The Mythos of the Vision Plan



Mythos - a pattern of beliefs expressing the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group.

I find it interesting that my reading of the now "adopted" vision plan differs so greatly from the interpretation of the vision plan being expressed by a couple of the town commissioners.

1. Background - the opening paragraph of the new vision plan states that the entire vision plan is crafted against the background of a momentary economic cycle. I feel that a vision plan should be rooted in prevailing community values and not on ephemeral economic conditions. Whereas the commissioners justified their actions based on business and money, those are hardly the values one looks for when looking for a new home or new schools or community social amenities. The entire vision plan is all about business and commercial profits. Only here and there is any mention made of residents or neighborhoods or town amenities.

2. Vision - the second paragraph also emphasizes commerce as stated "The core values are to create and reinforce a welcoming community and government atmosphere with a common sense approach to managing the mix of resident, visitor, and commercial uses of Longboat Key". Note that two of the three core values are tourism and business.

3. HOW WE GET THERE - in this section of the vision plan we again see an emphasis on restoring tourism and commerce, creatively reinvigorating underutilized commercial areas and supporting restaurants. In 1983 I participated in a sort of vision plan effort in Lake Tahoe. In Tahoe it was all about the people, schools and quality of life. I do not believe any mention was made about supporting eateries. Perhaps the greatest deterrent to families buying homes on Longboat is a lack of good schools. Perhaps we might do better as a community working at facilitating quality education in the two counties rather than what is on the menu.

4. CHALLENGES - here again 6 of the 8 paragraphs deal specifically with the deteriorated condition of businesses and tourist facilities on the island. As far as I can tell if a motel or shop looks dilapidated there is no one to blame other than the owner. Do the current commissioners really expect the taxpayers, most of whom cannot even vote, to devote town resources to prop-up failing businesses that are no longer in demand by island residents? I sincerely hope not.

5. "What is the potential future of Longboat Key if nothing is done? Longboat Key will be a much less enjoyable and convenient place to live, if all basic necessities, from gasoline to groceries to medical needs to entertainment, will only be found off the Island. Visitors will still be amazed at the beauty of the island, but may also come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing to do here beyond the beaches and possibly the resort. They will opt to purchase homes where they can have both - beauty and the conveniences that Longboat Key should offer."

I find this passage in the vision plan to completely miss the obvious - there really is nothing to do on this island. Except for a ridiculously high priced golf course and a really good community tennis center, what else is there to do for the greater part of the population? Surely the commissioners do not believe that going to an over-priced gas station constitutes something to do. As for aspiring to a robust medical system in our seasonal tiny community, I suggest the commissioners attempt to find an analogous community model somewhere else, before including it in a vision plan. We do need things to do and they are nowhere to be found in the vision plan. We need an adequate community center to the focal point of community activities that appeal to all our residents. We need social amenities and activities scattered throughout the community. We need places for residents and visitors to meet one another and provide entertaining healthy activities.

6. Points of Community Consensus - "The strength of a vision plan is directly proportional to the level of community consensus in support of it. The following points enjoyed a high level of consensus and were valued input in the writing of the plan:"

I do not know of any evidence that here is "a high level of consensus" concerning the vision plan. I was one of the 300 panelists on the original vision plan. My table of 8 was comprised of 100% business people and only two of us were residents. Observers of the process have confided in me that they believed the great majority of the panel members were business people. There is nothing wrong with the business community being the major component of the vision plan so long as that is make that clear. The town hired a $100,000.00 expert named Marlowe to manage the original vision plan effort. Mr. Marlowe advised the town that the then vision plan would not be legitimate without a comprehensive community survey to validate the vision plan. Instead of that we are now given a hand-picked committee and told that that constitutes the new consensus for the new vision plan. I don't believe the vision plan has been validated by the community so it remains illegitimate.

