Accountability and the Common Good

In 1975, while touring Asia with a popular band at the time, we experienced a two hour water outage in  the early afternoon at our hotel in the Ginza district of Tokyo. On the evening TV news he learned that the water commissioner for the Ginza district had committed harikari late that afternoon, for his failure to the Japanese people. I was horrified at the level of accountability expected by their culture at that time.

Today I read that a vice-president of Apple is being fired because he refused to sign a corporate letter to the American people, apologizing for the recent Apple Maps App failures. Once again I was taken back by the level of accountability within the Apple company. Perhaps being held responsible is a contributing factor  to the company's great success and superb quality in their products.

I look at the past three years of governance on Longboat Key. I see no one being held responsible for a dismal record of failed policies that have hobbled our real estate market, compared to likened communities such as Bird and Lido Keys. The property owners within the Islandside community have been denied full access to the real estate market, as a result of unlawful actions taken by the current town commission surrounding the now dead Key Club expansion application, that led to three legal actions, the last of which will be decided in late November. The first two judgments strongly rebuked the town government for violating their own laws and ordinances.

I do not see any of those responsible for the failed policies of the past three years willing to accept any responsibility for their actions.  Save for the unceremonious dismissal of the manager of the Key Club, no one else is taking responsibility for actions that have damaged the Longboat Key economy.

Then I wonder what would come to pass if the entire commission did commit political harikari. Are there any other residents willing to take their places?  The voting record of the current commission has been relatively monolithic when it comes to land use ordinances and changes to the town's Comprehensive Plan. This commission has devoted its energies almost exclusively to pro-development and pro-commercial tourism  legislation.

I know there is a great deal of concern and dissatisfaction with the present commission. People come up to me and express their apprehensions and their desire for a change in leadership. I always ask them if they are willing to serve as a town commissioner, or even willing to make the effort to write letters to the present commissioners. We all know their answers by the dearth of candidates and emails appearing in the News. 

I do not see how the current commission can justify their course of action over the past three years with anything but apologies to the residents for having bogged our community down in endless legal battles that so far have gone against the town government. Unfortunately these protracted litigation's have had a serious negative impact on the commerce of the island. 

It is sadly ironic that a pro-business commission has been singularly unsuccessful in attracting any new businesses to Longboat Key. To the contrary, there has been a steady decline in the number of retail businesses on the island along with a steady decline in property values during the past three years. Personally I do not attribute this decline to anything the commissioners have done, because they have done nothing to actually promote commerce. We hear a lot of talk. We do not see things getting better. Where this commission has focused their efforts on gutting our protective land use codes, they should have been working with the real estate community to create coordinated effective national and international marketing efforts to advertise our wonderful town's lifestyle. 

The retail stores on  Longboat Key never played apart in our meteoric development as an exclusive seasonal retirement destination. Likewise the commercial segment of the island's economy will never become a major influence on property values. The types of businesses being promoted by this commission are unneeded by the residential community. The primary concerns of today's Longboat seasonal resident center around restaurants and domestic services including furniture, house painters, appliance repair, Publix and CVS.

If Longboat Key somehow  finds itself on an irreversible course towards commercial tourism becoming the dominant business on the island, there will also be a painful period of transition, taking perhaps a decade or more, where our well-to-do residents will flee the congestion and the constantly changing unfamiliar faces of tourists, for communities just like what exists on Longboat Key right now. If our property owners wanted  to live in Bradenton Beach they certainly have the financial wear-with-all to do so.

If the commercial tourism proposals that have been entertained, and encouraged, by the current commission, come to fruition, the number of tourists on Longboat Key will almost double in a short period of time from current levels - Key Club expansion, Colony rebuild, Hilton expansion, north end motel. This is a huge expansion of tourism in an otherwise bucolic residential community. 

It is the obligation of people holding offices of public trust to act for the common good of their community. This has not been the case for the past three years. Property owner's interests have been ignored while a mostly appointed commission has been devoted to passing ordinances, overlays and codes that are exclusively for the benefit of commercial developers.

If the community at-large does not express their views, then we will continue to have a mostly appointed town government, with a narrow agenda that does little to nothing to promote real estate values over commercial development.

I advocate that the town redirect its energies to clearing the glut of for-sale properties on Longboat Key through a concerted national and international marketing program to attract home buyers. I would much rather see the town pay for effective marketing than architects for yet another plan for a costly, and most likely unneeded, expansion at Bayfront Park. 

This commission has been playing a zero-sum-game with the island's economy.

When a tourist developer wins some residents lose.

Year-to-year Property Values - Aug. 2011-2012

Longboat Key$472,4002.8%

Whitfield$151,40017.7%

Cortez$140,6003.9%

Bradenton Beach$230,8000.4%

Sarasota$130,60011.6%

North Sarasota$74,7008.6%

Note how poorly Bradenton Beach has performed. 

Perhaps tourism is not such a great asset.

