Our view

One of the pleasant aspects of Longboat Key Town Commission races and elections is voters are not subjected to deceptive and sleazy TV and radio ads. Voters don’t have to listen to ominous voice-overs slurring candidates about cutting Medicare, ending abortions, warring with women or tax cuts for the rich.
Longboat Key’s town elections are dignified, and the candidates are gentlemen.

Imagine how much the quality of life in America would improve if all candidates behaved the way they do on Longboat Key.

Indeed, Longboaters are blessed. In the vast majority of town elections, the quality of candidates is exemplary. They’re smart, accomplished and wise. And they’re motivated, not so much by their egos, but by a strong, inner desire to protect and improve and contribute to the present and future of Longboat Key.

This year’s candidates — incumbent Commissioner Terry Gans and Ray Rajewski, running for the District 3 seat; and Armando Linde and Irwin Pastor, running for the at-large seat — are especially good.

Each of them would bring different special skills, experiences, knowledge and wisdom that would make a powerful and effective Town Commission. Indeed, at Monday night’s Longboat Observer candidate forum, attendees had to be impressed — no, awed — by the professional accomplishments of each of the candidates:

• Gans heading a 120-employee advertising and marketing team and $60 million budget for Giant Food stores ($5 billion in annual revenues).

• Rajewski spending his career managing TV stations, eventually becoming chief operating officer and executive vice president of CBS and Paramount TV stations.

• Pastor spending a career as an entrepreneur and owner of a half-dozen companies with 1,200 employees, including his Pepsi bottling company in Buffalo and Atlantic City; serving as a consultant and board member for five public companies; and a leader in the $750 million merger of two Buffalo hospitals and the renovation of the Buffalo Bills’ stadium.

• Linde, the Havana, Cuba, native, spending his career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund, helping manage economic and inflation crises in Argentina and India, as well as the finances of 30 other countries, and eventually becoming deputy secretary of the IMF.

Send them all to Washington!

Would that they all could be elected March 25.

Unfortunately, only two can win.

All of these candidates would be good for Longboat Key. But as always, there are nuances that make a difference, and there are town needs right now that call for the skills and expertise of one candidate over another.

Herewith, our recommendations:

District 3
Geographically, this district essentially encompasses the area just south of the Twin Shores mobile-home community, south to the Islander Club and from the Gulf of Mexico east to Sarasota Bay; it includes most of Bay Isles.

The seat became available when incumbent Vice Mayor David Brenner decided not to seek re-election. Rajewski and Gans, both Bay Isles residents, stepped in.

Both Gans and Rajewski are soft-spoken, low key and thoughtful. But when you hear their voices and watch their demeanors as they speak about the issues facing the town, you can see and feel a difference.

In Gans, there is a passion, vision and enthusiasm that looks more forward and upward toward what could be and should be than what is. More so than Rajewski.

While Rajewski supports sensible development and redevelopment, on the subject of modernizing and rewriting the town’s codes and comprehensive plan, he sees no need. He often says what has worked for 30 years isn’t broken. Asked what one thing he would change on Longboat Key and his vision for the Key, Rajewski told us: “Nothing. The Key is perfect the way it is. We just need to work to maintain what we have.”

Gans, on the other hand, says: “We have to attract people. We have to make sure we have what people want to buy our houses someday … We need to have open eyes, preserve what we have here and realize that some changes need to be made to stay a competitive, premier community.”

Implicit in those statements is Gans’ belief that Longboat Key cannot merely maintain. It must move forward.

This is the essential difference between Gans and Rajewski.

What’s more, in his one-and-a-half years as an appointed and elected commissioner, Gans has served taxpayers well — perhaps with one exception. Fiscal hawks still curl their talons over Gans’ vote to allow eight town employees to enter a pension program retirement perk that will cost the town close to $2 million at a time when the taxpayers are paying to reduce the town’s unfunded pension liabilities. Gans told residents at the candidate forum he felt obligated to live up to what previously had been promised.

That one case aside, Gans has proven to be thoughtful and watchful on town spending and a watchdog over the town reaching further than it should.

Logical and pragmatic, passionate and forward thinking, Gans is the right man for the time.

We recommend: Gans

At-Large

This is a tough one.

Armando Linde knows numbers and finances better than any of the candidates. And having worked more than three decades with and observing governments of all sizes, he knows how government works — and doesn’t work.

As he explained Monday night, he has found, no matter the size, all governments are the same: They promise more than they have resources to deliver. Figuring out how to manage and temper that temptation is his expertise.

Linde already has proven that skill as a member of the town’s finance committee and pension board, helping them craft plans that stop the town’s unfunded liabilities from worsening and paying them down.
In spite of being what some might call a career bureaucrat, Linde is perhaps more of a free-market capitalist than any of the candidates — a trait that gives him special appeal.

But, as they say, timing is everything.

Irwin Pastor is the right candidate for the right time.

Many Longboaters might remember a year ago when Pastor ran for the commission against Gans for the at-large seat. At the time, Pastor was vice president of the Islandside Property Owners Association, the organization that squelched the Longboat Key Club and Resort’s $400 million expansion plan.

A resident of L’Ambiance, Pastor felt the plan was too large. He became painted with the brush of typical Longboat obstructionism.

Pastor has since resigned from IPOC. Asked to respond to residents thinking he would be “in the pocket” of IPOC President Bob White, he will tell you, “No one owns me. I am my own man,” Pastor says. “I told Bob I didn’t agree with him on everything. I just didn’t think the Loeb plan was the right thing for the Key.”

Toward the end of that confrontation, Pastor became a bridge builder that led to Loeb Partners Realty selling the club and resort to Ocean Properties.

That, in fact, has been one of the consistent patterns of Pastor’s professional and civic career — building bridges and solving problems in the private and public sectors.

To the commission, Pastor would bring invaluable business depth and connections especially suitable for the times. If the idea of a town center becomes truly plausible, who better to have on the comission dais than an entrepreneur who helped steer the the renovation of the Buffalo Bills’ stadium, development of a minor league hockey arena and merger of two Buffalo hospitals? Who better to advise and help guide that entrepreneurial, public-private venture?

If Ocean Properties decides to go forward with a major renovation of the Key Club, who better to have on the dais than one of the key figures in the previous attempt?

It’s, indeed, a difficult choice between Linde and Pastor. But it would follow the Longboat tradition to go with Pastor. For years, Longboaters have tended to follow a rule: “Seasoned” candidates gain preference over the newcomers.

In this vein, Linde, the newcomer, is on the right path to the commission, participating as he is on town boards. He should run again in 2015.

This year, it’s Pastor’s time.

We recommend: Pastor