I suggest that the commissioners might better serve the community by finding a way to sell houses since that is our most pressing problem at the moment. What good is a vision plan, drafted by a hand-picked committee, aspiring to resurrect a business and tourist presence that may never have made economic sense, when all we see is For Sale signs everywhere. That, and not what some restaurant is serving for supper, is making the greatest impact on the vitality of Longboat Key.

My New Vision Plan

Last Monday night the town commission "adopted" a vision plan based on pre-2008 focus group data, that is no longer relevant in light of today's economic and demographic realities. The current commissioners tweaked the old information by adding a new emphasis on commercial development in a exclusive residential second-home community. Why?

So I am proposing a New Vision Plan based on current socio-economic realities, which do not include inappropriate commercial enterprises that detract from our community's residential composition.

Ask yourself if you would prefer a liquid real estate market where, if you wished, you could sell your home in less than a month at a good price, or hoards of tourists, traffic and condo-tels like Reddington Beach or many of the other commercialized Pinellas County beach communities? If you prefer the former, then you may like my New Vision Plan. This plan includes many incentives to attract new residents, not contained in the old Vision Plan "adopted" by our current commissioners.

This afternoon Elisabeth and I went to the Manatee Art Center to see the National Watercolor Exhibition. WOW! I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates beautiful art. The art center was packed with people obviously enjoying the exhibition. Elisabeth struck up a conversation with one couple who informed us that the entire group was from The Villages and had arrived on two buses. We noticed that everyone was our age and obviously having a good time with one another.

As our discussion progressed we inquired about the housing market in The Villages. They said that currently over 250 new homes are sold each month at The Villages, and that figure did not include sales of existing homes. I have since confirmed the 250+ figure with the developers.

Then we discussed community activities at The Villages such as the outing to the National Watercolor Exhibition that we were all attending. The woman directed me to the Activities Web Site for The Villages. I have since looked at the website and I am astonished by the breadth and depth of activities available to the residents. Here is the link: http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/app/files/recnews.pdf

So the cornerstone of my New Vision Plan is creating more activities to draw our community together rather than promoting more tourist businesses up and down GMD. My New Vision Plan has the town using its resources to promote community values, community activities, development of a community center and spearheading a concerted effort to promote our community as the place to own a home, a place to meet new friends and a place where residents are actively engaged in life.

My New Vision Plan envisions a re-build-out of our residential neighborhoods, fueled by a strong demand by perspective baby boomer home-buyers, who want to be part of an exclusive seaside community, at the forefront of defining the new American way of life. Tourism oriented strip malls and condo-tels may be fine for Reddington Beach, but they have no place on our island.

My New Vision Plan has no place for traffic grid-lock or beaches crowded with day visitors. The New Vision Plan promotes an active yet relaxed community. One need only look at other successful communities, Florida communities, where real estate is in high demand, to realize that tourism is by no means essential to a vibrant growing community.

My Vision Plan has our community redefining itself and becoming part of today's New America, where it seems people want to be more active and more social. We need to have our town government turn its efforts towards community development, not commercial development. We are an island community that has failed to stay abreast of current community trends and we need to change direction now.

The Villages is not located on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet they are attracting 250+ new home-buyers a month while our community is attracting a dozen if we have a good month. I believe we as a community are not currently able to offer a lifestyle that attracts the new generation of home-buyers; and that we need to change as quickly as possible. We might want to look at why we would even want to devote resources to tourism that is probably a decade in the offing. Until we understand why people want to move to such places as The Villages and not here, we should not embrace the commission's vision plan that emphasizes tourism.

The ink is barely dry on our new vision plan, the one some of the commissioners defend as being community friendly and absolutely unbiased towards commercial development, and the commission already has the town spending taxpayer money on a lawyer to immediately change our trusted comp plan to do one thing - promote commercial expansion on Longboat Key. The commission's actions speak much louder than their rather hollow protestations, that their vision plan is little more than a manifesto for commercial development of our precious residential community. One would think that at this time, when so many Longboat taxpayers are financially stresses and unable to sell their homes, that the commission would not hurry so to help their business friends, while doing nothing to assist their fellow residents.

