Anna Maria Island Sun June 15, 2022

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- Named Best Florida Newspaper In Its Class -

VOL 22 No. 36

June 15, 2022

Clean water committee members plan for prevention of water quality issues but also are exploring remediation opportunities. BY KRISTIN SWAIN SUN STAFF WRITER | kswain@amisun.com

Clean water group poses solutions to algae blooms CINDY LANE | SUN

HOLMES BEACH – As members of the city’s Clean Water Ad-Hoc Committee seek solutions to water quality issues already plaguing the area, Mayor Judy Titsworth wants them to shift focus to their overall goal – prevention. Committee members met recently to get water testing results, review feedback from city commissioners and hear from Suncoast Waterkeeper Chair Rusty Chinnis, The Sun’s outdoors columnist. During the meeting, Titsworth stepped up to the podium to talk about different devices that could be used to remediate algae problems around Anna Maria Island. She said that none of the devices she’s seen so far are really impressive in their capabilities. She also added that while using a device to churn the water and push lyngbya algae mats out of canals and into the bay would help improve the quality of life for residents, it doesn’t solve the problem, which is preventing the algae blooms in the first place.

Mats of lyngbya algae fill the Intracoastal Waterway at Neal Preserve across the water from Holmes Beach on June 11. SEE LYNGBYA, PAGE 9

Mary Green: The villager who could, and did BY CINDY LANE SUN STAFF WRITER | clane@amisun.com

CORTEZ – Residents of the last commercial fishing village in Florida will miss the “matriarch of Cortez,” Dr. Mary Frances Fulford Green, but those who knew her – and many who did not – will benefit from her remarkable legacy well into the future. A commanding personality, Green died on June 9 in Tallahassee surrounded by her family. God, family and fishing were her touchstones. She could recite whole sections of the Bible, the genealogies, marriages and deaths of the village’s founding families, and who fished with whom on what boats until her death at age 96. “Mary definitely was a force to reckon with,” said Karen Bell of A.P. Bell Fish Co. “She was never one to take ‘no’ for an answer. I like to think she symbolized the

INSIDE NEWS EDITORIAL CARTOON OUTDOORS REAL ESTATE BEACH BEAT CROSSWORD CLASSIFIEDS

4 6 20-21 26 14 33 34-35

people of this village - strong, tough, spirited and, at times, somewhat impossible! When she didn’t like the way I was doing something, she had no problem letting me know about it. I believe she was so Green proud of her family’s history and she wanted to share that story with anyone who would listen. And I mean anyone. I will miss her.” Born in Cortez in 1925, Green was the granddaughter of 1887 Cortez settlers William Thomas Fulford and Sallie Adams of Carteret County, North Carolina. She was born in the house next door to the one she lived in when she died, the Walton “Tink” and Edith Wilson Fulford house, which the family moved into when she turned 1 year old. SEE GREEN, PAGE 15

IT’S TIME FOR

June

brides and grooms to celebrate on AMI’s beaches. 22-23

Anna Maria Island, Florida

City files lawsuit against vacation rental owners The lawsuit seeks a one-year prohibition on the residential structure being used as a vacation rental. BY JOE HENDRICKS SUN CORRESPONDENT | jhendricks@amisun.com

ANNA MARIA – The city has filed a lawsuit against the owners of a vacation rental home whose guests received five noise ordinance violation citations in a nine-month period. The vacation rental at 313 Magnolia Ave. is managed by Vacasa and owned by the Orlando-based Mangoes on Magnolia LLC that lists Mukesh Patel and three others with the same last name as the LLC’s principals. The noise violations documented from June 2021 to March 2022 are in

violation of the city code, according to the lawsuit. During a code enforcement hearing on May 18, Special Magistrate Jerry Buhr declared the vacation rental to be a public nuisance. On May 26, the city commission authorized City Attorney Becky Vose to file a lawsuit seeking a one-year suspension of the LLC’s city-issued vacation rental license. “The lawsuit was filed yesterday,” Mayor Dan Murphy said at the June 9 city commission meeting. “They’ve already assigned a judge to our case and we are moving forward with it. We are going to go to court looking for injunctive relief – looking for a one-year suspension of his ability to rent as a vacation rental. So fasten SEE LAWSUIT, PAGE 31

SUSPECTED GAS LEAK

shuts down Bridge Street. 5 ROCKING OUT AND raising support for Ukraine. 11

The Island’s award-winning weekly newspaper www.amisun.com


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