Not developers, but business owners, should be thanked

Developers should thank the business owners In a recent guest column for the Sarasota Herald Tribune Rod Thomson would like the citizens of Sarasota County to thank developers for the buildings we work in, the restaurants we eat in, and the stores we shop in. In his vision of the world, it is the developers who are owed thanks for the success of our community but I believe it is the businesses, restaurants and shop owners who are actually owed our gratitude. For if it were not for their entrepreneurship, the developer would not have an opportunity to build for them. Developers are suppliers of structures but the economy's success depends on the businesses that occupy those buildings. While developers provide temporary jobs and then move on, it is the businesses that actually provide jobs for the long term. Without businesses, commercial construction would cease to exist. In reality, businesses supply the needs of the community and developers provide a service to the businesses. Mr. Thomson wants us to believe that developers are the largest employers in our community. In Sarasota County, the top five employers are: Sarasota school system Sarasota county government Sarasota Memorial Hospital Publix Supermarkets and  Venice Regional Medical Center.  The top three employers depend on our taxes to survive. Even if the developers were allowed to double the number of houses in our county, this mix of top five employers will not change. There may be more government employees needed with each new housing development but the opportunities will be the same: low paying or government jobs.  How does that help our future economy? The current county commissioner's economic policy focusing largely on housing developments is flawed since it does not provide the community with the higher paying long term job opportunities we need for families to succeed in the future. What about growth?  Growth is usually measured by government officials as the number of residential houses built. If we count housing units created between 2000-2010, Sarasota County grew faster than Manatee. There were 46,480 new houses built in Sarasota County between 2000 and 2010 while Manatee grew by 36,973 new homes. Sarasota County outpaced Manatee County's growth by almost 10,000 housing units from 2000 - 2010.  The comments made by Mr. Thomson and others in the construction industry that Manatee is better than Sarasota is just not true.  (See comparison chart below on Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte county population, housing and millage rates)  Mr. Thomson also cherry picked information from Sarasota's recent citizen's survey to point out a rosy picture of the attitude of citizens. But if we read the survey carefully, citizens are now more concerned about growth and development (21%) than the economy (7%).  The citizen's rating of our quality of life as 'excellent' fell from 55% in 2012 to 43% in 2014. According to the survey, the concerns about growth and development are the reasons for the 'slippage' of the ratings from 'excellent' to 'good' in the past two years. Mr. Thomson also neglected to address the cost of development on our community. With low impact fees and changes to the Sarasota 2050 plan, the tax burden is shifting from developers to the current Sarasota County taxpayers. Sarasota County's focus on sprawl will lead to higher taxes to pay for the new infrastructure and government services to support the development. If we have to pay for new development growth, how does the new housing benefit the existing Sarasota County taxpayer? It is the local concerned citizens and activists that have shaped Sarasota County to what it is today. We voted to tax ourselves to buy environmentally sensitive lands and new parks. The citizens also voted to avoid sprawl by protecting our urban service boundary, which is supposed to control increases in density in the rural areas. It is the activists and citizens that work together to demand a high quality of life from our government.  Rod Thomson wants us to thank the developers but it is the developers who owe Sarasota's citizens and businesses a world of thanks for the opportunities to serve them. Link to comparison chart on Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties population, housing units, businesses and tax millage rates

Important Meetings! CONA Monday, October 13 6:30 pm social 7:00 Meeting Meet the Candidates for County Commission Districts 2 & 4 and Charter Review Board Location:  Sarasota Garden Club 1131 Blvd of the Arts Sarasota ****************** County Commission hearing on 2050 Tentative Date: October 22 possibly after 1:30 pm Location: 1660 Ringling Blvd Sarasota

Lourdes Ramirez PO Box 35231 Sarasota, FL 34242 Office: 941-346-2830

Lyons: Still in favor of checks on builders

Reposted from the Herald Tribune:

By Tom Lyons

Published: Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 6:24 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 6:24 p.m.

A local public relations man who used to be a newspaper reporter just set many misguided people straight, he thinks.

I’m among the misguided, and despite Rod Thomson’s best efforts, I remain that way.

Most people on this wrong path with me ought not be blamed, I’m sure. As Thomson explained in a recent Herald-Tribune guest column, people have been grossly misled by “a loud minority that is given an outsized megaphone for ill-formed views” who rail “irrationally against developers, a word often said with the dripping disdain normally reserved for Islamic terrorists beheading humanitarian workers.”

Thomson may or may not realize this is an incredibly grotesque exaggeration. But he is stridently convinced that the populace has been unfairly tricked into believing developers are evil.

“But,” he wrote, “practically everything you think you know about the evil of developers is demonstrably wrong.”

