The City of Brooksville might not be the first city to pop into your head when you think of Florida, but they've made headlines for a big mistake: The city sold their own water tower.

Last year, a guy named Bobby Read approached the city about purchasing a small building with a garage that sits at the base of the city's water tower. It had been used as storage for the city, but he wanted to turn it into a gym.

The city deliberated over selling the property, and finally declared it as surplus and subdivided the land to sell to Bobby.

Because of the pandemic, the deal was put on hold until April 19th. It was then that the city council members were able to hear the formal request of the city's Community Redevelopment Director, Chris Anderson, who wanted to sell the building.

“We see no reason not to sell this site for commercial,” Anderson said, according to Tampa Bay Times.

Brooksville City Council decided on selling the property to Bobby for $55,000.

Bobby thought there were some extra details to the deal that the city needed to look at, but they ignored that warning and sold him the property anyway.

When Bobby went to the Hernando County Property Appraiser’s office to get an address for his new property, they told him that the parcel he purchased included the entire water tower site.

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On May 14th, records show a deed was transferred back to the city for the water tower.

“I don’t know where the blame falls here,” City Council Member known as Bell told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’re council members and we rely on the city manager. We assume that he has done his due diligence. I’m unhappy that we lost control of our water tower but, number two, we also gave away a lot of parking with it."

Read more at Tampa Bay Times

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