Anatomy of a feud

BELLEAIR SHORE — The iron gates here went up suddenly and without warning, blindsiding neighboring Belleair Beach, whose residents were now locked out of the beach after sunset.

Thirty years after that well-publicized confrontation between these bickering beach burgs — which share part of a name and a shoreline but not much else — they're still at it.

The gates, initially derided by some as foreboding and downright ugly, have outlasted a succession of elected officials in both communities. So has the issue over when — or even if — they should be locked.

The arguments haven't changed much. Belleair Beach says its residents are sometimes blocked from a beach they have a legal right to use. Belleair Shore, which originally defended the gates as deterring late-night revelry, now emphasizes the privacy and property rights of homeowners in its tiny, exclusive residential enclave.

And the gates are only part of it.

The municipalities — separated by Gulf Boulevard — also are fighting over control of the paved access lots, beach umbrellas and an invisible line in the sand that nonetheless determines where private property ends and the public beach begins.

Attend any Belleair Beach City Council meeting and you might hear a resident or two complaining that the gates through Belleair Shore are locked when they should be open.

Earlier this month, Debra Maul told council members she is on the beach most mornings around 6:30 or 6:45 and that the gates have not been opened consistently. She recalled finding them still locked around 7:45 one morning as a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy arrived to open them.

Joseph Manzo, an attorney and former Belleair Beach mayor who has tangled with Belleair Shore before, warned that he would seek legal action if the problem continued.

“We don't get locked out of our gates,” Manzo told the council. “If you can't get it under control, I will get it under control for you with an injunction.”

Last week, Manzo appeared before the Belleair Shore Town Commission with another warning: He said an alliance of Belleair Beach residents had authorized him to bring a legal challenge against Belleair Shore’s restrictions on the use of beach umbrellas by anyone other than the town’s 70-some residents.

“It’s going to happen fairly quickly,” Manzo told the commission. “And it’ll be a federal lawsuit.”

If that seems like déjà vu, it's because Manzo sued Belleair Shore in state court in 2020 over the same ordinance. His lawsuit quoted one town commissioner as saying during a meeting: “Make it as strong as you can. If they can’t put up umbrellas or tents, maybe they’ll go somewhere else.”

The case lasted nearly three years before Belleair Shore agreed to pay Manzo $5,000 to settle it in 2023. The town did not admit liability under the settlement.

To some, the disputes over locked gates, umbrellas and beach access might sound like nothing more than a kerfuffle between neighbors.

The history and implications say otherwise.

“The issue has never simply been about how people are using the beach,” Belleair Beach Councilman Frank Bankard said. “The issue is whether people who have a legal right to access the beach are going to be allowed to exercise that right.”

When the gates went up

Belleair Shore isn't your typical municipality.

It has no town hall, no government workforce and no public roads or bridges. Its annual budget is about $320,000. Commission meetings, once held in the homes of elected leaders, take place in a conference room in Belleair Bluffs, an inland city a mile away. Contested elections are rare. Its roughly 55 Gulf-front homes include some of the area's priciest real estate.

According to news accounts at the time, relations between the twin communities began deteriorating in the mid-1990s amid disputes over beach-access hours, chains and signs.

Around the same time, Belleair Shore was embroiled in a controversy of its own making — this one over drinking coffee on the beach. But more about that later.

In December 1995, the town installed the $19,000 wrought-iron gates at its beach access lots without first notifying Belleair Beach.

Those lots have roots stretching to the area’s development in the 1940s.

Arnold Kirkeby, a real estate investor and hotelier, wanted to make his inland property more attractive to buyers. So he set aside lots that future residents could use to reach the sand and surf.

Three lots — at 600, 1200 and 1880 Gulf Blvd. — are in Belleair Shore. A fourth, Morgan Park, is in Belleair Beach.

Deeds transferring the three properties to the entity that later became Belleair Shore included clauses allowing nearby property owners to use them “for beach or bathing purposes.”

In plain terms, Belleair Beach residents who didn't live directly on the water had the right to use the lots — but not to own them. That distinction later would become a flashpoint between the communities.

After the initial gate galère — which culminated with an unfulfilled threat by Belleair Beach to sue Belleair Shore — the communities eventually called a truce and signed an interlocal agreement in 2003 governing use and maintenance of the lots.

But the agreement didn't put an end to the arguments, which have ebbed and flowed over the years much like the Gulf tides.

Earlier this year, an attempt to update the pact devolved into a contentious Belleair Beach work session that Mayor Dave Gattis abruptly ended amid shouting and cross-talk from some residents.

Belleair Shore had proposed taking over responsibilities that included raking, trash collection, landscaping, towing enforcement and infrastructure upkeep at the lots. Given that the town has no public works department, some Belleair Beach council members viewed the overtures with suspicion.

“Tell me one good thing Belleair Shore has done for any of us,” said Bankard, who routinely attends Belleair Shore Town Commission meetings.

Gattis, though, accused Bankard of contributing to the underlying friction between the communities.

“I want to put the arguments between the two communities to bed,” the mayor said. “And all I see is you going over there and poking the bear every chance you get.”

Gattis also balked at a town proposal that would require the localities to share legal costs if disputes or lawsuits arise: “I don’t agree with if they do get sued for something dumb, that we pay a dime for it.”

The fight moves onto the sand

Even before the gates went up, Belleair Shore had attracted unwanted national — even international — attention for a 1995 incident involving its mayor and two women drinking coffee on the beach while watching the sunset.

