The City of Orange Beach is facing a new lawsuit over issues of transparency, with a condominiums association alleging the council violated the Open Meetings Act at a special meeting called to settle a 2020 land dispute.
The Turquoise Place Condominiums Association filed the suit Friday, December 12, following the special called meeting on November 21, where the Orange Beach City Council voted to pay Turquoise Properties LLC owner Larry Wireman $500,000 and convey to him two tracts of land.
The Association claims they are harmed by this decision—which they claim came in a meeting that lacked proper 24-hour notice under the Open Meetings Act—because the tracts of property are adjacent to the Association’s.
“Plaintiff has strongly resisted Wireman’s planned developments on the Turquoise Properties Acquisition Tracts,” the complaint reads. “Defendants, by passing the resolution and authorizing settlement, are preparing to convey the Turquoise Properties Acquisition Tracts to Wireman, a precursor to his push to develop the adjacent tracts and specifically the Gulf Tract.”
According to the City of Orange Beach website notice of the meeting was posted online only five minutes prior to the meeting. Some residents reported receiving an email notification about the meeting about 90 minutes prior, according to the Lagniappe Daily.
Neither notification would satisfy the Alabama Open Meetings Act, which requires 24-hour notice of a special called meeting. The only exception is for an “emergency meeting,” typically to deal with catastrophic events or damage.
“All interested residents, including plaintiff, were denied the right to make themselves heard with respect to the city’s action taken on November 21, 2025, because defendants failed to provide notice of the meeting as required by Alabama law,” the complaint states.
The council voted to approve the settlement in November after a decades-long legal battle with Wireman over the properties. The meeting lasted barely more than a minute.
