IRB commissioner seeks legal opinion
By HARLAN WEIKLE
Article published on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007  |
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| Photo by HARLAN WEIKLE |
| At the site in question, Whitehurst Avenue looking east, Commissioner Jose Coppen maintains that the access is too narrow to accommodate emergency vehicles. |
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INDIAN ROCKS BEACH – In a Jan. 24 letter to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, City Commissioner Jose Coppen wrote the following: “My purpose in writing you is to bring to your attention the irregularities and possible violations of law in the city of Indian Rocks Beach by the mayor, William A. Ockunzzi.”
Coppen’s letter arrived Monday, according to a staff spokesperson in Tallahassee, who added, “It will require some time to review.”
“I just wanted to raise a question based on what I see,” Coppen said.
What he has seen swirls around the ongoing matter of a request for a variance to the city building code. The property in question, a vacant lot bordering the southern edge of Whitehurst Avenue, is owned by A. Parker Willis, who wants to build a 3-unit, 4-story over parking condominium on the property, which runs between the beach and Gulf Boulevard. The problem, according to Coppen, is that Willis’ plan extends precisely 7-feet, 3-inches over the boundary onto Indian Rocks Beach property.
The Whitehurst Avenue beach access is a sand-covered, irregular path to the beach. On the south side, a 6-foot chain link fence surrounds the proposed building site. To the north, an open patch of land narrows from Gulf Boulevard to just 10 feet as it squeezes between the fence and the end of a concrete sea wall running north into Indian Rocks Beach.
Among other things, Coppen points out, the passage as it stands is too narrow for an emergency vehicle. The Willis site plan would narrow that width to just 8.63 feet, indicated on the plan blueprint.
In his letter to the attorney general, among other irregularities, Coppen accuses Ockunzzi of improperly drafting a contract to resolve the dispute over the boundary line.
The mayor, Coppen said, “is not a lawyer … he performed actions usually reserved to one admitted to the practice of law in this state.”
Coppen said there is no confusion about the exact location of the boundary between IRB and Indian Shores and nothing will deter him, as an elected official, from resisting what he calls a “land grab.”
“Why are we (the commission) wasting our time on this?” Coppen asks.
In a phone interview, Ockunzzi said, “As usual, Commissioner Coppen has exaggerated. I have no interest in the property. I have no confusion about the boundary.”
Ockunzzi said he did not draft an agreement but rather, “drafted amendments and presented them to the commission.”
He points to the transcript of the City Commission workshop at which Willis’ attorney, James Helinger, presented a case for the requested variance. At that workshop, the mayor said, the commission was clear on the subject that there would be no vacating of the property rights of the city of Indian Rocks Beach.
On Tuesday, Ockunzzi said he intended to call for a special commission meeting to air this matter.
“I will listen to what is said, but that in the end, the commission is obliged to protect the land,” Coppen said.
Referring to the attorney general’s office Coppen said, “The ball is in their court now.”
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Article published on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007
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