Pension Plan Procrastination

The commission has been kicking the pension plan problem down the road for a couple of years. While I was on the commission we had meeting after meeting about the pension plan. We heard from and listened to many pundits and experts. And we did nothing about the pension plan predicament.

From that time to now, while the commissioners have been continuing to take no action, 17 new hires have been added to the pension plan, and to the already considerable financial obligations of the taxpayers. The commission seems to be suffering from pension plan paralysis.

The pension plan issue boils down to two choices. The first involves joining the Florida Retirement System (FRS), which would require fully funding our current pension plan financial obligations as a condition of admittance.

The second option is to put all new hires in a "defined contribution" or 401K retirement plan, while maintaining all current employees on their "defined benefits" pension plan. The town could offer to buy the employees out of the current pension plan but that would require as much money as buying into the FRS. It seems that the Florida Retirement System is the best choice.

If the stock market was currently at say 18,000 we would not be having a pension plan discussion, because our plans would be fully funded. The upside of "defined benefits" pension plans is possible gains on investments that offset pension obligations. However, the vicissitudes of the market have not been kind to our three volunteer investment committees, and our town finds itself in the unenviable situation of being in the bottom 10% of funded municipal systems.

Defined contribution pension plans require a fixed rate contribution into employee 401K plans. Most of the town's management are on 401K plans. I suspect there may be a few of these employees who wish they had stayed with the defined benefits system instead of being underfunded for their retirement due to market losses. The town manager receives a 28% of annual salary contribution into his 401K. It should be noted that the amount of money required for yearly defined contributions plans is usually greater than payments into a defined benefits plan.

Our present, locally funded retirement plan does not allow employees to transfer benefits if they move to another location. The FRS does have transportability within the state. Even though the FRS suffered recent losses in their investments, the FRS is still ranked highly in state retirement funds.

I can see no future in continuing with our current volunteer pension fund committees with their duplication of fees to advisor's, lawyers and brokers. The FRS can afford to hire the best fund managers. We cannot, and that is reflected in our underfunded pension plans. We are in the bottom 10%.

While the commission mulls over its alternatives, the town continues to add to the obligations of its pension plans. Joining the Florida Retirement System is the most prudent choice. Moving to a defined contributions plan will not lessen our current debt. Nor will it attract the best workers as long as there are other communities that offer a more secure career track either by being part of the FRS or by offering their own guaranteed retirement plans.

Being part of a huge state pension system would stabilize our pension plan issues, add portability as an incentive to attract new workers and most importantly assure our employees a secure retirement. A 401K plan does none of these.

The Chimera of Tourism on Longboat Key



Chimera [ chi·mae·ra ] something totally unrealistic or impractical: a wildly unrealistic idea or hope or a completely impractical plan.

Many years have passed since the voters of Longboat approved a referendum to allow rebuilding 250 tourist units on the island. To date not a single unit has been spoken for. How many more years will it take before there is once again a thriving tourist presence on the island. Even the remaining tourist rooms  on the island go unfilled much of the time. If you are waiting for tourists to one day return to  Longboat to purchase your home, you may be here longer than you intended.

"Governor Rick Scott considers 'destination casinos' for Florida"


Would the Key Club expansion make an attractive and exclusive gaming casino? I do not believe the great majority of Longboat Key residents want to see a gambling casinos in our community. However, gambling will attract all sorts of tourists and day visitors. If Loeb Partners want to build a casino, and Tallahassee mandates "destination casinos", will Longboat residents have a say,  since this commission has greatly relaxed our land use codes? Be careful what you wish for.

