In Covid19 crisis citizens help, elected officials fail the homeless

All Talk, No Action in protection for the homeless

Carrie Seidman's Easter Sunday editorial points to the abject failure of Sarasota County and the City of Sarasota to mount any sort of coordinated,, effective response to the Coronavirus crisis now affecting the homeless as well as everyone else here.

Andrea Buscemi posted this regarding Streets of Paradise, a citizen group helping the homeless during the Covid19 pandemic:

Good morning everyone! Feeling disheartened by this? Well there is something you can do!

COVID 19 has shut down a lot of our homeless friends resources for food. Some volunteers had been trying to fill that void by providing meals 7 days a week.

We have been so lucky to have some help but we are still coming up short. Below is a list of items we desperately need to continue feeding our friends 7 days a week. Also please know we are following the strict guidelines set forth during this stay at home order to keep ourselves and our friends safe.

If you wish to donate you can go to www.streetsofparadise.org and mention “for food supplies” in the “notes” portion of the donation. Thank you all so much. You can also donate via Facebook by visiting the Streets of Paradise Inc. page.

Items needed:

~Granola bars
~Water
~bread
~meat and cheese for sandwiches
~peanut butter
~Jelly
~chips
~mustard
~mayonnaise
~sandwich bags

All items can be dropped off at your convenience to:
3044 Bay St., Sarasota FL 34237

I'd like encourage everyone to join the Streets of Paradise volunteers group to stay current on volunteer opportunities available to help the homeless community in Sarasota.

Cathy Bryant, Greg Cruz, Devon Oppenheimer, and Angel Mendoza Williams are some of the amazing volunteers who lead and organize this group. You can reach out to them with more questions.

Streets of Paradise has ongoing efforts to help feed the homeless.

New: LTE 4.15.20 regarding Board inaction.

A government for the people

This editorial appeared in Sarasota's Herald Tribune on July 7:

On the day before the 4th of July, traditionally one of the biggest beach days of the year here, the state Department of Health sent out an advisory warning that four of the state’s beaches posed health hazards for visitors due to high fecal levels. Three of those beaches, where the levels of bacteria ranked “poor,” were in Sarasota County.. . . 

      There seems to be a consistent disconnect between our high priority of promoting Sarasota Bay for recreation and our low priority of insuring its waters remain usable. Somehow, we can make a commitment to invest in a multi-million-dollar project like The Bay, but when it comes to an advanced water treatment plant or more septic conversions, the price tag is always too high.  Carrie Seidman - Swim at your own risk:

Carrie Seidman is describing the incongruence of marketing and reality in the city of Sarasota. The same discontinuity applies with more force to Sarasota County.

Take for example the handling of planning wizardry such as Comprehensive Plan Amendments and Special Exceptions.

According to our Section 124-43(b) of the Sarasota County Unified Development Code:

a. A special exception is a use that would not be appropriate generally or without restriction throughout a zoning division or district but which, if controlled as to number, area, location or relation to the neighborhood, would promote the public health, safety, welfare, morals, order, comfort, convenience, appearance, prosperity or the general welfare.

Gabbert

Developers regularly ask for Special Exceptions when the code stands in the way of their plans. James Gabbert was granted an exception to build and operate a waste transfer station on thin, failing roads next to public lands at the Celery Fields, in full view of the highway.*

The area's largest local developer and local campaign contributor wished to build 1,100 homes on a cul de sac where the land use rules allowed 258. Pat Neal asked to amend the county's 2050 Comp Plan, which requires plans defined as "Villages" to have contiguous commerce enhance walkability and reduce traffic. Neal thought his Grand Lake "Village" could do without the contiguity rule, and the Board was pleased to grant his amendment. "The County thinks this is a good product," said one County planner. Neighbors sued to no avail.

Such "investments" in our publicly planned space never seem to cover the costs they impose on taxpayers -- a fact documented nearly two decades ago by the Tischler report. (See also Jon Thaxton on balanced growth).

Last month, an East Sarasota County advocate proposed a public comprehensive plan amendment at the Planning Commission. Anticipating a proposal for large-scale housing project in East County, Old Miakka neighborhood leader Becky Ayech cited the rural heritage designation of the area, whose character, history and rural land uses date back decades. 

The Sarasota County Planning Commission

Ayech isn't asking the County to deny the developer's proposal. Instead she and a substantial number of other voters want County Planning to look at the long-range viability of a rural sector of East County. Such a Comp Plan Amendment from a resident was a first for the county, which is used to seeing and approving amendments from developers seeking to increase density and intensity. ***

Becky Ayech

According to land use experts, the development pattern of five and ten-acre parcels that Ayech’s proposal would protect is one of the few land use patterns that generate surplus tax revenue to the County’s General Fund. That is, these properties pay more in taxes than they consume in services. 

