Scientology to Clearwater: $1.3 million? We're taking your street and you get bupkis

[Dave's keeping his eyes on the prize]

About a week ago, Scientology lawyer Robert Potter sent over a new letter to David Margolis, the city attorney for Clearwater, Florida.

In it, Potter indicates that his client, the church, will be resubmitting its application for the “vacation” of a portion of a street in downtown Clearwater known as South Garden Avenue.

And this time, he explains, the city better gets its head around the notion that things are going to be a lot different.

Scientology wants the street shut down to traffic and vacated as part of its “L. Ron Hubbard Hall” project. The short street lies between the large future auditorium and the “L. Ron Hubbard Park” that Scientology is planning to build in front of it.

In this Scientology rendering, we have outlined in red the current location of Garden Avenue with the future Hall behind it on the right and the Park in the foreground. To the left is the large Flag Building, which already exists.

Scientology owns all the property around the short street, and the church initially agreed that it would pay $1.3 million for the street once the city council voted to vacate it as a right of way.

But during the period when the proposal was being considered, a last-minute counterproposal was submitted by a man named Brooks Gibbs, and the city council decided to delay its vote to think about it. During that period, city councilman David Allbritton changed his mind and said he would vote no on Scientology’s application, making it a 3-2 majority against.

Rather than suffer that embarrassing defeat, Scientology withdrew its application at the last minute before the scheduled vote in May.

Now, it is preparing to resubmit its application, but church lawyer Potter is telling the city it got things completely wrong last time, applied the law incorrectly, and did not pay attention to the original designation of the underlying land.

And so this time, Scientology says, not only will it be applying for the street to be vacated, but Clearwater won’t be selling Garden Avenue, and won’t get a dime for it.

Attached to Potter’s letter is a copy of a 1922 map that shows the original designation of the street and adjoining parcels of land (see the illustration above).

Potter argues that because the right-of-way was designated this way, on the 1922 plat, the city’s only decision should have been whether to give up the right-of-way, in which case the underlying roadbed would go back to the adjacent property owners, which in this case is the Church of Scientology.

The city, in other words, never had the right to demand payment for the road, as well as to seek alternative proposals in a 30-day process. (Which in this case resulted in the Save the Garden project advanced by Brooks Gibbs.)

This time, Scientology says, when the church submits its application, the city better understand the law properly, and should be prepared to give the street away.

“As the City does not own the S. Garden Ave. roadbed, the City cannot sell the land to the Church. It simply vacates the right-of-way and ownership of the roadbed reverts to the adjacent property owners... We urge you to reexamine your analysis.”

At a Monday night work session, Clearwater Mayor Bruce Rector said that he didn’t appreciate being “intimidated,” and it appeared that he was referring to Potter’s letter.

But last night, the council didn’t bring up the matter, so we will continue to wait and see how they deal with Scientology leader David Miscavige’s aggressive countermove.

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California Governor Newsom rewards Scientology lawyer with judgeship

We noticed this week that William Forman, the reliable workhorse of Scientology attorneys who has been handling so many of the civil lawsuits at Los Angeles Superior Court over the last ten years or so, suddenly on Monday filed notices that he was abandoning all of them. (That includes the Danny Masterson civil lawsuit and Leah Remini’s lawsuit against the church.)

It turns out, Forman got the call-up.

He’s been appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to the bench, and will be joining the Los Angeles Superior Court as one of its new judges.

So what can we conclude? If you work hard enough, apply yourself, and take the big bucks to hammer Scientology’s victims in court, you will eventually get to put the robes on and get to be called “Your Honor.”

Great job, Gavin.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

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