Sarasota County Commission Aborts 2050 Scoping Process

Sarasota County apparently does not use the “ordinance bank” feature of Municode, so I don’t think I have easy access to Ord. No. 2011-070, § 2, 11-9-2011. That's the ordinance that adding a scoping requirement for County initiated Comprehensive Plan Amendments. 

As a result I can’t easily research the whereas or intent sections of that change in Section 94-85 County Initiation of Comprehensive Plan Amendments, but I suspect the County Commission added a scoping process via 2011-070  in order that “the proposed amendment will be clearly defined and all pertinent issues identified”.

Now according to section (a) the Board may waive the scoping requirement, and, as I argued yesterday, that would make sense in constrained, technical cases since the purpose of the scoping (having clear definition of what needed to be done) would be implicit in the proposed amendment.

But very little was clear yesterday. In its simplest terms, the County Commission was voting whether to re-open 2050. According to a much-maligned graphic* , when the county initiates a CPA  (Comprehensive Plan Amendment) there is to be a public workshop on scope (pursuant to 94-85(c))

And indeed, according to the County’s REVISITING 2050 webpage, “The commission subsequently directed that the public be engaged in discussions with the process of preparing a scoping document for appropriate implementation actions.” 

But then, according to the dreaded diagram, the matter is to go to the Planning Commission (pursuant to 94-85 (a) before coming back to the Board.

I don’t think that happened. At least, I don't see any reference to Planning Commission involvement. If I am right, the county entered into the scoping process. If they wanted to waive it,  that should have been done as the first step, but once they entered “the dashed box” in the Comprehensive Plan Amendment process, the next step was to be the Planning Commission. 

I am arguing that they could have skipped the whole scoping effort if they did that at the front end, but once they started the scoping process they initiated a process the public (and presumably the Planning Commission) was relying on.

Throughout all this Commissioner Barbetta stated at least twice (and maybe three times) words to the effect that “we’ve always done it without the scoping process”. I know that’s not true because the effort to amend the TDR ordinance went through the scoping process. I was at the public workshop, and received notices about when it was going to the Planning Commission.

What surprised me was that no one, not the County Administrator, nor representatives of the Office of the County Attorney, nor the several high-ranking members of the planning staff interceded and politely said something to the effect of:

“Commissioner Barbetta is right, we did always do it that way, and then in 2011, a previous Board passed an ordinance requiring a County Initiated Comprehensive Plan Amendment (CPA) to go through a scoping process. I believe the reason for that was to ensure both that what was being proposed was sufficiently narrowed or defined, and to make sure the Planning Commission is involved at a relatively early stage. As I recall, the Board has the power to waive the scoping process, but I would have to go back and look at the ordinance and board discussion to provide any guidance on when that waiving was to be invoked.”

The fact that no one said something similar suggests that either a) they didn't know that, b) they were afraid to even obliquely challenge a commissioner, or c) I have no idea what I am talking about (in which case I will admit my error, something I am about to encourage the Board of County Commissioners to do).  

So, If I have the facts straight, the Board initiated the scoping process (by using that preparing a scoping document language cited above from their 2050 website) and then in their meeting yesterday, aborted that process, taking the Planning Commission literally and figuratively out of the loop and proceeding with very little clarity on what staff is to be doing.

My understanding of Robert’s Rules of Order is that someone voting on the prevailing side can initiate a motion to reconsider at the next meeting. 

I think one of the four commissioners (Barbetta, Robinson, Mason, or Hines) who voted to abort the scoping process should make such a motion, if only to clarify what exactly took place and correct the lingering misunderstanding regarding the scoping process. Ideally, someone should make the motion to put this collection of major proposed 2050 changes back on course.

TO RECAP:

1) Since sometime in 2011 the Scoping Process has been the default setting for all Board-initiated Comprehensive Plan Amendments. (This is contrary to statements made by Commissioner Barbetta.)

2) The Board initiated the scoping process in this case when they directed staff to prepare a scoping document and posted that intent on the 2050 webpage. The staff initiated the scoping process as directed and held the required workshops.

3) The next step according to the law and their flow chart involves going to the Planning Commission and providing for public comment.

4) Then, once the Planning Commission weighs in, it goes back to the County Commission, which authorizes the scope and processing of the CPA (or not).

