All Together Now

The median age of Longboat Key residents is 68. We are an upscale residential community composed  for the most part, of retirees, many of whom spend only a few weeks a year on the island. Whether we like it or not that is our major demographic, and we as a community must deal with what we are.

I read a comment in one of the newspapers some time ago that used the term "Deadboat Key". I have spoken to several real estate sales people who have said that younger home buyers do not want to live on Longboat because it is "unfriendly" and there is nothing to do. Is that true?

I live in the village. Here, the residents are out and about in the neighborhood. It is a friendly welcoming enclave of modest homes. Every month we have a village get-together and potluck dinner. Anyone is welcome. The village has several activity groups and a lively social network. I have lived in the village over 25 years and it is the best place I have ever lived. Most of my friends and neighbors share my appreciation for the kicked-back friendly intimate lifestyle we enjoy.

I believe Longboat needs to become more user-friendly. Even though some people do not want our island to be known as a community of affluent retired people, that is what we are if you look at our population.

I have always supported the tennis center because I believe it enriches the lives of hundreds of our residents and offers a popular social activity to visitors and perspective home buyers.

Even though tennis is a good physical activity, along with golf and of course swimming in the beautiful gulf, many of our residents may be interested in less strenuous activities such as Bocce Ball and other outdoor activities requiring less stamina than tennis. Our climate may discourage many residents from participating in the more active social activities such as golf or tennis much of the year. Perhaps a few town Bocce Ball and shuffleboard courts with shaded seating might allow residents to get out more and find social interactions year-round.

I want to promote many more community activities that draw the residents together, provide more social activity choices and improve our image as a great place to live and buy a home.

The town has an infrastructure fund with proceeds from the tourism taxes collected by the counties. Perhaps a small portion of those funds might be used to create and promote social activities on Longboat to be enjoyed by all. Other communities such as "The Villages", an upscale planned retirement community on central Florida, have a robust social activities infrastructure that is well attended and supported by the residents.

Here are a few ideas I have that might be worth examining:



Bocce Ball courts can add utility to our existing parks at relatively little cost. Shaded seating affords residents the opportunity to exercise and meet other island residents in relative comfort year-round. Perhaps the town could organize league play and even an invitational tournament that would attract off-island players to our island as the triathlon drew hundreds of contestants to Longboat for a day.

I have a friend who moved from Longboat to "The Villages" several years ago, and is still happy with their decision. My friend loves all the community social activities that are available. Weekly dances in the village squares are very popular as are outdoor activities. We have ample room in one of our parks to install an outdoor dance floor with appropriate LED lighting. Add a DJ and you have a starlit evening to enjoy.

Longboat has no centralized organization to promote and manage community activities. Perhaps we need one. It is a lot of effort for our residents to sponsor activities which tend to be restricted to a particular condominium association or neighborhood. Perhaps we might all enjoy more community-wide activities. The St. Jude's luncheon and various other fundraising functions are always well supported.

If the town managed weekly potluck dinners in the park then they would be able to manage attendence each week. If the town installed numbers of shaded outdoor picnic tables and benches in the public areas, perhaps more people would organize activities in the parks. With a median age of 68, I doubt that many of our residents want to have to stand in the hot sun to be a part of an otherwise enjoyable community social gathering.

I believe our community needs to find more ways to come together and to offer an expanded living experience to residents and visitors alike. Perhaps local government is the most able to create and organize community resources in an intentional effort to grow our community.

We need to be a part of the competition to attract the baby boomers to Longboat. The current retiring generation has different asperations than the people who built our community a generation ago. The boomer's aspirations are more active, and if one looks at "The Villages" they want an increased sense of community.

We can easily increase social interaction on Longboat in a number of ways. Certainly a community center will be a major asset in attracting new residents. In the meantime, there are many other activities that can be organized.

Perhaps the vision plan might address community activities more and pay less attention to the tourists.

Managing our beaches intelligently

In this blog I will link to two beach maintenance technologies that might be explored to maintain sand on our beaches at minimum cost and maximum longevity, instead of hopper dredging that lasts only a few years.

In my previous post I stated that the town might serve the community well by researching what beach management alternatives are available, and how they might be applied to our particular beach challenges.

I believe it is essential to look at preserving sand along our entire 10 miles of beach, not just the beach adjacent to Longboat Pass.

For the past 20 years I have always tried to offer positive alternatives if I questioned a particular town policy of activity. The current beach conundrum is no different and here I am suggesting that we look at two specific beach maintenance technologies because they make sense to me. I have looked into both companies enough to believe that each has promise. Both systems can be economically applied to the entire island to provide a semi-permanent solution that does not require spending tens-of-millions of dollars every 8 years or so.

In the case of the Sand Saver company, they are willing to ship 20 of their units to Longboat, at no cost to the town, so we might conduct a small test lasting for a month or two as proof of concept. Since the Sand Saver units are highly portable and quickly and easily removed, the town can assure the Department of Environmental Resources that the test will cause no permanent damage to the coastline. I like companies that believe enough in their technology to fully underweight the pilot project.


