Before voting against the counter-offer, Stroup said he could back the 99-year lease and automatic renewal but not the monetary compensation. He said $105,000 was “an unreasonable offer for them to consider accepting.” 

The settlement offers stemmed from the Feb. 26 virtual mediation at the Sixth District Court of Appeal in front of mediator and retired Circuit Judge Frederick Lauten.  

A mediation order filed Monday by the appellate court gives attorneys on both sides fewer than five days to file status reports about the settlement and alert the court if the appeal should proceed. 

The town scheduled two shade meetings for March 31 and April 6 at 6 p.m. to hash out a new settlement offer.

Add another $200K? 

The Town of Windermere filed its lawsuit in 2022, in an attempt to evict residents from the boathouses — one of which has been in a family’s possession for more than six decades — alleging they were in breach of a 1986 lease, which stated the boathouses would be turned over to the town in 2021. In October, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the boathouse owners, affirming that they owned the boathouses, the town could not evict them and that the town did not have the right to enter into the 1986 lease. 

The town filed an appeal with the Sixth District Court of Appeal, and the case was recommended for mediation. Attorneys for the boathouse owners later filed a motion to dismiss the appeal on the grounds that it was not legally authorized. Separately, a hearing on awarding the boathouse owners attorneys fees is scheduled for April 20 with Ninth Circuit Court Judge John E. Jordan at the Orange County Courthouse. Boathouse-owners’ attorneys filed an additional motion in the Sixth District Court of Appeal, requesting attorneys fees if the appeal is dismissed or decided in their favor. 

Crews told the council she was told by the opposing side’s counsel that the boathouse owners have spent an estimated $800,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs. VoxPopuli could not independently verify that amount. Windermere has estimated its legal fees to be $637,000 as of October. Crews said that continuing the appeals process could potentially cost the town an estimated $100,000 to $200,000. 

“Who can dredge the lagoon?” 

A sticking point for the town appears to be ownership of the Palmer Park lagoon. Under the town’s settlement offer, the boathouses and lagoon bottom beneath them would be awarded to the boathouse owners through an automatically renewing 99-year-lease. While Ninth Circuit Court Judge Jordan has already ruled that the boathouses unequivocally belong to the residents, Crews insisted that ownership of the lagoon beyond the boathouses still needs to be “legally defined.” 

“We don't know who maintains the lagoon, who can dredge the lagoon,” she said. “We don't know who controls permitting … All of these things are left completely open in the court’s underlying orders, which I don't understand why both sides would not want the clarification.”

“It seems like without that clarification, you could potentially easily end up in additional challenges of litigation down the life span of the agreement,” said Mayor Jim O’Brien, who presided over the boathouse matter as his last order of business before Mayor-Elect Andy Williams was sworn in. 

Crews floated a possible solution. “We could probably work out a situation where they get an actual deed to that plot, and so do we,” she said. “We have a legal adjudication from a court that both parties can present into the future proving what they do or do not own.”

But at least one boathouse owner was not buying the town’s offer of yet another lease. 

“What are you leasing?” demanded Gerald Fay, who owns Boathouse #5 with his brother Doug, ahead of the council’s vote on the town’s counter-offer. 

“You don’t own anything to lease to us,” he said. “We’d be a fool to take something like that.”