5) I don't think it went to the Planning Commission (seeking confirmation).

6) If they didn't want to go the scoping route, they should have made that decision at the front end, not by deviating in the middle of the process. Once they started on the scoping process the public and Planning Commission had cause to act in reliance of the process, since the Commission did not waive scoping at their initial decision point as shown in the flow chart.

7) Instead of following the procedure, on May 8th they took a short-cut, aborting the legally-reqired scoping route they started on, thus depriving the public and Planning Commission of the opportunity specifically laid out in and mandated by ordinance 2011-070.

8) The only remedy I am aware of is for a commissioner that voted on the prevailing side to make a motion to reconsider at their next meeting. Commissioner Patterson cannot make the motion, but she could second such a motion.

9)If you would like to encourage them to reconsider, you may email them at commissioners@scgov.net.

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NOTE: Commissioner Patterson should be recognized for her efforts to follow the Commission's own duly-adopted process to involve the public (and unstated) the Planning Commission in a MAJOR revisiting of 2050. Unfortunately, she is just one person, less than one hundredth of one percent of our county population, and so her voice was discounted. 

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*[ I don’t believe that graphic was available online as part of the Board Packet Supporting Materials, yet it became a key item in the discussion that followed and the public should have access to it.] A similar, but I don't believe identical, graphic may be seen here.

Finally, if there are any factual errors in what I have written, please use the comment section and I will make changes as appropriate.

ADDENDUM:

Here is most of the body of what I wrote to one commissioner (with some typos corrected):

I think for myself, don't swing at every pitch, and when I communicate with the board it is because I feel something important needs to be said. I'm neither emotional nor accusatory about this matter. It may all be one big, crucial misunderstanding.

But my understanding is that the Commission adopted a process (that was inaccurately portrayed by one commission member and which may have led others to misunderstand the process) that features, as the default setting, a clearly laid-out sequence involving public workshops and the Planning Commission. 

Months ago, the county commission had a choice to take that "scoping" route or not. At that time, the Commission could have argued this was too urgent, too important, or too whatever to wait, and go directly to the public workshop on the CPA (as shown in the orange hexagon on your flow chart).

But that's not what happened, instead, some months ago the board directed staff to initiate scoping -- at least that's what your 2050 webpage says (see attachment). Once y'all posted that on your website you clearly communicated to the public that you had embarked on a scoping process that involved public workshops and would subsequently have the matter brought before the Planning Commission before it came back to the board. 

Maybe your webpage was wrong, or vulnerable to misinterpretation. But I think a reasonable person would conclude from it that the county had embarked on "a process of preparing a scoping document" since that is what the website says. And that process goes from public meetings to the Planning Commission. 

Screenshot from the County's 2050 webpage.
This is why people like myself believe the Planning Commission should be the next step.

I know abort is a connotation-laden word. But let's not go to the most incendiary meaning. If NASA has to abort a mission to the moon, they would be well advised to do that before launch or immediately afterward while the vehicle is over the Atlantic and not when it is half-way to the moon. Your collective vote yesterday was halfway to the moon because Option 3 specifically tries to opt out of the scoping process you had already told the public you were engaged in.

I participated in the TDR scoping process and knew from that experience that the scoping process involved the Planning Commission. Your County Administrator, legal staff, or planning staff should have told you that before you voted. I tried to in Open to the Public after you voted. 

You're aware of my reputation in defense of our natural areas, but lately I've been more vocal defending the role of our advisory boards. The Planning Commission is the mother of all  local advisory entities and it has a special role in comprehensive planning. It should be involved early in this process, but it has not been.

The Commission has just made a decision about the most significant changes proposed in our comprehensive plan in more than a decade without 1) any public hearing, 2) any involvement of the Planning Commission, or 3) following the procedure you adopted in 2011 and chose to utilize in this matter by invoking the word  "scoping" in your direction to staff and on your webpage.  Even if every other contention of mine is fallacious, it seems nearly inconceivable that a county commission would make a decision to embark on major changes in a comprehensive plan without any hearings or Planning Commission involvement. In my opinion this is not good public policy.

This 2050 process has started out unduly polarized. I regret that, but short-circuiting your officially-adopted and communicated-to-the-public process is not a path towards less polarization.

