Moral Compass

Florida Circuit Court Judge Charles Roberts called the entire effort by the Longboat Key town commission, including ignoring existing building codes and the town's Comprehensive Plan, "a miscarriage of justice".  He is right.  The commission did this in order to grant Loeb Partners the right to expand onto protected PUD land (Planned Unit Development), and thus abridge the property rights of Islandside property owners for Loeb Partners' exclusive profit.

I predict that this judicial chastisement will have little affect on the zeal of the current commission to vindicate their actions, and continue to work to fulfil their pledge to make more millions for British retirement funds and Mr. Lesser, who does not even live here.

These commissioners do not seem to understand that while aiding and abetting Loeb Partners to compromise the covenant that exists between Islandside property owners and their shared PUD for Loeb's profit, they may, at the same time, be financially harming hundreds of taxpayers. It is a risky zero-sum game they play.

Have we as a community lost our moral compass? Are we willing to condone the commission harming someone to help someone else make a buck? Have we reached a place where we are willing to believe that someone needs to suffer for all the rest of us to get ahead financially?

What the commission did was illegal, and many property owners may have been financially harmed as a result. The Longboat Key real estate market has been stalled because many Islandside buyers do not want to invest in an unstable community. Discriminating private property investors will avoid a community that is on a fast-track to expand commercial tourism.

Sure the commission can further erode the protections afforded our residents under our current codes and charter to favor commercial developers. That does not make it morally right. If there are those that are more interested in winning; if there are those that do not care about what means are used to achieve some political or financial goal, and if we refuse to hold our commissioners accountable, then we are probably in for a long period of constant court battles, law suites and community divisiveness. We all lose.

The commission and the town lawyers would have been able to commit "a miscarriage of justice", possibly damaging the home values of hundreds of residents, had it not been for the members of IPOC.

Legally wrong is legally wrong and the commission was willfully so. To take actions that are known to be unjust, and hope no one notices, further diminishes peoples' trust in their government.

If you are tired of watching your commission take the side of developers over the interests of the taxpaying residents, then speak up. Otherwise do not complain when some developer is legally able build a nuclear reactor next door to you as a result of your commission removing all the protections that once insured that Longboat Key would remain a low density exclusive community.

There are those, including several commissioners and business people, who cast people who do not agree with the commission's all or nothing KC expansion stance as "against the Key Club". One could argue that every Longboat resident wants the Key Club to thrive, just not at taxpayers' and property-owners' expense. Why not work within our time-proven codes and avoid further litigious delays.

From the beginning I have advocated a process that produces results in the shortest time and with the least adverse impact. For as long as it takes our commission to come up with a "legal" and community friendly agreement with Loed Partners, that is how long that our real estate market is going to be held hostage. The ill-advised actions of the majority of the current commission have delayed this process by years. If the commission continues to operate outside the confines of the law, then we will see more years wasted and a continuation of a crippled real estate market.

The residents of Islandside have been demonized for buying already existing high-rise condominiums that were created by previous town commissions and Arvida decades ago. All the current residents did was to purchase part of  a PUD with all its supposed stability. Judge Roberts pointed out that the composition of  PUD cannot be altered by one party in just the same way that changes to condominium association property cannot be changed without legal consent of at least a majority of the stakeholders.

Does Longboat Key still have a moral compass? Does Might Make Right?