This week the Longboat commissioners received an invitation from the Sarasota County Economic Development Council to attend the EDC's seminar on How to Market to the Baby Boomers. I have devoted a previous column to the idea that the fastest and most realistic approach to re-vitalizing our island community is to attract the Boomers, to our beautiful exclusive island community, as home buyers. Once again I will emphasize that Longboat Key does not appear in anyone's list of the 100 best places to live or retire in America. We really should be in the top five on every list if we want to attract new residents to our island. I believe this is simply insufficient marketing on our part and that with more effort we can gain high national and international visibility as a very desirable place to live, retire or vacation.

Unless the Sarasota area somehow magically creates a large vibrant business and industrial infrastructure, no one is going to be able to find the high paying career positions they would need to move to Longboat Key as working-age families.  Dr. Fishkind has assured us they are on their way if we build the new Key Club. Hopefully they will eventually come to our island. However, I doubt that will be any time soon if they need to work for a living.

We need to see what other communities, that are effectively attracting Baby Boomers, are doing to be successful community marketers. Much of Longboat real estate is priced at a level that has been seriously impacted by the recession. Many Baby Boomers have suffered economic reversals. But there are millions of Boomers who have the money and the mobility to make Longboat their new home. We simply need to attract them, and they will see what we see in our paradisaical community.

Perhaps we need yet another resident committee to do the research and the work to analyze what the Baby Boomers are looking for, and then formulate a path forward for our community for the next decade.

At the end of the day, if no one knows Longboat Key is here, if our marketing message gets lost in the marketing clamor for new residents, our community will most likely recover more slowly than more energetic communities. If one looks at the Anna Maria Island communities one sees a vibrancy that appears to be lacking on our island. There are more things for people to do on Anna Maria. 1000 residents of the Villages play Pickleball. There is a very active Pickleball league on Anna Maria. You may not want to participate in community social activities, but Boomer home-buyers might. http://www.usapa.org/ I personally know numbers of Longboat residents who regularly drive to Anna Maria to use their community center and play Pickleball.

Rather than let the county potion of our community center land lie fallow year after year, perhaps the town could request that Sarasota county use some of our tens of millions in taxes to build a few Boccceball and Pickleball courts. These facilities cost less than $5,000 each to implement and would greatly improve our community image. Longboat has a sizable infrastructure fund we receive from tourist taxes. Perhaps those funds might be used to provide much needed activities on our island. Let's not be "Deadboat Key".

Perhaps we need a whole lot more residential retirement community marketing and a whole lot less energy spent planning for commercial tourism, that may take decades to materialize.

The Existential of Home Rule

Longboat Key, due in part to its exclusivity, and therefore its high aggregate property value, pays approximately $70 million in taxes to Sarasota and Manatee counties each year while receiving little in the way of essential services that are supplied to the unincorporated parts of the counties. Longboat has a budget of $14 million to furnish those essential services we would otherwise receive from the counties if Longboat was not an incorporated town.

If Longboat could manage to get free of the taxing authorities of the two counties, we would save the $70 million in taxes we presently give to the two counties annually. County services such as records keeping, and a few other clerical functions presently provided by Sarasota and Manatee counties, could be easily contracted out in this modern age of computers and the information cloud.

While Longboat was being developed home rule enabled our community to shape and control land development. The result is a beautiful residential island with an appropriate tourism presence. However, now that the island is built-out there are few if any advantages to being an incorporated town, if we have to pay extra for essential government services that we can get at no additional cost if we were simply part of the county.

There are other considerations when examining the ability of a small town to supply the level and quality of services that can be provided by a much larger governmental entity such as a county. I believe that Longboat provides good quality services to its residents. However, it is not possible for a small taxing authority to afford the level of expertise that exists at the county level. I believe that by duplicating services we may not be taking full advantage of the higher paid professional expertise available at the county level. Why are we paying for services twice?

If the need for tight control of land use and development no longer exists, since our community is built-out, and we are spending $14 million a years to duplicate services already available from the counties, is there a need to have a discussion about this?

