Sarasota County Circuit Court ruling favors Marina Jack

A retired Sarasota County Circuit Court judge has ruled that Marina Jack restaurant owner Bob Soran doesn’t have to pay property taxes or the back taxes that Sarasota County Property Appraiser Bill Furst said the complex owed.

Soran had challenged Furst’s August 2010 decision to collect $1.5 million in taxes on the property — $300,000 for 2010 and $1.2 million for previous years.

The city owns the land and the building, but Jack Graham Inc. leases them both for 3% of its annual revenues, which totaled about $300,000 in 2010. The lease agreement essentially has been in place since the 1960s, albeit with tweaks.

Judge Thomas Gallen’s Feb. 22 summary judgment said that the restaurant company did not have to pay property taxes, because of the agreement with the city of Sarasota. However, the judge ruled in favor of Furst’s ability to tax any surrounding property that is not specified in the agreement. No formal determination has been made yet, regarding whether such other property exists.

Neither Furst nor his attorney returned phone calls seeking comment. Furst has not indicated whether he intends to appeal the ruling.

Bradenton attorney John Harllee, who defended Jack Graham Inc., said he was pleased the judge had decided the property in dispute could not be taxed.

As far as the part of the ruling that favored Furst, Harllee said he’s “not sure how that affects my client in the slightest.”

Sarasota City Commissioner Shannon Snyder told the Sarasota Observer this week that it did not bother him in the least that the judge’s ruling meant taxes could not be collected on the property where the restaurant and marina complex sit.

Snyder pointed out that Marina Jack had made numerous improvements on the city-owned property, which had proven beneficial.

A 2009 review of the property and its lease, prepared by Sarasota real estate appraiser Larry Sewell, reported that the improvements had allowed the city to collect the equivalent of 6% of the company’s revenues, instead of 3%.

“Marina Jack is a good corporate citizen that runs a first-class operation,” Snyder said. “They also help pay for things the city can’t afford to do any longer, like annual Fourth of July celebrations.”

The ruling marks the end of the 15-month-old case’s journey through circuit court. In November 2010, Soran and his legal counsel filed suit, taking issue with Furst’s declared right to nullify a 1989 court decision that granted the for-profit business a favorable tax exemption, because it leases publicly owned land.

In that filing, Jack Graham Inc. said Furst “is not delegated with any statutory authority to invalidate” the 1989 court ruling.

An affidavit submitted by a former city staff member, who had direct knowledge of the matter and who had helped formulate that 1989 agreement, helped Soran’s case, Harllee said.

Changes in state law and court rulings over the years led to the Marina Jack property’s being exempt from ad valorem taxes. Furst’s initiative, however, revived public debate over the validity of that exemption.