Mayor Bob Clayton pressed for the women to be prosecuted for violating a town ordinance that prohibited beverages on the sand other than water. The state attorney declined, and the town eventually dropped the case and modified its ban.

Clayton later had another run-in with two people over parking at one of the beach accesses, flashing a gold badge and saying he was the police. He subsequently resigned as mayor in 1996. His successor, retired circuit judge George Jirotka, initially agreed to an interview for this story but later could not be reached.

Those folktales — or variations of them — still come up in conversations with Belleair Beach leaders and activists long after the primary players have moved on.

Clayton was a driving force behind the installation of the gates that continue to divide the communities today. A retired mechanical engineer, he sold his home to the town's current mayor, Steve Blume, in 2012 and later built what was believed to be Florida's first hempcrete house in Tarpon Springs.

Besides the gates, Belleair Beach residents seeking shade have complained about the town's pandemic-era ban on "temporary shade structures" and other beach restrictions.

Maul told the council that she and others recently were confronted about umbrellas by a fill-in Pinellas County sheriff's deputy working in Belleair Shore. The deputy told the group umbrellas weren't allowed and, according to Maul, said Belleair Beach City Manager Kyle Riefler had given that direction. Riefler told The Pinellas Current he gave no such direction.

Maul, who said she keeps a copy of the town's ordinance on her phone for just such encounters, asked the deputy to check with a supervisor.

"She did come down and say, ‘I don't know what the answer is. I'm just not gonna harass you guys anymore today,’ " Maul quoted the deputy as saying. "It’s ridiculous. We deserve the same respect at the beach.”

Yet the most consequential dispute involves something that can't even be seen by beach-goers.

It's called the erosion control line, or ECL.

Established by the state as part of a beach restoration project, the ECL marks the legal boundary between privately owned beachfront property and state-owned land seaward of it.

Belleair Shore is now waging an expensive legal battle to have the line, in place since 1997, removed along its shoreline — which some fear could lead to privatizing public beaches. The town has pressed ahead despite legal setbacks and questions from critics about why it waited three decades to challenge the boundary.

Belleair Beach — at times criticized by residents for not responding fast enough — and Pinellas County are fighting the effort, which has morphed from a state administrative matter into a confrontation that Manzo predicts could reach the state’s highest court.

Town Attorney Daniel Lewis told commissioners last week that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had yet to rule on Belleair Shore's amended petition, filed Sept. 14. If the agency dismisses it, he said, the town's next step would be an appeal to the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

“I said in the beginning, ‘This will go to the Supreme Court,’ ” Manzo said. “They’ve got lots of money, and they’re not stopping.”

For the city, the stakes go far beyond whether someone can plant an umbrella in the sand or whether a gate gets unlocked on time.

They involve property rights and future control of the shoreline.

"They have every intention of keeping us from using the beach as much as possible," Maul told the council in August. "Many of our residents are asking a simple question: At what point do we stop accommodating Belleair Shore and start advocating for Belleair Beach?"

Too much damage?

The longevity of the disputes hasn't been lost on those caught up in them.

Gattis described the city-town relationship as “professional but strained,” saying decades of disagreements have bred distrust.

Gattis, who steps down in November after four years as mayor, said he would rather see the municipalities resolve their differences than spend taxpayer money on litigation.

"I have spent a lot of time dealing with these issues and learning the history behind them," he said. "And I would always be willing to assist with future negotiations between Belleair Beach and Belleair Shore if both communities felt that would be helpful.

"I would like to see both communities get to the point where we can leave some of the old battles behind and focus more on what is best for the people who live here."

Bankard said the protracted disagreements cannot be blamed solely on the latest personalities. He questioned who would want to buy a home in Belleair Beach if residents lost their beach access.

Belleair Shore officials, often non-responsive when approached for comment, have publicly described their effort to remove the ECL as an attempt to restore private property rights along with making it easier for the town to enforce its ordinances. Those rules cover everything from umbrellas and trespassing to digging holes in the sand and fishing for sharks from shore.

But the cost of removing the ECL is being shouldered by more than Belleair Shore.

In a letter to the DEP last week, Manzo complained that Belleair Beach, its residents and Pinellas County were spending money “in bundles” to defend against the town's challenge and urged the state to reject its latest filing “with prejudice” — barring the same claim from being refiled.

Earlier this month, Blume cited mounting legal expenses from the town’s appeal as a major factor for seeking a sharp property tax increase. On Sept. 21, the commission gave final approval to a tax rate 82 percent above the rollback rate.

Belleair Shore maintains that the boundary was improperly recorded because no beach restoration project was carried out within its borders. The town says property owners representing 71 percent of its beachfront, measured by shoreline length, signed the petition.

“We're correcting an error,” Vice Mayor Daniel Storie said at a meeting in May. “An error that took private property from residents of Belleair Shore.”

So far, the state hasn't seen it that way. The DEP denied the town's request, then dismissed its initial appeal, saying it failed to meet the legal requirements for removing the boundary.

Still, Belleair Shore is forging ahead with what some might regard as a quixotic quest.

"The entity that declined it used every opportunity to avoid the facts," Blume said of the DEP’s initial denial of the town’s petition. "We need to be the one to lead the charge."

Bill Lusk, a Belleair Beach resident, suggested that once the ECL fight is over, perhaps both municipalities could look at how they reached this point and find a more civil way of dealing with each other.

Then again, maybe not.

“Maybe there's been too much damage,” Lusk said.