Key Winter Springs commissioner: There’s ‘proof’ that the developer has to pay tree fee

It’s a brutally hot Friday afternoon at a pond overlooking the Winter Springs Village clubhouse, but 21-year-old Hailey Donahue has a job too important to stay inside. She asks her father if he’s seen D’Argo, Chiana or Zhaan.

Those are their names for the three softshell turtles that make the pond home. They’ve been keeping an eye on their nearby turtle nests. 

Hailey’s father, T.C. Donahue, says he hasn’t seen any turtles today. But just then, one breaches the surface of the pond for a few moments. 

“Oh no, right there, speaking of!” T.C. says. 

“I believe that is Chiana,” Hailey says, “the smallest of the three.”

The neighborhood behind the Winter Springs Town Center is a mix of urban and rural. Neat homes lined up shoulder-to-shoulder sit a stone’s throw from the Cross Seminole Trail, which cuts a course through wide swathes of undeveloped woods next to the neighborhood Lake Jesup’s shoreline nearby.

The Donahues count indigo snakes, bobcats, coyotes and raccoons among their neighbors. And Hailey says environmental issues are a key thing for her as a voter. 

“I’ve grown up watching Florida go away by the acre,” Hailey Donahue said. “It’s kind of depressing at times to see that happen.”

Hailey was one of more than a dozen residents who lined up last month to tell Winter Springs City Commissioners not to waive a fee for cutting down trees in the proposed Sea Hawk Cove development next door. Many residents were upset that all five commissioners met with former Winter Springs Mayor Paul Partyka, who is representing the developer, before voting to absolve the developer of the fee.

“Pretty much everyone in the neighborhood is concerned about too much development on land that has a bunch of protected species on it,” said Hailey, a University of Central Florida student getting her master’s degree. “While it’s great to do it if you have the permitting and everything paid for and you crossed your T’s, dotted your I’s. But you also don’t want to overtax the land itself.”

That public outcry about the arbor fee appears to have swayed commissioners. The Winter Springs City Commission voted 3-2 to reopen the controversial vote last month. 

And this coming Monday, the final vote will happen on whether or not to require the developers to pay a $227,400 fee for cutting down trees to build connector roads, 82 townhomes and several commercial lots for Sea Hawk Cove. 

Former mayor Partyka declined to do an interview for this article.

“I will only say one thing: We’re right,” Paryka said. “Thats all we have to say.”

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Commissioner Mark Caruso, key vote on tree fee, appears ready to vote for fee

The key vote to bring back the arbor fee came from Commissioner Mark Caruso.

Caruso voted to waive the fee at the June 23 meeting, but voted to bring the matter back up at the July 14 meeting.  In an interview with Oviedo Community News, Caruso appeared ready to vote for the fee. 

“So talking to the city attorney about it, there’s definitely proof that the developer has to pay this fee,” Caruso said. “It was pretty simple. If we would have had this information during the first vote, the very first vote, we wouldn’t be here.”

Caruso said the mayor has been confident that the city could win a lawsuit, if it came down to it – so if the city ends up in court, the blame for that would fall on McCann. He blames the mayor for not giving the commission more information at the first meeting. 

For his part, Caruso said he won’t meet with developers going forward.

“From now on, because of the mayor’s actions on social media, I’m not going to meet with a developer, and I don’t care if a developer has solid proof in their favor, they’re going to have to bring in front of the commission during a meeting, because the mayor is going to do nothing but challenge our integrity and call us unethical in the public and on social media,” Caruso said. “That’s what he’s doing now, and I’m not going to have it.”

So how did the city end up here? 

Sea Hawk Cove is an 8-acre site along State Road 434, east of Michael Blake Boulevard in the Winter Springs Town Center. The project calls for an extension of Sea Hawk Cove, and inside there are multiple projects. On the commercial side, there’s a 7-Brew drive-through coffee shop and a 10,000-square-foot child care center called The Learning Experience. There’s also plans for Townhomes at Sea Hawk Cove, which is planned as 82 townhomes on the site. The project is expected to cost an estimated $50 million to build. 

The arbor fee issues stem from a previous development agreement for the property. 

In 2017, Tuskawilla Retail Partners II IIC took over as the developer on the project, and is an affiliate of Catalyst Development Partners. 

Catalyst developed the $42 million The Blake apartments, which has 218 units.  

Catalyst argues that when they developed The Blake apartments in 2017, they paid a $149,660 arbor fee that was for “the Project,” which included the land on both sides of Michael Blake Boulevard and the entire 45-acre project. 

“And then to add another $200,000 in arbor fee that technically we’ve already paid, I mean that’s a killer for the project, right?” Jones told Winter Springs commissioners in June. “And this is a good project. It’s a $50 million revenue benefit for the city. It’s what the city has been asking for. The city has been asking for commercial.”

Ultimately, three commissioners – Paul Diaz, Victoria Bruce and Mark Caruso – voted to approve the project without requiring them to pay the arbor fees at the June 23 meeting. Commissioners Sarah Baker and Cade Resnick voted against waiving the fee. 

But at the July 14 city commission meeting, Mayor Kevin McCann presented what he called new information. 

Winter Springs City Attorney Anthony Garganese produced an email from then-community development director Randy Stevenson that explained the math of how they calculated the arbor fee in 2015. It was calculated for removing 170 trees on 6.45 acres – the size of the parcel for The Blake, and not the size for the upcoming Sea Hawk Cove. And McCann pointed to a 2015 Planning and Zoning meeting that defined the project as east of Michael Blake Boulevard. 

That’s when Caruso switched his vote, and three commissioners voted to bring it back Aug. 11. Catalyst argued in a memo that the city never should have been able to reverse the vote. 

Winter Springs staff calculated the fee for the current project, the Sea Hawk Cove extension, as $227,400. But McCann cautioned that it wasn’t just about the current arbor fee.

“The next 10 acres will (also) be exempt from paying the fee,” McCann said. “We’re not just giving up $227,000. We’re giving up half a million dollars. Once we run through the facts and the commissioners understand the consequences, it will turn the vote over. “

Winter Springs City Attorney Anthony Garganese said he couldn’t comment on whether the dispute could ultimately end up in court. 

“We’ll get our direction next Monday,” Garganese said. “I can’t say much more than that. It’s in the hands of the Commission.”

For T.C. Donahue in Winter Springs Village, there were two things that brought him to live in the Winter Springs Village. The first was the quality of the schools. 

“Schools, and then greenery,” Donahue said. “You want to be able to have this environment where, if you want, you can take a nice stroll in the evening.  You don’t have to worry about cars running by, choking on smog and exhaust and fumes.”

He said it’s in the name: Winter Springs has been designated a Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation for more than 35 years. 

“Why have a moniker like Tree City and then decide that if you’re a developer, you can knock down a tree and not replace it?” Donahue said. “If you’re going to take down a tree, someone has to replace them in an equitable area close by. Not just, oh, here I’m going to take this tree down and I’m going to plant five in Ocala National Forest. No, if you’re going to develop green space, you have to keep a green space available for the people who you’re now producing for.”

Abe Aboraya is a Report for America Corps Member