Letters to the Editor

+ Grant changes costly to Sarasota Chalk Festival
Dear Editor:
As community supporters and corporate sponsors of the Sarasota Chalk Festival, we are grateful for the Sarasota City Commission’s decision to overturn its 4-1 vote to implement a mid-process grant criteria change. We also applaud the commission’s intent to better align our city grant process with relevant best practices by changing application criteria.

But we must express our disappointment that the City Commission considered — let alone voted to approved — immediate implementation of last week’s grant criteria change instead of applying the change to next year’s process and funding. The vote to change the process took place after the festival and other organizations had completed grant applications and after the city communicated grant and funding approval to the festival.

The rush to implementation was a careless choice made without due consideration to cost. The festival paid those costs. At a mere five weeks away from the event, the non-profit organization’s time, effort and focus were diverted from festival production and promotion to disaster recovery. Those are precious resources that cannot be recovered.

The City Commission cannot shake responsibility for this outcome. Nor can it deny accountability for the local, national and global black eye it gave Sarasota’s reputation as a community devoted to the arts.
We are confident that Sarasota Chalk Festival Chairwoman Denise Kowal has the knowledge, network and capabilities to turn the commission’s lemons into our community’s lemonade. She has, after all, grown the festival from an idea to an internationally recognized arts event that adds value to Sarasota as a destination for residents and tourists alike.

We chose to make an unprecedented investment in our community via the Chalk Festival because it consistently delivers on its vision and commitments to the community, families, residents, visitors and artists. Needlessly throwing a stick in the spokes of growth is bad government and bad business in the best of times. Right now such actions are devastating and negligent.

Moving forward, we expect local government to recognize economic momentum and respect enterprise. We survivors of the worst of times are pulling up with broken bootstraps and re-building the economic ramp as we climb up.

What we need from our local government remains the same: lead, follow or get out of the way. What we hope is that Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy take note and give local government efforts to generate festival tourism their just results: mockumentary.
Rich and Katherine Miller
Owners of DirectBuy of Sarasota

+ Claims of homelessness at library are baseless
Dear Editor:
In a recent article by Kurt Schultheis, downtown resident Phil Grande claims the homeless have taken over the Selby Public Library; that they are using it “as a homeless shelter”; and that 80% of the daily visitors are vagrants.

I use the library almost daily, and I can say that these claims are absurd. Has Grande spent any time here? Yes, the homeless are present, but are they disruptive? Not in my experience. Many use the computers here (as I am doing right now), others read.

So what does Grande really want? Closure of the Selby Library? Turning the downtown into a gated community open only to the rich? May I remind him that Five Points Park and the Selby Library are public property and belong to all of us, the homeless included.

Like many other places, Sarasota does have a homeless problem, and that problem has its roots in our troubled economy. Removing benches from Five Points Park or defunding the library is hardly an appropriate or constructive response to the problem. Indeed, it may make the problem worse, because the library is a place where people can search online for work.

Selby Library is a valuable resource to the people of Sarasota. It is also a pleasant place to read or to look for books or movies to check out. I am grateful for it.
Paul B. Laub
Sarasota