Tick, tick, tick….
The end of the 2021 Florida legislative session is April 30, but, when it comes to protecting Raymond Guthrie Jr.’s stilt-house from demolition, state and local officials appear to be confused about who’s doing the protecting.
State Sen. Jim Boyd, a member of Manatee County’s legislative delegation representing District 21, said in a March 16 email to The Islander “there has been no legislation filed relating to net camps for the 2021 Legislative Session.”
“At this time, it is my understanding that there may be something in the works locally that might assist in resolving the current issue in Cortez relating to the Guthrie net camp,” the Boyd email continued.
However, Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge — whose district includes Cortez and the state-owned submerged land on which the stilt-house was built in 2017 in Sarasota Bay near the A.P. Bell Fish Co. docks— said in a March 9 email to The Islander he “had not heard that a local ordinance could be enacted that would trump state law,” but that he would ask the county attorney if that was a possibility.
The commissioner also said he had not been contacted about the matter by Guthrie or A.P. Bell Fish Co. owner Karen Bell, who has been assisting Guthrie in his legal battle against the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Van Ostenbridge had not responded to multiple email inquiries about the county attorney’s opinion as of Islander press time March 29.
Bell said March 23 she had not reached out to any county commissioners about local ordinances to protect the camp, but that she had been working with unnamed Manatee County legislative delegates and officials in Tallahassee.
“I don’t have a lot of information about what’s working and what’s not working, because nothing’s really totally worked yet,” Bell said. “So, I really don’t have a lot to say about it, aside from we’re trying.”
Judge Edward Nicholas signed an order March 8 granting Guthrie’s motion for a 60-day stay of enforcement on his final order that the stilt-house be demolished.
The order stated the motion was granted “to allow the Florida Legislature or other governmental body to consider protection for the structure.”
If lawmakers do nothing to protect the structure, Guthrie said he will take the demolition in stride.
“What am I going to do about it?” he said. “I’m too old to cry.”
The stilt-house saga
In 2017, Raymond Guthrie Jr. built a 1,200 square-foot stilt-house — complete with electricity and other amenities — over the water in Sarasota Bay near the A.P. Bell Fish Co. docks.
Guthrie maintains the pilings on which the stilt-house is built were driven into the bay by his ancestors and have supported structures used by his family for three generations.
He also asserts the stilt-house is a “historic net camp.”
Net camps, erected in the early 19th century, were barren shacks built over the water in which cotton nets were hung to dry before the advent of monofilament nets.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection sued Guthrie in 2018, alleging the stilt-house was constructed without permits on state-owned submerged land. The DEP won the case, but the structure remains standing thanks to court-sanctioned extensions on a June 2020 demolition order.
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