No one likes being told they were misled. But I am contending that 1) the repeated inaccurate statements of one commissioner combined with 2) silence on the part of your staff regarding the scoping process, and 3) a webpage that told the public the county was preparing a scoping document presumably as part of the scoping process, which had not been waived as you were required to do; all combined to created conditions that enabled the majority of the board to make a decision based on misunderstanding of the law as well as what had been communicated to the public. 

There are some driveways in life where you turn off your headlights, make a u-turn, inwardly resolve to try to not do that again, and get back on the main road. There is nothing wrong with any commissioner admitting he or she was making a decision based on inaccurate information, without understanding that the public had been told via your website that the the county would be engaged in the process of preparing a scoping document, which directly implied Planning Commission involvement. Therefore, please give consideration to making or supporting a motion to reconsider. 

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Who do I least favor on May 14th? The answer may surprise you.

When I stepped off a National Airlines flight from Newark in 1970, I was a teenager who had never been to Sarasota before. And for roughly three decades afterward I had a fair chance of being the youngest person in the room at any number of local meetings.

Those days have passed. I find I’ve lived more than two-thirds of my life here and I’m trying to understand the tradeoffs involved in delaying collecting Social Security, hoping some upcoming issue of the AARP magazine will lay it all out for me.

Along the way I’ve learned a lot about myself -- that I am a paradoxical blend of New College visionary idealism and New Jersey pragmatic realism.  That confuses some people because they expect me to predictably be one or the other.

Back in January I posted a blog entry that over 250 people have read (or at least looked at.) Those aren’t big numbers compared to Jenna Marbles or even the Sarasota CLUCK blog postings (the annotated version of the City’s chicken ordinance has been viewed over 2,500 times).

The opening sentence of that entry was: Susan Chapman is talented, effective, and dedicated community leader. I then went on to explain why I wasn’t going to vote for her in the early City Commission contest that featured six contenders.  That was the idealist blogging. Now you’re going to hear from the pragmatist.

Susan Chapman was the top vote-getter in the primary and that may have led some to assume the race for the second available seat was between Suzanne Atwell and Richard Dorfman. But shortly after that first vote, two of the three candidates that didn’t make the cut (one Democrat and one Republican) recommended that people vote for Suzanne Atwell and Richard Dorfman and that unexpected, blended endorsement made headlines.

That surprising endorsement was followed recently by the announcement that a dozen former mayors are supporting Susan Chapman. This unprecedented affirmation has been dismissed by some,  (I believe Mr. Dorfman suggested the former Mayors were only interested in the status quo, which, when you consider who some of the former mayors are, is actually quite offensive) but this collective endorsement really is fairly remarkable, especially when you consider that the former mayors have almost nothing to gain by endorsing, except I suppose, better government.

Since then the twelve have been joined by a thirteenth and fourteenth: Rita Roehr and Fred Soto. Head down to City Hall and check out the glass wall case with the photographs of all the city’s mayors. You’ll see more than one quarter of all our City’s mayors THAT HAVE EVER LIVED are endorsing Chapman. [And I was surprised to learn that I am just one mayor short of having dealt with half of all Sarasota’s mayors.]

Why is this cornucopia of mayoral endorsements meaningful? Two reasons. First because these former mayors are some of the only people who completely comprehend what skills are needed to be a commissioner. They remember colleagues who got the votes but who couldn’t master the job.

Secondly, what these former mayors are bringing to the party is not just their reputations, but also their expertise. I know these people and they are not likely to endorse and forget. Their endorsement represents a commitment not simply to Susan Chapman’s campaign, but to her service as well. This is a big and balanced group: men and women, Republican and Democrat, black and white, working and retired. This is a significant brain trust and a great resource that represents the diversity of Sarasota.

Now in an election such as this, where only two out of three will prevail, it might be more straightforward, if not kinder, to simply ask people which of the three they least want serving.

And for me that turns out to be Richard Dorfman, who happens to be exactly one month younger than I am. I admire his chutzpah, cojones, or moxie to run for office after only having lived here for a few years. Mind you, I’m not one who believes you had to swim at Lido Casino or dine at the Smack to be a legitimate candidate, but you probably ought to know whom to believe when you are told grey sand pumped on Lido Beach will somehow turn white.