There are costs for going-it-alone that have financial consequences over and above duplication of services. At present Longboat taxpayers are paying for infrastructure projects that would otherwise be paid for out of the taxes we pay to the counties. Our utility rates reflect a $34 million project to increase water capacity at the south end as well as sewer-line maintenance. Sooner or later, unless the commission and the town manager find a means of cost containment, the beaches will require another $35 million beach project in the next few years. Add to that the pension fund problem, which may cost another $30 million, and our community is looking at $90 million in extra costs that would not exist if we were part of the county, and not an independent incorporated town. That comes out to an extra $10,000 per household for just being a town. Of course that $10,000 is distributed on an assessed value basis so some taxpayers are looking at perhaps twice that amount on their yearly tax bills over time.

The town manager has stated that if the counties took over fire and safety services it would cost taxpayers more. I believe he is correct. The question is not a single service costing more, but the over-all financial cost of being an incorporated town, and the advantages for being so. Are we really better off being a town?

Perhaps it is up to each taxpayer to reach his/her conclusion as the the intrinsic value of being a town. I am not advocating one way or the other. Each resident may already have formed an opinion, an evaluation, about the value of being an independent municipality. However, being a town has its costs.

Government and the 3 Minute Boogie

A writer named Hugh Prather wrote that he and his wife had learned to argue long enough to learn what it was they were really arguing about. I never forgot that thought and I wonder if it might be applied to the way our town government operates.

Last Thursday I attended a special commission meeting specifically about the beach. I thought the meeting would last as long as it took the commissioners to vote on the four previously proposed referendum items. Instead what ensued was a four and a half hour ordeal where no one appeared to be listening to one another.

Particularly baffling was a three-hour monologue by the mayor attempting to convince the other commissioners that Commissioner Younger's new beach proposal was the wrong answer to the question about what to do about our beaches. I personally believe that Commissioner Younger's idea is a doable compromise between doing too little and doing too much. As the town manager put it "an ingenious" concept. It now appears the town manager is having second thoughts and is unwilling to accept a 6-1 commission vote to adopt Commissioner Younger's proposal and no other proposals.

The town manager had his beach consultants tell the commissioners that Commissioner Younger's ideas were inadequate and that only a full beach re-nourishment a year ahead of schedule would do. I felt that neither the consultant's or the mayor's words had any affect on the resolve of at least four of the commissioners.  In the end, six commissioners rejected the town manager's consultants' admonitions.

Still the mayor pressed on, hour after hour, unrelentingly, in his quest to defeat Commissioner Younger and champion the town manager's much more costly plan.

While I was watching the mayor's labored, perhaps over-labored monologue, I recalled all the times that the mayor has limited input from residents and commissioners alike to 3 minutes, when that person is talking about something that is not part of the majority agenda. I wonder if limiting dialog to 3 minutes, for all those who do not agree with the majority, serves the residents of this community well. Do as I say, not as I do it seems.

Of course the political majority of commissioners have the power to curtail input from residents and commissioners. Also there seems to be a generally accepted philosophy amongst our unpaid commissioners that commission meetings should not be allowed to "drag on". The shorter the better. I wonder if this is good for a community where the town government is faced with some truly daunting issues. Is it a good idea to allow people who have political cache, or are friends with the current majority faction of the commission, to have greater access and more time to advance their ideas, while restricting the general public and minority commissioners to only a 3 minute boogie, so to speak?

The present beach dust-up between the town manager and the majority of the commissioners, or should I say the majority of the commissioners at last count, appears to lack any sort of clearly defined parameters. Cost estimates have ranged from 7 to 50 million dollars. Sand quantities have ranged from 35 thousand to 1.5 million yards. Bond interest has ranged from 2.5 to 5 percent. Bond terms have ranged from 2 to 20 years. I doubt the commission fully understands the details of what they approved. I certainly did not and I have attended the meetings.

For the most part this has been a one-sided conversation. Opposing points of view have been limited to 3 minutes. Strangely the majority has swung a couple of times between the town manager's proposal for a high-priced replenishment to commissioners Brenner's and Younger's less ambitious plans. Nowhere have I seen a measured and balanced dialog that included commissioners and residents with differing views.

