Sarasota Baptist's planned development: Careless? Indifferent? Dangerous?

The Lake Sarasota community wants its children to be safe, but a housing development proposed for Hand Road by Sarasota Baptist Church (Proctor Rd.) poses potential design dangers that have been ignored by the developer and by Sarasota Baptist.

Read on to learn why this project has come to be seen as CARELESS, INDIFFERENT, and DANGEROUS by residents familiar with the complexities of Hand Road.

Nowhere in the proposal are these issues of concern to parents and residents addressed:

• Neighborhood children walking to Lakeview Elementary cross Hand Road at a blind curve to and from school each day.
• Parents and teachers are tied up driving to and from Lakeview Elementary on Hand Road every weekday morning and afternoon.
• Buses of children converge on Oak Park School on Hand Road at 9 a.m. 
• Everyone in Lake Sarasota knows to avoid Hand Road during school opening and closing every day.
• Lago Road to Hand Road is a straightaway heading into to a blind curve.
• The plan proposes two entrances/exits onto Hand Road.
• Sarasota Baptist fills with hundreds of cars every Sunday morning.

When informed about the new construction, a crossing guard who has guided children at the curve from Lago to Hand Rd. for the past three years said, "That’s crazy! The road can’t handle any more traffic."

Why CARELESS?

• The plan produced by Bo Medred of Genesis Planning & Development Inc. seems fundamentally flawed -- nowhere does it address these unique conditions. 

• Sarasota County has a rule that a traffic study is only triggered when a certain number of new homes are to be built. The plan from Sarasota Baptist and David Weekley Homes seeks permission to build 141 homes, but they proffered a commitment (binding?) to build no more than 87 luxury homes, which is below the technical trigger for a study.

• Despite "NO" votes from two members of the Sarasota County Planning Commission, that board recommended approval without ever taking up the question of WHY, given the complex conditions and the presence of children walking to school, NO TRAFFIC STUDY HAS BEEN REQUIRED.

Pember



•  Moving the discussion away from fellow board members' safety concerns, Planning Commissioner Colin Pember said, "'I don’t think traffic’s an issue,' . . . eliciting laughter from the audience members." (Sarasota News Leader) He then drove the vote to recommend approval of the project. Pember is the Division Director of Land Acquisition at Pulte Group.

Why INDIFFERENT?

• Efforts to raise these issues with Pastor Michael Lewis of Sarasota Baptist went without a response. When a co-worker of Pastor Lewis was contacted, she assured us that Lewis had received emails of concern from Lake Sarasota (sent via the church site), but indicated that he would not be available to take calls or to speak with residents. Emails sent to him via his site have gone unanswered.
• When local residents brought intimate knowledge of traffic conditions that raise concerns, the Planning Commission voted for the plan without any stipulations or recommendations to scrutinize our safety considerations.

DANGEROUS:

• Hand Road is a major access driveway for our kids and parents every day (8am and 3pm). It's an extremely important access for safe and protected access for young ones, and the currently proposed site plan reflects two additional roadway connections, and 160+ additional vehicles which will create increased safety risks. 
• How is the developer and the County and/or school board mitigating these concerns?
• The proposed development would create two entrances/exits - both on Hand Road - one near to the curve from Lago Road to Hand:

• Sarasota County Transportation states that only an "operational analysis" commissioned by Medred has been done. It does not address the volume of cars, the walkways children use, or the straightaway on Lago leading to the sharp curve to Hand Road. And, it doesn't use actual traffic counts, only misleading estimates. For example, it states that the traffic levels on Proctor Road have not increased in the past three years - anyone hearing this who lives or drives along Proctor would laugh out loud.

On Tuesday Nov. 28 the County Commission will consider and possibly approve this project. To watch the meeting, go to this site, look for Nov. 28. On Tuesday a link to the meeting will be next to the agenda link. This is Item #38 on the agenda. If you can make it to the public hearing, please come and speak.

