The evening leader., 1919-01-04

| Answering article in The Evening
Leader OF Dec. 30: "Will you be dis
possessed Of your waterfront proper
ty?-If the council should succeed in
taking property rights from one it
will Of necessity take it from all
! Read what prominent attorney says
when interviewed by citizen"
! am satisfied the owners of water
front property in Tarpon Springs need
feel no uneasiness as to their rights in
the matter. The city cannot create a
title to that to which it had no title
| consider the article of Mr.. H. L.
Whitney, "Will you be dispossessed of
waterfront property" as misleading
in the questions to Judge Brandon and
the answers, though surely not intend
ed to be So
If the property or riparian rights in
question do not legally belong to the
abuuing property owners the decision
of the case in question would not alter
the title. The city can not hold or
take by law that to which it has no
legal right. The city can not acquire
riparian title by special favor of the
law to its own individual case; the
law of riparian rights applies to the
whole state. to every waterfront in
the state. The city is stock compa-
ny Of which every property owner is
a member and it does not seem reas-
enable that the city would do that
which would injure it's members so as
to deprive or dispossess them of i'm
provements and thus place barrier
to future Improvement of the main
! feature of this city-the water front
age.
1t might be that the city may estab-
lish a control" of all water fronts in
its limits, but to imply that it could
acquire title against those who had
been decided title from the state and
held and paid taxes on it for years,
seem preposterous. For example:
Hog Island, off our coast, is more than
half submerged by high tides 1t is
divided in Government lots by cross
section lines running to the water
from side to side and from north to
south, which include the submerged
land; the corners of the water lots are
lost in the water, in other words, the
water front lots take in all the land
at LOW TIDE. This island has been
decided to private parties by the state,
naming the approximate acreage of
the lots including tide marginal land.
The state has been paid for it and re-
ceived taxes for it all. Mo- would or
could the state claim this low land un-
der Submerged" or any other name,
and grant title or privileges to other
parties to the tide overflow land in
cluded in those government lots al
ready conveyed? The same point OBJ
tains in respect to the water front
lands in Tarpon Springs on it's river
and bayous.
BUT as to the question of the city
VS.. the original platter of the town
of Tarpon Springs as to the title and
control of the bank or water margin
or submerged lands bordering streets
that is another question. AS soon
as the plat is filed, the city becomes
an owner in trust of the streets. The
question is: Does the city acquire con-
troll and community or municipal IT,
tie to the riparian foot of streets that |
run to the water, and to the water |
margin of streets margining the river
anG 5ayous?
The city council are claiming that |
the city has rested all these years with |
the latter understanding of the case.
Personally, can see no menace to
any private interests on either Spring
or Whitcomb bayous in this issue.
AS to the Springs bayou water
fronts bordering Spring boulevard
there is another phase of the question.
A number of years ago when the first
concrete walks were built along the !
margin of the bayou, the property
owners along Spring boulevard got to-
gether and made proposition to the
city council to this effect: that al
though the Spring boulevard was sup
posed to be about forty feet wide for
travel, the fact was that from the
front line of the abutting property
according to the designated figures of
the plat, forty feet from the property
line would bring the shore line of the |
street to the water, in other Words
include the bank which IN some places /
lis quite steep. So these property own