Faux Sure

Faux Sure is a mixed-use of languages for sure. It is meant to point to the predicament the community finds itself in, where a small group of powerful people have hijacked the town government and are telling us we need to greatly expand development on Longboat Key. The problem is how do we know they are right? If they are wrong they will destroy Longboat Key as we know and love it. This self-assured group is working tirelessly to rewrite both the land use codes and the comprehensive plan in an attempt to deconstruct the very codes and comp plan that have been used to create our great and unique community. How about another Plymouth Harbor behind Publix and/or at Whitney Plaza?

What are the Faux Sure people offering you and me? What do we know about their career histories? Would you want a clique of unknowns to have control of your finances? What do you really know about the present commissioners? What will happen to the market value of your property on Longboat Key if they are wrong? Expanded commercial tourism seldom mixes with low density exclusivity.

Up to now it made little difference who was on the commission because the town had a strong town manager who was easily able to control the commissioners by limiting their choices and feeding them well massaged information. So long as the town manager was on a strong course the commission was sure to follow.

This is no longer the case. We now have an activist commission who are on an accelerating quest to rewrite both the land use codes and the comprehensive plan to allow developers to have a free hand in developing large projects on the island with little accountability required. The commission has gone through four town managers in less than a month. What does that say to anyone wishing to apply for the town manager position in the future? The Faux Sures have re-instated the building department director when it is convenient for their purposes for short periods of time, in the midst of what may be a bona fide employee grievance process, by firing our police chief as the acting town manager. I was at the special meeting where Mayor Brown humiliated the police chief infront of the community. This was obscene. This sordid affair should have been carried out in a less offensive way. An already fractious situation has been exacerbated by ill tempered words and actions. Damage has been done and trust and confidence have been diminished. It is unclear if Ms. Simpson has been reinstated or not been reinstated. She appeared before the most recent planning and zonimg board meeting so one would assume she had been reinstated. Everything is unclear at the moment, the commissioners are unusually quiet and town hall is walking on soft boiled eggs hoping nothing else happens.

Where do we go from here and how to we find out if the Faux Sures are on the right track? We seem to have reached a point where the entire governance of Longboat Key is on shaky ground. The position of town manager has been compromised by five commissioners who shoot first and don't bother to ask questions later.

The current commission has now demonstrated that they either do not intend to be limited by, or do not know, the confines of their elected offices. We do have a town charter and that charter needs to be followed and obeyed. In recent years I cannot recall when the town attorney has been unable to find a way to support the commission. I find it hard to believe that everything the commission wants to do is always legally OK.

The Ends Justifies the Means?

Certain town politicians are now espousing the rationale that we must retain the Planning and Zoning Department director because she is too professional to lose. They are employing this rationale as their justification to excuse the director's behavior that had been allowed to go on under the former town manager. I am sorry that this story is not pretty. This article is based on official employee testimony that exposes the town to further criticism. As time goes on we may discover that all was not sweetness and light under the leadership of the former town manager. Personally, I cannot imagine being in the work environment described by numerous employees in the building department. In fifty or more years in the workplace, I have never witnessed anything like what is contained in the employee interviews. To say that girls will be girls or that managers repeatedly swear at staff, dismisses unacceptable behavior and abuse of power over employees with children to feed and mortgages to be paid. I am unable to stay silent in the face of numerous instances of humiliation and denigration. How this was allowed to go on for so long is something that needs to be investigated.

The commissioners appear to have a clear choice between their "useful" zoning director and the well being of an entire department. To me there is no choice and there is no lack of even more qualified land use and municipal code experts who can be retained by the town. We already hire consulting experts in several areas of town activities such as utility and beach projects. Marty Black comes to mind as an extremely qualified consultant who is already familiar with the town's codes and comprehensive plan. I believe Mr. Black is far more qualified and licensed than Ms. Simpson. Why not retain Marty Black?

No one is irreplaceable and no one should be indispensable when it comes to working conditions. If only one or two building department employees had complaints about their work environment, there might be a case for trying to mediate the manager / worker relationship. The current situation involves ten employees and descriptions about extreme and prolonged behavior patterns.