The safety issues outlined above are only part of the issue raised by this project. For more, see this series of observations raised by residents, including a professional planner.

Parents and children walking to school on Hand Rd.

Please see the related Sarasota News Leader story on the Planning Commission hearing.

DeSantis, Florida, and the seeds of Fascism

 

Heather Cox Richardson:

The attempt to take over schools and reject the equality that lies at the foundation of liberal democracy is now moving toward the more general tenets of authoritarianism. This week, one Republican state senator proposed a bill that would require bloggers who write about DeSantis, his Cabinet officers, or members of the Florida legislature, to register with the state; another proposed outlawing the Democratic Party.

DeSantis and those like him are trying to falsify our history. They claim that the Founders established a nation based on traditional hierarchies, one in which traditional Christian rules were paramount. They insist that their increasingly draconian laws to privilege people like themselves are simply reestablishing our past values.

But that’s just wrong. Our Founders quite deliberately rejected traditional values and instead established a nation on the principle of equality. 

 

NBC: Florida bill would require bloggers who write about the governor and legislators to register with the state

The bill proposed by Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur would also require bloggers who write about state officials to disclose who is paying them and how much.

 

  

  . . . the seeds of Fascism begin in fear & contempt . . . 

Curmudgucation - The DeVos School Privatization Plan Turns Twenty-One: 

Way back in 2002, Dick DeVos, husband of Betsy, was at the Heritage Foundation, where he was introduced by former education secretary Bill Bennett. In a speech there, he laid out strategy for the dismantling of public education and replacing them with a privatized system. 

It would, he said, have to be done on the state level, with a certain amount of stealth. 

We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities. Many of the activities and the political work that needs to go on will go on at the grass roots. It will go on quietly and it will go on in the form that often politics is done . . .

 

Daily Beast - Batshit Bill Would Force Bloggers Who Write About DeSantis to ‘Register’ With the State: 

The bill, which sounds better suited to Soviet Russia than the Land of the Free, includes a dizzying list of requirements. If a blogger writes more than one blog post, they would have to submit monthly reports that disclose, among other things, the amount of compensation received for each post. Failure to do so would result in fines of at least $2,500 per article, and a subsequent requirement to file a notice of failure to file.

 

DeSatan Is A Stinking Fascist

Continued depravity by Republican Party in the longest state to hang precariously off the bottom of the eastern United States is reaching a fever pitch!

Governor Ron DeSantis leads his merry band of womb wreckers into “F*ck Free Speech” territory, inspiring the  one-upsmanship that is currently on display by  white nationalist legislators in New Disney—I mean Florida.

 

Holocaust Encyclopedia

Starting in 1934, it was illegal to criticize the Nazi government. Even telling a joke about Hitler was considered treachery. People in Nazi Germany could not say or write whatever they wanted.  

Book Burning

 

Herald Tribune: Banning books has nothing to do with liberty | Editorial

There are public school classrooms in Florida where teachers wrapped paper around bookshelves to shield the books from students. Why? If one of the books were to fall afoul of the new state law on book appropriateness, the teacher could face a felony charge.

Some, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, call this liberty and freedom.

To us, it looks anything but.

Book banning are two words that don't partner with the ideas of liberty and freedom. 

 

(How) Fascism Is When People Don’t Want You to Exist - Umair Haque

DeSantis banned…teaching…books…words…classes. He’s realized that, well, why bother with any of the niceties of democracy at all — let’s just ban people we don’t like from existing. Let’s disappear them — first, ideologically, in the mind, then socially, as in, they’re not really allowed to exist…and it hardly takes a genius to see where that particular road ends. 

Meanwhile, the new “Women’s Health and Safety Bill” makes it a crime for women to…use the internet. Remember when I pointed out that it wasn’t just “the end of Roe” that the Supreme Court had brought about, but had effectively eviscerated the rights women have, the basic ones, from expression to association to speech to privacy? Now — think about this — just using the internet in ways the GOP doesn’t want you to is to be a crime. More...

