The Petition asserts that the City and Council denied the Petitioners’ Constitutional rights to due process, departed from the essential requirements of the law, and failed to base certain decisions on necessary competent, substantial evidence by:

1) Approving the rezoning based upon a report by the Planning Commission that failed to show its consideration of 16 important factors as required by City ordinance;
2) Denying the due process rights of Petitioners to cross-examine witnesses;
3) Denying the due process rights of the Petitioners to the rebuttal of witnesses;
4) Denying the due process rights of a Petitioner to be fully and fairly heard by limiting certain opponents of the rezoning to five minutes each at the first hearing while granting unlimited time to the applicant, staff, and others to advocate for the rezoning; and
5) Approving the rezoning based on a perception of public opinion.

The Petitioners have filed this appeal because we believe that procedures used by the City in conducting rezoning hearings have fundamental flaws that resulted in the inappropriate approval of an incompatible development at their border. Appropriate changes to these procedures as determined by the Courts are needed to protect the rights of affected residents in rezonings.
-- Dan Lobeck, attorney for Sorrento Ranches, email to City Attorney Bob Anderson, dated 02/08/08

If you read the above and then go back and read the civil court complaint that Rumrell filed against the city on behalf of Milo, you'll begin to get the feeling that these two cases are actually the same case. As shown, in many ways, they are.

How much would you pay for all this? But wait, there's more...
What should be particularly disturbing to city officials, but isn't raising any apparent alarms so far, is the piling on effect -- when you have this many wolves at the door braying "lack of due process" and you just have one city attorney (the same city attorney that led us into this mess) trying to direct a team of attorneys in boarding up the windows, you should come to a pretty quick realization that you're in a highly vulnerable position and that the stakes are pretty damned high.

There's an epiphany here that should be taking place inside our elected city officials' cranial cavities, but there's no sign that it has happened yet. At some point in time, they will have to come to the sudden realization that if any of these opposing attorneys are successful, the subsequent court rulings could (and likely would) throw a whole slew of zoning ordinances and major portions of our entire zoning process right out of the legal window. That's the big picture that one attorney involved in these set of cases painted: "[There's a] vast body of law out there that the city attorney has deliberately ignored," the attorney stated.

With multiple attorneys piling onto the city with nearly identical arguments in front of different judges (Milo's case is set before Judge Robert Bennett, while the Sorrento Ranches/Bella Citta case will be in Judge Donna Berlin's courtroom), the city's chances of coming out of this inexpensively unscathed get slimmer and slimmer.

Marriott as a possible behind-the-scenes player in this?
How scary is all of this? Consider one more loose thread: in the short-term rentals case, Milo's attorney, Richard Rumrell, was joined by the Pacific Legal Foundation, an ACLU-styled organization that primarily deals with issues of property rights. One other player threw in with Milo, and that may be even more significant: the law firm of Williams, Parker, Harrison, Dietz, & Getzen. They're a powerhouse law firm in Sarasota that primarily represent land developers in and around Sarasota County and throughout the state. These guys make our local Boone boys look like amateurs.

Normally, local developer attorneys would not want to get mixed up in our little short term rental mess, especially in going against an entity like the city, who they may have to appear before in order to get a favorable zoning determination in the future -- it's kind of like peeing in your own pool. Add to that the fact that with both Rumrell and the Pacific Legal Foundation acting in Milo's behalf, it would appear that Milo is already over-represented.

That's not to say that the Williams law firm jumped in of their own accord. They were contracted by Milo's company, Vacation Rental Pros. Milo believed he needed representation that knew the local legal jungle, as Milo's lead attorney is based out of Jacksonville.

Still that begs the question: Why, exactly, would the Williams law firm, a law firm that has the enviable luxury of being able to consider cases very carefully before taking them on, decide that they want to have a dog in a fight against the city to overturn the city's zoning codes? Perhaps because the Williams firm may very well have a dog already in this fight, a very big one at that. In one of those odd coincidences that stretch credulity when an argument is posed that it is just a mere coincidence, attorneys in the Williams firm just happen to be the attorneys of record for Amalthea Investments -- that's Aris Mardirossian, the wealthy investor who wanted to put a Marriott on airport property. Last year, when City Manager Marty Black announced that he had received a letter of interest on behalf of Marriott and Amalthea, the letter in question was printed on the Williams law firm letterhead.

After last November's city council election that swept three pro-growth incumbents out of office in favor of populist candidates, Mardirossian was quoted in the papers as publicly conceding that the Marriott deal was dead in the water. While that may be true, the entry of the same legal team that represents Mardirossian into an affray that has the potential of causing a hugely wide swath of collateral damage and permanent ill-will is... well... damned curious. It would be ludicrous to think that there weren't discussions within the law firm about the various potential fallout scenarios prior to their agreement to take Milo on as a client.

For a savvy business investor like Mardirossian who has already acquired a taste for gulf-front property, one thing is clear: if he does still want to build a Marriott at the airport, time is on his side. Marriott will likely still be an international mega-corporation in two years, or even in five or ten. The airport land is prime land right on the gulf, and it isn't going anywhere. If, in the meantime, the city's zoning process goes legally awry because of lack of due process, well, that probably can't hurt the prospect of a future airport land deal on behalf of Marriott International. In fact, it might help out a lot.

You folks in city hall anywhere close to an epiphany yet? Need more light bulbs?

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.