When one examines the input from all the land use experts who have disagreed with Ms. Simpson's interpretations of the town's poorly written codes and comprehensive plan over the years, it might be an unpleasant shock for the commission, the town's land use attorney and the town attorney if a new well qualified manager was hired to replace the current planning and zoning director. Perhaps that is why the commission has trespassed into areas of the town's charter that deny commissioners the right to hire and fire town employees. And that is just what the commission has done by hiring the former town manager's assistant to be the acting town manager, and then having her, in turn, return Ms. Simpson to the workplace, in spite of the fact that a well qualified acting town manager recently placed Ms. Simpson on leave until an investigation of her actions was completed. When the commissioners crossed the line in our charter they may have exposed the town to litigation. What the commission did was pure shenanigans to retain Ms. Simpson as a predictable interpreter of the town codes and comp plan.

I am one of many who feel that the current commission is abusing our charter and codes and that Ms. Simpson has repeatedly demonstrated her willingness to "find a way" by contorting and misrepresenting the the town's codes to suit the wishes of the pro-development commission and town attorneys. If Ms. Simpson had been doing a rock solid job of interpreting the town codes and charter, why has her work been challenged by so many residents and so many law suites?

I have always questioned Ms. Simpson's role in the cell tower struggle. I sincerely believe that she has been openly biased in favor of the cell tower builders. Rather than lead the commission to a place of informed decision making, Ms. Simpson has instead repeatedly told the commission that in her professional judgement that cell towers are the best solution. To the best of my knowledge, and having had conversations with Ms. Simpson, I am not aware that she possesses any expertise in the area of wireless communications. However, that has not stopped Ms. Simpson from leading an unsuspecting commission to baseless conclusions.

Marty Black would be an ideal solution for the present town dilemma. We do need expert advice concerning the future of our community and I believe Mr. Black would be of invaluable assistance.

Your Cell Phone and Fixed-Mobile Convergence

Much of the success of recent Apple products has been their elegant user interface making IPods/Ipads/IPhones easy to use. Google Android has emulated the Apple approach with great success. Simplicity of use has proven to be a viable business model. Smart phones and other smart data devices are taking over the world, or so it seems. My daughter and sub-teen grandchildren recently informed me that, even though I am "the greatest grandfather in the world", they only do texting, and that voice calls and email are yesterday's news. As I said technology is taking over our lives.

The cell phone carriers have not been oblivious to user wishes and demands. As a result, data usage on cell phones, notebook computers and pad devices has been increasing exponentially. In an effort to further simplify using a cell phone,, the carriers are migrating towards what is called Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC). FMC is the bringing together of previously disconnected communication technologies (cellular and wifi) to form a seamless umbrella of access for all modern data devices including smart cell phones such as IPhones, pad devices such as IPads and IPods and notebook computers.

The ultimate goal of FMC is to optimize transmission of all data, voice and video communications to and among end users, no matter what their locations or devices. In the more immediate future, FMC means that a single device can connect through and be switched between wired (wifi) and wireless networks.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Rogers and other carriers currently offer FMC to their business clients. Modern computer driven communication technologies enable companies to meld together various networks into a transparent web.

Any discussion about cell towers needs to be weighed against the overwhelming onslaught of newer technologies that offer vastly improver service along with simplicity of use compared to cell tower technology. FMC will offer phone users the option of a single phone number that will connect to land line phones, cell phones and other data devices such as IPads. FMC offers the opportunity to greatly reduce cell phone and/or land line costs while improving reception.

The backbone of Fixed-Mobile Convergence is the marriage of cellular networks with wifi networks. Most people on Longboat Key already have wifi in their homes. The town needs to extend wifi coverage throughout the community by installing a community wifi network on the island. Currently there are more than 126,000 square miles of municipal wifi globally, with the majority being in North America and Asia. I work with local tourist facilities where people ask for wifi access far more than they want cell service. Visitors want to be connected more than they need voice communications. We already have fairly good outdoor cell coverage. There are small pockets of poor service, along with individual residences with building construction issues. All these individuals can easily solve their indoor reception problems by switching carriers and/or using a wifi based FMC app on their cell phones.

