In Brooksville, Florida, personal trainer Bobby Read purchased a municipal building to convert into a fitness center. He paid $55,000. Turns out though that the deed also included the town's water tower. While the right thing to do would have been for Read to start selling the water back to the town at inflated prices, he instead initiated the process to legally return the tower to the city. From NPR:
Mark Kutney, the Brooksville city manager, says the building Read wanted to buy was never split off from the parent property where the water tower is based, even though city leaders were aware it was supposed to be. City code allows properties to be split one time from their parent parcel, Kutney said.
Kutney says he directed his staff to provide the city attorney with a legal description that separated the parcel. But the description that went to the attorney was still for the full property.
"If there was any error, it was on my part," Kutney said. "I should have looked at it more closely, because that's where we dropped the ball."
(Thanks to our Florida bureau chief, Charles Pescovitz!)
