MEMO DICTATED BY PHONE FROM DOUGLAS ROACH U.S. HOME CORPORATION
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Dictated by phone by Douglas Roach, U. S. Home Corporation,
upon request of Mr. Whitehead, Clearwater City Clerk--
10:00 a.m., January 22, 1976.
Relative to U.S. Home's actions with other communities at
the time we began discussions with Clearwater on annexation
of Countryside, the following is the chain of events as best
I can remember them four years later:
Our engineers advised us that we had two choices in regard
to utility services for Countryside. Those two choices were
to go into the sewer business ourselves (such as Sidney Colan
has done at Top of the World) or to annex to Clearwater which,
at that time, had both the capacity to serve our initial needs
and the financial ability to expand its services to serve our
needs in the future.
In an effort to be a good nei~hbor to all of the surrounding
municipalities and as a courtesy to Mr. Stierheim and at
Mr. Stierheim's request, we talked to the County, Dunedin
and Safety Harbor, and advised them why we were entering into
negotiations with Clearwater on the annexation of Countryside.
To the County, we told them throu~h Bill Dunn, that due to
the County's delay in constructing the Northwest Sewer Plant
near Innisbrook, that we could not afford to wait for the
completion of its facility in order to proceed with our
development program. We knew that they had ample water
supply to serve us but we did not want to go into the sewer
business ourselves.
To the City of Safety Harbor, we told them that our property
did not come within a quarter-of-a-mile of the existing
Safety Harbor limits and, therefore, there was no way we
could annex if we wanted to, but that in addition our engi~
neers advised us that at that time less than 50% of the City
of Safety Harbor was actually tied in to Safety Harbor sewer
plants and the plant was inadequate to serve the existing
City much less take care of our Countryside needs. We were
also advised that Safety Harbor was at that time negotiating
with Mr. Stierheim at Clearwater relative to ~oing out of
the sewer business completely and having Clearwater treat
all of its sewage at the Clearwater East Plant.
To Dunedin, we met with their officials specifically at
Mr. Stierheim's request and advised them of our engineers'
report stating that Dunedin was having a very difficult time
adequately treating its existing sewage load and could not
reasonably expect to provide any treatment for Countryside
sewer load when needed. In addition, it was unlikely that
Dunedin could have the financial capacity to expand its
facilities rapidly enough, therefore, even though their
boundaries were contiguous to our property, we intended to
annex to Clearwater. This public relations gesture on our
part (requested by Mr. Stierheim) actually precipitated a
heated discussion on future town policy regarding Dunedin
Service Area. As a result, in the next upcoming municipal
election, the two factions pro and con on extensive expansion
caused a referendum to be held in conjunction with the muni-
cipal election relative to a service area. The referendum
showed that the majority of Dunedin preferred to pull their
service area boundary back from U.S. 19 to County Road 70.
At no time did the Company ask for service from any of those
three governments. Our choice was only to go into the sewer
business ourselves or to annex to Clearwater for service.