rich. I don’t trust the things you’ve been doing. … We’re a town that’s desperately in need of money. We have a downtown area that’s dying. … We’re in a bad place and I don’t see it getting any better. And I don’t think lawsuits are the way to solve these problems.
“You dismiss it and make it look like I’m the bad guy. I’ve never lost my love for this town. And concern for what’s going on right now and it couldn’t be any worse than what’s going on and what happened in this commission chamber today.
“I do know this. I’m not so confident that we’re going to be able to get out of this situation that we’re in right now.”
Behind his distrust, he said, is the impression that town staff is maneuvering to replace Forest with another developer. He pointed out that marina tenant JetRide is owned by a local developer, without saying the developer’s name. JetRide’s owner is Harbourside developer Nicholas Mastroianni III.
‘Do not let this divide us’
Final word went to Michaud, who is running for reelection March 10.
“We cannot let something divide us down. It does not work,” he said.
“I refuse as your mayor sitting here right now to let this happen to us. I am pleading on the camera looking at everybody that watches us on YouTube … do not let this divide us.
“This is not what we are here for. We are the town of Lake Park. We should be standing hand in hand, side by side. … I signed up for this and I’ll stand here and take responsibility for whatever actions I have to, because that’s what I signed up for here as your mayor.”