Bottom line: I don’t believe someone should be running for office if they have only lived here four years. Testify at hearings, serve on advisory boards, vote, and write letters to the Editor -- fine. But I believe our City leaders need a contextualized sense of place and I simply don’t believe that can’t develop in four years (or even “nearly eight” if you count a recent Dorfman mailing).  But either way, four or nearly eight “maintaining a home”, don’t send me a glossy campaign mailing telling me you are “a longtime resident” if you weren’t here for Hurricane Charley.

If I was simply doing what comes all too naturally for most of us (adopting a position first and then reverse-engineering a rationale) I could have clutched at the fact that he is a Republican, and supported by the big money in town, but those facts are not deal killers for me. And while I admit to having a visceral reaction upon seeing among Dorfman’s backers the names of those who conspired, out of view of the media, to fund a massive backdoor campaign to defeat my candidacy for the County Commission, I vote for people, not parties, and (as a Democrat in this burg) I’ve voted for plenty of Republicans.

Honestly, I’m not immune to the appeal of some of Richard Dorfman’s expressed goals – I agree that we need greater density and more year-round residents downtown, more support for young people, and a city where life without a car is made more feasible, but these are not patentable ideas. By that I mean they don’t have to travel with a specific individual.

So, just as I judged Susan Chapman not so much on positions as behavior, I’m looking at Richard Dorfman’s behavior.

Now all candidates make slips, some worse than others. But referring to a group of Sarasota citizens as “white-haired ladies” seems especially problematic for at least two reasons. First we need commissioners working both consciously and unconsciously to bring us together and vilifying engaged citizens is not a good way to accomplish that. Put another way, Susan Chapman may have stereotyped chickens, but I’ve never heard her stereotype groups of citizens.

Second, unless one is crassly or divisively playing for some youth vote by taking a cheap shot at the elderly, dissing “white-haired ladies” in Sarasota does not reflect a very sophisticated understanding of the electorate. It is the kind of mistake someone who doesn’t really understand or appreciate Sarasota could make. In addition to the inappropriate white-haired ladies crack, Dorfman failed to challenge a radio host who spoke in crude terms about the commissioners Mr. Dorfman hopes to join. Allowing others to trash-talk your future teammates does not bode well for commission collegiality.

In my previous posting regarding this election, I didn’t deign to tell others how to vote – I simply explained how I was approaching that first election.  So now, for what it is worth, I’m reporting that on May 14^th I will be voting for Susan Chapman, and if I vote for a second candidate, it will be Suzanne Atwell.

What Does It Mean to be a "Longtime Resident" in the City of Sarasota?

I'm neither a native, nor a an old-timer or a "Sarasota pioneer". I never ate at the Smack or swam at Lido Casino, and I don't remember before the Van Wezel was there or even when there was a Democrat serving on the County Commission.

But I do consider myself a longtime local resident. I've lived in both the County and the City (and have lived in five different locations in the City of Sarasota).

So when I get some slick* campaign mailer from a candidate who claims he is a "longtime resident" who "has called Sarasota home for nearly eight years", I have to ask myself: what exactly is a "longtime resident"?

To partially answer the question I created a quiz of sorts. It reflects my own cultural biases, but it may work for you.

You may be a longtime City of Sarasota resident if you:

1) Experience a moment of confusion when someone mentions Mayor Kirschner.

2) Tend to think of the Michael Saunders Real Estate office as the Saprito Brothers Fruit Stand.

3) Remember something you heard Ken Thompson say.

4) Drove on Main Street when it was one way.

5) Ate at the John Ringling Hotel, or Rauls, Tail ‘O the Pup, the Mel-O-Dee, or for that matter, even Dennys or Dairy Queen.

6) Wish we still had The Acacias.

7) Found it convenient that Cheap Clothes was across the street from the Granary.

8) Saw movies in what we now call the Opera House and then couldn’t find an indoor movie anywhere in the City.

9) Bought gas or hardware on St. Armands Circle.

10) Thought a night at the Normandy Motel might be interesting, but never got around to it.

11) Were offended that women were not allowed upstairs in that joint (Roz's?) on 1^st Street.

12) Still think of the west end of Fruitville Road as Third Street.