 

Chances are, Rufo hasn't read the Classics, and knows nothing about education, or anything else.

DeSantis seeks conservative overhaul at Florida liberal-arts college

miamiherald Saturday, January 7, 2023 Politics 

(Images and links added by editor)

By Ana Ceballos and Jeffrey Solochek Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau Updated January 06, 2023 2:46 PM 

Florida Gov. DeSantis has targeted public universities and their curricula on race, racism. Florida Gov. DeSantis has targeted public universities and their curricula on race, racism. Rebecca Blackwell Associated Press 

TALLAHASSEE Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a group of hard-line conservative loyalists Friday into leadership positions at the New College of Florida, a move that comes as the Republican governor plots a remake of the state’s higher education system. 

Several of the appointees are vocal opponents of gender- and race-related education issues that have fueled the right’s culture wars in schools. They were picked as DeSantis, who is eyeing a potential 2024 White House run, vows to fight “philosophical lunacy” in the schools. 

The new appointees will now help oversee the Sarasota college, which has a reputation for being one of the most progressive higher-education institutions in the state. 

Of the six appointed by DeSantis, the marquee names are Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped turn critical race theory into a conservative rallying cry, and Matthew Spalding, a government professor at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan. 

Rufo and Spalding have backed DeSantis’ proposals targeting critical race theory, a 1980s academic legal concept holds that racial disparities are systemic in the United States, not just a collection of individual prejudices. 

DeSantis also appointed:

 Charles R. Kesler, the editor of the conservative Claremont Institute’s publication, The Claremont Review of Books;

 Eddie Speir, the superintendent of Inspiration Academy, a private Christian school in Bradenton that has as its mission to “cultivate, nourish and inspire students, using a mentorship model to develop an integrated life of faith from the inside out, in an environment of family, care and love.”

 Mark Bauerlein, a pro-Donald Trump English professor at Emory University, whose latest book, “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,” casts a critical eye on education for giving up on the classical canon and instead allowing students to choose for themselves what they want to learn. 

 

 Debra Jenks, a New College alumna who currently is a securities mediation lawyer in Palm Beach County. 

These individuals were picked, in part, because New College needs a new direction, 

DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske told the Herald/Times in an email. “NCF needs new leadership that sends a clear and attractive signal to students, throughout Florida and nationwide, that this is an institution intending to remain humble in size yet nation-leading in its approach to ‘innovation’ and ‘excellence,’” Fenske said. 

Rufo lives in the Pacific Northwest

Rufo celebrated the appointment by declaring: “We are recapturing higher education.” 

‘Recapturing higher education’ 

As DeSantis kicked off his second term in office on Tuesday, he made clear that he plans to focus on reshaping the state’s higher education. In particular, he said, he wants to make sure his administration eradicates “trendy ideologies” from the classroom. 

“We must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology,” DeSantis said during his inaugural speech at the steps of the historic Florida Capitol in Tallahassee. 

Then, DeSantis’ office made public a memo that it had sent out to state colleges and universities asking the for information about resources they are putting into activities and program related to diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory. 

“As the Executive Office of the Governor prepares policy and budget proposals ahead of the 2023 Legislative Session, it is important that we have a full understanding of the operational expenses of state institutions,” Chris Spencer, the director of DeSantis’ Office of Policy and Budget, wrote in a memo Dec. 28. 

The information need to be submitted by Jan. 13. It remains unclear exactly what will be done with the information once it is collected. 

Signs of a major shake-up

As word spread of DeSantis’ appointment to New College on Friday, reaction from academics came swiftly via social media. 

“Terrible news,” tweeted Ohio State University political science associate professor Benjamin McKean. “DeSantis is aiming to destroy New College.” 