We need to do a better job marketing our beautiful community.

now, here, and nowhere...E.E. Cummings

The notion of “what is happening” and “what ELSE could be happening” brought to mind the recent history of Longboat Key and what might have been our history. Not that this sort of musing has any bearing on where we are right now as a community. Perhaps just thinking constructively about how we got here may improve our vision going forward. 

I am not sure there is really anything that needs changing by a small group of residents who have managed to concentrate power in a town government, that for the most part, is appointed rather than elected by the people. I feel this is the most unhealthy situation for any community. Behind the void of citizen participation in the community lies a resident base that inhabits seasonal houses as opposed to living in them as homes. Longboat Key is a town without any intrinsic energy. This is freezing our community between a vanishing past and an incalculable future. 

I predict that no one will challenge the current group of mostly appointed town officials this election cycle. This speaks volumes for the sort of community that has evolved on Longboat Key over the past five decades. The question in  my mind is, what does what we have become, say about our future as a town? If no one is interested in that happens, then someone will fill the vacuum and will ultimately determine future directions and town policies. Since almost no one is willing to participate in community affairs, the way is opened up for a sort of unintentional oligarchy. In essence that is what exists presently on Longboat Key. 

The flap over the Colony is just one example where our current oligarchy has created a new land use zone, not enumerated in our Comprehensive Plan, that constitutes a government supported private entity, immune form existing codes and ordinances. The rational of the commission is that tourism is good for the island at any cost. How do they know this? If they are correct, why have so many pieces of tourist zoned land been converted to luxury condominium use? The answer is they don't know, and they are not giving the taxpayers a voice. See what happens when we as a community do not participate in our own political process?

Unfortunately the aspirations of a few individuals can have little impact on the future course of the island, unless they are part of the small group of people in power. Once a political system is entrenched in a community, it is usually fairly difficult to control politically. Especially in a community of snow-birds and foreign property owners who are not allowed to participate in local government.

I believe it is impossible to predict how the emerging global economy will affect Longboat Key. If there is a global economic contraction, then the market for 2nd homes will mostly likely not fully recover, and Longboat Key will drift towards being a relic of a lifestyle that has, in general, been abandoned by home buyers.  If that in fact does occur, then our community needs to find a way of transforming itself into a place where people live as their primary residence. 

The idea that is being promoted by the town commission that the Key Club will somehow transform the fortunes of the entire island is ludicrous. All that will happen is a few additional hotel rooms will dilute an already struggling tourism market, and yet more condominiums will be for sale that do not even offer beach access. Since the Key Club is a private non-equity enterprise, that most Longboat residents find not worth the yearly costs, life for all but those living at Islandside will not notice anything different. Perhaps longer waits to get off the island during the height of season. 

The commission might better expend their energy working with the airport to reduce aircraft noise pollution that currently adversely affects the northern half of the island. If we are to attract quality home buyers we need to improve our image as a community. The commercial signage along GMD is spotty and often unattractive and even shoddy. The town's signs at each end of the island are "plastic looking" and uninviting. We even have trailers being used as billboards on GMD. This is stuff one expects to see on Tamiami  Trail and downtown Bradenton. We can have all the gated hotels and condominiums we want and still present an unattractive facade to anyone driving onto our island. 

Previously I have proposed using the commercial property at the north end of the island to build a high quality private school. Where I grew up, and it is still the case, people move to and pay top dollar for the Westchester County schools. If we offer a superior educational facility, I believe high quality families will be attracted to Longboat Key both for its beauty and for the opportunities it offers their children. 

If we are unable to become more attractive as a place where people live, rather than inhabit seasonal dwellings, then it is hard to see how more retail business will survive. A small increase in tourism will likewise have little beneficial impact on either the island's quality of life or the few remaining retail businesses. If people are not concerned about the real estate market on the island, then we are doing fine just the way we are, as a place where people spend a few months in the winter.

Most everyone agrees that Longboat Key is a special place. We are not alone in confronting changing times and the new economics, whatever that is. It is possible to make things a lot worse by making bad decisions. The lack of dialog on our current homogeneous political body has accomplished nothing in the past three years but divisiveness and making several attorneys richer. I am going to out on a limb and say I believe the courts will nullify the most recent changes the town commission created to legalize the Key Club expansion. If Ordinances 2012-6 and 2012-8 are struck down by the courts, the people of Longboat Key need to find new leaders who do not further impede any hope of economic recovery on our island.

As the trend on Longboat Key towards further absentee property ownership progresses, more owners merely inhabit their dwellings during the cold month up north, the less likely we will see any change in appointed government. There are four commission seats up for election this year. So far, with about a month left to file, no new candidates have applied. Under Florida law, unopposed candidates to not appear on the ballot. This year voters may well be presented with a blank piece of paper when they go to vote. This will be a carte blanche for the current, mostly appointed, town commission. Forgive my sad double entendre.