Fixed-mobile convergence works will all cell carriers, even for foreign visitors who will no longer need expensive SIM cards or expensive global cell phones. In addition, all their other data devices will also function throughout our community.

Fixed-Mobile Convergence will deliver superior indoor cell phone access compared to any sort of cell tower that may or may not be constructed with one or two carriers. Cell towers will never improve access for all our data devices that we love and seem to need.

Fixed-Mobile Convergence is already in use by all the major cell carriers. We may never get a cell tower depending the economy and our community's continuing shift towards seasonal property owners. On the other hand FMC will be island-wide, indoors and outdoors for all data devices including smart cell phones. We need to embrace today's technological advances and leave the past behind us.

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

Presently 1 in 6 Americans live below the poverty line. At the hight of the Great Depression 1 in 4 were unemployed. No one knows if the world has seen the bottom of the current recession. There are billions of helpless people hoping for the best and expecting the worst. When one lives in paradise one tends to forget about the fear and the suffering that has overtaken so many in America. This article is about three families I have known for decades and what confronts them for perhaps the rest of their lives.

All the characters in my tale are in their late sixties or early seventies. All are, how shall we say, well bred and well educated. All are from upper-middle class backgrounds with doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs as parents. All were doing splendidly until 2008. All are currently living on social security, having spent their retirement money to ride out an economic maelstrom that lasted a little too long and consumed their homes in the process. Their situations have oddly brought them to the stark realization that they are destitute at about the same time. I have been the sad witness to it all. They are some of my closest friends. As my Argentinean friend described the economic collapse in his country - the rubber band stretched and stretched until one morning it snapped. Just like that  millions or people were in deep trouble with nowhere to turn. So it is with my friends. For the most part they have exhausted every source of assistance. They are confronted by years of old age and poverty. For them there will be no years of rest. I am so sad for my friends. It is a horrible reality I had never considered, since I was distant from the poor, living among the well-to-do in paradise.

The plight of my friends has smacked me in the face with the reality that we live in uncertain times, and but for fate I could be in a similar situation. I still could lose everything if there is an economic collapse in this country. I somehow side-stepped the stock market declines of 2000 and 2008. I was too risk-adverse to speculate in the housing bubble. I am lucky I guess.

I have Ivy League friends who are stockpiling sealed food stores and purchasing weapons and lots of ammunition. It seems all my "wise" friends have already purchased gold and silver in what they feel are sufficient quantities to ride out the worst, whatever that is.

My friends are now looking for jobs, any jobs, anything to earn money to pay the rent and buy food. My friends tell me about the dehumanizing experience of applying for jobs on-line, which is how it's done these days. It is well known that as a worker gets older it becomes more difficult to compete with younger workers. My friends are well aware that someone in their late sixties or early seventies applying for even entry level jobs faces a challenge. Why would an employer, in today's labor market, hire an old person?

The friends I am writing about have all hit the wall of realization at about the same time. They all realize that they are economically stranded but they are all still trying to deny it. Their new futures are so far away from their expectations that they are having a difficult time grasping the true meaning of desperation.

If my friends were the only ones facing a bleak old age there would be a good chance that they would be able to find a way back to some semblance of economic stability. But there are over 40 million Americans currently living below the poverty line. My friends have become part of a frightening statistic that may or may not become even worse. No one knows at this point in what is still being called a recession by both Democrat and Republican politicians and the media. Most likely those 40 plus million Americans, unable to make ends meet, have a different name for what they are experiencing.

Good luck to us all, especially my dear friends in their time if disillusionment with the American way.

Perhaps being an ideological anything is counterproductive if our divisions force our government to remain inactive. Let's all find a way to make America once again financially secure so my friends can go to bed tonight without fears of what tomorrow may bring.