In June, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended denial of Ayech's initiative. They saw no reason to allow residents to consider changes to our comprehensive plan that might help avert massive urban sprawl or other degrading impacts on their property. In September, the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners (BCC) will decide whether to allow Ayech's amendment process to go forward. 

The Planning Commission is an advisory board, made up largely of Realtors, builders, marketers and insurers appointed by the BCC. There is no citizen advocate seat on the Commission. Recently Jon Thaxton, a former County Commissioner who probably knows more about development regulation than anyone else in Sarasota, was denied a seat on the Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission is also the sacred ladder leading from hoi polloi to the County Commission. Their every move is scrutinized by developers, attorneys, builders and business leaders. Anyone who speaks out of tune with the Official Growth Doctrine of the Builders and Contractors industry groups, Matt Walsh, the Argus Foundation. etc., can expect his/her upward path to power and glory go up in smoke.

The pattern of providing concierge service to high-powered developers such as Benderson, Neal, Carlos Beruff and others within this tight governing coterie is unmistakable -- click here for several examples.

Developers ignore public goods - open space, road safety, environmental health -- because their business models see no profit in them. Their petitions come with no plans or funding to improve road capacity – so traffic issues will multiply exponentially.

While our officials grant new building permits, amendments and special exceptions, the costs on the other side of the ledger -- the expense to taxpayers -- is huge.

These expenses of indifference and neglect include:

• diminution of quality of life; 
• higher costs of living; 
• reduced market values for existing housing; 
• reduced public services and staff; 
• higher costs for roads, fire, police, and sanitation; 
• unhealthy waters; 
• reduced attention to parks, emergency shelters and evacuation routes.

These privations amount to a "tax" upon all voters who put these officials in office. Residents who have no voice on the Boards that oversee the policy and needs of the people.

Mike Moran (l.) and Al Maio

The other day, the Board ignored a host of complex planning issues and approved a controversial cluster home development next to a venerable development on Boleyn, a rural canopy road.

While our public wastewater infrastructure has been crumbling, developers are going full speed ahead with vast new developments in East County: LT Ranch (Turner family), Waterside (Rex Jensen of Lakewood Ranch), Grand Lake (Pat Neal). Giant Hi Hat Ranch (Turner family) is now speeding toward approval, and if Ayech's effort fails, Rod Krebs and Don Neu will be building thousands of homes in Old Miakka.

The consistent pattern of our elected officials' decisions raises some important questions:

• Where was their attention when county data showed eight years of rising nitrogen levels of our bays and waterways? 

• Were they acting as custodians of our environment when they allowed an aging, overflowing wastewater treatment facility to erode to the point that millions of gallons of high-nitrate wastewater entered our waters? 

• How did they fail to discern major policy and environmental concerns looming on the public horizon while granting plan amendments and special exceptions to one developer after another? 

• How do those special exceptions square with the UDC criteria: public health, safety, welfare, morals, order, comfort, convenience, appearance, prosperity or the general welfare?

• Should officials in receipt of more than $10,000 in campaign contributions from developers recuse themselves from voting on large developments or Comprehensive Plan amendments from developers?

Information Bubble

It's the county's job to watch out for us. Do they? In fact, the county has already approved more than 250% of the housing units that state standards call for.

When a government is so subservient to wealth and business interests, it is no longer for the people. Sarasota's elected officials -- from the same tiny ideological gene pool for the last 50 years -- appear little more than a shadow private sector pretending to be the public sector.

Note: This is not about party. The problem is not which party is in power for 50 years, it's that 50 years of any small entrenched group is bound to create a self-serving bubble. Its spectrum of ideas contracts, outreach to diverse elements of the commonweal ceases.

Perspectives outside a narrow, self-serving spectrum simply do not exist. Ideas such as:

• using public lands for public benefit, rather than selling them to private developers; or,
• doing the actual job of government to maintain aging infrastructure, rather than risking public health and damage to our tourism market; or,
• encouraging a diversity of views, values and expertise on our advisory boards.

Unlike Mr. Neal, Sarasota's voters will receive no special exceptions. We'll pay, and pay, and pay to fix what's wrong.

But we can redistribute the power.

In 2020, we have single member district voting. We have the power to bring back open, accountable, fair government to Sarasota County.

Sarasota 2020: Government for the People 

______

Notes:

*For details on how the County Commission changed the Comp Plan to enable Gabbert to build a giant open air waste plant, see this timeline.

**Ayech and her neighbors have assembled a great deal of information regarding their proposal. It can be found here.

***See this planning memo in which Ayech's key statements receive thoughtful comments from a respected county planner:

Seidman: Citizens speak on Siesta Promenade ... but nobody’s listening

With approval of the controversial project, once again residents’ concerns take a back seat to development interests.

Carrie Seidman, Herald Tribune


Before last week’s County Commission hearing on the proposed Siesta Promenade project by Benderson Development, Sura Kochman was feeling hopeful.