Acadia University politics instructor Jeffrey Sachs wrote, “With leadership like this, how could college NOT educate freethinkers?”

Rufo lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three sons, according to his website. He caught the attention of national figures, like DeSantis, during the pandemic after frequently appearing on conservative media outlets to criticize the concept of critical race theory. 

Eventually, the ire against the theory became a rallying cry for conservatives, many of them in Florida. And DeSantis tapped into those ideas to build a reputation as a warrior. He has often declared that Florida is where “woke goes to die.” 

When Rufo tweeted his enthusiasm for the appointment, he drew a barrage of congratulations from conservatives, including Erika Donalds, the wife of U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who was nominated this week for U.S. House speaker. 

Hillsdale connection

Spalding’s appointment to marks another instance in which Hillsdale College is helping DeSantis reshape the state’s higher education system. 

“I am honored by the appointment and look forward to advancing educational excellence and focusing New College on its distinctive mission as the liberal arts honors college of the State of Florida,” Spalding said in a statement Friday. “A good liberal arts education is truly liberating and opens the minds and forms the character of good students and good citizens.” 

Hillsdale President Larry P. Arnn called DeSantis “one of the most important people living,” during the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar in Naples last February. And the Times/Herald found that the private Christian college was among several national groups that helped the governor develop a civics education training program for teachers that some educators said was seeped in “Christian fundamentalist” overtones. 

READ MORE: DeSantis’ ‘full armor of God’ rhetoric reaches Republicans. But is he playing with fire? 

DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier told the National Review that the administration intends to convert the college, which has under 700 students, to a classical model akin to that of Hillsdale College. 

Twelve years ago, Hillsdale College set out to reshape public education through the growth of charter schools and in recent years has expanded its reach in Florida’s education system. 

And in Florida, Hillsdale’s influence has been seen in the state’s rejection of math textbooks over what DeSantis called “indoctrinating concepts,” the state’s push to renew the importance of civics education in public schools, and the rapid growth of Hillsdale’s network of affiliated public charter schools in Florida. 

Arnn, Hillsdale’s president, was appointed by Trump to chair the president’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which was formed to “advise the president about the core principles of the American founding and to protect those principles by promoting patriotic education,” according to Spalding, who Trump appointed as the commission’s executive director. 

Spalding is also the vice president for Washington operations and the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., extension 

Hillsdale’s digital digest, Imprimis, features the writing of conservative thinkers like Christopher Rufo, who has worked with DeSantis to combat issues like critical race theory and gender identity. The publication also includes articles with titles, like “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax,” “The Disaster at Our Southern Border,” “Gender Ideology Run Amok.” “Critical Race Theory: What it is and How to Fight it,” and “Who is in Control? The need to Rein in Big Tech.” 

This story was originally published January 6, 2023 2:30 PM.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article270852507.htm

History in the Un-Making: Sarasota teachers talk back

 

Lucas: A legacy for Sarasota

To: County Commissioner Charles Hines
cc: SRQ County Commissioners Maio, Moran, Ziegler and Detert
cc: SRQ Affordable Housing Advisory Committee
cc: Facebook Celery Fields Group, SRQ Citizens for Sarasota, Personal Facebook Page

From: Adrien Lucas

Re: Board decision approving affordable housing on parcel #2 by July 22 / Chronic Sewage Dumps into the Sarasota Gulf waters

Commissioner Hines,

I began this email a few weeks ago when I read an article published by the Sarasota News Leader regarding the County Commission board’s latest absurd affordable housing proposal to be plopped down on Quad Property Parcel #2 adjacent to the Celery Fields. I continue to be fuming angry and I am also very frustrated that I am not living in Sarasota full time because I would, again, devote any free time, to fight the BOCC's proposal for putting affordable housing on Parcel #2. 

Before I begin, I want to stress that affordable housing, even if the Celery Fields were not adjacent to the quad property you have suggested for affordable housing, is no gift to people who are in real need of affordable housing.