13) Took an elevator to get to a County Commission meeting.

14) Read books in the Chidsey Library and then got vertigo going upstairs when it moved.

15) Could order a camelade at the Main Bar and get one.

16) Were not surprised to see a shopping cart with a golden horse’s head at events.

17) Enjoyed how cool it was inside the arcade next to the Palmer Bank.

18) Relished the inconvenience of stopping either for the Circus Train to pass or the Ringling Bridge to open.

19) Saw snow or felt the earthquake.

20) Counted two Rosemary District oases besides the cemetary: Hibb's Farm and Garden and the Rosemary Community Garden.

21) Rented rollerblades to join those rollerblading on Main Street.

22) Marveled as a pinch of neighborhood became Martin Luther King Park.

23) Watched a King Neptune parade or went to the Medieval Fair when it was at Ringling.

24) Got ready for a camping trip by buying gear at Tuckers or topo maps at Ellie’s.

25) Wondered how the WWI veterans felt when the oaks planted to remember them were cut down.

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*Meaning both glossy paper stock and "superficially attractive or plausible but lacking depth or soundness".

Why I Won't be Voting for Susan Chapman

Susan Chapman is a talented, effective, and dedicated community leader.

And if her supporters want to take that quote and use it in her campaign literature, saying that the Sarasota Democrat that got nearly 90,00 votes in the 2008 County Commission race said so, they are welcome to do so. It won’t be the first time I have been quoted out of context in a political campaign.

My long-time friend and former candidate, Diana Hamilton, recently posted a SRQ  What Beats? column (Sign Wars) encouraging people not to base their vote on a single issue. Instead she suggested we think about the City Commission candidates as being on a life raft.

“If you were stranded on a life raft with any one of the six, with whom would you feel most safe? Which of them would you trust to share fairly the scarce provisions and row along cooperatively in the direction of an agreed upon truth north?”

I don’t think we can take the life raft test too literally. I mean if I were on a raft I’d rather have someone that could make a serviceable fishhook out of a broken pair of eyeglasses than someone who could only solve thorny pension issues. But I think what Diana was arguing for was judging candidates based on character rather than issues, particularly single contentious issues such as parking meters, Walmart, late-night music, or the so-called strong mayor.

So indulging in Diana’s metaphor about the life raft, I would want someone who listened to ideas about our floating predicament with an open mind, someone who did not engage in prejudice (pre-judging), someone who did not engage in personal attacks, and someone who could accurately remember what had been previously decided. And the fishhook thing.

……

There are some great advantages to aging. One is a certain disinhibition. Not so disinhibited as my father-in-law when he was in hospice care who would point out, to our embarrassment, how fat a nurse was, but the ability to speak truth to power, the willingness to say something that others are reluctant to say.

Since the first of this year I’ve had several conversations with people in the City of Sarasota who, when Susan Chapman is mentioned, look both ways, lean in, and in a sotto voce whisper explain to me why they can’t say anything. I’m old enough to not feel so constrained.

First let me say that my thinking on this is not based on a long relationship with Susan Chapman. I think there really have only been two issues I’ve connected with her on.

Susan was a powerful voice for relocating a lift station that has ended up in Luke Wood Park, instead of behind the High School. That has turned into a complete textbook debacle for reasons she can’t be blamed for. But it was, in my opinion, a tragic decision and the final insult to Luke Wood Park.* [There really should be a day of atonement each year when the City leadership reflects on how they have treated that gift to the City and resolves to never let it happen again.]

As many of you know, I locked horns with Susan Chapman on the subject of backyard chickens in the City. You may be tempted to conclude my opposition to her candidacy stems from the fact that she voted against chickens while serving on the Planning Board. But that isn’t so. Chris Gallagher voted against chickens and, if he were running for the City Commission, I would be a proud supporter. He met with me, listened to our arguments, and drew a different conclusion. Reasonable guy.

