VERO BEACH — They’ve butted heads for more than a year, but both sides in the Beachland Elementary School tree debate appear to be no closer to an agreement over the future of the property. On one side are residents of Central Beach determined to save the one of the last vestiges of Old Florida on the barrier island — the oak hammock near the school. On the other side are school district officials, who say they must address safety concerns for the half a dozen school buses and more than 100 parents who wait to pick up their children. Their cars, vans and SUVs idle in lines that block the flow of traffic on main island roads each afternoon during the school year.
After it appeared school officials and board members were giving in to pressure from residents determined to save the woods, one leader in the save-the-woods efforts said she thinks the whole discussion with the school district is a moot point after finding a deed she believes states the property no longer belongs to the Indian River School District.
Others aren’t so sure of Laura Guttridge’s interpretation of the 1955 deed.
“They are reaching for straws here,” said David Luethje, an owner of Carter Associates which has been working with the school district on the plan to re-route the traffic.
Luethje attended Beachland briefly as a youngster and said he’s all in favor of restoring habitat. Still, his read on the deed differs greatly from that of Guttridge .
“I guess it depends on which side of the fence you are on,” Leuthje said.
“We are prepared to go to the city if we have to,” said Guttridge.
Guttridge has collected about 400 signatures of others who join her in trying to spare the woods from future Beachland expansion as well as from having two roads built through it for school bus and parent pick-up spots.
The school district was given the property for $1 back in 1955. The gift came with restrictions: build a school within 10 years and keep the land maintained.
It appears the district made good on at least half of the restrictions when not long after getting the property, a small, some seven-room school was built. Today, roughly 600 students attend the much larger school though only about half of the property is developed.
The deed Guttridge unearthed after hiring a land title company for $300 recently is one she hopes will allow the city to finally put an end to battle. The way Guttridge reads the deed, the property should revert to the city because the school district never made good on meeting the requirements.
Guttridge told the school board of her interpretation of the deed — that the city owns the property — when it met last week. The district’s attorney said she’d look into the matter.
Guttridge then told 32963 that she’ll bring the matter to City Hall if needed with the hopes that the city will turn the property over to the Indian River County Land Trust.
City Manager Jim O’Connor said getting the city involved won’t be necessary.
O’Connor was asked by 32963 review the deed and comment on it early this week. Within an hour, staff had unearthed another document.
What a staffer found for O’Conner was a resolution passed and signed in 1960 — five years after the city property was given to the school district — that said the district was no longer bound by the conditions of the deed and the land was its free and clear.
“We are here as a resource,” said O’Connor, noting the school district, not the city, will have to make a decision about what to do with the property.
