Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/341318
The boards jointly purchased the property in December 2010 for $5.5 million. "We bought the property really, as much as anything, as a favor to North Port and also to make sure, ironically … [that] the Springs not be overdeveloped," County Commissioner Nora Patterson pointed out. "Making it into a park is not what we bargained for. … I would be happy to sell the property at this point to [the North Port city commissioners]. … I'm not willing to buy it. … If they want 100 percent of it [to carry out their vision], their municipality needs to pay for it." Patterson added that the matter needs to be resolved. "And I don't think we should be bit- ter about it, maybe disappointed." "If North Port wants to buy us out … fine," Chairman Charles Hines concurred. "Let it be a city park. … I'm open to that, but I disagree about putting it back out to bid." Hines added that the County Commission has spent a disproportionate amount of time on the future of Warm Mineral Springs over the past 21 months. "We've got a two-and-three-quarter-million- dollar investment on behalf of 385,000 people, and we have an obligation, a fiduciary respon- sibility to make that investment work, and it's not working," Commissioner Joe Barbetta pointed out. The solicitation package advertised earlier this year for a long-term operation of Warm Mineral Springs contained this map showing existing land uses on the site. Image courtesy Sarasota County Sarasota News Leader July 4, 2014 Page 46