Testimony: Pressure to reject River Cross
Some commissioners in Seminole County against development
The morning after a Seminole County advisory board rejected plans in mid-2018 for the controversial mega-development River Cross, the panel’s chairwoman received an angry phone call from former county commissioner Randy Morris.
“He was screaming at the top of his lungs,” Michelle Ertel testified in a deposition as part of a federal lawsuit filed by developer Chris Dorworth after county commissioners followed up on the decision by the planning and zoning commission, an advisory board, and rejected the development within the county’s rural area.
“It was screaming and cussing to the point where I just hung up on him,” Ertel said, testifying about how Morris was furious that she let Dorworth and his attorney, Tara Tedrow, talk for too long and didn’t give county staff members enough
time to rebut the project at that meeting.
The depositions from Ertel and other county officials filed in court provide a behind-the-scenes peek into the world of Seminole County power politics and how passionate many are in protecting the rural area mostly east of the Econlockhatchee River — considered one of the county’s crown jewels — from urban sprawl.
Morris — who was instrumental in the 2004 voterapproved measure that established the county’s rural boundary — later apologized to Ertel. That came after her husband, Michael Ertel, who was then Seminole’s supervisor of elections, scolded him by saying: “Don’t ever talk to my wife like that again,” according to her Nov. 15 deposition.
Morris, who served as county commissioner from 1994 through 2006, couldn’t be reached for comment. Michelle Ertel ended up voting along with the rest of the advisory board members in recommending that county commissioners not approve the River Cross plans.
Even so, the confrontation and other testimony shows how politically explosive Dorworth’s River Cross project became among commissioners, county staff and other politically connected people in Seminole soon after the former state legislator and now lobbyist submitted his plans in early 2018. The 291-acre environmentally sensitive site is west of County Road 419 and north of the Orange County line.
Ertel and others testified last November that some commissioners — particularly Bob Dallari and Lee Constantine — felt that if the project were to be approved, it could be detrimental to their political careers.
“I remember receiving it [the development plans and staff report for River Cross] and thinking that, wow, this is really something that the county does not want us to approve, for whatever reason, because there was such a volume of stuff,” Ertel testified with Dorworth in the room, along with his attorneys and county attorneys.
“I believe because, for some members and past members [of the commission] that this is their — this [the rural boundary] is their legacy and they didn’t want to see it — see it changed.”
Contacted by the Orlando Sentinel, Ertel was reluctant to go into further detail about her involvement in the River Cross decision.
“Both of those commissioners were very concerned about any movement of the rural boundary [line],” she said. “I was chairman [of the planning and zoning commission] and they expressed that to me particularly. … I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t say anything more than that.”
Fair Housing Act violation?
According to plans by Dorworth and his company River Cross Land Co., the development called for 600 single-family homes, 270 townhouses, 500 apartments and 1.5 million square feet of shops, eateries and offices.
The project would sit entirely within the county’s protected rural area, where development densities are limited to one home per 3 acres or one home per 10 acres. Changing the boundary line and density — which Dorworth’s team requested — would require the support of at least three of the five county commissioners.
Hundreds of residents loudly protested the development, saying it would open the entire rural area to future development and urban sprawl. County officials said the additional growth would mean spending tens of millions of dollars widening roads, extending water and sewer lines, building new schools and adding more public safety facilities to accommodate all the new residents.
After the planning and zoning commission recommended denial, Seminole commissioners unanimously turned down the River Cross development plans in August 2018.
Dorworth responded by suing the county in federal court, arguing that the rural boundary and rejection of his development plans violate the Fair Housing Act because it “has a segregative effect and disparate impact on protected minority classes in Seminole County.”
A jury trial is scheduled for April, according to court documents.
Commissioners didn’t return calls for comment. County Attorney Bryant Applegate told the Sentinel that he advised commissioners and staff not to comment on the lawsuit because of the ongoing litigation.
On Tuesday, commissioners and attorneys are scheduled to have a closed-door meeting to discuss litigation strategy related to expenditures and settlement negotiations on the River Cross lawsuit. It will be the third closed-door meeting regarding the lawsuit in as many months.
According to Florida’s Government in the Sunshine laws, commissioners can hold closed meetings pertaining to ongoing litigation.
Weighing political considerations
The court file also includes a deposition taken on Nov. 15 from former Deputy County Manager Bruce McMenemy, who testified that he noticed the “trepidation” Dallari felt before voting on the development plans.
McMenemy said Dallari was in “a bad spot.”