The road that you propose this project on has a grade rating that is as close to failure as it gets. With Mr. Gabbert’s waste transfer facility, along with other industrial trucking in the area, placing affordable homes on a street that is never going to be widened, improved or having traffic thinned out, is about the biggest insult you can gift the poor or working middle to lower class. Oh yes, let’s put these poor people on a road that is dangerous and heavily trafficked with semis. What a blessing that our children can play outside next to these traffic jams and semi exhaust fumes. Seriously, shame on you.  This quad parcel is not a place for healthy living.

Time and time again, you all ignore what the public has asked, begged, written, tons of personal time spent trying to show you what these quads could do by way of enhancing the area and complimenting what already exists, to have a Quad Property back on the agenda, especially for affordable housing, illustrates how self serving politicians are. I digress.

I will be sharing Commissioner Hines' affordable housing proposal for Quad #2, coupled with the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast’s attempt to acquire acreage adjacent to the Celery Fields. It's sad that the evidence is so brightly shining regarding what the Celery Field Quads and local area can be, however, none of you are capable of seeing a Golden Nugget that exists as is and will take very little effort on your part to do what your constituents and people around the world have asked all of you and your predecessors in loud community abundance.  FOLD THE CELERY FIELD QUAD PROPERTIES into the existing Celery Field storm water management lands and designate them as parkland.

If the County Commission had enforced the numerous "affordable housing" constructs they created for the top developers (who clearly run the county) then this flimsy discussion regarding selling surplus county owned land for affordable housing would not be a discussion.

Al Maio

If Commissioner Hines were truly concerned about affordable housing then he would have addressed this issue years ago when it became very clear that the Developers were ignoring any concessions they had agreed to commit to for affordable housing. Instead Commissioner Hines, you rolled over every time Christine Robinson raised an eyebrow and you folded every time. Same with you, Commissioner Maio.

Commissioner Hines clearly wants to leave some kind of redeeming legacy because he has acquiesced to every Benderson, Neil, Gabbert (etc.) request and he has never ever made the developers follow anything they had said they would do regarding affordable housing for their Sarasota developments.

Shame on you Commissioner Hines and shame on the rest of you for acting like sheep and agreeing that Parcel 2 is just a dazzling piece of property for affordable housing. It is so unctuous to think that Mr. Neal or Mr. Benderson continue to skate on by with county corporate welfare and you all think you are going to save the day by building affordable housing units on a crappy street that has D grade for its quality with large trucks now zooming up and down from Gabbert’s little stinkin’ waste transfer sty, zoned light industrial, with all of you refusing to change zoning and now all of a sudden it’s paradise for the poor?  Puh’leeze. Shame on all of you. This presents as the biggest insult to every person who has contacted you to consider saving the Celery Fields Quad properties and the communities who have grown and flourished in that area. You all are failing the people who live out there.

This is not representation. Between redistricting, ignoring amendments voted in by Sarasota constituents and now this, you, the Commission, act solely based upon any self serving whim that strikes your fancy. I bet an email inquiry to public records will show how little county citizens are emailing Commissioner Detert telling her the Celery Quads should be developed into affordable housing/apartments.  I bet the emails that all of you are receiving regarding the Quad properties demonstrate majority opposition to developing or selling the Quad properties will outweigh affordable housing email.

As for the Housing Affordability Initiative you all passed on November 28, 2018, seriously, this is the best scheme you can come with? And while I appreciate the members on the board trying to address this serious issue of affordability in the county, the boards should be preparing a lawsuit against Benderson, Neal and any other developer who has failed to honor the contracts they created with the county regarding affordable housing.

The Celery Field Quads are not and should not be considered for affordable housing. It is not an appropriate place for housing. Period. 