As soon as ideas for a long term low maintenance beach solution are presented, I suspect there will be opposition from several quarters. I can see no reason why these technologies should not be explored to the point where a consensus of experts reject them. Ask yourselves if you believe all the communities that decided to use these various beach maintenance methods acted impulsively and without evaluating what they were doing. In the past the town manager has defended his continued use of hopper dredging by saying that all other technologies will not work on Longboat Key. My question is how do we know this without throughly exploring the promising technologies and how they apply to our particular beach conditions.

Are we the only ones who know what we are doing? Is there nothing to be learned from the efforts and collective experiences of other communities? Do you really want to reject all seemingly successful technologies out-of-hand? I don't when $50 million is on the line with a life expectancy of only seven or eight years, and even higher costs the next time we re-nourish our beaches.

The Movable Wall: The first technology I want to highlight is called "Sand Saver". This beach maintenance technology uses movable semi-porous retaining wall modules to build beach profile and then maintain the built-out beach on an ongoing basis. The semi-porous units can be repositioned up and down the island to both acquire sand and to maintain the beach. Please watch the entire video and note how quickly sand is acquired using the Sand Saver modules.

At this point I am not saying that the Sand Saver is the answer to all our dreams. I am saying we should, as a community, honestly evaluate this technology, and others, both in terms of cost and effectiveness. The Sand Saver has never been permitted since the 1970s. Many of the technologies being proposed for examination have to deal with a $3 billion a year dredging industry along with its attendant lobbyists. Sand Saver has recently obtained all required permits for a project on the Great Lakes in Michigan. When this technology was permitted it was successful in accretion 100 feet of beach in a few weeks.

Link: http://www.sandsaver.com/main.wmv

Link: http://www.sandsaver.com/

Sub-current Stabilizers: Holmberg Technology is a local company has been reclaiming beaches for decades around the world. They have hundreds of satisfied clients. Holmberg has hundreds of success stories of reclaimed beaches that have lasted decades without needing further work and money. I have spoken with Mr. Holmberg and for a few thousand dollars we can have Mr. Holmberg evaluate our beaches and make a preliminary proposal.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA7D8UERl6A&feature=related

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBTroxOvczc&feature=related

I have presented two differing beach maintenance technologies. Both have been successful in other communities. There are many more alternatives to the expensive temporary dredging solution being championed by both the town manager and the town's beach engineering consultants. Look at my LBK beaches web site to see several other shore maintenance technologies that are in use around the world.

Link: http://www.lbkbeaches.com/

I do not believe we should continue to support expensive dredging projects without first having a disinterested independent expert beach management company evaluate the major alternative beach management technologies that have been successful in other communities.



Sandcastles In The Air

What are informed decisions? What are uninformed decisions?

What role does foresight play in our decision making?

The taxpayers of Longboat Key will soon be asked to once again approve a beach bond in the vicinity of $50 million to replenish ten miles of beach. I am reminded of George Santayana's admonition "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." If today's commission proceedings are any indication of the commissioners final decision concerning the scope of work on the island's shoreline, we are doomed to throwing an enormous amount of money into the Gulf of Mexico, again.

To view some of the erosion control solutions employed by other communities look at the link below.

http://www.lbkbeaches.com/

I honestly believe that any decision to repeat a process that has been shown to be temporary and increasingly costly is an uninformed decision if no attempt is made to seriously examine as many viable alternatives as possible.

I also believe that waiting until the last possible moment, when the town is between the devil and the deep blue sea, does not lead to a successful informed decision making process.

At the previous commission workshop, the town's beach consultants appeared to be ill-prepared at such a late date. They had no innovative and cost saving suggestions for the commission to consider. When commissioner Larson brought up the idea of geotex tubes as a means of retaining expensive sand, the consultants appeared to be caught off guard and had no immediate answers. One would think for what we pay the consultants, that they would have come to the deadline meetings with more than "the same old same old".

I believe the time has come, and the costs high enough, for the town commission to finally approach our beach problem with true due diligence. We need to seek solutions from more sources than just our current beach management consultants. If one takes the time and does the research it becomes apparent that communities use many different methods to control the costs of maintaining their beaches. If money were of no concern, then our present policy of replenishing our beaches ever seven or eight years might be the easiest approach. However, money is a concern and we need to attempt to find a permanent solution if one exists.

Informed decision making will require a great effort for an unpaid commission. It will also require that the commission instruct the town manager to bring in other coastal engineering companies from around the country and around the world if necessary. The projected cost of the upcoming beach project is $50,000,000.00 plus when interest is added to the $40,000,000.00 bond issue. That works out to over $5,000,000.00 a mile for sand replenishment that has been proven again and again to last only a few years.


False Economies: eventually taxpayers will tire of geometrically escalating beach management costs and insist that a permanent solution be found. As sand borrow areas become more difficult to find and competition for limited sand resources increases, so will the costs associated with our present sand replenishment policy.

