The City Commission voted 5-0 to give Taurus Southern Investments another 30-day extension to negotiate a developer’s agreement. This extends the due date until June 2nd. And while the vote was unanimous it was not without hard questions and several revelations about the likelihood this deal will close.
After a brief explanation and recommendation by City Administrator Glenn Irby that Council approve the extension, Mayor Joe Kilsheimer asked for a motion, but City Commissioner Diane Velazquez asked Irby why they needed so many extensions.
“John Keating is their (Taurus’) attorney and I’ve known John from another life,” said Irby. “He told Taurus that he knew 60 days was not enough time to negotiate, and we’re not sure this additional 30 days is going to do it either. Taurus wants to believe it will. So you may be asked again for another extension. Hopefully not.”
Commissioner Kyle Becker then grilled Irby on the merits of continuous extensions.
“What’s the reality that they’re going to have something in play in 30 days? Can we condition this thing to say you get it to us in 30 days or this thing isn’t going to happen? Why are we going to continue doing extensions? What’s the purpose of it?”
“To allow more time to negotiate,” Irby said.
“Well let’s get a realistic time frame,” said Becker. “I don’t want to belabor the point, but it makes no sense to me to keep on allowing them to miss a deadline.”
“I don’t think the deadlines are something we’ve missed,” said Kilsheimer. “What we have run into is the level of detail. For example the size of Martin’s Pond and the size of how much land can be developed around Martin’s Pond. If you look at the high-water mark for Martin’s Pond, it eliminates four acres. So four acres that everyone thought would be developed is no longer developable. That changes the whole scheme of things because four acres has now been taken out and so that changes the economic calculations. But the ultimate idea is…and I probably shouldn’t say…”
“In all fairness to Taurus and the the City Staff, we think there is a reasonable prospect that we can pull this deal off, but as we have peeled back the onion and started to discuss some of these hairier issues it turns out that it requires a depth of discussion that no one originally envisioned.”
-Mayor Joe Kilsheimer
I don’t think you should either,” said Irby.
“Okay, so there’s an ultimate idea,” said Kilsheimer.
The Mayor went on to explain the complexity of the deal with Taurus makes it difficult to predict the time frame or the certainty it will close.
“In all fairness to Taurus and the the City Staff, we think there is a reasonable prospect that we can pull this deal off, but as we have peeled back the onion and started to discuss some of these hairier issues it turns out that it requires a depth of discussion that no one originally envisioned.”
“How confident are we that we’re at the middle of the onion?” Becker asked. “How confident are we that the known issues are known?”
“We can let you know after we see the latest draft,” said Kilsheimer. “That’s the truth. I don’t have a better answer than that.”
Commissioner Doug Bankson then asked when the next workshop would be.
“If I can get the staff to say ‘this is a good deal’ and the staff can say ‘we will recommend this to the Council and to the public’ then we’ll schedule a workshop,” said Kilsheimer. “The staff is very protective over City assets. And the staff wants to make sure this is going to be successful. At the same time the developer wants as much flexibility as possible. They want to agree to as little as possible so they can go back to their investors and say ‘hey we got a great deal in Apopka, let’s begin.’ It’s a natural tension and these negotiations are hard. And I’ll go back to what I said from the beginning. If this were an easy deal it would have been done already. It is not an easy deal.”
“But I want us to be able to say to the citizens, we got a good deal,” Bankson added.
“Well sure,” said Kilsheimer. “And believe me, everyone is watching this deal. And negotiating in a very public way doesn’t lend itself necessarily to success. But it’s the nature of the beast, and we’re in this situation because we’re in this situation.”