My View

No offense, Mr. Editor, but with respect to your Sept. 25 Our View (“Time to hit the ULI reset button”), I respectfully request and recommend that the electorate of Longboat Key gets another opinion.

In a parallel article in that issue you also print that the “Commission seeks to seat new members.” I suggest the commission seeks more of the same old cadre that has populated it these past few years.

Being paranoid, I compare it to the Bolsheviks, who took their name as being the “majority” to cower their opposition into submission. This goes, as well, for the Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board.

As a retired professional planning engineer, I wish to state unequivocally that there was nothing wrong with the town’s Comprehensive Plan or zoning until the owners of the Longboat Key Club and Resort dreamed of creating a bonanza on the recreational land and open space it purchased from Arvida at Islandside. It’s fact that the deed from Arvida to the Key Club specifically provided and agreed that no residential units could be built onto that land. 

To compound matters, the then Comprehensive Plan specifically stated that within all of Islandside only two additional units could be built. The infrastructure within Islandside and our town was designed in accordance.

Also, the Comprehensive Plan stated clearly that no increase in density could be allowed without voter approval.

But the club’s grandiose scheme convinced the commissioners at that time that everything could be ignored or changed to approve the extravaganza that overtook the permitting process. 

As it turned out, the courts said no.

Undaunted, they are at it again, trying to water down the Comprehensive Plan and amend the zoning to attract some developers for some mysterious “redevelopment.”

If there is a problem, it’s that the governing cadre is in itself so paranoid that it refuses open discussion on what our town should be. What do we actually want? Who decides? Our businesses or our residents?
There should then be an open vote.

The Urban Land Institute panel members can be ignored. They are consultants. They strictly catered to the people who hired them and signed their checks. 

Instead of “pushing the reset button,” may I suggest we start by changing our archaic method of electing our commissioners? Except for the two at-large commissioners, it completely ignores the democratic concept of proportional representation. The five “district” commissioners, albeit living in their district, do not represent the vote of the residents within their district. They each hold their office as the result of a townwide vote.

Successful prospective candidates, historically, seem to have been preselected by the ruling cadre. We even find incumbents stumping for these preselections.

My suggestion: Keep selecting the two at-large members with a townwide vote, but limit the vote for each district commissioner to the residents of that district. It would then make each of them beholden to their neighbors and not to the body politic. Then, at least each district commissioner would respond to correspondence from his or her district’s neighbors.

Second suggestion: Disband the Planning and Zoning Board. Its function has been largely negated by the action of previous commissions in making its decisions merely advisory in the matter of approving development. It now functions solely as a “bush league,” selected by the commission and as a testing ground for future commissioners.

Its activities are a needless expense to a prospective developer. It serves only as a superfluous appendage to our now perfectly functioning Planning, Zoning and Building Department that professionally pre-digests any matters eventually brought to the board.

I propose that, as a start, the paragraph in the attached box be adopted by our body politic. It is borrowed, but similar language led to the creation of a great nation. It may help Longboat Key.

Bradford Saivetz has been a resident of Longboat Key for more than 30 years. He is former member of the Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board. 

A GUIDING PRINCIPLE FOR LONGBOAT KEY?
The Longboat Key Town Commission and its Planning, Zoning and Building Department view with favor the redevelopment of various areas in the town and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done that may prejudice the civil rights and quiet enjoyment of existing residents of the community and of the businesses that may attract tourism to its confines.