Furthermore, I end this with the chronic sewage spill catastrophes that keep occuring. You are all responsible for maintaining the safety of our county and have failed us for decades. None of you do the county any favors when it comes to public relations. Your focus should be on preserving existing nature because the future of our beaches does not bode hopeful. People will be coming in land to experience nature in the future. Wake up, climate change is real, red tide will continue to grow as will this flesh eating bacteria because these “natural occurring” dangerous issues thrive in warm waters  and are exacerbated by man. It is as if the county is giving a free lunch of poo flushes on a regular basis to these awful things that exist in the gulf, so please turn your attention to infrastructure and having the developers really kick in monetarily what is needed for all their new building sprawl. 

Mr. Hines, you all want to leave a legacy for Sarasota? Then please, help clean it up and make the developers build affordable housing in a place, other than the Quad parcel, where parents, children and the working class will be safe.

Respectfully,

Adrien Lucas

In support of teaching

The opening of a worthwhile piece entitled "Ten Theses In Support of Teaching and Against Learning Outcomes." While it addresses university level teaching, it might have relevance for earlier levels as well. Something to think about in relation to our schools, and the school board race.

1. Teaching at the university level is not a practice of communicating or transferring information but awakening in students a desire to think by revealing to them the questionability of things. The desire to think is awakened in students if the teacher is able to reveal the importance of the discipline as a way of exposing to question established “solutions” to fundamental problems of human experience, thought, activity, relationship, and organization. Teaching does not instruct or transmit information, it embodies and exemplifies the commitment to thinking. 

2. True teaching is thus a practice, a performance of cognitive freedom which awakens in students a sense of their own cognitive freedom. Both are rooted in the most remarkable power of the brain: not to simulate, not to sense, not to tabulate, not to infer, but to co-constitute the objective world of which it is an active part. In thinking we do not just passively register the world, we transform it by making it the object of thought, i.e, an object that can be questioned and changed.  To think is thus to cancel the alien objectivity of the world and to become a subject, an active force helping to shape the order of things.

 more . . .

PAC money and Sarasota's schoolchildren

Cathy Antunes:

School Board candidate Eric Robinson works for over 40 political committees. A review of their financials raises a number of issues.

Follow the Money! 

This bit of wisdom tells us to take a close look at how money moves through our political system. Understand the money flow and who is involved and you gain clarity around who influences elections and what they may expect to gain from doing so. Simple enough. But these days, following the money is a different animal. Political committees have changed the campaign funding landscape as donations are swapped from political action committee to another. Political committees are exempt from limits on donations, and can stuff voter mailboxes with a barrage of political ads late in local elections. Candidates who don’t attract lush PAC funding are unable to respond to the onslaught. This dynamic is a huge factor in City and County elections. School Board candidate Eric Robinson works for over 40 political committees. A review of their financials raises a number of issues.  Read more . . .

Political Action Committees:

More about PACs and SuperPACs:

Wikipedia
Open Secrets 
Federal Election Commission

Eric Robinson

Runs for School Board

Sarasota School Board Background

Schools suffer as Developers get free pass

Dan Lobeck: School impact hardly begins to meet unfunded needs

By Dan Lobeck, Guest Columnist

Published: Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 1:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, October 23, 2015 at 2:31 p.m.

On Oct. 20, Sarasota County School Board members betrayed taxpayers and schoolchildren and bowed instead to the developers who bankroll their campaigns.

The School Board adopted a very low school impact fee on new residential development — less than 26 percent of the full fee recommended by their expert consultant. It will be the third lowest school impact fee in Florida.

This despite an unfunded need of $326 million to build at least six new schools over the next 10 years, mainly to serve urban sprawl east of the interstate and south of Venice. The new low fee will cover only 13 percent of that cost, putting 87 percent of the expense on the backs of the tax-paying public.

So how will the School Board pay for new schools? Even the recommended full fee would only pay half of the cost, but with 87 percent unfunded the shortfall is severe.

The School Board, through its state association, is trying to get the Legislature to raise our school property taxes.  MORE . . .