His demonstration fails to wow.

The psychic power he used to read your befuddled mind found nothing thoughtful or rational or nuanced or knowledgeable in there. He saw that you have only the most simple-minded, cartoonish notions about developers and that, as a result, certain important realities have never occurred to you.

Brace yourself for his big revelation: If not for developers, we wouldn’t have all the buildings we use.

“Do you like your house? Thank a developer,” he wrote. He repeated that dramatic admonishment for workplaces and for retail shops.

He didn’t say so, but I must add: Why not hug all the bankers, too, as even the worst and most fraudulent of banks — heck, especially those — played a huge role in financing many of those wonderful buildings.

If this amazing news about developers being the ones who build our buildings has rocked your world, no doubt it also cured your hate-mongering ways. Congratulations! Now you must hate only the real evildoers: Those who believe in green space and concurrence and land preservation and such. Those people, no doubt, want everyone to be unemployed and living in a straw hut, much as you did until you got Thomson’s message.

Now you surely realize that you were shamefully ungrateful to question or object to anything a developer wants in the way of development rights or deregulation or tax breaks or whatever. If so, Thomson has done his job.

But maybe you are still wavering. Are you unclear about how far your new understanding of the benevolence of developers — who so generously provide you with shelter and sustenance — should now take you in the direction of approving every proposal they make to local government?

That might be because Thomson slipped up a bit, aside from the part where he assumed you were totally clueless.

“There’s more,” he wrote. “Most roads to your homes were originally built by developers, as were the stormwater drainage systems, water and sewer utilities and sidewalks.”

Well, yes. And why is that? In many cases — as Thomson certainly did not say — it was because regulations that many developers adamantly groused about forced them to do that stuff. They were required to build homes that resist hurricane winds, don’t flood every year or so, don’t dump sewage straight into the nearest estuary or wetland, and aren’t creating traffic logjams because of inadequate roads serving massive numbers of residential or commercial drivers.

Some still gripe about it, and some manage to escape some of the rules. Many try. But some have figured out that most of the rules make things better.

Of course it is a simpleton’s view to assume anything a developer wants must be bad, or that anytime one gets something he asks for, it is the result of buying off local politicians. But it is equally simple-minded, and more dangerously naive, to imagine that enforcing carefully crafted regulations is destructive or that without the rules, developers can all be trusted to do right.

Please.

Even a 10-minute study of Florida’s real estate development history makes it clear why most rational Floridians — not the morons Thomson imagines — are wary of developers who gripe about being handcuffed. I can barely imagine what Florida would look like if we took the cuffs off.

As is, there are still a few unspoiled areas and intact wetlands and some wildlife corridors in between the massive and growing developments that have transformed Florida in the past half century or so.

Developers get paid in cash. It is the environmentalists who work so hard to curb them who deserve our gratitude. I just wish they would win more often.

Response to Rod Thomson's Praise for Developers: Bill Zoller

The first thing to say about Rod [Thomson]'s recent column is that it is mostly true. Developers did build houses, shopping centers, offices, etc. that most residents live in, work in, and shop in.  

The second thing to say about his column is, "So what?"  All of that is beside the real point, which is that the form and location of development are what become critically important as we grow. As we grow (whether more or less rapidly than other areas), how we preserve, protect, and enhance all of the things that we value and that contribute to what we call the "quality of life" become of great importance. Rod's statistics about the rate of growth here are probably true, but again, so what?

If we take away all restrictions or guides for our future growth, the result a few decades in the future will be more congestion, higher taxes (as the costs of maintaining infrastructure outstrip the income produced by the development), and loss of our rural lands and native habitats and wildlife to paving and endless subdivisions. 

One of the Guiding Principles articulated by the Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) was: "People will want to come here until we make it the sort of place that people do not want to come to." 

It is very easy to kill the goose that lays those golden eggs. . . it may be much harder to keep her alive and laying for the long haul. That is the task, really, that we, the citizens of Sarasota County (and the region) must hold foremost; how to plan for the growth while preserving what is critical in order to keep Sarasota the vibrant, diverse, community that we all treasure.  What we have had here is, unfortunately, "planning by developers". 

As Maynard Hiss has written, we need to go back to the days when planners actually planned...made physical plans...instead of writing 1300 pages of policies and regulations and telling developers to "have at it." Planning such as Nolen made for Venice, and Frederick Law Olmsted made for Louisville, Buffalo, Montreal, and other places. These plans, by the way, have provided a framework for exceptional development in those areas for over 100 years.

The current amendments to the 2050 Plan are being made at the behest of a select list of large landowners and developers, whose goal is to make the 2050 Plan "work for them." Will those changes make it "work for us?"

- Bill Zoller