Five things to Improve Downtown Sarasota

Joe Moraca asked for five things we'd like to see happen downtown.  I'm posting mine here:

1) Water taxi to South Lido so people who live downtown could get to the beach without either a car or a bike ride.

2) A regularly updated (tabloid format?) downtown map that used color coding to identify most of the major retail themes, which I would list as Restaurants, Galleries, Antique/Resale, Bookstores. This would be sponsored by advertisers and help downtown retail business.

3) A more flexible Saturday Farmer's Market format that would let four people share one space so that each was only there one weekend a month

4) Greening of walls with creeping fig (Ficus pumila). See Bay Plaza, the west wall of Sarasota News and Books and a previous blog of mine from January 7th. 

5) Inexorable, but not necessarily immediate, conversion of most non-retail ground floor space on Main Street to retail. 

Oh, and 6) general recanting of the decision to banish the Rosemary Community Garden. 

Times Obit Triggers High School Memories of the Cambodian Invasion

Attempts by candidates to link present virtues to early indications sometimes fall flat and I like to think I've changed a lot since I was a teenager. But an obituary in the New York Times today connected me to a man I had forgotten and also to an early action of mine that, it could be argued, presaged some of my present style . 

The man was Robert Goheen and he was the President of Princeton from 1957 until 1972. I called him as an eighteen year old high school student to solicit his help. Actually, prep school student would be more accurate.

I grew up in suburban New Jersey and nothing about my family approached being wealthy. If there was any inherited money it wasn't evident to me and my father commuted to New York City to work as traffic manager for a steamship line. Our garage had a dirt floor, we had a one-bathroom house (on  the second floor) and our garden and chickens were both indulgences and a lingering habits from my parent's Great Depression experiences. 

But I was an only child and not doing well in school. School officials thought I 'tested well' but my grades usually didn't reflect my potential so my parents tried a private day school and, when that didn't work, a boarding school in Princeton, the Hun School. I repeated my junior year of high school there, and by senior year I had been elected to the student council.

Somewhere in the spring of 1970, the American public found out about the invasion of Cambodia and many colleges and some high schools were shut down by student protests and strikes. The Hun student leadership decided to stage a teach-in rather than a protest. I'm not claiming it was my idea, but it might have been and I supported it. It fell to me to call President Goheen to ask his assistance. It was with some trepidation that I called, but I made the call anyway and found President Goheen to be gracious and helpful. I believe he actually spoke at our teach-in, but that may be wishful memory. 

The NYT obit says of Goheen: "He weathered the protests, the rebellion, and the confusion that swept higher education in the 1960's, using humor and urging civilized debate. He had little use for angry protest, even when he agreed with the protesters, as he ultimately did with critics of the Vietnam War."

Although popular sentiment on the Princeton campus was opposed to the invasion, we found an articulate, confident, conservative student willing to come speak in support of the conduct of the war and, as I recall, mounted a balanced assembly that was an alternative to classes for one day. 

So is my flashback significant? What character traits do I chose to extract? Trepidation and not living up to potential? No. Hey, this is a campaign. 

I prefer to emphasize the reaching out to others not like myself, and the quest for balance, education and civilized debate. Oh, and using humor to defuse tension. And, in retrospect, I appreciate my brief, tangential interaction with one of Princeton's great President's who chose to listen to me and, in doing so, taught me one great life lesson, which is usually formulated as something like "the worst he can do is say 'no'". Fortunately for me, President Goheen said 'yes'.

Reflections on the Legacy Trail Opening

Today (March 28th) was truly historic day as the long awaited Legacy Trail opened. Former Commissioner David Mills was on hand and this must have been a gratifying conclusion to a long-held dream for him. 

I actually have been mentioning David when I speak, using him to exemplify a Commissioner who had a mission and vision that transcended simply taking care of County business. David has been stereotyped as the "business guy" just as some of us are stereotyped as "environmental guys", but like everyone he was multi-dimensional and thoroughly committed to recreational trails, particularly this one. 

Of course, thousands contributed to the existence of the trail from taxpayers and voters (not always the same thing) to Commissioners, county staff and exceptional volunteers like Rollins Coakley. 

I managed to make the ribbon cuttings at both ends of the trail, so I got to hear Commissioner Jon Thaxton twice. The first talk was punchy and assertive, but after traversing the entire trail he was more reflective and by the time he was done talking the trail seemed like a transect not only of his life, but even of Sarasota County. 

Who expected unsolved murders, school breaks in storm sewers and a graphic vignette of Sarasota's county's racist past at a trail dedication? Jon spent more than the alloted three minutes, but delivered  personal testimony that even attributed our enlarged Oscar Scherer State Park to the railroad right of way. 

It was a moving speech and it made me wonder how many of the Venice Elementary School Chorus members would be roughly my age fifty years hence, standing on the platform reminiscing how they had been present the day the trail first opened?

From "book club without a book" to "cabal unmasked"!

Rick Barry rips the lid off the soft underbelly of a mysterious organization unafraid of mixed metaphors!

Taking investigative journalism  to a new plateau, Pelican Press writer Rick Barry uncovered, documented and brazenly reported on a little known organization that has existed in our midst for four or five years. Code-named (well, actually just named) ENZYME, Rick was no doubt hoping for some dastardly entity comparable to SMERSH or SPECTRE, some underground organization plotting some nefarious action that will bring Sarasota to its knees; like installing roundabouts on I-75, opening a new pass along the Manatee-Sarasota County line on Longboat Key or draining the Myakka to create a mid-county recreational trail. 