You Should Know

You should know that your developer-friendly town government is rapidly trying to install tall cell towers up and down Longboat Key. The planning and zoning board is discussing opening up all town property for tall cell towers in direct repudiation of cell tower codes put into place less than three years ago after strong opposition to cell towers by the community. The town is doing this without any needs assessment or economic impact studies. Below are the results of a few studies about the impact of cell towers on real estate values.

The Bond and Hue - Proximate Impact Study:

The Bond and Hue study conducted in 2004 involved the alanysis of 9,514 residential home sales in 10 suburbs. The study reflected that close proximity to a Cell Tower reduced price by 15% on average.

The Bond and Wang - Transaction Based Market Study:

The Bond and Wang study involved the analysis of 4,283 residential home sales in 4 suburbs between 1984 and 2002. The study reflected that close proximity to a Cell Tower reduced price between 20.7%
and 21%.

The Bond and Beamish - Opinion Survey Study:

The Bond and Beamish study involved surveying whether people who lived within 100' of a tower would have to reduce the sales price of their home. 38% said they would reduce the price by more than 20%, 38% said they would reduce the price by only 1%-9%, and 24% said they would reduce their sale price by 10%-19%.

"As a licensed real estate broker with over 30 years of experience, it is
my professional opinion that the installation of a Cellular Tower can significantly reduce the value of neighboring residential properties"

Lawrence Oxman, Licensed Real Estate Broker

The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a denial of a Cell Tower application based upon testimony of residents and a real estate broker, that the Tower would reduce the values of property which were in close proximity to the Tower.

From Longboat Key real estate brokers:

Bruce Myer, of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, said that he doesn’t believe a tower is needed. “Based on the level of service that is achieved, I don’t see that it would be a help to real-estate values,” he said.

Hannerle Moore, a veteran Realtor with Michael Saunders and Co., also questioned whether a cell tower was needed. She said that she uses Verizon, which works with few interruptions on the north end, and said that she recently had a buyer for a $3.2 million home who walked away from the sale out of concerns about the proposed tower. “People perceive it as ugly, but, more importantly, as a health hazard,” she said. “Today’s buyers are into living longer and healthier, they take the time to go to Whole Foods and exercise, and they’re not going to move into a community with a cell tower.”

I have discussed cell towers on Longboat Key with several other island brokers. They all agree that cell towers in an exclusive community negatively impact real estate values and sales.

Oddly Longboat Key real estate agent Barbara Ackerman of Caldwell Banker responded to a request by Jim Eatrides, who is trying to get a 150 foot cell tower at the Island Chapel, to evaluate the impact of a "stealth" tower on Longboat Key. It should be noted that Ms. Ackerman recently sold Mr. Eatrides home on Longboat Key. Ms. Ackerman states “As a real estate professional with extensive knowledge of and experience in the Longboat Key real estate market, my opinion is that the proposed tower would not have a negative impact on nearby residential properties.”  Perhaps Ms. Ackerman did not know that the proposed tower is not a "stealth" tower but a rather imposing edifice 42 inches in diameter at the top (see picture below). It should also be noted that in Mr. Eatrides cell tower application, now before the town, that Ms. Ackerman's assessment stands alone with one other impact study from a blue collar neighborhood. 

Ask yourself if you had options would you purchase property close to a cell tower? If no, is it because you believe that other people will not want to purchase a home near a tall cell tower?

What the planning and zoning bord and the commission are about to do may seriously impact real estate values on Longboat Key in the tens of millions of dollars in lost property values as a direct result of unsightly cell towers in an upscale community.

Is it worth it to apease a few residents and a local cell tower developer? That is for you to decide. Do we need island-wide wifi for our notebooks, smart phones and IPads more than we need improved indoor cell phone reception for a few seasonal residents on the north end? Our mostly appointed commissioners are most likely on the verge of causing real damage to our real estate values. Why?

I urge every resident to become part of the discussion. I feel things are bad enough without our commissioners causing further declines in property values.

Proposed 150 foot cell tower as Island Chapel.