“He expressed concern that the people out in that area and some of the Geneva folks would destroy him if he were to side with allowing a project like that to go through….He was concerned on both sides of the issues. He was concerned that Mr. Dorworth had a lot of political power, and he was concerned that he was coming up for election in 2020…And all of these were factors.”
McMenemy also testified that Dallari was unhappy with county staff, particularly with public works employees who said it could be possible to provide water and sewer utilities to Dorworth’s property.
McMenemy added that he figured Commissioner Lee Constantine was also strongly against the project after reading comments he made in the Sentinel regarding River Cross. But Constantine seemed less concerned about the politics of River Cross than the environmental effects of the development, McMenemy said.
“He felt that if he staked out the environmental position, most people would side with him anyway,” McMenemy testified. “And he wasn’t worried about the political ramifications of doing that on the other side because he believed that Mr. Dorworth wouldn’t oppose him on a political basis because he wouldn’t get anywhere….
“Mr. Dorworth would never oppose [Constantine] politically because Mr. Dorworth was interested in Mr. [Jason] Brodeur becoming the next state senator and that Mr. Constantine was probably the only person that….if he wanted to run for state senator again and ensure that Mr. Brodeur never got the position,” he said, referring to the former GOP state representative from Sanford who is running for the Seminole-based Senate District 9 seat.
McMenemy also advised county staff that it wouldn’t be a good idea from a professional standpoint to oppose a commissioner.
“My read on it — and, again, it’s my read — was that it was not a project that was going to go forward for a variety of political reasons,”
McMenemy said. “But [county employees] have to understand: If you’re working for a government, by its very nature, there’s politics involved. It’s unavoidable.”
McMenemy, who eventually retired from the county in March 2019 after a decades-long career, said in the deposition he had never seen anything as political as the River Cross project. McMenemy couldn’t be reached for comment.
Ertel, who lives in rural Geneva, also testified that Constantine told her a month before the planning and zoning meeting how important it was to keep the rural boundary.
“He would just tell me he hoped I understood how important it was to keep the rural boundary, and I live out there and if I would deny it, my neighbors would hate me,” she said.
Ertel added that Morris also called her before that same meeting.
She recalled him saying, “It was just, you know, this is my legacy. I put this together. This is my doing. Please don’t undo it.”
She called Morris the “sixth commissioner” because “he goes around and influences the other commissioners. They often refer to Randy as — Mr. Morris as Mr. Dallari’s boyfriend. Not in a sexual way, but in the fact that, you know, Bob [Dallari] will do what Randy wants him to do.”
Ertel said that she has been good friends with Dorworth since 2007, when he first ran for the Legislature and she worked as a reporter The Seminole Chronicle paper. She testified that her husband would occasionally meet with Dorworth to drink beers together.
Michael Ertel served as Seminole’s supervisor of elections from 2004 — when he was appointed by then Gov. Jeb Bush — until December 2018, when he was selected by Governor-elect
Ron DeSantis to serve as secretary of state.
However, he ended up resigning about a month later after photos surfaced of him as a Hurricane Katrina victim and wearing blackface at a 2005 private Halloween party.
‘A controversial project’
In her deposition testimony, County Manager Nicole Guillet called Dorworth’s development plans a “complicated” application. For that reason, she approved hiring a civil engineering firm, the Balmoral Group, to help her staff process it and put together a report.
But Guillet testified that she and her staff didn’t lean in favor or against the development plans.
“I didn’t get an impression that they were predisposed to one recommendation or another,” Guillet testified. “I knew that it was going to be a controversial project. There was a lot of stuff swirling around in the atmosphere about it, and I wanted them [county staff ] to know that I expected them to give a professional recommendation; to not get caught up in any of the things that were swirling around.”
Michelle Ertel — who now works as director of public affairs for Seminole Tax Collector Joel Greenberg and runs her consulting firm, Florida Strategic Advisors — said that as chairwoman of the planning and zoning commission she wanted to make sure that Dorworth’s application got a fair hearing, even though she felt the plans submitted to the county were rushed through and incomplete.
“My whole goal was to make sure Mr. Dorworth had due process,” she testified. “And you know with the hard no that was given from the staff and the pressure I got from the commission, I felt it was especially important that they — that the applicant had their say. …
“I didn’t like it,” she said of her board’s denial, even though she, too, voted against it. “But I knew that we were simply a recommending body and the county commission would do what it — you know, whatever it wanted.”
Michelle Ertel left the planning and zoning board in December 2018.