What he found can barely be considered an organization. There are no dues, no bylaws, no minutes, no actions, no initiatives. As one member put it: " We don't really do anything." This puts the ENZYME 'cabal' on a level with any other group that gets together informally. I told him it was like a book club without a book. 

Here's what Rick quoted me as saying about the group: 

Miller more or less confirmed these assessments: "It's just a group of people who care deeply about the area. Each month, Debra will give us a homework assignment, and each group of two or three will look into a subject and make a presentation to educate the others.

"We talked about how Englewood and Longboat Key are split between two counties, and how that affects those towns; how North Port's physical layout affects its development, that sort of thing.

"It's named 'Enzyme' because they are natural catalysts. And we hope by getting together and learning ... and getting to know one another, we might have a positive effect on the community. But it's all very relaxed, informal ... and not really very secret at all."

Click on the highlighted text to read Rick's article.

Losing 4-1

Today's Sarasota Herald Tribune  (March 25, 2008)  took some editorial space  (see accompanying scan on the left) to comment on Commissioner Mercier's forceful opposition to the USB consensus alternative his fellow commissioners embraced. 

To be fair, Mercier is not alone in questioning the process that brought the community to this point -- at least one citizen and one Pelican Press editorial writer agree with him, apparently mostly on procedural grounds.

Opinion seems to be divided regarding his motive: was this a shrewd play to align himself with voters who may already feel disenfranchised, or a principled stand based on deep convictions? 

I try to avoid cynicism and conspiracy theories and I'm prone to taking people at their word until they convince me that's unwise. Hence, I'm inclined to believe Paul's position is heartfelt, sincere, and based on deep convictions. He could no doubt see how the vote was going down and had the opportunity to go along to get along, but he made a conspicuous choice that further distanced himself from both the rest of the commission and a broad spectrum of the community. 

There's no shame in a principled stand. While I agree with the editorial's conclusion that his comments were unreasonably dismissive, it's important to note that being on the losing end of a 4-1 vote doesn't mean the minority position is wrong, it just means the losing party was unable to mount a convincing argument. 

This matter is not fully settled and reflection may yet lend credence to some of Paul's concerns. All we know today is that one commissioner, for whatever the reason, went out of his way to thwart a unanimous endorsement of a unique settlement distinguished not as some would argue by who was excluded, but rather by the breadth of those that were included. 

Sarasota USB Monday: The will of people -- who are they and how is it determined?

At 1:30 p.m. this Monday the Sarasota County Commission will wade into water that, apparently, no other County Commission in the state of Florida has ever waded in before. They will explore whether, and under what circumstances, a referendum with enough valid signatures may be withdrawn from a ballot. 

Some have argued that pulling the measure from the ballot, if it is even legal, is a form of disenfranchisement or even 'betrayal' of the 12,500 signatories. This suggests that, once approved, the ballot measure belongs either to the citizenry as a whole or, somehow, to the signatories, but not the initiators who conceived, and nurtured the measure -- the people responsible for its existence . 

Others, the initiators and the broad spectrum consortium supporting an alternative "consensus", believe that there is both a compelling will and a legal way to retire the original ballot measure and replace it with one more agreeable to all sides. 

Here are just a few of the submerged logs and gator holes the commission and its legal staff will have to negotiate during their wade:

Who has standing to challenge withdrawal?  Any citizen? Any registered voter? Anyone who signed the petition to get the measure on the ballot? This is second cousin to the efforts of some opposing the Florida Hometown Democracy asking petition signers to rescind their signatures -- an innovative and ominous development, in my opinion. 

And what if one signer, or ten, or even five hundred petition signers show up demanding that the original measure be sent as originally drafted for a vote? Would that suggest that 12,499 signers or 12,490 or even 12,000 signers were comfortable with the alternative consensus measure?

 If so, how are their competing interests to be weighed? Simple majority? Super majority? Unanimity? 

Either way, it promises to be a milestone in local government that may set precedent for the entire state as well as either derailing or affirming an intriguing convergence of interests. 

I don't have the responsibility of deciding such matters. If I did I would be interested in two things: 1) Is their any compelling legal precedent in such matters that constrains Board action, and 2, if not; how to honor and respect both the intentions of the majority of the signatories and the historic broad spectrum consensus that has emerged. As I stated in an earlier blog, "it will be unfortunate if this historic agreement is derailed by legal hurdles that confound and contradict the wishes of the people who started the whole thing." 

Stop the Presses ! Republican Supports Democrat!

The Sarasota Herald Tribune is reporting that a local elected Republican official is endorsing and contributing money to the candidacy of Democrat Charles McKenzie who is in a three way race for the Fla. House District 55 seat.

Bold move? Probably not, more likely part of a growing trend in Sarasota, a trend building on a tradition of local Republicans supporting (and voting for) solid Democratic candidates. 

We see it in state wide races with Bill Nelson and Alex Sink and locally with the success of Keith Fitzgerald  and in the ostensibly non-partisan races in Venice and Sarasota. And we'll no doubt see it again in the District 1 County Commission race in November.

P.S. I too have contributed to the McKenzie campaign and support his candidacy. I've believed in Charles since I first heard him speak over five years ago. Earlier this year I marched next to Charles McKenzie holding the Democratic Party Banner with him from City Hall to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Park. His headline-making Republican supporter was nowhere to be seen at that time, but sometimes it just takes awhile to figure out what makes sense. Let's get out the local vote and see if we can put Charles over the top.