For almost two years, using the tools she’d developed over a decade of chairing a New Jersey planning board, she’d spent “almost every waking moment” gathering research, talking with officials, building alliances and working to disseminate information about the mixed-use plan for the 24-acre site near U.S. 41 and Stickney Point Road, neighboring her Pine Shores home. Now it was time for Kochman — and dozens of other residents who also saw the mix of hotel, retail and residential development as incompatible with the surrounding area — to share their concerns before commissioners took a vote last Wednesday.

“I truly felt in my gut that, with the mountain of evidence we had gathered and the testimony of eight organizations representing thousands of people’s voices, that the commissioners would listen and understand the issues regarding this very unique area,” said Kochman, who formed the Pine Shores Neighborhood Alliance to advocate for reducing the project’s height and density.

Siesta Promenade site at US 41 and Stickney Point

Others, aware of the commission’s history of siding with developers, were more cynical. A chorus of voices chimed in on the group’s Facebook page: Don’t even bother going. You’re wasting your time. They’re going to approve it anyway.

Kochman responded with all the fervor and optimism of a high school cheerleader.

“I said, ’Don’t give up, you have to make your voices heard, give it your all!” she recalled earlier this week, sounding a little defeatist herself after commissioners approved the project. “But they were proven right. So maybe people shouldn’t bother anymore. Because they hear our voices, but they don’t hear us.”

Commissioners listened to almost 90 residents, just eight of whom spoke in favor of the project. Speakers said it was incompatible with a comprehensive plan that calls for “walkability” and reducing negative impacts on surrounding residential areas. They pointed to conflicts with elements of the newly-passed uniform development code. They noted flaws in the traffic studies that were conducted and expressed fears of a gridlock that would be not only a hassle but a danger and, in the event of an emergency, potentially life-threatening.

But after nearly five hours of testimony, the vote (4-1) was swift and unequivocal. Benderson’s request for a rezone and a hotel exception was granted, without modification.

“The fact that they totally ignored us and didn’t make one change, it’s very discouraging, very disheartening,” said Kochman, who was born and raised in Sarasota. “The whole process is just so disingenuous. Did they already know when they walked into the meeting that the whole thing was for naught? Was the fix in?”

When I asked her exactly what she meant by that, Kochman didn’t pull any punches.

Sarasota County Commission: In bed with the developers?

“Any rational person would have seen that this application should not have been approved in its proposed form,” she said dismissively. “So the only answer, I assume, would be to go to sarasotavotes.com and see where the (commissioners’) campaign contributions have come from. You hate to think our commissioners can be bought off, but there’s no other way to look at this. That’s the only reason I can think of.”

Kochman has a lot of company. In my year-long tenure as a columnist, this is the refrain I hear more than any other: Local government is in bed with the developers and it’s ruining Sarasota.

I’ve heard it from the grassroots advocacy group STOP, fighting to change the “administrative approval” process that grants the city the right to green light downtown development projects without citizen input.

I’ve heard it from people living on S. Palm Avenue , who formed SHOUT over concerns about safety hazards from construction debris and practices on new developments and who have encountered resistance in trying to get the city to take proactive measures to protect residents, their pets and their vehicles.

I’ve heard it from homeowners in Venice, objecting to the placement of a new hospital in an area the comprehensive plan intended to be residential, and one that lacks the infrastructural capacity to handle increased traffic and emergency vehicles.

I’ve heard it from those fighting the city’s plan to lease the pavilion on Lido Key to private investors for development of a restaurant and additional amenities that would decidedly change the ambiance of Sarasota’s most laid-back, family friendly public beach.

And I’ve heard it from “Reopen Beach Road” advocates who objected to the county’s ceding a once-public thoroughfare to private property owners, allowing for increased density on their buildable land. (Even though an amendment calling on the county to regain ownership and reopen the road passed in the recent midterms, it is already facing pushback — leading to the conclusion that even if you win, you’re not done fighting.)

Almost daily I get mail from readers complaining about everything from traffic congestion to red tide, flooding to impassable sidewalks — all of which they blame on uncontrolled development and injudicious planning. They write to inform me of meetings and public forums and petitions and ask if I can help rally the troops. Many say they are reluctant crusaders.

“I moved here to retire, I didn’t plan on becoming an activist,” one told me recently. “But I can’t stand to see what they are doing to this paradise.”

But when the fattest wallet can buy the loudest voice, even a substantial citizen chorus is like background noise. And how long will residents continue to protest if they know it’s pointless?

“I guess that’s why so many people in Sarasota just live in their little bubbles,” Kochman said. “Go out to dinner, see a show, come back home and don’t get involved. It’s discouraging people from wanting to get involved because they think ... to what end? There is a total disregard here for the voices of the citizenry.”

For more on the projects Seidman alludes to, see This Could Be You.

Contact columnist Carrie Seidman at 941-361-4834 or carrie.seidman@heraldtribune.com. Follow her on Twitter @CarrieSeidman and Facebook at facebook.com/cseidman