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.

We the Taxpayers

What would happen if all the homeowners on Longboat Key formed a political pressure group? Let's say we call it Longboat Key Home Owners or LKHO, which might be pronounced much like the Spanish word for crazy "loco", and perhaps it is an unusual notion. However, how would such an organization alter the political landscape on Longboat Key?

LKHO would be the largest special interest group on the island by far. PIC has only a few members now, many of whom are involved with real estate, which is often reflected in PIC support of development on the island that would have been anathema to PIC members a decade ago.

LKHO would represent all property owners and give a voice to non-resident taxpayers that has never been available to them before.

LKHO could clearly define the interests of island property owners with a strong single voice. LKHO members could be effectively polled to ascertain views on tourist development, beach management, vision plan content, revisions to the Comprehensive Plan, development of the town's public lands such as Island Park and Quick Point and a host of other community functions.

LKHO could have an elected representative attending commission meetings and conveying LKHO's positions of various vital commission decisions. This representative would carry a big stick being the representative of a large majority of the community's taxpayers.

Currently the town is run by a town manager and a commission that is mainly composed of appointed or unopposed residents. Perhaps in a more vital political environment the commission might be more responsive to home owners. What I see presently is a great deal of commission discussion about how to fiddle with our long-standing land use codes to provide a way for the developers to expand their operations on Longboat without ending up on the losing side of court decisions. My idea of forming a homeowners political pressure group would force the current developer oriented commission to include all property owners in their discussions.

LKHO, if it came into being, would be a strong voice for those non-resident taxpayers who are presently disenfranchised. I can not see any other means of exerting force on the town government to become strong advocates of non-resident taxpayers. I see absolutely no discussion from the commissioners about the plight of homeowners and non-resident taxpayers. Instead of tightening the town's fiscal belt, the commissioners raised taxes at a time of almost universal economic distress and a devastating decline in home values.

Now the town wants to embark on a $50+ million beach renourishment program that many feel is unneeded and unwarranted. The $50+ will go directly to the bottom line on your taxes. Right behind that is the pension plan conundrum that has been kicked down the road for years by a commission that has never been able to get a clear understanding of what is at stake. What is at stake is a $30+ million ad velorum bond that will increase real estate taxes even more. When a town government encumbers its constituents with excessive taxes, the cost of living in that community becomes more expensive and less attractive to perspective home buyers.

LKHO may seem a bit crazy to some. To others it will be crazy like a fox. I believe it is time for our property owners to unit and become an effective part of the political process. If  you are tired of not having a voice in Longboat government, property tax increases and seemingly endless expensive bond referendums, you might think about becoming a little bit LKHO yourself.

If you feel that having a homeowner oriented political pressure group similar to LKHO is a good idea, add your comments to this article, talk to your neighbors. If enough homeowners express an interest in forming an organization them perhaps it will happen. I believe such a group would be good for our community.

Dancing in the Dark

I have looked at Longboat Key's town manager form of government and the strong mayor form of government that exists on Anna Maria Island. Certainly neither form of government is perfect and each has its challenges. However, I do see some important differences and perhaps some advantages to the strong mayor form of government.

One of the three planks in my campaign for commissioner centered on the inability of our commissioners to always make truly informed decisions. When it comes to the large and complex, and often the most expensive issues, the commission too often operates as a rubber stamp for the programs and policies of the town manager. I am not slighting our town manager as I have always found him to be a consummate professional with considerable political aplomb. I see the problem as a flaw in an unpaid commission where no one runs for office, and the inability of the commission to learn about and grasp the subtleties often inherent in large programs such as beach management or reclaimed waster. In the case of reclaimed water, the taxpayers spent over $3 million for little more than two bottles of water. The reclaimed water project was complex and relied on the advice of a single contractor with much to be gained from the project. Perhaps if the town had sought the advice of other experts in the field, the taxpayers would not have wasted $3+ million.

The Longboat Key beach management issue once again demonstrates that the commissioners are called upon to make decisions about technical matters they clearly did not understand. The town manager brought in two "experts" to educate the commission about alternative technologies for maintaining beaches. At the end of the day the commissioners were forced to accept the town manager's position, that there are no alternatives to sand dredging, since the commissioners had nowhere near enough knowledge about the subject to form their own informed opinions. I feel this occurs too often. Yet what can be done about the situation when we are lucky not to have to appoint commissioners when a commission seat goes unwanted.

In the process of convincing the commission that there are no possible alternatives to dredging, the town managed managed to sidestep the question of why he wants to advance the scheduled beach project. Again I do not believe all the commissioners were even aware that advancing the beach project may be more costly in the long-run than remaining on schedule. It appears the town manager was able to substitute alternatives as the criteria for advancing the beach project, instead of discussing financial costs, needs or long-range fiscal planning.