The town commission can choose to remain passive and accept the advice of the town's beach consultants, or they can insist on input from a number of qualified engineering companies. I suspect that there will be no real effort to evaluate the many proven methods for erosion management used by communities around the world. Instead, and as usual, the commission will be willing accept the choices offered by our beach consultants, even in the face of launching the largest bond referendum in the history of Longboat Key.


The pending beach management project includes provisions for some sort of sand retaining structures at the north end to slow the loss of sand into Longboat Pass, depending on the outcome of an inlet management study. Inlets account for 86% of sand loss off our beaches.

Since the town has refrained from conducting a north end inlet management study for many years, until such a study was mandated by the state last year, the taxpayers of Longboat Key will be asked to "trust" the town to do the right thing, since the sorts of structures to be used at the north end may be undefined at the time of the bond referendum.

This week the town's beach consultants told the commissioners that they had stabilized Longboat's beaches with the exception of Longboat Pass and that sand replenishment was a prudent approach to maintaining the beach profile.


At the same time the consultants detailed the amount of yearly sand loss from the various sectors of the beach in terms of hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand. The stabilized beach they spoke of is still losing sand at a prodigious rate in terms of dollars that will soon be required to replenish that sand again.


I believe we need to explore means of keeping sand on the beach through the use of various technologies.

If the commission chooses poorly then some poor commissioners and many property owners will be faced with an even more enormous financial problem a scant ten years from now.

We cannot afford to continue throwing tax dollars into the Gulf of Mexico every few years if there is some way to retain the sand more effectively.

What's Wrong with Tourists?

Should we label tourists as second-class economic citizens on Longboat Key?

What do tourists bring to our community?

Recent studies have demonstrated that residents and tourists do not mix well. In communities where commercial tourism has expanded, residents most often relinquish territory to the tourists. On Longboat the tourist influx during February and March means crowded roads and restaurants. Residents know better and do not plan trips off-island on weekends when the beaches are filling up or tourists are heading home. We prepare ourselves for long waits at local eateries during season while mumbling about the need for tourism to keep local businesses alive. We modify our life style because of the tourists yet we are the ones who pay all the taxes. Does that make sense?

Do tourists keep our businesses alive? Probably not the same businesses needed by residents such as medical, lawn, municipal, home repair or domestic services. While residents have little need for tee-shirt shops, shell stores or jet-ski rentals. There seems to be very little that tourists and residents have in common except being on the same road at the same time two months a year. 


The residential community realizes almost no financial benefit from commercial tourism except for a small portion of collected sales taxes and real estate taxes which represent a small fraction of the total tax burden.

A few property owners rent their houses, mostly on a monthly basis, with mixed reactions form neighboring homes. The chamber of commerce along with some current commissioner/planners now advocate relaxing the monthly rental restrictions and allowing weekly rentals to encourage more tourists to come to Longboat by offering reduced cost accommodations. We all know that weekly rentals quickly deteriorate into weekend rentals. There are no controls as to how many people can occupy a house. A property owner near me rents to different people for weekends on a weekly basis even though it is illegal. Sometimes there are eight or more people occupying the house including boisterous young children. Our town continues to demonstrate that it is not prepared to effectively regulate residential rentals, nor should it, for the town is not be in the vacational rental business. The weekend rentals continue island-wide, though the economic downturn appears to have reduced rental traffic.

I do not believe that the great majority of our island residents even want monthly rentals much less weekly/weekend rentals. Yet the current pro-business commission appears to be on the verge of approving a vision plan that encourages weekly/weekend rentals. Of course, our chamber of commerce also seeks increased tourism and relaxation of the current thirty day rental restrictions.

If you own a home in a neighborhood where rentals are allowed, and you do not want your neighborhood to be turned into a short-term rental community, then I suggest that you log onto http://www.longboatkey.org/ go to the commissioner's page and email them how you feel about weekly rentals on Longboat Key.

Lastly I want to bust the myth that young Yuppie tourists will become future home buyers on Longboat Key, and that is why we should want hoards of them to be visited upon our beautiful serene residential community. By the time these people are old enough to want to retire to our island, I will most likely be beyond caring and my heirs will also be too old to care.

I believe we should be marketing our island to the retiring baby boomers, not weekly tourists. As soon as the economy recovers we will be looking at a large population of retirees. The more fortunate of those retirees will want just what we wanted when we bought our homes on Longboat Key. Who wants to wait twenty years for the Yuppies to grow up and retire, when there are so many perspective home buyers much closer at hand?

We do not need more tourists. We need discriminating home buyers right now. The best way to attract these people is through sophisticated marketing and advertising.

We do need to spruce up our act, put on a big smile, invent all sorts of things to do as a community and tell the world that we are a wonderful place to live. Did I hear tourist in any of this?

"What our commissioners fail to understand is that the community, not the developers, should define community identity. That is the purpose of the zoning code. Variances should be the exception and not the rule." ... SH