So it wasn’t Susan Chapman’s vote that soured me on her – it was her behavior/character. Not her position, but her process. Linking back to my life raft criteria, Susan refused to meet with me on the chicken issue, engaged in ad hominem personal attacks, adopted a strident position without knowing what was being proposed, misquoted me, and publicly misrepresented the adopted position of CCNA on the matter. As for the last transgression, that error could be excused if she was an outsider, but no one was more central in CCNA at the time. And a bunch of all that happened while she was chairing a City Planning Board meeting, which is a time when the Chair should be most rigorous about fairness and accuracy. So this wasn't the case of single unfortunate incident, but rather a cavalcade, a veritable panoply of multiple behaviors all unbecoming an appointed official.

I began my public life in Sarasota in 1977 and I can say that in the subsequent 36 years I have never been treated with more incivility by an appointed or elected government official than I have been by Susan Chapman (although the County Commission Chair that failed to speak up when I was called a communist was pretty bad - he must have lost track of the County civility pledge).

Now some will say I can’t have it two ways, objecting to Susan Chapman because she engaged in personal attacks and then posting a blog that some could construe as a personal attack on Susan Chapman. I’d argue that a commission race is precisely the time to address matters of behavior and character. In other words, opining about people's character when the topic should be issues is one thing, but when the question is qualifications for office, quite another. And I want y'all to know how disappointed I was in her behavior.

Of course, this essay notwithstanding, Susan Chapman has a good shot at winning a seat on the City Commission. After all, my opposition to a local candidate doesn’t necessarily amount to much. As you’ll recall, no one campaigned harder against Carolyn Mason than I and today she is the Chair of the County Commission, while I am but a sometimes blogger. And no one was more publicly outspoken challenging Charlie Crist’s looming appointment of Christine Robinson than I was, and she was Carolyn's predecessor chair of the County Commission (and she did a good job).

And Susan Chapman has some high-profile City activist supporters, people I admire and count as friends and allies. These include Kelly Kirschner, Dick Clapp, and Johannes Werner.

So I recognize that Susan Chapman may well be serving as a City Commissioner when I come before the commission to support, oppose, or comment on some city issue. But my historic opposition to Carolyn and Christine hasn’t prevented me from seeking their support on county issues. Because if you resolve never to work with people you have disagreed with, you’ll find there aren’t many (any?) elected officials you can work with.

Bottom Line: If you want someone on your side in the City of Sarasota, it would be hard to find someone better than Susan Chapman. (another campaign quote?) She is a skilled, relentless fighter more than willing to use a variety of effective (as seen on TV) attorney strategies to pursue her goals.

I just don’t think the City Commission needs a ruthless fighter with Susan Champan's M.O.

• I've been informed Susan Chapman was an early and dedicated supporter of the the alternate list station site at the High School. That's entirely possible, and anyone arguing for that alternate site should be commended. Conversely, I can't applaud anyone supporting the Luke Wood Park site, even as a last resort -- I just feel that strongly about parks, and this uniquely abused one in particular.

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If you are looking for a second or third or fourth opinion on my assessment, please check out:

“Whose Afraid of Susan Chapman?”,  by Jacob Ogles, which is another SRQ article and/or

Scroll all the way down to the bottom to find Letter from Mike McNees, Sarasota City Manager 2001-2007 responding to the SRQ article above

Ms. Susan Chapman/Police Advisory Board (Take this one with a grain of salt because the authors are not identified except by online handles. Anonymity sometimes emboldens people to overstate their case and these commentator's credentials as arbiters of civility seem lacking.)

Or read the comments associated with Sarasota May Fire Engineers on Sewage Project, a November 2102 Sarasota Herald Tribune article dealing with the lift station fiasco.

There is also at least one other online posting that views Susan Chapman in a negative light, but the screed I am thinking of is so over the top that I don't think it is worth the pixels.

Is Mote Unable to Resist Calling Their Caviar Sustainable??

On December 22^nd, 2012 Mote spokeswoman, Hayley Rutger, was quoted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune as follows: “ It’s good to know our caviar is not only sustainable, but up to par with the foodies out there. There’s an interest in out culture to be sustainable and what we’re doing really fits into that.”

Photo of  Sarasota Herald Tribune  Dec 22 2012

247 days earlier, on April 19^th, the Sarasota Herald Tribune was kind enough to publish a guest column of mine that argued Mote Marine’s sturgeon/caviar operation was not, contrary to their persistent claims, a sustainable enterprise.

