Posted on January 1, 2025
TARPON SPRINGS — City commissioners expressed dissatisfaction with the $5.2 million asking price on a spoil site for river dredging, but they ultimately agreed to finance the purchase through issuance of a 10-year loan because voters approved of the purchase in a Nov. 5 referendum.
The vacant property, owned by Anclote Properties and recently used by the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge sediment from the Anclote River, is on the east side of L&R Industrial Boulevard, north of Brady Road and south of Anclote Boulevard. According to city records, it has been previously leased and utilized by the city as a dredge spoil site for sediment dewatering for more than seven years at a cost of approximately $770,000.
Commissioners ultimately approved the loan from TD Bank by a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Frank DiDonato dissenting at the Dec. 17 meeting. According to city records, the 14.28-acre permanent dredge spoil site will also be used to expand water utilities and for potential solar power generation, hurricane trash and debris storage and Pinellas Trail parking.
In the November election, residents decided the city of Tarpon Springs should purchase this 14.28-acre site south of Anclote Boulevard to put dredging material from the Anclote River. [ Pinellas County Property Appraiser’s Office ]
Unlike at the referendum election, passage of the bond issue at the commission meeting was not easy. An initial motion to approve the bond issue died for lack of a second, forcing Mayor Panagiotis Koulias to pass the gavel to Vice Mayor John Koulianos, so he could second the motion and keep the issue alive.
Koulias said the city has to take care of the Anclote River, which is an important economic resource. He noted the bayous and waterways have to be dredged as soon as possible.
DiDonato, who cast the only no vote, said, “I feel if voters had known our financial situation maybe they would not have voted for it.
“I was part of the group that voted for it. I did it because they talked for 30 years about doing it. … I’m going to say again tonight, I’ve never liked the price and I like it even less now than I did back then, because of where we are financially,” he said.
He explained he is more against the asking price now because of the storms and their potential impact on property tax revenue next year.
“I personally want to see a spoil site,” he added. “I think definitely long term it’s the thing to do; it would actually expedite future dredging because there’s always a holdup. We always have to wait until we find and authorize a property of which we pay the lease rate, and the cleanup rate is almost $1 million every time we do that. So I’m definitely for a spoil site, but I’m not for this site at this time. The circumstances weren’t that way when I supported it before and I cannot support it now.”
Commissioner David Banther ultimately voted to approve the loan, “in light of things I’ve heard and how much we would lose ($525,000) in escrow.”
Earlier in the discussion, he questioned the city “going into this much debt for this project. I just do not see where that makes sense.”
Commissioner Michael Eisner said he was surprised the public voted for the site, but that commissioners must represent the people of Tarpon Springs.
“I agree with Commissioner DiDonato that paying this was not something I wanted to do, but it has to be done at a certain point,” he said. “This has been going on for a long time. We do need to dredge endlessly, it’s not just now. We’re not buying it for now, we’re buying it for the next dredge, which could be 15 years down the road.”
“So far there has been no other site that has this value, this size, this ability to regenerate the water that gets placed in there,” he said. “There are smaller, different areas, that would be difficult to get this type of results, and that’s why we used it in the first place. I do realize it came in at an appraisal of $3.5 million to $3.6 million, but I don’t want someone to look back 15 years from now and say why didn’t they buy it then.”
Vice Mayor John Koulianos said he would also prefer not to buy the property.
“I was surprised that it passed, but it teaches us a lesson that if we send something to the residents they assume it’s something we want,” he said. “Especially when it’s going to a November election, with a presidential election involved, you got a lot of people going to vote that probably aren’t fully educated on city matters.”
However, he added, he doesn’t think killing the purchase is the right thing to do.
A city fact sheet distributed before the referendum noted “in the past the city was able to offset 80% of the lease cost through grant funds, but there is no guarantee in the future that such grant funds will be available.”
It predicted “accounting for an expected annual inflation factor of 3%, if a property is available, the future projected lease costs during the next anticipated dredge event between 2039 and 2044 would be approximately $1.4 million.”