The Anna Maria Island communities have strong mayor governments with no town manager. In those communities each member of the commission is personally responsible for some aspect of the town's operations, whether it be finance or water/sewer or beach maintenance or some other department. The Anna Maria form of government requires commissioners to have personal knowledge and experience as a required part of their job description. On Longboat the commissioners do not have to do or know anything. Yet we ask them to make decisions that often have large consequences and high price-tags.

Last week the commissioners decided to advance the next $54 million beach dredging one year. I do not believe that all the commissioners were cognizant of the financial ramifications of their decisions, yet they were asked to decide anyway. I also saw the commissioners agree that there are no alternatives to dredging after listening to the town manager's experts. Yet I felt that few of the commissioners had any real background or knowledge about alternative beach maintenance technologies, even the ones that have existed on Longboat for over a decade, as was pointed out by former mayor Brown in his column this week.

I believe there might have been a different discussion on Anna Maria where at least one of the commissioners would have been intimately involved with beach maintenance as a part of his day-to-day duties in a strong mayor form of government.

I am not the only columnist to have written about the apparent weaknesses in our town manager form of government, in these times of fiscal stress and evermore technically complex problems to be solved.

Since there is little chance that we will transform our government, I am proposing, once again, that the commission retain its own consultants and expert advisers, as needed, as a counterpoint to the town manager's agenda and "Golden Rolodex" of consultants.

We cannot afford to make mistakes.

Too Far Horizons

This past week three individuals either emailed or called me after reading my column in the LBK News advocating immediate rejuvenation of our user-friendly community quotient. In the column I said that the village was a wonderful place to live with lots of social activities and welcoming neighbors.

Dennis from Ohio is 71 and stays at the Far Horizons a month every winter. He is now ready to retire and is looking for a place to live. After reading my column Dennis called me to ask about houses for sale in the village at the north end of Longboat. During our conversation he expressed agreement with my statements that when he visits Longboat he feels isolated and lonely as there are no apparent ways to meet people outside the small group of fellow tourists staying at the resort. Dennis wishes there were things to do on Longboat that would enable him to enjoy the company of others. At the end of our conversation Dennis said that he is now actively looking for a home in the village expressly because of the sense of community that exists within the village.

Bill and Anne emailed from Rye New York. They also read my blog which turned up on a Google search about retirement communities in Florida. Bill and Anne subsequently called after I returned their email. Bill and Anne found exactly what they were looking for in my description of the rich social interaction that thrives in the village. They inquired about specific social activities in the community and about being dog-friendly. I told them about dog-thirty which occurs at 5:30 each afternoon where all the dogs bring their humans to play and socialize. Since then I have received two more phones calls asking about specific houses in the village that are for sale. I have referred them to a real estate agent familiar with the village.

All three of these people are ready to move here now and they want to live where there are things to do with others. This is far different than the model being advanced in the new vision plan where tourism is touted as the essential element in the financial wellbeing of Longboat Key. Where in fact the very model being advanced in the new vision plan would drive away the three people I have been talking about. They do not want to live in a motel. They want to find a welcoming community where people do things together. Tourist do not do things with residents.

Dennis and Bill and Anne are ready to buy homes today and become residents of Longboat Key today. The plan being put forth in the vision plan targets affluent tourists in their 40s and 50s as future home buyers. Unless they can find high paying jobs in the area, it will be decades before they get here. Dennis, Anne and Bill are here today with their checkbooks in hand.

I agree that we need to be looking ahead and cultivating future residents in all our marketing. But the vision plan is a Too Far Horizon for today and our community’s immediate and short-range plans and needs. When real estate agents market our island to perspective home buyers today, they should be able to brag about all the wonderful things to do on Longboat, and all the friendly neighbors they will get to know.

The vision plan looks too far into the future to be of any real use in today’s economics and community aspirations. Ask yourself how many years you think it will be before some brave developer builds a motel or hotel on Longboat Key. Ask yourself if you would relocate into a community with markedly more tourism and tourism related businesses. Ask yourself if you would like to see significantly more people on the beach, on the road and in our restaurants. Ask yourself if you would prefer to see people moving to Longboat in the very near future, or wait until the tourist based vision plan finds investors willing to build new motels or open new stores to the extent that Longboat is a tourist attraction, and then wait another twenty years for the tourist's kids to leave home.

I believe the proposed vision plan relies too heavily on horizons too far distant into an unpredictable financial future. I feel we need to find ways to attract residents to our community right now. To me the best way to do that is to show Dennis, Anne and Bill that Longboat is a friendly community with many community oriented activities that promote friendship and meeting new people. Dennis, Anne and Bill already think that Eldorado is to be found in the village at the north end of Longboat Key. We welcome them.