Fool Me Once

 

Today a 3-judge appeals tribunal handed the Longboat Key commission a stunning defeat. The town lawyer's land use litigation losing streak remains intact. The town might finally look elsewhere for legal advice. The primary duty of a municipal attorney is to keep that municipality out of expensive court proceedings; especially if the municipality will lose. 

 

The latest appeals court loss may expose the town to law suits and costly litigation from property owners who have been denied unfettered access to the real estate markets due the the town's ill-advised legal gambits against its own residents.

 

Judge Roberts, and now the Florida appeals court, have ruled that the LBK commissioners broke the law when they zealously advanced the interests of the Key Club. Bob White and the members of IPOC are to be congratulated for their unflinching conviction that the town commission had violated the property owner's legal rights.

 

Those on the commission and the town's previous planning director, who opposed the Key Club expansion as being inappropriate and needlessly dense, have been vindicated. It has been stated before, I was always in favor of improvements at the Key Club, but not at the expense of surrounding property owners.

 

While on the commission, I requested that the commissioners retain an outside, disinterested land use attorney to advise the commission concerning the Key Club proposal. I had lost faith in the two lawyers retained by the town. At that time I expressed my doubts that the town was on firm legal footing if they approved the KC expansion. Unfortunately, there was no support for this proposal, most especially from the town lawyer. If the commission had insisted that the Key Club proposal be adjusted to the point where the surrounding community was comfortable, the Key Club expansion would already be in its 3rd year and close to being completed. Instead we have had a paralysed real estate market on the south end. Who in their right mind would not be cautious about investing while there was a lawsuit pending on the property.

 

Unfortunately for our residents, this commission will try to get around this resounding slam by the Florida courts by shamelessly gutting our comprehensive plan and those building codes specifically needing change to specifically address the Key Club expansion. If the commissioners once again look to the town lawyer's advice, they should also look at his win/loss record in land use litigation he has managed on behalf of our community.

 

If the new Key Club owners really want to add value for themselves and for our community, they should work with the affected property owners and the commission to create a win-win design that is more appropriate for Longboat Key, keeps the process out of the courts, and hastens the completion of the entire process.

 

The town could now retain an expert land use attorney to advise the town how to avoid another court defeat that could be even more destructive to our property owners than the most recent rout. There is that old saying - Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

 

This commission, and sadly Longboat Key, will now be immortalized in the law journals and legal precedents citations as a Goat Rodeo. We can do better than that. We need some changes and we need them before more damage is done.

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?

De-constructing Longboat Key

I admit I am apprehensive about the flurry of activity taking place in our town government during our summer doldrums. There are more town commission appointed committees than I can keep tabs on. Each one seems to be tasked with rewriting major parts of our comprehensive plan, a plan that has created one of the most successful communities in America.

To date our energetic commission has not told us why we need so many committees making so many major revisions to the town's land use policies. Since the commission has chosen to use committees to carry out the commission's grand design, very little that is being done is recorded or tracked by the two town newspapers. It appears that the commission is operating in a stealth mode via committees and when no one is around.

Somewhere down the road, or at the end of the summer, we will see a glimmer of the commission's grand design for our island, and one suspects that the developers will be happy.

Since there is little to no unused land on Longboat, one wonders how and where the developers plan to create something out of whole cloth, so to speak. If the commissioners do not have a fairly robust development effort in mind, one wonders why the long hours, during what is usually a quiet period in town government, and why all the committees?  Do they see opportunities to expand tourism and increase retail business on our island?  And if so, where do they see these opportunities?  It has been over 5 years since the 250 room referendum was approved by the voters, and not a single room has been taken.  Publix may actually reduce retail at Bay Isles, including all the shops behind Avenue of the Flowers that they now own. One doubts the owners of all the newly acquired land on the north end of the island at Whitney Beach Plaza will be using the land as any sort of retail center. They have had enough time to understand what happens on Longboat during the nine months of off-season to want to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

For now it appears that both tourism and retail are diminishing on Longboat, in spite of the assurances by some commissioners that they will save Longboat by promoting new tourist facilities that will in turn support a burgeoning retail renaissance on Longboat. I do not see that happening even after the commission has done serious damage to what have been an effective comprehensive plan and building codes. Have many residents have said they even want more tourists and more development?  Have residents been asked whether they want it?

If all this extra effort, and all the hours of committee meetings, and all the extra costs of  two town attorneys, is on behalf of the Key Club, I will be stunned at how the tail now wags the dog on Longboat. Hopefully all this effort is not for one developer, who says he plans to build a hotel at one of the least desirable locations one can imagine. There are already too many lovely, sparsely occupied, hotels located right on some of the most beautiful beaches around. The Key Club hotel has no Gulf beach, only a view of an ordinary and noisy bridge and the boat docks of a few nice homes on Lighthouse Point. I doubt a hotel will be built at that location. Mr. Lesser understands location, location, location.

Why then all the sound and furry and rush to recast our comprehensive plan as a testament to lax control of land use and overly permissive building codes? Do the commissioners really believe they are fashioning a panacea for our future?  The coming economic times may have a far greater impact on our futures than any machinations of a small group of like-minded individuals, well-intentioned though they might be, who have gained the power to alter what was working, without really understanding what the ramifications might be.

I do not believe our beautiful community should welcome developers. They make their money and then leave. If we are doing well, as I believe we are, there is really nothing that needs doing. Especially increases in density solely for the sake of promoting retail commerce which is what some of our commissioners are telling us.

Waiting for Godot and the Courts

At the recent DCA hearing the town's attorney spent all of fifteen minutes summarizing the town's legal defense of the commission's stampede to give the Loeb group anything they wanted for the Key Club expansion. That is about as long as the commission spent looking at what they were doing to the town's comprehensive plan and land use codes.

Now we wait for the various courts to decide if haste makes waste.

Street legal on Longboat Key

I have mixed feelings about leaving the public sector and returning to a normal life where I no longer feel the responsibility of taking care to do no harm to the community I have loved for over twenty-six years.

I learned a great deal. I have gained a better understanding of the immense effort required to be a town commissioner.


I am sure I made the correct decision for me. From the dozens of phone calls I have received I am not sure that they agree.


I found that being a commissioner came with many constraints. I came to understand that unlike the business sector that I was unable to advance my goals without having to first educate and then convince many people that something might be beneficial for the community.


I discovered that large scale objectives were almost beyond doing. And that was a major consideration as I gradually came to the conclusion that I simply was not happy being a commissioner.


The other part or the calculus in my decision to resign from the commission was the toxic political atmosphere that has become a controlling factor in town government.


Now that I not constrained by being in government, I am free to say that I believe the current polarized political status on the island does not benefit our community.