Oh, the inactivity.
As of The Islander’s press time May 9, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had not responded to a nearly year-old motion filed in Manatee County court by Cortez Raymond “Junior” Guthrie’s legal team over the construction of a stilt-house over the waters of Sarasota Bay.
The motion — a request for an extension on a stay of a demolition order for the stilt-house built in 2017 yards off the fishing docks in Cortez — was filed May 11, 2021.
The DEP did not respond to The Islander’s May 4 email inquiries by the paper’s press time.
In January, Stetson law professor Paul Boudreaux told The Islander the department’s inactivity could mean settlement negotiations were underway.
However, Robert Schermer, Guthrie’s attorney, wrote in May 4 emails to The Islander that neither the agency nor its legal team had contacted Guthrie or Schermer’s office.
According to staff at the 12th Circuit Court, a party can motion the court to dismiss a case for lack of prosecution after 11 months of inactivity but Schermer said he likely would not pursue that course of action.
Judge Edward Nicholas, who is presiding over the case, usually reviews lawsuits for lack of prosecution once a year, court supervisor Nikki Monfils told The Islander in May 4 emails.
If a party fails to justify its inactivity, the case can be dismissed.
Monfils said she thinks Nicholas has yet to review any cases for inactivity this year.
The DEP successfully sued Guthrie in 2018 for building the structure over state-owned submerged land but it remains thanks to a series of extensions on Nicholas’ final demolition order.
Manatee County commissioners and state legislators expressed support for the home in April 2021 letters to former DEP Secretary Noah Valenstein.
Guthrie, A.P. Bell Fish Co. owner Karen Bell — assisting Guthrie with his legal defense — and other supporters characterize the 1,200-square-foot structure with a steel roof, electricity, air conditioning and other amenities as a net camp or net camp replica.
According to Guthrie and Bell, the pilings on which the current structure rests have been in Guthrie’s family for three generations and previously supported other net-camp-like structures.
The county commissioners’ support letter outlined a stilt-house preservation plan that called for Guthrie to transfer ownership of the structure to a Cortez nonprofit that would reconfigure the exterior to more closely resemble net camps of old — barren shacks built over the water in the 19th century to store cotton fishing nets.
In late May or early June 2021, Guthrie and Bell said ownership of the stilt-house had been transferred to Cortez Core, a nonprofit Bell founded in 2019.
The structure is not a legally recognized edifice and there is no record of the transfer with the county clerk’s office.
Since the alleged transfer, Guthrie has erected a temporary sunshade on the structure’s southern deck and expanded the stilt-house’s dock by about 10 feet.
Guthrie expanded the dock to replace a segment that he said May 4 had washed away at an unspecified date.
Bell did not respond to a May 4 text message and phone call inquiries from The Islander.
Cortez fishers have said they occasionally use the stilt-house dock as a net mending station and, going back to at least February 2021, Cortez residents have not publicly voiced concerns about the structure.
“It doesn’t mean anything to anybody, so I don’t have anything to say,” Guthrie said.