A Long Blog Posting About Sarasota County Term Limits

No one would deliberately shoot someone to create a portal to the stomach. But when Alexis St. Martin was accidentally shot in the stomach on June 6, 1822, he provided medical science with a literal window into human digestion. Likewise popsicles, chocolate chip cookies, and tofu are all rumored to exist as the result of unintended culinary mishaps. 

And no one would deliberately design an experiment to see what would happen if a community decided to have a rule preventing third and fourth terms and then somehow set the rule aside to see what would happen.

But that is what happened. In a primary election in 1998, Sarasota voters voted to prevent county commissioners from serving more than two terms consecutively. That charter amendment was challenged and a court ruled it should not be enforced. That created a situation where there was a clear mandate (greater than two to one), but no implementation or enforcement. How did the electorate react and what were the consequences? Would voters self-implement the charter amendment or behave in a contrary manner?

The Great Indian Beach Palm Massacre of 2012

There are two types of neighborhoods in Sarasota: the most recent is the type where everyone belongs to (and pays money to) an association and the norms and expectations of all the neighbors are codified.

These neighborhoods offer fairly predictable appearance and people can buy a home without worrying that an eccentric neighbor is going to get all creative and populate their front lawn with with stereotyped gnomes, sombrero-wearing Mexicans languishing under concrete cactus and dutiful diminutive black jockeys holding yard lights.

Then there is the older type neighborhood, where you don't have to join (or pay) the association and the norms and expectations are not written down and not enforced. Homes in these neighborhoods can vary considerably and it is there can be tensions among neighbors regarding what is appropriate. Neighbors take their cues from other neighbors and infer what the range of acceptable behavior is. New residents typically temper their visions of their new property with principles garnered by observation of the surrounding homes. I'm talking about neighborhoods like IBSSA. 

The following observations are not personal, because I have no idea who owns the property south of Indian Beach, the site where, on Friday January 20th, 2012, the great palm massacre took place.

Now, according to the City this vegetable genocide is all above board and sanctioned and makes perfect sense.

It is, after all, private property and the trees that were removed will (are projected to) be offset by new trees and all this is outlined in a landscape plan prepared by a professional landscape architect. The palms (mostly cabbage palms) were not dug up so they could be repositioned because this site is an important archaeological site and digging the trees would disturb the site.

But I, for one, challenge this narrative.

1) If this is such an important archaeological site, why are we building a private residence on it? Furthermore many of those trees (including the native palms) may have been there when Fort Armistead was established in 1840 to deal with the local Indians. So the trees are actually part of the historic/archaeological record just as much as any mouldering bones or eroding pot shards. To claim that one is respecting local heritage and then removing most of the trees is disingenuous.

2) Unless they are planting seeds, the new trees called for will involve digging site-disturbing holes, just as relocating the old trees would have.

3) I believe it is a polite fiction to say trees can be replaced. You can replace a light bulb, a TV set, or Uniroyal Tiger Paw GTZ All Season tire. But you cannot replace a living tree anymore than a family that loses a child can "replace" the child by adopting another, or a new puppy can "replace" a faithful hound of 15 years. Living things can sort of take the place of a previous living entity, but they cannot replace because they will never be the same as what preceded them. 

4) I also bristle at the implicit finding that if Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schmo want to remove trees they have to argue and wheedle with the city, but if one is  able to afford a landscape architect then the city rolls over and approves mass killing. This certainly seems like a double standard. 

5) I would like to assume that moving into a neighborhood like ours is motivated in part by wanting to be part of the neighborhood, that rather than an private enclave or bastion with no neighbor contact, that new residents would want to be accepted by those who live around them. But this is not always the case, particularly along the bayfront, which has drawn the wealthy and powerful for over a century. But even John Ringling and Powel Crosley, whose wealth and power in their day almost certainly eclipsed that of the new owners of 916 Indian Beach, had the decency and forbearance to leave some of the native palms.

We all understand that you have to break eggs to make omelets and siting a house on a lot, (particularly a small, constrained lot) may involve removing trees. Thoreau did to build his cabin as did Jesse Colin Young (see Ridgetop lyrics). 


But when you have a gigantic lot populated with native trees saturated with both natural and cultural history, I think it all comes down to respect:


• Respecting the people that came before
• Respecting the current neighborhood
• Respecting those that will live here in the future.