What I believe I have seen in the process that has ended up with a 6-1 commission vote to place Commissioner Younger's proposal on the March ballot, and the town manager's continuing refusal to accept that vote, is a lack of hard facts and information. Yes, the town manager's beach consultants have had many hours to advance their views. Unfortunately, no one else has been invited to the table. I think that is what commissioner Brenner is alluding to when we asks for some sort of evaluation process. I concur.

Three minutes is not enough  time to explore alternative facts and views in a multi-million dollar conversation. I hope we find a better political path into our future. Political might may not always be right.

Beach Management - A Broader View



Three weeks ago the town manager brought in two beach experts to shoot holes in the belief, previously expressed by a couple of commissioners, that it might be prudent to maintain the existing beach management time schedule, and take a year to seriously look at ways we might lessen the yearly cost of beach maintenance.

At that meeting if one listened to Mr. Woodruff, from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, he stated that one way to lower costs is to approach beach management on a regional level instead of going it alone, which is what we are presently doing. I have been advocating the regional concept for over five years after reading the following article about such an approach on the east coast of Florida.

http://gene248.web.officelive.com/Coastal_Engineering.aspx

If there are enough municipalities participating in a regional program then things such as owning a medium sized cutter-head dredge, along with a small cutter-head dredge for maintaining canals, become economically feasible due to economies of scale, where there are enough beaches and canals to keep a dredge busy on a continuing basis. Hillsboro Inlet taxing district spends $1 million annually to maintain Pompano Beach, which has not requird dredging since 1985. Longboat Key will spend $50 million to maintain our beaches for the next 7 or 8 years, followed by who knows what. The Hillsboro Inlet taxing district has contained costs while Longboat's costs continue to double periodically.

Perhaps the only rational for conducting island-wide dredging projects, which frequently place sand on beaches that do not need sand, is the millions of dollars required to setup and dismantle a large dredge operation, along with the high cost of paying beach engineering companies to permit each separate renourishment project. If Siesta, Lido, Longboat and Anna Maria beach taxing districts owned a dredge the logistical costs could be greatly reduced and spot dredging would become economically viable. Spot dredging would most likely require far less sand and maintain a consistent beach profile as opposed the feast followed by famine cycle we presently support.

The various taxing districts would pay for their share of costs. The regional program would work under a ten year renewable permit from the state, just like other beach districts such as Hillsboro Inlet and others, creating an aggregate savings of tens of millions of dollars over a decade.

We can only hope that the town manager and the town's beach engineering company will at least encourage the town commission to look into the advice offered by Mr. Woodruff from FDEP. I suspect that a regional beach maintenance program would be more attractive to Federal and state funding. Other regional beach efforts in Florida have been successful.

Perhaps the commissioners might retain an independent engineering company to research possible ways our community might reduce spending on beach maintenance. Longboat Key's "go it alone" approach may have been financially supportable when dredging projects cost less than $20 million. Those times appear to have vanished and our community is facing doubling cost increases every 7 or 8 years.

The commission seems unable to add $28 million to the pension funds, so that the town can transfer our unsuccessful pension plans into the Florida Retirement System and be done with the problem, while still offering our employees a fair retirement. The pension plan funding is a one time fix. The beaches are an ongoing problem that has doubled in size each replenishment cycle. It should be noted that the town and the commissioners have spent magnitudes more time on the pension fund dilemma than the far more expensive, and still uncontrolled, beach maintenance cost problem.

If the commission approves advancing the beach maintenance schedule, then our community will be ignoring the possibilities of controlling our beach maintenance costs for another eight years. The town's beach engineering consultants have stated that our beaches do not presently need any sand except for the north end. What's the hurry?

I believe our community needs to explore all possible ways to reduce beach maintenance costs and not wait until the last minute, again, 8 years from now. Waiting until the last minute is no way to spend $50 million tax dollars on a temporary fix.