A reader sent this in. He will remain anonymous and this is verbatim:
"Here's a file (click here for a PDF) which I put together in early 2008 to suggest that some shenanigan's seemed to be afoot with the Grove Key Marina property just inland from Charthouse/Scotty's Landing parcel. At the time I was curious about apparent back taxes, not any prospect of new projects.
As I recall, Commissioner Marc Sarnoff's office looked into the matter with City staff and reported the following: At the time of the original lease, the property was thought to be exempt from taxes because it actually belonged to the City and was merely sub-leased to the current tenants. Somewhere along the line after the inception of the lease, the State of Florida decided that otherwise tax-exempt municipal properties that were leased to profit-making businesses were in fact taxable. (I suspect that this issue may have also figured in the back tax flap which accompanied the "sale" of Monty's early in the Mayor Manny Diaz administration.)
In any case, Grove Key Marina was not technically on the hook for any taxes and had in some suitably lawyerly fashion explained to the City just where they could stuff it whenever the City suggested that token taxes might be a good idea. The notion (in February 2008) was that the lease would be up in 2010 and the whole matter could be re-visited then.
Well 2010 is almost upon us, the City with its merry band of 1751 $100K+ employees has its fiscal ass in a crack and could easily be imagined to be looking for some additional tax base now that the Viagra has played out of Jorge Perez's condo erection frenzy. Charthouse-Bayside sounds like just the ticket."
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